Information is not power

There is a little theory that is still being banded about which maintains that information is power but the 'New Statesmen' stumbles closer to the truth when it contends that "the electronic gush of information, and invitations to offer feedback, which comes our way can often obscure where real power lies."(1) However, I am not even sure that it obscures anything; "power is power" and although they don't always poke the one-eyed man's eyes out in the kingdom of the blind, he is certainly not king. The blogs, the feedback, the alternative media, they can all run riot, they can all have their little platform, but it is 'big oil', the 'neo-cons', 'Wall Street' and their mainstream junk that will hold sway and never at anytime has it been more true that in the West we live in a system, which grants us free speech but not the power to change anything and we watch helplessly as our governments pursue illegal wars, as our politicians commit crimes against humanity, as our bankers rob us blind. In the meantime, 'Real News' appears to have gone down the drain and 'Democracy Now' is probably struggling to survive. Moreover, with almost one hundred and ten million blogs worldwide, of which, 99% are, more or less, completely ignored, the 'media moguls', the boys at Goldman Sachs, Dick, George, Cony, the "hype" man and all their cronies here there and everywhere must be laughing their little heads off. An interesting "Brave New World" that we have landed ourselves in.
1 http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2009/05/online-information-feedback

The Obama Brand

"If a man can make a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to his door", this little quote, which is, I think, attributed to the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, is not completely true in its contention and, while I am tempted to think that the new iMac would not be a complete failure even without 'Apple's' wonderful marketing of the product, we cannot underestimate the role that marketing plays. Yes, it is safe to say that the product has long since been dethroned and that it is marketing and advertising that holds court. That brings me to a little story that a German friend told me at dinner recently.
Jürgen works for a German company called 'Linde' and, if you know 'Linde', you will know that they make excellent products. Anyway, Jürgen, who works in Sales, was telling me that while their product is excellent, they could learn a lot from the Anglo-Saxons when it comes to selling. That positive praise for the Anglo-Saxons was though somewhat tempered by him going on to say that he has watched super presentations being given by American and Brits only to discover later that the actual content of the presentation was hot air and when it came to delivering the goods according to the promised conditions at a later date ..... anyway, you get the gist, and there was me thinking back to my time working in advertising and telling a client that our magazine had a circulation of 20,000 when in actual fact the figure was much closer to 2,000.
One hundred and a couple of days into the "hype" man's term in office and the loquacious, "pull the wool over our eyes" verbal skills of America's marketing men has never been more obvious and here we have an administration that has excused torture, sent more of its young men to kill and be killed in an illegal war, conned the international community into propping up "Uncle Sam's" IMF and World Bank.... but really, I have to get to the point and, the point is; this "hope and change" sell is so absurd, such drivel, such a lie that you begin to realise these people could market condoms in the Vatican, ice on Greenland or whisky in Saudi Arabia and when the dead come home from the Hindukush, the "hype" man might be asked to stand up and say a few words on how they had not died deaths in vain and how the war in terror has to be won etc. etc. The world is still waiting on a "better mousetrap" and in the meantime the "Obama" brand holds court.

The Sopranos

Here is me at a half past midnight, indulging, in a wee bit of escapism, watching the 'Sopranos' on the new iMac and then beginning to analyse my wee bit of escapism. There you have yourself thinking that this Tony Soprano chap is actually a quite fair, quite nice guy and then you pinch yourself and think well .... well, the man is a psychopath and then you have his son visiting a psychologist and rabbiting on about the situation in Palestine as people fighting over a piece of sand because their respective Gods say that it is theirs and then there is this bit where the same son is almost surreptitiously reading 'Al Jazerra' on the internet and in the mainstream media in the US of A, reading 'Al Jazerra', it would appear, is portrayed as radical stuff. Radical stuff, indeed, and round about the end of the series we learn that the young man's solution to the world's ills is to join the US Army and go to Afghanistan. Well, it is time to see the 'Sopranos' for what it is; light hearted entertainment, not to be taken seriously and if we are not going to let them play mind games with us, don't let's start playing mind games with ourselves. Of course, the problem is that while some of us might use crap like this to lower our affective filters, switch off and become cognitively engaged with more creative, worthwhile thoughts, there are a lot of people out there who just don't have much of an affective filter to lower and crap like this ends up substituting that cognitive depth that might get us a bit closer to Rousseau's 'Emile' with nonsense like this and then off we go to school and with a loaded gun and shoot up half of our classroom or even worse we emulateTony Soprano's son Anthony Soprano Jr, better known as "A.J." and get ourselves out to the Hindikush not to prevent or treat the dying there, but to do the killing. The mind boggles but then maybe "ego" should just chill out.

Japanese Communist Party has 410,00 members

Apparently in the last sixteen months membership of the Japanese Communist Party has increased to more than 410,000 with some 25% of those who have joined since the end of 2007 under the age of 30. Now with some 100 million more across the South China Sea Karl Marx could be forgiven a smile from the grave and there might even be some who can envisage a brave new world in the not too distant future. Of course, with just nine seats in the 480 seat parliament and with a parliamentary system that, like the one in the United Kingdom, is not too democratic the rise in Japan might not mean very much, not even in Japan. Moreover, while the 410,000 member in the Japanese party might signify a some increase in consciousness in Japan ..... well, let us not hope too much for that brave new world coming from a CCP that would seem to be more in sync with Lenin's little tirade round about ninety years ago when he said that the problem with most Communists was that they didn't understand very much about communism. Still with 100 million members they might not all be lost souls and who knows, perhaps, the struggle is still going on, and maybe the Japanese "cuddly Communists" will get to together with that more enlightened part of the CCP, which does still know what communism is. You have got to have a dream.

This is so absurd

Picked the following up at 'Y Net News'; "Regarding Israel's borders, Netanyahu says he plans on keeping 50% of the West Bank, including the Jordan Valley." He then went on to say, "Among other things his government is demanding control of the Palestinian state's airspace as well as its border crossings, and the power to limit its relations with countries such as Iran."(1) This is so absurd, these are illegally occupied territories, you don't get to "keep" something that is not yours and if you do keep it, it is called "theft" and this is what UN Security Council Resolution 242 is saying; "Israel's continued presence in the area occupied since 1967 is illegal." Indeed, the General Council of the United Nations Resolution 194, which is renewed every year in the General Assembly goes further and demands that the Palestinians have a right of return to the homes that the lost during the 'Nakba' or they have a right to commensurate compenstation. Now, what do we have Netanyahu offering the Palestinians? Well, half of the 22% of what was originally Palestine, half of that 22% that the Zionists have been occupying since 1967. Of course, Netanyahu will even let the Palestinians call this 11%, of what was originally Palestine, "a state", providing, of course, that Israel can control that "state's" borders, its airspace and its foreign policy. Of course, once they get their "vichy Palestine" our Zionists can then have a field day making "their" little collection of Palestinian "Quislings" responsible for law and order in the new Palestinian state, while planning their next transfer of population, namely, that of the one and a half million Palestinians who hold Israeli citizenship to their brand new "state". If we are looking for historical parallels we would either be better conjuring up a "what if .....?" scenario - and just imagine the British had given the Irish County Cork in 1921 and then began to "ethnically cleanse" the rest of the island of anyone who held onto an Irish identity - or we might draw parallels with either the "bantustans" under apartheid or, indeed, the reservations that the white man hearded the red indians into.
1 http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3705306,00.html

A couple of light years from Munich

Outside the streets of Munich are looking their usual scrubbed selves, the sun has it's hat on and we are basking in 25 degrees, the streets are littered with little tables and the beautiful sun worshipers are interrupting the supping of their "lattes" only to smile with their pearly white teeth, the recession is a million miles away and Central Africa a couple of light years, and there was me stumbling on an article in 'Congo Watch' by an independent journalist, an American, called Keith Harmon Snow. His prose are good and would deserve a place on any of the tables in front of the 'Caffe Deli' window. Perhaps, not next to the copy of Klaus Mann's 'Mephisto' that I can see out of the corner of my eye but most definitely next to the 'süddeutsche Zeitung' as a better written, more honest alternative, to a newspaper that has not only seen it's circulation figures plummet in the last few years.
Keith Harmon Snow has not been corrupted by a mainstream media that has almost completely fallen under the sway of the big cooperations and he writes; "Many years ago, George Orwell had warned against the dangers of propaganda, or what he called "New Speak." We hear New Speak every day; where everything is turned upside down, killers are praised, while innocents are marched off to shallow graves in the forests. New Speak celebrates murderers as heroes and denounces victims."(1) Harman Snow's point of reference is Africa and if we want to begin to guage the size of the problem he is talking about we should go to his own web site, 'All Things Pass'.(2) Essential reading if you want to know about the hidden agendas of the western media and about "Uncle Sam's" greed for the mineral wealth of the region. There you will meet the master "new speaker" Uganda's Yoweri Museveni, a man who has "single-handedly, with the assistance of U.K. and U.S. financing and military hardware, caused the deaths of more than eight million Africans --half a million or more in Uganda; one million in Rwanda; seven million in Congo."(3) A man who, along with "Uncle Sam's" other side-kick, Paul Kagame, is ensuring that the suffering does not stop.
Outside the sun has got its hat on, the beautiful people smile through their pearly white teeth and it suddenly dawns on me that the genoicide in Central and East Africa is light years away from them because of the trivia trashy journalism which they expose themselves to, a journalism which is light years away from the man who writes in his own website, "I want to tell the world this story... because I cannot get it into the mainstream "news" and the photos will not be shown there... I want you to know about the western interests behind this war, about the huge deceptions of it, about the hidden agendas of the National Geographic and the New York Times...about George Bush and Bill Clinton and their connections to mining operations in Congo."(4) Finally, I am reminded of the Palestinian who showed me the keys from the house that his family had to leave during the "Nakba" in 1948 and saying to me, "tell everyone the truth" and there was me thinking, "Omar, even if people knew the truth, they wouldn't be interested." Welcome to '1984'!
1 http://congowatch.blogspot.com/
2 http://www.allthingspass.com/
3 ibid see 1
4 ibid see 2
The map shows the political divisions on that other planet a couple of light years from Munich.

the pot calling the kettle black

There was me a couple of days ago, more or less, praising Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's speech in Geneva and, if I remember correctly, I was grateful to Erodgan for, some of the benefits that fell the Palestinians way after his flare up with Peres just down the road from Geneva, in Davos, a few weeks ago.(1) Now, I know that Erdogan denies Tukey's own little holocaust, namely, that perpetrated against the Armenians and I know that the Turkish government hardly handles their own ethnic minorities with kid gloves. Moreover, we all know that the Islamic regime in Teheran is, ....well, isn't very "nice" and the evidence would appear to suggest that in Iran, bloggers, prostitutes and quite a few others sometimes end up in prison and, indeed, sometimes dead. Therefore, are the Turkish and Iranian presidents really people we should be listening to? Well, normally not. However, what did Erdogan and Ahmadinejad actually say? Well, Erdogan got "upset" because the Israelis were killing men, women and children indiscrimently in Gaza and Ahmadinejad said that Israel is built on someone else's land, and that .... well, among other things, that they had just ben on a killing spree in Gaza. Now, both Ahmadinejad and Erdogan are political creatures of the machiavellien sort and I really doubt as to whether they are very nice people and, indeed, I really doubt that they are too concerned one way or another about the Palestinians. Nevertheless, while it is all a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, or a bit like a murderer calling someone else a murderer, surely what should also interest us is, is the kettle really black and is the person who is being called a murderer a murderer?
1 http://thediplomatabroad.blogspot.com/2009/03/sting-slang-complicated-confidence-game.html

Taliban advance in Pakistan

It would appear that a few hundred Taliban have just taken control of a "strategically important district" just seventy miles from the Pakistani capital, Islamabad.(1) Certainly, something to worry about and all the more so when the "hype" man's side kick, Hillary Rodman Clinton, says to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, that "the deterioration of security in nuclear-armed Pakistan “poses a mortal threat to the security and safety of our country and the world.” and that while “we spend a lot of time worrying about Iran — Pakistan already has them. And they are widely dispersed in the country.”(2) The "Iran" and the "them" in that first sentence are, of course, anaphoric reference to that little worrying matter, "nuclear weapons". You see the problem is the Pakistani government can now only control about a third of the artificial creation that is Pakistan, that veritable British fuck-up and one that was held together only by force. Now it would appear that the force is crumbling and there we have them, our pious Pashtun from "this" side of the 'Durand Line' seizing towns some sixty miles from Islamabad and if we want an inkling of their exact plans for Pakistan we don't have to look across the border to Afghansitan but direct our eyes on the Swat valley, which the Pakistani goverment has long given up control of and where "government officials take orders from Taliban commanders; the regular police uniform has given way to the shalwar kameez — loose trousers and long shirt; notices posted at barbers’ shops warn against shaving; women are not allowed to shop alone and public punishments and beatings are common."(3)
A right "little" mess the incursion into Afghanistan and eight years down the road it is looking increasingly as if Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's President, will be taking on a role not unlike that of his Afghani counterpart, the man with the nice shawls, Hamid Karzai, namely, bunkering himself up in the capital city. Of course, with Pakistan we also have that "little" issue of the nuclear weapons. However, not to worry, "Uncle Sam" has reacted and not only has the "hype" man increased the war effort in the area we have the Defence Secretary, Robert Gates saying, “My hope is that there will be an increasing recognition on the part of the Pakistani government that the Taliban in Pakistan are in fact an existential threat to the democratic government of that country,” Mr. Gates said. “I think that some of the leaders certainly understand that. But it is important that they not only recognize it, but take the appropriate actions to deal with it.”(4) Anyway, it is more or less official, and Georgie boys "little" 'War on Terror' in the Hindikush has spread to Pakistan and, of course, everyone is to blame except the idiots who started it all in the first place and Hillary the evidence would seem to suggest that that mortal threat to the security a the world you are referring to comes from your country.
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/24/world/asia/24pstan.html?_r=1&hp
2 Ibid
3 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6150376.ece
4 ibd see 1, 2
The picture shows our pious Pashtu pilgrims in Dagger the main town in Pakistan's Bruner district.

Jews for Peace

A tried and tested ruse; any criticism of Israel is equated with anti-semitism. However, that is not the only reason why, outside Israel, organisations such as 'Jewish Voice for Peace', 'Independent Jewish Voices', 'Jews against the Occupation', American Jews for a Just Peace, and many more, and organisations in Israel, such as those being set up by the IDF "Refuseniks", 'The Israeli Committee against House Demolitions', and 'Gush Shalom', are crucial. They are also indispensible if there is to be that kind of peace where both Jews and Palestinians can live together peacefully. There is a chance for dialogue, a chance for justice and the chance for that kind of solution that can accomodate most Israelis, while redressing many of the wrongs that the Palestinians have had to endure since 1948 in particular. It is, however, not a solution that can accomodate the zany Zionists, however. Moreover, it is very important that there are Jews both inside and outside of Israel who recognise this. Especially, when other, non-Jewish, opponents of zionism are being branded as anti-semitic.

Cheney says torture was necessary

Now Dick Cheney, one might expect, would want nothing more than to just retire to obscurity. However, here we have him turning up on that veritable "pravda" cum "Völkische Beobachter" of television news, 'FOX', and announcing that he had asked the CIA to declassify reports documenting the intelligence gained from the "interrogations".(1) This is after the Obama administration revealed that during Bush's time in office "interrogations" were in fact torture and thattorture was officially sanction and while our "hype" man said that he, "will not pursue prosecutions of CIA employees"(2) this isn't really enough for Dickie. You see this arsehole actually wants to argue that torture was necessary and that a lot of valuable intelligence was gained from it and he wants the CIA to provide him with the documentation to support his absurd thesis. Well, isn't it a pity we didn't have someone torturing George, Dickie, Donald, Cony and Tony, to get the necessary information about the illegal wars that they were about to pursue, to unlarve the odious lies that they were telling, and to thus avoid the slaughter of millions and millions of innocents who died in their wars? Well, that didn't happen and our "fabulous five" are obviously going to escape justice. However, is it really necessary that we are to be exposed further to their disgusting drivel? It is time for them to be thankful that they are not sharing a tract on death row, count their blessings and slip out of public view.
1 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/21/us/politics/21intel.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=cheney%20fox&st=cse
2 http://www.democracynow.org/2009/4/17/memos

Ahmadinejad sparks a walk out at UN meeting

It really is amazing the way these people hit back; the headline in today's 'Haaretz' was that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that "the holocaust was a pretext for Israel's creation."(1) The text reads, that Ahmadinejad "charged the West with dispossessing the Palestinians "on the pretext of Jewish suffering from World War II."(2) The impression that is to be created is that Ahmadinejad is accussing Israel of wanting the holocaust. Well, I suppose Ahmadinejad leaves himself wide open to all sorts of interpretations and Hitler certainly didn't gas six million Jews in order to facilitate the creation of the Zionist state. However, what he is saying is quite simply that the holocaust was used as a pretext by the Zionists and the West to create the Jewish state. Indeed, the evidence would seem to suggest that he is anything but a holocaust denier as all none of his statements seem to doubt that the holocaust did happen. Therefore, what is he? Well,he is saying that Israel is a racist regime and here again, not quite right Mahmoud as Jews are no more of a race than catholics, protestants, sunni muslims or shiite muslims are. Still, we will forgive him that slip and, if I remember correctly, didn't Durban 1 equate zionism with racism? No, I am making Mahmoud dot his "eyes" and cross his "tees" here and what he is, of course saying, is that Israel discriminates against non-Jews, against Arabs. He has said that the Zionists used the holocaust to provide "moral" arguments that facilitated them dispossessing the Palestinians, he has said that the West facilitated this dispossession and he has said that Israel is a state where the Palestinians who live there are third class citizens. Now, our zionist "friends" are displaying their usual indignation and spouting out their usual drivel and there we had Peres today saying, "The gas has dissipated, but the poison remains," Peres said. "There are still Holocaust deniers and hot-headed skinheads in the world, those who bear the sort of visceral hatred that leads to racist murder."(3) Shimon this has nothing to do with the three main tenents of Ahmadinejad's thesis and I wonder why the Israeli Prime Minister, Netanyhu didn't go to Switzerland to confront the Iranian President. Of course, they didn't go because there are no real arguments against what Ahmadinejad was saying. The Palestinians were dispossessed, the West facilitated this dispossession and the holocaust gave the zionists the "moral" highground in establishing their state, a state that some forty five years previously, almost ended up in Africa. Moreover, the treatment of the Palestinians, both inside and outside the green line, is, at best discrimatory, and at worse on a par with the Nazi hordes in their "occupied territories".
Finally, an interesting little footnote; after saying that he intented to challenge Ahmadinejad personally on his views regarding the holocaust and Israel, Swiss authorities escorted Alan Dershowitz away from the hotel where the Iranian President and his Swiss counterpart, Hans-Rudolf Merz were meeting.(4) This is the very same Dershowitz who started a witch hunt against Norman Finkelstein after the said Dr Finkelstein expose the opportunist and Israel apologist for the "academic" clown that he is.(5) In exposing Dershowitz, Finkelstein's thesis statement was not radically different from Ahmadinejad's. Yes, even rational clear thinking intellectuals can agree with mad "mahdi" propagating homophobes when it comes to our zany zionists.
1 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079628.html
2 ibd
3 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079641.html
4 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1079592.html
5 http://www.democracynow.org/2007/4/17/noam_chomsky_accuses_alan_dershowitz_of

Thought Police

There we all were sitting having dinner in Qingdao and there was the shout from the kitchen, "look, look, look" and there was a wee plane taking of from the sea, but we didn't see it, we continued eating, and about two hours later there was a "knock, knock, knock" on the door and there they were standing there, three policemen and a couple of men in plain clothes who introduced themselves as "Chinese National Security". The problem was, the wee plane, had been taking off from the wee military base that was next to my flat, the photo had been taken facing the sun, there had been a flash and, apparently, a little Chinese soldier had looked up at the window and had started screaming and screeching at the German lady, who had taken the photo and there they were confiscating my laptop and digital camera. To cut a long story short, I got the "guanxi" going and I got the laptop and the camera back within a couple of days. In the meantime, however, I had managed to send a couple of the photos from the base to a friend in England and he did not really understand the "much ado about nothing" telling me that you can get better photos of the base on 'Google Earth' and there was me about four months doing a little virtual walk in Seville on 'Google Street View' before I went to Seville and found myself doing the same "little" virtual walk real time every day and that brings me to the new iMac.
The new iMac arrived yesterday and I started playing with their programme for photos. It is really incredible not only does it have this "face recognition" facility, where you identify a face and it automatically finds all the faces belonging to that person, but it also has this thing that, providing you have been using a GPS camera, recognises where and when you have taken the photo, adds that information to the photo and then categorises it according to the place, date etc. However, there was another aspect of this GPS facility that I found mind boggling; it also provides a little google map for where the photo was taken. Now, I don't know where all of this is leading but I am beginning to think we have entered a brave new world where if "they" want, "they" don't only know where you are but "they" also know where you were and what you were doing when you were there. Furthermore, we are only starting out on this journey and already google, who I have to thank for facilitating this blog, seem to know quite a lot, quite a lot, about us and, while we might be able to trust them, we should always remember that there is the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the MI5, the MI6, the etc. etc. , who already store our private calls and our emails, who might just say to google, "give us some data, please." Moreover, with google already having reached its "agreement" with the Chinese authorities and with yahoo having already given the Chinese informaton that led to arrests in China, it would be naive to think that they are not going to cooperate with other governments when those governments tell them to do so.

Bill and Yang

It was an interesting end to a sort of media filled day today. A day that began with me watching a documentary on the media in China on that fine German-French channel, 'ARTE and ended with me watching the documentary"Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism" on the new iMac, and some conclusions were made. Firstly, the evidence would seem to suggest that that democracy "par excellence" across the Atlantic, is, at best, a much lessor democracy than the majority of its citizens are led to believe. Indeed, one might even argue that the American media is about as "free" as its counterpart in the Middle Kingdom. Nevertheless, it was my encounter with Bill O'Reilly, a rather, unpleasant, obnoxious loud mouthed right wing nutter who serves as an anchorman for Fox, that had me making a more specific comparison and my mind went back to Beijing's Yang Rui, who hosts CCTV 9's 'Dialogue', and I thought, where do these two twats actually differ? Yang Rui, can be extremely smug and downright condescending when it comes to towing the party line and spouting out his "jingoistic" nonsense, and Bill? Well, you might want to watch him interview Jeremy M Click, who lost his father in 9/11; Bill is not only rude, smug and condescending, he is also arrogant, aggressive and threatening. Yes, Yang and Bill, and I cannot thing of more appropriate ambassadors for their respective countries.
Of course, there are mainstream channels, like 'ARTE' and '3 SAT', here in Germany that facilitate good objective, journalism. Moreover, the battle for the web is still going in China, the United States and elsewhere. It is time to pick up the remote control, time to think, and time to stop listening to the drivel that the "Yangs" and "Bills" spout and when we stop listening to them, perhaps, we will stop listening to their political masters.
Picture: Yang's 'Dialogue' is looking for guests. Bill interviewing Yang and Yang interviewing Bill that should be worth a laugh or two at least.

Bombing a Country to Democracy

Obama is continuing Bush's policy of deadly air strikes in Pakistan and with Afghanis urging him to send aid and not troops, he has ordered an additional 17,000 US combat troops to Afghanistan, and with a foreign occupation, torture, rendition, bombing civilians, going on in their country, do we really expect the Afghanis to support women's rights and democracy? Napoleon brought French ideas across the Rhine at the end of French bayonets; at the time the ideas were progressive, the reaction and rejection that followed wouldn't be. Indeed, it is not wholly wrong to argue that the manner in which those "progressive" ideas were disseminated at least helped to spawn national socialism. Then there was the British who banned thugee and surpressed the practice of sati. The Indian Mutiny of 1857/58 was to follow.
The French ideas were revolutionary in their day but you don't occupy countries and expect them to accept your ideas with open arms. The British in banning sati and tackling the practice of thuggery were only being "civilised" and now we have the advent of the "hype" man who preaches democracy and human rights but bombs civilians. Of course, it was never about the spreading of French ideas but rather about extending the borders of Imperial France and it was all about expanding the British Empire and not about spreading British "civilisation". Now, we have the "hype" man sending more young American boys to foreign fields to kill and be killed and expecting his sychophants, "blighty" to the fore, to do the same. We should, at least, be aware of why they are killing and being killed.

Time to monitor the monitors

You see them everywhere I was thinking while walking through Brunel campus last summer, there they are watching your every step, from the halls, down to the bus stop and in front of Uxbridge train station, sitting at Costa's supping your coffee, peering at you and off you go"rumbly, rumbly", "chug, chug" overground, underground, and off you get and up, up into Leicester Square and there they are staring, glaring, the cctv cameras, and oops don't pull that bar of chocolate out of your pocket too quickly and don't start running if two policemen are walking towards you or then it's bang, bang, bang and curtains for you.
Klaus Matza from Vienna, a 69-year-old retired television cameraman with a taste for modern architecture,won't be returning to the "big smoke" and why? Well, it would appear that he and his teenage son were taking photos of London transport a bit "abseits" from the tourist trail and two policemen forced them to delete the photos in the name of preventing terrorism.(1) Klaus is quite rightly pissed off and from his home in Vienna he said he won't be going back to London and added, "I've never had these experiences anywhere, never in the world, not even in Communist countries."(2) Well Klaus in China the Chinese authorities deleted two of my photos but then they were of a military base. Although my mate did tell me that he could see the photos of the base on 'google earth'. Christ, 'google street view' can watch you doing a crap! Of course, that is not the point and the point is that "they" can watch you doing a crap, they can monitor your telephone calls, your emails, they can, .... well, they can do what they want and in the meantime, the police have said that as far as they know there are no restrictions on photographing public transport in the capital.(3) Well, there we have it, it was just two policemen doing basically what they want. Still, it could be worse just ask Jean Charles de Menezes's family.(4) Time maybe to monitor the monitors.
1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/apr/16/police-delete-tourist-photos
2 ibid
3 ibid
4 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4713753.stm
The picture shows "big brother" watching all the pretty girls go by

Wall Street's puppet

The German pseudo-intellectual invariably thinks that if something cannot be understood, it must be good. Or how else can you explain Hegel's popularity? Sometimes, however, we really do make things more difficult to understand than they really are and sometimes things really are quite simple. There are not two conflicting moral arguments regarding the situation in Palestine; there is one moral argument and one immoral argument. It really is as simple as that. Similarly " the financial crisis", "the credit crisis", "the economic crisis", call it what you will, has left us all confused and very few of us really know what a sub-prime mortgage or a derivative is. However, what has actually happened, what is happening, really is crystal clear; the money has been concentrated in even fewer hands, the American government is acting as a big holding company and the ex-Wall Street bankers in the administration and the current mob at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and elsewhere, avail themselves of pay offs and access massive "bailouts" courtesy of their mates, and is it really as simple as that? Well, not quite and it is not only about these people lining their own pockets and as Mike Morgan, a registered investment adviser, says, "if you just look at Wall Street and where the money came from, you will realize that Barack Hussein Obama is nothing more than a puppet of Wall Street."(1) Morgan is, of course, referring to the money for those "bailouts", which see money, and power, concentrated in even fewer hands. That's right folks, not only do they steal your money, but they also run the show and you don't have to know what a derivative or a prime sub mortgage is to understand that much. Indeed, you don't even have to understand Hegel.
http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/7738/

Alison des Forges

It would be going a step too far to contend that Alison des Forges death, when Continental Airlines Flight 3407 crashed on route to Buffalo, New York, was more than an accident. The cramped commuter plane crashed on February 12th in icy weather near Buffalo. Fifty people were killed.(1) Nevertheless, Alison had many enemies who wanted her out of the way.
One of those enemies was the Rwandan President, Paul Kagame, whose RPF murdered some 30,000 people in the immediate aftermath of the Rwandan genocide. It is a number that doesn't compare with 800,000 genocide victims, the government in Kigali is quick to point out; a genocide that is meticulously documented in Alison's award-winning account, "Leave None to Tell the Story". Nevertheless, 30,000 is hardly an insignificant number and it cannot be ignored, because, as Allison contended, "if it is ignored any "justice handed down in Rwanda will "look like selective victor's justice."(2) Paul Kagame's government twice denied Alison entrance to Rwanda; an admission of how much Kagame has to hide, perhaps?
One explanation of why the mass murder after the genocide was allowed to happen is that officials in the Clinton administration were "traumatized by the genocide and shamed by their failure to stop it and that they gave the new Tutsi government a pass on its abuses against Hutu civilians."(3) This, however, really paints a false picture. French and American complicity and incompetence were certainly responsible for the genocide in Rwanda in the first place. However, with Paul Kagame "Uncle Sam" had its man in Africa and American hypocrisy and greed would quite easily allow the good old US of A to turn a blind eye to his "friend's" indiscretions. After all with the gold, diamonds, columbium-tantalite (coltan), platinum, natural gas and oil that the region offers(4) "we" don't want to upset our friends, do we? Allison, however, was not prepared to look away. With the crash on the 12th of February Kagame and his paymaster in Washington had managed to rid themselves of an unrelenting critic.
1 http://www.economist.com/obituary/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13137097
2 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kenneth-roth/a-heroine-for-human-right_b_167072.html
3 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/17/AR2009021702718.html
4 http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/04/the-rwanda-genocide-fabrications/
The picture shows Alison des Forges

Anti-Israel and Anti-Semitism

In writing, "Cheapening the charge of anti-semitism", Mike Marqusee enters into a debate with John Mann, the Labour MP for Bassetlaw, when he argues that a particular article by Mann is just one more effort to sully critics of Israel with the "anti-semitism" tag and "thereby muddy the waters in the debate about the Middle East."(1) The reference is to the article, "When language becomes an actor".(2) After reading both Mann and the riposte, I see myself as further supported in my hypothesis that the Zionists pull the anti-semitic card, not only to "muddy the waters" as Marqusee points out, but also to gain an "intellectual" and "moral" credibility for a machavilian "Realpolitik" that, in fact, sullies the memories of the real victims of the holocaust, while facilitating an ongoing crime against an innocent people. Or were Palestinians working at Auschwitz?
It is time for all of us to distinguish between Judiasm and Zionism and it is time for us to force the Zionists to be aware of that distinction, to become aware of the fact that we no longer buy their nonsense. It is especially crucial that we of the left do this for as Marqusee writes in an earlier article, "The elevation of brutal Israeli realpolitik into an article of faith is a mockery of the ethical, universalist strand of Judaism that once flowed into revolutionary social movements around the world."(3) Or what position do you think Karl Marx, Rosa Luxemburg and Leon Trotsky, to name but a few, would have adopted vis-a-vis Palestine? They would have adopted a similar position to that being adopted by Norman Finkelstein, Illan Pappe, Naomi Klein and Naom Chomsky, to name but a few.
1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/mar/17/cheapeningthechargeofantis
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/mar/17/religion.world
3 http://www.mikemarqusee.com/index.php?p=171

Munich

One could easily get the impression that the economic crisis has sort of, at worst, brushed over here and that the world "outside" has very little to do with the "devil take tomorrow", "carpe diem", "la dolce vita", "que serra", "live and let live" "Weltanschauung" that perseveres in southern Bavaria at this time of the year in particular, but never quite goes away the whole year round. No coming to grips with the nitty- gritty of the world outside, of the starving millions, of the news behind the news, the real news. Here, no gripes about social injustice and for the "Hartz 4", unemployed, social security dependent, underclass, no climbing the barricades and there is always enough there for another "mass" of cold beer; there will be no red flags on the streets of Munich.
For my part, I am drawn to think about Winston at the end of '1984' when he sits outside the cafe waiting, waiting for what? Still, there is a trifle more on offer here than there was for Winston; bike rides through beautiful countryside, the "panem et circenses" of digital television, iPod, Apple,Champions League football, silly newspapers, good food and, should ego decide to go off the wagon, good beer. Wouldn't have been enough to stop a Michail Lermontov or an Ivan Turgenev from going mad, and, just as the Nihilists in 19th century Russia, sought refuge in their Nihilism to escape the Narodnik reaction to the assasination attempt on Alexander I, the escape from "reality" here for your "intellectual" can be found in literature, film, music, in the superficiality of a "Zeitgeist" that allows us to say everything and anything we want but criticise nothing really and, "abseits" from the nitty-gritty, with the sun beating down on Ludwig Strasse, what would we really want to criticise?
The picture was taken yesterday Munich

What a mess

News from East and Central Africa generally concentrates on Southern Sudan, Somalia and Rwanda; the some 300,000 who have died in the Dafur region, the pirates off of the Somalian coast and the Rwandan genocide, which saw the deaths of up to a million Tutsi are well known. The Democratic Republic of the Congo, where some six million people have died in the last ten years, and Uganda, however, receive scant coverage. Today, for instance, I was lucky enough to find a current article in the 'Guardian', which reports on how the situation in North and South Kivu, after "completion" of the joint DRC/Rwandan operations, has not improved.(1) The article goes on to explain how, following the Rwandan army's withdrawal from DRC in February, the FDLR Hutu forces are now returning to their former positions and one local is reported as saying, ""What good did it do to provoke the FDLR if you were not able to finish them off once and for all?"(2) We could also view the joint operations against Joseph Kony's 'Lord Resistence Army' in a similar vain; the quite mad Joseph, is still on the rampage, no closer to being captured, and now he really has got a bee in his bonnet and in the meantime the Rwandan president, Paul Kagame is no closer to handing his "protege" Nkunda over to Kinshasa for the crimes he commited in the DRC. It is one bloody mess down in Central and East Africa and we are confronted with a reality where "Uncle Sam's" stooges, Museveni in Uganda, Kagame in Uganda and Mayardit in the South Sudan, stir up the hornet's nest at will but are exonerated of any responsibility for their actions. Indeed, they are portrayed in the western media as genuine leaders and, for a time at least, in Museveni's case, and to some extent, in Kagame's case, statesmen. We are not told that Museveni is ethnically cleansing the Acholi, Kony's tribe, in Northern Uganda and that Kagame is pursuing a little genocide of his own in North and South Kivu and in Rwanda itself. Now, why should we be told that? After all, these are the guys who wear the white stetsons, "our men in Africa", the "goodies". Moreover, the media, by keeping mum on "Uncle Sam's" sychophants, allows that very efficient divide and rule policy that facilitates the bigger rape of the region; the rape of some of the richest mineral resources in the planet. Half the truth covers up the big lie, the lie of a democratic, freedom loving, humanitarian, altruistic, US of A.
1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/10/congo-united-nations-aid
2 ibid

"American" victims of Hezbollah sue North Korea

It really is becoming difficult to pull myself away from that insult to man's intelligence that is the Zionist absurdity. There was me today with a fixed determination not to write about the region and, with blue heavens over Central Europe, I was all easy-going, full of the joys of spring and thinking of things closer to home and then out of the sun and onto the web and bang, bang, bang; the 'Jerusalem Post' today really does bring the zany Zionist zealots and their crazy road show right into your living room. "N.Korea sued for aiding Hizbollah" is the article in question and it refers to thirty plaintiffs, who all hold US citizenship, claiming that the North Korean-built bunkers enabled Hizbullah to fire thousands of rockets at Israel from below the ground, thwarting IAF efforts to locate launching pads."(1) Apart from anything else, these idiots all had American passports and once their "brave" boys started bombing Beruit they could have, had they wanted to, driven down to Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv and taken the plane to their other "Heimat". No such luck for the men, women and children who were burned alive at Qana, Beruit, Bin Jbeil with weapons"made in the United States".
According to the'Haaretz'; "The suit seeks more than a $100 million in compensatory damages and an unspecified sum of punitive damages, and also names Hezbollah as a defendant."(2) In reading this we could actually hope that they plaintiffs are successful and that they all pick up their two point something million dollars; take the politics out of it and you have really got to admire their audacity especially after the recent news that an American judge has ordered Iran to pay twenty five million US dollars for the murder of an IDF soldier who also held American citizenship.(3) Indeed, maybe we should wish them luck in their claim. After all, the regime in North Korea might be unable to feed its population but it can, no doubt, afford $100 million dollars. Yes, politics aside, it really is worth a try, isn't it? Moreover it might open the floodgates for Lebanese citizens suing the American government for their aiding and abetting the Zionist terrorists in 2006, and suing the zany Zionists for their maiming and murdering. Of course, they wouldn't have a leg to stand on, and I don't only mean that literally. After all, not for them the luxury of having an American passport. Furthermore, can you imagine the repercussions of a successful claim for damages against Israel?
1 http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1238562952090&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull#
2 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077703.html
3 http://thediplomatabroad.blogspot.com/2009/03/it-cannot-really-get-much-more.html

Gerry Adams goes to Gaza

Tony Blair used to annoy me with his naive harping on about "conflict resolutions", while his ignorance of the true nature of the conflict in question was all too obvious. Yet, Blair was articulate and in the Northern Ireland situation that and the willingness of the 'Sinn Fein' leadership to put a united Ireland on hold, led to a conflict resolution of sorts; we now have an all inclusive society in the north of the island. Nevertheless, I could never overcome my suspicion that Tony didn't know very much about the island of Ireland and when he came to applying this "conflict resolution" to Palestine, he really did expose us to the most awful, albeit still articulate, uninformed drivel imaginable. Surprise, surprise then that Gerry Adams turns up in the south of Israel and Gaza and spouts off similar drivel and he was reported in 'An Phoblacht' as saying, “I believe there should be a complete cessation of all hostilities and freedom of movement for everyone. There needs to be a dialogue between the people of Palestine and their leadership; and the people of Israel and their leadership; leading to a peace settlement which must be urgently built."(1) Gerry, Tony never really quite got the picture and the fact is that the British really don't have a political role to play in the north of Ireland, and while you might be compromising, temporarily, on your ultimate goal of a united Ireland, it really is offensive to listen to you come away with the type of drivel that we have come to expect from the "Friends of Israel ltd". In Palestine, as in Ireland, there is only one party which is being wronged; the Palestinians have had their land taken away from them, they are being ethnically cleansed and if you want to make some sort of comparison you might look at the situation in Ireland not in 2009 but in 1846. Moreover, any negotiation that the Israelis are going to enter into will fail to address the ethnic cleansing of 1948, will fail to address any real Palestinian national aspirations and, indeed, will fall well short of offering the Palestinians that all inclusive society that, for the time being, nationalists in the north of Ireland are willing to accept in place of the foreseeable fulfillment of their national aspirations. Gerry, one really does wonder how you would have felt had the British offered the nationalist community in Northern Ireland the Bogside, West Belfast, Crossmaglen and a few other "Bantustans", one really wonders. It would be good if you were to do some serious research Mr Adams before you open your mouth on the subject of Palestine and if you have done your research, you should really think about what you say.
1 http://www.anphoblacht.com/news/detail/37979
The picture above shows Ismail Haniyeh, the Palestinian prime minister, meeting Gerry Adams of 'Sinn Féin' in the Gaza Strip today

Tel Aviv a Hebrew City

There was a documentary on Germany's "ARD" this evening, celebrating "100 years of Tel Aviv", "Die hebräische Stadt" (The Hebrew City).(1) A documentary, which appeals to our western "tastes", a city full of young people who just want to live their lives, a city with a "carpe diem" philosophy, a liberal city etc. etc. and there we have one young Israeli landscape artist, who likes to go into the woods and paint the trees and who explains to us the difference between a German wood and an Israeli wood, and doesn't he realise that the "Israeli" wood is, very probably, built on a Palestinian village and doesn't he realise that parts of Tel Aviv and most of his country are built on Palestinian land? He doesn't realise it, they don't realise it and they don't want to realise it and there they are, creating their own little realities in the "bubble" and telling us that it is their escape from a starker, not so pleasant, "reality" that accompanies their lives; the reality of the war and I am left asking myself the question, when did 1,200 Tel Avivians die because of Arab bombing? Tel Aviv a modern city, that just wants to enjoy life, a "liberal" city where "Gay Pride" has pride of place and its citizens are not proud enough to do everything they can to stop the ongoing ethnic cleansing just up the road, around the corner, next door, that is going on in their name.
No, I am sorry, it just doesn't wash; Tel Aviv is not London or New York or Paris or Sydney and it never will be and, perhaps, just perhaps, when this "hebrew city" opens its doors to everyone in the region and, perhaps, when the citizens of this city are aware of what is under Israeli woods and, perhaps, just perhaps, when the citizens of this city refuse to go to the military and, perhaps, just perhaps, when they realise the difference between Saadam's few scud rockets, the 'Hamas' ineffectual "Qassams" and the carnage that befell Gaza a few weeks ago, perhaps then Tel Aviv really will have earned its right to "carpe diem" it.
1 http://ard-digital.de/32123_1
The picture is from the Tel Aviv "love parade" and love is all you need!

Devious Iran hiding nuclear ambitions

Got this from today's 'Haaretz', "President Shimon Peres on Monday said a "sophisticated and devious" Iranian regime has managed to hide the Islamic Republic's nuclear ambitions from the world."(1) Now, I know that this blog can be a little bit repetitive however, this coming from the President of a country that has illegally acquired nuclear weapons and possesses up to 80 nuclear warheads, really does take the biscuit. What we have, of course, is our zany Zionists accumulating the "evidence", formulating their reasons and getting ready to hit Iran despite "Uncle Sam's" "objections". Pseudo objections, of course, and we will have them screaming from Washington that they knew nothing about Israel's intentions after the event, calling for calm from all and sundry, bullying in as an "impartial" arbitrator and when the dust is settled, the goal posts will be moved once again and the possibility of a regional power that might challenge the Zionist state removed from the equation. Wishful thinking Mr Peres, wishful thinking!
1 http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1076859.html

Innocence Lost

The article in today's 'New York Times', "Pain of Khmer Rouge Era Lost on Cambodian Youth"based on a report from the Human Rights Center, University of California, maintains that "as much as 70 percent of Cambodia’s population is under the age of 30, and four out of five members of this young generation know little or nothing about the Khmer Rouge years."(1) Now, four out of five of this generation of Cambodians live in abject poverty, are for the most part illiterate and are probably more concerned about trying to eek out a living than they are about the crimes of the Khmer Rouge. On the other hand, here in the West, where we all share a certain schemata, a lot of us, I won't say most, have heard of the crimes of the Khmer Rouge but how many people actually know that it was criminals in Washington who helped facilitate their rise to power and who helped keep them there? As I have said before, ignorance is not bliss, it is just ignorance and it might be good for the future of Cambodia if its young people were to become more informed of the catastrophe, which wiped out some 40% of the population of that troubled land. Nevertheless, while they continue to live in a world where there is no alternative but to live for the day one can forgive them their ignorance, and our excuse? The daily diet of drivel and bits of the truth have some of us actually convincing ourselves that we are informed when in fact we are only tailoring our convictions to suit our bad tastes and comfortable lifestyles. Our ignorance is much greater because due to its voluntary nature we share in the perpetrators crimes.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/08/world/asia/08cambo.html?ref=world

Turkey in the European Union

The roadshow moved onto Turkey today and the "hype" man has given his backing to that country joining the EU and the next thing you know he will be supporting an application by Israel to join the Union. Well, at least Sarkozy got it right when he said, that, "it was not for America to determine whether Turkey should be admitted to the European Union."(1) Of course, a "watered down", grateful to "Uncle Sam", European Union is what America wants; the type of European Union that will allow the USA to set up its ridiculous missile shield in the middle of the continent, that will send its sons without a whimper to die on foreign fields for a lost "American" cause; a European Union that will be easy to divide and rule and, no doubt, in a few years time we could very well have praise from across the Atlantic for a "new" Europe,which will include, among others, Turkey, Israel, Georgia and the Ukraine and disdain for that "old" Europe, which is epitomised by France and Germany. Of course, there is no historical inevitability and for the time being, Sarkozy and Merkel, who are only willing to offer the Turks a "privileged partnership",(2) continue to offer us the hope that the Union might still be able to determine its own destiny and wouldn't be nice if one of them were to go to Mexico and tell the Mexicans that they have a common culture with the United States and are entitled to join that other union, the one across the Rio Grande? Of course, the way the American economy is going, it is hardly likely that they would want to.
1 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6046113.ece?token=null&offset=12&page=2
2 http://nachrichten.t-online.de/c/18/34/66/80/18346680.html

The show must go on

Well, hasn't he done well? There he is, with house prices tumbling, unemployment and debt increasing, markets caving in, and the fat cat CEOs getting nice big fat pay offs back home, taking himself off to London, Strasburg, Baden-Baden and Prague and coming away with all sorts of "goodies". First of all, he got the Chinese, the Indians, the Russians, the Japanese, the Brazilians and the Koreans to give money to "his" financial institutions, the World Bank and the IMF, and then off he went and got a broader contribution from the Europeans to "Uncle Sam's" doomed imperial venture on the Hindukush and a commitment to taking prisoners, illegally imprisoned by the good old USA, who are in the process of being released from Guantanamo and there was me listening to the car radio and I am informed that he has managed to convince the Czech government of the need for an anti-missile shield on its soil to protect all of us from a possible nuclear attack from .... from who? Iran, I think! What codswallop!
Of course, what it all means is that an increased commitment from the Europeans to NATO and a radar shield controlled by the Americans in the centre of Europe has the Europeans very much in "big brother's" pocket and, before getting on the plane to Istanbul, the "hype" man has no problem in telling them that they should accept Turkey into the European Union. Yes, a good week for the "hype" man, which began with "Uncle Sam's" ostensible adversary China propping up the financial pillar of his empire and ended with his sychophants lending legitimacy and support to his illegal war in Afghanistan. One gets the feeling that despite house prices tumbling, unemployment and debt increasing, markets caving back home the "hype" man's roadshow has got the good old "US of A" firmly back on track.

What a farce

Interesting watching the news on Germany's "ZDF" this evening. There they were at the French/German border; Merkel, Obama, Sarkozy, Brown and one or two others and Silvio Berlusconi arrives, chatting on his mobile, gets out of the car and signals to everyone that he is busy chatting and they will all have to wait. However, it transpires that Silvio wasn't being impolite and, according to the Italian Foreign Ministry, he was just having a wee chat with the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to help convince him to accept the Danish prime minister, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, as the next NATO General Secretary. Turkey's opposition to having Rasmussen is because of his defence of Danish newspaper cartoons depicting Muhammad in 2005.(1) One really wonders what planet all of these people inhabit and I mean all of them. There was Angie grinning, standing on a red carpet, supposedly waiting for Silvio who was having a telephone conversation with Erdogan who is supposedly still sulking, when in actual fact he is trying to use the appointment of the new NATO General Secretary to gain political capital, and there we all were watching television, witnessing this, with Angie grinning like a cheshire cat, Barack laughing and joking with Nicholas and Gordon. Well, maybe I am getting upset about nothing but somehow it all seems really difficult to take these people seriously and while they were having their "serious" talks all the wives and Angies hubby were having a little programme of their own, no doubt, at some distance from the right back of the Rhine where the demonstrators against the whole charade were burning down a couple of buildings. In some ways we really haven't come very far in the last couple of thousand years.
1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/apr/04/europe-troops-afghanistan-nato-obama
2 ibid

The Obama Road Show

We are, of course, being confronted by some incredible nonsense at the moment and there is "ego" following the hype around the "hype" fellow quite closely and did he not do well in London to actually get all and sundry to prop up his not so murky, rather blatant, little global financial domination project? However, he has now moved on and after his little effort in Strasburg at getting France to commit more fully to the "new" NATO, he now finds himself in Baden-Baden, where he really does appear to have the Germans eating out of his hand and one wonders when Berlin will be committing combat troops to the Hindukush. Christ, even Adolf called it a day when he got to the Caspian. Yes, the NATO really has found itself an interesting little role, but surely with the fall of the Warsaw Pact, it had lost its "raison d’être" and wasn't Gorbatshev promised that if a united Germany were allowed to join the NATO, there would be no further expansion of the alliance eastwards? Well, all of that was "yesteryear" and not only has the NATO expanded into the former Soviet satellites it has also moved onto the former Soviet Union itself; with further moves into Georgia and the Ukraine on the horizon.
However, the expansion of NATO's membership is only one way in which "Uncle Sam" is trying to preserve his global hegemony. NATO has long since expanded its sphere of operations outside the territory of its members and today we are all threatened by Afghani terrorists, therefore, all of us will have to get involved in the fight on terrorism where it is to be won. What drivel, what disgusting puerile drivel; it is difficult to think of one incident where an Afghani has blown him or herself up outside Afghanistan but I read every day of Afghanis being killed by American and NATO bombs. No, what we have is one last desperate throw of the dice to get that pipeline built from Turkmenistan in Central Asia to India, a pipeline which would go through Afghanistan's rebellious Kandahar province and Pakistan. "Uncle Sam's" sycophants will not only provide additional cannon fodder but they will also lend the gamble its legitimacy. The stakes are high and with the "hype" man already appearing to have won the "money game" in London a few days ago, he is now ready to pursue the "Great Game" that I spoke about in earlier posts(1) with a renewed vigour. Yes, this is about hegemony in Central Asia and about geo-political domination of the planet and when "they are lying and dying on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains" let us at least have no illusions.
1 http://thediplomatabroad.blogspot.com/search?q=%22the+great+game%22

A New World Order

An article in today's 'Independent', "Obama hails the new world order", could be perceived of as giving something of an answer to the question I asked in yesterday's post, "have the Chinese managed to increase their influence in the World Bank and IMF? The 'Independent' writes, "China is playing a notably bigger role, pledging $40bn for the improvement in the IMF's resourcing. Most of the rest comes from the US and Europe. China has publicly called for an increased role for the IMF's own "world currency", the SDR. A long-awaited reform of the governance of the IMF should deliver China more votes and influence."(2) Yes, and if we view the "should" as an exercise in academic caution, I will go along with that. However, the fact is China will have no significant influence in either body or do you think that anyone other than a European is going to be the President of the IMF and anyone other than an American is going to be President of the World Bank?
No, the Anglo-Saxons and their European chums it appears have been very clever, or have the Japanese, Indians, Chinese, Russians, Brazilians etc just been downright stupid? There they all are pumping money into the very two pillars that prop up the West's financial dominance of the planet and now we hear the British saying, " the real significance of yesterday's agreement was not the $1trn package but the enhanced role it gave to world institutions like the IMF, whose budget will triple to $750bn. "A new world financial order has been born, almost by accident, because of this crisis," one cabinet minister said. "These bodies have been revamped; now they need to raise their game."(3) A game that the Anglo-Saxons know all too well how to play. For the rest of the planet it will be a case of contenting themselves with the old adage, "in for a penny, in for a pound." As far as the game is concerned it is not difficult to deduce who the winners will be.
1 http://thediplomatabroad.blogspot.com/2009/04/new-superpower.html
2 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/obama-hails-the-new-world-order-1661088.html
3 Ibid

A New Superpower?

Now, at this point I really don't know if the Chinese have managed to increase their influence in those two "outstanding" facilitators of Anglo-Saxon global hegemony; the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. However, it would appear that those two institutions are about to receive massive financial injections as a part of a deal arranged by the G20 in London. An economic recovery package of $1 trillion has been arranged and one wonders where they get these "strange" figures from. More importantly, however, a substantial amount of the money will be made largely available through the IMF and the World Bank. The IMF will get an additional "$250 billion" and the World Bank "$100 billion" ostensibly to help poor countries.(1) Yes, the same World Bank that goes into countries, loans the money at interest rates that those countries can never pay and then has them either in the West's pocket or buggers them up completely. The same World Bank and IMF that China has cleverly avoided. They really do appear to be quite clever the "Anglo-Saxon money men". Firstly, they use this crisis of capitalism to concentrate capital in even fewer hands, and thus increase the power and influence of the very people who are responsible for the mess in the first place, and then they get the rest of the international community to contribute to their bailout, while strengthening those very two institutions that have facilitated the biggest economic heist in the history of the planet. Or do the Chinese know something I don't? There is the usual mainstream media drivel, which suggests that China has started to throw its weight around and how it has managed to prevent Sarkozy getting a tax-haven blacklist published.(2) The real question though is have the Chinese managed to increase their influence in the World Bank and IMF. With Barack Obama setting aside time for a meeting with China', Hu Jintao, it might just be that they have and it might just be that that very exclusive little "essentially" Anglo-Saxon club has just taken on a new member.
1 http://nachrichten.t-online.de/c/18/30/67/92/18306792.html
2 http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/apr/02/g20-china
The picture above shows the group photograph at the G20 summit

Orwellian

Yesterday's 'Süddeutsche Zeitung' had an nice little article on how Obama is doing away with the clumsy ideological spin of the Bush era and young American cannon fodder in Afghanistan will be pleased to know that they are now dying in an "Overseas Contingency Operation" rather than in a "War on Terror". In drawing a comparison between the Nazis and the Bush administration, a comparision that he was careful to qualify, the reporter, Andrian Kreye dug out a quote from George Orwell,(1) which I remembered from my own reading of the said writer's article, "Politics and the "English Language", which was written in 1946, and in which Orwell says the following, "Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. One cannot change this all in a moment, but one can at least change one's own habits, and from time to time one can even, if one jeers loudly enough, send some worn-out and useless phrase -- some jackboot, Achilles' heel, hotbed, melting pot, acid test, veritable inferno, or other lump of verbal refuse -- into the dustbin, where it belongs.(2) If only it were so easy!
It is not going to be so easy not only because of the "hype" man's new "newspeak", the variation of the theme, the unadultarated drivel dressed up to the nines, the "emperor" wearing new clothes, but also because of something Sarah Chayes writes about in her book 'The Punishment of Virtue; Inside Afghanistan after the Taliban'. when she tells of how, on arriving in Afghanistan in October 2001 to begin her work as a journalist, she was soon made aware of the fact that the editors back home, "knew the story they wanted, and they told us what it was. We were just supposed ot dig up some stuff to substantiate their foregone conclusions."(3) There we have it; the spin, the "newspeak" will be in line with the prevailing "Zeitgeist"; the "news" will be "no news" as Bush gives way to "Bush lite", the "hype" man, and the reporters report what they are supposed to report, what they are told to report, and report it the way they are "supposed" to report it and, while I will continue to consign the drivel to "the dustbin, where it belongs" I am increasingly seeing my alter ego in one of Orwell's heroes and "It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen"(4) and, like Winston Smith, I too question the system in which I live. Big Brother is watching you.
1 'Die Süddeutsche Zeitung', April 1, 2009 front page
2 George Orwell, 'Politics and the English Language' (1946)
3 Sarah Chayes, 'The Punishment of Virtue' New York (2006) p13
4 George Orwell, '1984' (1949)

"Duch" apologises

About seven years ago I visited the Tuol Sleng - S-21 - prison in Pnom Pen and it was the photographs on the walls, the photographs of the young men and women, of the children, of the "normal" faces staring out of their prison garb before the horrors had been inflicted upon them, that left a lasting impression. However, that lasting impression was because I knew of the ordeal that was to accompany their departure from the "normality" that was portrayed in the photographs. Yesterday, the Khmer Rouge's chief torturer, Kaing Guek Eav alias "Duch", who ran the prison admitted murdering thousands of Cambodians and told of his "heartfelt sorrow" for his crimes.(1)
Effectively, the man said "sorry" and what do you think folks? Are the faces peering out of the photographs ready to forgive him.? No, I don't think so. However, it is the rest of "Duch's" statement that should make those of us who are not immediately involved think for, he also said, that while he was responsible for this crime, he was just a scapegoat who never dared challenge the top authorities. and that fearing for his own life and for his family, he was just following orders.(2) Do you know, I actually believe him and in believing him, I am not even sure that he is especially evil and that conclusion has very serious repercussions and those repercussions mean that it is important that we resist before it becomes as "immediate" as it did for Kaing Guek Eav, it is important to resist while it is still possible to do so.
1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/31/pol-pot-torturer-says-sorry-kilings
2 ibid
The photo shows photographs taken of the "inmates" when they entered the prison. Duch's indictment reads; "every prisoner who arrived at S-21 was destined for execution".