licentious radio

Friday, April 19, 2002
[12:22:10 PM]

The War in Context covers the war on terrorism and Israel/Palestine.

They point to: Israel: the generals' grand design. You should read this article.

Also, Imposing a two-state solution is the last chance for Middle East peace [guardian.co.uk], and Start with Palestinian statehood [latimes.com].

[11:38:49 AM]
How weird. The Washington Post runs a story about recent analysis of some JFK assassination evidence that says: "There was a shot from the grassy knoll" [washingtonpost.com].

[11:09:06 AM]
'Media Whores Online takes an unbiased, in-depth look at the astonishingly vast myriad of whores who call themselves "journalists." MWO casts a garish spotlight on the relentless screaming heads of television, the babbling paranoids of squawk radio, and the crayon scribblings of lazy print media "columnists." '

Now, the fastest, easiest source of information for journalists is the government, and this regime is the most blatant ever about punishing journalists who don't go along with the official story. But journalists seem to go overboard.

Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney suggests finding answers to some obvious questions, and journalists are still taking potshots at her.

She quite notably *didn't* suggest any of the more outrageous conspiracy theories might be true. She asked some obvious questions.

From what I've been able to see, the White House was running a major operation to lean on the Taliban to open Afghanistan up for a gas pipeline. They appear to have threatened the Taliban with "a carpet of bombs" (very poetic), if the Taliban didn't go along.

Meanwhile, the pipeline would have benefited Enron tremendously, salvaging a multi-billion dollar powerplant in India. Fancy that.

Meanwhile, the administration apparently blocked the FBI and other organizations from investigating Al Qaeda. The most-documented case was the thwarted investigation of a man training to fly airline jets in Minnesota. A concerned citizen might think that investigation would have unraveled the whole plot, and prevented the September 11 attacks.

Meanwhile, allies across Europe were warning that an attack was in the works, John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines, and (according to rumor) there was constant fighter cover over Bush's ranch while he was there.

And on September 12, when the FBI wanted to talk to Bin Laden family members in the U. S., the administration blocked that, and let a jet fly around the country to whisk the potential witnesses back to Saudi Arabia. The Bush and Bin Laden families are long-time business partners. These family ties were clearly put ahead of national security.

The suspicious implication of all of this is that White House operatives were so greedy to get the pipeline, that they blocked the FBI and company from investigating the terrorist plot. If so, this was a mistake of epic proportions, and the people involved should be removed from power. We can't afford another screw-up like that.

Beyond that, you really do get into weird conspiracy territory, but there are reasonable questions that should have reasonable answers, and the answers should be made public. For example, why didn't fighters immediately intercept the hijacked airliners? It certainly looks like there was a huge system failure there. We deserve to know what happened.

[10:26:17 AM]
Spin-on-this.com has *very* impolite humor about political issues. Now, I say impolite, but as these things go, perhaps it isn't out of line. When our fearsome "Let's Roll" air force pilots casually bomb innocent families to pieces, politeness has very little to do with it. Rumsfeld will say we're all sorry, without mentioning that we are perfectly willing to kill thousands of innocent brown-skinned Afghans, in order to avoid the deaths of a few American soldiers. And if you question that, you hate America.

From Spin-on-this:

MEDIA: JENIN NOT 'PROPER' MASSACRE
(POSTED 160402) The World's Media have confirmed Jenin was not a massacre in the 'proper sense of the word' - ie, one committed WITHOUT America's approval. Ari Fleischer explained "Sharon is not Milosevic, he's not Mugabe and he's certainly not Hussein. Ariel works for us goddammit - give the guy a break! If he commits a grotesque war crime in broad daylight in front of your eyes - ask yourself if what you really saw wasn't something completely different. Better still - pretend it was all perfectly normal, like you did with Dubya's election!" The World's Media obliged adding "carry your bags Mr Fleischer?!".