2012: The Future of Mankind by Michael Tsarion
Talk given at the Granada Forum, Los Angeles, 2006
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Tuesday, May 29, 2007
"Baghdad is a smashed City"
The western media shows a very limited scenario of the devastation caused as a result of the USUK's illegal invasion of Iraq and nothing of the war crimes they have committed there. As usual, news is kept as sanitized as possible. They cannot and will not show or tell us the truth.
It's only thanks to websites like Uruknet and Dahr Jamail's MidEast Dispatches can concerned folk in the West and elsewhere begin to grasp the true state of affairs. Here's the most recent Dispatches:
May 27, 2007
May 27, 2007
Below is an email I have just received from my close friend and translator Abu Talat. While he has fled Baghdad with his family and is now a refugee in Syria, he recently had to return to Baghdad in order to try to salvage what is left of his former life (his car, belongings from his house, etc.) before returning back to Syria. His note is instructive as to the current living conditions in the capital city of Iraq. Here is the full text of his message:
Habibi…
Baghdad is a SMASHED city … no roads to drive on … most of them are closed off by concrete obstacles with concertina wire. In addition, the presence of the Iraqi military, who cover their faces with black masks and hold their guns in such a way that when you see them you will definitely be afraid that they will shoot you.
The shops in most of the area I went to see are closed. I asked one of the shop owners I know, 55-year-old Abu Fadhil, since I heard that his shop was robbed. I found his door closed and locked and he was nowhere to be found.
Later, on my way to Sadr City, I found that two of the three roads which lead all the way from south to north Baghdad are either partially or totally closed in some places. You still remember the highways in Baghdad … well now most of them are closed, or at least fenced off with obstacles, yet they say there is some progress in the security situation inside the city! Everyday two or three cars explode across Baghdad, killing big numbers of civilians.
When I returned to my neighborhood of al-Adhamiya, I couldn’t get in unless the soldiers checked my ID and my car, even though the guards are from the same neighborhood and they know me personally. But they had to check it to ensure that no car bombs might happen.
Nevertheless, daily mortars shell my neighborhood and those are out of control, despite this concrete wall placed by the Americans which now surrounds our neighborhood. Despite all that they do, they cannot bring security to our small neighborhood.
Needless to say, Baghdad has been changed into THE CITY OF GARBAGE. You can find it everywhere. You can smell the stench of dead bodies wherever you go.
Talking of electricity, there is now only one hour daily. That’s it. From where we’re staying in the city center, in Bab al-Muadham, I can see from the balcony that people sleep nearly naked on their rooftops because it is so hot and there is no electricity to run fans or air conditioners. Thank God that there are two large generators that maintain electricity in our building.
Everyday by 2-3 pm the buildings where we are staying are closed so that no one can leave or enter. That way it is kept secure, and this is how it remains until the next morning.
As far as my family life in this condition, we are as though we are in jail from 2-3 pm until the second morning where the doors are opened at 7 am.
My son goes to the hospital to work, but for the last two days he finds it without any running water. [His son works in Baghdad Medical City, the largest hospital in Iraq] For the last 2 weeks, as he told me, the hospital has been without any air conditioning and almost without patients, although it’s the biggest hospital in Iraq.
My son's wife, who is also a doctor, has to go to another hospital just to try to assist since there is a drastic lack of Gynecologists. She stays in her hospital for three days continuously before my son picks her up with his car on the fourth day to bring her home, in order to insure her safety so she doesn’t have to take a bus or taxi.
As for my daughter, she has not passed out the doorway of this apartment where we are staying for the last week except for one time for some work she had to accomplish.
My wife left here only once, when she went to her job (which she has been on leave from since we left to Syria) in order to apply for a full year vacation. Thank God she got it. As for me, I found my car ruined, so I had to repair it. For that I called the mechanic to come to my home and repair it, since I couldn’t take the car to him since all the mechanics shops are closed and there is no place to have a car repaired. All of those shops are totally closed.
When I saw the mechanic he said, “We cannot live anymore, and there is no job we can find.”
Dahr, this short letter gives you just a glance of the current situation in Baghdad. With the next letter I will tell you some more.
Nevertheless, daily mortars shell my neighborhood and those are out of control, despite this concrete wall placed by the Americans which now surrounds our neighborhood. Despite all that they do, they cannot bring security to our small neighborhood.
Needless to say, Baghdad has been changed into THE CITY OF GARBAGE. You can find it everywhere. You can smell the stench of dead bodies wherever you go.
Talking of electricity, there is now only one hour daily. That’s it. From where we’re staying in the city center, in Bab al-Muadham, I can see from the balcony that people sleep nearly naked on their rooftops because it is so hot and there is no electricity to run fans or air conditioners. Thank God that there are two large generators that maintain electricity in our building.
Everyday by 2-3 pm the buildings where we are staying are closed so that no one can leave or enter. That way it is kept secure, and this is how it remains until the next morning.
As far as my family life in this condition, we are as though we are in jail from 2-3 pm until the second morning where the doors are opened at 7 am.
My son goes to the hospital to work, but for the last two days he finds it without any running water. [His son works in Baghdad Medical City, the largest hospital in Iraq] For the last 2 weeks, as he told me, the hospital has been without any air conditioning and almost without patients, although it’s the biggest hospital in Iraq.
My son's wife, who is also a doctor, has to go to another hospital just to try to assist since there is a drastic lack of Gynecologists. She stays in her hospital for three days continuously before my son picks her up with his car on the fourth day to bring her home, in order to insure her safety so she doesn’t have to take a bus or taxi.
As for my daughter, she has not passed out the doorway of this apartment where we are staying for the last week except for one time for some work she had to accomplish.
My wife left here only once, when she went to her job (which she has been on leave from since we left to Syria) in order to apply for a full year vacation. Thank God she got it. As for me, I found my car ruined, so I had to repair it. For that I called the mechanic to come to my home and repair it, since I couldn’t take the car to him since all the mechanics shops are closed and there is no place to have a car repaired. All of those shops are totally closed.
When I saw the mechanic he said, “We cannot live anymore, and there is no job we can find.”
Dahr, this short letter gives you just a glance of the current situation in Baghdad. With the next letter I will tell you some more.
(c) 2007 Dahr Jamail
BREAKING NEWS: Deputy Claims US, British Forces Killed 15 Civilians
Websites Relevant to the Destruction and Occupation of Iraq
MidEast Dispatches
Uruknet
Baghdad Burning Blog
Depleted Uranium: An Investigation
SOS Irak
The Military Project: GI Special
Iraq Today
Jihad Unspun
Irak War Crimes
Sunday, May 27, 2007
USUK Preparations for the Apocalypse?
In an inexorable build-up of propaganda and military encirclement prior to a first strike attack on Iran, the Bush junta, along with its London quislings, have switched their anti-Iranian propaganda from nuclear issues to accuse the Iranian government of "meddling" in Iraq and supplying Iraqi guerillas weapons with which to fight the US and British occupying troops.
The evidence for such allegations was always sketchy and reminiscent of the concocted lies about Yellowcake Uranium and WMDs, used by Bush and Blair to drag their people into a genocidal war crime against a much weaker country.
The evidence for such allegations was always sketchy and reminiscent of the concocted lies about Yellowcake Uranium and WMDs, used by Bush and Blair to drag their people into a genocidal war crime against a much weaker country.
Now, an independent research organization, the British American Security Information Council, has produced its own report on the alleged involvement of Iran in Iraq.
"Whatever the true extent and nature of Iranian military action in Iraq," the report concludes, "few independent analysts believe Tehran is playing a decisive role in the sectarian warfare and insurgency."
Instead, the report suggests that "other, more strategic motives also lie behind the considerable US political energy being expended on highlighting the Iranian role in Iraq. Iran may present a useful scapegoat to divert the blame for failures in Iraq away from the occupying powers."
"Recent allegations must also be considered in the context of the current crisis surrounding Iran’s nuclear programme. If Tehran can be cast as a source ofregional instability in the eyes of the international community, then the US administration’s hand will be strengthened as it seeks support for stronger measures to oppose Iranian nuclear ambitions."
"In particular, should the administration decide to embark on a military strike – an option which it says is still ‘on the table’ – then garnering public and political support in advance would be vital. Without it, the global unpopularity for military action would likely greatly exceed the opposition to the invasion of Iraq."
"In particular, should the administration decide to embark on a military strike – an option which it says is still ‘on the table’ – then garnering public and political support in advance would be vital. Without it, the global unpopularity for military action would likely greatly exceed the opposition to the invasion of Iraq."
Meanwhile, in an extremely disturbing statement, John Reid, the UK's Home Secretary (Minister of the Interior) has threatened to implement emergency powers in order to derogate Britain's obligation to uphold the European Convention of Human Rights. If emergency powers were to be implemented as an excuse to extend the fake "war on terror" then Britain will, to all intents and purposes, become a naked dictatorship. And even if bully-boy Reid's stepping-down from office in late June were to put such a threat on the back-burner it is more than likely that his successor would continue with such a policy.
Derogation of the European Convention on the basis that there is an emergency threat would need the approval of both Houses of Parliament. But that would be a mere issue of technicalities to a dangerously Manichaean, Blair-Brown regime which, as before, would simply organize yet another Black Op crime against its people in order to plunge the country into a full blown totalitarian state prior to further domestic or international crises such as an apocalyptic nuclear attack on Iran.
I believe it is extremely significant that moves by Blair and Reid to steer Britain into a state of permanent emergency and dictatorship is happening at the very time when Bush is making similar moves in the USA. The two are taking place in coordination with each other as a transatlantic conspiracy to finally do away with so-called liberal democracy. And it is the chief players, the US and the UK, in the Anglo-Saxon alliance of 21st century imperialism that are leading the world into this darkness.
This article is now at:
Friday, May 25, 2007
Way Forward: the only solution
Presented in the conclusion of 'A war on Islam?', 2002.
Abid Ullah Jan
A felicitous conversation between two characters of Robert Bolt’s “A Man for All Seasons” goes like this:
Sir Thomas More: The Law, Roper, the Law, I know what is legal not what is right. And I will stick to what’s legal…
William Roper: So now you’ll give the Devil benefit of law!
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?
More: And when the last law was down, and the devil turned on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, nor God’s – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?
In real life, Thomas More would have been decidedly of the view that there was something called the law of nations, which was prior to and above the laws of England. Since September 11, 2001, no such awareness seeps through the thicket of ignorance in the West.
Ever since, media prosecution has proven Muslims guilty of terrorism and all justifications are being put forward in support of cutting down all international rights, laws and codes of ethics to eliminate 'the evil.' A war on every aspect of Islamic civilisation under the banner of 'war on terrorism' is considered a panacea to all the ills afflicting the United States. But, is it the only solution?
The post September 11 experience further forces us to ask: has the US occupation of Afghanistan reduced the chances of any attack on its interests? Would support of dictatorships in the Muslim world eliminate threats to US security? Would the US-backed drive for secularisation substantially reduce anti-Americanism in the Muslim world?
The answer to all these questions is an emphatic 'NO.' The only solution to eliminating anti-Americanism and the subsequent anti-Westernism and associated violence for the establishment in Washington is to live and let the Muslims live with the same rights to liberty, independence, sovereignty and dignity as it wants to enjoy for itself.
This solution can never be materialised as long as the US does not feel concerned about the rights of Pakistanis, Egyptians, Algerians, Afghanis, Iraqis, Palestinians, Kashmiris, Chechens, etc., as much as it is concerned about the rights of Muslims to throw off the burqa, shave off their beards and adopt any of the lifestyles from straight to bi-sexual, homosexual, transsexual and omnisexual. The Muslims’ collective rights as independent nations are as much important as individual human rights of their public.
The implementation of the aforementioned solution depends on overcoming the following basic hurdles of misconception on the part of the US and its Allies. These misconceptions can be discussed, debated and implemented in one go or in phases, but the idea to continue living with them will never help the US achieve the objectives that it expects to achieve through its 'war on terrorism.'
Misconception 1, Global apartheid will survive: The first misconception of the US and its Allies is that Muslim nations will ultimately learn to live with the pervasive inequality, unlimited double standards and domination. Calls from the Muslim world for equal rights, as enjoyed by other 'civilised' nations, are labelled as the voices of extremists and terrorists. The American 'war,' if it is indeed launched for peace and not domination, can only succeed if it is free of the hypocrisy, cynicism and partisan exploitation that surround it. Liberty and independence is as dear to the Palestinians and other Muslims around the world as they are to Americans. If other countries do not have the right to impose or overthrow governments in the US, UK, then neither do they have the right to overthrow populist governments in Muslim countries.
Twentieth century colonialism has led to international apartheid. However, quelling Muslims’ resistance to repression and domination is a short-term policy, because regardless of their economic, technological, organisational and military weakness; and political instability, Muslim nations will never surrender their rights to live as equal nations in the world.
Misconception 2, Authoritarianism is bliss: This misconception leads to yet another myth that US interests can be safeguarded forever through imposing, sponsoring and sustaining pro-US authoritarian regimes in Muslim countries and that is a lesser evil. Just a year ago, the US could not do 'business as usual' with dictator Musharraf, but suddenly all the principles went up in smoke and he is now the most beloved “President” of Pakistan. Considering authoritarian regimes as bastions of US interests is one of the main impediments to the US understanding the suffering of the Muslim masses. The unrepresentative governments like Hosnie Mubarak, Islam Karimov's and Pervez Musharraf will not remain a blessing for the US for too long. Once they start backfiring, the global apartheid will crumble just like the colonial empires of the 20th century.
3, Secularisation will dilute the Islamic threat: It is an extremely disappointing fact that the US and some opportunistic Muslim leaders have started presenting the establishment of an Islamic government as a threat to civilisation. Global efforts are underway to secularise all Muslim states, keeping Turkey as a role model before them. Such attempts ignore the fact that Islam is not an 'ism'; nor any degree of manipulation can make it so.
By dislodging the Taliban government in the most illegal and inhuman way, the US is trying to establish that all the propaganda against the Taliban regime was based on facts and that any government established in the name of Islam will be a copy of the Taliban government. To make secularism palatable, the war against the Taliban was underway since long. Long before the final showers of cluster bombs, the US was raining down dollars to buy out Muslim scholars and the close associates of Mullah Omar, for influencing major decisions.
All these efforts paved the way for demonising the Taliban as much as possible, and the idea of an Islamic state. The fact, however, remains that the task of diluting Islam in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, etc., is daunting and its consequences will be far worse than allowing Muslims to form and run governments of their own liking. For this to happen, the US has to get rid of its morbid dread of Islamic states. If allowed to flourish on an equal footing, such governments would be more sincere and friendly to the US than self-centred despots.
Misconception 4, The root causes can be ignored: The fourth hurdle to realising the only solution is the wrong assumption that the US will win the 'war on terrorism' without specifically addressing its root causes or defining the meaning of terrorism. Taking advantage of the ambiguity, politicians and governments worldwide have expanded the war against terrorism by re-designating their own enemies as terrorists and extremists.
This has been easy because Washington's definition is elastic and arbitrary, and it has cut down many laws that could hinder the smooth implementation of occupation and repression of Muslim states. Indian exploitation of the politico-religious conflict, Russian reinterpretation of its war on the Chechens, and Israeli attempts to consummate its occupation are but initial pinpricks compared to the impending horrible consequences of the US’s ambiguous war on terrorism.
The US needs to stop its disregard of the plight of the oppressed by labelling it as propaganda of the terrorists. Life is not so different under the direct occupation of Israel in Palestine and indirect US domination in Egypt or Pakistan. The marginalized masses are growing entirely insensitive to violence and the value of life. There must be some reason that they not only dance at the death of Americans but also when their own brothers and sons blow themselves up.
Misconception 5, Propaganda and lies will endure: The recent success of Western news channels to lie about almost every aspect of the Muslim world has emboldened American policy makers to believe that they will maintain their supremacy forever by concealing the facts from their public and to make them love and hate personalities, nations and different issues according to the strategic priorities of Western capitals. They ignore the fact that people on both sides of the artificial divide are seriously looking for change.
Misconception 6, The UN can be exploited indefinitely: For maintaining the status quo in the international apartheid, the US believes that it can enjoy forever the unchallenged, one-against-all position with its veto power; that it will continue to use the UN as an oppression-legitimising agency; and that its managers of genocide will indefinitely bow down to US pressure. Keeping the growing resentment against US policies in mind, one can safely predict that an upheaval in the Muslim world could soon trigger a rejection of the unjust and undemocratic UN mechanism.
For peace, the US has to make a war on injustices.
Archbishop Desmond Tutu in South Africa has been a proponent of what is probably the best way to fully reconcile differences and expose injustices. In this age of global apartheid, we now need his "truth and reconciliation commissions" on an international level for exposing and acknowledging all the bad, dishonest and evil things, done by all sides, with the hope of getting justice, making restitution, and trying to prevent them from ever happening again. This is consistent with the statement, "the truth will set you free" and this is one of the ways towards the only solution.
The proposed international "truth and reconciliation" commissions need to be independent and without any power, with anyone, to veto the truth. There are too many good Muslims and good Americans, that would hate to see an escalation of war between people who should be best partners in peace, except for the acts of a few terrorists, dishonest leaders and broken promises on all sides.
Unfortunately, any future acts of terrorism against the people of the United States or the continued unequal treatment, occupation, repression and killing of Muslims around the world will not lead to greater understanding of the problem or justice for people who do have genuine grievances. The US cannot make the world a better place by cutting down all the laws while crusading against the devil in others. All of us need to honestly face the mirror, no matter how hard it may be and how long it may take.
BAGHDAD, May 21 (IPS) - Killings, crime, lack of medical care, collapse of education, the list goes on. But with the occupation by U.S.-led forces now into a fifth year, and a supposedly democratic government in place, no one knows who to hold accountable for all that is going wrong.
It is the occupation forces, particularly the United States and Britain, that must be held accountable, many Iraqis say.
"It is good of these people to discuss accountability for theft, but the most important thing to account for is Iraqi blood," Numan Ahmed, a human rights activist from the Adhamiya neighbourhood in Baghdad told IPS.
The British medical journal Lancet has reported that by July 2006, 655,000 people had died as "a consequence of the war." It has reported that the risk of death among civilians is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion in March 2003.
"By now a million Iraqis have been killed for no reason, and many millions disabled or badly injured just because of some thieves in Baghdad and Washington," Ahmed said. "We are prepared to reveal the documents to condemn them even if takes us a lifetime."
But Iraqis have no means to take action against occupiers.
The United States has not accepted jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court, which has the power to investigate complaints of genocide. The United States took the view that the court could conduct "politically motivated investigations and prosecutions of U.S. military and political officials and personnel."
U.S. opposition to the ICC is in stark contrast to the strong support for the Court by most of its closest allies. But Iraqis have found no way to proceed against these either.
With no doors of justice open to them, many Iraqis are now taking to unlawful ways to hit back at occupation forces and government targets.
"The only way to do it is at gunpoint," 32-year-old Ali Aziz from Ramadi, 100 km west of Baghdad, told IPS. "They invaded us at gunpoint and we find it ridiculous to talk about any other way of getting back what belongs to us."
Aziz said he had lost several friends in attacks by U.S. soldiers. "The whole world is dealing with this in a hypocritical way, and there is only us to claim our rights the way we find proper."
The human rights group al-Raya filed a case in a local court in Fallujah against U.S. forces in 2004, following a massive military crackdown. About three-quarters of all buildings in the city were destroyed or heavily damaged during the U.S. assault in November 2004.
But U.S.-backed Iraqi security forces have hit out at the human rights group. "The secretary-general for the organisation has now been arrested by Fallujah police for reasons that we are not aware of, and the organisation is not functioning any more," a member of the board, speaking on condition of anonymity, told IPS in Baghdad.
"It is not the right time to talk about accountability when daily killings by U.S. and Iraqi soldiers are still ongoing. God knows if it will ever be possible."
A case for accountability could well be made. A judge from the United States wrote at the time of the trial of Nazi war criminals in Nuremberg in Germany in 1946: "To initiate a war of aggression is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."
The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was judged by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan Sep. 16, 2004 as "an illegal act that contravened the UN charter."
The lack of accountability appears now to be leading to greater support for armed resistance against occupation forces.
"What accountability are you talking about, sir," said Abu Jassim from Fallujah, who lost four members of his family when a U.S. bomb destroyed his home during the first U.S. offensive in the city in April 2004. "Americans are criminals, and the whole world is covering up for their crimes." They will be held accountable, he said, by "Allah" and by "the heroes of the Iraqi resistance."
Iraqis are also angry over destruction of their civilian infrastructure, for which no one has been held responsible.
"The U.S. crime of deliberately crushing Iraqi infrastructure must be looked at as a crime against humanity," chief engineer Jalal Abdulla at Baghdad's Ministry of Electricity told IPS. "They did not have to do this to support their military effort, but they did it just to cause hundreds of thousands of deaths for no reason but cruelty."
Others vent their frustration against what they see as an impotent United Nations. "The UN should be the place for asking those Americans why they committed so many crimes in Iraq," said Baghdad resident Malik Hammad.
(*Ali, our correspondent in Baghdad, works in close collaboration with Dahr Jamail, our U.S.-based specialist writer on Iraq who travels extensively in the region)
(c)2007 Dahr Jamail.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
The statistical invisibility of
Islamist 'terrorism' in Europe
by David Miller, SPINWATCH
New figures from Europol, the European police agency, reveal that Islamist terror attacks in Europe constituted 0.2% of all 'terrorism' throughout the continent in 2006.* Unsurprisingly, there has been little in the media about this interesting figure in the month since it was published.
In their first report of this nature - European Terrorism Situation and trend Report 2007 - reports that across the EU there were 498 terrorist attacks in 2006. These include:
424 'ethno-nationalist and separatist' (mostly in France and Spain)
55 'left-wing and anarchist' (mainly Greece , Italy, Spain and Germany)
1 failed Islamist terrorist attack (in Germany, plus two more attempts allegedly foiled in Denmark and the UK)
1 right-wing terrorist attack (in Poland)
The figures appear to over report left and anarchist 'terror' by categorising some political demonstrations which result in damage to property as 'terrorism'. On Germany it reports that 'the G8 Summit 2007 that still has to be held has already been the target of left-wing and anarchist terrorists.' The report also appears to under report 'right wing' and neo-fascist violence since this is as the report states: 'mainly investigated as right-wing extremism and not as right-wing terrorism'. The report only includes rightwing and animal rights political violence as terrorism if reported as such by member states.
The report does also note that the 0.2% of attacks undertaken by Islamists resulted in fully half the 706 arrests in the EU being of Muslims. The UK itself has seen hundreds of arrests on trumped up charges which are later shown to be false and often propagandist. Indeed one of the two alleged 'foiled' attacks in the figures is the much heralded transatlantic bomb plot in the UK which has certainly adversely affected millions of air passengers. However, it does appear that this plot existed much more in the minds of the security establishment than in reality.
I wondered how well the pattern of media reporting conformed to the pattern of offences or the pattern of arrests. In 2006 the National press in the UK carried 26, 577 reports which mentioned the word 'terrorist' or 'terrorism'.** Of these 7,620 also referred to 'Islam', 'Islamist' or 'Muslim'. In other words the media reported Islamist violence out of all proportion to the number of attacks. This is hardly helpful to those trying to resist the wave of Islamophobia emanating from sections of the police and from the intelligence agencies and politicians. Nor does it give much hope for muslims under attack throughout the UK.
Notes
* Thanks to Eric Herring for drawing these figures to my attention.
**Figures from searches conducted on Lexis-nexis press database.
Europol, 'First Terrorism Situation and Trend Report of Europol released' News Release, The Hague, 10 April 2007. http://www.europol.eu.int/index.asp?page=news&news=pr070410.htm
European Terrorism Situation and trend Report 2007
http://www.europol.eu.int/publications/TESAT/TESAT2007.pdf
7/7 London Bombing CCTV analysis British False Flag Op
Read it here
Attorney General for Arkansas, Tim Griffin, directed voter fraud?
Reporter Has Rove Office Emails - Goodling/Sampson Obstruction of Justice evidence?
Posted By Greg Palast in his Blog on May 23, 2007 @ 1:39 pm in Articles
For Immediate Release,Wednesday 23 May
BBC Television’s Newsnight has 500 “missing” Rove office emails including a series of self-incriminating notes which provide “the keys to the kingdom” behind the prosecutor firings.
[1] In the opening to today’s testimony before Congress, Monica Goodling, former Department of Justice White House Liaison, testified that Deputy Attorney General Kyle Sampson lied. At issue was, says Goodling, Sampson’s denial “that he had some knowledge of allegations that Tim Griffin had been involved in vote ‘caging’ during the work on the President’s 2004 campaign.”
What is ‘caging’? Why is it so important that it led Goodling’s testimony? Why is Tim Griffin’s involvement kept secret? And what are ‘the allegations’?
Goodling, in her testimony (and in several subpoenaed emails) identifies the source of the allegation as BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast - who, in October 2004, first broke open the ‘caging’ story on BBC’s Television’s premier current affairs show, Newsnight. ([2] Watch it here)
The BBC reporter explained that ‘vote caging’ is a crime; Tim Griffin directed it; Karl Rove, Goodling and Sampson knew it, yet Rove demanded the appointment of Griffin as the US Attorney for Arkansas.
‘Caging’ was a 2004 Bush-Cheney campaign scheme to challenge, on false evidence, the right to vote of tens of thousands of black voters.
Was Tim Griffin involved? Palast showed, on camera, the email he intercepted from the Bush campaign, “Subject: caging,” written by Griffin himself, making clear that Griffin was not just involved but the director of this vote fixing scheme.
The allegation is based on an email, re-produced on page 207 of Palast’s book, “Armed Madhouse,” currently a New York Times bestseller (published by Penguin).
In several emails obtained by subpoena by Congressional investigators, Goodling and Griffin complain about ‘that British reporter Palast’ (an American working with BBC London). In a February 5, 2006 email, Griffin gloats to Goodling that “no [US] national media” has picked up Palast’s discovery of the ‘caging’ operation. [3]
Here’s how caging works: letters were sent “Do Not Forward” to voters at home addresses. When the letters were returned to sender (”caged”), the voter’s right to vote was challenged. The letters, however, were targeted at African-American homeless men, students — and soldiers sent overseas — all legal voters who, because they were shipped to Iraq or for other reasons, were not at their home address. BBC obtained 50 ‘caging’ lists with 70,000 voters including large groups of servicemen.
Palast, currently in New York, is available for a limited number of media interviews. Contact interviews (at) gregpalast.com immediately.
Palast is the award-winning reporter who, for BBC TV, exposed the Florida 2000 ‘purge’ of black voters wrongly accused of being ‘felons.’
[4] Share This
Article from Greg Palast: http://www.gregpalast.com/
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Wednesday, May 23, 2007
US military encirclement of Iran
The Grauniad: An Unlimited Conduit for USUK's War Propaganda
Fed up of the garbage with which their mainstream media force-feeds them, North American as well as readers all over the world have turned to newspapers like the UK's Guardian in the hope of finding informed, intelligent reporting of world events. They will be disappointed. Today's Guardian is as much part of an Orwellian, Atlanticist, warmongering propaganda campaign as is the disgraceful New York Times.
Far from being the 'socialist' newspaper that our American cousins believe it to be, the Guardian has all along played an enthusiastic role in promoting the Bushblair war party's war crimes against the people of Iraq. Without admitting to it, and through its uneasy relationship with Blairism, it has moved away from Trilateralism to become, de facto, a promoter of the neocon worldview and its Blueprint for a New American Century.
Along with the rest of the western mainstream media (MSM) the quality of its reportage, now so dependent on 'embedded journalism', has taken a revolting downward lurch. A lurch made all the more disastrous since the appointment of a pimpish US government mouthpiece, Simon Tisdall, as its deputy editor.
British journalism has long been infiltrated by the intelligence services with newspapers like the Telegraph and its notorious Con Coughlin known to be MI5 stooges. Whether or not Tisdall is yet another is not certain but he certainly likes to play the cheerleader for US foreign policy on issues like the Iraq occupation and its anti-Chavism.
His latest piece of disinformation on Iraq, supplied him as the article repeatedly suggests by US "official sources", is not only full of nonsensical contradictions but the kind of blatant propaganda that could only have come straight out of Dick Cheney's Iran Policy Committee.
'Iran's secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq', begins with the hysterical allegation that, "Iran is secretly forging ties with al-Qaida elements and Sunni Arab militias in Iraq in preparation for a summer showdown with coalition forces intended to tip a wavering US Congress into voting for full military withdrawal, US officials say."
Note the last three words, "US officials say", which are to be found sprayed across the rest of this tripe. Any journalist who uses language such as "al-Qaida elements" without questioning the highly dubious CIA origins of the nebulous Al Qaeda is either naive in extremis or a fully fledged disinformer. Iran is a nation of Shiites who are no friends of the Sunnis. To suggest now that Iran is backing its mortal enemy takes us into a world so full of convoluted logic we could easily drown. Another classic ploy of the disinformer.
Iran expert and academic, Juan Cole, comments despairingly on his blog, "I suppose I have to link to this silly article by poor Simon Tisdall in of all places, The Guardian, whom someone is using to push a sinister agenda. Yes, its sources are looney in positing a coming offensive jointly sponsored by Iran, the Mahdi Army and al-Qaeda."
He continues, "At a time when Sunni Arab guerrillas are said to be opposing 'al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia' for its indiscriminate violence against Iraqis, including Shiites, we are now expected to believe that Shiite Iran is allying with it. And, it claims that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are shelling the Green Zone."
"The parliament building that was hit to day by such shelling is dominated by the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council and its paramilitary, the Badr Organization. Who trained Badr? The Iranian Revolutionary Guards. And they are trying to hit their own guys . . . why?"
" It really is discouraging that Tisdall didn't report instead on what crazy things the US military spokesmen in Iraq told him. US military spokesmen have been trying to push implausible articles about Shiite Iran supporting Sunni insurgents for a couple of years now, and with virtually the sole exception of the New York Times, no one in the journalistic community has taken these wild charges seriously. But The Guardian?"
Somebody should have warned Juan Cole that the Guardian is no longer the respected journal it was traditionally considered to be. But Cole's incredulity is common enough among North Americans who, it appears, haven't quite woken up to smell the Guardian's new, more bellicose brand of coffee. British readers are already more cynical:
"Not sure whether Tisdall has any intelligence links, and it doesn't matter if he has, but this looks very similar to the sort of material produced by Con Coughlin over at the Telegraph, and perhaps suggests that 'officials' and 'intelligence sources' are looking for other outlets now that Coughlin has been investigated twice for reporting spurious and unverifiable claims from the same type of sources in the past."
"This does look like a deliberately constructed story concocted through anonymous sources which provides a picture of the situation in the region that serves the purposes of the US and UK government perfectly."
"Tisdall's article blames Iran for the problems in the region and sets it up as the likely cause for any worsening of the confict in the summer, if that were even possible. This is justified solely by anonymous US government sources. The thrust of the article clearly serves the US government without any evidence."
"This is truly dreadful journalism."
"It would be laughable if it was not so malignant. That is, the absurd idea that Iran is preparing for a military "showdown" with coalition forces."
"The Guardian seems to be directly acting as an agent of US propaganda. Is this to prepare public opinion for a US attack on Iran?"
"Exactly as it was intended:
“the labelling of news in some way as “official” (“Dublin Castle”, “GHQ”, etc) is the essence of the whole thing; the whole system of propaganda by news hangs on it. For by virtue of that label our news gets monopoly value, a sort of hall-mark or copyright. It is that hall-mark which gives to the news (in the eyes of the newspapers if not in the eyes of the readers) a news value so high that they cannot afford to be without it. Take away that hall-mark and you ruin the whole business.”
"Merely repeating what unnamed US sources say, however outlandish, is what I'd expect from the Sun, not a proper newspaper. Shame on you - at this time more than ever we need journalists willing to fight the culture of spin and lies, before Brown turns into Blair Two."
Faced with a barrage of hostile criticism, the Guardian editors clearly panicked and put out an explanation stating that Tisdall had never been approached by US officials. Instead, it was he who had sought their views. That's all right then, so clearly this doesn't make him a stooge of US military propaganda! Further correspondence by email I had with the Guardian's Assistant Editor, Michael White, drew a series of hysterically defensive replies suggesting that the newspaper's editors are now well dug into their bunkers and suffering from severe shell shock.
Their latest PR attempt by the newspaper prompted this:
"Tisdall: please! please! give me a scoop, any scoop, I'll print anything you say, my editors assure me it will be on the front page, Cockburn over at the Independent just had a big scoop about the US trying to trap Sadr, and Fisk is an eyewitness to what's happening in Lebanon. I need something, we need something, quick. Anything you say we'll print, we won't ask for sources, we won't ask for any of those pesky anti americans to respond, you'll have the field to yourself."
"Unnamed US official: hmmm, your kneel is very convincing Tisdall, perhaps we can do business. But don't you think begging is a bit undignified for the independent fourth estate?"
"Tisdall: Oh, I was just down here looking for my integrity on the palace floor. You know, we could reprint the news from Jan 2003, change the names, dress it up with a headline and spread it over the front page and people would swallow it like honey. never underestimate the gullibility of the public."
"Unnamed US official: or the servility of journalists!"
Clearly, the purpose of this blatant piece of embedded journalism is to provide the Guardian's chattering classes with a drip-feed of US military propaganda meant to justify Bush's 'Surge Policy' and doubling of occupation troops. It is not Bush's intention or that of his London quislings, Blair and Brown, to withdraw their troops from Iraq. They plan to stay there for an awful long time to come.
And given Bush's domestic weakness it is quite possible that an outright first strike military onslaught on Iran might have been postponed. But that will not stop an ongoing build-up of US military forces in the Gulf and surrounding area which already encircles and threatens Iran. And now Bush has authorized a "CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran's currency and international financial transactions." The objective of all this fits in neatly with the neocon Blueprint whose purpose is to capture and occupy the Middle East as on oil producer solely to feed a greedy US appetite.
The greater number of guerilla attacks taking place in Iraq, it is now admitted, are being made against the Coalition occupiers and not on civilians (see GAO Report graph on p.39, Pdf). But you won't find that in the Guardian or anywhere else in the MSM. What you will find is the endless reporting of so-called terrorist attacks.
By using undercover terrorists to wreak havoc and terror, not only in Iraq but throughout the Middle East, it is the long-term intention of the Bush regime and its European quislings --the latter comprised mainly of Brits-- to balkanize the entire area into a region of warring fiefdoms entirely under their control ... a major theatre of the many resource wars we can expect capital to enact during the coming years. And the CIA can expect to further enrich itself, as it has done in Afghanistan, on the rapid increase of opium poppy cultivation in Iraq.
All of this is being actively supported by the banana republic 'journalism' of the likes of Tisdall and the Guardian. Readers are encouraged to remind the Guardian's editors that a suitable definition of Tisdall's embedded propaganda is to be found in the candid observation of Sir Christopher Meyer, ex-UK Ambassador in Washington, who reminds us that the purpose of British foreign policy is to get as far up the arse of the US and to stay there.
**********
Condemnations of Tisdall's garbage article may be sent to
MEDIALENS ALERT: PENTAGON PROPAGANDA OCCUPIES THE GUARDIAN'S FRONT PAGE
Read it here
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Blair: "We're not living in a Police State."
Taking Liberties
Taking Liberties is released on June 8th.
Freedom of Speech. Right to Privacy. Innocent Until Proven Guilty. Prohibition from Torture.
TAKING LIBERTIES will reveal how these liberties have been systematically destroyed by Blair's New Labour and the freedoms of the British people stolen from under their noses amidst a climate of fear created by the media and government itself.
Freedom of Speech. Right to Privacy. Innocent Until Proven Guilty. Prohibition from Torture.
TAKING LIBERTIES will reveal how these liberties have been systematically destroyed by Blair's New Labour and the freedoms of the British people stolen from under their noses amidst a climate of fear created by the media and government itself.
If you haven't read it already, after watching this video read BLAIR'S KALEIDOSCOPE DYSTOPIA below.
Monday, May 21, 2007
A group of soldiers from the Minnesota National Guard stationed in Iraq, hold up a sign mocking recent comments by Sen. John Kerry about people who didn’t study in school being ‘stuck in Iraq.’ (AP Photo/WTMJ-AM)
THE PENTAGON CENSORS SOLDIERS' ACCESS TO THE INTERNET
by St. Clair
‘The situation BOTH in Iraq and in Afghanistan is a lot more involved than mainstream media can fathom. And, if it could fathom what is going on, it would not be allowed to report it for obvious reasons, as this would further undermine the morale of the Western world.
Troops and their families at home used to be able to at least write emails to each other via blog spots and troops were also allowed to access certain parts of the internet. This is now no longer possible.
The truth here is multi-layered: Several troop elements (including higher ranking officers) have started to REFUSE to carry out certain missions because simply these missions are so dangerous that the loss of more troops would be the consequence. There are not enough protective elements to back up guards on forelorn outposts and there are in general not enough troops to hold down the territories of Iraq and of Afghanistan.’
Read On
Read GI Special here
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Blair's Kaleidoscope Dystopia
Significantly, one of the last things that Tony Blair does before finally quitting (don't believe it until it happens) is to go off to greet the British military occupation on a rah-rah tour in Iraq. A mortar attack was made on the British Embassy but unfortunately missed hitting Blair who went on to give a heart-rending speech on what a great job 'Our Boys' were doing defending good ol' Freedom 'n' Democracy and making the Matrix World a safer place to live in, blah, blah, blah.
Meantime, ex-Prez Jimmy Carter is reported by the BBC to opine on Blair in tones which if not quite Red Pill are still an embarrassing pink.
Criticising Blair for his "blind" support of the war in Iraq Carter said the UK's "almost undeviating" support for "the ill-advised policies of President Bush in Iraq had been a major tragedy for the world."
"... I think the combination of Bush and Blair giving their support to this tragedy in Iraq has strengthened the effort and has made the opposition less effective and prolonged the war and increased the tragedy that has resulted."
The Iraq invasion had "caused deep schisms on a global basis", said Carter, and he hoped Mr Blair's successor, Gordon Brown, would be less enthusiastic in his support for it.
Jimmy Carter's outspoken condemnation of Blair followed a similar interview he gave to BBC Newsnight last year when he expressed his disappointment at the "apparently" subservient attitude of the British government towards the White House. Carter went on to observe how enthusiastically Blair had helped to influence Bush's war-mongering by adding "a very strong voice from London in the shaping of a common policy."
"I have been really disappointed in the apparent subservience of the British government's policies related to many of the serious mistakes that have been originated in Washington," he added.
"No matter what kind of radical or ill-advised policy was proposed from the White House, it seems to me that almost automatically the government of Great Britain would adopt the same policy without exerting its influence."
"No matter what kind of radical or ill-advised policy was proposed from the White House, it seems to me that almost automatically the government of Great Britain would adopt the same policy without exerting its influence."
Well, this is about as candid as any establishment political figure is going to get. Apart, that is, from the priceless comment by Sir Rodric Braithwaite (UK ambassador to Moscow 1988-92, then foreign policy adviser to John Major and chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee) who described the miserable Blair as "a frayed and waxy zombie straight from Madame Tussaud’s."
"This one," Sir Rodric continued, "seems to live and breathe. Perhaps it comes from the Central Intelligence Agency’s box of technical tricks, programmed to spout the language of the White House in an artificial English accent."
"Perhaps," of course, is a deliberate understatement by an ex-intelligence boss who knows full well Blair's long history as an informant and quisling whose CIA-directed mission was to finally destroy the reformist tendencies of the British Labour Party as well as his country's freedoms.
When the establishment begins to talk in those terms you can be sure that political affairs have not just deteriorated, they have taken on the proportions of a Titanic listing badly before being sucked down into an unforgiving abyss.
The list of Blair's crimes are endless: in his youth an MI5 informant, a war criminal who not only lied to his parliament and people about non-existent WMD's but who actively used his intelligence services to fabricate lies in order to feed them to their CIA counterparts and a compliant media. Leo Strauss, the architect of the 'noble lie', kiss-my-ass philosophy of the neocons would have been delighted in how deftly his acolyte, the Bliar, was able to put the science of spin, distortion and invention into service. So would Goebbels, he of the Big Lie.
Not only was the Iraq invasion justified by a stream of well-orchestrated lies where Bush and Blair were fed just the kind of 'intelligence' they instructed their spooks to feed them it was, by an incredible sleight-of-hand, made to seem like a necessary act in an equally fake 'war on terror' where Saddam Hussein and the nebulous Al-Qaeda were held responsible for 911.
Though taken in by the Al-CIA-duh link to 911 story few in Europe bought the contorted logic linking both to Saddam Hussein. But it didn't matter a damn because the target audience to persuade was not in Europe but with the folks down home in Amerikkay. And they bought it hook, line and sinker, thanks to the force-feeding techniques used by the Bushblair duo and their media sycophants on both sides of the Atlantic.
Just hours after 911, Noam Chomsky, in an interview on a then relatively free BBC World Service, warned the world that the real impact of 911 would follow in a world of rapidly-deteriorating civil liberties. He was exactly right and an inexorable onslaught on civil liberties followed where the diabolic duo used their fabricated 'war on terror' and the excuse of 'security' to overturn the basic tenets, such as Magna Carta and Habeas Corpus, upon which Anglo-Saxon law was founded eight hundred years ago.
The havoc wreaked upon our freedoms by these satanic minions is much greater than anything their erstwhile counterpart, Adolf Hitler, was able to bring about in a war-torn world. And yet it follows on nicely in a descending curve of civilised values which Hitler and Mussolini would have been delighted to see their political descendants bring about in a world betrayed by smooth-talking gangsters.
The 'war on terror' was never what it was purported to be. More correctly it was a war of terror in which the ultimate goal is to dismantle the old, so-called 'politics of consensus' of the post WWII period, where social spending was considered an important aspect of developing capitalism, and to replace it with something far more brutal disguised by the economic description of 'liberalization' and 'globalization.'
A fake 911, the 'war on terror', homeland security, the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan, the neocon Blueprint for a New American Century, a racist scapegoating and terrorizing of Muslim communities, all these are but the various building-blocks by which a New World Order is being created. The same new world order that Blair predicted would follow in a speech given not long after 911 in which he claimed that "the Kaleidoscope" had been shaken and when the pieces fell back into place the fractal reality of a new world order would have come about.
How many professional 'commentators' would have rashly said what they knew to be the truth: that 911 was a carefully-orchestrated event deliberately brought about to give the likes of Bush and Blair a Pearl Harbour event to justify their war-mongering in the name of Big Oil and the betrayal of their people's freedoms? How many editors would have dared to risk their careers by publishing anything but the official spin on 911 or the warnings of Chomsky that 911 would presage a new dark age of totalitarianism?
It was left to the politically marginalised sectors of a prison planet to get the truth out by any means they could find, predominantly the internet. For nearly six years now, this writer has played his part in that small band. And we shall continue until such time as the likes of Bush and Blair are successful in finally being able to control the internet and turn us into 'non-persons', beings who simply do not exist in the fractal-reality of the dystopia they intended when they shook the kaleidoscope so violently on 11 September 2001.
Friday, May 18, 2007
Blair: ‘We need America Engaged’
‘Go on America, buy his crock of shit. "We need America engaged". I hope you won't be continuing to fool yourselves by celebrating the 4th July though. American republicans must have the brains of the average coachroach. They're their own worst enemies. Just know that "we the people", who are still stuck with Her Majesty's imperial government, despise you above all others. The British Government has never fought for "freedom and democracy". They fight for the monarch, and so do you, these days, and you wonder why the whole world hates you? Patrick Henry must hate you most of all.’
from NEMESIS NEWS
Thursday, May 17, 2007
Britain's Premier-in-Waiting Gordon Brown-noses the NWO Matrix
‘Just when you think you are getting rid of one New World Order s-o-b crook (Blair), along comes another to fill his place. Out of the frying pan into the fire me thinks. Spouting NWO/Globalisation every other word will secure his position as the Globalists' faithful poodle.’
Brother Spartacus
‘Watch this video and see if you can count how many times Gordon Brown uses the words 'New', 'World', 'Order' and how many different permutations he comes up with in just over two minutes. Short of donning a purple robe and prancing around on national television with his cock hanging out, singing praises to his Dark Lord Beelzebub, I'm not sure that he could be any more explicit about where he is coming from and what we can all expect from his reign’
Stef Zucconi
‘Just when you think you are getting rid of one New World Order s-o-b crook (Blair), along comes another to fill his place. Out of the frying pan into the fire me thinks. Spouting NWO/Globalisation every other word will secure his position as the Globalists' faithful poodle.’
Brother Spartacus
‘Watch this video and see if you can count how many times Gordon Brown uses the words 'New', 'World', 'Order' and how many different permutations he comes up with in just over two minutes. Short of donning a purple robe and prancing around on national television with his cock hanging out, singing praises to his Dark Lord Beelzebub, I'm not sure that he could be any more explicit about where he is coming from and what we can all expect from his reign’
Stef Zucconi
Escaping the Matrix: Are you ready for the red pill?
‘The defining dramatic moment in the film The Matrix occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises "the truth, nothing more." Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality--something utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turned out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods ... In the Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes.’
‘The story is intended as metaphor, and the parallels that drew my attention had to do with political reality. This article offers a particular perspective on what's going on in the world--and how things got to be that way--in this era of globalization. From that red-pill perspective, everyday media-consensus reality--like the Matrix in the film--is seen to be a fabricated collective illusion.’
‘The defining dramatic moment in the film The Matrix occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises "the truth, nothing more." Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality--something utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turned out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods ... In the Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes.’
‘The story is intended as metaphor, and the parallels that drew my attention had to do with political reality. This article offers a particular perspective on what's going on in the world--and how things got to be that way--in this era of globalization. From that red-pill perspective, everyday media-consensus reality--like the Matrix in the film--is seen to be a fabricated collective illusion.’
Escapar de la Matriz: ¿Está Ud. listo para la píldora roja?
‘El momento dramático definitivo en la película La Matriz ocurre inmediatamente a continuación de la invitación de Morfeo a que Neo escoja entre una píldora roja y una azul. La píldora roja promete "la verdad, nada más". Neo toma la píldora roja y despierta a la realidad - algo tremendamente diferente de todo lo que Neo, o el público, pudieran haber esperado. Lo que Neo había tomado por la realidad resulta ser sólo una ilusión colectiva, inventada por la Matriz y alimentada a una población que está adormecida, en grotescas incubadoras embrionarias ... En el mundo de la Matriz la verdadera realidad y la realidad percibida transcurren en planos completamente diferentes.’
‘La intención de la trama es metafórica, y el paralelo que atrajo mi atención tiene que ver con la realidad política. Este artículo presenta una perspectiva singular sobre lo que está pasando en el mundo -y cómo las cosas llegaron a ser de este modo- en esta era de globalización. Desde esa perspectiva de la píldora roja, la realidad de los medios de comunicación y del consenso cotidiano general -como la Matriz en la película- aparecen como una ilusión colectiva inventada.’
Richard Moore, Cyberjournal.Org
Read On
LET THE ANARCHY BEGIN
from MAGICK RIVER Blog
‘A TV TALKSHOW HOST once asked me point-blank during a panel discussion if I were an anarchist.
“Of course,” I unhesitatingly replied, which took him aback. He quickly changed the subject. I guess the talkshow host, like most people I meet, was unaware what “anarchy” actually means.
My Oxford Concise Dictionary tautologically defines anarchy as “a society or political system founded on the principles of anarchism.” And how does it define anarchism? “Belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis.”’
“Of course,” I unhesitatingly replied, which took him aback. He quickly changed the subject. I guess the talkshow host, like most people I meet, was unaware what “anarchy” actually means.
My Oxford Concise Dictionary tautologically defines anarchy as “a society or political system founded on the principles of anarchism.” And how does it define anarchism? “Belief in the abolition of all government and the organization of society on a voluntary, cooperative basis.”’
Read On
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Letter from Australia
by Ghali Hassan
AXIS OF LOGIC
Aug 30, 2006
‘It is getting harder to describe Australia in term of an independent, democratic and morally responsible nation. Australia has moved from a forward looking to a backward sliding society. Many people, including many Australians are regarding this shift in direction as morally reprehensible.’
Now Read On
by Ghali Hassan
AXIS OF LOGIC
Aug 30, 2006
‘It is getting harder to describe Australia in term of an independent, democratic and morally responsible nation. Australia has moved from a forward looking to a backward sliding society. Many people, including many Australians are regarding this shift in direction as morally reprehensible.’
Now Read On
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Was Blair's real Legacy to have finished off the Public's belief in the Myth of Parliamentary Democracy?
“In a very real sense, the symbol of the state in the form of the Parliament, has not only lost all legitimacy, sitting in splendid isolation in its Victorian Gothic pile, which just like the government, masquerades as something it’s not, it has also relinquished whatever power it had over the functioning of the state to Blair’s vampires who are in reality ‘asset-stripping’ public resources under the guise of ‘efficiency’ and ‘reorganisation’.
Sooner or later people are going to wise up to what ‘Blatcherism’ has done, the question is, will we have a voice and the means to turn the tide?”
William Bowles, INVESTIGATING NEW IMPERIALISM
Now read on
“In a very real sense, the symbol of the state in the form of the Parliament, has not only lost all legitimacy, sitting in splendid isolation in its Victorian Gothic pile, which just like the government, masquerades as something it’s not, it has also relinquished whatever power it had over the functioning of the state to Blair’s vampires who are in reality ‘asset-stripping’ public resources under the guise of ‘efficiency’ and ‘reorganisation’.
Sooner or later people are going to wise up to what ‘Blatcherism’ has done, the question is, will we have a voice and the means to turn the tide?”
William Bowles, INVESTIGATING NEW IMPERIALISM
Now read on
The Globalization of Electronic Election Theft
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
From Ohio and California to Scotland and France, the disputes surrounding electronic voting machines have gone truly global.
Read it here
by Bob Fitrakis & Harvey Wasserman
From Ohio and California to Scotland and France, the disputes surrounding electronic voting machines have gone truly global.
Read it here
Monday, May 14, 2007
Fake Terrorism
Jürgen Elsässer: “The CIA recruited and trained the jihadists”
by Silvia Cattori
by Silvia Cattori
In his latest book, “How the Jihad Came to Europe”, German journalist Jürgen Elsässer unravels the Jihadist thread. Muslim fighters recruited by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan were used successively in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, still supported by the CIA, but perhaps sometimes out of its control. Basing himself on diverse sources, mainly Yugoslavian, Dutch, and German, he reconstructed the development of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants at the side of NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.
Now read on
& More Fake Terrorism ...
The Liquid Bomb Hoax: The Larger Implications
Read it here
Saturday, May 12, 2007
www.signgenerator.org
Scotland to remain Corrupt Britannia's Colony?
If it was the intention of Blair's venal Nu Labor administration in London to make a mockery of the Scottish electoral process they certainly succeeded. After last week's electoral count fiasco when Data Research Service's superduper electronic counting machines went into meltdown, producing around 142,000 rejected ballot sheets 3.5% of the Scottish electorate were effectively disenfranchised. To that must be added the thousands of postal ballots that were never received on time.
If this kind of shambles had taken place in a third world country, Blair would have been among the very first to shout Foul and to demand a re-election. But not in Britain. Here the silence from all parties, including the Scottish Nationalists (SNP) with their majority of one over Nu Labor, has been ominous.
True, the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, furiously denounced the election result and demanded an independent inquiry. But, eager to become Scotland's next First Minister, he clearly prefers to live in hope of leading a minority government than to reject the fundamentally flawed electoral process which gave his party a measly 47 seats against the corrupt Nu Labor's 46.
The Greens were the largest group which lost out badly. They had hoped to increase the seven seats they had in the previous parliament at Holyrood to nine. In fact, they ended up with just two. And looking at the manner in which their leader, Robin Harper, has been prepared to compromise his party by leaping into bed with the SNP in a 'loose coalition' it seems that everyone in our small country, still under Whitehall's colonial yoke, has lost out to the unashamed all-round use of political expedience.
I am, by nature, an optimist and see progress to be a tediously slow, one-step-forward-two-steps-back kind of evolutionary process. A thing to be considered against the measure of eternity rather than days, weeks or months. To be an optimist, I believe, it's more realistic to set one's expectations low to avoid short-term disappointments.
And living in the Red Pill Matrix world of the many other millions of Her Britannic Majesty's marginalised and disaffected subjects I am tempted to think that the scorn and contempt in which we are held by the wankers who presume to rule over us is now so great they think they can openly defraud and deny our once-in-a-blue-moon right to have our say at the ballot-box by sabotaging even that.
And it is a measure of the sheer arrogance of our southern rulers that, despite this almighty shambles, the man responsible for having organised it all in the first place, the Scottish Secretary of State, Douglas Alexander, simply refuses to accept he screwed up and should resign. True to his elitist nature, Alexander claims the fault must lie with the people. Along with the lies, venality and colonial racism of Nu Labor (it's not just Blair, it's the whole wretched lot of them) Blair's apparatchiks are not in the habit of admitting to making mistakes or resigning when they have.
So, as no apology is forthcoming, must we be left to believe that no mistakes were made after all? That last week's electoral disaster was intended all along? Alexander's stubborn refusal to heed the several warnings he got that he was backing a flawed electoral system can only suggest that he and his bosses in London were so sure of what they were doing that nothing could persuade them to change course.
Nu Labor has been extremely clever to have deceived the British people over the last ten years with its spin, cynicism and an endless series of lies and distortions. In all of this it has been served well by both the state's sycophantic propaganda machine, the BBC, as well as the rest of the corporate controlled media. In that short period of time its quisling Blair has dragged an unwilling country into more wars than the dreadful Maggie Thatcher ever did and by overturning 800 years of constitutional precedents going back to Magna Carta suceeded in accomplishing what even she dared not attempt.
Perhaps it was foolish for anyone of us to have believed that Her Majesty's 21st Century imperialist rulers in London would have allowed quite so easily the people of Scotland their right to exercise their political will. Perhaps we should have recalled corrupt Britannia's past, her brutal treatment over centuries of the Irish and how, by practising a silent, ongoing coup against democracy not only in Scotland but in England and Wales she keeps alive the abortion that is called the United Kingdom.
Maybe Blair's let's-pretend-at-being-socialists Nu Labor had taken to heart the prediction made by that genuine socialist of old, Scotland's John Maclaine, that Britannia's empire would finally collapse the day that Scotland regained her independence, ending 300 years of imperialistic union. And with that Empire the nuclear colony that Scotland's militarist masters have turned her into.
If what we are now seeing turns out to have been a coup against democracy (and how will we ever know the truth?) surreptitiously planned and intended to look like a cock-up then that must be seen by the rest of the world as proof of how all pretence of freedom and democracy has finally been discarded by our multinational capitalist rulers to be replaced by a planetary, Orwellian dystopia.
Scotland to remain Corrupt Britannia's Colony?
If it was the intention of Blair's venal Nu Labor administration in London to make a mockery of the Scottish electoral process they certainly succeeded. After last week's electoral count fiasco when Data Research Service's superduper electronic counting machines went into meltdown, producing around 142,000 rejected ballot sheets 3.5% of the Scottish electorate were effectively disenfranchised. To that must be added the thousands of postal ballots that were never received on time.
If this kind of shambles had taken place in a third world country, Blair would have been among the very first to shout Foul and to demand a re-election. But not in Britain. Here the silence from all parties, including the Scottish Nationalists (SNP) with their majority of one over Nu Labor, has been ominous.
True, the SNP leader, Alex Salmond, furiously denounced the election result and demanded an independent inquiry. But, eager to become Scotland's next First Minister, he clearly prefers to live in hope of leading a minority government than to reject the fundamentally flawed electoral process which gave his party a measly 47 seats against the corrupt Nu Labor's 46.
The Greens were the largest group which lost out badly. They had hoped to increase the seven seats they had in the previous parliament at Holyrood to nine. In fact, they ended up with just two. And looking at the manner in which their leader, Robin Harper, has been prepared to compromise his party by leaping into bed with the SNP in a 'loose coalition' it seems that everyone in our small country, still under Whitehall's colonial yoke, has lost out to the unashamed all-round use of political expedience.
I am, by nature, an optimist and see progress to be a tediously slow, one-step-forward-two-steps-back kind of evolutionary process. A thing to be considered against the measure of eternity rather than days, weeks or months. To be an optimist, I believe, it's more realistic to set one's expectations low to avoid short-term disappointments.
And living in the Red Pill Matrix world of the many other millions of Her Britannic Majesty's marginalised and disaffected subjects I am tempted to think that the scorn and contempt in which we are held by the wankers who presume to rule over us is now so great they think they can openly defraud and deny our once-in-a-blue-moon right to have our say at the ballot-box by sabotaging even that.
And it is a measure of the sheer arrogance of our southern rulers that, despite this almighty shambles, the man responsible for having organised it all in the first place, the Scottish Secretary of State, Douglas Alexander, simply refuses to accept he screwed up and should resign. True to his elitist nature, Alexander claims the fault must lie with the people. Along with the lies, venality and colonial racism of Nu Labor (it's not just Blair, it's the whole wretched lot of them) Blair's apparatchiks are not in the habit of admitting to making mistakes or resigning when they have.
So, as no apology is forthcoming, must we be left to believe that no mistakes were made after all? That last week's electoral disaster was intended all along? Alexander's stubborn refusal to heed the several warnings he got that he was backing a flawed electoral system can only suggest that he and his bosses in London were so sure of what they were doing that nothing could persuade them to change course.
Nu Labor has been extremely clever to have deceived the British people over the last ten years with its spin, cynicism and an endless series of lies and distortions. In all of this it has been served well by both the state's sycophantic propaganda machine, the BBC, as well as the rest of the corporate controlled media. In that short period of time its quisling Blair has dragged an unwilling country into more wars than the dreadful Maggie Thatcher ever did and by overturning 800 years of constitutional precedents going back to Magna Carta suceeded in accomplishing what even she dared not attempt.
Perhaps it was foolish for anyone of us to have believed that Her Majesty's 21st Century imperialist rulers in London would have allowed quite so easily the people of Scotland their right to exercise their political will. Perhaps we should have recalled corrupt Britannia's past, her brutal treatment over centuries of the Irish and how, by practising a silent, ongoing coup against democracy not only in Scotland but in England and Wales she keeps alive the abortion that is called the United Kingdom.
Maybe Blair's let's-pretend-at-being-socialists Nu Labor had taken to heart the prediction made by that genuine socialist of old, Scotland's John Maclaine, that Britannia's empire would finally collapse the day that Scotland regained her independence, ending 300 years of imperialistic union. And with that Empire the nuclear colony that Scotland's militarist masters have turned her into.
If what we are now seeing turns out to have been a coup against democracy (and how will we ever know the truth?) surreptitiously planned and intended to look like a cock-up then that must be seen by the rest of the world as proof of how all pretence of freedom and democracy has finally been discarded by our multinational capitalist rulers to be replaced by a planetary, Orwellian dystopia.
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