By Felicity Arbuthnot
GlobalResearch.org, October 3, 2012: This weekend a detailed article in the Daily Mail (i) suggested that a: “French secret serviceman, acting on the express orders of the then President Sarkozy, is suspected of the murder of Colonel Quaddafi”, on 20th October last year.
While bearing in mind that the NATO-backed insurgents now in power who have destroyed, de-stabilised, and terrorized much of Libya and who hope to carve up Libya’s resources for their own benefit have every reason to wish to disassociate themselves from the butchery of Colonel Quaddafi’s terrible death, the new allegations illuminate interesting points.
The French assassin, it is claimed, infiltrated the mob rabidly manhandling the Colonel, and shot him in the head.
“The motive, according to well placed (Libyan) sources”, was to prevent any chance of interrogation into Sarkozy’s links with Colonel Quaddafi.
The Mail previously revealed (ii) quoting a French governmental briefing note published by an investigative website, that fifty million euros has been: “laundered though bank accounts in Panama and Switzerland … from Colonel Quaddafi, to fund (Sarkozy’s 2007) election as President”, which if correct: “would have broken political financing laws.” Sarkozy’s: “numerous visits to Libya” were also cited.
Further claims are that: “The Swiss account was opened in the name of the sister of Jean-Francois Cope, the leader of Mr Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party, and the President’s right-hand-man.”
Quaddafi’s son, Saif alIslam, whose life hangs in the balance and no doubt further so, should he be subject to the Libyan “judicial system”, has stated unequivocally regarding the Sarkozy campaign funding: “We have all the details and are ready to reveal everything … We funded it.”
No wonder Saif, also a generous funder (£1.5 million) to his former place of advanced study, the prestigious London School of Economics – where he also delivered the annual Ralph Miliband Lecture in May2010, named for the renowned academic and father of the former UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband and his brother Ed, current Leader of the Labour Party – has been abandoned by the Western powers who had formerly welcomed him – then conspired in another illegal coup, this time in his country.
Sarkozy, on becoming President, memorably welcomed Colonel Quaddafi on a State Visit to Paris in December 2007, greeting him as “Brother Leader” and hosting his famed Bedouin tent next to the Elysee Palace.
Tony Blair, visited Quaddafi on many occasions, even flying in the Colonel’s private plane, pushing mega business deals. He too is mute on the horrors of the death and the fate of his children, grandchildren and country.
The Mail also makes the points that: “The United Nations mandate which sanctioned (the misnamed ‘no fly zone’) expressly stated that the Western allies could not interfere in the internal politics of the country.”
“Instead the almost daily bombing runs ended with Quaddafi’s overthrow, while both French and British military ‘advisors’ were said to have assisted on the ground.”
“Now Mahmoud Jibril, who served as interim Prime Minister following Gaddafi’s overthrow, has told Egyptian TV: ‘It was a foreign agent who mixed with the revolutionary brigades to kill Gaddafi.’ “
Another Tripoli source, according to the paper, stated: “Sarkozy had every reason to try to silence the Colonel and as quickly as possible”, with a further “diplomatic source” also stressing Quaddafi’s threats to reveal the financial details of the funding to the 2007 French Presidential elections donations.
An interesting point, if correct, is made by Rami El Obeidi, the : “former head of foreign relations for the Libyan Transitional Council (who) said he knew that Quaddafi had been tracked through his satellite telecommunications system as he talked to: “the Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.” Which raises the question of what connection exists between the murderous Western backed rampages against Libya and Syria?
How much of alleged murky financial deals does Syria’s President also know?
Sarkozy has consistently denied receiving money from the Libyan Leader and was unavailable for comment in response to the Mail's article.
Worthy of mention is that in November 2007, just before Quaddafi’s Paris visit: “A US State Department cable had warned that those ‘who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector’ and that there was ‘growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism.’ ”
“The cable cited a 2006 speech in which Quaddafi said: ‘Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them. Now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.’ ”
“Quaddafi’s government had forced oil companies to give their local subsidiaries Libyan names. Worse, ‘labor laws were amended to ‘Libyanize’ the economy’, that is, turn it to the advantage of Libyans.”
“Oil firms ‘were pressed to hire Libyan managers, finance people and human resources directors.’ ” (iii)
Perhaps then it is no wonder, that, on hearing of Colonel Quaddafi’s horrific death, President Nobel Obama declared it was a: “momentous day.” (BBC, 20th October 2011.) Madam Clinton followed with a raucous laugh and: “We came, we saw, he died.”
There is only one certainty, in the whole shaming “regime change” in Libya, there are no clean hands.
And where is Colonel Quaddafi’s body?
Wednesday, October 3, 2012
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
How globalization is destroying the livlihood of Western youth
 |
Image sourceGreek Youth Unemployment Hits 55% |
The economic elephant in the room that no Nobel-Prizing-winning economist dare mention is globalization and the offshoring and outsourcing of Western jobs to the Third World.
See also:
CanSpeccy: Obarmy Is a Tyrant But Romney Could Be Worse
Sep 08, 2012
In fact, offshoring is the gift of what was US GDP to China, India, and the other countries to which US corporations locate their production that they sell to Americans. US GDP goes down, the GDP of the countries who make the ...
CanSpeccy: The New Conrad Black: On the Stupidity of the Last four American Administrations ...
Aug 30, 2012
A few months behind bars seem to have done former Canadian Citizen, his Lordship, Conrad Black much good. Other newspaper proprietors would no doubt benefit from the same experience. By Conrad Black The Financial ...
CanSpeccy: How globalization destroys Western prosperity
Jul 10, 2012
But what the shills for globalization fail to mention is that comparative advantage, as Ricardo defined it, presupposes immobility of capital, a condition that certainly does not apply in a globalized economy, where international ...
CanSpeccy: Niall Ferguson: The Failure of the European Union and ...
May 25, 2012
In an interview with Michael Posner for the Globe and Mail, Ferguson points out that it is globalization, i.e., free trade with four billion third worlders earning pennies an hour, that is impoverishing low-skilled european workers, ...
CanSpeccy: How the Rich Destroyed the Economy
Sep 27, 2011
Economic policy failed for three reasons: (1) policymakers focused on enabling offshoring corporations to move middle class jobs, and the consumer demand, tax base, GDP, and careers associated with the jobs, to foreign ...
CanSpeccy: Exporting the economy
Dec 02, 2011
“Free market economists” are paid to sell offshoring to the American people. High-productivity, high value-added American jobs are denigrated as dirty, old industrial jobs. Relicts from long ago, we are best shed of them. http://canspeccy.blogspot.com/
Saturday, September 29, 2012
Netenyahu Seeks to Elect the Next Neocon US President
By David Remnick
New Yorker Blogs, September 12, 2012: It is hard to overestimate the risks that Benjamin Netanyahu poses to the future of his own country. As Prime Minister, he has done more than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage. Now Netanyahu seems determined, more than ever, to alienate the President of the United States and, as an ally of Mitt Romney’s campaign, to make himself a factor in the 2012 election—one no less pivotal than the most super Super PAC. “Who are you trying to replace?” the opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz, asked of Netanyahu in the Knesset on Wednesday. “The Administration in Washington or that in Tehran?”
Mofaz, a former Defense Minister, who participated in the fabled raid on Entebbe, in 1976, along with the Prime Minister’s brother, was reacting to Netanyahu’s outburst against the Obama Administration, at a news conference in Jerusalem. “The world tells Israel ‘Wait, there’s still time,’ ” Netanyahu told reporters in English. “And I say, ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?’ Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”
No one had any illusions that Netanyahu was addressing anyone but Obama, with whom he has a tortured relationship, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had earlier said, “We are not setting deadlines,” but, rather, pushing forward on economic sanctions and diplomacy. Articles in the Guardian and elsewhere have set out the sorry recent episodes in this chaotic relationship. On a trip I took to Israel a few weeks ago for The New Yorker, the political philosopher Avishai Margalit told me that Netanyahu was a kind of “mythomaniac,” a politician utterly absorbed and guided by his sense of heroic mission, and dismissive of the opinions and analyses of even his closest advisers. This goes for his innate distrust of any and all Palestinians, as well as for the vast range of military and intelligence experts, both inside and outside the Israeli government, who are constantly telling him that a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will end in political, diplomatic, and military disaster. Netanyahu’s opponents include the current leaders of the Israeli military and the major intelligence branches and their most recent predecessors, to say nothing of a decisive majority of the Israeli population. They fear consequences as dire as regional war and an Iranian regime unified and strengthened by a sense of common purpose. ...
Read more
See Also: White Man's Burden, How a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish launched the Iraq War
New Yorker Blogs, September 12, 2012: It is hard to overestimate the risks that Benjamin Netanyahu poses to the future of his own country. As Prime Minister, he has done more than any other political figure to embolden and elevate the reactionary forces in Israel, to eliminate the dwindling possibility of a just settlement with the Palestinians, and to isolate his country on the world diplomatic stage. Now Netanyahu seems determined, more than ever, to alienate the President of the United States and, as an ally of Mitt Romney’s campaign, to make himself a factor in the 2012 election—one no less pivotal than the most super Super PAC. “Who are you trying to replace?” the opposition leader, Shaul Mofaz, asked of Netanyahu in the Knesset on Wednesday. “The Administration in Washington or that in Tehran?”
Mofaz, a former Defense Minister, who participated in the fabled raid on Entebbe, in 1976, along with the Prime Minister’s brother, was reacting to Netanyahu’s outburst against the Obama Administration, at a news conference in Jerusalem. “The world tells Israel ‘Wait, there’s still time,’ ” Netanyahu told reporters in English. “And I say, ‘Wait for what? Wait until when?’ Those in the international community who refuse to put red lines before Iran don’t have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.”
No one had any illusions that Netanyahu was addressing anyone but Obama, with whom he has a tortured relationship, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who had earlier said, “We are not setting deadlines,” but, rather, pushing forward on economic sanctions and diplomacy. Articles in the Guardian and elsewhere have set out the sorry recent episodes in this chaotic relationship. On a trip I took to Israel a few weeks ago for The New Yorker, the political philosopher Avishai Margalit told me that Netanyahu was a kind of “mythomaniac,” a politician utterly absorbed and guided by his sense of heroic mission, and dismissive of the opinions and analyses of even his closest advisers. This goes for his innate distrust of any and all Palestinians, as well as for the vast range of military and intelligence experts, both inside and outside the Israeli government, who are constantly telling him that a unilateral attack on Iranian nuclear facilities will end in political, diplomatic, and military disaster. Netanyahu’s opponents include the current leaders of the Israeli military and the major intelligence branches and their most recent predecessors, to say nothing of a decisive majority of the Israeli population. They fear consequences as dire as regional war and an Iranian regime unified and strengthened by a sense of common purpose. ...
Read more
See Also: White Man's Burden, How a small group of 25 or 30 neoconservatives, almost all of them Jewish launched the Iraq War
Friday, September 28, 2012
Why US Military Veterans Kill Themselves
By Luke Hiken and Marti Hiken
Progressive Avenues, September 28, 2012: Recent figures indicate that for every soldier killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, 25 veterans commit suicide upon their return to the U.S. That is an astonishing statistic! How can this be?
In 1971, Stanford University conducted a prison experiment to determine what the effects of imprisonment were on a selected group of students. One half of the students were chosen to act as prison guards while the other half were to be criminals convicted of serious crimes. The University had to bring the experiment to an abrupt end when it was discovered that the “prison guards” were becoming sadistic, violent oppressors, and the “criminals” were responding to the conditions of imprisonment in dangerously rebellious ways. The experiment underscored what happens to average, educated people, when they are treated without respect, and without protections. More importantly, it demonstrated the catastrophic effect that unrestrained authority, violence and corruption had on those entrusted with the roles of caretakers and guards.[1]
We are witnessing a similar breakdown of morality and judgment among U.S. troops presently carrying out our imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere throughout the Middle East. “The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology” recently issued the report that for every soldier who was killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East over the last 10 years, 25 more veterans have committed suicide.[2] Whether or not these suicide attempts are a result of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), mental health breakdowns, or the natural consequences of having good “soldiers” turn into murdering monsters because of the conditions they are placed under (i.e. the Stanford experiment), is debatable. Yet, what is more at issue here is the fact that over a ½ million soldiers and mercenaries (i.e. “civilian contractors”) have returned home to our communities from the Middle East, and the Pentagon opines that approximately 1/3 of them suffer from some form of PTSD.
What these statistics highlight, is the moral depravity resulting from all aspects of our involvement in the Middle East, and the impact our colonial assaults have, not only on the defenseless populations we have chosen to destroy, but also on the perpetrators of those assaults as well. It is impossible for soldiers to participate in unjustified mass murder, and not be scarred by it. One would have thought that our experiences in Vietnam would have provided a clue as to the disastrous results that unjustified wars have on the men and women asked to fight in them. But no, our Pentagon and “misleaders,” have learned nothing from Vietnam, the Russian and French failures in Afghanistan, or our deceitful and shameful attack on Iraq. These “misleaders” are unaffected by the cruelty and viciousness of their overseas forays, while many engaged in these wars will spend their days contemplating killing themselves.
Recent studies conducted by NYU and Stanford have documented the fact that hundreds more civilians have been killed by the U.S. drone attacks than the Pentagon acknowledges.[3] Yet some bull-headed bureaucrat in the Defense Department, named John Brennan, has the audacity to explain to Obama that these studies are inaccurate, and that our “pinpoint” accuracy with drones is only killing terrorists, and any unwarranted deaths are “extremely rare.” Are these pathologically absurd comments by Brennan designed to insulate Obama from his slaughter of hundreds of innocent women and children identified in the studies, or do we assume that Obama is even more of a scoundrel than we imagined, for setting up a clown like Brennan to rubber stamp the illegal use of drones?
A nation that murders civilians indiscriminately, wages wars of aggression against defenseless nations, and lies to its own people about our reasons for destroying governments around the world is not only subjecting its soldiers to resulting suicidal behavior, but destroying the moral integrity of the entire nation as well. At every sporting event where we see jet planes and U.S. flags displayed for purposes of propagandizing the American people to put up with our international war crimes, most of the people watching hang their heads in shame over the decline of what was once a great nation.
The Stanford prison experiment was a microcosm of what is happening to the U.S. worldwide. It demonstrates what happens to citizens who become international killers and to the nation that pays them to do so.
FOOTNOTES
(1) The Stanford Prison Experiment - A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
“The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted at Stanford University from August 14 to August 20 of 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. It was funded by the US Office of Naval Research and was of interest to both the US Navy and Marine Corps as an investigation into the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.
Twenty-four male students out of 75 were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed and excerpts of footage are publicly available.”
(2) Press TV, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/236543.html
“According to a New York Times article published on April 14, an American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan while veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes.
“The article also said more than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year -- more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.”
(3) Zucchino, David, Drone Strikes in Pakistan have Killed many Civilians, Study Says,” LA Times, latimes.com, 9-24-12 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/24/world/la-fg-drone-study-20120925
______________________________
Marti Hiken is the director of Progressive Avenues. She is the former Associate Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and former chair of the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force. She can be contacted at info@progressiveavenues.org, 415-702-9682.
Luke Hiken is an attorney who has engaged in the practice of criminal, military, immigration, and appellate law.
The Progressive Avenues website, www.progressiveavenues.org, is regularly updated in the “What’s Added, What’s New” link on the Home page, at http://www.progressiveavenues.org/Whats_New_Added.html
Progressive Avenues, September 28, 2012: Recent figures indicate that for every soldier killed in Afghanistan and Iraq, 25 veterans commit suicide upon their return to the U.S. That is an astonishing statistic! How can this be?
In 1971, Stanford University conducted a prison experiment to determine what the effects of imprisonment were on a selected group of students. One half of the students were chosen to act as prison guards while the other half were to be criminals convicted of serious crimes. The University had to bring the experiment to an abrupt end when it was discovered that the “prison guards” were becoming sadistic, violent oppressors, and the “criminals” were responding to the conditions of imprisonment in dangerously rebellious ways. The experiment underscored what happens to average, educated people, when they are treated without respect, and without protections. More importantly, it demonstrated the catastrophic effect that unrestrained authority, violence and corruption had on those entrusted with the roles of caretakers and guards.[1]
We are witnessing a similar breakdown of morality and judgment among U.S. troops presently carrying out our imperialist wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and elsewhere throughout the Middle East. “The Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology” recently issued the report that for every soldier who was killed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East over the last 10 years, 25 more veterans have committed suicide.[2] Whether or not these suicide attempts are a result of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), mental health breakdowns, or the natural consequences of having good “soldiers” turn into murdering monsters because of the conditions they are placed under (i.e. the Stanford experiment), is debatable. Yet, what is more at issue here is the fact that over a ½ million soldiers and mercenaries (i.e. “civilian contractors”) have returned home to our communities from the Middle East, and the Pentagon opines that approximately 1/3 of them suffer from some form of PTSD.
What these statistics highlight, is the moral depravity resulting from all aspects of our involvement in the Middle East, and the impact our colonial assaults have, not only on the defenseless populations we have chosen to destroy, but also on the perpetrators of those assaults as well. It is impossible for soldiers to participate in unjustified mass murder, and not be scarred by it. One would have thought that our experiences in Vietnam would have provided a clue as to the disastrous results that unjustified wars have on the men and women asked to fight in them. But no, our Pentagon and “misleaders,” have learned nothing from Vietnam, the Russian and French failures in Afghanistan, or our deceitful and shameful attack on Iraq. These “misleaders” are unaffected by the cruelty and viciousness of their overseas forays, while many engaged in these wars will spend their days contemplating killing themselves.
Recent studies conducted by NYU and Stanford have documented the fact that hundreds more civilians have been killed by the U.S. drone attacks than the Pentagon acknowledges.[3] Yet some bull-headed bureaucrat in the Defense Department, named John Brennan, has the audacity to explain to Obama that these studies are inaccurate, and that our “pinpoint” accuracy with drones is only killing terrorists, and any unwarranted deaths are “extremely rare.” Are these pathologically absurd comments by Brennan designed to insulate Obama from his slaughter of hundreds of innocent women and children identified in the studies, or do we assume that Obama is even more of a scoundrel than we imagined, for setting up a clown like Brennan to rubber stamp the illegal use of drones?
A nation that murders civilians indiscriminately, wages wars of aggression against defenseless nations, and lies to its own people about our reasons for destroying governments around the world is not only subjecting its soldiers to resulting suicidal behavior, but destroying the moral integrity of the entire nation as well. At every sporting event where we see jet planes and U.S. flags displayed for purposes of propagandizing the American people to put up with our international war crimes, most of the people watching hang their heads in shame over the decline of what was once a great nation.
The Stanford prison experiment was a microcosm of what is happening to the U.S. worldwide. It demonstrates what happens to citizens who become international killers and to the nation that pays them to do so.
FOOTNOTES
(1) The Stanford Prison Experiment - A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
“The Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted at Stanford University from August 14 to August 20 of 1971 by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo. It was funded by the US Office of Naval Research and was of interest to both the US Navy and Marine Corps as an investigation into the causes of conflict between military guards and prisoners.
Twenty-four male students out of 75 were selected to take on randomly assigned roles of prisoners and guards in a mock prison situated in the basement of the Stanford psychology building. The participants adapted to their roles well beyond Zimbardo's expectations, as the guards enforced authoritarian measures and ultimately subjected some of the prisoners to psychological torture. Many of the prisoners passively accepted psychological abuse and, at the request of the guards, readily harassed other prisoners who attempted to prevent it. The experiment even affected Zimbardo himself, who, in his role as the superintendent, permitted the abuse to continue. Two of the prisoners quit the experiment early and the entire experiment was abruptly stopped after only six days. Certain portions of the experiment were filmed and excerpts of footage are publicly available.”
(2) Press TV, http://www.presstv.ir/detail/236543.html
“According to a New York Times article published on April 14, an American soldier dies every day and a half, on average, in Iraq or Afghanistan while veterans kill themselves at a rate of one every 80 minutes.
“The article also said more than 6,500 veteran suicides are logged every year -- more than the total number of soldiers killed in Afghanistan and Iraq combined since those wars began.”
(3) Zucchino, David, Drone Strikes in Pakistan have Killed many Civilians, Study Says,” LA Times, latimes.com, 9-24-12 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/sep/24/world/la-fg-drone-study-20120925
______________________________
Marti Hiken is the director of Progressive Avenues. She is the former Associate Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy and former chair of the National Lawyers Guild Military Law Task Force. She can be contacted at info@progressiveavenues.org, 415-702-9682.
Luke Hiken is an attorney who has engaged in the practice of criminal, military, immigration, and appellate law.
The Progressive Avenues website, www.progressiveavenues.org, is regularly updated in the “What’s Added, What’s New” link on the Home page, at http://www.progressiveavenues.org/Whats_New_Added.html
Thursday, September 27, 2012
Pictures Worth a Thousand Words
Netenyahu Addresses the UN
 |
| The Netenyahu Salute |
 |
| The Netenyahu Nuke. Afterwards, Bibi gave the picture to Romney to color in |
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Pictures Show Why US/Israel Hate Iran
 |
| (Image source) |
The evidence is conclusive. Iran is a mono-ethnic nation state stubbornly intent on preserving its racial, cultural and religious heritage, something to which no nation but Israel is entitled to do.
Then there's the oil. One hundred and fifty billion barrels, or $15 trillion-worth at the wellhead. That's far too much cash for such a populous country in such a geostrategically important part of the world to invest in in its own development.
 |
| (Image source) |
What's more, they have to restore control of the oil fields to the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. (aka BP) and Exxon.
Monday, September 24, 2012
The Pretty Face of Genocide
By JAY
Norway appoints a Muslim woman "culture minister"
JewAmongYou, September 23, 2012: Norway has appointed a Muslim woman as its “culture minister”. According to Alarabiya:
Norway appoints a Muslim woman "culture minister"
JewAmongYou, September 23, 2012: Norway has appointed a Muslim woman as its “culture minister”. According to Alarabiya:
Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg has appointed a Muslim woman as part of his government during a Cabinet reshufle this week.It’s not clear why there needs to be a government minister of culture in the first place, but if there is to be one, shouldn’t he represent the indigenous people of Norway? With traitors like Stoltenberg comprising the ruling class, it’s easy to understand the rage of Anders Behring [Breivik]. As for Tajik, my guess is she was hired for her good looks – to give genocide a pretty face.
Hadia Tajik, 29, from Pakistani decent, was appointed on Friday as Norway’s minister of culture.
Hadia has become the first ever Muslim cabinet member and youngest ever government minister in the Scandinavian country.
The newly appointed minister of culture has already publicized her program for the upcoming months and highlighted that cultural diversity should become an undisputable part of Norway’s everyday life.
In 2009 she was elected as MP for the Norwegian Labour Party that represented Oslo.
The new face of Norway: Not Norwegian
Sunday, September 23, 2012
Paid PR scandal erupts at Trikipedia
Or where would a wise man hide a pebble?
By Violet Blue
CNet, September 18, 2012: Concerned Wikipedians raised the alarm Monday that two trusted men -- one a trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation UK, the other a respected Wikipedian In Residence -- are allegedly editing Wikipedia pages and facilitating front-page placement for their pay-for-play, publicity-seeking clients.
Read more
Isn't that what Wikipedia has been about from the outset? A place where critical lies can be embedded in a mass of otherwise useful information gathered at no cost by naive unpaid contributors?
Friday, September 21, 2012
The life of Jesus: Does it matter?
...there is not a single fact about Jesus of which we can be certain, other than that, if he actually existed, his name would not have been Jesus...
The four gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul, which are the core texts of the Christian faith, tell the story of Jesus' life: his birth; his intellectually precocious youth; his recognition by John the Baptist as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah; his 40-day fast during which he wrestled with the temptations of the Devil and determined the path he would follow; his recruitment of disciples; his journeys throughout Palestine; his teachings and miracles; his conflicts with the Jewish authorities; and finally, his arrest, conviction, crucifixion, resurrection and ascension to Heaven.
Yet there is not a single fact about Jesus of which we can be certain, other than that, if he actually existed, his name would not have been Jesus, since no such name was known to the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine of that day.
There is not a single reference to Jesus in the historical record. The day and month of his birth are unknown. The year of his birth is uncertain, the place of his birth, Bethlehem or Nazareth, is a matter of debate. And the circumstances of his birth and life as recorded in the gospels so closely reflect those of the Persian god, Mithra, and the founders of other religious cults that the literal veracity of the gospel story seems impossible to accept.
If, then, the story about Jesus is largely if not entirely myth, what possible interest can it have for people of the present day? To many, the answer is "none." On that view, Jesus, if any real person existed who inspired the gospel stories, must have been a mere mortal, born not of a virgin, unable to raise the dead or turn water into wine, who died as any crucified man dies, and whose death was as final as will be yours or mine.
That, precisely, was the view of Russia's literary giant, Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy. Yet Tolstoy made Jesus the focus of his religious life.
Why?
Because the teachings of Jesus remain a fact undeniable on the basis of any historical evidence. The teachings of Jesus have a validity and significance totally independent of their authorship, and even of how they may have been edited or re-written. One can accept or reject them, but one cannot deny their reality or their force in the world.
For that reason Tolstoy made his own translation of the gospels from the Greek bible. In it he combined the teachings from the four gospels in a single narrative, which omits reference to the supposedly miraculous nature of Jesus' birth, the miracles Jesus is supposed to have performed and the miracle of his resurrection.This work is available in English translation as The Gospels in Brief.
Tolstoy's rejection of the magic and mystery of Christianity naturally enough alienated him from the Orthodox Church, which excommunicated and anathematized him. His rejection of violence as a means to political ends alienated him also from the dictatorship of the Tsar, which though fearing to take action against Tolstoy himself, persecuted his followers.
His ideas were equally repugnant to the Communists who claimed Tolstoy as a great patriotic artist while suppressing his religious and political beliefs and punishing those who attempted to put into practice his ethical principles. The Soviets shot more than 100 Tolstoyans, while consigning many more to slave labor camps and mental hospitals.
An account of the evolution of Tolstoy's religious beliefs is provided in Rosamund Bartlett's fine biography: Tolstoy, a Russian Life.
 |
| C'mon guys, you try it. (Image source) |
Yet there is not a single fact about Jesus of which we can be certain, other than that, if he actually existed, his name would not have been Jesus, since no such name was known to the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine of that day.
There is not a single reference to Jesus in the historical record. The day and month of his birth are unknown. The year of his birth is uncertain, the place of his birth, Bethlehem or Nazareth, is a matter of debate. And the circumstances of his birth and life as recorded in the gospels so closely reflect those of the Persian god, Mithra, and the founders of other religious cults that the literal veracity of the gospel story seems impossible to accept.
If, then, the story about Jesus is largely if not entirely myth, what possible interest can it have for people of the present day? To many, the answer is "none." On that view, Jesus, if any real person existed who inspired the gospel stories, must have been a mere mortal, born not of a virgin, unable to raise the dead or turn water into wine, who died as any crucified man dies, and whose death was as final as will be yours or mine.
 |
| Lev Tolstoy by Ilya Repin (Image source) |
Why?
Because the teachings of Jesus remain a fact undeniable on the basis of any historical evidence. The teachings of Jesus have a validity and significance totally independent of their authorship, and even of how they may have been edited or re-written. One can accept or reject them, but one cannot deny their reality or their force in the world.
For that reason Tolstoy made his own translation of the gospels from the Greek bible. In it he combined the teachings from the four gospels in a single narrative, which omits reference to the supposedly miraculous nature of Jesus' birth, the miracles Jesus is supposed to have performed and the miracle of his resurrection.This work is available in English translation as The Gospels in Brief.
Tolstoy's rejection of the magic and mystery of Christianity naturally enough alienated him from the Orthodox Church, which excommunicated and anathematized him. His rejection of violence as a means to political ends alienated him also from the dictatorship of the Tsar, which though fearing to take action against Tolstoy himself, persecuted his followers.
His ideas were equally repugnant to the Communists who claimed Tolstoy as a great patriotic artist while suppressing his religious and political beliefs and punishing those who attempted to put into practice his ethical principles. The Soviets shot more than 100 Tolstoyans, while consigning many more to slave labor camps and mental hospitals.
An account of the evolution of Tolstoy's religious beliefs is provided in Rosamund Bartlett's fine biography: Tolstoy, a Russian Life.
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Honorary President of the Italian Supreme Court to Cite Key US Administration Figures in 9/11 Criminal Case
By Ian Henshall
9/11 Doubts Seep into the Mainstream as Evidence Accumulates
The most significant expert may turn out to be Judge Ferdinando Imposimato, the widely respected honorary president of the Italian Supreme Court and legendary mafia hunter who lost his brother in a revenge attack.
Courtesy: liamscheff.com
|
www.Salem-News.com, September 19, 2012: (LONDON) - As the annual 9/11 remembrance draws to a
close, the world is as split as ever. Not only on whether the Afghan and
Iraq invasions were justified, but between those who accept
Washington's official 9/11 story and those who do not.
Under the mainstream media radar, the number of those
who do not is steadily increasing, forming substantial majorities in
places like Pakistan and Egypt and significant minorities even in NATO's
heartland countries, France, the UK and the US itself. The issue is not
whether, despite his denials, Osama Bin Laden might have wanted to
organise the 9/11 attacks but whether Al Qaeda actually had the
capability to infiltrate 19 terrorists into the US, including some very
well known to the CIA, and the four highly skilled pilots necessary to
pull off the spectacular coup. Up to then Al Qaeda's biggest success was
setting off two truck bombs in East Africa. (1)
The stereotype promoted by the corporate media of a
9/11 sceptic, a badly educated redneck watching Fox News in a trailer
park, could hardly be further from the truth. The website Patriot's
Question 9/11 lists hundreds of University Professors, over a thousand
architects and engineers and hundreds of aviation professionals who have
spoken out against the official 9/11 story. (8)
The most significant expert may turn out to be Judge
Ferdinando Imposimato, the widely respected honorary president of the
Italian Supreme Court and legendary mafia hunter who lost his brother in
a revenge attack. Imposimato has written to the Journal of 9/11 Studies
announcing his intention to bring a case before the International
Criminal Court citing key figures in the US administration for
involvement in the execution of the 9/11 attacks. (2)
Imposimato's take has received indirect support from
people close to the heart of Washington's power elite. Richard Clarke,
White House anti-terror czar at the time, has confirmed what researcher
Kevin Fenton has established based on a meticulous examination of
recently released official reports. Someone at the top of the CIA "made a
decision" to stand down the FBI and the CIA, allowing the alleged
hijackers a free run in the US when they would otherwise have been
arrested and the plot foiled. (9)
Meanwhile the 9/11 truth movement continues with a
drip, drip of new research. This year we have seen nothing on the scale
of the revelations of iron spheres and uncombusted nanothermite in the
dust at Ground Zero, strong indicators that the Twin Towers' spectacular
collapses on live TV were caused by something a lot hotter than diesel
fuel fires. But there are significant developments nonetheless.
Scientist Kevin Ryan was fired from work some time ago
after he went public saying his employer Underwriters Laboratories, the
company which had certified the quality of the steel used in the World
Trade Centre, was involved in creating fake computer simulations to help
support the official story that the fires were sufficiently hot to
cause the disastrous collapse of three skyscrapers. He has since been
beavering away at various aspects of the 9/11 story.
This year Ryan has released an analysis of the changes
that the 9/11 events have brought to the US building industry. If the
official story is to be believed, 9/11 was an architectural and
engineering disaster. Buildings expressly designed to withstand a high
speed jet impact and subsequent fire failed spectacularly. This disaster
should have led to an urgent and exhaustive inquiry with many action
points for other buildings of the same construction. Instead, says Ryan,
nothing like that happened.The US engineering community has acted as
though it does not believe the official 9/11 story any more than the
alleged conspiracy theorists in their trailer parks. (3)
Meanwhile the US Public Broadcasting System became the
conduit for the latest film from Architects and Engineers for 9/11
Truth: Explosive Evidence - The Experts Speak Out, with downloads
nationally pushing Bill Clinton's Convention Speech into third place, an
astonishing success for a topic the mainstream media as usual were
entirely deaf to (4). The film has a section in which psychologists and
counsellors explain why the media and sections of the public are so
reluctant to doubt an official story that might, from another
government, seem highly unlikely if not absurd. The reasons come down to
trauma, belief in authority and a phenomenon psychologists call
cognitive dissonance. For every trailer park dissident there are several
other citizens with a very strong desire to believe in authority,
especially after the terrifying circumstances and unprecedented media
barrage of 9/11. Confronted with contradictory evidence some time later,
such people suffer from painful cognitive dissonance and often resort
to denial.
An example of cognitive dissonance occurred last week
on CNN when Piers Morgan tried to dismiss Jesse Ventura, a maverick
politician and broadcaster. Morgan clearly knew little about the issue
and could only say the suggestion of an inside job was "preposterous".
The studio audience applauded Ventura. (10)
Another 9/11 researcher who goes by the name of
Shoestring has presented a very detailed analysis of the various
emergency offices that failed on the morning of 9/11. Probably the most
shocking was the FBI's emergency management office in Washington,
designed to cope with up to five major emergencies at one time, which
knew nothing more than the TV channels. In the light of so much other
bizarre activity - at the CIA, on the building investigation, the
failure of Washington's Andrews Airbase to scramble any of its fighters
for nearly two hours - the official 9/11 story of coincidence, surprise
and cock-up begins to look less likely than some of the alternatives.
(5)
But surely the post 9/11 war against Al Qaeda has
produced a network of detainees, led by Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who have
corroborated the official 9/11 story of a plot hatched in the caves of
Afghanistan? Even the supine 911 Commission was disturbed by the CIA's
refusal to allow them any contact with KSM or even his interrogators. As
suspicions of systematic torture were confirmed in media leaks, the CIA
illegally destroyed most of its own records, presumably to save its
officers the worry of future prosecution. This ugly picture of detainees
tortured into corroborating the official 9/11 story has been enhanced
by another recent revelation from the Defence Department Inspector
General: detainees were given truth drugs, or to put it in official
language were drugged with powerful antipsychotic and other medications
that “could impair an individual’s ability to provide accurate
information". (6)
Last year's bombshell from the White House anti-terror
czar at the time has produced a sequel. Richard Clarke has focused on
the role of the CIA saying the then boss George Tenet must have known
about the shocking unexplained decision to block three FBI field offices
from acting against several 9/11 hijackers. Most researchers agree that
the CIA's dedicated Osama Bin Laden Unit, kept secret until some years
after 9/11, is the best place to start asking questions. Up to now they
have focused on Bush favorite and torture advocate Cofer Black who
oversaw the unit before moving on to make money as a principal in
Blackwater, the mercenary company in Iraq.
Recently another CIA official has come into the frame:
Black's deputy in the CIA's counter terror center, Enrique “Ricky”
Prado. A book based on sources in the Miami Vice Squad describes Prado's
apparent double life as CIA official and a member of Florida's Cuban
mafia. The story was ignored by much of the mainstream media but carried
in detail in Wired magazine, the Daily Beast and the UK's Daily Mail,
which operates under stringent libel laws. (7)
When will the truth be known? Many agree that the
planet's intelligence services probably already know. Iran's President
Ahmedinajad's UN General Assembly speech calling for a new investigation
into 9/11 was greeted with predictable outrage and the corporate media
applauded when the NATO countries angrily walked out. But most countries
did not walk out and with global opinion ever more sceptical as time
goes by, this could prove a bad omen for Washington.
(2) http://www.
(3) http://digwithin.net/2012/09/
(4) digitaljournal.com/article/
(5) http://shoestring911.blogspot.
(6) http://www.washingtonsblog.
http://www.WantToKnow.info/
(9) Fenton's book is "Disconnecting the Dots", published by Trine Day
(10) http://edition.cnn.com/video/#
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Until Blogger Restores Our Side-bar -- If Ever
Here are a couple of excellent links.
The Game's Afoot -- Still
Winter Patriot's 100 plus episode Sherlock Holmes And The Alderney Street Mystery, in which Sherlock Holmes investigates the murder of Garth Williams, the Welsh math wiz and cryptanalyst who became a victim of the British secret state appeared to have reached a brilliant conclusion. However, Sherlock, assisted by his more intelligent older brother has now resumed the chase in pursuit of criminals behind a much broader conspiracy involving both 9/11 and the death of National Football League star Pat Tilman who supposedly died as the result of "friendly fire" in Afghanistan.
Did you ever want to know about those subsidies for coal and oil while alternative energy was starved of funds? Well here's the scoop from the Climate Resistance blog. : It’s a F*ct – We’re F*cked
The Game's Afoot -- Still
Winter Patriot's 100 plus episode Sherlock Holmes And The Alderney Street Mystery, in which Sherlock Holmes investigates the murder of Garth Williams, the Welsh math wiz and cryptanalyst who became a victim of the British secret state appeared to have reached a brilliant conclusion. However, Sherlock, assisted by his more intelligent older brother has now resumed the chase in pursuit of criminals behind a much broader conspiracy involving both 9/11 and the death of National Football League star Pat Tilman who supposedly died as the result of "friendly fire" in Afghanistan.
Did you ever want to know about those subsidies for coal and oil while alternative energy was starved of funds? Well here's the scoop from the Climate Resistance blog. : It’s a F*ct – We’re F*cked
Pursuing Truth on the Kennedy Assassinations
By Donald W. Miller, Jr., MD
LewRockwell.com, September 19. 2012: Everyone over the age of 60, and many over age 55 who were in grade school at the time, remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard what happened to President John F. Kennedy, on Friday, November 22, 1963 at 12:30 PM (CST). I was finishing lunch with other students in the dining room at Harvard Medical School’s Vanderbilt Hall lined with portraits of past professors when a student ran in and yelled, "President Kennedy has been shot."
I began studying and collecting books on the Kennedy assassination after reading Josiah Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas, published in 1967. My interest in the subject is heightened by having personally known two physicians involved in President Kennedy’s care whose observations are pivotal to the case, Admiral George G. Burkley (1902-1991) and Dr. Malcolm Perry (1929-2009). Admiral Burkley was the President’s personal physician. He was the only physician who was with Kennedy in Dallas and also at the autopsy, done at a Navy hospital in Bethesda, MD. Dr. Perry performed a tracheotomy on Kennedy shortly before he died. He was the first physician to speak publicly about the President’s injuries in a televised news conference an hour after his death.
My family lived next to Dr. Burkley and his family on the grounds of the Newport Naval Hospital in Newport, Rhode Island when I was a teenager, sharing a duplex that housed its Chief of Medicine, Dr. Burkley, and Chief of Surgery, my dad. His teenage son, George W., and I became friends. (We once sailed up Narragansett Bay in his Snipe sailboat and camped out on an uninhabited island. This adventure was cut short the next morning, however, when a Navy launch arrived to tow us back home, sent by our fathers after a hurricane warning was issued.)
Dr. Perry and I worked together at the University of Washington (UW). He moved to Seattle in 1974 with Dr. Tom Shires, Parkland Hospital’s Chief of Surgery, who came to Seattle to be Chairman of Surgery at the UW School of Medicine. Dr. Shires brought a group of surgeons from Parkland Hospital with him, which included Dr. Charles James (Jim) Carrico, who, as a surgical resident, was the first doctor in the emergency room to examine Kennedy after he was shot. Dr. Perry and Dr. Shires operated on Lee Harvey Oswald, but the bullet Jack Ruby shot into Oswald’s abdomen tore his aorta and vena cava and he bled to death on the operating table before they could save him. Dr. Perry was a vascular surgeon. We would perform surgery together on patients with a thoracoabdominal aneurysm. (I was the last UW faculty surgeon that Dr. Shires hired before he moved to Cornell in 1975. Drs. Perry and Carrico stayed, with Dr. Carrico becoming the UW’s Chair of Surgery in 1983, to 1990).
The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren assured the American public and the world that there was no conspiracy. It said a lone assassin shot three bullets at the President from a window in the Texas School Book Depository, above and behind the Presidential limousine as it proceeded down Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. No one else planned or participated in the attack, not the Russians, Castro, anti-Castro Cubans, or organized crime – or any officials in the U.S. military-industrial-intelligence complex either, for that matter.
The Warren Commission concluded that one bullet hit Kennedy in the back, exited out through his neck, and went on to inflict all the injuries Governor Connally sustained sitting in a jump seat in front of the President. This bullet, as postulated in the Commission’s "single bullet theory," went through Connally’s chest, in-and-out of his wrist, and landed in his thigh. A second bullet missed the limousine, ricocheted off a curb and grazed a bystander. The third bullet the sniper shot hit the President in the head, killing him. The Commission concluded that the evidence compiled in its 888-page Report and 17,816 pages of Hearings and Exhibits (in 26 volumes) proves that a 24-year-old ex-Marine with Marxist sympathies, Lee Harvey Oswald, was the assassin. Likewise, the Commission found that nightclub owner Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later.
At the first press conference after Kennedy died, a newsman asked Malcolm Perry, "Where was the entrance wound?" Dr. Perry informed the American public and the world that, "There was an entrance wound in the neck…It [the bullet] appeared to be coming at him…," which on repeated questioning he twice more affirmed and the world’s press duly reported. This did not sit well with the Warren Commission’s view of the matter. Testifying before the Commission several months later, however, Dr. Perry supported its contention that the bullet shot into Kennedy’s back had exited his neck, not entered it. Accepting the proposed one-bullet, two-victim hypothesis as true, Dr. Perry agreed that the bullet wound he observed in the neck "certainly would be consistent with an exit wound."
Fifteen years later Dr. Perry told me in a surgeon-to-surgeon private conversation that the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck was, without question, a wound of entrance, irrespective of what he had told the Warren Commission....
Read more
See also:
Why Three Kennedys Were Assassinated: Lew Rockwell interview with Dr. Miller
George de Mohrenschildt, George H.W. Bush, Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
Noam Chomsky "Debunks" 9/11 and JFK Murder After 7.00 minutes: (re: Kennedy assassination) "Who knows. Who cares. Plenty of people get killed all the time. What does it matter if one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy?) Yeah, right, Noam.
LewRockwell.com, September 19. 2012: Everyone over the age of 60, and many over age 55 who were in grade school at the time, remember where they were and what they were doing when they heard what happened to President John F. Kennedy, on Friday, November 22, 1963 at 12:30 PM (CST). I was finishing lunch with other students in the dining room at Harvard Medical School’s Vanderbilt Hall lined with portraits of past professors when a student ran in and yelled, "President Kennedy has been shot."
I began studying and collecting books on the Kennedy assassination after reading Josiah Thompson's Six Seconds in Dallas, published in 1967. My interest in the subject is heightened by having personally known two physicians involved in President Kennedy’s care whose observations are pivotal to the case, Admiral George G. Burkley (1902-1991) and Dr. Malcolm Perry (1929-2009). Admiral Burkley was the President’s personal physician. He was the only physician who was with Kennedy in Dallas and also at the autopsy, done at a Navy hospital in Bethesda, MD. Dr. Perry performed a tracheotomy on Kennedy shortly before he died. He was the first physician to speak publicly about the President’s injuries in a televised news conference an hour after his death.
My family lived next to Dr. Burkley and his family on the grounds of the Newport Naval Hospital in Newport, Rhode Island when I was a teenager, sharing a duplex that housed its Chief of Medicine, Dr. Burkley, and Chief of Surgery, my dad. His teenage son, George W., and I became friends. (We once sailed up Narragansett Bay in his Snipe sailboat and camped out on an uninhabited island. This adventure was cut short the next morning, however, when a Navy launch arrived to tow us back home, sent by our fathers after a hurricane warning was issued.)
Dr. Perry and I worked together at the University of Washington (UW). He moved to Seattle in 1974 with Dr. Tom Shires, Parkland Hospital’s Chief of Surgery, who came to Seattle to be Chairman of Surgery at the UW School of Medicine. Dr. Shires brought a group of surgeons from Parkland Hospital with him, which included Dr. Charles James (Jim) Carrico, who, as a surgical resident, was the first doctor in the emergency room to examine Kennedy after he was shot. Dr. Perry and Dr. Shires operated on Lee Harvey Oswald, but the bullet Jack Ruby shot into Oswald’s abdomen tore his aorta and vena cava and he bled to death on the operating table before they could save him. Dr. Perry was a vascular surgeon. We would perform surgery together on patients with a thoracoabdominal aneurysm. (I was the last UW faculty surgeon that Dr. Shires hired before he moved to Cornell in 1975. Drs. Perry and Carrico stayed, with Dr. Carrico becoming the UW’s Chair of Surgery in 1983, to 1990).
The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy chaired by Chief Justice Earl Warren assured the American public and the world that there was no conspiracy. It said a lone assassin shot three bullets at the President from a window in the Texas School Book Depository, above and behind the Presidential limousine as it proceeded down Elm Street in Dealey Plaza. No one else planned or participated in the attack, not the Russians, Castro, anti-Castro Cubans, or organized crime – or any officials in the U.S. military-industrial-intelligence complex either, for that matter.
The Warren Commission concluded that one bullet hit Kennedy in the back, exited out through his neck, and went on to inflict all the injuries Governor Connally sustained sitting in a jump seat in front of the President. This bullet, as postulated in the Commission’s "single bullet theory," went through Connally’s chest, in-and-out of his wrist, and landed in his thigh. A second bullet missed the limousine, ricocheted off a curb and grazed a bystander. The third bullet the sniper shot hit the President in the head, killing him. The Commission concluded that the evidence compiled in its 888-page Report and 17,816 pages of Hearings and Exhibits (in 26 volumes) proves that a 24-year-old ex-Marine with Marxist sympathies, Lee Harvey Oswald, was the assassin. Likewise, the Commission found that nightclub owner Jack Ruby also acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later.
At the first press conference after Kennedy died, a newsman asked Malcolm Perry, "Where was the entrance wound?" Dr. Perry informed the American public and the world that, "There was an entrance wound in the neck…It [the bullet] appeared to be coming at him…," which on repeated questioning he twice more affirmed and the world’s press duly reported. This did not sit well with the Warren Commission’s view of the matter. Testifying before the Commission several months later, however, Dr. Perry supported its contention that the bullet shot into Kennedy’s back had exited his neck, not entered it. Accepting the proposed one-bullet, two-victim hypothesis as true, Dr. Perry agreed that the bullet wound he observed in the neck "certainly would be consistent with an exit wound."
Fifteen years later Dr. Perry told me in a surgeon-to-surgeon private conversation that the bullet wound in Kennedy’s neck was, without question, a wound of entrance, irrespective of what he had told the Warren Commission....
Read more
See also:
Why Three Kennedys Were Assassinated: Lew Rockwell interview with Dr. Miller
George de Mohrenschildt, George H.W. Bush, Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK
Noam Chomsky "Debunks" 9/11 and JFK Murder After 7.00 minutes: (re: Kennedy assassination) "Who knows. Who cares. Plenty of people get killed all the time. What does it matter if one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy?) Yeah, right, Noam.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
Losing Our Turbulence
By John Derbyshire
Taki's Mag, September 13, 2012: The country of my birth no longer much resembles the country of my birth, mainly as a result of mass immigration. Britons were already grumbling about the influx of Third Worlders in my student days back in the mid-1960s.
Thanks to a nifty little app put online by the Office for National Statistics over there, I see that the grumblers of those days were straining at gnats. Until 1983 the net flow was actually outward, with more Brits emigrating than there were foreigners going in for settlement. The inflow wasn’t so Third-Worldy, either: In 1975, the first year for which we are given immigrants’ “countries of last residence,” the top three were Australia, the USA, and Iceland.
Then, after straining at gnats for a few years, the Brits began swallowing camels. The big inflows started after the election of Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997. Numbers peaked at a stupendous 591,000 in 2010 (top countries of last residence: India, Pakistan, and Poland). Last year, we are told, they declined somewhat.
As two dissident parliamentarians have pointed out—and proved, with an extraordinarily successful online petition—the British public is fed up with immigration.
They were fed up in the 1960s, though, as Enoch Powell’s famous 1968 speech showed. Not only did their fed-upness achieve little; thirty years on, immigration was massively greater.
All this illustrates something I spend a lot of time pondering: the strange disconnect between what democratic populations want and what they get—or fail to get—from their politicians.
I read something that I thought might be relevant to the issue in Gordon Bowker’s recent biography of George Orwell. On page 183 we read of Orwell’s investigations among the Depression-stricken coal miners of 1930s northern England:
You may say that the absence of turbulence is a good thing, that (A) turbulence is a characteristic of unhealthy, unstable polities; and that (B) it destroys property and injures—even kills—citizens.
(B) is indisputable. At my age and with my responsibilities, I’d rather turbulence not come roiling through my neighborhood.
(A) is more questionable. It may be that some turbulence now and then does no lasting harm to a nation. England was plenty turbulent from (at least) the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to the Reform Riots of 1831-2, a span of nearly half a millennium during which England never ceased to be England. The USA has seen turbulence aplenty: Authorities in New York City had just barely finished cleaning up from 1863’s Draft Riots when the Orange Riots of 1870-71 started up. Again, neither threatened the nation’s integrity.
Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights.
Read More
Taki's Mag, September 13, 2012: The country of my birth no longer much resembles the country of my birth, mainly as a result of mass immigration. Britons were already grumbling about the influx of Third Worlders in my student days back in the mid-1960s.
Thanks to a nifty little app put online by the Office for National Statistics over there, I see that the grumblers of those days were straining at gnats. Until 1983 the net flow was actually outward, with more Brits emigrating than there were foreigners going in for settlement. The inflow wasn’t so Third-Worldy, either: In 1975, the first year for which we are given immigrants’ “countries of last residence,” the top three were Australia, the USA, and Iceland.
Then, after straining at gnats for a few years, the Brits began swallowing camels. The big inflows started after the election of Tony Blair’s Labour government in 1997. Numbers peaked at a stupendous 591,000 in 2010 (top countries of last residence: India, Pakistan, and Poland). Last year, we are told, they declined somewhat.
As two dissident parliamentarians have pointed out—and proved, with an extraordinarily successful online petition—the British public is fed up with immigration.
They were fed up in the 1960s, though, as Enoch Powell’s famous 1968 speech showed. Not only did their fed-upness achieve little; thirty years on, immigration was massively greater.
All this illustrates something I spend a lot of time pondering: the strange disconnect between what democratic populations want and what they get—or fail to get—from their politicians.
I read something that I thought might be relevant to the issue in Gordon Bowker’s recent biography of George Orwell. On page 183 we read of Orwell’s investigations among the Depression-stricken coal miners of 1930s northern England:
He remained at the tripe shop for almost two weeks, during which he attended large gatherings of “sheeplike” miners, concluding, “There is no turbulence left in England.”If there actually was any turbulence left in England eighty years ago, there sure isn’t any today. (The Irish, bless them, are a different story.) A turbulent people would long since have dealt with the politicians who handed their country over to alien hordes by burning those politicians out of their houses, then stringing them up from lampposts.
You may say that the absence of turbulence is a good thing, that (A) turbulence is a characteristic of unhealthy, unstable polities; and that (B) it destroys property and injures—even kills—citizens.
(B) is indisputable. At my age and with my responsibilities, I’d rather turbulence not come roiling through my neighborhood.
(A) is more questionable. It may be that some turbulence now and then does no lasting harm to a nation. England was plenty turbulent from (at least) the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381 to the Reform Riots of 1831-2, a span of nearly half a millennium during which England never ceased to be England. The USA has seen turbulence aplenty: Authorities in New York City had just barely finished cleaning up from 1863’s Draft Riots when the Orange Riots of 1870-71 started up. Again, neither threatened the nation’s integrity.
Please share this article by using the link below. When you cut and paste an article, Taki's Magazine misses out on traffic, and our writers don't get paid for their work. Email editors@takimag.com to buy additional rights.
Read More
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
The Ugly Interior of Jeremy Bentham's Head
 |
| Jeremy Bentham's head (Source) |
Yes, that's Jeremy Bentham's mummified head. In accordance with his will, his corpse was stuffed with hay and "put on public view for all to see" However, in time, his head got knocked off and was replaced with a wax replica. The original head (shown above) was locked in box and remains in the keeping of University College, London.
As you can see, by the end, Bentham's head was not in good shape. Unfortunately, what was inside Jeremy Bentham's head was even uglier than the exterior.
Bentham invented a new moral philosophy called utilitarianism. This is the basis of all liberal thought and can be summed up in the single rule:
It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.The consequences of this idea have been utterly toxic. My purpose here is to consider why. But first, what does it mean?
What is happiness? How do you measure it? Is it to be determined by the number of one's sexual partners, the amount of junk food one consumes, the length of one's life, one's freedom from work or responsibility?
Obviously, the idea is nuts. Happiness is not measurable, and what people think will bring the greatest happiness often brings only misery.
And how do you maximize happiness? Most people would say their happiness would be maximized if they were free to do exactly as they pleased. And allowing and even encouraging people to do exactly as they please is the basic liberal program: no-fault divorce, state-funded abortion, euthanization of tiresome elderly relatives, oral sex as part of the school curriculum, and no, oral sex is not talking a good line, as we of the older generation may have assumed. But as the poet T.S. Eliot remarked,
If you give people what they want, you begin by underestimating them and you end by corrupting them.Exactly, which is what the liberal program has done.
And the project is idiotic because a state of persistent happiness is physiologically unattainable. We possess adaptive mechanisms that make suffering more endurable and pleasure cloy. We are made to strive, drawn by unsatisfied desire and propelled by the experience of discomfort and dissatisfaction.
The wise individual seeks not happiness but fulfillment: moral, physical and intellectual.
But there is another and truly evil implication of the Benthamite doctrine. If the happiness of the greatest number is the object of public policy and the measure of good and evil, then there is no absolute morality and the unhappiness of a few is a morally acceptable price to ensure the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
Three thousand dead Americans on 9/11 provided the hoped for catalyzing event that kick started the NeoCon Project for the New American Century, aka the long war for American global empire. How easily such mass murder can be justified by the Benthamite calculus. Which means that if 19 incompetent Arabs with paper knives were insufficient to complete the task, why not help them out with a Norad stand-down? The subsequent death of a hundred thousand Iraqis is also easily justified in terms of the greater good.
Single-handedly, with one ridiculous and tawdry idea, Bentham provided the means for the destruction of Christendom, the greatest civilization the World has yet seen.
See Also:
Britain's Peeping State: Bureaucrats At the Washroom Keyhole
Britain's Peeping State: Bureaucrats At the Washroom Keyhole
More than 200 schools across Britain are using CCTV cameras in pupils' toilets or changing rooms, according to figures obtained by anti-surveillance campaigners, who warned that the research raised serious questions about the privacy of schoolchildren.
A total of 825 cameras were located in the toilets or changing rooms of 207 schools across England, Scotland and Wales, according to data provided by more than 2,000 schools. The Guardian
 |
| Jeremy Bentham's Panopticon. (Image source) |
This is what it has come to: public servants watching school girls taking a pee, blue-gloved airport goons viewing passengers naked. This is the end result of the project to dismantle religion and abandon the notion of personal moral responsibility. As people lose the ability to control themselves, everyone has to be spied on at every instant by a bunch of perverts on the public payroll.
Jeremy Bentham, who invented the Panopticon, a structure allowing prisoners to be under observation 24/7, would have been delighted, as must be his totalitarian followers, people like Fidel Castro of Cuba who built this huge Panopticon complex:
 |
| The Presidio Modelo Prison, Cuba. (Image source) |
Bentham also proposed that Panopticons could be used as "houses of industry, work-houses, poor-houses, lazarettos, manufactories, hospitals, mad-houses, and schools."
So yes, the Brits have finally got around to it. Adapting the Panopticon to schools.
Naturally the architecture of the modern Panopticon is not as Bentham envisaged it. There's no need to arrange people in a circle all in view of the centrally place observation post. All that's needed to convert any building to a Panopticon is some wires or wireless links and a bunch of CCTV cameras. Then the bureaucratic state has, in Bentham's words, "a new mode of obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example."
But they promote buggery and oral sex in British schools, so what can the pervs in the control room be watching for? Is it some dopey white kid calling an immigrant kid a Paki or a nig-nog? Nah, probably it's the heteros -- making sure they put on a condom.The prime object of "obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example" is, after all, the genocide of the English without the use of bullets or gas chambers.
So, well done David Camoron, the latest in a long line of liberal British Prime Ministers, working to reduce the English to abject slavery and eventual extinction.
Monday, September 10, 2012
The New World Order: What Is It? Who Wants It?
The New World Order is not an international organization, treaty or political movement. It is not even a conspiracy. It is simply an idea.
With the advent, in the 19th Century, of the steamship, the telegraph, and the Gatling gun, the possibility of global empire became evident to all and has been pursued by many under various names including the British Empire, World Communist Revolution, Pax Americana, the United Nations, the Empire of Unlimited Voluntary Assimilation -- aka the European Union -- Islam, the Banking Cartel, Wall Street and the City of London.
All of these projects are or were manifestations of the struggle for what some have called a New World Order, which is nothing but a sanitized term for global empire.
With the victory over the French in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, Britain became the World's first super power. The first nation to industrialize, Britain reaped the largest profits from the industrial revolution, then earned interest on the profits by financing industrialization throughout the Empire, and in America, Russia, Argentina and much of the rest of the World. Ruling a quarter of the World's population, with naval forces greater than those of the next two largest national naval forces combined, Britain in the year 1900 was the indispensable nation, able to project power from China to Peru and all places between.
With the advent, in the 19th Century, of the steamship, the telegraph, and the Gatling gun, the possibility of global empire became evident to all and has been pursued by many under various names including the British Empire, World Communist Revolution, Pax Americana, the United Nations, the Empire of Unlimited Voluntary Assimilation -- aka the European Union -- Islam, the Banking Cartel, Wall Street and the City of London.
All of these projects are or were manifestations of the struggle for what some have called a New World Order, which is nothing but a sanitized term for global empire.
With the victory over the French in 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo, Britain became the World's first super power. The first nation to industrialize, Britain reaped the largest profits from the industrial revolution, then earned interest on the profits by financing industrialization throughout the Empire, and in America, Russia, Argentina and much of the rest of the World. Ruling a quarter of the World's population, with naval forces greater than those of the next two largest national naval forces combined, Britain in the year 1900 was the indispensable nation, able to project power from China to Peru and all places between.
Canada's Humiliating Foreign Policy
By Eric Walberg
EricWalberg.com, September 10, 2012: On 7 September, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced that Canada is suspending all diplomatic relations with Iran, expelling all Iranian diplomats, closing its embassy in Tehran, and authorizing Turkey to act on Canada's behalf for consular services there. Baird cited Iran’s enmity with Israel, its support of Syria and terrorism. "Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today," Baird said at the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in Vladivostok, Russia.
Canada has not had a full ambassador in Iran since 2007. Relations between the two countries cooled after Iranian-Canadian free-lance photographer Zahra Kazemi died in Iran in 2003 under disputed circumstances, and went from bad to worse under the Conservative government in power in Ottawa since then.
While indeed Iran has been the nation most outspokenly critic of Israel, and is actively working to thwart the Western-backed insurgency in Syria, there is no evidence of its support for "terrorism". It is in fact the victim of terrorism on the part of Israel and the US, which boast about assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and destroying Iranian computers with viruses made-to-order, among other officially-sponsored acts of subversion.
EricWalberg.com, September 10, 2012: On 7 September, Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird announced that Canada is suspending all diplomatic relations with Iran, expelling all Iranian diplomats, closing its embassy in Tehran, and authorizing Turkey to act on Canada's behalf for consular services there. Baird cited Iran’s enmity with Israel, its support of Syria and terrorism. "Canada views the government of Iran as the most significant threat to global peace and security in the world today," Baird said at the Asia Pacific Economic Conference in Vladivostok, Russia.
Canada has not had a full ambassador in Iran since 2007. Relations between the two countries cooled after Iranian-Canadian free-lance photographer Zahra Kazemi died in Iran in 2003 under disputed circumstances, and went from bad to worse under the Conservative government in power in Ottawa since then.
While indeed Iran has been the nation most outspokenly critic of Israel, and is actively working to thwart the Western-backed insurgency in Syria, there is no evidence of its support for "terrorism". It is in fact the victim of terrorism on the part of Israel and the US, which boast about assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists and destroying Iranian computers with viruses made-to-order, among other officially-sponsored acts of subversion.
Forget Iran, it’s Israel’s Nuclear Gun Pointed at Obama’s Head: The Myth of the US-Israel Special Bond
By Jonathan Cook
Global Research, September 10, 2012: It is possibly the greatest of American political myths, repeated ad nauseam by presidential candidates in their election campaigns. President Barack Obama has claimed that the United States enjoys a special bond with Israel unlike its relations with any other country. He has called the friendship “unshakeable”, “enduring” and “unique”, “anchored by our common interests and deeply held values”.
His Republican rival, Mitt Romney, has gone further, arguing that there is not “an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally Israel”. A recent Romney election ad, highlighting his summer visit to Israel, extolled the “deep and cherished relationship”.
But, while such pronouncements form the basis of an apparent Washington consensus, the reality is that the cherished friendship is no more than a fairy tale. It has been propagated by politicians to mask the suspicion — and plentiful examples of duplicity and betrayal — that have marked the relationship since Israel’s founding.
Politicians may prefer to express undying love for Israel, and hand over billions of dollars annually in aid, but the US security establishment has — at least, in private — always regarded Israel as an unfaithful partner.
Global Research, September 10, 2012: It is possibly the greatest of American political myths, repeated ad nauseam by presidential candidates in their election campaigns. President Barack Obama has claimed that the United States enjoys a special bond with Israel unlike its relations with any other country. He has called the friendship “unshakeable”, “enduring” and “unique”, “anchored by our common interests and deeply held values”.
His Republican rival, Mitt Romney, has gone further, arguing that there is not “an inch of difference between ourselves and our ally Israel”. A recent Romney election ad, highlighting his summer visit to Israel, extolled the “deep and cherished relationship”.
But, while such pronouncements form the basis of an apparent Washington consensus, the reality is that the cherished friendship is no more than a fairy tale. It has been propagated by politicians to mask the suspicion — and plentiful examples of duplicity and betrayal — that have marked the relationship since Israel’s founding.
Politicians may prefer to express undying love for Israel, and hand over billions of dollars annually in aid, but the US security establishment has — at least, in private — always regarded Israel as an unfaithful partner.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Obarmy Is a Tyrant But Romney Could Be Worse
By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy September 7, 2012: If political conventions are ranked on a one to ten scale for intelligence, I give the Republican Convention zero and the Democrats one.
How can the United States be a superpower when both political parties are unaware of everything that is happening at home and abroad?
The Republicans are relying for victory on four years of anti-Obama propaganda and their proprietary programed electronic voting machines. For nearly four years Republican operatives have flooded the Internet with portraits of Obama as a non-US citizen, as a Muslim (even while Obama was murdering Muslims in seven countries), and as a Marxist (put in power by the Israel Lobby, Wall Street, and the military/security complex).
Most Republican voters will vote against Obama based on these charges despite the curious fact that no committee in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives held a hearing to determine if Obama is a citizen. If Obama were not a citizen, why would the very aggressive House Republicans not capitalize on it. It would be easy for a Congressional committee to determine if Obama were a citizen. Despite the propaganda, the Republicans in office have shown no interest in the propaganda charges spread by Republican operatives over the Internet.
Either Republicans have no confidence in the charges and do not want to end up proving with Congressional hearings that Obama is a citizen, or the Republicans, having destroyed every other aspect of the US Constitution, reducing it to “a scrap of paper,” feel that making an issue of the last remaining Constitutional provision other than the Second Amendment would be the height of hypocrisy and don’t want to risk opening the constitutional issues that Republicans have run roughshod over.
If the Republicans can destroy habeas corpus, due process, violate both US statutory and international law, ignore the separation of powers, and create a Caesar, why can’t the Democrats run a non-citizen?
Why didn’t the Republican convention raise the issue about the Obama regime’s claim that the executive branch has the power to assassinate US citizens without due process of law? No such power exists in the US Constitution or in US statutory law. This gestapo police state claim exists only as an assertion. Republicans ignored this most important of all issues, because they support it.
Why didn’t the Democrat convention raise the issue that the Republicans took us to wars based on 9/11 assertions without ever conducting an investigation of 9/11? No qualified high-rise architect, structural engineer, physicist, chemist, or national security expert believes a word of the US government’s 9/11 story. Neither do the first responders who were on the scene and witnessed and experienced the event.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)