Saturday, April 5, 2008

AND NOW... for something completely different. There's a ukefest in New York. Yes, ukes, not nukes. There is a peaceful solution, you know. (Scroll down a bit for Willie Nelson's song). 12:43:46 PM

ONE MAY SMILE AND SMILE, AND BE A VILLAIN Some days ago an American friend sent me the movie 'The White River Kid'. It is a dramatic comedy 'about people coming out from behind their disguises'. 'Brother' Edgar of the Little Brothers of St. Mortimer, a Church he invented himself after having been harassed by the police about a pedlar's licence for selling reject socks and knowing that in this disguise he could get away with his scam. Apart from one serial killer the film is full of con-men. The Blair family came to mind. Well, you know, Tony being a first-class con-man himself, having subverted democracy by lying about Iraq and having started an illegal war. His wife is supposedly a human rights lawyer, but in fact she's living with a war criminal. And now, after his conversion to Catholicism, his pièce de résistance, Blair urges bigger role for faith. He is fine material for a six-shilling novel. But how cynical does it get? Here is a man who allowed torture flights to land in Britain, who collaborated with torture practices, started an illegal war, has been responsible for the killing of thousands of people, and he has the temerity, the indecency, the arrogance to tell us there should be a bigger role for faith. It shows how deep our civilization has sunk. Blair is one of the architects of the new cold war. In fact, it is not cold at all. People are already dying. Revolutions are financed (Georgia, Poland, Chechnya, Tibet), wars are fought (remember Yugoslavia?) by the US and Britain, and plans are being made to encircle the enemy, no it's not al-Qaeda, but Russia and China, the economic 'threat'. A missile 'defense' system will be put up on the borders of Russia. If that is not a threat to Russia, I don't know what is. The guns are put in place and the ideological support is being concocted. In his new book Edward Lucas is accusing Russia of being a threat. After all, while the hatred for Russians is still hot, why not take advantage of it? Even Russia's own satellite 'snoopers' are seen as a threat, while right across Russia's border US missiles are installed. Lucas's new book is all agit-prop of the worst kind, of course. It's meant as a sensibilization of the gullible Westerner to accept the new cold war. The usual trick is to accuse the 'enemy' of what you are doing yourself. Lucas has written The New Cold War. And guess who's the danger again? Yes, Russia. Putin is supposed to be responsible for the rise of oil prices, Putin is accused of harbouring in his government oligarchs who control the Russian economy, etc. etc. Mr Lucas wants to whitewash the Bush regime. It is clear that the rise in oil prices is the result of the war in Iraq. Moreover, it's the US oligarchs who are profiteering from it immensely. Then, if Russia is now capitalist and the Russian top is involved in the Russian economy, what difference is there with the US, where the involvement of government and military with industry is even greater? The US wanted capitalism in Russia, they got it, but now Mr Lucas is still not satisfied. Of course not, the purpose of the US neocons was to grab the Russian industry and resources, and have a puppet president installed like Yeltsin who caters to their US needs. Putin is a danger for the greedy financial interests of the Western neocons, British and American, and that is why the US and UK governments are actively working towards the overthrow of all governments that want their resouces to benefit their own nation. Never before have politics in the West been so dirty. Britain is supporting some pretty obnoxious parties in Russia. The same procedure is used as in Afghanistan where the Taliban were practically created by the West to fight the Russians. And the Bush administration is the most corrupt ever. A huge propaganda campaign is being put on the rails, and it involves Litvinenko and other so-called 'dissidents', strangely enough most of them also oligarchs with a KGB past (I guess Mr Lucas is not against these criminals who want to grab power in Russia). And significant 'mistakes' are being made all the time. "The Defense Department announced on Tuesday that it mistakenly shipped non-nuclear components for an intercontinental ballistic missile to Taiwan but has recovered them and launched an investigation." Also the 9/11 event is still riddled with anomalies. CommonDreams: "Last week, during a question-and-answer session following a speech he delivered San Francisco, Attorney General Michael Mukasey revealed a startling and extremely newsworthy fact. As I wrote last Saturday, Mukasey claimed that, prior to 9/11, the Bush administration was aware of a telephone call being made by an Al Qaeda Terrorist from what he called a 'safe house in Afghanistan' into the U.S., but failed to eavesdrop on that call. If the Attorney General of the United States, out of the blue, makes an extraordinary and new assertion in a public speech about an easy opportunity the Bush administration had to detect those attacks - an opportunity he claims was lost because of eavesdropping laws - Hamilton ought to say whether the Commission was ever told about this incident and/or whether Mukasey is telling the truth. Preventing high government officials from lying about the 9/11 attacks or exposing concealment of key 9/11 facts is his obligation as Vice Chairman of the Commission. Some type of comment from 9/11 Commission officials on Mukasey's claims is vital for generating further attention to this story and for compelling Mukasey to account for what he said." And what about the American Dream? What exactly is it? Has it come true? IPS: "Dr. Martin Luther King recognized that the next phase in the African-American's quest for civil rights and equality was one that would focus on the economic divide between the wealthiest Americans, the working class, and those in poverty. King's analysis of economic inequality as the foundation of racial inequality remains as valid today as it was 40 years ago. 40 Years Later: The Unrealized American Dream examines the progress in and challenges to economic equality between African Americans and whites since April 4, 1968 using data from the US Census Bureau, the Economic Policy Institute, the Survey of Consumer Finances, and other sources. Findings conclude that despite educational advances, economic equality for African Americans is still a dream, not a reality." Of course, African Americans and the poor are the basic material for cannon fodder. When, or if, they come home from one of the neocons' wars they don't even get proper health care. Lefti: "At least eight Californians die every day because they don't have health insurance. An estimated 3,100 adults in the state died in 2006 because they lacked insurance and either couldn't afford the care they needed, got substandard care or got treatment after it was too late, determined researchers with Families USA, a national health care advocacy organization based in Washington. The national Institute of Medicine concluded that between 2001 and 2004, a lack of insurance caused roughly 18,000 deaths nationwide per year." TomDispatch: "In Iraq, in Afghanistan, and at home, the position of the globe's 'sole superpower' is visibly fraying. The country that was once proclaimed an 'empire lite' has proven increasingly light-headed. The country once hailed as a power greater than that of imperial Rome or imperial Britain, a dominating force beyond anything ever seen on the planet, now can't seem to make a move in its own interest that isn't a disaster. The Iraq government's recent offensive in Basra is but the latest example with - we can be sure - more to come." DieZeit: "Das Unbehagen am Kapitalismus wächst. Nicht einmal Manager vertrauen noch dem Markt. Gerät nun das ganze System ins Wanken?" "The unease about capitalism is growing. Even managers don't trust the market system any longer. Is the whole system collapsing?" Zeit: "Karl Marx predicted it. Capitalism nowadays functions exactly as he described it. Wherever the great world builder turns up, not one stone remains upon another. Here capitalism has milk and honey flowing, there it creates misery. Here it builds, there it destroys. Nothing remains as it was." "Doch wer sagt eigentlich, dass westliche Demokratien auf diese neue Herausforderung genauso reagieren werden wie bei der Systemkonkurrenz mit dem Kommunismus? Wer sagt, dass sie auf die Freiheit setzen, um dem autoritären Ausbeutungskapitalismus Paroli zu bieten? Es könnte auch ganz anders kommen. Politische Eliten und rechte Intellektuelle könnten aus der ökonomisch verursachten Legitimationskrise der Demokratie die Lehre ziehen, dass auch der liberale Kapitalismus endlich autoritärer werden und durch Demokratieverzicht neue ökonomische Triebkräfte entfesseln muss." "But who says that Western democracies will react to this challenge exactly like with the system competition with communism? Who says that they are putting their money on freedom to counteract the authoritarian exploitative capitalism? It can turn out quite differently. Political elites and right-wing intellectuals could draw the lesson from the economically created crisis of legitimacy that also the liberal capitalism must finally become more authoritarian and engage new driving forces by abandoning democracy." So that is our future: totalitarianism, exactly that what the present crooks and liars are saying they are fighting against. Capitalism has lost all legitimacy. The question is when the supporting system of money, banks and wars will collapse. It can take time, but it will eventually. 12:26:24 PM

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD Geert Wilders has removed his video from his site. He had breached copyrights in three cases. So it's back to the drawing board. Much ado about nothing anyway. But the discussion is going on. I hope that islamists will now realize that threatening people with death is not the way to promote Islam. But they could make a point of the unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and put their views forward in a reasoned way. 10:30:38 AM

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