Saturday, April 19, 2008

GREED AND VIOLENCE One of our leading cabaret artists has voiced his annoyance about the Tibet hype and said that the nonsense the Dalai Lama is ventilating is now being seen as 'wisdom'. He said that China is changing in a positive way and that the euphoria about the pitiful Tibetans is a sign of shortsightedness. When the Dalai Lama was in power his was not a gentle rule. He said we accepted the war against Iraq and the thousands of deaths there without too much scruples. So a boycot of the Olympics is not reasonable. He is quite right. The present Tibet hype is largely fuelled by America and taken up by those xenophobic and simplistic new-agers who believe in the 'wisdom' of backward nations. They see the Tibetan monks as cute little animals, who need a cuddle. Get real! It seems that much of the hype is simply diversion tactics, diversion from an economical crisis and unjust and catastrophic wars. Guardian: "When it comes to rigging elections, countries like Jordan and Egypt have been happy to oblige in recent months - in the Egyptian case, jailing hundreds of opposition activists into the bargain - and almost nobody in the west has batted an eyelid. In Saudi Arabia there are no national elections at all, let alone the opposition MPs and newspapers that exist in Zimbabwe. In Africa, Togo has been a more flagrant rigger, while in Cameroon last week the president was given the job for life. And when it comes to separatist and independence movements, the Turkish Kurds have faced far more violence and a tighter cultural clampdown than the Tibetans. The crucial difference, of course, and the reason why these conflicts and violations don't get the deluxe media and political treatment offered to the Zimbabwean opposition or Tibetan separatists is that the governments involved are all backed by the west, compounded in the Zimbabwean case by a transparently racist agenda. But it's not just an issue of hypocrisy and double standards, egregious though they are. It's also that British and US involvement and interference have been crucial to both the Zimbabwean and Tibetan conflicts." Reuters: "A court said in a non-binding ruling on Thursday that Japan's dispatch of air force troops to Iraq was unconstitutional, but the government said it would press on with the military activity anyway." This is something you see more and more: government leaders who breach national and international laws. ACLU: "The American Civil Liberties Union obtained documents from the Department of Defense confirming the military's use of unlawful interrogation methods on detainees held in U.S. custody in Afghanistan. The documents from the military's Criminal Investigation Division (CID), obtained as a result of the ACLU's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, include the first on-the-ground reports of torture in Gardez, Afghanistan to be publicly released." Fiore on Bush. Bradblog: "As Pope Benedict XVI was met with a resplendent ceremony on the White House lawn this morning, George W. Bush noted the visit would remind Americans to 'distinguish between simple right and wrong'. 'We need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism,' Bush said. Is it just us? Or, given the news of late, concerning meetings in the White House to discuss what kind of torture America would officially carry out, isn't there something perversely discordant in Bush's remarks? The Pope, who is celebrating his 81st birthday today, gave a few of his own remarks in turn (to which Bush replied 'awesome speech') before being serenaded with a rousing rendition of 'Battle Hymn of the Republic', as performed by a U.S. military choir." WashingtonPost: "The Bush administration said yesterday that it plans to start using the nation's most advanced spy technology for domestic purposes soon, rebuffing challenges by House Democrats over the idea's legal authority." The example of lawless behaviour is followed by other leaders and of course neocons. JerusalemPost: "Opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu has said if he is elected prime minister, he won't carry out any peace deal with the Palestinians reached by current Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, a newspaper reported Thursday." NYTimes: "Hedge fund managers, those masters of a secretive, sometimes volatile financial universe, are making money on a scale that once seemed unimaginable, even in Wall Street's rarefied realms. One manager, John Paulson, made $3.7 billion last year. He reaped that bounty, probably the richest in Wall Street history, by betting against certain mortgages and complex financial products that held them." Soros: "Mr. Soros' opening sentence summarizes his sense of urgency about the turmoil in the financial world, where he is one of the most successful and enduring of investors: 'We are in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the 1930s.'" RawStory: "US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said Tuesday that America's Social Security program for the retired is "financially unsustainable" and needs an urgent overhaul." Of course, the neocons are so greedy they also want the social security money. BBC: "The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has accused 112 construction companies of rigging bids for contracts." The same has been happening for more than a decade in the Netherlands and the rest of Europe. Volkskrant: Several Dutch firms which had a contract with the Dutch government to pay back part of their turn-over in the lucrative Joint Strike Fighter deal (after all, the government invested hugely in the project), are now refusing to pay the money back. The spectre of neocon greed is haunting the world. 9:04:08 PM

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