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Monday, May 5, 2008 |
Indepenent: "Tony and Cherie Blair have bought the £4m former home of legendary actor Sir John Gielgud, it was reported last night. The Grade I listed stately home near Chequers is the Blairs' sixth property in their growing portfolio."
Tony Blair is a war criminal who should be on trial. He has destroyed the democratic process and destroyed the Labour party. Blair is not a socialist, he is a full-blown capitalist, who has lied and cheated to corrupt Britain. He has promoted a neocon world in which the benefits go exclusively to the rich.
Independent: "Giant agribusinesses are enjoying soaring earnings and profits out of the world food crisis which is driving millions of people towards starvation, The Independent on Sunday can reveal. And speculation is helping to drive the prices of basic foodstuffs out of the reach of the hungry.
The prices of wheat, corn and rice have soared over the past year driving the world's poor - who already spend about 80 per cent of their income on food - into hunger and destitution."
And then there is the military industrial complex of course. Or rather it's the private military industry that is slowly taking over the military tasks of our governments and are thriving enormously on war and destruction. What you destroy must be reconstructed, so the benefit is double. The taxpayers still pay for the illegal wars, but the profits are strictly for the private 'security forces' and the multinationals who play a role in destruction and rebuilding.
TheNation: "On September 10, 2001, before most Americans had heard of Al Qaeda or imagined the possibility of a 'war on terror', Donald Rumsfeld stepped to the podium at the Pentagon to deliver one of his first major addresses as Defense Secretary under President George W. Bush. Standing before the former corporate executives he had tapped as his top deputies overseeing the high-stakes business of military contracting - many of them from firms like Enron, General Dynamics and Aerospace Corporation - Rumsfeld issued a declaration of war.
The often overlooked subplot of the wars of the post-9/11 period is their unprecedented scale of outsourcing and privatization. From the moment the US troop buildup began in advance of the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon made private contractors an integral part of the operations. Even as the government gave the public appearance of attempting diplomacy, Halliburton was prepping for a massive operation. When US tanks rolled into Baghdad in March 2003, they brought with them the largest army of private contractors ever deployed in modern war. By the end of Rumsfeld's tenure in late 2006, there were an estimated 100,000 private contractors on the ground in Iraq - an almost one-to-one ratio with active-duty American soldiers.
To the great satisfaction of the war industry, before Rumsfeld resigned he took the extraordinary step of classifying private contractors as an official part of the US war machine."
Blackwater, The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army.
12:35:55 PM 
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Saturday, May 3, 2008 |
NYTimes: "In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded 'the gulag of our times' by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.
The administration's communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.
To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as 'military analysts' whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.
Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration's wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.
The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.
Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration's war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.
Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse - an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks."
PRWatch's John Stauber appears on PBS NewsHour to talk about the Pentagon Pundits scandal.
PRWatch: "The Pentagon military analyst program unveiled in last week's exposé by David Barstow in the New York Times was not just unethical but illegal. It violates, for starters, specific restrictions that Congress has been placing in its annual appropriation bills every year since 1951. According to those restrictions, 'No part of any appropriation contained in this or any other Act shall be used for publicity or propaganda purposes within the United States not heretofore authorized by the Congress.'"
Fiore's animation.
PRWatch: "As part of its plan to expand online 'information operations', the Pentagon is launching 'a global network of foreign-language news websites ... and hiring local journalists to write current events stories and other content that promote U.S. interests', reports Peter Eisler. The Pentagon launched Matawani.com last year, an Arabic-language site with Iraq news; other sites are being developed for Asian and Latin American audiences. Like the Pentagon's older 'news' sites, aimed at North Africa and Southeast Europe, the new sites only disclose U.S. Defense Department involvement on a single page reached via a small 'about' link at the bottom of the site. The goal of the Pentagon's 'Trans Regional Web Initiative' is to launch 'a minimum of six' websites run by regional U.S. military commands."
George W. Bush has announced he is going to spend some money on world hunger. Let me guess what will happen: he will pay all this money to a few American multinationals who will then send some stuff abroad. In fact, it is more a 'help American industry' program.
World hunger is the result of the machinations by neocons like Bush and the World Bank.
Their spin and lies cover all aspects of their policies.
Of course, America's first agitprop sorties date from much earlier.
Chalmers Johnson: "The RAND Corporation of Santa Monica, California, was set up immediately after World War II by the U.S. Army Air Corps (soon to become the U.S. Air Force). The Air Force generals who had the idea were trying to perpetuate the wartime relationship that had developed between the scientific and intellectual communities and the American military, as exemplified by the Manhattan Project to develop and build the atomic bomb.
Soon enough, however, RAND became a key institutional building block of the Cold War American empire. As the premier think tank for the U.S.'s role as hegemon of the Western world, RAND was instrumental in giving that empire the militaristic cast it retains to this day and in hugely enlarging official demands for atomic bombs, nuclear submarines, intercontinental ballistic missiles, and long-range bombers. Without RAND, our military-industrial complex, as well as our democracy, would look quite different."
And the system has now embraced torture within its own ranks (previously relegated to their pawns in South America, or the Middle East).
CommonDreams: "'Why are we talking about this in the White House?' John Ashcroft nervously asked his fellow members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee. (The Principals were Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General Ashcroft.)
'History will not judge this kindly,' Ashcroft predicted.
'This' is torture. Against innocent people. Conducted by CIA agents and American soldiers and marines. Sanctioned by legal opinions issued by Ashcroft's Justice Department. Directly ordered by George W. Bush.
An April 11th report by ABC News describes how CIA agents, asked by previous presidents to carry out illegal 'black ops' actions (torture and killings), had become tired of getting hung out to dry whenever their dirty deeds were revealed by the press. When the Bush Administration asked the CIA to work over prisoners captured in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, Director George Tenet demanded legal cover. The Justice Department complied by issuing a classified 2002 memo, the so-called 'Golden Shield', authored by Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee. 'Enhanced interrogation techniques' - i.e., torture - were legal, Bybee assured the CIA."
2:55:28 PM
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Independent: "Alexander Litvinenko died on 23 November 2006, after a mysterious and painful illness. The cause was identified, less than two hours before his death, by scientists at the British government's Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. They found that he had been poisoned, with the radioactive isotope polonium-210.
A long and detailed article by the veteran US investigative journalist, Edward Jay Epstein, was printed in The New York Sun (19 March 2008) and has been avidly read and critiqued on the internet.
What he says struck him above all about the papers was the flimsiness of the British case and the lack of even a post-mortem report.
This is that Alexander poisoned himself while handling radioactive material. Epstein posits that Litvinenko was poisoned by accident - the post mortem, he says, would have determined whether he ingested the polonium-210 or inhaled it. Part of his thesis is that the isotope had been smuggled to London not to murder someone, but as part of an illegal nuclear transaction.
And while coroners officially enjoy substantial independence, there are points where political pressure can be exerted. So the more time that elapses without an inquest being scheduled into one of London's most high-profile deaths, the more the delay looks suspicious. After all, if the case is as cut and dried as the British government has consistently made out, what has anyone possibly to lose?
The answer, if the persistent digging of informed sceptics, such as Epstein, has come anywhere near the truth, could be an awful lot.
The most obvious relate to the polonium-210 that was identified as the cause of his illness just before he died. Then there is the role of Andrei Lugovoi. The Crown Prosecution Service says it has enough evidence to charge with murder, but the only third party to have seen the papers, Edward Epstein, says the case is extremely thin. Third, there are the mysterious activities of Litvinenko himself. The fourth cluster of questions concerns the part, if any, played by the British secret services, and, last, the role of the exiled Russian oligarch, the enigmatic Boris Berezovsky.
What is certain is that Russia is not the only producer of polonium-210. Epstein (among others) reports that, while Russia produces it for export to the United States (!), any country with a nuclear reactor not subject to IAEA inspection can produce it - they include China, Israel, Pakistan, India and North Korea. So the consolation that there is only Russia to worry about is flat wrong.
But there is another, and perhaps bigger, problem. Scientists who know anything about polonium-210 find it hard to believe that anyone would choose it as a murder weapon against one individual, even if the purpose was to evade detection. For a start, it is extremely expensive. But it also fits much more comfortably into another scenario: that of nuclear smuggling. It seems far more likely that the polonium tracked in London was part of some sort of deal - a deal that, for whatever reason, went disastrously wrong.
Demand for polonium-210 on the illegal international market is as a key element in detonating a nuclear explosion. This is why it commands such a fantastically high price - hundreds of thousands, if not the many millions, of dollars mentioned by some. Money, and even nuclear terrorism, thus emerge as plausible motives to compete with the theory of a Putin-inspired political assassination. Either would entail embarrassment for the British authorities, for it would suggest that illegal nuclear trafficking was going on under their very noses, with all the attendant dangers to the population. It also raises the question of border security. The small matter of how such a lethal substance got into the country pertains, of course, regardless of its intended purpose. So far, however, this crucial question has been successfully muffled by the horror of the presumed crime and the blanket allegation that 'the Russians did it'.
The second cluster of questions relates to Andrei Lugovoi, charged in Britain with Litvinenko's murder.
As Lugovoi tells it, a long, calculated effort was made by MI6 to recruit him - an effort he eventually rebuffed.
What we have here, then, is a chief suspect with no motive, who may not have been the source of the polonium, and who says he was set up by MI6. If this last point is true, then there may be other reasons why he has been accused - and why the British might not want him in a London witness box.
This could explain something else that has long been a mystery to me. I always found it difficult to believe that the British ever seriously expected to obtain Lugovoi's extradition, especially against a Russian constitutional provision that expressly protects Russian nationals against being delivered to a foreign country. I never understood, either, why the British were so furious about Russia's non-compliance that almost the first act of David Miliband as Foreign Secretary was to up the ante by expelling four Russian diplomats.
British official fury becomes more much more comprehensible, however, if Lugovoi's real crime in their eyes was not to have killed Litvinenko, but to have fled the clutches of British intelligence - with, perhaps, information valuable enough to buy his safety back home. Fast-tracked into the Russian parliament last December, he now enjoys immunity not only from extradition, but from prosecution in his own country.
Mystery surrounds precisely how Litvinenko occupied himself when he was not at home watching old videos. He and his family received a house and an income from Boris Berezovsky's charitable foundation, but it is not clear what his paymaster might have asked of him in return.
There has been speculation that towards the end he had money worries, precipitated perhaps by a desire to break with Berezovsky. Others say this is disinformation. What is not in dispute is that he had known Andrei Lugovoi in the 1990s and that they shared a connection with Boris Berezovsky. They had not been in touch, however, for almost 10 years, when Litvinenko suddenly approached Lugovoi from London, and suggested meeting up. Lugovoi says they then did some - unidentified - projects together, though he suggests that Litvinenko did little more than sit in on his meetings, in the hope, perhaps, of drumming up some business for himself.
No evidence has emerged that either was involved in nuclear smuggling - or, if they were, on whose behalf. One person who definitely was involved in such murky dealings, however, is Mario Scaramella, the Italian businessman and academic, whom Litvinenko met on 1 November at the Itsu restaurant in Piccadilly.
It is also worth noting that one of the few instances of nuclear smuggling to have come to light in recent years (of uranium) concerned a Russian man caught in Georgia in 2007 as part of an FBI 'sting' operation. Which introduces another dimension.
It has been confidently reported that, at the time of his death, Litvinenko was receiving a retainer from MI6. For obvious reasons, This will never be confirmed, although irregular payments to exiles for particular pieces of information are routinely made. A retainer, though, would suggest more systematic cooperation.
It seems safe to say that Litvinenko had a relationship with MI6, which could be seen as providing a motive for Russia - or rival Russian exiles - to eliminate him. But it could also be seen as a hint of desperation: perhaps he could find no other line of paying business. Whatever the truth, MI6 probably knows more about what happened to Litvinenko, and why, than might be concluded from its complete non-appearance in the authorised British version of his death.
If the shadowy hand of MI6 can be detected in the Litvinenko affair, then so can that of Boris Berezovsky. The Russian exile, multi-millionaire property magnate, and perpetual thorn in Putin's side, was a constant presence behind the scenes. It was he who sponsored Litvinenko's entry to Britain - out of gratitude, it is said, for Litvinenko's refusal, in the late Nineties, to act on orders to kill him. He appears to have been Litvinenko's main source of employment in Britain, and his charity continues to support his widow.
In the last week of Litvinenko's life, it was also Berezovsky's money that bought the publicity campaign, so expertly fronted by Alex Goldfarb. Thus the view that the British public had of Litvinenko's illness and death was essentially dictated by Berezovsky.
Some have asked whether so comprehensive a PR effort might not have been intended as a diversion - to disguise, say, a catastrophic accident to Berezovsky's employee and recast it as a Kremlin-ordered assassination. That cannot be excluded.
The discovery that the poison was not thallium, but polonium-210, however - a substance that would be intended for mass, rather than individual, annihilation - suggests that the context was not political vendetta, but illicit nuclear trading. The careless handling of radioactive material then becomes by far the most likely explanation for Litvinenko's death.
That the polonium might also have been tracked as part of an attempted security services 'sting' would also explain why British officials have stuck so rigidly to their version. Why, after all, would they choose to pick a quarrel with the Kremlin, rather than present Litvinenko as the accidental victim of Russian émigré nuclear trafficking - unless there was something in the latter explanation they needed to hide?
In fact, any softening so far is to be discerned on the British side. We have not heard any furious public statements about Russia's iniquities for a while. It was announced recently that a new ambassador had been appointed to take over from Sir Anthony Brenton, who had angered the Kremlin by consorting with opposition figures.
Sad to say, there may be those in Britain who are even more interested than the new overlord of the Kremlin in seeing this divisive case consigned to oblivion."
2:19:02 PM
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Sunday, April 27, 2008 |
EconomistsView: "For the world as a whole (or at least the more than 90 percent of global GDP represented by our dataset), the current period can be seen as a typical lull that follows large global financial crises.
Aside from the current lull, one element that jumps out from the figure is the long periods where a high percentage of all countries are in a state of default or restructuring. Indeed, there are five pronounced peaks or default cycles in the figure. The first is during the Napoleonic War while the most recent cycle encompasses the emerging market debt crises of the 1980s and 1990s.
Another regularity found in the literature on modern financial crises is that countries experiencing large capital inflows are at high risk of having a debt crisis. Default is likely to be accompanied by a currency crash and a spurt of inflation.
Also consonant with the modern theory of crises is the striking correlation between freer capital mobility and the incidence of banking crises.
This brings us to our central theme - the 'this time is different' syndrome. There is a view today that both countries and creditors have learned from their mistakes.
Such celebration may be premature. Capital flow/default cycles have been around since at least 1800. Technology has changed, the height of humans has changed, and fashions have changed. Yet the ability of governments and investors to delude themselves, giving rise to periodic bouts of euphoria that usually end in tears, seems to have remained a constant."
What is actually happening is, in my view, a structural crisis. Capitalism has to return to its previous methods of exploitation to keep going. The rich are getting richer. And those at the bottom are experiencing increasingly hard times, with cuts in essential services, like health care, welfare, public transport, etc.
A recent proposal by the Dutch postal services (formerly state owned) was to reduce the wages of their postmen by 25%. Outrageous! The rich are doing fine and are creating a crisis that affects the people and the system as a whole. What we have is a bunch of neocons who have no responsibility towards the people or nation whatsoever, and continue to destroy the system from within, grabbing whatever they can for their sole benefit.
As in politics, the basic method is to lie and cheat.
CommonDreams: "Genetic modification actually cuts the productivity of crops, an authoritative new study shows, undermining repeated claims that a switch to the controversial technology is needed to solve the growing world food crisis.
The study - carried out over the past three years at the University of Kansas in the US grain belt - has found that GM soya produces about 10 per cent less food than its conventional equivalent, contradicting assertions by advocates of the technology that it increases yields.
Professor Barney Gordon, of the university's department of agronomy, said he started the research - reported in the journal Better Crops - because many farmers who had changed over to the GM crop had 'noticed that yields are not as high as expected even under optimal conditions'. He added: 'People were asking the question 'how come I don't get as high a yield as I used to?'
Last week the biggest study of its kind ever conducted - the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development - concluded that GM was not the answer to world hunger."
If we allow this monopoly to take over our crops production, the prospect of a world-wide famine is not far away. But don't worry, the monopolists will still earn their billions while millions of people will be dying.
Actually the purpose of the neocons is not to provide food and eradicate hunger, but to gather capital in the hands of the evil few. That is the essential flaw of our present world, it's no longer about people but about money.
And trouble is expected. So what is the reaction of our lawmakers?
Statewatch: "Proposal to create EU-wide 'troublemakers' database
- to 'prevent individuals or groups who are considered to pose a potential threat to the maintenance of public law and order and/or security from travelling to the location of the event'
- and to put in place: 'The necessary arrangements for a quick and efficient implementation of the potential expulsion measures'
- EU Security Handbook: 'The scope of the manual is now such that it applies to the security (both from a public order point of view as well as counter-terrorism) of all major international events, be it political, sporting, social, cultural or other.'"
It is all about the protection of the exploiting neocons.
In a way, present politics and economy are a kind of scientology, a system based on lies and cheats to benefit the rich. It is not a Church, but it only calls itself a Church for tax reasons.
VillageVoice: "'There seems to be a level of hypnosis or brainwashing or whatever you want to call it, and this training is a way of getting people hypnotized. And there's a lot of patter that you're constantly hearing that helps you get in that state,' he (television actor Jason Beghe) says."
Read more.
There is no freedom in our economy. A free market does not exist. The large companies are fixing prices and the governments won't do much about that.
Bloomberg: "Tesco Plc, Imperial Tobacco Group Plc and eleven other companies were accused of fixing cigarette prices between 2000 and 2003 by the U.K.'s antitrust regulator, opening the first formal probe of tobacco sales."
FPD: "A German member of the European Parliament (MEP) has called on the European Commission (EC) to investigate claims that glass bottle makers have been fixing prices."
IHT: "Deutsche Telekom AG lost a European court appeal Thursday against a fine EU regulators imposed in 2003 for price fixing that damaged Internet and phone rivals over five years."
If by anyone, price fixing should be done by government giving due consideration to the interests of the people and the industry. But again we see that neocons are taking over the essential tasks of government. That is why they don't want government interference, that is why they want to destroy the power of national governments.
11:38:55 AM
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Saturday, April 19, 2008 |
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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Saturday, April 12, 2008 |
A few more days and Carlos Ruiz Zafón's new book, El Juego del Angel, will be out. If you have read Zafón's earlier book, La Sombra del Viento, you will know what I am talking about.
You can download three of his unpublished stories here. And if you hadn't already downloaded the music to La Sombra del Viento a year ago, you can get it there too, with some desktop wallpapers.
5:33:27 PM
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Saturday, April 5, 2008 |
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
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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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Friday, March 28, 2008 |
Fitna the movie was removed from LiveLeak following threats to their staff. See their statement.
But you can still watch the video here. Or here.
Fitna is a right-wing propaganda film, but it does not incite violence, it does not call for the killing of islamists. In the United States several tv channel pundits have in the past expressed their desire to see some of their opponents killed. Apparently this is bon ton there. When islamists now react violently to this film they are proving Wilders' film right. If their reaction is violence then yes, indeed, those islamists are violent extremists.
When Theo van Gogh was murdered by an islamist here in Holland some years ago, some islamists were allowed to react before tv and tell us that the murder was justified; there was no rebuttal of their extremist views.
Therefore it is my opinion that this film does not breach the law and should be allowed, even shown on national tv.
If islamists start rampaging and burning embassies they are doing exactly what Wilders accused them of.
Today the Dutch PM was interviewed on public tv about the film. Strangely enough he said that what Holland was best at doing were things like our involvement in Afghanistan. Duh! Of course he was definitely against the film, but fighting in Afghanistan was a good thing! How stupid do they come? The unjust wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are exactly the reason why islamists feel attacked. Wilders should have the right to show his film, but the Netherlands does not have the right to invade Afghanistan.
Get our troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Only that can be the basis for a mutual understanding.
11:04:34 PM
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Geert Wilders' film is out.
Just a few preliminary thoughts on this.
Quoting the Koran and highlighting some dubious sentences is not really convincing. The Bible too contains some unpalatable stuff.
Then we see the WTC attack for the umpteenth time. I still ask myself why the US government did everything to prevent intercepting the 'hijackers'. Too much remains uncertain.
Moreover, which countries have wreaked havoc all over the world for decades? Yes, the US and Britain, and they are still going at it. Millions of people have been murdered with the help of the CIA and US governments, from South America to Asia, from Argentina to Vietnam. So what is the main source of violence nowadays? It's the neocon United States. And presidents like George W. Bush also say 'Gott mit uns!'. He calls himself a 'Christian', but allows torture, and thinks he is above national and international law. And that is not typical of just one president. The US is convinced of its droit de seigneur, its right to invade and pillage any country without any accountability to the United Nations and its charter.
Guardian: "US courts are not bound by the international court of justice or by direct orders from the president, the supreme court ruled today when it refused to allow a fresh hearing for a Mexican on death row."
The US supplied Saddam Hussein with weapons and the Taliban with weapons and extremist propaganda for 'strategic' purposes, and so in fact created them. Now they are fighting the spectre they let loose themselves. It's cynical and mad.
10:44:02 AM
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Tuesday, March 25, 2008 |
BBC: "A website that a Dutch right-wing politician was planning to use to release a film expected to be fiercely critical of Islam has been suspended."
I am not a Wilders supporter, on the contrary; Wilders is a right-winger with some pretty weird ideas. But suspending a website without reason is going too far. There still is the freedom of expression and the press. And this kind of taking the law in their own hands is not conducive to an atmosphere of reason and tolerance. The laws of this country are clear. And everyone, Islamists and right-wingers should stick to it.
Just suppose Mr Wilders is going to make public on April 1 that his film does not exist, that he only raised the subject to show how our society would react, with fear and a suspension of the freedom of expression. That would be a devastating blow to the official Dutch reaction of hysteria and fear of repercussions on Dutch financial interests.
If Wilders really has a film he has the right to show it. If it breaches the law, people can file a complaint. Not earlier.
10:43:40 AM
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Michael Moore: "It would have to happen on Easter Sunday, wouldn't it, that the 4,000th American soldier would die in Iraq. Play me that crazy preacher again, will you, about how maybe God, in all his infinite wisdom, may not exactly be blessing America these days. Is anyone surprised?"
Send Us Not Our Grandchildren: "10 grandmothers and supporters, ages 57 to 80, tried to enlist in the US Army at an Atlanta recruiting office on St. Paddy's Day. Following the nurturing instincts of grandmas everywhere, they offered to replace young Americans in harm's way in Iraq. When their generous offer was refused, these gritty grannies stood their ground. 'We insist! We enlist!' When will the paddy wagons go to the White House for the real criminals?"
If you would like to make a contribution to the Atlanta Grandmothers for Peace Legal Defense Fund, send checks to:
Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition/Atlanta
P.O. Box 133016
Atlanta GA 30333
On the memo line, write Grandmothers Legal Defense.
Compare those peacefully protesting granmas to the violently rampaging, looting and killing Tibetan monks, and you'll see which police intervention is justified or not.
RawStory: "Associated Press president Tom Curley says his news organization does not buy the government's argument that one of its photographers arrested in Iraq was working on behalf of the enemy, and he alleged the US is rounding up journalists in an attempt to control information."
Reuters: "More than 200 people were arrested across the United States on Wednesday as protesters marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq obstructed downtown traffic and tried to block access to government offices."
Guardian: "Somewhere in the Middle East, Jesus Christ is strapped to a bench, his head wrapped in clingfilm. He furiously sucks against the plastic. A hole is pierced, but only so that a filthy rag can be stuffed back into his mouth. He is turned upside down and water slowly poured into the rag. The torturer whispers religious abuse. If you are God, save yourself you fucking idiot. Fighting to pull in oxygen through the increasingly saturated rag, his lungs start to fill up with water. Someone punches him in the stomach.
Perhaps this is how we ought to be re-telling the story of Christ's passion. For ever since the cross became a piece of jewellery, it has been drained of its power to sicken. Even before this the Romans had taken their hated instrument of torture and turned it into the logo of a new religion. Few makeovers can have been so historically significant. The very secular cross was transformed into a sort of club badge for Christians, something to be proud of.
Two weeks ago, the most powerful Christian in the world vetoed a bill that would have made it illegal for the CIA to use waterboarding on detainees. 'We need to ensure our intelligence officials have all the tools they need to stop the terrorists,' said George Bush in a passable impersonation of Pontius Pilate. 'This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe.'"
10:31:10 AM
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Friday, March 21, 2008 |
Reuters: "The U.S. dollar's value is dropping so fast against the euro that small currency outlets in Amsterdam are turning away tourists seeking to sell their dollars for local money while on vacation in the Netherlands."
5:12:11 PM
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Thursday, March 20, 2008 |
CNBC: "A British judge has lifted a $12 billion freeze on Venezuelan assets awarded to U.S. oil major Exxon Mobil in a spat over a seized oil project.
An English court had frozen the assets of Venezuela's state oil company in January so cash would be available if Exxon won arbitration over an oil project which was lost in President Hugo Chavez's nationalization drive."
11:01:40 AM
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A small demonstration of ten Tibetans in say Seattle gets loads of attention in the media. When thousands and thousands of people protest against the war in Iraq, you won't find much on the mainstream media in the US or the neocon Netherlands.
FAIR: "Dozens of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars gathered in Silver Spring, Maryland last weekend for the Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan hearings (3/13/08-3/16/08), where they offered harrowing testimony about atrocities they had witnessed or participated in directly. The BBC predicted that the event, organized by Iraq Veterans Against the War, 'could be dominating the headlines around the world this week' (3/7/08). The hearings were covered as far afield as the U.K. (Guardian, 3/17/08), Australia (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 3/14/08), Croatia (Javno, 3/16/08), and Iran (Press TV, 3/14/08). Yet there has been an almost complete media blackout on this historic news event in the U.S. corporate media."
Iraq veterans against the war.
Guardian: "If George Bush and Tony Blair had presided as CEOs over deceptive and fraudulent practices in the City comparable to those they are guilty of with regard to Iraq, they would have been immediately and unceremoniously sacked.
Five years on, the legacy of the Iraq war is now clear. Let us look at the balance sheet.
Based on an extrapolation from the figures of the Lancet study, more than 1 million Iraqi civilians have died - a figure that might even eclipse the genocide in Rwanda.
In terms of casualties, 3979 US soldiers have died to date, and almost 30,000 have been seriously wounded.
Four million refugees have been created. Two million of these have fled the country altogether; 2 million have been internally displaced."
Ah well, Tony Bliar is probably having a cigar and reading one of his Wodehouse books, about the 'splendid idyll' that was, don't you know. And George, well, George actually doesn't read very much.
WallStreetJournal: "America's decision to topple Saddam Hussein has left Iraqis a people uprooted. Iraq's Ministry of Health estimates that 180,000 Iraqis have been killed; other estimates put the numbers much higher.
An estimated four million Iraqis - over 14% of the country's population - have been displaced inside Iraq or to neighboring countries, largely due to the chaotic aftermath of the American-led invasion that began on March 19, 2003."
IHT: "British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said in a letter published Monday that the U.K. will hold an inquiry into the Iraq war - but not soon."
Gordon has first to finish one of his Wodehouse books first, probably. Right Ho, Jeeves!
But the disgruntlement among soldiers (the real ones, not the toy-boys like Harry) and veterans is growing.
ON: "It's an old story in America. During the civil war the weapons corporations delivered inferior rifles to the soldiers of the Union army and they maximized their profits. We see the same thing happening today in Iraq and Afghanistan."
AlterNet: "Not so long ago in the United States, presidentially sanctioned assassinations abroad were illegal. But that was then, this is so now. Nonetheless, it's a fact that the 'right' to missile, bomb, shell, 'decapitate', or assassinate those we declare to be our enemies, without regard to borders or sovereignty, is based on nothing more than the power to do it. This is simply the 'right' of force (and of technology). If the tables were turned, any American would recognize such acts for the barbarism they represent."
10:53:29 AM
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