Hubritic Anomaly

Eustace Mullins

2011-07-14T23:03:00.000+01:00

suraci - truth in a time of deceit: Truth - Eustace Mullins

The Pogues & The Dubliners - Irish Rover

Johann Hari and his Plagarism

2011-06-29T12:49:00.007+01:00

Johann Hari - Plagarist,
and generally prone to other forms of Journalistic dishonesty

Johann Hari is a columnist with the London Independent, and has recently been caught Plagarising the words of others and passing them off as his own in various interviews published under his name.

See Here for more details

Johann Hari plagiarism row – in quotes

Extracts from books allegedly inserted into interviews as quotes, that have sparked plagiarism row

This comes as no surprise at all since Mr Hari has long shown a disregard for what some might call 'ethical behaviour' when it comes to his Journalism (such as it is).

I noticed Johann Hari's lack of truthfulness quite a long time ago, and am quite surprised it took other people so long to notice his lack general of candor.

Back in 2003 young Johann Hari had the dubious distinction of being billed as 'Johann Hari, Young Journalist of the Year' whenever his musings are published in the Independent.

Since discovering that Johann was, shall we say, 'economical with the actualite', I have been most skeptical of young Johanns belief in his own writings. I must, to my shame, confess that I have been now operating on the theory that young Johann will scribble 'any old tripe', as long as he receives his 30-pieces-of-silver.

On Monday, April 14, 2003 I wrote the following:

"Johann Hari is a columnist with the London Independent, and has recently observed that:

'we in the press are the least trusted of all British institutions... the number of my friends who assume that we just make up stories - even at a reputable paper such as the Inependent - is startling'

Well all I can say to that Johann, is that your friends know you pretty well then. Seems Mr Hari is not averse to bending the truth when it suits him. Like all good media-whores he never lets the facts get in the way of a good story.

Regular readers of young Johann will recall that he started his 'journalistic' career as as a lowly hack at the New Statesman. One of his first forays into the pubic sphere concerned the use of drugs among the younger generation.

In July 32001 he wrote:

'Another Cambridge (University) May Week has rolled around, and I, like half of Cambridge, celebrated with a few tabs of Ecstasy and the odd line of coke'

Now that must have been a fairly ODD' line of Coke' alright because the rumour is that little Johann has never taken ecstasy in his life.
Apparently, if rumours are to be believed, little Johann had to 'phone a friend' before writing his article in order to obtain a description of it's effects from a users point of view.

If that wasn't bad enough Hari then went on to do an encore for the London Evening Standard where he set out to defend 'the ecstasy I know and love (?)' even going so far as to offer David Blunkett (British Home Secretary at that time) the chance to accompany him to a 'decent club' in order to 'score a tab of ecstasy' Hari then went on to describe the sensations experienced when one is 'loved-up' (luckily he had that friends phone number).

So it was with much scratching of the head that we read this next piece printed in the Independent less than a month ago

'Ecstasy defined the generation of my older siblings, not mine - Ecstasy is OUT!!'

Johann, it seems all those 'tabs' that you so foolishly consumed up in Cambridge have fried your synapses old bean!. Has the memory been effected? What was that about 'tabs of ecstasy and he ODD line of coke'' - and who says drugs don't do any long-term damage - Johann is a living breathing example of 'your brain on drugs' so remember kiddies don't be like Johann - just say no (when offered cash to tell lies to gullible readers)

Johann Hari's lack of acquaintance with the truth has not suffered one bit by his fore-swearing nefarious substances - quite the contrary, it seems to have blossomed. A few weeks after his original ecstasy article he traveled to the G8 conference in Genoa. From there he sent an emotional piece regarding the death of protester Carlo Giuliani.

Take it away Johann -

'On Friday , before the real business of the summit began, the police shot him twice in the head and than ran him over. They killed him, even though he carried no weapon other than a fire-extinguisher. When I saw the scene I couldn't believe so much blood had poured from one body'

Well gee Johann that really must have been a very 'odd line of coke ' you took back there in Cambridge, because according to several witnesses, Mr Johann Hari had hopped into a taxi and high-tailed it out of there long before any trouble started - maybe the death-scene came to him in a 'flash-back' after he returned to his hotel? So much for integrity.

Lately Johann has been doing the rounds on UK TV proclaiming his support for a war against Saddam. The Iraqis want to be bombed - he knows because he's been to see them. 'Last October, I spent a month seeing the reality of life under Saddam. Most of the Iraqi people would hug me and offer 'coded support'' (please come back and bring the bombers with you next time, johann) Jan 10 Indie
amazingly enough Hari had actually visited Iraq as a tourist visiting archaeological sites.

He wrote about it in the Guardian on 3 December 2002. In that article however , he claimed that it was ' very difficult to get Iraqi's to express their feelings (or may the feelings you want them to express, Johann?)... I blundered about asking fairly direct political questions, which caused many people to recoil in horror...Many people asked quite genuinely _'why your Government hate the Arab world'. The only person who eventually offered 'coded' support, was an old man in a market who had visited London in the 1970's 'After much oblique prodding, he said warmly 'I admire British democracy and freedom' He held my gaze 'I very much admire them' he added 'we do not know what is coming. the news we receive here is ...unclear''

Seems straight forward enough but not for our Johann. In an article for the Independent on Feb 15, Hari claimed that Iraqi's had asked him ' When will you come to free us? When will we be able to live again ?'' Since these pleas for bombers to arrive must have struck Mr Hari as newsworthy why didn't he mention them in his earlier Guardian piece?? Could it be that Johann 's friends know him only too well? After all a mans got to earn a living in these dark times.

Is anything you write believable Johann? "

==================
"As you can see, I come not to praise Johann Hari but to demonise him." - Lenin's Tomb

I'm not the only one to notice Johann Hari's lack of honesty:

LENIN'S TOMB - Tuesday, July 24, 2007 "In which I becomes a diverting anecdote" - posted by lenin

It isn't all that worrying that I didn't say the things that Johann Hari thinks I said. Who doesn't sometimes get that treatment? Practically everyone else who is referenced in the article is dealt with in a similarly unfair fashion

==================

On Friday, April 18, 2003, I wrote the following concerning Johann Hari:

"Having read his latest offering entitled 'There will never be a better time to go for the euro' we were left feeling a little mean-spirited. Perhaps, we pondered, we had been far too harsh on young Johann, a chap has to earn a crust after all. He is, we can assure you, considered to be the cream of the crop; 'Johann Hari, Young Journalist of the Year' and his musings are much discussed by other 'bright young things' as a simple search of Google, using the term 'johann hari', will demonstrate :)

We here are rather cynical, as you may by now have noticed. So we couldn't help but dig a little deeper and try to discover the grounds for young Johann's strident championing of the Euro.

Let us firstly examine the Independent. This is a British Daily with few 'stars' in its stable , most people online know it as the home of Robert Fisk, decidedly anti-war war-correspondent.

According to this excellent article by Guardian Media-Correspondent Roy Greenslade

''Are readers of the anti-war Independent overwhelmingly opposed to the war? Is the bulk of the Daily Telegraph's readership standing four-square behind the coalition? What about the people who read the Daily Mirror: do they support its consistent criticism of the Bush-Blair war?
In an attempt to answer these questions, the polling company ICM asked people whether they approved or disapproved of the war and then discovered which daily newspapers each respondent regularly reads.
The results are, I must add, somewhat tentative. The sample size for a couple of titles was small and these should be taken only as indicative. But despite that health warning, which probably affects the Independent more than any other, the figures from this exercise - the first of its kind - are fascinating. ''

As we said the Independent, is considered on-line, to have a basically anti-war stance, mainly because of the articles of Robert Fisk. However things in the real world are not so clear cut. Back to Greenslade in the Guardian again:

''Independent also has more than a third of pro-war readers. Though its sample was small, the editor, Simon Kelner, wasn't in the least surprised at the result. "It's broadly in line with what I'd expect," he says. "Our postbag reflects those sorts of figures too."

He pointed to Friday's letters page, in which there were two letters questioning the validity of the "moral outrage" which informed the front-page article the day before by the Independent's reporter in Baghdad, Robert Fisk. Three other writers congratulated Fisk.

That ratio, Kelner suggests, supports the ICM finding of a 55-38% split. He points out that the response to his pro-war columnist, Johann Hari, is proportionately similar.

The Independent has been one of the major beneficiaries of the war, claiming about 9% extra on its daily sale last week.''

So it appears that the Indie is playing a 2 front game. On one side it is gaining much recognition online as an anti war- publication, but it has the problem that 'Independent also has more than a third of pro-war readers.' Therefore one can conclude that one-third of readers who actually shell out hard cash for its printed equivilant in the real-world, are not happy with the opinions of Fisk, it's main star. Hence the need for someone like Johann - who'll say exactly what the boss wants him to.

The Boss in this case is one Tony O'Reilly, head of an Irish Media group, Independent News & Media, whose worldwide holdings include

UK

* The Independent
* Independent on Sunday
* Belfast Telegraph

Republic of Ireland

* Irish Independent
* Sunday World

South Africa

* 14 newspapers including Cape Argus and Pretoria News

Australia and New Zealand

* 24 daily newspapers including the New Zealand Herald and Queensland Times

A rather impressive list we think you'll agree. Big media brings big problems, however. In this case very big debt problems. According to this Guardian article of April 17, 2000

''The Independent could finally break even next year but only if the advertising market returns to health, its owners said today.''

and this on November 4, 2002

''Independent hit by £16m loss : The Independent and Independent on Sunday slipped further into the red last year, posting a £15.7m loss despite a cost-cutting drive.

The figures are a blow for Sir Tony O'Reilly, the owner of parent company Independent News & Media. When he bought the papers in 1998 he claimed they would break even by 2001.''

The Indie is in deep trouble indeed. Losing money hand-over-fist is the correct expression, I believe.

Things have gotten so bad that poor Slur Tony has had to dig deep into his own pockets in the hope of halting the slide:
O'Reilly props up Independent group

''Irish entrepreneur to make £20m cash injection and sell off British regional titles to cut debt . O'Reilly has agreed to pay around ?30m (£20m) for new shares in the Independent News & Media Group he chairs as part of a ?256m restructuring plan that aims to reduce debts of more than ?1.2bn.

The Dublin-based group has launched a deeply discounted rights issue to raise ?103m in new cash to meet debt obligations that are due later this year. ''

Now the most interesting thing to note here (at least I think it is the most interesting) is that Independent News & Media Group is a Dublin-based group. Dublin being the capital city of that 'most-septic of sceptered Isles', Ireland. Hence the Independent News & Media Group, operates in Euro's and not British Pounds Sterling, which are the currency of the UK. This might indeed cause some problems for O'Reilly if his personal cash is held in Euros. Currency fluctuations have wiped the smiles from the faces of many an obese feline over the last few years. Hence Tony might indeed be very pleased were Britian to adopt the Euro.

Which, I think, brings us back to where we came in - Johann Hari ' Young Journalist of the Year' and his latest offering; 'There will never be a better time to go for the euro'

I ask myself if it's very likely that Fisk would have written such a pleasing article for SIR Tony...."

============

approx 9 days after writing that last piece, The Independent introduced a pay-for-view system for many of it's articles published on-line, in an effort I suppose to help shore up it's dire financial situation.

I have no idea if this system is still in operation or for how long it may have been in operation. I no longer read mainstream media on a regular basis, having learned my lessons regarding the truthfulness of such media-organs while watching the Iraq war unfold.

since writing that piece, The Independent has been sold by O'Reillly's Independent News Media Group,

Independent Sold: Now Going Free?
The UK’s tenth-placed national newspaper The Independent has been sold to Russian billionaire Alexander Lebedev, as expected, for £1.

The O'Reilly-dominated Independent News Media group itself still has some financial problems, as well as some recent high-profile disagreements between the O'Reillys and another major shareholder Denis O'Brien

Is the Euro finished?

2010-11-26T22:46:00.003Z

Nigel Farage MEP "The Euro Game Is Up... Just Who The Hell Do You Think You Are? You Are Very Dangerous People"

Famous euroskeptic Nigel Farage (as seen previously here), in just under 4 brief minutes tells more truth about the entire European experiment than all European bankers, commissioners, and politicians have done in the past decade. As we have already said pretty much all of this before, we present it without commentary:

"Good morning Mr. van Rompuy, you've been in office for one year, and in that time the whole edifice is beginning to crumble, there's chaos, the money's running out, I should thank you - you should perhaps be the pinup boy of the euroskeptic movement. But just look around this chamber this morning, look at these faces, look at the fear, look at the anger.

Poor Barroso here looks like he's seen a ghost. They're beginning to understand that the game is up. And yet in their desperation to preserve their dream, they want to remove any remaining traces of democracy from the system. And it's pretty clear that none of you have learned anything. When you yourself Mr. van Rompuy say that the euro has brought us stability, I supposed I could applaud you for having a sense of humor, but isn't this really just the bunker [or banker?] mentality. Your fanaticism is out in the open. You talk about the fact that it was a lie to believe that the nation state could exist in the 21st century globalized world. Well, that may be true in the case of Belgium who haven't had a government for 6 months, but for the rest of us, right across every member state in this union, increasingly people are saying, "We don't want that flag, we don't want the anthem, we don't want this political class, we want the whole thing consigned to the dustbin of history."

We had the Greek tragedy earlier on this year, and now we have the situation in Ireland. I know that the stupidity and greed of Irish politicians has a lot to do with this: they should never, ever have joined the euro. They suffered with low interest rates, a false boom and a massive bust. But look at your response to them: what they are being told as their government is collapsing is that it would be inappropriate for them to have a general election. In fact commissioner Rehn here said they had to agree to a budget first before they are allowed to have a general election.

Just who the hell do you think you people are. You are very, very dangerous people indeed: your obsession with creating this European state means that you are happy to destroy democracy, you appear to be happy with millions and millions of people to be unemployed and to be poor.

Untold millions will suffer so that your euro dream can continue. Well it won't work, cause its Portugal next with their debt levels of 325% of GDP they are the next ones on the list, and after that I suspect it will be Spain, and the bailout for Spain will be 7 times the size of Ireland, and at that moment all the bailout money will is gone - there won't be any more.

But it's even more serious than economics, because if you rob people of their identity, if you rob them of their democracy, then all they are left with is nationalism and violence. I can only hope and pray that the euro project is destroyed by the markets before that really happens."

The Story of Your Enslavement

2010-11-26T21:30:00.004Z

1984

THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF OLIGARCHICAL COLLECTIVISM
by
Emmanuel Goldstein

Winston began reading:

Chapter I
Ignorance is Strength

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude towards one another, have varied from age to age: but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these groups are entirely irreconcilable...

Winston stopped reading, chiefly in order to appreciate the fact that he was reading, in comfort and safety. He was alone: no telescreen, no ear at the keyhole, no nervous impulse to glance over his shoulder or cover the page with his hand. The sweet summer air played against his cheek. From somewhere far away there floated the faint shouts of children: in the room itself there was no sound except the insect voice of the clock. He settled deeper into the arm-chair and put his feet up on the fender. It was bliss, it was eternity. Suddenly, as one sometimes does with a book of which one knows that one will ultimately read and re-read every word, he opened it at a different place and found himself at Chapter III. He went on reading:

Chapter III
War is Peace

The splitting up of the world into three great super-states was an event which could be and indeed was foreseen before the middle of the twentieth century. With the absorption of Europe by Russia and of the British Empire by the United States, two of the three existing powers, Eurasia and Oceania, were already effectively in being. The third, Eastasia, only emerged as a distinct unit after another decade of confused fighting. The frontiers between the three super-states are in some places arbitrary, and in others they fluctuate according to the fortunes of war, but in general they follow geographical lines. Eurasia comprises the whole of the northern part of the European and Asiatic land-mass, from Portugal to the Bering Strait. Oceania comprises the Americas, the Atlantic islands including the British Isles, Australasia, and the southern portion of Africa. Eastasia, smaller than the others and with a less definite western frontier, comprises China and the countries to the south of it, the Japanese islands and a large but fluctuating portion of Manchuria, Mongolia, and Tibet.

In one combination or another, these three super-states are permanently at war, and have been so for the past twenty-five years. War, however, is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting and are not divided by any genuine ideological difference. This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude towards it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly-trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average man can only guess at, or round the Floating Fortresses which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes. In the centres of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumption goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths. War has in fact changed its character. More exactly, the reasons for which war is waged have changed in their order of importance. Motives which were already present to some small extent in the great wars of the early twentieth century have now become dominant and are consciously recognized and acted upon.

To understand the nature of the present war--for in spite of the regrouping which occurs every few years, it is always the same war--one must realize in the first place that it is impossible for it to be decisive. None of the three super-states could be definitively conquered even by the other two in combination. They are too evenly matched, and their natural defences are too formidable. Eurasia is protected by its vast land spaces, Oceania by the width of the Atlantic and the Pacific, Eastasia by the fecundity and industriousness of its inhabitants. Secondly, there is no longer, in a material sense, anything to fight about. With the establishment of self-contained economies, in which production and consumption are geared to one another, the scramble for markets which was a main cause of previous wars has come to an end, while the competition for raw materials is no longer a matter of life and death. In any case each of the three super-states is so vast that it can obtain almost all the materials that it needs within its own boundaries. In so far as the war has a direct economic purpose, it is a war for labour power. Between the frontiers of the super-states, and not permanently in the possession of any of them, there lies a rough quadrilateral with its corners at Tangier, Brazzaville, Darwin, and Hong Kong, containing within it about a fifth of the population of the earth. It is for the possession of these thickly-populated regions, and of the northern ice-cap, that the three powers are constantly struggling. In practice no one power ever controls the whole of the disputed area. Portions of it are constantly changing hands, and it is the chance of seizing this or that fragment by a sudden stroke of treachery that dictates the endless changes of alignment.

All of the disputed territories contain valuable minerals, and some of them yield important vegetable products such as rubber which in colder climates it is necessary to synthesize by comparatively expensive methods. But above all they contain a bottomless reserve of cheap labour. Whichever power controls equatorial Africa, or the countries of the Middle East, or Southern India, or the Indonesian Archipelago, disposes also of the bodies of scores or hundreds of millions of ill-paid and hard-working coolies. The inhabitants of these areas, reduced more or less openly to the status of slaves, pass continually from conqueror to conqueror, and are expended like so much coal or oil in the race to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, to control more labour power, to turn out more armaments, to capture more territory, and so on indefinitely. It should be noted that the fighting never really moves beyond the edges of the disputed areas. The frontiers of Eurasia flow back and forth between the basin of the Congo and the northern shore of the Mediterranean; the islands of the Indian Ocean and the Pacific are constantly being captured and recaptured by Oceania or by Eastasia; in Mongolia the dividing line between Eurasia and Eastasia is never stable; round the Pole all three powers lay claim to enormous territories which in fact are largely uninhabited and unexplored: but the balance of power always remains roughly even, and the territory which forms the heartland of each super-state always remains inviolate. Moreover, the labour of the exploited peoples round the Equator is not really necessary to the world's economy. They add nothing to the wealth of the world, since whatever they produce is used for purposes of war, and the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war. By their labour the slave populations allow the tempo of continuous warfare to be speeded up. But if they did not exist, the structure of world society, and the process by which it maintains itself, would not be essentially different.

The primary aim of modern warfare (in accordance with the principles of DOUBLETHINK, this aim is simultaneously recognized and not recognized by the directing brains of the Inner Party) is to use up the products of the machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumption goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work. The world of today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1914, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly, and efficient--a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete--was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped, and the ravages of the atomic war of the nineteen-fifties have never been fully repaired. Nevertheless the dangers inherent in the machine are still there. From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process--by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute--the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being very greatly over a period of about fifty years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction--indeed, in some sense was the destruction--of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed a motor-car or even an aeroplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which WEALTH, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while POWER remained in the hands of a small privileged caste. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, a hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. To return to the agricultural past, as some thinkers about the beginning of the twentieth century dreamed of doing, was not a practicable solution. It conflicted with the tendency towards mechanization which had become quasi-instinctive throughout almost the whole world, and moreover, any country which remained industrially backward was helpless in a military sense and was bound to be dominated, directly or indirectly, by its more advanced rivals.

Nor was it a satisfactory solution to keep the masses in poverty by restricting the output of goods. This happened to a great extent during the final phase of capitalism, roughly between 1920 and 1940. The economy of many countries was allowed to stagnate, land went out of cultivation, capital equipment was not added to, great blocks of the population were prevented from working and kept half alive by State charity. But this, too, entailed military weakness, and since the privations it inflicted were obviously unnecessary, it made opposition inevitable. The problem was how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they must not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built. In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another. By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter--set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call 'the proles'. The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.

War, it will be seen, accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labour of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of masses, whose attitude is unimportant so long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the Party itself. Even the humblest Party member is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist. The splitting of the intelligence which the Party requires of its members, and which is more easily achieved in an atmosphere of war, is now almost universal, but the higher up the ranks one goes, the more marked it becomes. It is precisely in the Inner Party that war hysteria and hatred of the enemy are strongest. In his capacity as an administrator, it is often necessary for a member of the Inner Party to know that this or that item of war news is untruthful, and he may often be aware that the entire war is spurious and is either not happening or is being waged for purposes quite other than the declared ones: but such knowledge is easily neutralized by the technique of DOUBLETHINK. Meanwhile no Inner Party member wavers for an instant in his mystical belief that the war is real, and that it is bound to end victoriously, with Oceania the undisputed master of the entire world.

All members of the Inner Party believe in this coming conquest as an article of faith. It is to be achieved either by gradually acquiring more and more territory and so building up an overwhelming preponderance of power, or by the discovery of some new and unanswerable weapon. The search for new weapons continues unceasingly, and is one of the very few remaining activities in which the inventive or speculative type of mind can find any outlet. In Oceania at the present day, Science, in the old sense, has almost ceased to exist. In Newspeak there is no word for 'Science'. The empirical method of thought, on which all the scientific achievements of the past were founded, is opposed to the most fundamental principles of Ingsoc. And even technological progress only happens when its products can in some way be used for the diminution of human liberty. In all the useful arts the world is either standing still or going backwards. The fields are cultivated with horse-ploughs while books are written by machinery. But in matters of vital importance--meaning, in effect, war and police espionage--the empirical approach is still encouraged, or at least tolerated. The two aims of the Party are to conquer the whole surface of the earth and to extinguish once and for all the possibility of independent thought. There are therefore two great problems which the Party is concerned to solve. One is how to discover, against his will, what another human being is thinking, and the other is how to kill several hundred million people in a few seconds without giving warning beforehand. In so far as scientific research still continues, this is its subject matter. The scientist of today is either a mixture of psychologist and inquisitor, studying with real ordinary minuteness the meaning of facial expressions, gestures, and tones of voice, and testing the truth-producing effects of drugs, shock therapy, hypnosis, and physical torture; or he is chemist, physicist, or biologist concerned only with such branches of his special subject as are relevant to the taking of life. In the vast laboratories of the Ministry of Peace, and in the experimental stations hidden in the Brazilian forests, or in the Australian desert, or on lost islands of the Antarctic, the teams of experts are indefatigably at work. Some are concerned simply with planning the logistics of future wars; others devise larger and larger rocket bombs, more and more powerful explosives, and more and more impenetrable armour-plating; others search for new and deadlier gases, or for soluble poisons capable of being produced in such quantities as to destroy the vegetation of whole continents, or for breeds of disease germs immunized against all possible antibodies; others strive to produce a vehicle that shall bore its way under the soil like a submarine under the water, or an aeroplane as independent of its base as a sailing-ship; others explore even remoter possibilities such as focusing the sun's rays through lenses suspended thousands of kilometres away in space, or producing artificial earthquakes and tidal waves by tapping the heat at the earth's centre.

But none of these projects ever comes anywhere near realization, and none of the three super-states ever gains a significant lead on the others. What is more remarkable is that all three powers already possess, in the atomic bomb, a weapon far more powerful than any that their present researches are likely to discover. Although the Party, according to its habit, claims the invention for itself, atomic bombs first appeared as early as the nineteen-forties, and were first used on a large scale about ten years later. At that time some hundreds of bombs were dropped on industrial centres, chiefly in European Russia, Western Europe, and North America. The effect was to convince the ruling groups of all countries that a few more atomic bombs would mean the end of organized society, and hence of their own power. Thereafter, although no formal agreement was ever made or hinted at, no more bombs were dropped. All three powers merely continue to produce atomic bombs and store them up against the decisive opportunity which they all believe will come sooner or later. And meanwhile the art of war has remained almost stationary for thirty or forty years. Helicopters are more used than they were formerly, bombing planes have been largely superseded by self-propelled projectiles, and the fragile movable battleship has given way to the almost unsinkable Floating Fortress; but otherwise there has been little development. The tank, the submarine, the torpedo, the machine gun, even the rifle and the hand grenade are still in use. And in spite of the endless slaughters reported in the Press and on the telescreens, the desperate battles of earlier wars, in which hundreds of thousands or even millions of men were often killed in a few weeks, have never been repeated.

None of the three super-states ever attempts any manoeuvre which involves the risk of serious defeat. When any large operation is undertaken, it is usually a surprise attack against an ally. The strategy that all three powers are following, or pretend to themselves that they are following, is the same. The plan is, by a combination of fighting, bargaining, and well-timed strokes of treachery, to acquire a ring of bases completely encircling one or other of the rival states, and then to sign a pact of friendship with that rival and remain on peaceful terms for so many years as to lull suspicion to sleep. During this time rockets loaded with atomic bombs can be assembled at all the strategic spots; finally they will all be fired simultaneously, with effects so devastating as to make retaliation impossible. It will then be time to sign a pact of friendship with the remaining world-power, in preparation for another attack. This scheme, it is hardly necessary to say, is a mere daydream, impossible of realization. Moreover, no fighting ever occurs except in the disputed areas round the Equator and the Pole: no invasion of enemy territory is ever undertaken. This explains the fact that in some places the frontiers between the super-states are arbitrary. Eurasia, for example, could easily conquer the British Isles, which are geographically part of Europe, or on the other hand it would be possible for Oceania to push its frontiers to the Rhine or even to the Vistula. But this would violate the principle, followed on all sides though never formulated, of cultural integrity. If Oceania were to conquer the areas that used once to be known as France and Germany, it would be necessary either to exterminate the inhabitants, a task of great physical difficulty, or to assimilate a population of about a hundred million people, who, so far as technical development goes, are roughly on the Oceanic level. The problem is the same for all three super-states. It is absolutely necessary to their structure that there should be no contact with foreigners, except, to a limited extent, with war prisoners and coloured slaves. Even the official ally of the moment is always regarded with the darkest suspicion. War prisoners apart, the average citizen of Oceania never sets eyes on a citizen of either Eurasia or Eastasia, and he is forbidden the knowledge of foreign languages. If he were allowed contact with foreigners he would discover that they are creatures similar to himself and that most of what he has been told about them is lies. The sealed world in which he lives would be broken, and the fear, hatred, and self-righteousness on which his morale depends might evaporate. It is therefore realized on all sides that however often Persia, or Egypt, or Java, or Ceylon may change hands, the main frontiers must never be crossed by anything except bombs.

Under this lies a fact never mentioned aloud, but tacitly understood and acted upon: namely, that the conditions of life in all three super-states are very much the same. In Oceania the prevailing philosophy is called Ingsoc, in Eurasia it is called Neo-Bolshevism, and in Eastasia it is called by a Chinese name usually translated as Death-Worship, but perhaps better rendered as Obliteration of the Self. The citizen of Oceania is not allowed to know anything of the tenets of the other two philosophies, but he is taught to execrate them as barbarous outrages upon morality and common sense. Actually the three philosophies are barely distinguishable, and the social systems which they support are not distinguishable at all. Everywhere there is the same pyramidal structure, the same worship of semi-divine leader, the same economy existing by and for continuous warfare. It follows that the three super-states not only cannot conquer one another, but would gain no advantage by doing so. On the contrary, so long as they remain in conflict they prop one another up, like three sheaves of corn. And, as usual, the ruling groups of all three powers are simultaneously aware and unaware of what they are doing. Their lives are dedicated to world conquest, but they also know that it is necessary that the war should continue everlastingly and without victory. Meanwhile the fact that there IS no danger of conquest makes possible the denial of reality which is the special feature of Ingsoc and its rival systems of thought. Here it is necessary to repeat what has been said earlier, that by becoming continuous war has fundamentally changed its character.

In past ages, a war, almost by definition, was something that sooner or later came to an end, usually in unmistakable victory or defeat. In the past, also, war was one of the main instruments by which human societies were kept in touch with physical reality. All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers, but they could not afford to encourage any illusion that tended to impair military efficiency. So long as defeat meant the loss of independence, or some other result generally held to be undesirable, the precautions against defeat had to be serious. Physical facts could not be ignored. In philosophy, or religion, or ethics, or politics, two and two might make five, but when one was designing a gun or an aeroplane they had to make four. Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past. Newspapers and history books were, of course, always coloured and biased, but falsification of the kind that is practised today would have been impossible. War was a sure safeguard of sanity, and so far as the ruling classes were concerned it was probably the most important of all safeguards. While wars could be won or lost, no ruling class could be completely irresponsible.

But when war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded. As we have seen, researches that could be called scientific are still carried out for the purposes of war, but they are essentially a kind of daydreaming, and their failure to show results is not important. Efficiency, even military efficiency, is no longer needed. Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. Since each of the three super-states is unconquerable, each is in effect a separate universe within which almost any perversion of thought can be safely practised. Reality only exerts its pressure through the needs of everyday life--the need to eat and drink, to get shelter and clothing, to avoid swallowing poison or stepping out of top-storey windows, and the like. Between life and death, and between physical pleasure and physical pain, there is still a distinction, but that is all. Cut off from contact with the outer world, and with the past, the citizen of Oceania is like a man in interstellar space, who has no way of knowing which direction is up and which is down. The rulers of such a state are absolute, as the Pharaohs or the Caesars could not be. They are obliged to prevent their followers from starving to death in numbers large enough to be inconvenient, and they are obliged to remain at the same low level of military technique as their rivals; but once that minimum is achieved, they can twist reality into whatever shape they choose.

The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This--although the vast majority of Party members understand it only in a shallower sense--is the inner meaning of the Party slogan: WAR IS PEACE.

Winston stopped reading for a moment. Somewhere in remote distance a rocket bomb thundered. The blissful feeling of being alone with the forbidden book, in a room with no telescreen, had not worn off. Solitude and safety were physical sensations, mixed up somehow with the tiredness of his body, the softness of the chair, the touch of the faint breeze from the window that played upon his cheek. The book fascinated him, or more exactly it reassured him. In a sense it told him nothing that was new, but that was part of the attraction. It said what he would have said, if it had been possible for him to set his scattered thoughts in order. It was the product of a mind similar to his own, but enormously more powerful, more systematic, less fear-ridden. The best books, he perceived, are those that tell you what you know already. He had just turned back to Chapter I when he heard Julia's footstep on the stair and started out of his chair to meet her. She dumped her brown tool-bag on the floor and flung herself into his arms. It was more than a week since they had seen one another.

'I've got THE BOOK,' he said as they disentangled themselves.

Mapping the Golden Circle of the Irish Banking, Business and Political Elite

2010-11-26T13:31:00.015Z

Mapping the cosy Golden Circle of the corrupt
Irish Banking, Business and Political Elite
http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/9432/tasc.jpg

Download the PDF of this excellent report into how the Golden Circle of Banking, Business and Political elite managed to line their own pockets in the course of causing our current financial crisis
http://tinyurl.com/IRELAND-Golden-Circle (PDF - no login required to download)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/31309991/MtGC-ISSU# - (PDF but Requires Login)
http://www.tascnet.ie/

MtGC ISSU

A look at the Bondholders of Anglo shows that Goldman Sachs and Rothschilds are listed as creditors. Both Goldman Sachs and Rothschilds have been acting as 'advisors' to the Irish Gov't
during this crisis. - If that's not a criminal conspiracy then what is?

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/5097/aibondholders3.jpg

Rothschild Bank AND Goldman Sachs Are Both On The LIST Of Bondholdeers getting U.S. Taxpayer Billions In Irish Bailout

"Of the 80 listed companies only 7 listed pensions and being a cooperative savings institution. Of those only 4 listed churches and unions as their clients, the others could well have been big pension funds. The churches and unions in question were in Germany not Ireland. Those seven companies are amongst the smallest of Anglo Irish's bond holders. I only have figures for four of the seven. The largest, Union Investments of Germany, has a mere €165 billion in assets under management.

The total assets under management which I was able to compile from publicly available figures is €20,871,150,000,000. That is an underestimate because the bond holders who turn out to be Private and Swiss banks don't publish any figures. So Anglo Irish's 'bond holders' hold and invest MORE than 20.8 trillion euros. Guido lists those bond holders as holding between them 4 Billion euros in Anglo Irish bonds.

Now, in my opinion both figures are likely to be wrong. Certainly my figure is a large underestimate. But taking them at face value Anglo Irish would account for one 5000th of the total assets being managed by all the bond holders. So would even a total default by Anglo Irish cause that much, let alone systemic, pain and risk? Why are the 'Bond holders' and the Irish government so concerned that the Irish people be forced to take the loss and pay the debts for them?

Now lets look at the other side of the equation, at Ireland itself. Well Ireland's GDP before the crash, in 2008, was ... drum roll please... €207 billion. Or 0.207 trillion.

SO.... on one side we have Ireland whose bond holders, its people, have between them a total GDP wealth of 0.207 trillion euros. Who are being FORCED, against their will, to pay Anglo Irish bank's debts to its bond holders, who between them hold 20.8 Trillion euros. The people of Ireland are paying to, and protecting the wealth and power of, people who have 100 times more wealth!

So where do these wealthy bond holders live and work?

Germany has the most with 15 of the bond holders. Who between them hold 5.3 trillion euros.
France is next with 10 bond holders. Who have about 4 trillion to keep them warm.
Britain is third with 9 who have around 3 trillion.
The Swiss have 6 but who have about 8.5 trillion.
America has only three and hold only a trillion.

Other nations include, Spain, Belgium, Portugal, Holland Finland, Norway, Sweden, Poland, South Africa and Italy.

All these figures are very rough. The figure for Switzerland is certainly under because Private Swiss banks just don't publish figures. What we can say for sure, figures or no figures, is these are not banks investing widow's pensions or orphan's pennies.

So who are they? Well many of the bond holders are privately held banks, which list their activities as asset management for off-shore, non-resident and high value individuals. To give you an example, one of the private banks is EFG Bank of Luxembourg. EFG stands for European Financial Group which is the third largest private bank group in Switzerland. It manages over €7.5 trillion in assets. It is 'mostly', 40%, owned by Mr Spiro Latsis, son of a Greek shipping magnate. He also owns 30% of Hellenic Petroleum. His personal fortune is estimated to be about $9 Billion."

The cost of Rent/Mortgages helped kill the Irish economy

The cost of housing here was the biggest reason for the large wage bills - According to the OECD. ( http://tinyurl.com/36q5e49) - I have lived in Germany and the UK - in Germany the cost of living is much less than here, in large part due to rent-control and proper tenants rights. the main reason for the high cost of living here was the cosy property speculating cartel, who financed Fianna Fáil - a big merry-go-round, with the money going in in the tent at the Galway races in order to come out again at the other end in tax-breaks for both developer and speculators, including the average-joe who bought a second house thinking they could sit on their arses while the tenants paid the mortgage. These same greedy tosspots were the arseholes that voted Fianna Fáil back in again last time.

The Next IMF-proposed 'solution'?

Fianna Fáil represents the Bankers and the property developing classes etc - they were the ones corrupting the political process. Fianna Fáil are scum - I'll grant that - but they're a servant of even bigger scum - scum you never get to hear about because they manage to keep their names out of the papers and use the likes of Harney, Bertie, McDowell (remember him?) Cowen and Lenihan to do their dirty work.

The Irish people are soon going to find out the hard way that we don't live in a democracy - we live in something that calls itself a democracy but what sort of democracy is it when no matter who you vote for it always ends up the same - there's enough evidence of that right now - every Major political party in this country is lining up to pass that economy-destroying budget. The treacherous Green Party are trying to pull a fast one by pretending they are doing the country some good by 'demanding' an election - a useless election AFTER everyone of the political scumbags votes to pass that budget. That way the new Gov't gets to pretend it gives a damn but it's hands are tied - they will turn around at every opportunity and say 'Not our fault - It wasn't our budget'

Coming soon - maybe to you or someone you know -
courtesy of the
Irish Political Banking, business and Political Elite

Memo to Ireland- "Tell the EU and the IMF to shove it"

So let's look at Ireland and the so called "bail-out" of the country. Which is NOT a bail-out of the nation. It is just another bank bailout.

large excerpt-
This is a black day for Ireland. The Irish people will now face a decade or more of grinding poverty and depression thanks to their venal leaders. As soon as the ink dries on the IMF loans, the second occupation of Ireland will begin, only this time there won't be armored cars and Paramilitaries in fatigues, but nerdy-looking bureaucrats trained in the art of spreading misery. In fact, the loans haven't even been signed yet, and already IMF officials are urging the government to cut jobless benefits and the minimum wage. They're literally champing at the bit. They just can't wait to get their hands on the budget and start slashing away.

And don't believe the hype about European unity or saving Ireland. My ass. This is about bailing out the banks. The bondholders get a free ride while workers get kicked to the curb. Here's a clip from the Financial Times that spells it out in black and white:

"According to data compiled by the Bank of International Settlements, the three largest creditors to the Irish economy at the end of June...were Germany to the tune of €109bn, the UK at €100bn and France at €40bn. These sums amount to 2 per cent of France’s gross domestic product, 4.5 per cent of Germany’s GDP, and 7 per cent of British GDP."

It's useless to pretend we live in a democracy when the people are so easily fooled by the media into turning their rage onto low-paid civil servants such as Teachers and Nurses. This time last year there was a witch-hunt organised by the Political and Banking classes against the low-paid civil-servants, in order to distract the foolish electorate from the Criminal Bailout of the banks and the rampant criminality of the Banking-Property Speculating classes in general. The media all marched in Lock-step behind them writing crap about how teachers and nurses are what's causing the ruin - pure nonsense - and the majority of the idiotic Irish Electorate allowed themselves to be fooled AGAIN - how many times is that now?

The current agenda to drive down the minimum wage is more evidence of this rush to keep the citizens subjugated because I for one will never be convinced that the min wage of €8.65 per hour threatened our balance of payments. But by reducing peoples ability to save means it will increase their need to borrow to make up for the shortfall in the standard of living. I can assure you if you are unfortunate enough to have to live on the now 7.65/hr, it could mean the difference between going hungry or not before the next pay check. - and once again the Financial/Banking and Property Speculating classes are using this as a distraction from the real problem - the mountain of their debt which they have ordered their Political servants (Theirs NOT ours) to pile onto our shoulders.

The Web of European Debt

Taking your eye off the ball at a time like this is fatal - do not allow yourselves to be distracted by Media-Generated witch-hunts. The Media are the mouthpieces of the Banking and Political classes - all they ever do is repeat the message... the are told to disseminate - they keep a few guys like Fintan O'Tooles and Gene Kerrigan around to give the apppearence of objectivity and even-handedness but if you go back and look at how they have reported events over the past 2 years you can see that all they were doing was repeating Gov't Spin.

Yes there are problems with high-paid civil-servants, I'm not denying it - but it's feckin small potaotes compared to the REAL issues - deal with the major problems first THEN move onto the minor ones - remember - TROUSERS First - THEN shoes!

Keep your eye on the Billions-
Don't be distracted by Media-witch-Hunts
http://img185.imageshack.us/img185/6369/1pixel1milliondollars.gif

+++++++++++++++++++++++

There's plenty of proof that both Goldman Sachs (which some say are a front for Rothschilds) and Rothschilds themselves, are involved in a criminal conspiracy with the Irish Political and Banking classes (who caused this mess in the first place)
See:

Anglo Irish bank Bondholders - Goldman Sachs and Rothschilds

Anglo Irish bank Bondholders - Goldman Sachs and Rothschilds

2010-11-25T20:25:00.011Z

http://img214.imageshack.us/img214/5097/aibondholders3.jpg

A look at the Bondholders of Anglo shows that Goldman Sachs and Rothschilds are listed as creditors. Both Goldman Sachs and Rothschilds have been acting as 'advisors' to the Irish Gov't
during this crisis. - If that's not a criminal conspiracy then what is?

Don't just take my word for it - there's plenty of proof that both Goldman Sachs (which some say are a front for Rothschilds) and Rothschilds themselves, are involved in a criminal conspiracy with the Irish Political and Banking classes (who caused this mess in the first palce) See:
Anglo Bondholders Advising Government on Dealings with Anglo Bondholders
& Goldman Sachs Involved In Anglo Irish Bank Bailout Shenanigans
& Rothschilds controlling NAMA?
& Ghosts in the Irish Financial Machine - NAMA: deliberate entrapment into eternal Debt-slavery

The 2 Brians - Brian Cowan and the excerable Brian Lenihan - are not merely 'idiots making mistakes' - if they were then, simply by the law of averages, some of those mistakes, or even just ONE of those mistakes, would put some money back into our pockets. NONE of their decisions recently have done this. So it is rational to conclude that they are not making mistakes. From that one can deduce that they were never working in our favour, but are in fact working for International Financial crooks

and remember - an election after the economy-killing budget, which will pass with the collusion of ALL major Irish Political parties, allows the craven weasels which are the Fine Gael party to say "don't look at us, it wasn't our budget!"

So far I have not heard anything about laying a little more of the burden onto the richer members of this so-called society of ours. Why is that I wonder?

Every time the 2 Brians have had to make a decision over the last while, they have CONSISTENTLY made the absolute WORST decision (for the Irish people) - each and every time, without exception.

The only rational answer as to why the 2 Brians are acting as they are is that they are seeking to secure their own future prosperity by ensuring, after they are kicked out on their arses, that they will be offered some lucrative Directorships/Consultancies arranged through the grateful bankers.

Peter Schiff : The Irish Should Default On Their Debt, Not Become Slaves To Bankers

The OECD released a report a few years ago showing that the main driver of costs and wages was the cost for the average worker of servicing a mortgage

In my opinion this was due to the rampant speculation – too many people buying houses to rent out, expecting to pay the mortgage from squeezing tenants

Proper security of tenure (not the farce we have now where all the Landlord has to do is claim he/she needs it for a one of their offspring and they can evict any tenant) and proper rent control would have quietened the property market just when it needed it. Instead what we got was more and more tax-breaks for speculators

Mary Harney kept claiming that ‘We are closer to Boston than Berlin’ – well Mary I got news for you – Boston had Rent Control and Berlin still has it- so why couldn’t we have had it when we needed it?

Rent control in Boston began in 1968, when exceptional pressures on the rental housing market prompted the city to enact laws that controlled rents and protected tenants from arbitrary evictions and excessive rent increases. (Massachusetts state law gives tenants some basic rights, but does little else to protect them.)

In 1975 Boston began vacancy decontrol, but the important protections against arbitrary evictions and rent increases were later restored. By 1994 only 20,000 units were left with fully controlled rents. Three times that number, 60,000 units, had become vacancy decontrolled, where the landlord could charge any rent to new tenants, but they retained basic tenant protections once they moved in.

Of course the speculators continued to attack tenancy laws and eventually Boston ended up with spiraling rents and a property boom which also eventually collapsed, just like ours – Berlin on the other hand has no such problems

=====================

Some Irish netizens have suggested that the politicians are playing along with the IMF and ECB to get them into the “kill zone” of default territory. "Remember", they say, "if a soldier is an honest man sent out to die for his country then a good politician is an honest man sent out to lie for his country."

They have suggested that perhaps the game is being played by the politicians in full knowledge that they will spring the bank bondholder default trap once the state has a line of credit in place to allow us to reduce the structural deficit in our current account to near zero.

This is nothing but nonsensical wishful thinking

Self delusion is a dangerous thing – especially at times like these –

The 2 Brians - Brian Cowan and the excerable Brian Lenihan - are not some geniuses in disguise, tricking and lying to the bankers, in the service of their country

They are traitorous craven criminals, lying to their country, in the service of the bankers

A map showing why Peter Sutherland is a Cunt

I already said - a long time ago - that the Head of Goldman Sachs European operations, Peter Sutherland, is a c**t

===============

One more thing this agenda to drive down the minimum wage is more evidence of this rush to keep the citizens subjugated because I for one will never be convinced that the min wage of €8.65 per hour threatened our balance of payments. But by reducing peoples ability to save means it will increase their need to borrow to make up for the shortfall in the standard of liveing. I can assure you if you are misfortunate enough to have to live on the now 7.65/hr it could mean the difference between going hungry or not before the next pay check.

It's official: Republic of Ireland is no longer sovereign

2010-11-25T17:35:00.003Z

Republic of Ireland no longer Sovereign
(according to Wikipedia -
Click Image for larger more readable version)

I saw it on Wikipedia, so it must be true - List of former sovereign states

In and around what is now the British Isles

Kingdom of England (927-1707)

Kingdom of Scotland (843-1707)

Kingdom of Ireland (1541–1801)

Commonwealth of England, Scotland and Ireland (1649–1660)

United Kingdom of Great Britain (1707–1800)

Republic of Ireland (1916-2010)

Irish Economic Problems Solved!!!!!!!! Gov't announce seekrit Fiscal Weapon!!!

2010-11-05T19:21:00.007Z

Who needs a coherent non-retarded
Economic Policy when you have
Nu-Wonder-Cheese™?

Hitherto utterly useless Fianna Fail Gov't announce astounding scientific break-through!!
Irish Dairy Produce has hitherto unknown miraculous Economic Powers!!

People in need to get free cheese

Preparations are under way for the distribution of free cheese to needy people starting on Monday week.

53 tonnes of cheese will be given to charitable organisations to distribute as part of an EU scheme.

Already this year, over 114 tonnes of free cheese have been given to people in need in this country.

Miraculous Economic Nu-Wonder-Cheese™
Photographed in Seekrit Irish Central Bank Vaults,
yesterday.
The fresh cheddar is coming from production lines in manufacturing firms around the country.

For about two decades, butter was taken from EU intervention stores and given to needy people, especially around Christmas.

Fianna Fail - Cheese Eating
Surrender Monkeys?

But in recent years, it was felt that cheese was easier to distribute than butter.

So this year, the Department of Agriculture has swapped 350 tonnes of butter in exchange for 167 tonnes of cheese.

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries & Food Brendan Smith said the EU-funded scheme is an important means of contributing towards the well-being of the most deprived citizens in the Community.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, Minister Smith said the Government would purchase the cheese from the Irish Dairy Board and make it available to voluntary organisations, such as St Vincent de Paul.

He said the scheme would also promote the use, value and importance of nutritional dairy products.

He said it may be a small measure but it is helpful to those who are in need.

The cheese is available in 12 x 1kg boxes from stores in Clondalkin, Portlaoise, Kilmacthomas, Cobh and Togher with a minimum of one box per collection.

Permits are now being issued to applicants to facilitate collection.

Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith announces
cunning-plan to solve Irish economic woes

Ghosts in the Irish Financial Machine - NAMA: deliberate entrapment into eternal Debt-slavery

2010-10-22T21:08:00.012+01:00

Ghost Estates in the Irish Financial Machine,
OR: deliberate entrapment into eternal Debt-slavery?
I was reading a post over at Aangirfan which contained this question:

What were the reasons for World War One?

Some people blame Imperialism.

For example, the Austrian Empire and the Russian Empire clashed over Serbia; the British Empire, the German Empire and Turkish Empire had clashing interests in Iraq.

Some people blame Militaristic Nationalism. There were plenty of Germans and Englishmen who looked forward to a fight.

What role was played by Zionist bankers?

I recalled that I had made a number of comments on an Icelandic blog called Time To Think, which discussed this very subject. It all started with this comment, a reply of mine to this post by NOTSylvia on the subject of the Icelandic banking debacle.

Stop thinking of it as a take-over of your State and start thinking of it as a hostile take-over of your Company, Iceland Corp.

It’s more like Economic Terrorism. And get ready for asset-stripping . . .

It could be worse. . . . Ireland PLC’s asset-raping/economic-terrorism , called Nama, is being managed by N.M.Rothschilds.

We are SO F*%ked . .. . .

Something which caught my attention was THIS Document which shows a list of Foreign holders of U.S. Gov’t Treasury Bills.

What is interesting, or really Freaking scary depending on how awake you are, is that Ireland PLC steadily increased their holdings of these rapidly devaluing pieces of paper, from a ‘mere’ $13.9 billion in June 2008 to $50.6 billion by May 2009.

I don’t know what the hell they think they are doing, but I do know I haven’t seen a word about this in the Irish media.

Here’s a graphic:
U.S. treasury Bills. Ireland PLC holdings highlighted
here’s a link to the graphic: Link

Note that Israel, a country of similar population size and in 2006 also had a similar GDP ($129 billion according to the CIA Factbook figures for that year) and whose economy would appear to be equally if not more dependent on the US economy, had in May 2009 less than half the amount invested which Ireland PLC had (in their dubious wisdom) decided to purchase.

Also, note that Switzerland had a figure similar to that of Ireland PLC, invested in US Treasury Securities.

According to Wiki there a 3 main types of US Treasury Securites.
I do not know which types(s) Ireland PLC decided (in their wisdom) to purchase. Some are long-term some are not.

As far as I can ascertain, from the limited info available, the Federal Reserve appears to be mostly owned/controlled by Rothschilds through a series of what appear to be front-organisations.

Regarding the news that NAMA is being managed by N.M. Rothschilds: I heard Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahearn say it on the radio. He as trying to re-assure "de peepil" that NAMA was a 'good thing', and was being done in the best interests of all employees/vassals of Ireland PLC. As soon as I heard it, instead of feeling 're-assured', I felt a distinct chill run down my spine.

Ghost Estates of the Irish Property Bubble
Image taken from: Ghostestates.com

As far as I can remember what he actually said was something like

‘The gov’t is taking the best advice on this. We are being advised by N.M. Rothschilds . . .

So, me saying ‘Rothschilds is managing NAMA’ was not quite correct. Still, hopefully you can understand my reasons for hearing even MORE alarm-bells concerning the whole NAMA farce, once I’d heard that little gem of conspiracy-fodder - if not , then perhaps you should read this free on-line book: SECRETS OF THE FEDERAL RESERVE By Eustace Mullins

In Mullin’s book, which he compiled mostly from US Library of Congress records, the author concludes that 4 or 5 of the original shareholdings were held by what Mullin’s concluded were Rothschild-controlled Fronts.

So in future when you hear the terms ‘the Fed’ or ‘Federal Reserve’, it might be more useful to think "Rothschild".

In the book, Mullins makes the point that one of the reasons often put forward in favour of the existence of Central Banks, is that they can help control the economy through regulation of the money supply.

Mullins claims that since the Fed was created in 1913 there has never been an ‘accidental’ recession. He also makes the claim that the Fed was ‘needed’ in order to create (from nothing) money which could then be loaned at interest (naturally) to allow the US Gov’t to finance it’s involvement in WW1. The Fed shareholders such a JP Morgan, Kuhn and Loeb etc., were busy engineering that war at the time.

He states that all economic booms and all economic recessions are simply a result of an increase or a decrease in the available money supply.

Since Central Banks regulate the money supply, it is obviously they who deliberately create the conditions for a boom or a recession.

I’m no financial expert but my in-light of what I have read in the book I came to the conclusion that the recent Wall Street Banksters-bailout was a good example of recession-creation in action.

Money that could have been circulated through the US economy providing health care or even maintaining infrastructure is hoovered out of the economy and disbursed amongst various banks who then refuse to re-lend the money as credit, thus halting the flow of credit the modern-day economy has been engineered to depend upon.

Halting the credit flow decreases the overall money supply, and at the same time the Fed is debasing the dollar through the hilariously mis-titled process economists call ‘Quantitive easing’.

Ireland appears to be dong it’s own version of that by propping-up the soon-to-useless dollar with money they can ill-afford to spare on such a dangerous ‘investment’.

At the same time, acting on ‘advice’ from none other than N.M. Rothschilds they are also preparing to bail out banks and property developers by putting, what appear to me to be, totally unrealistic valuations on now-useless property in what is an over-saturated property market. The idea that these properties will sell for anything like these values in 7 or 8 years seems to me to be a totally preposterous notion.

So again we see money which could have been used to help keep credit flowing and thus help maintain a somewhat healthy/robust economy is being directed into the pockets of the banks. There have been many reports of the Irish banks’ unwillingness to re-circulate this money back through the Irish economy.

Curiously not one Irish economist or media-outlet has drawn attention to these similarities.

But then I have come to believe that Economists are required in order to lay down a smokescreen by providing, or usually merely repeating, seemingly complex explanations (which upon closer examination usually turn out to be complete & utter pseudo-intellectual horse-excrement) for events that according to Mullins are usually relatively simple to explain.

During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.
George Orwell

You really should read the book. It’s free.

The link above is an actual link to an actually free actually online actually unexpurgated actual copy of the actual book itself, NOT some link to a site trying to sell you the book.

Once you read it, you can decide for yourself.

But you should read it first.

I always prefer when people decide for themselves, once they have read the source material of course, rather than taking my word for it.

OR: you could read page 77 of The World War of 1914-1918 by Harry Elmer Barnes - another free online book.

The influence exerted by American finance upon our entry into the World War has been revealed in Ray Stannard Baker’s Life and Letters of Woodrow Wilson, in the volumes of the Nye armament investigation, and in Professor C. C. Tansill’s America Goes to War.

At the outset, the international bankers were not by any means all pro-Ally. Some, like the Morgan firm, were pro-British, and had been for years, while others, like Kuhn, Loeb and Company, manned chiefly by men of German derivation, were pro-German. But the financial interests of all the bankers soon came to be pro-Ally, for credit and loans to Germany were discouraged, while large loans were presently being made to the Allied powers.

On August 15, 1914, at the beginning of the war, Bryan declared against loans to any belligerent, on the ground that credit is the basis of all forms of contraband. President Wilson backed him up. For the time being, this position did not operate seriously against the Allies, for the balance of trade and investment was against the United States, and the Allied countries could pay for their purchases by cancelling the debts owed abroad by Americans. This situation took care of matters for a few months. But Allied war purchases became so great that, by the autumn of 1914, there was a credit crisis. The National City Bank addressed Robert Lansing, then Counsellor of the State Department, on this matter on October 23, 1914. Short-term credits to European governments were advocated. Lansing talked the matter over with President Wilson at once, and the latter agreed that the government would not interfere with such an arrangement. This information was transmitted orally to Willard Straight of J. P. Morgan & Company at the Metropolitan Club in Washington on the same night.

Shortly afterwards, H. P. Davison of the Morgan firm went to England and signed a contract to become the British purchasing agent in America. A similar contract was soon made with France.

The short-term loans sufficed for some months, but by the summer of 1915 Allied buying had become so extensive that the bankers saw that they must float loans here for the Allied countries if the latter were to continue to buy American munitions on a large scale. So they made strong representations to Colonel House and to the Secretary of the Treasury, W. G. McAdoo.

On August 21, 1915, McAdoo wrote a long letter to President Wilson, pointing out that great prosperity had come to the country as a result of the sale of munitions to the Allies, but that this prosperity could not continue unless we financed it through open loans to the Allies—i.e. selling Allied bonds in our own financial markets.

On September 6, 1915, Secretary Lansing argued similarly in a letter to President Wilson, stressing the crisis that faced American business if the earlier ruling of Bryan and the President on American loans to belligerents was not rescinded. Colonel House supported this position. McAdoo and Lansing won their point. On September 8, 1915, Wilson assented to loans and the Morgan firm was once more given oral information. Very soon, the first public loan, the $500,000,000 Anglo-French loan, was floated.

The formal loans to the Allies—over $2,500,000,000 in all—financed their purchases for a little over a year, but their buying was so heavy that even the great investment banking houses could not take care of their needs. By January, 1917, the Allies had overdrawn their credit by nearly $500,000,000. Only Uncle Sam could save the great banking houses and the Allies. And Uncle Sam could help only if the United States were at war with Germany. We could not, as a government, lend money to a belligerent, unless we were at war with its enemy.

79 THE WORLD WAR OF 1914-1918 79

Just at this time the Germans renewed their unrestricted submarine warfare. The United States could now be led into the war, and the bankers would be repaid. They were repaid to the last cent. When the war was over, Mr. Thomas W. Lamont, of J. P. Morgan and Company, stated the facts relative to the attitude of his firm toward the World War and the belligerent powers:

“At the request of certain of the foreign governments the firm of Messrs. J. P. Morgan and Company undertook to co-ordinate the requirements of the Allies, and then to bring about regularity and promptness in fulfilling these requirements. Those were the days when American citizens were being urged to remain neutral in action, in word, and even in thought. But our firm had never for one moment been neutral: we didn’t know how to be. From the very start we did everything we could to contribute to the cause of the Allies. And this particular work had two effects: one in assisting the Allies in the production of goods and munitions in America necessary to the Allies’ vigorous prosecution of the war, the other in helping to develop the great and profitable export trade that our country has had.”53

Most American industrialists naturally shared the attitude of the bankers. Since England controlled the seas, our sales were mainly to the Allied powers. We wished to see the Allies continue the war and win it. Upon their purchases depended most of our sales and prosperity, and upon their success and solvency depended the prospect of their being able to pay us in the end. The trade in munitions carried us from a depression in 1914 to boom years in 1915 and 1916.54

By abandoning his neutral financial and industrial policy in favor of the Allies, President Wilson made it possible for the Entente Powers to enjoy an enormous advantage over the Central Powers in getting war supplies. The only way for the Central Powers to overcome it was to resume unlimited submarine warfare and try to sweep from the seas the ships that were carrying these supplies to the Allies.

It was our unneutral financing of the Allies that led to the resumption of German submarine warfare, and it was the resumption of

53 Manchester Guardian, January 27, 1920.

54 There has been much dispute as to whether we were forced into war by the loans and sales to the Allies or by the resumption of German submarine warfare early in 1917. In an important article in Science and Society (spring, 1939) on “Neutrality and Economic Pressures, 1914-1917″ Professor Paul Birdsall shows that the two were inseparably tied together.

80 THE WORLD WAR OF 1914-1918 80

this warfare which furnished the “incident” that enabled the war party in this country to put us into the conflict. It is, thus, perfectly clear that economic and financial pressure was the crucial factor which led us into war in 1917.

But no one need hold that President Wilson was moved primarily by any tender sentiments for the bankers. Both McAdoo and Lansing argued that it was essential to American prosperity to finance the Allies.

It was this general consideration of continued prosperity in 1915-16, and the relation of this to the prospects of the Democratic Party in the election of 1916, rather than any direct banker pressure on the White House, that bore in on Wilson’s consciousness in the late summer of 1915, when he let down the gates to financing the Allies.

Yet, it is downright silly to contend that the bankers had no influence on Wilson’s policy. If he did not listen to the bankers himself, he did listen very attentively to those who did heed banker pressure, namely, McAdoo, Lansing and House.

Remember that Rothschilds were THE major player of the London-based International finance scene. They also would have been probable creditors to much of the British aristocratic class.

So if Mullins was NOT correct then the establishment of the Federal Reserve, with it’s complete monopoly on the provision and printing of US currency, in a very underhanded way in Dec 1913, just a little over 6 months prior to the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, could probably rank as one of the most lucrative instances of ‘Just Good Timing’ in the history of modern International Finance.

I however am not much of a believer in the existence of ‘just good timing’ when it comes to International Finance.

According to Mulllins the House of Morgan was little more than a Rothschild front. Morgans first job in banking was in the London offices of Rothschilds.

I keep having to remind myself that Israel is really nothing more than a Rothschild personal fiefdom. Sometimes I forget.

As far as I can make out, the backers of the Zionists see Judaism as merely a convenient cloth with which to cloak their activities. They appeared to see nothing wrong with sacrificing large numbers of apparently expendable Eastern European Jews in order to achieve their aims. It’s a pity that the diaspora and the citizens of Israel cannot see how they and their religion have been used and abused by these people all these years. Just mentioning that this might be the case will get you immediately labeled a ‘Jew-Hater’.

I totally forgot to mention the importance of the fact that the Berlin-Baghdad railway link was nearing completion at the outbreak of hostilities.

I guess the Anglo-American Axis was determined not to allow that to happen.

Imagine the effect that would have had on the oil monopoly . . .

If it had been completed the Berlin-Baghdad (and, ultimately, Basra) railway linkages would have enabled transport and trade from Germany through a port on the Persian Gulf, from which trade goods and supplies could be exchanged directly with the farthest of the German colonies, and the world. The journey home to Germany would give German industry direct supply of oil. This access to resources, with trade less affected by British control of shipping would have been beneficial to German economic interests in industry and trade,[3] and threatening to British economic dominance in colonial trade. Source:Wikipedia

Funnily enough the Berlin-Bhagdad rail link was not finally completed until 1940. Talk about coincidence!!

Some say that the real reason behind Hitler’s Drang nach Osten, Operation Barbarossa was merely to give Germany access to the oil-rich Caucasus.

Some even now say that the recent NATO Drang nach Osten, the Georgian attack on Russian forces in South Ossetia, is nothing more than Operation Barbarossa Part 2.

If the Rothschild Investment Bank(Irish Gov advisors) main business is the lending of funds to governments, then is in their best interests for the country to prosper or go bankrupt???

Obviously, it is the latter!

But it’s not so much the continuance of debt which gives the bankers their power that I find troubling but rather "What will they do with that power once they get it?" – what social and economic changes they will insist the debtor nations instigate in order to ensure continued funding?

it’s exactly the same scenario laid out by John Perkins in his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man

Eventually EVERYTHING will be privatised. Including the Police. If you can’t afford it there will be no one to protect you, not that Police actually do much protection as it is, but in the future we will only have those ‘rights’ which we can afford to pay for.

In the future, unless we take steps to stop it now – EVERY facet of human existence, from the cradle to the grave will be fully controlled by the banking elite/Corporations

Ehud Barak is Terrified!!

2010-06-13T14:25:00.009+01:00

Ehud Barak is Terrified - not by Hamas,
but by the consequences of his own actions

Wanted for War Crimes, Ehud Barak is Terrified - not by Hamas, but by the consequences of his own actions

From Richard Silverstein @ Tikun Olam:

Ehud Barak Cancels French Visit for Fear of Arrest Involving Gaza Flotilla Attack

The purported reason for the cancellation as relayed by his spokesperson, was that he had to remain in Israel to help assemble the panel of experts to investigate the Gaza flotilla massacre.

hahahahahaha - yeah . . . riiiiiiiiiiight . . . Ehud Barak is gravely concerned that an impartial independent panel of experts be assembled to investigate the Gaza flotilla massacre. Ehud Barak is sooooooo obviously a man whose utmost concern is always that both the letter and spirit of International Law be upheld.

The picture above is a screenshot from a website setup by Israelis disgusted at the crimes of their Zionist Gov't. The website can be found at wanted.org.il

You can also read a little about it here:
http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/israeli-human-rights-activists-arrest-olmert-livni-and-barak-for-war-crimes-1.268535

Anonymous self-described Israeli human rights activists have set up an Internet site detailing alleged war crimes committed by senior government officials and Israel Defense Forces officers. No known human rights organization is behind the site, whose founders refuse to give their names.

The Web site explains how to inform Hague of when 'suspects' are outside Israel, hence vulnerable to arrest.

Suspects listed are:

Defense Minister Ehud Barak,
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert,
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni,
Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai,
Public Security Minister Avi Dichter,
National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer,
IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and his two predecessors,
Dan Halutz,
Moshe Ya’alon,
Former air force commander Eliezer Shkedy and others.

Wanted! Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi a.k.a.: 'The Buthcher of Gaza',
FOR WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Chief of Staff of the Criminal Murderous and Racist Gang known as the 'IDF'

Wanted! Tzipi Livni
FOR WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Ex-Mossad Agent and Ex-Foreign Minister of the Criminal and Racist Entity known as 'Israel'

Wanted! - Ehud Olmert:
FOR WAR CRIMES AND CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY
Olmert is a financial criminal and Ex-P.M. of the Criminal and Racist Entity known as 'Israel'

BP Logo re-Design Competition Entry

2010-06-11T20:53:00.006+01:00

BP Logo Goatse re-Design By hubris
Courtesy of Steff @ Famous For 15 Megapixels

I found this competition http://www.logomyway.com/contestView.php?contestId=1746 to re-design the BP logo

So I did - as you can see from the picture above.

You lucky people can view my entry (fnarr fnarr) at the competition website by clicking here

Any comments or suggestions would of course, as always, be greatly appreciated

UPDATE: Apparently the design experts were not amused and my design has been deemed 'not relevant to this contest' - which seems a little unfair as I thought a BP/Goatse-mashup was quite a precise summation of BP's contempt for the rest of the planet -PLUS I even went to the bother of opening a PayPal account for them to deposit my contest-winners loot - €200 - which I am positive I would have been sure to win, I had not been so cruelly censored by TPTB, an absolute cert-to-win I reckon . . .curses . . .foiled again!!
BP/Goatse deemed 'Not Relevant', . . . hmmmm

aangirfan: BP MAY BE TAKEN OVER BY EXXON. THE UK IS BEING ATTACKED AND LOOTED.

Six of BP's directors are Americans.

And six are British. (Times Online)

We have noticed that UK companies with American directors are at risk of losing their independence.

BP should know what is going on.

John Gerson, BP's director of security and public affairs is a former deputy head of MI6. (BP briefs No 10.)

Some MI6 people have helped BP get contracts in Libya, Russia and elsewhere.

The Land of the Jews -

2010-06-06T13:19:00.008+01:00

'Jerusalem Day' - Young Jewish men go to Palestinian neighbourhoods to scream hatred at local Palestinians - the Police do nothing

Look at the above picture - how many of those young hooligans look typically look 'Slavic'/'East European'? Most of them in my opinion. How many of those young hooligans look typically 'Semetic'? at most 1 or 2.

In truth, the issue of genetic origins is irrelevant to events in Israel /Palestine. What matters is one group of human beings is murdering another group without regard to women or children, the horrific weapons used or the barbarity of the methods used.

Hitler claimed the Jews were a substandard race of evil intent and the Zionists seem to be trying to prove him right . Most people have the sense to know that there are good and bad people in every race, the problems arise when the bad people seize power and use it without regard to human rights or basic standards of humanity.

The Zionists insist that they have a right to all the land in Palestine because they claim that their ancestors were the original inhabitants and were driven out by the Romans. Like most of the claims made by Zionists, this is false.

Genetic studies have shown that The Palestinians are even more Semitic than the vast majority Israeli Jews. - the Palestinians have a much closer genetic relationship with the Biblical Jews who would have lived in that area 2000 years ago, than do the majority of people who call themselves Jewish - in fact it is widely accepted by non-racists, (i.e.: non-Zionists) that the bulk of the Palestinian population are in fact mostly descendants of Biblical-era Jews who later converted to Islam, whereas the genetic testing on modern-day Ashkenazi Jews has shown that they are in fact mostly descended from a Slavo-Turkic people known as the Khazars, who lived in the Caucus region, near modern day Georgia, and who converted to Judaism between 950 Ad and 1150 AD. They moved east-ward ahead of Genghis Khan who was rapidly expanding the area under Mongol control, and they eventually settled mostly in and around the Ukraine/Poland region of Eastern Europe, thus accounting for the large Jewish population once found in that area.

THe full text of the book "The Thirteenth Tribe - The Khazar Empire and its Heritage"
By Arthur Koestler, is available on-line at - http://198.62.75.1/www2/koestler/

Mr. Koestler was an Ashkenazi Jew and took pride in his Khazar ancestry. He was also a very talented and successful writer who published over 25 novels and essays. His most successful book, Darkness at Noon, was translated in thirty-three languages.
The Jewish Khazarian Empire ca. 950 - 1150 AD

As expected, The Thirteenth Tribe caused a stir when published in 1976, since it demolishes ancient racial and ethnic dogmas...At the height of the controversy in 1983, a year after another brutal Israeli invasion of Lebanon, the lifeless bodies of Arthur Koestler and his wife were found in their London home. Despite significant inconsistencies, the police ruled their death a suicide...some have speculated that it was not a suicide but a revenge killing due to his refusal to disown any of the conclusions in the book, which were causing some to question the whole Zionist narrative of 'our ancestors ancient land of Israel'.

This book traces the history of the ancient Khazar Empire, a major but almost forgotten power in Eastern Europe, which in A.D. 740 converted to Judaism. Khazaria, a conglomerate of Aryan Turkic tribes, was finally wiped out by the forces of Genghis Han, but evidence indicates that the Khazars themselves migrated to Poland and formed the craddle of Western (Ashkenazim) Jewry...

The Khazars' sway extended from the Black sea to the Caspian, from the Caucasus to the Volga, and they were instrumental in stopping the Muslim onslaught against Byzantium, the eastern jaw of the gigantic pincer movement that in the West swept across northern Africa and into Spain.
Thereafter the Khazars found themselves in a precarious position between the two major world powers: the Eastern Roman Empire in Byzantium and the triumphant followers of Mohammed. As Arthur Koestler points out, the Khazars were the Third World of their day, and they chose a surprising method of resisting both the Western pressure to become Christian and the Eastern to adopt Islam. Rejecting both, they converted to Judaism.

The second part of Mr. Koestler's book deals with the Khazar migration to Polish and Lithuanian territories, caused by the Mongol onslaught, and their impact on the racial composition and social heritage of modern Jewry. He produces a large body of meticulously detailed research in support of a theory that sounds all the more convincing for the restraint with which it is advanced.
Mr. Koestler concludes:

"The evidence presented in the previous chapters adds up to a strong case in favour of those modern historians - whether Austrian, Israeli or Polish - who, independently from each other, have argued that the bulk of modern Jewry is not of Palestinian, but of Caucasian origin. The mainstream of Jewish migrations did not flow from the Mediterranean across France and Germany to the east and then back again. The stream moved in a consistently westerly direction, from the Caucasus through the Ukraine into Poland and thence into Central Europe. When that unprecedented mass settlement in Poland came into being, there were simply not enough Jews around in the west to account for it, while in the east a whole nation was on the move to new frontiers" ( page 179, page 180).

"The Jews of our times fall into two main divisions: Sephardim and Ashkenazim.

The Sephardim are descendants of the Jews who since antiquity had lived in Spain (in Hebrew Sepharad) until they were expelled at the end of the fifteenth century and settled in the countries bordering the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and to a lesser extent in Western Europe. They spoke a Spanish-Hebrew dialect, Ladino, and preserved their own traditions and religious rites. In the 1960s, the number of Sephardim was estimated at 500,000.

The Ashkenazim, at the same period, numbered about eleven million. Thus, in common parlance, Jew is practically synonymous with Ashkenazi Jew." ( page 181).

In Mr. Koestler's own words,

"The story of the Khazar Empire, as it slowly emerges from the past, begins to look like the most cruel hoax which history has ever perpetrated."

The Historical Collaboration between Zionists and Nazis

2010-06-06T12:24:00.008+01:00

as far as I know, this picture is not photoshopped
Benjamin Netanyahu, ('NuttinYahoo' to his friends) gives a salute . . .

The blockade of Gaza has NEVER been about stopping 'terrorism'.

Hamas has repeatedly offered Israel an indefinite cease-fire in exchange for lifting the blockade. And, on a half dozen occasions, Israel accepted the deal but did not live up to its side of it.

All that is required of Israel is to stop killing Palestinians and stop making violent attempts to provoke a violent reaction from Palestinian groups - this is apparently just a little bit too much too ask from the Zionists

The 2009 war began after Israel ignored its commitments under the Gaza cease-fire agreement, continued the blockade, and then provoked the resumption of attacks on Sderot through a series of targeted assassinations of Palestinians.

The racist and openly fascistic criminal Zionist regime, known as 'Israel', claims that no cease-fire agreement curtails its right to kill any Palestinian it deems to be a terrorist - no trial necessary when you are an openly fascistic criminal Zionist regime, known as 'Israel'

Israel asserts that it will not accept any long-term cease-fire agreement with Hamas because it likes to frequently make the false claim that 'Hamas does not recognize its right to exist.'

See;

http://indymedia.org.il/article/2010/1/en/hamas-accepts-israels-right-to-exist-and-offers-to-nullify-its-charter

Hamas accepts 'Israel’s right to exist’

By KHALED ABU TOAMEH - printed in The Jerusalem Post

Hamas has accepted Israel’s right to exist and would be prepared to nullify its charter, which calls for the destruction of Israel, Aziz Dwaik, Hamas’s most senior representative in the West Bank, said on Wednesday.

"The [Hamas] charter was drafted more than 20 years ago," Dwaik noted, adding that his movement would even be prepared to "nullify" the document.

"No one wants to throw anyone into the sea," he said.

(For some reason the JP decided to delete that article from it's on-line archive - I suppose they don't want anyone to find out that their silly little justifications and demands are all either lies or based on lies)

But Israel does not need the permission of anyone -- let alone Hamas -- to exist. All it needs from Hamas is an end to violence and that is precisely what Hamas is offering, in exchange for lifting the blockade.

But Israel does not want n end to the violence, as it's frequent attempts to provoke violence attest. Without the violence all of the Israeli justifications will be shown to be the hollow lies that they really are. Without the violence the master plan of complete take-over of all territory currently inhabited by Palestinians will be harder to accomplish.

Israel is an aggressive fascistic militarist expansionist nation, and has been since the day of it's inception.

Lenni Brenner, an Israeli historian, wrote 2 very good books about the origins of political Zionism and it's very obvious close connections to Nazism. The first of these is "Zionism in the Age of the Dictators - A Reappraisal " - - the full copy is free online at the link - http://www.marxists.de/middleast/brenner/index.htm

The 2nd of Brenner's books is titled "51 Documents: Zionist collaboration with the Nazis"

Although historians have examined Nazism in detail in all its complexity, the present general public, world-wide, is interested in little more than the Holocaust, the Jews as victims. Few, Jew or gentile, know anything about the range of Jewish politics in the Hitler era.

What happened to the Jews is constantly utilized in Zionist propaganda as justification for the creation of the Israeli state, the silver lining around the dark cloud of desolation. That's the tip off that there is something missing: What did the Zionists do for the Jews? There is no '51 Documents: Zionist Resistance to the Nazis.'

The Nazi era is the most discussed period in history, yet most Jews and others are unaware of the interaction between Zionism, Hitler and Mussolini. This book brings to light, through the use of actual historic documents, the disservice that the Zionists did to Jews before and during the Holocaust. Some of these documents were published in English decades ago, but are only now seeing the light of day. Others are being translated into English here for the first time. Included are excerpts from Propaganda Minister Goebbels' newspaper, Der Angriff, detailing an SS-man's visit to Palestine as the Zionists' guest. Readers will also learn about Adolf Eichmann's account of his personal dealings with Hungarian Zionist Reszo Kasztner, who was later assassinated in Israel as a Nazi collaborator who betrayed 400,000 Hungarian Jews. Also revealed is pro-Zionist propaganda put out by the Nazis, such as a medal for getting Jews to Palestine and a Nazi board game where the object is to move Jews to Palestine. The documents contained in this book were selected with due care so that a rounded picture of history emerges. The author concludes that Zionism betrayed the Jews; and the evidence that led him to that conclusion is contained in this book."

The Plot to Stigmatize "51 Documents" on Amazon.com - http://www.counterpunch.org/brenner05252005.html

excerpt:

But the documents demonstrate that collaboration began when Hitler came to power, years before the Holocaust. In 1933, the Zionistischen Vereinigung für Deutschland, the German Zionist Federation, sent a secret message to the Nazis:

"May we therefore be permitted to present our views, which, in our opinion, make possible a solution in keeping with the principles of the new German State of National Awakening.... It is our opinion that an answer to the Jewish question truly satisfying to the national state can be brought about only with the collaboration of the Jewish movement that aims at a social, cultural, and moral renewal of Jewry.... Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group.... On the foundation of the new state, which has established the principle of race, we wish so to fit our community into the total structure so that for us too, in the sphere assigned to us, fruitful activity for the Fatherland is possible.... Our acknowledgment of Jewish nationality provides for a clear and sincere relationship to the German people and its national and racial realities.... [W]e do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group."

The ZVfD wasn't thinking about any future slaughter of Jews. To the contrary, they proclaimed that
"[A] self-conscious Jewry here described, in whose name we speak, can find a place in the structure of the German state, because it is inwardly unembarrassed, free from the resentment which assimilated Jews must feel at the determination that they belong to Jewry, to the Jewish race and past. We believe in the possibility of an honest relationship of loyalty between a group-conscious Jewry and the German state."

They went further.
"For its practical aims, Zionism hopes to be able to win the collaboration even of a government fundamentally hostile to Jews, because in dealing with the Jewish question no sentimentalities are involved but a real problem whose solution interests all peoples, and at the present moment especially the German people.

The realization of Zionism could only be hurt by resentment of Jews abroad against the German development. Boycott propaganda such as is currently being carried on against Germany in many ways is in essence un-Zionist, because Zionism wants not to do battle but to convince and to build.... Our observations, presented herewith, rest on the conviction that, in solving the Jewish problem according to its own lights, the German Government will have full understanding for a candid and clear Jewish posture that harmonizes with the interests of the state."

[Critics of Lennii Brenner's book] charge that the synopsis misrepresents "pragmatism for collaboration (particularly before the Nazi's policy of extermination was known about) as if Zionists and Nazis shared the same ideals is insulting and disingenuous."

But [the Zionists] called for
"a solution in keeping with the principles of the new German State of National Awakening."

After all, "Zionism believes that a rebirth of national life, such as is occurring in German life through adhesion to Christian and national values, must also take place in the Jewish national group.... [W]e do not wish to falsify these fundamentals, because we, too, are against mixed marriage and are for maintaining the purity of the Jewish group." . . .

A most apt comparison? - Israeli flag with swastika

No honest impartial observer could read those last 2 statements made by the Zionists and come to any conclusion other than that the Zionists were quite clearly saying to the Nazis:

"We Zionists share the Nazi values - we are the same as you"

Indeed Hitler himself recognised this from an early point - in his book "Mein Kampf" it is clear that he obviously recognised Zionism being essentially a twin of Nazism, which lead him to write the following passage in praise of Zionism:

"And whatever doubts I may still have nourished were finally dispelled by the attitude of a portion of the Jews themselves. Among them there was a great movement, quite extensive in Vienna, which came out sharply in confirmation of the national character of the Jews: this was the Zionists." - Adolph Hitler, "Mein Kampf"

Dublin Archdiocese Report on Child Sexual Abuse

2009-11-27T14:31:00.012Z

Serial-Paedophile-Enabling Archbishops: John Charles McQuaid 1940 - 1972, Dermot Ryan 1972 - 1984, Kevin McNamara, 1985 - 1987, Desmond Connell 1988 - 2004.
Murphy Commission:

* Dublin Archdiocese Report on Child Sexual Abuse: Part 1
* Dublin Archdiocese Report on Child Sexual Abuse: Part 2

"Officials of the Archdiocese of Dublin and other Church authorities have repeatedly claimed to have been, prior to the late 1990s, on a learning curve in relation to the matter. Having completed its investigation, the Commission does not accept the truth of such claims and assertions."

Church 'lied without lying'

One of the most fascinating discoveries in the Dublin Archdiocese report was that of the concept of “mental reservation” which allows clerics mislead people without believing they are lying.

According to the Commission of Investigation report, “mental reservation is a concept developed and much discussed over the centuries, which permits a church man knowingly to convey a misleading impression to another person without being guilty of lying”.

It gives an example. “John calls to the parish priest to make a complaint about the behaviour of one of his curates. The parish priest sees him coming but does not want to see him because he considers John to be a troublemaker. He sends another of his curates to answer the door. John asks the curate if the parish priest is in. The curate replies that he is not.”

The commission added: “This is clearly untrue but in the Church’s view it is not a lie because, when the curate told John that the parish priest was not in, he mentally reserved the words '…to you’.”

I found it astounding that the commission even spent any time considering the mentality of the people who helped enable the continued activities of paedophile sexual abusers in the Irish Catholic Church.

If the commision had any integrity it would merely have called them out as liars, morally-bankrupt cowards and peadophile enablers each and every time they were caught doing it.

What this shows is that even in the midst of all these revelations of the absolute depravity and evidence of the role the Church Heirarchy in covering-up and facilitating the continuation of serial child sexual abuse, the Commission of Inquiry are STILL threading carefully so to avoid causing too much offence to the oh-so-delicate sensibilities of the Irish Catholic Church Heirarchy.

For example :

"The commission added: “This is clearly untrue but in the Church’s view it is not a lie because, when the curate told John that the parish priest was not in, he mentally reserved the words '…to you’.”

Serial Paedophile enabler and all-round sophist, Cardinal Desmond Connell: explained 'mental reservation' as method whereby clerics can 'lie without lying'

It is that exact same deference to those oh-so-delicate sensibilities of the Irish Catholic Church Heirarchy, which allowed them to continue to cover-up the activities of these child sexual abusing Clergy.

Attempts to explain the Churchs view go some way to inssulatig them from the consequences of their actions. The commisions job hould not be to provide mitigating evidence for the churchs deplorable actions (or lack of them). it is not a defence to say they had a rationale for what they did.

Attempts to explain the Irish Church's rationale seem to me to be an attempt to somehow insulate the Church from the true reality of what it did (or what it did NOT do, which it should have done.)

I'm sure every peadophile or sexual abuser everywhere has a rationale for what they did, but the Irish Church's actions (or lack of them) are even more egregious in these matters than would be those of an actual peadophile or sexual abuser, given their self-appointed role as moral arbiter/guardian for Irish society as a whole.

William Burroughs:
"If you're doing business with a religious son of bitch,
get it in writing."
(William ,of course, had his own dark history concerning sex with young men and boys. Since they were under-age, and some sort of pay-off was usually involved, one could hardly argue that it was consensual.)

This sort of sexual abuse, by those in positions of authority over young people, is far from being merely a problem of so-called The Holy Roman and Apostolic Catholic Church. Evidence for this can be found when one considers that the exact same sort of abuse has occurred (is occuring) in similar British institutions. So here's nothing particularly 'Holy Roman Catholic' about this sort of thing, despite many people's attempts to claim that there is.

The last time I checked the British were not under the control of the so-called Holy Roman and Apostolic Catholic Church.

When people are given absolute control over others and when there is no effective oversight concerned with the interest of those under control, abuses of power like this are inevitable.

"Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely."
John Emerich Edward Dalberg Acton, first Baron Acton (1834–1902)in a letter to Bishop Mandell Creighton in 1887

Proof of the truth of this can be found by examining the events which occurred during the Standford prison Experiment

Standford Prison Experiment @ Google Video:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=677084988379129606#

The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted in 1971 by a team of researchers led by Psychology Professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Twenty-four undergraduates were selected out of 70 to play the roles of both guards and prisoners and live in a mock prison in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. Those selected were chosen for their lack of psychological issues, crime history, and medical disabilities, in order to obtain a representative sample. Roles were assigned based on a coin toss.

They adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations. One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized (two of whom had to be removed from the experiment early). After being confronted by Christina Maslach, a graduate student in psychology whom he was dating,[2] and realizing that he had been passively allowing unethical acts to be performed under his direct supervision, Zimbardo concluded that both prisoners and guards had become too grossly absorbed in their roles and terminated the experiment after six days. . . . The Stanford experiment ended on August 20, 1971, only six days after it began instead of the fourteen it was supposed to have lasted. The experiment's result has been argued to demonstrate the impressionability and obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and social and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate cognitive dissonance theory and the power of authority.

In psychology, the results of the experiment are said to support situational attribution of behaviour rather than dispositional attribution. In other words, it seemed the situation caused the participants' behaviour, rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities.

One could also examine the conclusions of the Milgram Experiment

The Milgram's experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that conflicted with their personal conscience. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology,[1] and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.[2]

The experiments began in July 1961, three months after the start of the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the question: "Was it that Eichmann and his accomplices in the Holocaust had mutual intent, in at least with regard to the goals of the Holocaust?" In other words, "Was there a mutual sense of morality among those involved?"

Milgram's testing revealed that it could have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs.[3] Milgram summarized the experiment in his 1974 article, "The Perils of Obedience", writing:

The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation.

Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.

Abu Ghraib - sexually abused Prisoners and various other forms of degredation

look at Abu Ghraib. the guards there were not particularly 'Holy Roman Catholic' either if I remember correctly

Thierry Henry - Hand of shame

2009-11-20T10:27:00.010Z

Cheatin' Cheeze-Monkey

'He came over to us and said he cheated'

NOT EVERYONE was quite so clear about the terminology that should be applied to Thierry Henry’s role in France all important extra-time goal last night at the Stade de France but as Richard Dunne took the first few steps out of the ground some 50 minutes after the final whistle, he had no doubt whatsoever about the what the French striker had been guilty of.

Thierry Henry - Handball Cheat

“I’ve watched it back a few times and I think it’s quite blatant that we were cheated,” said a still visibly upset Aston Villa defender. “Realistically, it’s exactly what we thought might happen. The people who run the game have got exactly what they wanted.”

Thierry Henry - Handball Cheat

Dunne conceded that the Swedish referee had given the Irish a couple of minor decisions over the course of the 120 minutes but, he insisted, the key ones all went the way of the hosts with the mistakes made by the match officials for William Gallas’ goal ultimately deciding the outcome.

“It’s not a difficult thing to see and really there shouldn’t be any need for replays,” said the 30-year-old Dubliner who was a matter of feet away as the Arsenal defender forced the ball over the line.

“The goal should have been disallowed for two reasons; the linesman was in line and should have given them offside then the referee should have given a free out for the handball.

Thierry Henry - Handball Cheat

“We couldn’t believe he didn’t but when we chased after him he said that he was 100 per cent sure that he (Henry) hadn’t handled it. But then Henry came over to us himself and said he had.

“He said he hadn’t intended to, it had just happened. He’s admitted that he cheated and that we should have gone through. He didn’t apologise but he admitted it. What can you do, though? That’s the result now and they’ve gone through.”

Thierry Henry - Handball Cheat

The defender was scathing about the prospect of an official complaint getting the Irish anywhere in the coming days. “I doubt that they’d even answer the phone to the FAI in Fifa because this is exactly what they wanted.

“The World Cup is run by people who want to decide who gets there, that’s why big teams get big decisions.”

Thierry Henry - Handball Cheat

Trapattoni, he said however, was “not happy in there and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s something more about it from him”.

The players, he admitted, however, have little real option but to take some very small consolation from how well they played and start looking forward to the next European Championships.

“We deserved to win tonight and we could have had another couple of goals during the 90 minutes. What happened in the end didn’t spoil our performance or take anything away from it, the referee spoiled his own performance.

“We have to be proud of our performance,” he concluded. “It will give us hope and encouragement.”

Moments later, Trapattoni’s assistant, Liam Brady described it as “a bad night for football” as he left.

Thierry Henry - Handball Cheat

“I wouldn’t call it that (cheating), I couldn’t use that word, but when it comes to the crunch the big teams do always seem to get the decisions.

Thierry, think of effect this will have on the Kids!!!! ;-)

Happy Birthday Mic Christopher

2009-09-21T19:28:00.003+01:00

That was your heyday. . . .

Heyday was used in the famous Guinness commercial, The Quarrel, wherein a man swims from Ireland to New York to settle a personal issue.

He was on tour in Amsterdam with The Waterboys when he fell down some stairs. If you've ever had to negotiate a set of stairs in Amsterdam you'll know how easy it would be to be seriously injured in such an event. He died shortly afterwards from head injuries sustained in the fall.

Mic Christopher would have been 40 today. Mic, we are poorer for your absence

Mic’s website

Irish music central’s Mic Christopher website

The coming 'crisis' in the Caucasus: Part 1

2009-06-24T15:18:00.008+01:00

Map showing Ingushetia
Head of Russia's Ingushetia in intensive care

MOSCOW, June 22 (Reuters) - The leader of Russia's Ingushetia region was in a serious condition and being treated in intensive care after an assassination attempt, RIA news agency quoted a source in local law enforcement agencies as saying.

President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov of the Republic of Ingushetia was injured when a blast rocked his car.

Chechen Leader Ramzan Kadyrov: Vicious

Chechens 'to fight rebels in Ingushetia'

The president of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, says Moscow has ordered him to help fight insurgents in neighbouring Ingushetia.

The president of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was wounded in an apparent assassination attempt on Monday.

Speaking to the Reuters news agency, Mr Kadyrov said the Russian leadership had told him to intensify operations in both Chechnya and Ingushetia.

Both republics have experienced an upsurge in violence over recent months.

Given the recent assassination attempt against the President of Ingushetia, I decided to post what I consider to be some vital information for understanding the soon to be 'Crisis' in the Caucasus.

Zbiggy Smalls, The Obamessiah & MC Rahm Bam Emmanuael:
The 3 Rappers of the Apocalypse?

first up a post from Justin raimondo of Antiwar.com

Making Excuses for Obama

The mythology of good intentions

"Obama lied – people died!" How long before we see that slogan emblazoned on a placard at a rather sparsely-attended antiwar rally?

But of course he didn’t lie, and isn’t lying now. He’s telling us he wants to confront Russia and Iran. He’s telling us he wants to increase a military budget already larger than the total military expenditures of all other nations combined. He says he won’t hesitate to invade Pakistan – and, presumably, any nation anywhere – if we have some reason to believe Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are in the vicinity. I think he’s telling the truth – and I challenge the Obamaoids, especially the ones who claim to be sick of eight years of constant warfare, to prove otherwise. If Obama is indeed giving us the real story, and if he actually implements his foreign policy proposals, we are in a world of trouble.

He’s telling us he wants to confront Russia [ Zbiggy Smalls Bug-bear ] and Iran. [ Rahm-Bam Emanuel’s Bug-Bear ]

All you need to know about an Obama Administration Foreign Policy direction, in 30 seconds flat!

Zbigniew Brzezinski: How Jimmy Carter and I Started the Mujahideen

Q: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?

Brzezinski: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.

Now remember that the Prez of Ingushetia, Yunus-Bek Yevkurov, was targetted by a suicide bomber. Now who do we know uses suicide bombers as their preffered method of assination? Step forward those dastardly demons, at Al Quaida. Now what do we know about Al Quaida? Well one time Foreign Secretary of Great Britain, The Right Honuourable Mr Robin Cook,
wrote this article exactly one month before he died:

Al-Qaida, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.

Exactly 30 days after making that statement Robin Cook died, reportedly of a heartattack, on a Scottish mountainside, on British Ministry of Defence land.

In other words, the US did some “outsourcing” and secretly “hired” some “mercenaries” to fight a “proxy war” for the US (my own choice of terms). It seems that Pakistan’s CIA, the ISI, was also involved and that some amount of the financing/support came from the Saudis, the UK, and China. Pakistan also received massive amounts of US military aid. The number of Muslim men who became US mercenaries according to Robin Cook was “thousands.”

The fact the Cook appeared to believe that Bin Laden did not provide the name for his own organistaion, and that the name apparently was provided by the Security Services that ran the organisation, indicates that Bin Laden was merely a figurehead without much power – others set-up and ran the organisation. In much the same way that Bush appears to be a mere front-man for other more capable and more dangerous individuals, so too is/was Bin Laden.

Wouldn’t it be kinda spooky if in both cases the individuals behind the frontmen were the same people?

If the people running the Org were picked and trained by the Security Services (ISI, MI5 and CIA and others) then in effect the organisation was being run by agents of the security services, and if the funding and weaponry were provided by the Security Services, then to maintain that the Security Services were not running the Org is, at best, naive.

If Cook is to believed, and I see no reason not to believe him, the Big Bad Wolf (Osama) didn’t even provide the name for the Organisation he apparently was mastermind of. That name was provided by the security services.

US reporter Ron Suskind provided us with this quote waaaaay back in October 17, 2004

The aide said that guys like me were in what we call the reality-based community,’ which he defined as people who ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ‘‘That’s not the way the world really works anymore,’‘ he continued. ‘‘We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.’‘

Vlad the Prevailer: Putin gives his side of the Georgian/S. Ossetia Story

Barack Obama: Promised to "Curb russian agression"

So:

Ingushetia is at present a part of Russia.
Someone recently tried to assassinate the President of Ingushetia using a suicide bomber
"Al Qaida" is known to frequently use suicide bombers
"Al Qaida" is, according to British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, a creation of the US&UK Intelligence services, brainchild of one Zbigniew Brzezinski, advisor to the Carter Administration
Before becoming Prez of the U.S., Barack Obama pledged to "going to "curb Russian aggression"
Zbigniew Brzezinski is a trusted advisor to the US President Barack Obama
Zbiggy likes to spend a lot of his time thinking about way to destroy Russia

Part 2 tomorrow . . . .

Iran election roundup #2

2009-06-18T23:54:00.009+01:00

Bring out yer Twits, Bring out yer Twits
Police batter Protesters: Iran or Georgia?

U.S. State Department speaks to Twitter over Iran

VASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. State Department said on Tuesday it had contacted the social networking service Twitter to urge it to delay a planned upgrade that would have cut daytime service to Iranians who are disputing their election.

Confirmation that the U.S. government had contacted Twitter came as the Obama administration sought to avoid suggestions it was meddling in Iran's internal affairs as the Islamic Republic battled to control deadly street protests over the election result.

For Comparison purposes only (i.e. To be completelly ignored by anyone that used Twitter to follow recent events in Iran):

Police in Georgia beat opposition protesters
Mon Jun 15, 2009 11:45am EDT

By David Mdzinarishvili

TBILISI (Reuters) – Masked police beat dozens of opposition protesters in the Georgian capital on Monday in the latest flare-up during a weeks-long street campaign against President Mikheil Saakashvili, witnesses said.

Dozens of black-clad police officers armed with truncheons confronted a protest of about 50 people at Tbilisi’s main police station demanding the release of six opposition activists detained since Friday, a Reuters photographer said.

He said several protesters and a photographer for the European Pressphoto Agency were severely beaten. Senior opposition official Zurab Abashidze was admitted to hospital.

Police seized cameras from photographers and cameramen, including a Reuters photographer. The cameras were later returned but the Reuters photographer’s images had been erased. Other photographers said their memory cards had been taken.

Tensions are running high in the former Soviet republic, after more than two months of opposition protests and roadblocks demanding Saakashvili quit over his record on democracy and last year’s disastrous war with Russia.

The volatile country of 4.5 million people sits on Russia’s southern border, at the heart of a transit region for oil and gas to the West.

“This is absolutely unacceptable,” protest leader and former Saakashvili ally Nino Burjanadze said of the violence. “We demand a response from our Western partners, to give their assessment of the situation.”

Saakashvili said he was tolerating a state of “lawlessness” and accused his opponents of trying to provoke him.

“They think Saakashvili is hot-headed, they insult (parliament speaker David) Bakradze and (Prime Minister Nika) Gilauri, and they try to make us crush them, “ he told a televised meeting of the parliamentary majority.

Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets dispersed the last mass demonstrations against Saakashvili in 2007. Watched closely by the West, authorities are wary of taking a hard line again, but analysts question how long the stalemate can continue.

“CRIMINALS AND BANDITS”

Both sides have traded blame for a spate of violent incidents, vying for the sympathy of Georgia’s Western allies.

The opposition said that statements by several Western embassies on Friday, in which they criticized opposition protesters for throwing rocks and bottles at Bakradze’s official car, had encouraged the government to take a hard line.

“The statements made by the U.S., French and Czech ambassadors clearly gave impetus to the authorities to act as criminals and bandits today,” opposition leader David Gamkrelidze said.

The Interior Ministry said in a statement that protesters were hampering traffic and resisted police efforts “to unblock the entrance to the police station and restore traffic movement.” It said 39 protesters were detained.

US envoy praises Georgia’s handling of opposition protests

Jun 10, 2009

TBILISI (AFP) — A senior US envoy on Wednesday praised the government of the former Soviet republic Georgia for how it has handled weeks of opposition protests calling on President Mikheil Saakashvili to resign.

“We appreciated the way the government is dealing with the protests,” Philip Gordon, the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, told a press conference in the Georgian capital Tbilisi.

What the Georgians lack is of course an Army of Twits to get all hot and bothered on their behalf. That's the problem with Twits though. Never there when they actually could be useful.

US Defense Department sees protests as terrorism

Antiterrorism training materials used by the Department of Defense teach that public protests should be regarded as “low-level terrorism,” according to a letter of complaint sent to the department by the American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.

:Low Level Terrorist?

I think that the democratic process, free speech, the ability of people to peacefully dissent — all those are universal values and need to be respected. — US President Barrack Obama commenting on the recent unrest in Iran

Twits out fer the lads . . .

See Also:
Iran election roundup

Update:

Perusing UrbanDictionary.com I found this:

Twitterolution: A revolution instigated, orchestrated and subsequently propagated and promoted by the WEB 2.0 Sensation Twitter.

Example: The protests seen in Iran against the disputed election is the World's first Twitterloution.

SO I sent this alternative definition to the people at UrbanDictionary.com:

Word: twitterolution

Definition: What occurs when a bunch of gullible twits are let loose on the internet to whip themselves into a frenzy regarding an election fraud that probably never occurred

Example: Boy, that was some load of twitterolution in Iran recently, weren't it?

They sent me a very rapid reply:

Editors reviewed your entry and have decided to not publish it.

A good blog on this subject:

Contrasting protest coverage Iran vs G-20 and Georgia

Iran, Iran, Iran. You would think this was the only news in the world. Odd isn't it?

Iran election roundup

2009-06-16T16:03:00.006+01:00

Ahmadinejad Supporters
From June 30, 2008:

Report: U.S. ‘preparing the battlefield’ in Iran

VASHINGTON (CNN) — The Bush administration has launched a “significant escalation” of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country’s nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic’s government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.

White House, CIA and State Department officials declined comment on Hersh’s report, which appears in this week’s issue of The New Yorker.

Hersh told CNN’s “Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer” that Congress has authorized up to $400 million to fund the secret campaign, which involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents

==========

From Thursday, 28 May 2009:

Iran: Many die in Zahedan mosque bombing

A bomb in a mosque in south-east Iran has killed at least 19 people and injured 60, the governor of Sistan-Baluchestan province said.
Although it occurred in a remote region, the explosion comes at a time of heightened political sensitivity nationally, with just over two weeks before the first round of the presidential election .

Fars news agency quoted witnesses saying the incident had been a suicide attack, and that a second bomb had been defused near the mosque. The reports could not be verified.

==========

Proof: Israeli Effort to Destabilize Iran Via Twitter

Were these legitimate Iranian people or the works of a propaganda machine? I became curious and decided to investigate the origins of the information. In doing so, I narrowed it down to a handful of people who have accounted for 30,000 Iran related tweets in the past few days. Each of them had some striking similarities -

1. They each created their twitter accounts on Saturday June 13th.
2. Each had extremely high number of Tweets since creating their profiles.
3. “IranElection” was each of their most popular keyword
4. With some very small exceptions, each were posting in ENGLISH.
5. Half of them had the exact same profile photo
6. Each had thousands of followers, with only a few friends. Most of their friends were EACH OTHER.

==========

Jones vs. Ross – Knock Out In The Third Round

. . . .The current Haaretz piece is headlined: “Why is Dennis Ross being ousted as Obama envoy to Iran?” The earlier headline was: “Was Dennis Ross ousted as U.S. envoy to Iran because he’s a Jew?”. If I remember correctly the earlier piece did not include the second paragraph of the current one which says Ross will in future “deal primarily with regional issues related to the peace process.”

We do not know why Ross was moved from that position. He should not have been put there in the first place because he is a. against talking with Iran, b. has never had success in achieving agreements in his earlier roles in the Clinton administration, c. has no experience on or with Iran at all.

Haaretz names several possible reason for this move. His open mistrust about talks with Iran, Irans alleged refusal to accept Ross in the negotiator role, his possible own dissatisfaction with his job and a rumored move of Ross to the National Security Agency where, a Haaretz source claims, he would work more directly under Obama.

The last claim sounds bogus to me. Ross does not have any experience as spy – at least not FOR the United States. The other ones are spurious too. Ross’ positions towards Iran was known before he was put onto the job. They can not be reason to now remove him.

=========

http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2009/06/iran-election-wrap.html

. . .. It seems the neocons were too smart for their own good, pissed off the Obama administration with their scheming, and paid the price of losing “Dennis Ross: (Ross was probably headed out the door anyway, but the timing of his departure is telling). It was always completely preposterous that the Obama guy in charge of negotiating with Iran was the co-founder – along with Richard Holbrooke, whose job it is to wreck Pakistan – of an institute dedicated to nuking Iran.

From the most dependable newspaper in the world, the Telegraph:

“Mr Mousavi’s cancellation of the protest came as sporadic disturbances continued around the Iranian capital, and reports circulated of leaked interior ministry statistics showing him as the clear victor in last Friday’s polls.

The statistics, circulated on Iranian blogs and websites, claimed Mr Mousavi had won 19.1 million votes while Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had won only 5.7 million.

The two other candidates, reformist Mehdi Karoubi and hardliner Mohsen Rezai, won 13.4 million and 3.7 million respectively. The authenticity of the leaked figures could not be confirmed.”

Try to remember that this is the Telegraph, not the Onion (a far more reliable news source).

Meanwhile, back in the real world, pollsters explain how the final results are quite credible. Mousavi, a politician who had been out of power for twenty years, entered the race at almost the last moment. The poll showed he didn’t even come close to Ahmadinejad amongst his own ethnic group. Ahmadinejad is considered to be personally completely non-corrupt, while a major supporter of Mousavei, Hashemi Rafsanjani, is infamous in Iran for his corruption.

Mousavi is also good pals with Manucher Ghorbanifar. Remember the meeting in Rome with Ledeen in which they cooked up the trickery which led to the disastrous American attack on Iraq? Remember the Niger documents? The connections to corruption and to the neocons make Mousavi’s recent actions quite understandable. He never thought he was going to win. He was in the election from the get go as part of a neocon/Zionist plot to destabilize Iran and make the election ‘illegitimate’ . . . .

===============

Ahmadinejad

Some Dots You May Want To Connect

Some U.S. officials who have dealt with Ghorbanifar praise him highly. Says Michael Ledeen, adviser to the Pentagon on counterterrorism: “He is one of the most honest, educated, honorable men I have ever known.” Others call him a liar who, as one puts it, could not tell the truth about the clothes he is wearing. . . .

On or about November 25, 1985, Michael Ledeen received a frantic phone call from Ghorbanifar, asking him to relay a message from the prime minister of Iran to President Reagan regarding the shipment of the wrong type of HAWKs. . . .

The administration’s reluctance to disclose these details seems clear: the DoD-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a “regime change” agenda not approved by the president’s foreign policy principals or even the president himself. . . .

==========

Axis of Logic

The attempt to discredit the elections and cause instability in Iran look very much like a scheme we've seen before - directly out of the CIA playbook. We've seen this pattern in so many elections in Venezuela, for example, I swear that even the Chavistas would be disappointed if it doesn't reappear next time around. After all, a little drama does add some excitement in elections where consistent landslide victories are won by presidents like Chavez and Ahmadinejad. So here we go again - the old Langley one, two, three:

1. Groom an opposition candidate to run against the guy you hate, pay him well and line up your media to back him.

2. During the campaign, sell him as the savior of the bourgeois opposition who lost their money in the revolution. Use your own pollsters and media propaganda to convince his followers that they are going to win by a wide margin.

3. When your guy loses, scream "FRAUD!" It's akin to yelling "FIRE!" in a crowded theatre, inflaming all those disappointed bourgeois counter-revolutionaries. Get them out on the street, setting fires, playing the victim, waving flags, ready-to-go placards, banners, women crying in front of CNN cameras and men yelling angrily into Christiana Amanpour's microphone. Only this time, they're ready to burn their own flag instead of the U.S. flag. I tell ya, it makes great TV for a western audience.

(Incidentally, don't take Christiana's reports too seriously. The Amanpours, like many Iranian expats, led a privileged life under the Shah of Iran and lost their ill gotten wealth as a result of the Iranian revolution in '79. Naturally, Christiana was very upset. Later, she married James Rubin, an arch-Zionist, and regained her status, good money and even some fame, this time as a CNN reporter in service to the empire.) . . .

===========

See also:

Golden Straitjacket ? . . . more like Golden Steak-knife . . . . through the ribs

Long Live Lord Patel

2009-06-10T00:47:00.000+01:00

Long Live Lord Patel!

Edward Teague the man known to hungry bloggers and non bloggers alike, as Lord Patel author of the blog Postman Patel, has sadly left us, for what I hope are greener politician-free pastures.

Tributes have appeared at The Antagonist, also at Craig Murray's website, and at Famous For 15 Megapixels

Today was not a great day for me, the loss of Lord Patel just makes it worse.

Oh well, musn't grumble.

A cartoon by Edward Teague aka: Lord Patel

How to disprove George Monbiot in 26 seconds . . .

2009-05-21T11:40:00.009+01:00

George Monbiot: Looks can be decieving.
Doesn't look like a clueless twat, does he?
via Famous for 15 Megapixels:

George Monbiot doing what George Monbiot does best . . .

How to disprove Christopher Booker in 26 seconds

“[George Monbiot] set the stopwatch running, pasted “National Snow and Ice Data Center” into Google, found the site, clicked on News and Events > Press room > Arctic Sea Ice News and Analysis and discovered that Booker’s claim was nonsense. It took [George Monbiot] 26 seconds.”

O’rly?

“5.12pm update:“
“Whoops – looks like [George Monbiot] boobed. Sorry folks. As one of the posters on this thread points out, there are in fact two averages in play – 1979-2000 and 1979-2009. It is therefore correct to state that the April 2009 extent exceeds the 1979-2009 average, but not the 1979-2000 average. It remains the case, however, that the data relate to April, not May. Please accept [George Monbiot’s] apologies for [George Monbiot’s] mistake and the confusion it has caused.”

Hubris didn't bother to set the stopwatch running, pasted “George Monbiot is a cluless twat” into Google, found the site Famous for 15 Megapixels", clicked on and discovered that George Monbiot’s claim was total nonsense.
USS Skate, North Pole, March 1959:
Proof that George Monbiot is a clueless twat?
If a long frame of reference doesn’t prove what you want it to prove then, dagnabbit, choose a shorter one that does, and truth be damned.

'Al Qaida Bomb Plot' hoax?

2009-04-10T13:19:00.009+01:00

Rupert Murdoch - Completely Bonkers?

As predicted here Thursday, April 09, 2009,
[Deliberate?] 'Security leak' prompts arrests in suspected al-Qaida plot

Well at least their arses are covered when it later turns out that the alleged "al-Qaida plot" was a complete fabrication.

The completely bonkers version:
Scramble to find the Easter bomb factory

A desperate (shock!! Horror!!) search was under way last night for the terrorist bomb factory (shock!! Horror!!) from which a suspected al-Qaeda cell (shock!! Horror!!) planned to launch a devastating attack (shock!! Horror!!) in Manchester.

The slightly more rational version:
Raids on 'bomb plotters' fail to unearth explosives

Raids to foil an alleged al-Qa'ida bomb plot, hurriedly brought forward after a blunder by a senior police officer, are yet to uncover any explosives or firearms, according to senior security sources.

but wait . . . . wait:

But further pressure was growing on the government last night after after it emerged that the suspects being questioned today may have exploited lax student visa regulations to enter the UK from Pakistan.

aaahhhhhh. Dirty filthy illegal immigrants, eh? How DARE they seek an education! Well we can fix that by kicking out all immigrants then. Good thing the cops found something though, was it not? Otherwise it might end up looking like a very cynical attempt to distract from the death of Ian Tomlinson at the hands of the police, rather then the vitally urgent anti-terrorist/anti-immigrant raid it was.

Bob Quick's Open Seekrits
pic courtesy of: Cryptome.org

From Rupert Murdoch's completely bonkers version:

The alleged Manchester plot represents a significant shift in tactics by terror groups based in Pakistan who view Britain as a prime target.

if it's an 'alleged plot' how could it represent anything but an allegation?

Between 2002 and 2006 their emphasis was on training young Britons. But if these plot allegations are proven, they suggest that planners are now exporting operatives here.

But if these plot allegations are UN-proven what would that represent, Rupert?

This week’s suspects had been under covert surveillance for a month and preparations for the swoop were already advanced before Mr Quick allowed crucial documents to be photographed as he went to brief the Prime Minister.

A whole month, eh? Well they simply must have been guilty of something nefarious then, no?

The suspects were allegedly seen filming in central Manchester and intelligence services had intercepted “chatter” suggesting that an attack could occur as early as this weekend

Filthy Freakin' F*$khead FILMERS!!!! String 'em up!

And what would we do without our wonderful 'chatter'? We'd be lost without it, no?

meanwhile back at the ranch . . .
UK unemployment passes two million

and
UK unemployment figures rising

but hey, as long at the police keep doing a sterling job hunting that 'chatter' none of that really matters, does it?

speaking of sterling:
Weak pound helps exports

haahaaahaa - WHAT exports? good old Guardian, always looking on the bright side. Of course the fact the the UK no longer exports anything of any real value, having shipped nearly all manufacturing overseas, makes that headline appear a little pointless.

More importantly though:
A FURTHER steep rise in the cost of food is keeping shop price inflation high, new figures from the British Retail Consortium have revealed.

Addendum:
From Wednesday, 18 February 2009:
'Bomb plot' case jury dismissed

The jury in the trial of eight men accused of conspiring to murder by blowing up transatlantic airliners has been discharged for "legal reasons".

It is not yet known why the judge, Mr Justice Henriques, took his decision to discharge the jury.

A new jury will be sworn in and the case re-started at a time to be fixed.

just for kicks, like

At last . . . Why Peter Sutherland is a c**t!

2009-04-09T13:59:00.006+01:00

A map showing why Peter Sutherland is a Cunt

Google ist kaputt, as far as I am concerned. Too many Ads and too many ways to 'game' it.

But now there is a web app that can map connections.
It states on it's homepage:

Map relationships among people and organizations:

and that's good enough for me

Muckety

Flash version 9.0 and higher required.

[Deliberate?] 'Security leak' prompts arrests in suspected al-Qaida plot

2009-04-09T02:19:00.010+01:00

Ian Tomlinson - Manslaughtered by Police?

From The Guardian:
Security leak by senior Scotland Yard commander Bob Quick prompts arrests in suspected al-Qaida plot

Apparently . . .

The arrests were triggered after Assistant Commissioner Bob Quick, head of Scotland Yard's specialist operations wing, was photographed this morning clutching sensitive documents as he arrived in Downing Street. Clearly visible on top of a large bundle of papers under his arm was a white document marked "secret" that carried an outline for briefing on a current counter-terrorism operation. He was on his way to attend a cabinet security committee.

O'Rly??

Well at least their arses are covered when it later turns out that the alleged "al-Qaida plot" was a complete fabrication.

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and suggest that this operation was carried out because Police felt the need to take the heat off of their comrades in the City of London Police Force.

Last week a man named Ian Tomlinson died at a protest outside the Bank of England in the heart of London's financial district, known as the "Square Mile".

Initially a Police spokes-thingy claimed Ian Tomlinson died of a heart attack and that Police Officers had being trying to help Ian Tomlinson but were hindered by missiles thrown by protesters.

It later turned out that the Police statement ~~was totally untrue~~ (ahem) appeared to be at odds with the few known 'facts' - Ian Tomlinson died after being assaulted by Police Officers in Riot gear, and many eye-witnesses claim that there were no missiles being thrown at Police, something confirmed by available video footage.

Interestingly enough, the Police also claim that CCTV-cameras in the area were mysteriously 'out-of-order'. Now, where have I heard that before?

Jean Charles De Menezes - Murdered in Stockwell

A second Post-mortem of Ian Tomlinson's body has now been ordered.

See also:
UK Police killed man to discredit G20 protests?

And
Having a bad day officer?

And:
Terror Raids and Bob Quick — Getting Public Ready for War in Pakistan?

Aww, the Little Rascals. . .OR: Melamine Phillips and the Art of Projectile Vomiting . . .

2009-03-28T17:30:00.012Z

Oh, those Little Isreali rascals!

Via Mondoweiss:

NYT reports: Israeli soldier returned Coca-Cola to store in Gaza after his mates told him it was wrong

Awww, bless him. The little tyke.

How vomit-inducing can it get?

I can't wait until the NYT prints:

IDF returns life to all the little innocents it burned/shot/bombed/beat to death

But the clincher will be when they print

IDF soldiers return to give toys and candy to all the little amputees/paraplegics/PTSD-Victims/Orphans/Future-Suicide-Bombers it just created

I didn't even read the comments.

Speaking of Vomit . . .

Anyone seen what the delightful Melanie Phillips, Racist-In-Residence at The Spectator wrote recently?

Melaine Phillips - Hypocritical Lunatic Racist?
She starts off with the quite excellent:

Of course Hague was careful to say the truth of this evidence was not yet known. But there is no evidence. So far, there is simply nothing to prove or disprove from these reports of the soldiers’ discussion carried in Ha’aretz last week, here and here -- just innuendo, rumour and hearsay, demonstrably (read the second account) wrenched out of context and refracted through the patent prejudice of the soldiers’ instructor Danny Zamir,

and then trumps it with ladle-fuls of "innuendo, rumour and hearsay," herself.

Funny sort of unethical military behaviour, that goes to some lengths to empty houses of civilians before storming them. Indeed, the soldiers’ discussion contains more such material totally contradicting the impression of gross violations of ethics. Such as this:
What annoyed me was that in the end, after we understood that the members of this family weren't exactly our good friends and they pretty much deserved to be forcibly ejected from there, my platoon commander suggested that when we left the house, we should clean up all the stuff, pick up and collect all the garbage in bags, sweep and wash the floor, fold up the blankets we used, make a pile of the mattresses and put them back on the beds.

Quite brilliant really, considering that she's totally bonkers and a racist.

Is Flodjo79's Girlfriend hot or not?

2009-03-26T15:51:00.004Z

Flodjo79's Girlfriend - Hot or not?

I found the above while looking for pics of Ireland. I found it here, at Panaramio.com.

We report - YOU decide . . . .

The Biggest Robbery In Irish History?

2009-02-27T21:36:00.005Z

Anglo-Irish Bank: The Biggest Robbery In Irish History?

The Biggest Robbery In Irish History?

That is how the Guardian headlined the story below, in my GMail RSS reader:
Robbers snatch record €7m from Dublin bank

Irish gangsters have staged the biggest cash robbery in the history of the Republic, stealing up to €7 million from the Bank of Ireland in Dublin's College Green early today.

The Garda Siochana said an armed gang took the family of a Bank of Ireland worker hostage at their County Kildare home on Thursday night.

The gang forced their way into the home at Kilteel and seized the worker's partner, her mother and a seven-year-old child. The man's partner was beaten before the family were taken away in their car.

(Notice they said 'cash robbery')

SO The Biggest Robbery In Irish History?

I think not . . .

Fraud Squad Raids Anglo-Irish Bank

Nationalisation of Anglo Irish bank

Autopsy for the Celtic Tiger

Irish gangsters have robbed a lot more than €7m in the last few months

I hope the Orangutans get to take over, after all the damn humans have gone

2008-12-22T01:24:00.005Z

Orangutan: Smart lil' persons of the forest
Wiki

The word orangutan (also written orang-utan, orang utan and orangutang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest",[3] thus "person of the forest".

Orangutans, Resistance and the Zoo

Ken Allen would make his first successful escape on June 13, 1985. Keepers found him mingling among visitors outside of his exhibit. After he was placed into isolation, officials set to work trying to figure out exactly how he did it. A few years previous, Ken had constructed a ladder out of some fallen branches. “He was very methodical about it,” one employee noted. “He would carefully put the foot of the ladder on the ground, and pound it with his hand to be sure it was solid, and then he would climb to the top of the wall and climb back down.” But there was no ladder to be seen this time. So that was ruled out. It might have been human error: a door left ajar or something. But that did not appear to be the case either. The zoo was definitely stumped. Nonetheless, it was not going take any chances. Cinder-blocks were stacked to raise the height of the retaining wall, and several portions were smoothed over to prevent any handholds. These alterations, the zoo anticipated, would do the trick. They didn’t.

Ken escaped again on July 29th and then again in early August. Each time, San Diego would make additional changes. The walls were made taller. The surfaces were made smoother. Electrified wires were added to guard the perimeter. Keepers brought in new females into the exhibit. The hope here was that one of young ladies might attract Ken’s attention. We want, the trainers’ stated bluntly, “to turn his wanderlust into just lust.” San Diego even started using spies. Zoo employees would disguise themselves as visitors. They would dress up in blue jeans, sunglasses, and a Hawaiian shirt, and watch from afar to see if they could spot anything unusual happening. The zoo eventually began utilizing two spies at the once, as it was certain that Ken was recognizing its informants. This belief would be affirmed.

Less than an hour after being released from solidarity confinement on August 13th, Ken was spotted standing with a small crowbar. Uncover trainers figured that someone must have forgotten it during the last round of construction, and they were alarmed. What would Ken do with it? Should they clear the area just to be safe? Those worries were put to ease when the orangutan tossed the tool aside. Ken did not appear to be interested in it - although the trainers should have known better. As one noted expert warned, if a tool like a screwdriver is ever accidentally left in a cage, an orangutan will “notice it immediately but ignore it lest a keeper discover the mistake. That night, he’d use it to dismantle his cage and escape.” Strangely enough, the crowbar itself landed only feet from a fellow inmate, Vicki, but this was not of particular concern either. The keepers’ focus was on Ken, and they followed him as he meandered across the exhibit to the far side. Within minutes, a loud noise disturbed their concentration. Vicki had been hard at work in a secluded spot, attempting to pry open the molding between two glass panels. The glass cracked but held in place. “I’m having a lot of trouble staying one step ahead of this group,” the head trainer admitted afterwards. Some at the San Diego Zoo believed that the two orangutans were in on this escapade together with Ken supplying the distraction and Vicki the muscle. To err on the side of caution, administrators placed both animals into isolation.

Replace 'Orangutan' with 'the prisoner'

Every time there's a full moon . . .

2008-12-15T22:28:00.002Z

he sings all night long

He waits for no man . . .

Misanthropy will be the death of me . . .

2008-12-15T21:42:00.004Z

This is but one of the many, many reasons
I hate my fellow human beings
The Good Times Are Killing Me

Zookeepers at the Malabon Zoo in Manila, Philippines, dress an orangutan for a promotional event marking the Christmas holiday season. This orangutan, wearing an "Oh Jeez, not again this year," expression, and his reindeer helpers look like they could benefit from a union.

In Borneo, according to the local folklore, OranguTans CAN talk, but refuse to do so because if humans knew OranguTans could talk then they would force them to become slaves of the Humans. The picture above is all the proof you need

Wiki

The word orangutan (also written orang-utan, orang utan and orangutang) is derived from the Malay and Indonesian words orang meaning "person" and hutan meaning "forest",[3] thus "person of the forest".

"Leave YouTube Alone!" says ADL . . .

2008-12-13T00:37:00.003Z

Leave YouTube alone!!!

YouTube Taps ADL as Partner in Fight Against Hate

NEW YORK, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- YouTube has reached out to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for its expertise in dealing with hate on the Internet. In one outgrowth of that partnership, the League is now a contributor to YouTube's newly launched Abuse & Safety Center, where users are empowered to identify and confront hate, and to report abuses.

I hate hate - I hate it sooooo much I want to smash hate's face in.

Wow ! that was SO empowering . . .

Smurfs capture Gargamel . . . Exclusive photos

2008-12-12T23:27:00.009Z

Last known picture of Gargamel
a.k.a. Malika El Aroud

6 alleged Islamic extremists charged in Belgium

El Aroud, dressed in black from head to toe, was pushed into a police car during a night raid early Thursday a few miles away from, and a few hours before, a summit of European Union government leaders was scheduled to open.

Authorities said she was too dangerous to walk the streets and even considered calling off the summit.

"It was considered as a possibility," said Belgian Prime Minister Yves Leterme at summit headquarters. In the end, the gathering went smoothly. Authorities said they cannot say whether an attack was planned in Brussels or elsewhere.

Smurfs out hunting for Gargamel, yesterday

What are the odds on this woman being guilty of nothing? She must be a real terrorist mastermind if

she was too dangerous to walk the streets.

And it must all be true because those brave Smurfs . . .

even considered calling off the summit. . . Shock!!! Horror!!

Gargamel Finally captured:
"was too dangerous to walk the streets"
say brave Smurfs

Still . . . mustn't grumble - after all she got off lighter than Jean Charles De Menezes.

From Stef at Famous for 15 Megapixels:

The only thing that has been proved is that the executioners and their bosses have lied through their fucking teeth about the execution and that the full force of the establishment was used to slander an innocent victim after he was killed

. . . . . .

Rest assured that little nugget is going to be filed away in the same memory hole as the revelation earlier this year that the alleged 7/7 bombers supposedly scattered their ID, personal effects and bombs around the crowded tube carriages before setting their bombs off (?!!)

and conspiracy theorists are supposedly mentally unwell because they're sceptical of official narratives? For fuck's sake...

. . . FFS indeed

Irish Media: Stupidity or Duplicity?

2008-12-08T12:59:00.006Z

Tesco-heiress Dame Shirley Porter -
Magaret Tatcher's favourite Criminal
Look at the linked headline below . . .

Tesco to create 220 jobs in Drogheda

Tesco will create 220 new jobs in Drogheda today with the opening of a new store in the town.

The supermarket chain said shoppers will also be able to chose products from six local suppliers whose foods will be highlighted on shelves by the Louth County colours.

Located in the Rathmullan Business Centre, just off the M1 motorway, the new store is Tesco Ireland’s 15th new premises opened this year.

It will be the second shop in Drogheda and fourth in Co Louth where 460 people are employed by the chain.

Local TD and Justice Minister Dermot Ahern said the new jobs were a major boost to the economy of the area.

“This is Tesco’s fourth store alone in Louth and they are to be commended for their commitment to their store opening programme and to job creation,” he added.

Tesco Ireland employs some 13,500 people.

while it is true that 220 jobs will be 'created' in a new Tesco store - it is NOT true that 220 jobs will in truth have been created.

Tesco offers a localised SERVICE. It does not manufacture anything. It certainly exports nothing except the massive profits it makes (off to Shirl, ex-Dame of the Realm, currently a fugitive from British Justice holed up in a comfy lair in Israel.)

Due to the nature of it's business and the business model itself, Tesco's new store will siphon jobs out of the local economy over a fairly short a period of time.

Ergo,in reality it is totally incorrect to say that any new jobs will be created by this new store, and indeed it is more than likely this store will have an negative impact on job figures in the area overall, as small locally-owned stores shut up shop, unable to compete with the purchasing power of the supermarket giant.

Media whores gotta earn a crust though . . .

More on the Hypocrisy of the Irish Chattering Class

2008-11-28T21:59:00.003Z

Brian Rossiter - just 842 pages from Ireland
written about the death of the 14 year old
in a cold Police cell in Clonmel

Related Post: Hypocritical Irish Scumbags

I decided that I may have been a little too harsh in condemning the Irish People as "Hypocritical Scumbags" when I based that previous post on the results of two simple Google searches. You see, I merely searched for the words "Shane" and "Geoghegan" and then counted the results, eg:

Google Search pages from Ireland: Shane Geoghegan

Results 1 - 10 of about 37,300 for Shane Geoghegan. (0.18 seconds)

So that would have brought up all pages from Ireland with the words "Shane" and "Geoghegan" in them. But how do we know these pages even refer to the Shane Geoghegan we were searching for? After all, if a page made reference to a Shane Boylan and an Andy Geoghegan then that page would also appear in our search.

Similarly, I searched for for the separate words "Brian" and "Rossiter" and then counted the results, eg:

Google Search pages from Ireland: Brian Rossiter

Results 1 - 10 of about 8,030 for Brian Rossiter. (0.09 seconds)

So that would have brought up all pages from Ireland with the words "Brian" and "Rossiter" in them. But how do we know these pages even refer to the Brian Rossiter we were searching for?

So I decided to refine the search, in order to prove or disprove my point.

I loaded the exact phrase "Shane Geoghegan" and "Limerick" into Google's Advanced Search feature, which would return all pages from Ireland with the exact phrase "Shane Geoghegan" as well as the word "Limerick".

Similarly I loaded the exact phrase "Brian Rossiter" and "Clonmel" into Google's Advanced Search feature, which would return all pages from Ireland with the exact phrase "Brian Rossiter" as well as the word "Clonmel".

The results of the Google jury were:

Google Search pages from Ireland: "Shane Geoghegan" AND Limerick

Results 1 - 10 of about 46,500 for "Limerick" + "Shane Geoghegan".

So that is 46,500 pages from Ireland discussing the death of Shane Geoghegan in Limerick.

And for the 14 year old dead boy:

Google Search pages from Ireland: "Brian Rossiter" AND Clonmel

Results 1 - 10 of about 842 for "Clonmel" + "Brian Rossiter".

Now that is 842 pages from Ireland discussing the death of 14 year old Brian Rossiter in a Police cell in Clonmel.

That's far, FAR worse than I thought.

So it looks like I was right: The Irish People really REALLY ARE a bunch of Hypocritical Scumbags . . .

They live in a society that ignores the illegal actions of Gardai, while screaming for more law and order to tackle the ‘crime wave’

Maybe if the idiots demanded that Gardai caught breaking the law be sent to jail as often as poor people from the sink estates of Limerick go to jail when they break the law then we might be able to restore some respect for the law in this country.

If the people that are supposed to uphold the law are allowed to act with impunity, which they very obviously are, then what right we be outraged when others decide to break the law?

People are talking about marches to demand the killers of Shane Geoghegan be punished for their crimes.

Why are the same people not as outraged when grown men wearing police uniforms batter a 14 year old child to death in a cold cell in Clonmel?

To me the second of those is far more despicable then the first - simply because the Garda have SWORN to uphold the law

Brian Rossiter’s last week on this Earth consisted of series of violent attacks on his person by grown men twice his size. He died alone in a cold cell in Clonmel because the Irish people refuse to deal with the fact that Garda can do what they like without any fear of retribution, legal or otherwise. Where is the outrage?

Do people not realise that scumbags see this and see no reason why they too should follow the law?

I DO understand how people can get very militant in the wake of the behaviour that lead to the tragic death of Mr Geoghegan - BUT at the same time I find myself grasping for reasons to explain the almost deafening silence amongst the ‘plain people of Ireland’ regarding the death of the 14 year old boy.

The only reason I can come up with is that they really don’t care when it is the Gardai that kill people - the unspoken consensus seems to be that anyone that dies in Garda custody might have deserved it - especially if they come from the wrong side of the tracks.

Tons of outrage (and rightly so) for Mr Geoghegan - calls of ’string ‘em up’ etc.

Yet curiously none for a 14 yr old that may have been killed by the Gardai - I have yet to see any letters to any newspapers calling for us to ignore the civil rights of certain Gardai. No one has suggested stringing up any Gardai that may have been (legalese again) involved in Rossiter’s death. (not that I would support that)

One law for the ’scum’ but a very different legal system operating for the ‘connected’ ones - how the hell do Irish people expect to have a decent society under those conditions?

Brown envelopes for Politicians to make terrible planning decisions that leave massive social chaos in their wake. West Dublin, and many other parts of this island, is a social and planning nightmare for the future - directly the result of those brown envelope shenanigans of the politicians - how many of them are in jail now?

In what universe does a society function properly when there is very obviously one law for the ‘connected’ and a very different one for all others? Can anyone tell me that please, if you know?

Hypocritical Irish Scumbags

2008-11-22T18:43:00.022Z

Brian Rossiter - just 14 years of age when he 'died in garda custody'

2 very simple Google searches tell you all you need to know about the hypocritical Irish people in 2008.

Google Search pages from Ireland: Shane Geoghegan

Results 1 - 10 of about 37,300 for Shane Geoghegan. (0.18 seconds)

Google Search pages from Ireland: Brian Rossiter

Results 1 - 10 of about 8,030 for Brian Rossiter. (0.09 seconds)

Many people believe Shane Geoghegan was killed due to the actions of feuding Limerick gangsters.

Many people believe Brian Rossiter was killed due to the actions of Clonmel Gardai

Shane Geoghegan was murdered less than 2 weeks ago.
Brian Rossiter was (possibly/probably?) murdered in a cell in Clonmel Garda Station following his arrest in the town on 10 September 2002. - That is over 6 years ago.

A Page from BOCK the Robber, everybody!.

After being castigated by the writer (see comments below, and/or click it and read his comments), I am quoting just a small bit - you really just need to click the link and read it all, it's all there, just go there and read, please, honest it's all there, go please, or Bock will be annoyed, and you really don't wanna do that, trust me . . .

Brian Rossiter — Report on Death of Child in Custody Due Shortly
Posted on Tuesday, March 25, 2008

In . . . . . . .

Brian Rossiter
- how much violence was this child subjected to
in his brief life on this earth?

This is a comment I posted to www.Indymedia.ie in relation to violence perpetrated against people in police custody.

In most societies, it is males that cause most of the violence, but those very same societies brutalise their males for more often, and with greater severity, than their females. So what the hell do they expect? Those who are the victims of outrages, quiet often go on to perpetrate outrages on others. Known fact, folks.

By the time a male has left his teens he will have been on the receiving end of far more violence than almost all females will ever have experience in their whole lives.

How much violence was Brian Rossiter on the receiving end of, in his very brief 14 year life?

Here is another comment I posted to www.Indymedia.ie in relation to violence in Irish society in general.

I have no idea if he is innocent or guilty in a moral sense, of the charges the Garda claim they were going to bring against him - and neither do you.

Equally I happen to know, and so do they if they stop to think about it, that the young man was also innocent - certainly in the legal sense - until convicted of this crime in a criminal court - that is what our courts are for, and that is the only sense that matters in our society, as the many Tribunals have demonstrated.

If you are advocating 'vigilante justice', then essentially you are supporting the type of crime YOU all have accused this young man of. For that is what he was apparently wanted by the Gardai for - vigilantism. That fact you can't see that surprises me not in the least. Seeing that would require using your brain for something other than plotting revenge against what you perceive to be the enemies of this wonderful society of ours.

You people demonstrate all that is wrong in our violent society. You're ultra-willing to believe anything the Garda and the Media tell you about the 'sumbags' that just happen to die in Garda custody, and yet at the same time you appear outraged at the level of violence in our society.

There a nice short word for what you are - Sheep, baa baaa, ya bloodthirsty Sheep (bit of an oxymoron there, I know, but I'll leave it in anyway ;-)

For some reason you can't see how the two are intimately intertwined.

It is a pity you appear to have neither the wit nor wisdom to see that.

God help us if you lot are indicative of the Irish mentality - and I truly fear that you are.

You only have yourselves to blame - you are willing to accept violence meted out by the state in our institutions, prisons, borstals, orphanages, Garda Stations etc. . You rail against the problems created in society by the high level of violence out there, and yet don't seem to have a clue how YOU yourselves are contributing towards it.

If you are willing to turn a blind eye towards the violence of State representatives, then yes YOU personally are responsible for the level of violence in the wider society.

But to be honest, I seriously doubt any of you will ever, EVER, comprehend that.

Shane Geoghegan - possibly/probably murdered by Limerick Gangsters

I'd better Name this guy below as well, or someone will get annoyed. Below is the Top Post from an Archive for the 'Brian Rossiter' Category at Public Inquiry, Examining corruption in Ireland

RTE's reporting of the Rossiter case
I was puzzled and to some degree I’m still puzzled by RTE’s coverage of the Brian Rossiter report.

The presenter of Today with Pat Kenny (See previous post) clearly said to Philip Boucher Hayes, who had seen the report:

“You’ve seen the report; the rest of us will not get to see the full report.”

I think the crucial word here is ‘full’. It seems that some of the report has been published but because the former Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, insisted on setting up the inquiry under the arcane Metropolitan Police Act, 1924, sections of the report must remain secret because the act offers no protection from defamation on publication.

For me, the most disturbing aspect of the report’s release is how RTE news dealt with the event. Admittedly, I’m only making comment here on one programme, Six One News, but the impression given, I think, was that the Gardai had little to answer for.

Viewers were not informed that the arcane legislation this inquiry was set up under would seriously compromise its publication. My understanding is that only a summary of the report has been published. Viewers were not told that they were only getting a small part of the story.

RTE news placed great emphasis on the unreliability of witnesses who were hostile to the Gardai.

While reporting that Brian Rossiter was unlawfully detained overnight by Gardai, RTE emphasised that Hugh Hartnett SC, the reports author, was not satisfied that Brian Rossiter was assaulted in Garda custody.

Viewers were not informed, however, that the report also found there was a statistical probability that Brian Rossiter sustained his fatal injury while in Garda custody.

I’m puzzled here because of the apparent contradiction, perhaps an expert witness came to the conclusion regarding the statistical probability. In any case, RTE did not make any of this clear to viewers.

The overall impression given was that the report was fully published, that all the details of the case were available and that the Gardai were, in the main, innocent of any wrongdoing.

The Rossiter family does not agree and are very unhappy with the report. I tend to agree with them

Brian Rossiter - possibly/probably murdered by Clonmel Gardai

Brian Rossiter died because the people tasked with ensuring that the laws of the State are upheld know that they can act with impunity

The United Nations Commission on Human Rights on 8 February 2005, defines impunity as:

"the impossibility, de jure or de facto, of bringing the perpetrators of violations to account – whether in criminal, civil, administrative or disciplinary proceedings – since they are not subject to any inquiry that might lead to their being accused, arrested, tried and, if found guilty, sentenced to appropriate penalties, and to making reparations to their victims.

How long to sing this song?

All you need to know about an Obama Administration Foreign Policy direction, in 30 seconds flat!

2008-11-12T01:12:00.005Z

The 3 Rappers of the Apocalypse?

2 from Counterpunch today . . .

Obama, Emanuel and Israel
By JOHN V. WHITBECK

In the first major appointment of his administration, President-elect Barack Obama has named as his chief of staff Congressman Rahm Emanuel, an Israeli citizen and Israeli army veteran whose father, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, was a member of Menachem Begin's Irgun forces during the Nakba and named his son after "a Lehi combatant who was killed" -- i.e., a member of Yitzhak Shamir's terrorist Stern Gang, responsible for, in addition to other atrocities against Palestinians, the more famous bombing of the King David Hotel and assassination of the UN peace envoy Count Folke Bernadotte.

In rapid response to this news, the editorial in the next day's Arab News (Jeddah) was entitled "Don't pin much hope on Obama -- Emanuel is his chief of staff and that sends a message". This editorial referred to the Irgun as a "terror organization" (a judgment call) and concluded: "Far from challenging Israel, the new team may turn out to be as pro-Israel as the one it is replacing."

That was always likely. Obama repeatedly pledged unconditional allegiance to Israel during his campaign, most memorably in an address to the AIPAC national convention which Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery characterized as "a speech that broke all records for obsequiousness and fawning", and America's electing a black president has always been more easily imagined than any American president's declaring his country's independence from Israeli domination.

Still, one of the greatest advantages for the United States in electing Barack Hussein Obama was the prospect that the world's billion-plus Muslims, who now view the United States with almost universal loathing and hatred, would be dazzled by the new president's eloquence, life story, skin color and middle name, would think again with open minds and would give America a chance to redeem itself in their eyes and hearts -- not incidently, drastically shortening the long lines of aspiring jihadis eager to sacrifice their lives while striking a blow against the evil empire.

The profound loathing and hatred of the Muslim world toward the United States, which has always had its roots for America's unconditional support for the injustices inflicted and still being inflicted on the Palestinians, can fairly be considered the core of the primary foreign policy and "national security" problems confronting the United States in recent years. Why would Obama, a man of unquested brilliance, have chosen to send such a contemptuous message to the Muslim world with his first major appointment? Why would he wish to disabuse the Muslim world of its hopes (however modest) and slap it across the face at the ealiest opportunity?

A further contemptuous message is widely rumored to be forthcoming -- the naming as "Special Envoy for Middle East Peace" of Dennis Ross, the notorious Israel-Firster who, throughout the 12 years of the Bush the First and Clinton administrations, ensured that American policy toward the Palestinians did not deviate one millimeter from Israeli policy and that no progress toward peace could be made and who has since headed the AIPAC spin-off "think tank", the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

and

"WIBDI: What If Bush Did It?"
A Prism for the New Paradigm
By CHRIS FLOYD

This user-friendly analytical tool provides a quick and easy way of determining the value of any given policy while correcting one's perception for partisan bias. Simply take a particular action or proposal and submit it to the WIBDI test: If Bush did this, would you think it was OK? Or would you condemn it as the act of a warmonger, or a tyrant, or a corrupt corporate tool, etc.? The just-concluded campaign has already shown us how our hordes of our quondam dissidents have signally failed this test, excusing, countenancing, defending or even embracing the actions and positions enumerated below by Chris Hedges:

"Sen. Barack Obama’s vote to renew the Patriot Act, his votes to continue to fund the Iraq war, his backing of the FISA Reform Act, his craven courting of the Israeli lobby, his support of the death penalty, his refusal to champion universal, single-payer not-for-profit health care for all Americans, his call to increase troop levels and expand the war in Afghanistan, his failure to call for a reduction in the bloated and wasteful defense spending and his lobbying for the huge taxpayer swindle known as the bailout..."

To which we could add his bellicose saber-rattling at Iran, his promise to roll back "Russian aggression" and extend war-triggering treaty protection to an aggressive Georgian regime (which cluster-bombed its own people, as we learned this week), his advocacy of destabilizing and civilian-shredding military strikes in Pakistan, his opposition to gay marriage (and campaigning with gay-bashing preachers), and his support for extending the death penalty to cover non-fatal offenses, and so on.

Any one of these positions would be roundly condemned by "progressives" if they were taken or advocated by George W. Bush -- as in fact many of them have been. Indeed, one of the most remarkable things about this campaign is how Obama has managed to embody the deep and desperate thirst for change among millions of America -- hence the genuinely moving scenes of jubilation and revived hope that have greeted his victory -- while his actual positions in many if not most key areas track very closely with Bush's, if they are not actually identical with them.

Take Iran, for example. Obama has taken what is regarded as a more nuanced position, holding out the promise of direct negotiations with Iranian leaders. Yet he has repeatedly stated what the outcome of these "negotiations" must be: Iran must "abandon its nuclear program." If it does not, then more and more draconian sanctions will be applied, with the clear threat of military action if these don't bring Tehran to heel. This is, chapter and verse, the precise policy followed by Bush, who has also repeatedly offered to "negotiate" with Iran as long as they agree to surrender on every point before talks begin.

Election Special 2008 . . .

2008-10-12T00:57:00.009+01:00

YOU know it's the right thing to do!

2008 Election Coverage

Wait for video to load.
Click the triangular Play button in the lower-left of the video window.

I am Hubris, and I approve this message

Vote Hubris on November 4th

Human Rights Watch [sic] still lying

2008-09-07T00:31:00.009+01:00

Marc Garlasco: moved over to Human Rights Watch
after working 7 years at Pentagon(?)
Postman (Lord) Patel nails it . . .

On the 16th August we posted Russia uses Cluster Bombs on civilian targets in Georgia which was based on a widely reported Human Rights watch report. A friend kindly pointed out what a bunch of lying fuckers they have been .. in fact they have an impressive track record. (of which more soon)

Now it turns out the bombs were M85 bombs of Israeli manufacture, and used by the Georgians. A letter from the Georgian Defence Ministry to HRW said the bombs were used "against Russian military equipment and armament" near the Roki tunnel that links Russia to South Ossetia. The Georgians have admitted using them. The original report was by a helpful chappie called Marc Garlasco, who moved over to Human Rights Watch after working 7 years at Pentagon. HRW has acknowledged cluster bomb use, but has not retracted their now baseless accusations against the Russians and still maintain the Russians used them. Tuesday, September 02, 2008 Clusterfuck on Blog Simple

Pipelines from the Russia, Stupid™

Cool reception for Cheney in Azerbaijan
Russia Today, Sept5, 2008

American Vice President Dick Cheney’s visit to the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, appears to be have been unsuccessful for Washington, unlike his visit to Tbilisi. Cheney received a cool welcome and, according to Russia’s Kommersant newspaper, Azerbaijan’s President Ilkham Aliyev has implied that Baku is going to play a waiting game concerning the Nabucco gas pipeline, which is set to bypass Russia. Neither President Ilkham Aliyev nor the Prime Minister, Artur Rasizade, were there to greet Cheney at Baku airport. Instead, he was met by the country’s First Deputy PM and the Foreign Minister.

The Kommersant newspaper reports that Cheney was very annoyed by the results of the meeting with President Aliyev and even refused to attend a ceremonial supper in his own honour. Aleksandr Pikaev, an analyst from the Institute for World Economy and International Relations, believes Dick Cheney is hardly the right man for diplomacy in the region.

Human Rights Watch [sic] caught lying . . . again!

2008-09-04T18:58:00.009+01:00

HRW provided this picture as evidence identifying
the weapon debris shown as a Russian RBK-250 clusterbomb.

Moon Of Alabamha has the scoop:

HRW Continues False Cluster Bomb Accusations against Russians

On August 15 Human Rights Watch (HRW) accused the Russian Federation of having used cluster bombs in the conflict with Georgia. These accusations were widely repeated in the 'western' media. The Russian Federation consistently denied any use of cluster ammunition. As it now turns out the repeated HRW accusations were wrong. The 'evidence' provided by HRW was based on pictures and misidentified ammunition in those.

The ammunition in question is of Israeli origin and was used by the Georgian military. The Georgian Ministry of Defense has now admitted as much. HRW now also acknowledges this in a new press statement. But it continues to claim Russian use of such weapons. It does so by pointing to its own older reports which clearly misidentified Georgian cluster ammunition as Russian made. HRW has still to show any proof for its continuing accusations against the Russian Federation.

While reviewing the story as documented below, notice the special role of HRW's 'senior military analyst' Marc Garlasco in this propaganda effort.

An August 15 HRW press release claimed:

Human Rights Watch said Russian aircraft dropped RBK-250 cluster bombs, each containing 30 PTAB 2.5M submunitions, on the town of Ruisi in the Kareli district of Georgia on August 12, 2008. On the same day, a cluster strike in the center of the town of Gori killed at least eight civilians and injured dozens, Human Rights Watch said.

A Russian(?) blogger noticed as much [that Human Rights Watch was LYING] yesterday.

Pictures Proof Positive Sarah Palin visited Ireland . . . in a Bikini

2008-09-03T19:06:00.014+01:00

Sarah Palin at St. James' Gate, Dublin
Some intarweb ne'er-do-well's have been spreading scandalous rumours in regard to John McCain's Vice President pick, Sarah Palin.

For example, some reprobate by the name of 'Chad', posted this at Buzzflash:

Palin also reportedly got her first passport in 2007, and she said she has been to Germany, Kuwait, and Ireland. (Until recently, going to Canada didn't require a passport.) But the Ireland visit was a refueling stop. That inaccuracy is bad enough, but we also have to get a correction from a Palin spokesman that she has visited Canada.

It is this sort of shoddy journalism that has, of late, given rise to the perception that the members of the Fourth Estate are little better than courtesans, and cheap ones at that.

Had they sought pictorial proof that Mrs Sarah Palin had indeed visited Ireland, they would have quite easily found it. I myself have several charming photographs of this beguiling lady. These photos quite clearly show that she has indeed visited Ireland.

Sarah Palin at the Dolmen outside Carlow Town

She even took time out to visit Father Ted in Craggy Island in order to Judge the 'Lovely Girls' Competition. Sarah, being the irrepressible minx she is, decided to take part as well. Needless to say the locals were pretty impressed, and she of course, went on to win.
Sarah Palin visits Craggy Island
for the 'Lovely Girls' Competition

Lastly, here she is on a fishing trip
in Wicklow.
(I warned her about the rifle, that it wouldn't look good, but she insisted on exercising her 2nd Amendment rights, despite my pointing out to her that the 2nd Amendment only applied within the boundaries of the U.S.)

Click any Pic for a larger version

Calls for EU role as Navy intervenes in Pipeline Dispute

2008-09-02T22:49:00.008+01:00

Another fine example of Naval power being brought to bear in a pipeline dispute.

Warship off the coast in Shell Pipeline dispute
Now we know how the Georgians feel :)

Maybe we'd have been better cutting a deal with Russia's Gazprom :)

Second Navy Vessel arrives in Bay

Anothes Irish Naval Service warship arrived off the Mayo Coast this afternoon. Given the small sizse of the Irish navy, the priority which is being put on this operation is alarming. As recent events have shown, the Irish coast is often used by criminals importing large quantities of drugs into the country fro further export to Europe, and the navy is supposed to be an impotant line of defence against this.

Instead two ships ae being used to intimidate the local population of a small part of the west coast, to discourage protests against Shell.

Sarah Palin's Bikini: A sober analysis . . .

2008-09-02T17:33:00.006+01:00

UPDATE: Snopes.com has the take on the Sarah Palin Bikini Shots. It wuz Photoshopped.

~~MILF~~, ~~GILF~~, !!

Sarah Palin: ~~GILF~~, ~~MILF~~, Photoshopped-VPILF!!

Pic courtesy of http://thebruceblog.wordpress.com/

Vlad the Prevailer: Putin gives his side of the Georgian/S. Ossetia Story

2008-09-02T15:52:00.019+01:00

Vlad the Prevailer?

Here's a YouTube of Vald Putin's interview with German Channel ARD. With English sub-titles

I found a Russian transcript HERE

I the used Google Translations to get to an English Transcript of the interview HERE

V. PUTIN: I just want to point out that we have not created this situation.

And now about the credibility of Russia. I am sure that the credibility of any country that can protect the lives and dignity of its citizens, a country which is able to pursue an independent foreign policy, the credibility of this country's long-term, medium term the world will only grow.

Conversely, the credibility of those countries which have a rule for foreign policy to serve the interests of other states, ignoring their own national interests, regardless of how they explain, will decline.

T. ROTH: You are still not answered the question: why have you gone to the risk of isolating your country?

V. PUTIN: I thought I replied. But if it requires further clarification, I will do.

Full 27 minute interview with English subtitles:

Russia Is One of 10 Biggest Creditors of the U.S.
Russia ranks the eighth in the list of the U.S. creditors, according to Finance magazine.

The Russian Federation share in the U.S. state debt was 2.5 percent ($65.3 billion) as of June 30, 2008.

Japan ($583 billion) and China ($503 billion, less the debt to Hong Kong and Macao) are the key creditors for the United States, accounting for over 40 percent of the state debt on aggregate.

What’s more, the debt to China goes up by 25 percent a year.

Other major creditors of the United States are
Britain,
Luxembourg,
Hong Kong,
Switzerland,
states of Caribbean offshore zone and the oil-exporting states, including Venezuela,
the United Arab Emirates,
Ecuador,
Iran,
Iraq,
Kuwait,
Oman
and others.

Here's a curious headline

EU officials express surprise over Russia sanctions

a casual observer might think the EU were surprised that RUSSIA was considering sanctions.

It appears to me that the headline is phrased to make it seem, to the casual observe, that Russia is the one proposing sanctions.

They would of course be wrong. It is the EU that is driving the debate on sanctions, as the rest of the story makes clear:

The European Union is considering sanctions against Russia as punishment for refusing to withdraw its troops from Georgia and for recognising the two breakaway enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The first hint that the EU might impose sanctions was made by Bernard Kouchner, the French Foreign Minister, during a press conference ahead of the planned summit on Georgia on Monday.

The reason the wiley Headline composer got away with their slightly deceptive headline, is because EU-heads seem 'surprised' that the always scrupulously impartial Mr Kouchner is the one proposing the sanctions:

Some EU officials were surprised that Mr Kouchner had raised the subject in public, knowing that it was going to be difficult to reach any form of consensus.

While some EU members are thought to be pushing for sanctions, it is a fact that the partnership and co-operation arrangements between the Europeans and Russia are of mutual benefit and both sides will be punished if sanctions are approved by the summit leaders.

Meanwhile Lord Patel has some interesting comments on the travels and travails of Mr Vlad Putin:
Mr Putin visits that nice Mr Karimov for a chat about this and that and oil and gas and pipelines

Vagit Alekperov called to tell us of his trip alongside Prime Minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, to Uzbekistan yesterday. They were met personally at the start of their 2 day visit yesterday at Tashkent International Airport by "boil in bag" Islam Karimov himself.

Russia, Uzbekistan agree on Uzbekistani gas pricing European formula

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin who is visiting Sep 2 Uzbekistan has announced following talks with Uzbekistan's President Islam Karimov that Moscow and Tashkent have agreed on the formula of pricing of Uzbekistani natural gas purchased by Russia. According to Putin, the formula is going to be the one used in Europe.

Uzbekistan produces 60 billion of cubic meters of natural gas annually, of which 7-8 billion are sold to Gazprom. In the first half of 2008, Russia was paying Uzbekistan $130 per 1,000 cubic meters, and is paying $160 in the second half.

See Also:
Pipeline Time: Pipeline Politics and Oil Imperium from Azerbaijan, to Ashkelon and Mogadishu

Piplines in teh Russia, Stupid!™

Bloomberg reports that “In the 2 1/2 years since Mikhail Khodorkovsky, then Yukos chief executive officer, was arrested on fraud charges, President Vladimir Putin’s government has used assets from Yukos to help turn Rosneft and OAO Gazprom into challengers to BP Plc and Royal Dutch Shell Plc. Rosneft and Gazprom have given Putin, 53, control of 60 percent of Russia’s energy industry, the world’s biggest.”

Considering the degree of U.S. and European investment in Yukos, if it had happened in any other country, then the government would surely have been pilloried, maybe even forcibly removed. The Pootster gets to hold a G8 summit. He’s obviously being a good enough boy – which may be where Abkhazia comes in. Perhaps at the G8 Summit it was suggested that Russia agree to withdraw from the Caucasus in exchange for the evisceration of foreign energy interests in Russia proper?

Then again, is he stupid enough to loosen all influence over the pipeline region just to avoid a few editorials in the financial press? I doubt it. The Caucasus remains an Achilles Heel of the Oil Imperium.

Russia faces new Caucasus uprising in Ingushetia

But it is Ingushetia, where the population has long been at odds with its Ossetian neighbours, that is prompting the greatest concern among observers and western diplomats.

Russian opposition newspapers have claimed that up to 1,200 Ingush police officers have resigned their jobs in protest at the war in South Ossetia, creating a power vacuum that could allow the insurgency to flourish.

Anger has particularly grown since Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, recognised the independence of South Ossetia last week. Many Ingush fear that could lead to the unification of South Ossetia, which lies in Georgia, and North Ossetia, which lies in Russia.

Ingushetia and North Ossetia fought a brief war in 1992, which claimed some 600 lives, over control of a slither of territory called Prigorodny which had come under Ossetian occupation after Stalin deported the entire Ingush population in 1944.

Regional experts say that a desire for separatism is now spreading from radical insurgents to Ingushetia's more moderate underground opposition.

Mr Yevloyev's death could act as a catalyst for opposition against regional head Murat Zyazikov, a former KGB officer and close ally of Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister.

The journalist, who was also one of Ingushetia's best known opposition figures, was arrested at an airport near the Ingush capital Nazran. Shortly after his detention, his body, bearing a single bullet wound to the temple, was thrown out of a police car.

Ingush officials passed off the death as an accident, but the angry reaction from opposition activists suggested not all believed that - especially as Mr Zyazikov had been on the same flight as the dead journalist.

Map showing Ingushetia

Media, Georgia, NATO, Russia and The FRENCH! . . . Oh, and Israel!

2008-08-21T17:39:00.011+01:00

Why does this BOZO sit with the flag of the EU in the background?
Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we come to work for Western Media

Georgia's Nato membership on track, says David Miliband

The boy Milliband wants Georgia in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation.

The Georgians can't actually physically pick up the whole country and drag it westward, closer to The North Atlantic so instead Saak launches an unprovoked attack on a territory guarded (under a 1992 agreement between the Russians and the Georgians) by Russian peacekeepers.

The Media's responds heroically, twisting and torturing language to make it appear the Russki's are now 'aggressive expansionists'™

Various internet identities pop up to assure us that once the Fog of War™ disappears, Russian duplicity will be plain for all to see.

despite copious evidence implicating US military and Israeli and US mercenaries (and by extension, also the Israeli Military) in this military farce we are assured that if only the Russki's weren't so meddlesome the problem would never have manifested itself

Meanwhile the French seem to be practising a little duplicity of their own.

The duplicity of the West is everywhere in this current crisis.

Even French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s cease-fire proposal signed by both Georgian and Russian presidents was a ruse.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov revealed that the document that Saakashvili approved did not contain an introduction that had been endorsed by Russia, South Ossetia and the other breakaway region, Abkhazia.

Meanwhile, US military planes are flying in “aid” and the US has announced it will henceforth have a permanent presence in Georgia.

Under what logic is this failed Military attack on a territory guarded (under a 1992 agreement between the Russians and the Georgians) by Russian peacekeepers, NOT a win for the Neo-Lib/Globalists ?

So far, from what I've seen, it appears the Neo-Cons have done quite well for themselves.

Thanks to The Media's Heroic Efforts™, most in the west see Russia as an aggressive expansionist intent on the commission of War Crimes (!!), meanwhile through the use of euphemistic phrases such as 'humanitarian relief' the U.S. now finally has an openly acknowledged military presence in a country bordering Russia with an ethnic-conflict situation ripe for meddling globalist intrigue. Apparently it's about the OIL, Stupid!™ when even a child could see it's about the Russia, Stupid!™.

In (insert random year from the 90's here) a guy called Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote a book called The Grand Chessboard

here's a link to something I found using the intarwebs : http://www.wanttoknow.info/brzezinskigrandchessboard

I haven't read it so I have no idea what it says, but luckily, due to the aforementioned intarwebs all here can google it to and discover lots of amusing family fun and find out more. The reason i didn't bother to read it is because as I said earlier even a child could see it's about the Russia, Stupid!™.

Zbiggy is now acting as an foreign policy adviser to none other than Mr Celebrity himself, the next JFK ........ Barack Hussein Obama. So we can expect 'hope'™ and 'change'™ 'cos BarryO's all about 'the change'™ and 'the hope'™
BarryO (aka Barack Hussein Obama) Purveyor of false Hope?

Here's a pretty good TIMELINE for events from Moon of Alabama:

On the evening of August 7 the Georgian President Saakashvili went on TV and announced a cease-fire. This came after some small tit for tat fire exchanges on the border between Georgia and South Ossetia. A few hours later Georgia launched a massive artillery barrage against the South Ossetian city of Tskhinvali. It used Grad multiple-launch rocket systems. Such weapons are effective against area targets, like large infantry clusters, not against pinpoint aims. To use such weapons against civilian areas leads to mass casualties and is in itself a war crime.

The attack hit people at sleep in their homes. It was followed by bombings from SU-25 ground attack airplanes in and around Tskhinvali.

The Russian peacekeepers in South Osssetia had less than a battalion of mechanized infantry between the border and Tskhinvali. This batallion was attacked by a multi battalion Georgian tank and armored infantry forces. The Russians retreated through and around Tskhinvali but held the line within the city limits.

According to Russian sources the Georgian assault killed some 1,500 to 2,000 civilians.

South Ossetia is connected with North Ossetia in Russia by only one road which leads up to the Caucasus mountain range and through the Roki tunnel. It was obvious that any Russian reinforcements would have to come through that tunnel. Georgia seems to have made no attempt to close the road and the tunnel.

Why was this attack done this way and why was the tunnel not closed down?

The only explanation I can come up with is planed ethnic cleansing.

The Georgian attack was planed and prepared for some time and followed a bigger strategic plan. Hitting the civilians in their sleep guaranteed panic and would obviously push them to look for refuge. The only place these Ossetians had to go was north to their compatriots. If the tunnel would have been closed, Georgia would have been stuck with these people after taking their land. That would have led to a messy guerrilla war. It was better, so the plan, to let them flee and therefore leave the outlet open. Indeed some 30,000 of 70,000 Ossetians fled through the tunnel.

Maybe the Georgian plan was to close the tunnel later, like after some 24 or 48 hours after the initial assault. That then was a gamble that Russia would not intervene or would need too long to reinforce. The gamble was lost.

Russia reacted quite fast and only six hours after the initial attack a combined arms force of tanks, artillery and armored personal carriers in the size of one battalion (some 600 soldiers) was on its way through the Roki tunnel. By late noon these forces had reached Tskhinvali and immediately began to push the Georgian forces back.

At the same time the Russian air force started to bomb Georgian air fields. At least four Georgian planes were destroyed on the ground. Two Russian planes were shot down by SA-5 anti air missiles which Georgia was not known to have. These weapons were possibly manned by Ukrainian mercenaries.

While the Russian troops were still on their march, Russia asked the UN security council to condemn the Georgian attack and to call for a cease-fire. The 'western' powers at the security council declined to do so.

Only after that did Russia start to get really serious. It activated paratrooper and special forces to reinforce in South Ossetia. A marine battalion was send from the Crimea and on the 11th landed in Abkhasia. Further reinforcements there came by rail. The Russian Air force launched a classic 'effect based operation' and took out military airports, radars, barracks and communication points.

A few of these attacks hit, as is inevitable, civilian places but Georgian civilian casualties seem to have been light. Russia did not attack economic or civilian installations like electricity plants, pipelines, or major traffic points. A Russian reconnaissance force only briefly moved to Senaki and the only place outside of South Ossetia and Abkhasia Russian forces now hold is a central highway crossing north of Gori.

The last Georgian attack attempt yesterday (after Saak signed Kouchner's cease-fire paper) was by six helicopters that again hit Tskhinvali. They were later destroyed by Russian air power. Yesterday night Georgian troops in Gori panicked and headed for the capital Tiblisi.

The Russian president Medvedev has stopped ground operations but the Russian forces will continue air operations against any Georgian troop concentrations until a cease-fire is signed that fits Russian demands.

The Georgian forces have lost quite a bunch of their tanks and other equipment. The Georgian air force does not exist any more. The Georgian navy lost the only two missile boats it had. Military infrastructure was hit badly. The military budget that Saak had increased from $30 million to $1 billion over a few years was wasted. The training Georgian forces received by U.S. troops and Israeli mercenaries seems to have been completely useless. Well, they learned how to bike quads.

There are now in total still only some 10,000+ Russian troops in South Ossetia and Abkhazi. Georgia has 27,000 men under arms. These did not even achieve their first objective and folded against a smaller force.

From a military standpoint the Georgian forces deserve an F. The Russian ground force deserves an A for the early holding of the ground, a B for the quick first reaction unit and a C for the reinforcement thereafter which seems to have not been very effective. The Russian air force for losing two planes only gets a D.

From a strategic political point Saak gambled badly and lost. It was obvious that he would lose this one from the beginning. Four days ago when Saak started his splendid little war I headlined Saakashvili Wants War - He Will Get It and wrote:

Saakashvili may hope for physical help from 'the west', but neither NATO nor the EU has any appetite to support his escapades. What has led him to this miscalculation?

That question is still unanswered. Saakashvili should answer it when he gets his deserved process at The Hague.

I think that quite sucessfully answers the question of who started this shit

Consider this Reuters wire report published on August 8, the day the conflict over South Ossetia went hot:

At the request of Russia, the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session in New York but failed to reach consensus early Friday on a Russian-drafted statement.

The council concluded it was at a stalemate after the US, Britain and some other members backed the Georgians in rejecting a phrase in the three-sentence draft statement that would have required both sides "to renounce the use of force," council diplomats said.

And Here's an interesting statement from that Great Democrat™, Saakashvilli

"The Israeli weapons have proved very effective," he said at a press conference at his office. When asked whether the Israeli arms played a role in the military successes he claimed the Georgian army had achieved, he joked: "Are you asking me as a representative of Elbit or of Israel Aerospace Industries?"

To a reporter's question about Jews who have fled the fighting and come to Israel, he said: "We have two Israeli cabinet ministers, one deals with war [Defense Minister David Kezerashvili], and the other with negotiations [State Minister for Territorial Integration Temur Yakobashvili], and that is the Israeli involvement here: Both war and peace are in the hands of Israeli Jews."

Source: Israeli Newspaper Haaretz.com

Oh, by the way, David Milliband is also Jewish. I don't know how significant that is in the overall scheme of things but I will say that when he visited Israel on a 'Peace' mission he took time out to visit his cousins who it turns out are living in an illegal Israeli 'settlement'/colony on what used to be know as Palestinian land.
("Miliband Visit Relatives on Settlement" FCO Panic AND David Miliband denies visiting family in West Bank settlement)

Like I said, I don't know how significant that is overall :)

See Also:
Georgia. A change in the balance of world relations.

Sources of good info on Russian-Georgian conflict

According to this now deleted API report by RAWSTORY

On July 14, 2008, 14 countries rehearsed war in the Ukraine.

Sea Breeze-2008 NATO exercise was held off Ukraine's Black Sea coast against anti-NATO protests and a hostile reaction from officials in Russia.

Sea Breeze-2008...includes forces from:

Armenia,

Azerbaijan,

Belgium,

Britain,

Canada,

Denmark,

France,

Georgia,

Germany,

Greece,

Latvia,

Macedonia and

Turkey...'

The US-Georgia joint exercises will be held at the Vaziani military base' less than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the Russian border with a total of 1,650 servicemen taking part."

...

Lyndon Baines Johnson was famous for many things.

One of them was his use of the phrase '"Make the bastard deny it!"

With that in mind, I propose we file the following BBC report under:

'Make the Bitch deny it!

Yulia Tymoshenko: Make the Bitch deny it!

Ukraine PM 'working for Russia'

Aides to Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko have accused Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of working in Russia's interests in a bid to become president.

Presidential spokesman Andriy Kyslynsky said Ms Tymoshenko had been co-operating with Russia by avoiding any criticism of its actions in Georgia.

He said she was counting on Moscow's support in next year's Ukrainian presidential election.

Ms Tymoshenko, currently on holiday, has not yet commented on the claim.

South Africa: Now with EXTRA Neo-Lib® ‘Poverty Boost‘™

2008-07-07T16:01:00.004+01:00

Morgan Tsvangirai: The Great White Hope?
Whoda' thunk it?

Most black South Africans were BETTER OFF (!?) under the racist Apartheid regime.

A report published by the South African Institute of Race Relations demonstrated that the living conditions for millions of South Africans have worsened since the ending of apartheid 13 years ago. Official unemployment currently stands at 26 percent, but the real figure is 41 percent—double what it was 10 years ago. Millions of workers earn less than US$150 a month, and 4 million people are living in conditions of extreme poverty, defined as less than US$1 a day.

Anglo Platinum (a subsidiary of Anglo American PLC) produces most of the platinum in SA.

So maybe the ANC should consider a name change to:

Anglo American PLC . . . National Congress

Zimbabwe has the world's number 2 reserves of Platinum.

the MDC supports neo-liberal, i.e. Bush/IMF type economic policies. SO, here I am trying (with some help from Wikipedia) to make a little sense of a country that’s had a very rough time. Remember Ian Smith and a country called Rhodesia? That was Zimbabwe before it gained independence as Zimbabwe in 1980. It was the Patriotic Front (PF) — an alliance of two movements that was formed in 1976 that overthrew Smith’s white minority regime. By the way, Zimbabwe is a landlocked country with rich mineral resources — the world’s 2nd largest platinum deposits, high-quality chrome, gold (50% of Zimbabwe’s mineral exports), and some other metals. The British have mined a lot of the gold. Uranium has also been found. Perhaps there are diamonds, too.

As mentioned earlier:
Right Wing British War Mongerers for Democratic Change?

The Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons include former Tory Foreign Secretaries Malcolm Rifkind, Douglas Hurd and Geoffrey Howe has been accused of using the organisation as a cover for promoting the interests of Western multi-nationals in the troubled region.

So maybe Morgan and his MDC-posse should be called:
Anglo American PLC . . . for Democratic Change?

Right Wing British War Mongerers for Democratic Change?

2008-07-01T15:11:00.005+01:00

So, who provides the money to that wonderfully independent and fantastically democratic political party MDC (Millions of Dead curly-haired-people) and it’s inspirational leader Mr Morgan (Can you kill Mugabe for me?) Tsvangirai?

Well, some of the people involved in the Rape of Yugoslavia, that’s who.

RightWing British cash behind bid to combat Mugabe

Top Tories backing pro-democracy trust are accused of promoting their own interests,

The Zimbabwe Democracy Trust, whose patrons include former Tory Foreign Secretaries Malcolm Rifkind, Douglas Hurd and Geoffrey Howe has been accused of using the organisation as a cover for promoting the interests of Western multi-nationals in the troubled region.

Douglas Hurd and Yugoslavia

Can this be the same Douglas Hurd who, as Conservative foreign secretary, was largely responsible for the European Union’s disastrous policy on Yugoslavia, including an arms embargo which prevented the Bosnians from defending themselves against Serbian genocide and ethnic cleansing?

The same Douglas Hurd who warned against armed intervention to halt the dictator Slobodan Milosevic, first in Bosnia and then in Kosovo? The same Douglas Hurd who was told at the time by his former boss Margaret Thatcher: “Douglas, Douglas, you would make Neville Chamberlain look like a warmonger”?

The same Douglas Hurd who, within a year of retirement, returned to Belgrade in 1996 on behalf of the bank that now employed him, NatWest Markets, to negotiate with Milosevic about the privatization of Serbian utilities?

Not only was Mr. (now Lord) Hurd eager to profit from the Serbian Dictator’s desire to sell state assets in order to generate cash to preserve his brutal tyranny—he even tried to justify it by claiming that his motive was the altruistic one of “liberalizing” Serbia, and that Milosevic “could have been rehabilitated.”

So, Morgan’s one of the good-guys,. . . right??

Did Hezbollah Thwart a Bush/Olmert Attack on Beirut?

2008-05-16T17:19:00.005+01:00

Nasrallah: "Are YOU talking to ME?"
See also :
Beirut Finally . . . The Fuller Picture
2 Nil to Hezbollah

Go Team Frankie!

This article is being excerpted in it's entirety under the powers granted me under E.U code 8496 namely: Section 34.b: "He agrees with me so I'm crowing about it"

This week Israel's Military Intelligence Chief, Major General Amos Yadlin complained to the Israeli daily Haaretz that "Hezbollah proved that it was the strongest power in Lebanon... stronger than the Lebanese and it had wanted to take the government it could have done it," He said Hezbollah, continued to pose a "significant" threat to Israel as its rockets could reach a large part of Israeli territory."

Yadlin was putting it mildly.

But what Intelligence Chief Yadlin did not reveal to the Israeli public was just how "significant" but also "immediate" the Hezbollah threat was on May 11. Nor was he willing to divulge the fact that he received information via US and French channels that if the planned attack on Lebanon's capitol went forward that Tel Aviv was subject, in the view of the US intelligence community to "approximately 600 Hezbollah rockets in the first 24 hours in retaliation and at least that number on the following day".

The Israeli Intel Chief also declined to reveal that despite Israel's recent psyche-war camping about various claimed missile shields "the State of Israel is perfecting", that this claim is being ridiculed at the Pentagon. "Israel will not achieve an effective shield against the current generation of rockets, even assuming no technological improvements in the current rockets aimed at it, for another 20 years. And that assumes the US will continue to fund their research and development for the hoped for shields" according to Pentagon, US Senate Intelligence Committee, and very well informed Lebanese sources.

The planned attack on Beirut

According to US Senate Intelligence Committee sources, the Bush administration initially green lighted the intended May 11 Israel 'demonstration of solidarity with the pro-Bush administration militias, some with which Israel has maintained ties since the days of Bashir Gemayal and Ariel Sharon.

In the end, "the Bush administration got cold feet", a Congressional source revealed. So did Israel.

Israel was not willing to proceed with the original Bush Administration idea which was to have Bush attend the May 15 Israel anniversary celebrations following the Israeli attack meant to hit Hezbollah hard, and give Bush the credit for coming to the dangerous region. The message was to be that Bush comes to the rescue 'on horseback and leads the US Calvary charge straight out of a B western movie where the bugle would sound and flag would be unfurled and the white hat good guys would show their stuff before riding into the sunset and back to Texas, leaving the results to the likely Obama administration to sort out.

The plan involved Israeli air strikes on South and West Beirut in support of forces it was assured would be able to surprise and resist Hezbollah and sustain a powerful offensive for 48 hours.

Also presumably disturbing to Israel was the report it received that Hezbollah "had once again in all probability hacked its "secure" military intelligence communications and the fear that the information would be shared with others.

The Hezbollah rout of the militias in West Beirut plus the fear of retaliation on Tel Aviv, ruining 60th anniversary celebrations, forced cancellation of the supportive attack.

Israel limited its actions to sending two F-15's and two F-16's into as far North as Tyre, one more of literally hundreds of violations of Lebanese airspace, sovereignty and SCR 1701.

Clearly frustrated, Cabinet Minister Meir Sheetrit said Israel should not yet take any action now, but warned" those things could change if Hezbollah takes over Lebanon." a few minutes earlier he had declared that Hezbollah had done just that and had treated the Lebanese army as a doormat.

Later in the Sunday cabinet meeting, Minister Ami Ayalon called for an emergency meeting of the political-security cabinet to discuss "the ongoing crisis in Lebanon and why Israel was not assisting friendly forces."

Minister Yitzhak Cohen (Shas) said that "Israel must immediately ask the [United Nations] Security Council to hold renewed discussions over resolution 1701." The minister was referring to the resolution that stopped the Israeli actions against Lebanon during the 34-day between in 2006, maintaining a fragile cease-fire.

Finally Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert informed Israeli supporters in Lebanon, through the media, and presumbly other means that" Israel was following the violence in Lebanon closely, but would refrain from intervening. Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai told Army Radio Sunday that Israel was prepared for the possibility that the situation in Lebanon will deteriorate into another civil war (meaning future opportunities for Israeli influence and interventon in Lebanon) and that the current fighting could end with a Hezbollah takeover of the government. "We need to keep our eyes peeled and be especially sensitive regarding all that is happening there," Vilnai told Army Radio.

The Bush administration, also disappointed, switched tactics and is opting for domination of the narrative of the fairly complicated events of the past week and using their media and confessional allies to launch a media blitz (minus Future TV for a few days} to flood the airways with:

· Hezbollah staged a coup d'état. Even Israel, if not the Bush administration, concedes Hezbollah has no interest in taking over the Government. (One observer, paraphrasing Winston Churchill's comment, deadpanned, "Some Hezbollah Coup! Some Hezbollah Etat!")

· Hezbollah brought it forces from the South and occupied West Beirut: Hezbollah not only did not bring their forces from the South to Beirut (rather they remained on alert for an Israel attack down South)

· Hezbollah broke its pledge not to use Resistance arms against Lebanese militias and shot up West Beirut.

The facts are very different when viewed close up on the streets here.

When the Lebanese Resistance took the decision during the early hours of Friday morning to engage in civil disobedience, it delayed its actions so as not to preempt the Labor movement strike for higher wages which it supported. When the marching Strikers were prevented from moving into West Beirut the Opposition extended its civil disobedience manifestation.

Various militias, including the smartly outfitted Hariri "Secure Plus" with its distinctive maroon tee-shirts and beige trousers, (now know locally by some as "Secure Minus") a hoped for future Blackwater operation in Lebanon disintegrated surprisingly quickly because many of its green recruits brought down from Tripoli felt misled and betrayed regarding their job description as they were handed weapons an instructed to fight Hezbollah. Snipers from anti-Opposition factions killed civilians from rooftops in Beirut trying to ignite a civil war.

Hezbollah, acting in self defense, according to various officials, quickly clamped down on the trouble makers, took control of the streets, within hours handed them over to the army, and virtually evacuated West Beirut, retaining one position near Bay Rocks manned by unarmed representatives.

Meanwhile the Hariri influence has been greatly weekend in Akkar near the Palestinian Refugee camp of Nahr al Bared and in the Tripoli area. According to some political analysts, including, Fida'a Ittani, a regular columnist for the independent pro-opposition newspaper Al-Akhbar, wrote on May 14, the Future Movement, defeated in Beirut, no longer has any serious influence in the north.

Several Salafi al Qaeda admiring movements are present in Lebanon and like Fatah Islam's declaration this week that they will fight for the Sunnis, they vary in their attitudes from silent opposition to Future leader Saad Al-Hariri to fully supporting him as the leader of the Sunnis. These groups are valued by certain 'leaders' in Lebanon because are the only ones with coherent structures at the ideological, political, technical, and field levels.

Judging from Saad Hariri's confused statements at his subsequent news conference and statements by other parties, the bitterness of promised but unforthcoming assistance was evident.

For two days following the debacle of his forces imploding the head of the Future Movement said nothing. Finally on the 14th he broke his silence. The Halba massacre, committed by Hariri's Mustakbal militiamen which brutally and barbarically murdered 11 people from the opposition did not seem worthy of discussion as he spoke. In a press conference on Tuesday, Hariri simply ignored what all the Lebanese had seen on TV from weapons, ammunition and alcohol found in Future movement offices, and instead listed a series of delusions. "We awaited an open war on Israel, and yet here is an open war on Beirut and its people" he stated. Some interpreted this rather odd statement either as a subconscious slip of the tongue on Hariri's part expressing his frustration that the Israelis help did not arrive or that his reported earlier incoherent state persisted.

Hariri's original speech was so confused that the Saudi channel al-Arabiyya stopped broadcasting it and only read excerpts from what he said, without showing his recorded speech.

When American criticism resumed, and Hezbollah fighters withdrew from the alleys surrounding his house, Hariri was urged to stand up and speak again, this time with a stronger tone, saying "This has been decided by the Iranian and Syrian regimes that wanted to play a political game in Lebanon's streets. For us nothing has changed. We will not negotiate with someone having a pistol pointed to our heads."

Anger at the Bush administration and Israel by certain warlords in Lebanon must feel much like the frustration of Secure Minus personal who rushed from Tripoli and felt misled, abandoned and cheated.

Franklin Lamb can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com

2 Nil to Hezbollah

2008-05-11T02:15:00.025+01:00

Hezbollah in charge in Beirut

Calm returns to Beirut's streets

Lebanon's opposition has begun withdrawing its fighters from the streets of Beirut, handing control to the army, after seizing much of the city in battles with government supporters.

Hezbollah, which heads the opposition, vowed to end its takeover of west Beirut on Saturday, after the army overturned government measures against them.
"The opposition welcomes the army's decision and will proceed with the withdrawal of all its armed elements so that control of the capital is handed over to the military," an opposition statement said.

Stefan Christoff: First, can you describe the current situation in Beirut?

Samah Idriss: Now everything is relatively calm. All the offices of the government-backed Future Movement in West Beirut have surrendered and many of the pro-government "fighters," many who were invited to come from northern Lebanon, often without even knowing that they were going to fight, have surrendered to the opposition and the opposition has handed these people and offices over to the Lebanese army.

Now that the forces from the March 14th movement have lost this battle, pro-government forces claim that they weren't preparing for a war, that they aren't organizing armed militias and that they weren't instigating the fighting, while claiming that Hizballah is acting on behalf of Iran and Syria.

It is critical to remember that this current situation started when the Lebanese government, a couple days ago, decided to declare the Hizballah communications system or independent telephone grid as illegal. This is critical because this communications system was a major reason behind Hizballah's victory against Israel in July 2006. Given that the Hizballah system isn't wireless it is harder for Israel or the US to crack or decode this communications network. This communication system was key to Hizballah preventing Israeli forces from knowing the positions and movements of Hizballah and it's leadership during the war in 2006.

So this current scenario commenced with an instigation from the western-backed government. Additionally the government wanted to kick out a person in charge at the international airport in Beirut who is close to Hizballah, in order to replace them with another person who would not be able to assist Hizballah to know who travels in and out at the airport.

These two actions from the government, the declaration of Hizballah's communication network as illegal and the attempt to oust a Hizballah-sympathetic person at Beirut's international airport, instigated the attack from the opposition, led by Hizballah.

West Beirut is now under the control of the Lebanese army, after the opposition took over the party offices representing the March 14th movement. Currently it's not clear if things will develop in other areas in Lebanon such as in the mountains; this remains unclear.

SC: Now concerning the way that the current situation is being reported in the western press, we are reading a basic depiction that involves armed clashes between pro-government militias and Hizballah supporters throughout Beirut. Also there is a focus on distilling the current scenario into sectarian terms, breaking down the division as fought between Sunni and Shia forces. Also, you highlighted that Hizballah or opposition forces have handed over certain pro-government offices or Future Movement offices to the Lebanese army, which is not being widely reported in the western press. Mainstream media in North America are reporting that West Beirut is under Hizballah's control. In this light could you offer your critiques towards the mainstream media's coverage concerning the events in Beirut within the last 48 hours, both western media and media in the Middle East?

SI: Media that are allied with the government in Lebanon aims to present the current situation simply as sectarian strife. ... First it's important to highlight that Beirut was never strictly Sunni, while the people who are now fighting for the opposition, many belong to Beirut, live in Beirut, a city that has never been just Sunni but a mixture of all religious sects in Lebanon. This is one critical point.

Clearly there is a strategy from the government and pro-government forces to portray Hizballah as the outsiders, to try to portray Hizballah as a force coming to change the nature of Beirut by bringing in Shi'ite elements, Iranian elements, Persian elements, barbarian elements, etc. All oriental stereotypes that mainstream western media and some mainstream Arab media will quickly adopt. It is not certain, however, that this portrayal for Hizballah could work in the Arab media because Hizballah is widely respected as the major defender for the Arab cause, for the Palestinian cause.

Across the Middle East the mainstream Sunni populations don't view Hizballah or its leader Hassan Nasrallah as a sectarian leader or simply a Shi'ite leader. However, the mainstream pro-government media in Lebanon attempt to portray Hizballah as a completely sectarian movement, in tune with the political lines fostered by the governments of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, France and the US.

Government forces in Lebanon claim they represent a peaceful vision for the country with their common slogan, "I Love Life," while claiming that Lebanon is being invaded by the violent Hizballah now in West Beirut.

and check this out:

Pacifism in Lebanon. While Amal militia men were roaming the streets of Beirut, Amal's TV (NBN TV) was airing documentary on Gandhi. I am not making this up . . .

Beirut Saturday 10 May

Reports are coming in that the army is sweeping up pro-government supporters in west Beirut. They are also rounding up Al-Qaeda sympathisers. There have been confrontations with Future Current supporters in Akkar in the north, Aley in the mountains, and in the south.

There are strong indications that the army has been coordinating with the opposition during the fighting.

It now seems clear that Hariri's Future Current in west Beirut has collapsed like a house of cards.

TV is showing angry funerals in Sunni areas of Beirut. Amal gunmen fired on the procession killing two.

Walid Jumblat's militia, in contrast to Hezbollah:

'Unfortunate incident'

In Beirut, 16 people were killed, two of them at a funeral procession for an earlier victim of the fighting, and there were reports that violence had spilled out of the capital and into other parts of the country.

Hezbollah said it blamed Walid Jumblatt, the pro-government Druze leader, for the death of at least two of its members in Aley, east of Beirut.

Jumblatt admitted there had been "an unfortunate incident" in the predominantly Druze and Christian town, in which "three people" had been killed.

"Two bodies were found and turned over to the army," he said.

He did not admit his supporters were responsible, but said if unconfirmed reports that the victims had been tortured proved to be true, he would "personally take responsibility for it".

Beirut Finally . . . The Fuller Picture

John Negroponte . . . US State Department flunky,
and well known Vampire

Washington pointed the finger at Iran and Syria - both of which back Hezbollah - for the violence, saying they must be held to account.

"The United States is consulting with other governments in the region and with the UN Security Council about measures that must be taken to hold those responsible for the violence in Beirut accountable," the White House said.

Mammoth war preps roundup :

On April 8, 2008, Bernard Kouchner, France’s top diplomat and head of the French Foreign Ministry, stated that Hezbollah was no longer “a domestic issue for Lebanon,” and that the Hezbollah’s weapons were a cause for serious international concern. A few days later, Fouad Siniora announced that the time for internal dialogue was over in Lebanon, while Nabih Beri was in Damascus trying to get Arab League support for new intra-Lebanese political dialogue.

The third expanded ministerial conference of the neighbouring countries of Iraq, held in Kuwait on April 22, 2008, also discussed Lebanon. The US, Saudi Arabia, France, Britain, and several other Arab states all sought to present Hezbollah as an international concern. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon released a report claiming that Hezbollah was an international problem.

All these events were aimed at internationalizing Hezbollah as a threat, and justifying US and NATO intervention in Lebanon.

These efforts entered a new phase in Lebanon too. The Hariri-led March 14 Alliance declared that it would take legal action against Hezbollah, because of a camera network monitoring Lebanon’s main airport and a telecomms network setup by the group. All this was done in coordination of the March 14 Alliance with US and Saudi Arabian diplomats in Beirut.