The New York Post is shocked, shocked, by a new poll that shows a staggering of number Americans believe that President Bush and/or his administration knew the 9/11 attacks were coming, and did nothing to stop them :
Nearly two-thirds of Americans believe the federal government had warnings about 9/11 but decided to ignore them, a national survey found.
Sixty-two percent of those polled thought it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely” that federal officials turned a blind eye to specific warnings of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.
The findings followed a 2006 poll by the same researchers, who found that 36 percent of Americans believe federal government officials “either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or took no action” because they wanted “to go to war in the Middle East.”
In that poll, 16 percent said the Twin Towers might have collapsed because of secretly planted explosives - not hijacked passenger jets flown into them.
And what hit the Pentagon? Twelve percent figured it was a US cruise missile.
Anger at the federal government and skepticism in general by younger Americans is fueling the popularity of crackpot conspiracy theories.
Crackpot conspiracy theories?
So where are all these Americans getting such crackpot conspiracy theories?
It’s a remarkable thing to consider that every year, on September 11, when memorials and retrospectives fill the evening news and current affairs shows, and President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney roll out the speeches, more than 6 out of 10 Americans watching it are thinking “They knew it was coming, and they didn’t stop it.”
It’s time for the official investigations into the 9/11 attacks to be completed.
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America’s Mind Power Wasted On Worthless Celebrity Trash
America’s most succcessful novelist, and self-confessed news junkie, Stephen King cuts loose on the corporate media’s obsession with mindless celebrity crap. Americans are being treated like idiots, and are being robbed of their intellect, all the while the real stories are being missed, like :
“…where all the money went that we poured into Iraq. It just seems to disappear.
“And yet you get this coverage of who’s gonna get custody of Britney’s kids? Whether or not Lindsay drank at her twenty-first birthday party, and all this other shit.
“You know, this morning, the two big stories on CNN are Kanye West’s mother, who died, apparently, after having some plastic surgery. The other big thing that’s going on is whether or not this cop [Drew Peterson] killed his… wife.
“And meanwhile, you’ve got Pakistan in the midst of a real crisis, where these people have nuclear weapons that we helped them develop. You’ve got a guy in charge, who’s basically declared himself the military strongman and is being supported by the Bush administration, whose raison d’etre for going into Iraq was to spread democracy in the world.
“So you’ve got these things going on, which seem to me to be very substantive, that could affect all of us, and instead, you see a lot of this back-fence gossip.
“We’re news junkies in my house.”
“I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy.
“We’ve switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics — trying to play a serious part in the world — to a culture that’s really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don’t know who their f—— Representatives are.”
“Britney Spears is just trailer trash. That’s all. I mean, I don’t mean to be pejorative. But you observe her behavior for the past five years and you say, “Here’s a lady who can’t take care of her kids, she can’t take care of herself, she has no retirement fund, everything that she gets runs right through her hands.” And yet, you know and I know that if you go to those sites that tell you what the most blogged-about things on the Internet are, it’s Britney, it’s Lindsay.
“So I think it would be terrific [to have them as TIME Persons of the Year]. There would be such a scream from the American reading public, sure. But at the same time, it’s time for somebody to discuss the difference between real news and fake news.
“…Britney is now famous for being famous. Her sales have gone down with almost every album, bigger and bigger jumps, so that nobody really cares about her music anymore. They care about the tabloid headlines and whether or not she’s wearing panties. I mean, is this an issue that the American public needs to turn its brainpower on?”
An American friend has a theory on what’s going on in his country right now. He doesn’t believe the media is dumbing down his country, he thinks it’s being dumbed up. That is, the obsessions and fixations of the not so bright are being forced up the intellectual scale, to where even once ‘hard news’ channels and current affairs shows are now including stories about celebrity trash.
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This collection of answers, in the below video, from Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul is as good an example as any of why the ten term senator is storming through the avalanche of spin and tosh falling from the mouths of the likes of Rudy Guiliani and causing such a ruckus.
The mainstream media remained faithful, for months, to the line that Ron Paul was merely an internet phenomenon and that his support base was nothing but a few hundred online activists doing a hell of a good job with spamming comment boards and ‘rigging’ online polls.
But Ron Paul pulled some 5000 people to a recent rally (even Hillary Clinton has trouble pulling crowds that big), and raised more than $4 million for his campaign in 24 hours. His fundraising efforts are on fire, while other, higher profile Democrat and Republican candidates are failing to raise enough for any serious advertising campaigns to get their message out.
Now it’s clear that there is a growing proportion of the American people listening to, and agreeing with, what Ron Paul has to say, the serious business of discrediting him and destroying his credibility will now begin, in earnest.
In the meantime, here’s the video of Ron Paul’s answers during the recent CNN Republican debate. Take special note of the vile way John McCain tries to link Ron Paul to the rise of the Nazis during the 1930s. Incredible :
McCain, citing the long ago discredited official history, declared Ron Paul to be an isolationist and World War II the fault of American isolationism, a claim so out of touch with reality as to be speculative fiction.
“Mussolini enjoyed a great deal of admiration in corporate America from the moment he came to power in a coup that was hailed stateside as ‘a fine young revolution,’” writes the historian Jacques R. Pauwels. “In the 1920s many big American corporations enjoyed sizeable investments in Germany…. By the early 1930s, an élite of about twenty of the largest American corporations had a German connection including Du Pont, Union Carbide, Westinghouse, General Electric, Gilette, Goodrich, Singer, Eastman Kodak, Coca-Cola, IBM, and ITT.”
Isolationist? Hardly. Corporate America was in business with Germany and Italy during the 1930s. Big business.
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Okay, prepare yourselves, and try not to be too shocked by this revelation :
Rupert Murdoch has admitted to a parliamentary inquiry (in the UK) that he has “editorial control” over which party The Sun and News of the World back in a general election and what line the papers take on Europe.
Mr Murdoch’s comments were revealed in the minutes from evidence he gave behind closed doors on 17 September in New York, during the committee’s inquiry into media ownership.
But the News Corporation chairman said he took a different approach with The Times and The Sunday Times. While he often asked what those papers were doing, he never instructed them or interfered, he said.
The minute stated: “For The Sun and News of the World he explained that he is a ‘traditional proprietor’. He exercises editorial control on major issues – like which party to back in a general election or policy on Europe
Murdoch’s revelation of purposeful editorial control and influence should not be a revelation to readers of this blog.
Murdoch clearly admitted, back in June during his climate change awakening, that not only did he instruct his newspapers to push a certain reality that he favoured, but he could also muster the entire forces of his internet, newspaper, cable and TV empire to push his belief systems onto the world and change not only what they believed, but how they behaved.
Here’s Rupert Murdoch explaining how this would be done on the issue of ‘waking up’ his hundreds of millions of readers and viewers to the ‘reality’ of climate change :
“We need to reach (our audience) in a sustained way. To weave this issue into our content– make it dramatic, make it vivid, even sometimes make it fun. We want to inspire people to change their behavior.
“The challenge is to revolutionize the message.
“We need to do what our company does best: make this issue exciting. Tell the story in a new way.
“…we can change the way the public thinks about these issues…”
The American mainstream media can learn a lesson or two in how to whitewash the war crimes of President George W. Bush from Rupert Murdoch’s Australian media.
This is how Murdoch’s key foreign policy commentator summed up the Iraq War Thing today in a long and glowing tribute to now former prime minister, and key Bush ‘War on Terror’ ally, John Howard in his national newspaper, The Australian :
Howard made the right call on the information available, and it took incredible guts to do it. There were certainly no lies involved - every responsible authority was convinced Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction - and Howard will be vindicated by history.
42 words, a couple of big statements, don’t worry about the crap factor, and that’s it. Don’t try and argue the case. That gets messy.
Look how easy the exact same whitewashing pitch can be slathered over President Bush’s Iraq War legacy :
Bush made the right call on the information available, and it took incredible guts to do it. There were certainly no lies involved - every responsible authority was convinced Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction - and Bush will be vindicated by history.
Like Bush, John Howard’s lies before and during the Iraq War have been stunning and numerous, but it is essential for his media supporters and shameless hacks to keep saying “he never lied, never, never, never” as often as possible, just in case it aids people in being able to look at these war criminals without thinking of Iraqi children with their arms and legs blown off and the ragged stumps pissing blood.
The 42 words come courtesy of Murdoch’s chief foreign policy commentator in Australia, Greg Sheridan, who you might remember for his fabulous and completely uncritical work in helping Dick Cheney get his message out on why the US must go to War On Iran, during his tour of Australia in February.
Michael Ledeen : I Was For Regime Change In Iran Before I Was Never For Military Action Against Iraq
By Darryl Mason
Who knew the Queen Of England played such a large role in the future of Iran?
Who knew Queen Elizabeth II decided whether or not countries outside her realm should suddenly become overwhelmed by the fervour of people powered revolution, backed by British secret service and the CIA, and try to overthrow their leaders?
According to Michael Ledeen, a NeoCon ’scholar’, Her Majesty does decide the course of historical events like popular uprisings against fascist and/or totalitarian regimes in the Middle East. In this scenario, Iran :
“…take revolution, for example. If the Americans and the Queen of England want there to be a democratic revolution in Iran it will happen. It will succeed. And conversely, if they don’t want it to happen, it can’t succeed.
Which is why I think basically (the Iranian people) are waiting to hear clearly from…Her Majesty that it’s time for democratic revolution.”
Is Michael Ledeen eating special mushrooms, or has he revealed too much information?
Ledeen has something to say about the levels of “carnage” in Iraq and who is responsible for it. Again, probably too much information…or not enough :
“…there is carnage. There are attacks, but compared to a year ago it’s 70 per cent less, 80 per cent less, 60 per cent less, I mean, big numbers. Numbers that surprise, frankly, that surprise our own military people who are the ones who have carried it out.
Let’s just file that one away as a Ledeen-style Bushism.
We’ll move on.
Michael Ledeen also wants it to be known that he was never for the military invasion and occupation of Iraq. For him it was always about revolution in Iran :
“I thought it was a bad idea to…attack Saddam Hussein militarily when there were so many smart political things to do. And I thought we should have started with Iran rather than starting with Iraq.”
Is there one single NeoCon left now who will admit that they enthusiastically, evangelically backed the War On Iraq? Without having a thick wad of 2002 interview transcripts waved in their face, that is.
Here’s an example of Ledeen expressing his opposition to the use of violence to get rid of Saddam Hussein :
One can only hope that we turn the region into a cauldron, and faster, please. If ever there were a region that richly deserved being cauldronized, it is the Middle East today…
And here’s Ledeen expressing his concern for casualties in Iraq, and other Middle East war zones :
I think the level of casualties is secondary. I mean, it may sound like an odd thing to say. But all the great scholars who have studied American character have come to the conclusion that we are a warlike people and that we love war.
Seeing as Michael Ledeen is a ‘resident scholar’ at the American Enterprise Institute (”You Want A War? We Can Make It Happen!”), we should make mention of some of the other valuable insights and breaking news he supplies during this interview :
* 90% of the streets of Baghdad are now so safe, Western journalists can go to the shops, get a haircut and do their jobs.
* Western journalists are now leaving the Iraq ‘post-war zones’ because there is not enough violence to write about.
* The new peace in Iraq can’t last however, because Iran and Syria won’t let freedom reign.
* NeonCons, like Leeden, now view Iraq as a “battle” that has been “won”, but the war is not over because Iraq was just one “major battle” in a larger “regional war”.
* Iranians thinks that the British Secret Service and the CIA run the world, and control historical events in Iran, and for good reason.
* President Bush is not planning to strike Iran militarily. Unless, of course, they nuke Israel, or if Israel is forced to shoot down a “nuclear tipped missile in mid-flight”. Then Iran gets smashed.
* The United States will not go to war again based on an intelligence assessment, because even the intelligence community no longer believes what intelligence assessments claim to be reality.
So to summarise : a democratic revolution in Iran needs the support of Queen Elizabeth II; even American intelligence agents don’t believe their own intelligence reports; the Iranians are right about the CIA and British Secret Service really running the world, or Iran at least; there will be no war on Iran unless a nuclear bomb either detonates inside Israel or is shot down on its way there and Katie Couric can walk down nine out of ten streets in Baghdad today without heavy security, go get a haircut and survive to file a ‘local colour’ story for CNN.
Let it never be said again, by anybody, that NeoCons like Michael Ledeen and the hermetically-sealed-against-reality inmates of the American Enterprise Institute don’t have any idea what’s going on in the world today.
Clearly the likes of Michael Ledeen know much more than you or I do about the true power of Queen Elizabeth II and her involvement in the fermenting of people power revolutions in the Middle East.
Now forget you ever learned this. Life is easier that way.
Amis should be allowed to wonder aloud about anything. He can suggest Muslims should ‘experience painful discrimination until they get tough with their children’ if he likes.
Thought experiments are fine.
But if he bundles his thoughts on Islam together and iterates them one after the other as he did when I saw him, he displays not unguarded musing but the forging of an incoherent creed of hate.
It goes roughly like this: 9/11 was horrific, its driving ideology was totalitarian, the totalitarians were Muslims, all Muslims follow a book they believe to be the immutable word of God, I don’t believe that, therefore all Muslims are idiots, and basically bastards. Idiot bastards moping around the Middle East in a paranoid funk just cos they lost their empire, and what a rubbish empire it was, too, by the way. Now, what is your balanced view of these primitive wife-beating idiotic bastards?
Martin Amis made funny, an accomplishment on a grand scale.
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Dozens of teens dressed in uniforms provided by the US Marines stand at attention in the gym of a Chicago public high school as a drill sergeant goes through a list of the day’s do’s and don’ts.
One in 10 public high school students in Chicago wears a military uniform to school and takes classes — including how to shoot a gun properly — from retired veterans.
That number is expected to rise as junior military reserve programs expand across the country now that a congressional cap of 3,500 units has been lifted from the nearly century-old scheme.
Proponents of the junior reserve programs say they provide stability and a sense of purpose for troubled youth and help to instill values such as leadership and responsibility.
But opponents say the programs divert critical resources from crumbling public schools and lead to a militarization of US society.
“To call these young people child soldiers might be technically inaccurate, but it does reveal the truth of it,” said Oscar Castro, a spokesman for the National Youth and Militarism Program, an advocacy group.
Military recruiters already have the right to give presentations in public schools and to access databases with the contact information of all public school students whose parents do not remove their children from the list.
While military officials say the junior reserve programs are not used as recruiting tools, about 30 to 50 percent of cadets eventually enlist…
This is particularly troubling given that the programs are concentrated in low-income and minority neighborhoods, said Sheena Gibbs, a spokeswoman for the Chicago branch of the American Friends Service Committee which lobbies against the programs.
“If you want to teach discipline and leadership then do it for everyone and don’t make them wear (military) uniforms,” Gibbs said. “Students (at regular schools) protest that they have to still share books but the military academy has laptops.”
At Chicago’s Marine Military Math and Science Academy, the first public Marine academy in the nation and the fifth military academy run by the city’s school district, it’s easy to see how signing up for service would be a logical post-graduation step.
The argument that such military training helps wayward kids learn discipline and how to behave is valid enough.
But equally valid is the argument that such military-in-schools programs are rare indeed in the more affluent white suburbs of the United States.
Rich white kids rarely go to fight America’s wars.
They go to university.
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What, then, caused them to embrace violent jihad? In a city flooded with televised images of civilians dying in Iraq, the forces of politics and religion surely weighed on these men’s lives. For some of them, public outrage merged with personal grievance.
Yet individual experiences and ideological convictions can only explain so much. Increasingly, terrorism analysts have focused on the importance of social milieu. Some stress that terrorists are not simply loners, overcome by a militant cause. They are more likely to radicalize together with others who share the same passions and afflictions and daily routines. As the story of Jamaa Mezuak suggests, the turn to violence is seldom made alone. Terrorists don’t simply die for a cause, Scott Atran, an anthropologist who studies terrorism, told me. “They die for each other.”
The question of what drives someone to terrorism has given rise to a cottage industry of theories since Sept. 11. None may fully explain what happened in Jamaa Mezuak: why some of its young men chose to become terrorists when most have not. The notion that poverty is to blame has been debunked again and again. And while religious extremism can feed militancy, many experts prefer to emphasize the anger generated by political conflicts, like the war in Iraq or the Arab-Israeli struggle.
Many may sympathize with a cause, but few ever turn to violence. Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former C.I.A. case officer, holds that people prone to terrorism share a sequence of experiences, which he outlines in his forthcoming book, “Leaderless Jihad.”
They feel a sense of moral outrage that is interpreted in a specific way (the war in Iraq, for example, is interpreted as a war on Islam); that outrage resonates with the person’s own experiences (Muslims in Germany or Britain who feel marginalized might identify with the suffering of Iraqis); and finally, that outrage is channeled into action.
This process, Sageman told me, is rarely a solitary one. He and a growing number of law-enforcement officials and analysts argue that group dynamics play a key role in radicalization. While ideology may inspire terrorists, they say, it takes intimate social forces to push people to action. Friends embolden one another to act in ways they might not on their own. This might be called the peer-pressure theory of terrorism. Experts in the field refer to it as the BOG, for bunch of guys (or GOG, for group of guys). “Terrorism is really a collective decision, not an individual one,” said Sageman, who coined the theory. “It’s about kinship and friendship.”
Jihadi groups, like most social circles, tend to rely on frequent, sustained interaction, Sageman told me. People are drawn together by a common activity, like soccer, or by a common set of circumstances, like prison. Often they meet in the temporary spaces born of immigration.
In groups predisposed to violence, there is often a shared grievance around which members first rally. In the case of urban American gangs, the grievance could be police brutality. For the Hamburg cell behind 9/11, it was the war in Chechnya.
Law-enforcement agencies have begun changing their approach to counterterrorism in tandem with their heightened awareness of the role that groups play. Investigators in Europe, Canada and the United States are now conducting surveillance of suspects for longer periods of time, in part to observe the full breadth of their social networks.
The horrors and inhumanity of what has happened in Iraq is poisoning the minds of millions of young people across the planet, not just in Morocco. A miniscule number are choosing violence as their way of unleashing vengeance, or evening scores.
But the West is clearly losing the battle of the mind when young men in Morocco can look to television and see for themselves the untold destruction and death unleashed by the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq and feel driven to seek revenge, and all that can be done is to increase surveillance on groups of young men who may or may not be plotting terror attacks.
In the New York Times Magazine story, young Moroccan men are quoted as saying that President Bush is the “biggest terrorist in the world.” They say this, apparently, because they’ve seen on TV what has happened to the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan.
Bush’s nickname of being “The World’s Greatest Terrorist” is seen at marches and rallies all over the planet.
War is Terror, and Terror is most certainly War.
Osama Bin Laden’s calls to jihad would be next to worthless without the wars of President Bush to supply the imagery and horror stories that rots so many souls, and helps to poison so many minds.
The wars feed the terrorism, and the terrorism feeds the wars.
Hopefully it won’t take another generation to end this circle of violence and inhumanity.
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Hear is something that I’m sure few thought about while having their turkey, ham and stuffing. Deserters. Not the pie you had after the meal but those who have run away from their oath and country. As you may note I’m not happy about the subject.
Why am I even thinking about this? This is the title of a press release I found on Yahoo news, Army desertion rate up 80 pct. since ‘03. Sounds horrific doesn’t it. It sounds like our troops are running from Iraq, Afghanistan and service they volunteered for in droves. Of course this is not true.
I’m annoyed by the tone the piece sets, starting with the opening paragraph.
Sounds impressive. Sounds like there is a problem and our soldiers are being affected by it. It sounds like droves of our service men and women cannot handle the situation. Of course it’s not until the 5th paragraph we find out that the number of deserters is less than 5%. In fact the number is close to 3%. Of course that’s considering the troops in Iraq. If we look at the total number of troops, in the Army that’s roughly 1.05 million alone, the number percentage drops even lower. And of course the article never states where those troops desert from, whether it’s Iraq or the middle of Texas. Takes the wind out of this story doesn’t it?
In essence I’m annoyed with reporters, like Lolita C. Baldor, and major news agencies who carefully phrase an article to project a certain view which places our troops in danger. This article may have been made in the U.S., but who do you think is interested in it?
Perhaps some of those setting roadside bombs and recruiting members to attack our troops have downloaded this article – thanks to our troops providing them with electric power – and lauded the thought that our Armed Forces are running away in droves. Perhaps Osama Bin Laden is using this type of article to add members to Al Quida, and training them to come to fight us, abroad or here in our homes, because he is the David placing fear in our Goliath.
Articles worded like this are political agendas, but they can also be propaganda for those that would see every American dead whether we fight them or not, simple because we exist in a country where women wear clothes they chose, believe in a God other than theirs (of forbid the thought don’t believe or pray differently), and educate children.
One thing this article does remind me about though is the cavalier way that deserters are being treated so far. I am biased so I have no problem with shooting deserters in a time of war, especially those that desert combat. The oath taken by those that choose to serve this nation is both an honorable act and serious. No one forced them to join, or to take that oath. To desert it is both cowardly and dishonorable.
But at this point, nothing is being done. Deserters are merely being discharged with less-than-honorable records. That’s it. Now I’m sure some corporations and business owners can connect the dots and refuse to hire these individuals that have turned their back on their own nation. I’m equally sure there are some organizations that will be happy to hire them. I am of the former and not the latter of course.
Still it seems that this is too little. At least Canada is taking action in this matter, refusing to grant asylum to those deserting their oath. Amazing that Canada will act on this issue while we have not so far.
I don’t care what the reasons, those that desert are cowards. They had a choice to not join. Like all things in life there is a consequence for every action. One consequence has been the ability of some writers to infer and proclaim problems where they don’t really exist. Another is aiding the enemies of this nation, giving them fuel by which other members of the Armed Forces who value their word and the responsibility they have taken on die. I think having a penalty applied to these deserters is the least we can do. Perhaps rescinding the birthright they so callously violate.
Bush Loses Number One Iraq War Ally, NeoCon Influence Down Under Comes To An EndGhosts Of The Iraq War Follow Prime Minister To The Polls
By Darryl Mason
Australia has a new prime minister today, and President Bush has lost his most devoted ally in the Iraq War.
Bush once called John Howard his “deputy sheriff” in the Pacific. It’s not a nickname that Bush will be able to slap on Labor leader Kevin Rudd, who has experienced one of the fastest rises to power in political history.
Rudd only became leader of the Australian opposition government less than a year ago, but from day one of his leadership he had John Howard’s number, promising to “mess with Howard’s mind”. He won early support for committing to a withdrawal of Australian troops from Iraq and to pull back from the disquietingly close relationship Howard shared with Bush.
John Howard swept his Liberal Party into a fourth term in 2004, with massive support from the Australian public. In only 36 months, millions of Australians have turned their back on Howard, as the scandals, lies and controversies surrounding the Iraq War, and the ‘War On Terror’ continued to mount.
One of the most damaging, and shocking, of all the revelations came in late 2006, when it was revealed John Howard had ignored, literally, dozens of memos from Australian soldiers and public servants in Iraq who had repeatedly tried to warn him that the Australian authority dealing with shipments of wheat to Iraq through the late 1990s and early 2000s were paying massive bribes to Saddam Hussein. It total, more than $300 million of dirty money helped to prop up the brutal dictator, and supplied him with cash to pay the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, build palaces and keep his military and Republican Guard paid and in arms.
Howard lied numerous times about when he first committed Australian troops to the Iraq War, after President Bush asked him to do so. While Howard continued to claim he had made no commitment at all about sending Australian troops into the warzone, as late as only a few hours before the first bombs of the ‘Shock And Awe’ campaign began to level buildings, many Australian soldiers were told in August 2002 that they were going to war, and they should prepare themselves and their families.
Most of the facts about when Howard decided to fully back Bush’s War On Iraq only came to light after Howard was re-elected in 2004.
The new Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, is committed to withdrawing all of Australia’s combat forces from Iraq in 2008, around 600 troops.
While the Saddam bribes scandal and the War On Iraq did not feature heavily during election debates, or in the media coverage, it’s clear Howard’s close relationship with President Bush, his continued backing for the War On Iraq, and his endless refusal to admit he was partly responsible for the hell unleashed on the Iraqi people, was symptomatic in killing off his support base.
John Howard’s massive and humiliating defeat in the elections yesterday brings to an end his 11 year reign as Australia’s leader, and a career in politics stretching back more than three decades.
Remarkably, most Australians still know little about their new prime minister, though they are clearly impressed with the Kevin Rudd they’ve seen so far.
The NeoCon influence on Australian politics and society, rammed into our normally easy-going, peaceful and “fair go for all” culture by Howard and Bush’s influence, is set to come to an end.
We’ll have more on the new Australian prime minister, Kevin Rudd, in the coming days, and a report on the John Howard era.
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No power king on the face of the planet did more to warp reality than Rupert Murdoch in helping to create the American mindset that backed the War On Iraq in early 2003.
Using his massive media blitzkrieg marketplace control in the US, the UK and Australia (70% of all daily newspapers), Murdoch pumped the always extremely dodgy case(s) for War On Iraq with all the desperate enthusiasm of a Depression-era carnival huckster with two families to feed and a baseball bat wielding loan shark taking aim at his kneecaps.
You must remember what Rupert had to say about how good the Iraq War would (could) be for the price of oil, right?
In case you’ve forgotten, here’s Rupert Murodch, from February 12, 2003, as quoted in the Australian Financial Review :
“The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil. That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country.”
Rupert won over a lot of people with that prediction. A lot of business and oil people anyway. A lot of media people, too. Particularly his media people.
They really believed that getting rid of Saddam would let them control the majority of Iraq’s oil, and flow another 4 or 5 million barrels a day into world markets. Invading and occupying Iraq was also going to help free the United States from its terror-soaked death grip with the Saudis, who were, and remain, the dominant force in Middle East oil.
How dominant? More than a dozen of Saudi Arabia’s countrymen allegedly carried out the 9/11 attacks, and BushCo. paid them back by, errr, bombing goat herders in Afghanistan and flying out dozens of members of the Bin Laden family from the United States under the protection of the CIA. Talk about a hardline.
But even though Murdoch could spin Wall Street, and readers of the financial media, he never really convinced most of the readers of his tabloid print and TV media, even though the pro-war message was relentless and unforgiving. That’s why more than ten million people around the world marched in protest against the Iraq War in early 2003.
Murdoch’s media ranted and raved and spite bile at all the protesters, even the World War 2 veterans and the little kids with their hand-drawn signs saying ‘Please Don’t Kill Iraqi Kids’. Murdoch’s media labeled veteran and child alike a bunch of Saddam sympathisers and terrorist-enablers, sometimes on the front pages of the newspapers. Before the protests even began.
But they still marched. In cities, towns, villages, even along country roads where the only people to see them were interstate truck drivers. In the United States, in England, in Australia, the United States, Canada, across Europe, across Asia.
Even though Rupert controlled the vast majority of tabloid newspaper markets in Australia, the UK and the US, and he directed them all to, as one former Murdoch journo told me in 2004, “really get behind this now”, he could never get the majority of the people in Coalition Of The Willing nations onside for the Iraq War. They didn’t have to step in it to know it was bullshit from the get go.
When the Iraq War began on Mach 21, 2003, more than 70% of Australians opposed the illegal invasion and occupation. The opposition was higher in the UK, and much less in the United States.
For most people, already trying to deal with rising fuel price, the only thing the Iraq War had going for it was Rupert’s claim that $20 a barrel oil would likely be the result of massacring Iraqis.
So where are we now, four and a half years on from Rupert’s infamous “$20 a barrel” quote?
Oil is closing in on $100 a barrel, and the financial media is discussing how oil beyond $100 a barrel will effect economies around the world.
Venezuela is happy, Iran is very happy, Russia is happy, Canada is happy, Mexico is happy. East Timor, if oil prices stay this high, will also soon be very happy. The Saudis? They’re fucking ecstatic. They’ll have to start burning money logs soon just to get rid of all that cash.
If you’re an excess oil producing nation (meaning you produce enough to sell on international markets) you’re probably burning candles and bowing down before shrines of President Bush, Dick Cheney and the coterie of NeoCons who have done so much in the past few years to unleash so much havoc and destruction and fear and chaos across the Middle East, further destabilising the confidence of the world’s oil markets.
Without Bush, Cheney and all those NeoCons and let’s not forget the Iraq War enabler himself Rupert Murdoch, the ‘evil’ leaders of Iran, Venezuela and Russia would not be so rich and powerful.
How rich? How powerful? Well, think about this. Venezuela, Iran and Russia now owe international creditors next to nothing. They’ve paid off once near crippling loans to the World Bank and IMF. Collectively, they owe a few billion, less than $10 billion, tops.
And the United States? Trillions in debt. Not billions. Trillions.
Who knows? Maybe there really is something in the ultra-weird conspiracy theory that the leaders of Iran, Venezuela and Russia are secretly working in cahoots with President Bush’s oil baron friends to drive up the price of the black gold. It would probably make sense around the boardroom table. Everyone gets rich.
Except for you, of course.
After all, we keep hearing about a looming War On Iran, it’s always just a few weeks away, but it hasn’t happened yet, has it? Flicking back through my files I see stories from 2003, saying that Bush would launch air strikes on Iran “within weeks”. That’s more than four years ago now.
And look at Venezuela. Chavez has never been so powerful, or so popular. His anti-American rhetoric, and his interference in how American corporations suck oil from his nation, have helped to make oil a very, very unstable commodity. Chavez, compared to the days before the CIA tried to assassinate him, is now leading one of the most oil-rich socialist nations on the planet. And thanks to all that oil wealth, Venezuela is soon to become even more socialist.
Questions.
So many unanswered questions.
What about the new Oil Shock? Isn’t oil running out? What if Venezuela cuts off supplies to the US? Is the Iranian president really crazy? Does he actually believe in the 12th Iman? Is he going to sink oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and disrupt more than 1/4 of the world’s oil from getting to market if Israel nukes his reactors? What if Iran bombs Israel? What if Israel bombs Syria? What if Turkey invades Northern Iraq and that oil pipeline up there goes up in flames? And what’s with Putin? Could China and Russia really go to war with the US to protect their hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new business interests in Iran? What would that do to the world’s oil supplies?
And up and up and up the prices go.
Where they will stop?
Nobody knows.
Well, they’ll have to stop before $200 a barrel. That’s the price where even the most optimistic economists say the world’s economies will grind to a halt.
And nobody wants that.
Well, not yet.
“The greatest thing to come out of this for the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be US$20 a barrel for oil.”
Thanks for that, Rupert. It’s one of the greatest misguided, or false-positive quotes since all those quotes in the 1940s where scientists and radio station owners said “this TV thing” would never take off.
Now, the chaos in Iraq, mostly unleashed thanks to the Murdoch-backed war, is not the only reason why oil is now closing in on $100 per barrel.
But it sure isn’t helping.
It’s amazing to remember that President Bush, and others, particularly in Murdoch’s worldwide media, pushed the line that Iraq would, within only a few short years, be pumping oil to the tune of 8 to 10 million barrels a day. That was how the reconstruction of Iraq was going to be paid for. Before the American taxpayers got shaken down for more than $600 billion. And probably another few hundred billion more.
The Council On Foreign Relations, the Vatican of nutcase war pigs and NeoCon destroyers-of-nations, also pushed the line back in 2002 that the Iraq War could only mean good things for the price of oil. They failed to tell us, however, that when they meant “good things” they weren’t talking about oil at $20 a barrel.
How they all must have laughed when Rupert Murdoch said the Iraq War could see oil prices plunge from $30 or $35 a barrel (late 2002 prices), down to a measly $20. That would have showed those damned Saudis and Iranians - wink, wink.
But instead, we got oil closing in on $100 a barrel, and a tank of petrol becoming the sort of luxury expense that millions of Americans, Australians and Brits are increasingly unable to afford so they can, you know, get to work.
A few hundred years ago this pack of clowns now purposely driving up the price of oil to once unimaginable prices would have been hung in the village square and pelted with cow turds.
Now they sit back and watch their stock prices soar. And they’re doing it in the US, in the UK, in Australia, in Venezuela, in Russia and across Europe. And of course, in Saudi Arabia and Iran.
Welcome to the New Poverty. It’s pretty much like the old poverty, but much, much worse. You’ll be poor, you’ll be able to only eat shit food, but you’ll still have a job. However, you probably won’t be able to afford the fuel to get to work.
UPDATE : To be fair to Rupert Murdoch, he did get one prediction right from the days before the War On Iraq was unleashed. And that was this prediction about President Bush if he didn’t end up ‘winning’ the war :
“He will either go down in history as a very great president or he’ll crash and burn.”
Crashing and burning.
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Terror Fear Campaign Targeting Sydney Muslims Set To Finish Off Australian Government In Weekend Elections
By Darryl Mason
The husband of the Liberal Party candidate running for election in the Western Sydney seat of Lindsay this Saturday, and the husband of the retiring Liberal Party member, have now both been kicked out of prime minister John Howard’s party for distributing ‘fliers’ claiming a vote for the opposition is a vote in support of terrorists who’ve killed more than 100 Australians.
The leaflet also claimed the Labor Party would build more mosques in Western Sydney and were in favour of allowing Islamic extremists into the country.
A third man, in the executive of prime minister John Howard’s party, has also been expelled.
All this less than 48 hours out from an election that is widely tipped to see the downfall of the John Howard government.
Incredible.
John Howard’s reaction?
He knew nothing about the leaflets, they were not authorised Liberal Party election material, he has distanced himself from the scandal, and now he expects us to believe that neither of the two Liberal Party politicians had any idea of what their husbands were up to in writing, printing and then delivering the leaflets to hundreds of homes in one of the most highly contested seats in the election.
Current Liberal Party member for Lindsay, Jackie Kelly, is still insisting the unauthorised campaign brochure her husband helped to write, print and distribute to homes in Western Sydney was “a joke” and that she thought it was “funny.” She tried to explain away the scandal, still laughing, by claiming her husband, and the other men involved were drunk and bored.
Tonight’s current affairs shows, which draw combined audiences of about 20-25% of Australia’s population, are expected to go hard on this story, uncovering similar tactics used by Jackie Kelly in past elections, and interviewing the families of Australians killed in international terror attacks.
Bizarrely, John Howard tried, unsuccessfully, to spin away the storm of controversy today by claiming that a wife should never be held responsible for the actions of her husband, and attempted to relate the individuality of husbands and wives to the rise of feminism, and that such separations of responsibility for each other’s actions should be celebrated, not damned.
Barely mentioned in most of the coverage so far is that the leaflets directly linked Australian Muslims to supporting international terrorists and terrorist attacks. Linkages that have been essential to John Howard’s divide-and-rule strategy of giving white Australians an easy target for vilification and loathing, though it should be pointed out that only the smallest minority of Australians have ever fallen for Howard’s race and religion-based baiting.
The Howard government defeat will now be even worse than the latest polls indicate, which is, to quote John Howard from earlier in the year, already set to be a defeat of near total “annihilation.”
It was scary enough to read stories like this last year on alternative news and so-called conspiracy sites, now this shocking stuff is hitting the headlines of the mainstream media every day :
Oil rose close to 100 usd/bbl having hit a record high price earlier as the dollar sank to new depths against major currencies — making commodities denominated in the greenback cheaper for those trading in other currencies.
…at an OPEC summit over the weekend, Venezuelan and Iranian officials discussed the possibility of trading oil in currencies other than the dollar because given the greenback’s latest weakness members’ purchasing power is eroded.
…as long as oil is priced in dollars its unlikely the cartel would raise production because such a move would possibly push oil prices down — decreasing further the group’s purchasing power.
OPEC nations are already pushing for the US Dollar to lose its long-standing role as the currency that oil prices are set in.
OPEC can raise production, but it is beginning to sound like it will only do that when the Euro becomes the currency of choice for pricing oil.
Not even a War On Iran will not slow the death of the US Dollar now.
Grim indeed.
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Trent Reznor’s Nine Inch Nails have teamed up with video activists The Art Of Mental Warfare to deliver a thumping music and vid call to arms.
Trent Reznor is deep into his plans to revolutionize the way his fans find, hear and experience his music. No more major label record deals (or so he says), he has already started releasing his music for free online, and will make his money from live concerts and merch.
Digital is the future of the music industry, and one Reznor has been anticipating since the release of his breakthrough album The Downward Spiral in 1994.
Reznor’s last contractual release with Universal Music has hit a major roadblock. Reznor put the masters of his last album Year Zero up on a site so fans could remix the songs. Reznor wanted to take this project further, but Universal Music’s lawsuits with YouTube and others over content control has canned that plan :
“Their premise is that if any fan decides to remix one of my masters with material Universal doesn’t own - a ‘mash-up,’ a sample, whatever - and upload it to the site, they will be doing exactly what MySpace and YouTube are doing. If they were to do such a thing, everybody sues everybody and the world abruptly ends.
“I am profoundly perturbed with this stance as content owners continue to stifle all innovation in the face of the digital revolution.”
No wonder Reznor wants to cut himself free of this kind of crap forever. The digital revolution is being held back by the profit-at-all-costs corporate motivations of the last century, and their endless lawsuits as they try to contain the new mediums. And the new players.
The power elite expend such great effort in controlling our communication and information system because they fear the American public more than any other enemy. They understand that if they lose their grip on our mass media, their lies and injustices will be exposed to the very people who can put a stop to their crimes…
The famed military strategist Carl von Clauswitz wrote in his study, On War, that the key to defeating an enemy is to identify and strike at “the hub of all power and movement, on which everything depends.”
The mass media is the foundation of the elite power structure. Without domination of the mass media the elite power structure is a house of cards.
Once the people can get their message through elite censors, the necessary evolution will occur. And thanks to the internet the tide has begun to swing back in our favor. The internet has given us a major weapon to battle these entrenched interests.
The internet is the one method of mass communication where you can research news and information for yourself, where you can use your own critical thinking and judgment skills, where voices are not censored through elite corporate interests.
The internet has been for us what pamphlets were to our forefathers; a new form of mass communication that is not censored by elite interests.
Not yet, anyway.
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Kidnappings, racketeering, assassinations, bribery, corruption…no wonder American troops are being told to watch The Sopranos to get an insight into how criminals are running the show in some neighbourhoods of Baghdad and Mosul :
“I tell a lot of my soldiers: A good way to prepare for operations in Iraq is to watch the sixth season of ‘The Sopranos,’ ” said Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of U.S. forces in central Iraq, referring to the hit HBO series about the mob.
“You’re seeing a lot of Mafioso kind of activity.”
Some excerpts from a Ron Paul editorial running in a number of US newspapers follows. Paul lays out his platform and believes clearly and concisely.
Most Americans remain perplexed as to where Democrat and Republican presidential candidates truly stand on any number of issues. One of the key reasons why Ron Paul is finding an ever expanding audience of Americans willing to listen to what he has to say is that his anti-war and pro-freedom and pro-liberty platforms are so straightforward :
On the fourth day of July in 1776, a small group of men boldly told the most powerful nation on Earth they were free. They declared that all men are created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights.
One then has to wonder how Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin would react to our current state of affairs.
We have lost sight of the simple premise that guided the actions of our founding fathers. That premise? The government that governs least is the government that governs best.
In our early history, it was understood that a free society embraced both civil liberties and economic liberties. But our government has significantly changed from one of limited power to one of pervasive intervention.
We must also examine our foreign policy. Our troops are spread to the four corners of the Earth and stretched too thinly, meaning we may well have difficulty defending ourselves if we are ever threatened.
The situation in Iraq reminds us that we are to go to war only after a congressional declaration of war, as required by the Constitution. A coherent foreign policy is based on the understanding that America is best served by not interfering in the internal affairs of other nations.
We should also reclaim our national sovereignty by first securing our borders. By now, many have heard about the proposed “NAFTA Superhighway.” This superhighway would connect Mexico, the United States and Canada, cutting a wide swath through the middle of Texas and through Kansas City. One proposed path takes the superhighway right through Iowa. This superhighway can be built only by sacrificing family farms through eminent domain.
Any movement toward a North American Union that erases the borders between the United States, Mexico and Canada would greatly diminish the ability of Americans to influence the laws under which they live.
Our economy is another victim of intense government intervention. The gold dollar of 1900 is now nothing more than a Federal Reserve note backed only by the promises of untrustworthy politicians and central bankers. No longer is there silver or gold available to protect the value of a steadily depreciating currency. Since the creation of the Federal Reserve, middle- and working-class Americans have been victimized by a boom-and-bust monetary policy.
Abolishing the Federal Reserve will allow Congress to reassert its constitutional authority over monetary policy and put the American people ahead of special interests.
We can reclaim our heritage of freedom, but it will require commitment, work and a willingness to stand firm for our beliefs, refusing to compromise with those who would continue to push for more taxes, more spending and more government solutions.
Just as devotion to freedom and self-determination brought forth our great nation, a renewed adherence to those principles can move us to new heights.
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It’s good to see that Fox News continues to set the standard for open democracy and free speech in the United States.
Fox News hosts, like most of the “Shut The Hell Up You Commie!” conservative media in the US, are appalled by the idea that leading Republicans, and Democrats, can be questioned during public appearances by mere voters, and have their answers broadcast to the world on
YouTube :
During a discussion about a Code Pink member heckling Hillary Clinton at a recent event, Fox News host Brian Kilmead said that people who confront politicians are “threatening” and should be Tased or “beaten to a pulp,” as the establishment media continues to sell the idea that anyone who disagrees with authority should be brutally punished.
A segment on the Fox and Friends morning show yesterday turned into an opportunity for Kilmead to share his dictatorial fetish that dissenters be dealt with in the proper manner, as footage aired of Clinton’s heckler being removed from the event by security.
“They should Tase this guy,” Kilmead says. “At one point with security so high and tensions on edge, don’t you think they’re going to get at the very least Tased or beaten to a pulp by somebody? These people look threatening.”
Paul Joseph Watson has the footage, and much, much more on the shocking rise of mainstream media pushing for dissenters to be brutally punished for speaking out of turn. Or just speaking out at all. This is how fascist police states begin : by using the media to make it somewhat acceptable, through repetition, for the public to be brutally punished for daring to dissent.
While Fox News hosts are usually keen fans of violence on innocent people, particularly through warfare, this bizarre and sickening call for members of the public to have their lives placed at risk by taser-happy cops and security guards, when tasers are repeatedly killing people they’re used on, probably has a lot to do with the mainstream media’s horror that some 17 year old kid with a video camera can get better quotes, and more entertaining confrontations, out of presidential candidates than they can.
The protected and highly defended decades long rein of the mainstream media as makers and deliverers of news is coming to an end.
And they don’t like it, not one little bit.
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England’s PM Winston Churchill loved to enjoy repeated, late night screenings of Bambi and Dumbo in a private cinema as he led his nation victory in World War 2.
He’d kick back in a huge chair around 11pm, after dinner, and instruct the projectionist to “Let It Roll!”
Other favourites included The Battle Of Midway, Lady Hamilton And Goodbye Mr Chips.
The superstitious will need no convincing but there really is good reason to steer clear of the number 13.
It is the unluckiest ball in the National Lottery, research has revealed. Since the lottery was launched in 1994, 13 has come up only 146 times, eight fewer than any other ball.
It failed to appear in 49 consecutive draws between July and December 1997. The next unluckiest balls are 6, 9 and 11.
I’m sure a math wiz could show that this reasoning is dodgy, at best. It sounds more like a promo push for and by the National Lottery than carefully parred fact.
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