Politicians

[Nur]

MP quits family values party after scandal with prostitute

 

By Richard Owen

Tuesday July 31 2007

 

Cosimo Mele (50), a parliamentary deputy for Italy's Christian Democratic UDC party, resigned from the party after colleagues complained that his behaviour was incompatible with the Centre Right's espousal of family values.

 

The timing of the dismissal was particularly sensitive as the party has been at the forefront of a campaign to oblige all parliamentarians to take a voluntary drugs test. This is due to take place tomorrow.

 

Mr Mele, whose wife is about to give birth to their fourth child, said that he felt proud to have risked exposure by calling the emergency services when the girl began hyperventilating and experiencing delirium and hallucinations.

 

"At least I avoided the worst - for her," he said.

 

Mr Mele, who comes from Brindisi, in staunchly Catholic southern Italy, claimed he had not realised that the girl was a prostitute.

 

During a recess in an evening vote in the lower house, he had gone for dinner with friends at a fashionable restaurant near the French Embassy on Piazza Farnese, and struck up a "sympathetic rapport" with a woman in her late 20s to whom he was introduced.

 

The MP said he had been flattered by her interest. "I am not exactly the kind of man women seek out with a lantern," he told Il Messaggero, the Rome daily.

 

He said that "one thing led to another" and they ended up in bed in a suite at the Hotel Flora on Via Veneto, which features in Fellini's 1960 classic film 'La Dolce Vita'.

 

Asked if he had paid the girl for sex, Mr Mele replied: "Not exactly. I spontaneously gave her a present." He admitted the present had been cash, "though not excessive".

 

He denied reports that he had taken part in a threesome, saying that although there had been another woman present she had only chatted to the first woman in the suite's sitting room while he lay in bed watching TV. "I think I fell asleep while they were talking," he said. "Perhaps that was when they took drugs."

 

Mr Mele said the prostitute became ill towards dawn. "I phoned the reception and then called for medical assistance. She didn't want me to, but I felt it was the right thing to do."

 

He admitted that he had supported a Bill going through parliament, calling for tougher measures against drugs offences, but denied he had taken drugs himself. "I made a mistake, and I assume full responsibility," he said.

 

He said he would tell his wife everything today at their home at Ostuni, and ask for her forgiveness.

 

He refused to resign as a deputy, because he was "a respectable man" with virtues and weaknesses. (© The Times, London)

 

- Richard Owen

[Nur]

Intellectual Violence

 

By Angie Riedel

 

06/06/08 "ICH" -- - Something I've learned over the last few years is that there really is such a thing as evil in this world. True, sheer evil.

 

I've also learned that all evil is perpetrated by force; and that can be physical violence or it can be intellectual violence, i.e. by deceit and deception. Lies. Lies are every bit as much a form of violence as guns, clubs and bombs because just like physical violence, lies are used to violate someone else's free will and free choice.

 

The reality is that the violence of lies is infinitely more common than physical violence. There's just no contest there. Lies are the single most prevalent form of violence in our country today, and that intellectual violence is taking a serious toll.

 

What is violence and why is violence used? It is used as a means to an end. More specifically it is the quickest way to get what you want from somebody else. You can either just shoot someone and take what you want or you can lie them out of what they have that you want, either way, you achieve the goal of getting what you want from somebody else. Lying is the means to perpetrate a robbery or theft. Just like a mugging in a dark alley, individuals and nations alike are violently attacked with the aim of destroying the true owners of something to take what they own for yourself.

 

The mere threat of using violence against somebody is often enough to get them to hand over the desired things. It works well because everybody knows what violence is and nobody wants to be violated, which is exactly what violence is. It is violating another person. It's using whatever superior tools or strength or advantages you posses to harm, or threaten to harm another with the aim of taking something that belongs to them and that you have no right to take. It means over riding the free will and free choice of another person and to force your own will on them, so that you can have it your way. And that's just wrong.

 

Depriving others of the God given right of having free choice over their own lives, bodies and property is the very definition of what we think of as crime. That is the DNA behind all crime, that's the reason that we even have the concept of crime. Forcefully depriving another of their free will is what all crime is. It violates a person in the most serious, egregious ways. It's an insult that goes very deep into the psyche of any victim of violence, physical or intellectual.

 

Victims of violence do feel violated. They feel the terror of powerlessness over their own lives. They feel the horrible loss of control over their own fate. The overwhelming insult of not having any choice in matters regarding their own life and best interests. They are reduced to irrelevance because of the appetites and will of their attackers.

 

Being made to feel irrelevant is probably the most damaging experience that any human being can go through. It's the worst feeling in the world to suddenly become nothing and no one as far as some dominating, violent others are concerned. To be deprived of the obligatory recognition of your sentience and inherent right to be treated as an equal to other human beings is to feel one's own life being negated, as if it had no meaning, importance or significance. There is no greater insult and no greater harm that can be perpetrated on another.

 

To become nothing more than the extension of another man's will is to become a slave or an object, and we are not slaves or objects. We are equals with the same human rights in this world, and we all deserve to retain our dignity and sovereignty at all times. No one has a right to take those things from us. When they do take those things they defy known reality and relegate us to a realm of confused suffering, and permanent damage that cannot be undone or recompensed.

 

The only way anyone can make you feel that way is by violating you, depriving you of your dignity and personal sovereignty, and this is why the concept of simple respect for others is such an important thing. It's a huge thing. In fact I'd have to say it's the biggest thing there is.

 

In a decent world we would all agree to respect the others in our lives and all over the world. We would comprehend the simple fact that those others do not owe us anything. They don't owe us their prosperity or their lives. They don't owe us their property or their rights. They are not in any way obligated to do as we desire so that we may feel happy.

 

The only people who think the opposite is true are the people in this world who are truly evil. They are the criminals who commit all the worst crimes in this world. Although those crimes can take many forms the bottom line is that it's always the same crime being committed, the crime of depriving another of their free will and their right to determine their own fate and their own life choices, whether or not anyone else happens to like those choices. It's just not our call to make for anyone else.

 

That's where we run into problems because there are a great many people, people who think of themselves as upright, good people, religious people even, who will not agree that everyone has the same right to self determination in this world. Right off the bat, that attitude is criminal.

 

The Liar's Toolbox

 

Today there is much killing of innocents happening in the name of the good guys vs. the bad guys, but what is never called to account is who defines good and bad. Without exception it is never a simple case of good guys versus bad guys; it is in fact a case of aggressors calling the others bad because those others are not doing what is desired by the aggressor. They are the legal owners of lands and resources the aggressor covets, they exist in the way of the aggressors and in blatant contradiction to false claims to ownership of the land and its resources. The others who have what the aggressors want are always automatically the bad guys, and that's nothing but a big fat lie. It's hypocrisy. And that's always attached to lies. Hypocrisy is one of the main tools in the liar's toolbox.

 

Hypocrisy is when we believe we deserve to have free will but we refuse to extend the same human right to others. This is a very important tool in the Liar's toolbox. It is used to try to justify violence against others with all manner of lies and excuses, like religious differences, racial differences, any kind of differences will be used to try to justify perpetrating violence against others when we want what belongs to them. Where ever there is hypocrisy there is lying going on and the sad reality will be that a lot of good people will have bought in to those lies and will be an opposing force to the truth. They will not be able to see their own hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is a serious, dangerous sin and it's one we should add to the list of things we want to find in ourselves and do away with.

 

Another item in the Liar's Toolbox is indifference. Sometimes called depraved indifference the meaning is simple enough to gather. When we are indifferent to the suffering of others we are committing a crime of violence against them. When big corporations or governments take steps in their own self interests that result in harm being done to others, directly or indirectly, they know it. That they proceed anyway makes it criminal.

 

Failing to notice or consider that our actions harm others is not an excuse and it cannot be justified. Saying they just didn't know, or worse, framing and promoting illicit depraved concepts like "collateral damage" is no excuse either. There is no such thing as lives that don't matter.

 

No matter what claims are being made to justify violence in the name of self interest, there is no justification. When we are led to believe otherwise that in itself is a crime being perpetrated on all of us. We are being insulted every bit as much as their innocent victims. The message is that others don't matter in the name of their personal goals and desires, and that's invalid on its face. Others always matter and life always matters more than any ideology or game plan. More than any government's desire for power and prestige, more than any corporation's greed and psychotic lust for endless expansion. Those things in fact and in reality are worthless up against human life and well being. Pretending otherwise is always and only a lie.

 

 

It's Not Just About Stuff

 

We're encouraged to believe that crime is all about property and ownership rights, and that there can be no crimes without property or life being involved but that's only seeing the peel and missing the entire banana beneath it. Every dishonest contract, every con job, every petty theft, every rape or act of child molestation, every bogus war we're led into based on lies, is always about depriving people of something that's rightfully and only theirs. That can be property, rights, dignity, life or limb, freedom of choice, or even the information needed to make the best decisions. Again, all of that boils down to overriding the free will of others. These are all forms of violence, ways of violating the human birthright to have free will and freedom of choice in all things pertaining to our own lives, persons, and property.

 

Violence used at any other time than in literal, imminent self defense from a violent attacker is criminal. It is unnecessary and unjustified. Yet it is prevalent and it is everywhere, from behind the closed doors of private homes to out in the open in the streets, the kinds of violence of wars and political unrest. Take Africa for example and the carnage going on there. It's all completely unjustified, it's criminal, people are getting hurt and dying and there is no end in sight. No good comes of this way of getting what you want at the expense of others without the consent of all involved.

 

There is no need to fund and instigate the social crisis there, which is what is being done by powerful, wealthy corporations and their copartners in governments. It is being done to consume the rich resources of that land for the benefit of those who already have more than enough, so that they can have even more for themselves. Greed is not good. It is just another weapon in the liars toolbox. Greed is always fed with the blood of innocent people and it is a crime.

 

Depriving others of what's rightfully theirs is what it always boils down to and that's why violence beyond literal, imminent self defense from a violent attacker is always criminal. It can not be tolerated. Not any more. Not in the 21st Century. It is long past time for humanity with its consciousness raised and its improved access to education to make the necessary spiritual/emotional/doctrinal adjustments to go along with that increased knowledge and awareness. Meaning, it's time for us to change for the better.

 

It's time for us now to take responsibility, which is what must be done when we become world aware and educated. To posses and use knowledge without responsibility is an unforgivable failure. It's also self-defeating because it enables that which is not true to dominate us.

 

Honesty isn't just the best public policy, it's the only public policy because dishonesty is literally a criminal act. It's an act of violence because it violates the peoples right to exercise their free will. It undermines our ability to make intelligent, meaningful choices for ourselves by giving us false information and forcing false perspectives on us that will lead us to draw conclusions based on that false information. The public will then be infinitely more likely to agree to whatever the liar or liars want. That's every bit as violent as holding a gun to our heads, it's just not recognized as such, and that's no accident. It's so obvious as to be painful, yet how many of us have ever made the connection? They're taking what they want by force and we can't even see it anymore, we expect no less.

 

We tend to think of violence only in terms of physical things, blood, bullet wounds, physical harm. But being lied to can do equal damage to our minds and souls, and can and does cause terrible harm and injury to the collective consciousness of mankind.

 

We're living in a society which, at this moment in time, is being controlled and dominated by people who have no respect for others. By people who by the very nature of how they think and act are criminals. There's no wiggle room here, it's quite simple when you stop to remember that the essence of crime is depriving others of their free will and their right to act in their own best interests. Those who dominate our reality right now are master liars, and the damage they are perpetrating has no historical equivalent in this country. The destruction they're wreaking is total and we're only beginning to see the tip of the iceberg. By the time they're done there won't be much left standing, and a whole lot of people are going to suffer, and a whole lot of people are going to die. You tell me what's not criminal about that. Everything about it is criminal.

 

These controllers have managed to get a dominant foothold into every major aspect of society. The justice system, the departments of government, the church, public and higher education have all been infiltrated and are in the process of being ideologically raped. They own and control the media and they do this with the specific purpose of being able to withhold the truth about themselves and what they do, what they want and how they're getting what they want, from the public. You can't even buy TV time today if you have a different perspective than the one they want to dominate the public consciousness with. They can't afford the truth going out to the people because they know the people would never agree to go along with them. Therefore, they either have to shoot us all, which simply isn't possible, or they have to violate our consciousness with an endless stream of lies to make us want to go along with them. And they're experts at this. And we pay them to do it and they use our money to do it to us.

 

Every aspect of how they operate is an insult and a violation of the public's right to choose in their own behalf. We can no longer make appropriate choices because we no longer have access to all of the information, to truth, or to all of the sides to any story. All we will ever hear again as long as the media laws stay the same is only what they want us to hear.

 

We have only to look around us to gauge the numbers of innocent people dying both here and abroad to get an accurate idea of just how much evil has managed to insinuate itself into our minds and lives. We have only to witness the metamorphosis of ordinary men who once upheld our laws to protect us, into militarized, soulless, dishonest inhuman robot killers and thugs to recognize that evil is transforming our society from its very roots and defining principles into its exact mirror opposite. We are being turned into everything we claim to hate and would risk our lives to fight against, and we no longer seem capable of recognizing it.

 

Our laws are quickly being changed from things that protect our God given right to exercise our free will without encumbrance from power and privilege, into things which give all permission to power and privilege to encumber us and prevent us from living in freedom. The lie is that it is being done to secure us, but we are not secure. We could never be kept safe by anyone, and especially not by a government so obsessed with secrecy, so disdainful of being bound by the laws that bind the rest of us, and so unconcerned with our core principles of protecting every individual from violence and interference by the government into their private lives. This government represents everything we once fought to be free of, and then some.

 

They use every form of violence and force conceivable, and have many others being developed, most of which are further insults to freedom and free will. All of them have the intended goal of depriving us of even more freedom, of our right to speak openly about what we see happening, of our hope and expectation that justice will be done and that they will be made to stop. Now that they are making the rules they will not stop. We are drowning in a sea of lies.

 

When lies dominate us then evil dominates our society. We are willingly or unwillingly forced to be complicit in the actions that evil desires to carry out. And it will always desire to perpetrate the greatest possible evils it can get away with. It spells the destruction of centuries of hard work and struggle specifically to stop, control and prevent evil from taking over our government, our country and our private lives. When lies are so common they become what feels normal and rational to us, we are certainly lost and it's only a matter of time before we'll have to pay the price of our ignorance and inability to discern something as simple as right from wrong.

 

We are all victims of intellectual violence, and knowing right from wrong will always be the first thing to go, and the last thing we'll ever recognize. Until it's far too late

[Nur]

The E-Diots Who Rule America

 

By Chris Hedges

 

October 21, 2008 "Truthdig" -- - October 20, 2008 -- Our oligarchic class is incompetent at governing, managing the economy, coping with natural disasters, educating our young, handling foreign affairs, providing basic services like health care and safeguarding individual rights. That it is still in power, and will remain in power after this election, is a testament to our inability to separate illusion from reality. We still believe in “the experts.” They still believe in themselves. They are clustered like flies swarming around John McCain and Barack Obama. It is only when these elites are exposed as incompetent parasites and dethroned that we will have any hope of restoring social, economic and political order.

 

“Their inability to see the human as anything more than interest driven made it impossible for them to imagine an actively organized pool of disinterest called the public good,” said the Canadian philosopher John Ralston Saul, whose books “The Unconscious Civilization” and “Voltaire’s *******s” excoriates our oligarchic elites. “It is as if the Industrial Revolution had caused a severe mental trauma, one that still reaches out and extinguishes the memory of certain people. For them, modern history begins from a big explosion—the Industrial Revolution. This is a standard ideological approach: a star crosses the sky, a meteor explodes, and history begins anew.”

 

Our elites—the ones in Congress, the ones on Wall Street and the ones being produced at prestigious universities and business schools—do not have the capacity to fix our financial mess. Indeed, they will make it worse. They have no concept, thanks to the educations they have received, of the common good. They are stunted, timid and uncreative bureaucrats who are trained to carry out systems management. They see only piecemeal solutions which will satisfy the corporate structure. They are about numbers, profits and personal advancement. They are as able to deny gravely ill people medical coverage to increase company profits as they are able to use taxpayer dollars to peddle costly weapons systems to blood-soaked dictatorships. The human consequences never figure into their balance sheets. The democratic system, they think, is a secondary product of the free market. And they slavishly serve the market.

 

Andrew Lahde, the Santa Monica, Calif., hedge fund manager who made an 870 percent gain last year by betting on the subprime mortgage collapse, has abruptly shut down his fund, citing the risk of trading with faltering banks. In his farewell letter to his investors he excoriated the elites who run our investment houses, banks and government.

 

“The low-hanging fruit, i.e. ****** whose parents paid for prep school, Yale, and then the Harvard MBA, was there for the taking,” he said of our oligarchic class. “These people who were (often) truly not worthy of the education they received (or supposedly received) rose to the top of companies such as AIG, Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers and all levels of our government. All of this behavior supporting the Aristocracy only ended up making it easier for me to find people ****** enough to take the other side of my trades. God bless America.”

 

“On the issue of the U.S. Government, I would like to make a modest proposal,” he went on. “First, I point out the obvious flaws, whereby legislation was repeatedly brought forth to Congress over the past eight years, which would have [reined] in the predatory lending practices of now mostly defunct institutions. These institutions regularly filled the coffers of both parties in return for voting down all of this legislation designed to protect the common citizen. This is an outrage, yet no one seems to know or care about it. Since Thomas Jefferson and Adam Smith passed, I would argue that there has been a dearth of worthy philosophers in this country, at least ones focused on improving government.”

 

Democracy is not an outgrowth of free markets. Democracy and capitalism are antagonistic entities. Democracy, like individualism, is not based on personal gain but on self-sacrifice. A functioning democracy must defy the economic interests of elites on behalf of citizens. This is not happening. The corporate managers and government officials trying to fix the economic meltdown are pouring money and resources into the financial sector because they only know how to manage and sustain established systems, not change them. Financial systems, however, are not pure scientific and numerical abstractions that exist independently from human beings.

 

“When the elite begin to think that money is real, the crash is coming,” Saul said in a telephone interview. “That is just a given in history. Because what they’ve done is pull themselves out of the possibility of looking in the mirror and thinking, this is inflation, speculation, this is fluff. They can’t do it. And when you say to them, gosh, this is not real. And they say, oh, you don’t understand, you’re so old-fashioned, you still think this is about manufacturing. And of course, it’s basic economics. And that’s what happens every single time.

 

“The difficulty is you have a collapse, you have a loss of face by the people who are there, and it’s not just George Bush, it’s very, very deep,” Saul said. “What we’re talking about is the need to rethink the departments of economics, of political science. Then you have to rethink the whole analytic method of the World Bank. If I’m the secretary of the treasury, and not a guy like [Henry] Paulson, but I mean a sort of normal secretary of the treasury or minister of finance, and I say, OK, we’ve got a real problem, let’s get the senior civil servants in here. Gentlemen, ladies, OK, clearly we have to go in another direction, give me some ideas. Well, those people don’t have any other ideas because at this point they’re about the fourth generation of what you might call neoconservative globalist managers, unfairly summarized. So they then go to the people who work for them, and you work down; there’s no one in there with an alternate approach. I mean they’ll have little alternatives, but no basic differences in opinion. And so it’s very difficult to turn anything around because they’ve eliminated all opposing ideas inside. I mean it’s the problem of the Soviet Union, right?”

 

Saul pointed out that the first three aims of the corporatist movement in Germany, Italy and France during the 1920s, those that went on to become part of the Fascist experience, were “to shift power directly to economic and social interest groups, to push entrepreneurial initiative in areas normally reserved for public bodies” and to “obliterate the boundaries between public and private interest—that is, challenge the idea of the public interest.”

 

Sound familiar?

 

“There are a handful of people who haven’t been published in mainstream journals, who haven’t been listened to, who have been marginalized in every way,” Saul said. “There are a couple of them and you could turn to them. But then who do you give the orders to? And the people you give the orders to, they are not going to understand the orders because it hasn’t been a part of their education. So it’s a real problem of a good general who suddenly finds that his junior generals and brigadiers and corporals, you want them to do irregular warfare and they only know how to do trenches. And so how the hell do you get them to do this thing which they’ve never been trained to do? And so you get this kind of disorder, confusion inside, and the danger of what rises up there is populism; we’ve already had populism in a way, but we could get more populism, more fear and anger.”

 

We may elect representatives to Congress to end the war in Iraq, but the war goes on. We may plead with these representatives to halt Bush’s illegal wiretapping but the telecommunications lobbyists make sure it remains in place. We may beg them not to pass the bailout but 850 billion taxpayer dollars are funneled upward to the elites on Wall Street. We may want single-payer, not-for-profit health care but it is not even discussed as a possibility in presidential debates. We, as individuals in this system, are irrelevant.

 

“I’ve talked to several Supreme Court justices, several times in several countries,” Saul told me, “and I say, look, in your rulings, can you differentiate easily in cases between the social contract and the commercial contract, and to which the answer is, we can no longer differentiate. And that lies at the heart of the problem. You don’t have the concept of the other, and of obligation of the individual leading to individualism. You can’t have that if the whole legal system has slipped over the last, really, 50 years, increasingly, to a confusion between the social contract and the commercial contract. Because they are two completely different things. The social contract is about the public good, responsible individualism, imagining the other. The commercial contract is a commercial contract. They’re not supposed to be confused. They don’t actually fit together. The commercial contract only works properly when the social contract works in a democracy.”

 

The working class, which has desperately borrowed money to stay afloat as real wages have dropped, now face years, maybe decades, of stagnant or declining incomes without access to new credit. The national treasury meanwhile is being drained on behalf of speculative commercial interests. The government—the only institution citizens have that is big enough and powerful enough to protect their rights—is becoming weaker, more anemic and less able to help the mass of Americans who are embarking on a period of deprivation and suffering unseen in this country since the 1930s. Consumption, the profligate engine of the U.S. economy, is withering. September retail sales across the U.S. fell 1.2 percent. The decline was almost double the 0.7 percent drop analysts expected from consumers, whose spending represents two-thirds of U.S. economic activity. There were 160,000 jobs lost last month and three-quarters of a million jobs lost this year. The reverberations of the economic meltdown are only beginning.

 

I do not think George W. Bush or Barack Obama or John McCain or Henry Paulson are fascists. Rather, they are part of a cabal of naive, mediocre and self-deluded capitalists who are steadily weakening political and economic structures to a point where our democracy will become so impotent that it can be blown aside, probably with broad popular support. The only question is how this will happen. Will there be a steady and slow decline as in the late Roman Empire when the Senate ended as a farce? Will we see a powerful right-wing backlash from those outside the mainstream political system, as we did in Yugoslavia, and the rise of a militant Christian fascism? Will there be a national crisis that allows those in power to instantly sweep away all constitutional rights in the name of national security?

 

I do not know. But I do know that what is coming, as long as our oligarchy remains in charge, will not be good. We will either recover the concept of the public good, and this means a revolt against our bankrupt elite and the dynamiting of the corporatist structure, or we will extinguish our democracy

[SayidSomal]

Originally posted by Nur:

From the e-Nuri Archives

 

Faarax Gololley, the legendary Political Humorist during the Afweyne Regime was quoted as saying :

 

" Afweyne raac, ama Afgooye aad, ama Afkaaga heyso ,"

 

Meaning: Follow Afweyne (Dictator of Somalia), or Go to Afgoye ( Somalia's notorious Guantanamo Prison, or Keep your mouth shut"

2003 eNuri Political Research

i recently heard this - now i see it here - just coincedence

[Nur]

Sayid Somal

 

This wisdom is still valid today, speaking out for your rights can invite trouble. But, standing up for Allah in prayers signifies a refusal to bow down for humans in Dullinimo.

 

 

Nur

[Nur]

The Big Whorehouse On The Potomac

 

By Paul Craig Roberts

 

July 03, 2009 "ICH" -- -As Americans celebrate July 4th, they can contemplate that the union of “free and independent states,” like the former British colonial power, has evolved into its final manifestation--a complete whore house. While Members of Parliament in London charge their expense accounts with every personal expenditure, including the rental of adult xxx-rated films, an American newspaper put the reporting of public policy out to bids until politico.com blew the whistle.

 

In Washington, everything is for sale, including journalistic integrity. The Washington Post, which abandoned investigative reporting eons ago, decided to boost its sagging revenues by spreading her legs. The Post’s business division put out a flyer offering lobbyists access at the Post’s CEO’s gracious home to “those powerful few” in the Obama administration, Congress, and among the Post’s editors and reporters who decide the nation’s policies, such as health care.

 

The Washington Post’s flyer offered a Wal-Mart low cost of a mere $25,000 for one “salon” to interact with decision makers and $250,000 for eleven interactions.

 

Alas, people with an old fashioned sense of integrity impugned the Washington Post’s new business model, and the Post’s boss, Katharine Weymouth, had to rescind the offer that would have rescued the newspaper by turning it into a “facilitator for private lobbyist-official encounters.”

 

I say damn the old fashioned moralists. America would be much better served if the Washington Post was selling access to lobbyists instead of selling the US government’s PSYOPS operations in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, Georgia, Ukraine, Serbia, Venezuela, Honduras, and everywhere else, for which the paper receives a pittance: the reporter can tell his editor that he has a deep source within the government, hardly an adequate recompense for wars that cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars at a time when Americans cannot pay the mortgages on their homes.

 

America would be better off if the Washington Post whored for lobbyists than for the US Imperial State, which has failed to adjust its imperial ambitions to its bankruptcy. As an example of its whoring for US Imperialism, on July 2, the Washington Post reported President Obama’s claim that Russian Prime Minister Putin is a person who lives partly in the past, with “one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new.”

 

If Putin has “one foot in the new,” he is ahead of Obama who has both feet in the past.

 

Obama said that Putin needs to learn that “the old Cold War approaches” to relations with the US are “outdated.”

 

The Post reported this as if a failure of Putin’s is endangering US/Russian relations. The Post did not point out that it is Obama, not Putin, who has wars of aggression against three independent countries--Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, with a fourth war threatened with Iran. We know for a fact these wars originated in Bush administration lies and deception, but Obama continues the occupations and expands the wars, thus endorsing the deceptions.

 

It is the Washington whorehouse that unilaterally abrogated the anti-ballistic missile treaty with Russia and begin constructing anti-ballistic missile sites designed to negate Russia’s nuclear deterrent. If Russia’s nuclear weapons can be made useless, Russia can be knuckled under to accept America’s hegemonic will, and US hegemony takes another step forward.

 

It is Washington that is surrounding Russia with military bases: an anti-ballistic missile base in Poland, an anti-ballistic missile radar site in the Czech Republic, American-made “color revolutions,” which have installed US puppet governments in Serbia, Ukraine, and Georgia, with failures in former constituent parts of Soviet central Asia.

 

NATO, once a European/American alliance against Soviet invasion of Western Europe is now a mercenary US force fighting for America in Afghanistan and attempting to incircle Russia from the Baltics to Central Asia.

 

Obama will soon be on his way to Russia to discuss whether or not Russia is willing to give in to US demands to prostrate itself before US hegemony. Obama hopes to drive a wedge between Prime Minister Putin and President Medvedev, like the wedges Washington has facilitated between the ambitious ruling ayatollahs in Iran. If Obama can get Putin and Medvedev at odds, Russia will be neutralized.

 

That would leave China alone as an obstacle to US world hegemony.

 

The US has no media. But it does have a Ministry of Propaganda. Americans were programmed with days of propaganda that Islamic Iran, a member of the US-designated “axis of evil,” stole the election from the Iranian people. According to the US Ministry of Propaganda, the Iranian people are allied with the US government against the Iranian government.

 

Even people who are regarded as Iran experts said, without any evidence, that the elections were stolen. One of their arguments is that three hours were not enough time to count all the votes, yet it was announced that Ahmajdinejad won. The ignorance of “experts” made theft a certainty for American TV audiences.

 

The “experts” who make this assertion are obviously ignorant of Iran’s electoral procedures. For the ignorant “experts” and the Americans deluded by them, here is the way it works:

 

There are more than 45,000 voting places, which means less than 1,000 votes per voting place, an easy number to count and report in three hours. At each voting place there are a dozen or more observers, including every candidates’ representatives, representatives of the Guardian Council, and the local police. The votes are counted in the presence of all, and all sign documents attesting to the count.

 

The vote totals are forwarded to a central office in the region that has representatives of the candidates and the Guardian Council, where they are verified by a dozen or a dozen and a half of witnesses. From here the vote count goes to the Minister of the Interior, where the vote is announced.

 

Unless these procedures were not followed, and no evidence has been provided that the procedures were not followed, it is impossible to steal an Iranian election. It is much easier to steal an American one, which happens routinely.

 

There are thousands, indeed tens of thousands of witnesses, perhaps hundreds of thousands of witnesses, to the Iranian vote. Yet, only Mousavi and his corrupt supporters among the high living Iranian elite, who are fighting for personal power in Iran, contest the vote. The kids in the street were the usual dupes. At this stage in history, how can anyone believe that there is a pure candidate that wants to bring freedom and justice to the people? Anywhere. In any country, the US included.

 

Ignorant “experts” made a great noise about the fact that 50 cities or towns had votes in excess of registered voters. Again, this is a demonstration of “Iranian experts” total ignorance. In Iran, voters can vote wherever they happen to be at the day of election. Vacationers, business people on travel, commuters, and the partial absence of distinct voting districts, can produce a vote count in excess of the local registered population.

 

The Guardian Council examined these differences, added them up, and noted that if every additional vote was fraudulent, the number was insufficient to affect the outcome.

 

The Guardian Council has agreed to post every vote count.

 

Did you, dear American, learn of these facts from Fox News, CNN, the New York Times, or from the CIA and Mossad bloggers? Of course not. Every time “your” media opens its mouth lies jump out that serve the US government’s hegemonic propaganda.

 

America’s salvation lies with Charles Pelton and the Washington Post’s business side managers. Once the American media is obviously a whorehouse, which it is, Americans might pull themselves out of their stupor and learn to recognize facts and to think for themselves.

 

But don’t hold your breath. From what I have seen, with few exceptions, Americans are as dumb and insouciant as they come. And they think they are the salt of the earth.

[Nur]

Helen Thomas: Not Even Nixon Tried to Control the Media Like Obama

 

By Penny Starr and Fred Lucas

 

July 03 2009 -- July 01 2009 - (CNSNews.com) - Following a testy exchange during Wednesday’s briefing with White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, veteran White House correspondent Helen Thomas told CNSNews.com that not even Richard Nixon tried to control the press the way President Obama is trying to control the press.

 

“Nixon didn’t try to do that,” Thomas said. “They couldn’t control (the media). They didn’t try.

 

“What the hell do they think we are, puppets?” Thomas said. “They’re supposed to stay out of our business. They are our public servants. We pay them.”

 

Thomas said she was especially concerned about the arrangement between the Obama Administration and a writer from the liberal Huffington Post Web site. The writer was invited by the White House to President Obama’s press conference last week on the understanding that he would ask Obama a question about Iran from among questions that had been sent to him by people in Iran.

 

“When you call the reporter the night before you know damn well what they are going to ask to control you,” Thomas said.

 

“I’m not saying there has never been managed news before, but this is carried to fare-thee-well--for the town halls, for the press conferences,” she said. “It’s blatant. They don’t give a damn if you know it or not. They ought to be hanging their heads in shame.”

 

During today’s briefing, Thomas interrupted a back-and-forth between Gibbs and Chip Reid, the White House correspondent for CBS News, when Reid was questioning Gibbs about who was going to decide what questions would be asked of President Obama in a townhall meeting that was scheduled to take place in Annandale, Va., today.

 

Gibbs then had an exchange involving Reid and Thomas that went as follows:

 

Gibbs: “… But, again, let's--How about we do this? I promise we will interrupt the AP's tradition of asking the first question. I will let you [Chip Reid] ask me a question tomorrow as to whether you thought the questions at the town hall meeting that the President conducted in Annandale—“

 

Chip Reid: “I'm perfectly happy to—”

 

Helen Thomas: “That's not his point. The point is the control--”

 

Reid: “Exactly.”

 

Thomas: “We have never had that in the White House. And we have had some, but not-- This White House.”

 

Gibbs: “Yes, I was going to say, I'll let you amend her question.”

 

Thomas: “I'm amazed. I'm amazed at you people who call for openness and transparency and—”

 

Gibbs: “Helen, you haven't even heard the questions.”

 

Reid: “It doesn't matter. It's the process.”

 

Thomas: “You have left open—”

 

Reid: “Even if there's a tough question, it's a question coming from somebody who was invited or was screened, or the question was screened.”

 

Thomas: “It's shocking. It's really shocking.”

 

Gibbs: “Chip, let's have this discussion at the conclusion of the town hall meeting. How about that?”

 

Reid: “Okay.”

 

Gibbs: “I think—“

 

Thomas: “No, no, no, we're having it now--”

 

Gibbs: “Well, I'd be happy to have it now.”

 

Thomas: “It's a pattern.”

 

Gibbs: “Which question did you object to at the town hall meeting, Helen?”

 

Thomas: “It's a pattern. It isn't the question—”

 

Gibbs: “What's a pattern?

 

Thomas: “It's a pattern of controlling the press.”

 

Gibbs: “How so? Is there any evidence currently going on that I'm controlling the press--poorly, I might add.”

 

Thomas: “Your formal engagements are pre-packaged.”

 

Gibbs: “How so?”

 

Reid: “Well, and controlling the public—”

 

Thomas: “How so? By calling reporters the night before to tell them they're going to be called on. That is shocking.”

 

Gibbs: “We had this discussion ad nauseam and—”

 

Thomas: “Of course you would, because you don't have any answers.”

 

Gibbs: “Well, because I didn't know you were going to ask a question, Helen.

Go ahead.”

 

Thomas: “Well, you should have.”

 

Reporter: Thank you for your support.

 

Gibbs: “That's good. Have you e-mailed your question today?”

 

Thomas: “I don't have to e-mail it. I can tell you right now what I want to ask.”

 

Gibbs: “I don't doubt that at all, Helen. I don't doubt that at all.”

 

Thomas, 89, has covered the White House during every presidency since John F. Kennedy’s.

[Nur]

"Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression."

---------Malcolm X.

 

 

The Middle East's Master Pimp

 

 

By Yvonne Ridley

 

December 27, 2009 "ICH" Cairo - December 26, 2009 -- The activities of the rent boys who parade up and down Al-Shawarby Street in Cairo provide a good metaphor for the relationship the Egyptian Government has with Israel and the US.

 

Both are quite shameless and ruthless; prepared to do whatever it takes to please ... in order to secure a fistful of dollars.

 

But at least the man whores of Al Shawarby are honest about their trade as they eagerly hustle potential customers.

 

Yes, they are shameless but so is the Egyptian Government as it continues to enforce the brutal siege in Gaza for Israel's pleasure and America's dollars.

 

The tears it sheds for the besieged people of Gaza are crocodilian.

 

And today the government stands before its people completely naked, without honour as the last fig leaf of decency floats despairingly to the ground.

 

I am making this rather crude analogy as I sit in my hotel room over-looking the River Nile. The view is breath-taking and just 50 yards away is the Egyptian Museum which reveals a rich history of a once great country.

 

The buildings around are decrepit, rundown like much of the country.

 

But I haven't sat down to give you a travel report. I am one of 1400 peace activists from across the world who is trapped in Cairo unable to move forward to take part in the Gaza Freedom March planned for New Year's Day. Most of us answered the rallying call of the US peace activist group Code Pink.

 

Meanwhile another shameful drama is unfolding just a few hundred miles away as life-long Palestinian supporter George Galloway sits trapped in the port of Aqaba as his latest Viva Palestina convoy has been stopped from moving forward.

 

The British MP's convoy of 250 vehicles and hundreds more supporters has been prevented from leaving Jordan with its much needed aid.

 

Why? Because America and Israel have told Egypt not to let a single vehicle or peace activist pass through its country to the Rafah border and in to Gaza where an entire population is suffering beyond belief and, it seems, beyond humanitarian relief.

 

So why doesn't Egypt tell Washington and Tel Aviv to get stuffed? For exactly the same reason a rent boy will do as his master tells him ... hard cash.

 

Proof? Exactly two years ago under the Bush Administration, both houses of US Congress agreed to withhold 100 million dollars in financial assistance to Egypt following Israeli claims that Egyptian authorities were failing to prevent weapons smuggling to the Gaza Strip. Egypt receives nearly two billion dollars in US aid making it the second largest recipient of US largesse after Israel, which receives three billion dollars a year in military assistance.

 

And now the Middle East's most active rent boy has a new master pimp - Barack Obama - although his White House enforcers have made sure the same house rules apply.

 

Now while the Egyptian Government might bend over backwards - or just bend over - the real enforcers will find Viva Palestina and the Gaza Freedom Marchers far less compliant.

 

We have traveled from more than 40 different countries to Cairo while others have driven thousands of miles to Aqaba to show our solidarity to the people of Gaza - we represent the largest gathering of international solidarity activists in the history of the Middle East.

 

Using the pretext of escalating tensions on the Gaza-Egypt border, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry said that the Rafah border will be closed over the coming weeks. Our message to the politicians is crystal clear: "Let us enter Gaza and let the Gaza Freedom March proceed."

 

Quite simply, you can not buy us. Integrity, freedom and our love for Gaza is not for sale at any price.

 

Egyptian Security goons have already used fear and intimidation on the management of the venues the Gaza Freedom Marchers have booked, as well as transport companies who contracted buses to carry us from Cairo to Gaza, with the result that these deals have been cancelled.

 

Egyptian Security even tried to pressurise the management of the Groppi coffee shop on Midan Talaat Harb to shut down while we were organising meetings. Despite warning us that more than six people can not gather in public places our meeting continued.

 

We will not bow to fear and intimidation but what we will do is increase the pressure on the Rent Boy Government and where injustice is the law resistance is our duty.

 

And as Malcolm X once said: "Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression."

 

*British journalist Yvonne Ridley is travelling with Indy film-maker Warren Biggs making a documentary about the Gaza Freedom March. She is a founder member of Viva Palestina and a member of the RESPECT Party. She also presents the Rattansi & Ridley show and The Agenda for Press TV, as well as writes columns for newspapers across the world. Her website is <a href="http://www.yvonneridley.org">www.yvonneridley.org[/i]

[Nur]

UN/AU Continues Somali Slaughter

 

By Thomas C. Mountain, Countercurrents.org

04 October, 2010

 

 

For over a year now the United Nations/African Union troops in Mogadishu, so called “peacekeepers”, have been regularly firing mortars and artillery into Somali neighborhoods in retaliation for attacks by the Somali resistance.

 

“Peacekeepers” firing artillery into civilian neighborhoods? “Peacekeepers” killing untold thousands of innocent women and children whose only crime was being Somali and living within range of the UN/AU artillery?

 

You have to wonder, are these Peace Keepers or Peace Killers?

 

The Somali resistance, or what the western media prefers to call “Al Queda linked Al Shabab” regularly stages hit and run mortar attacks on the UN/AU “green zone”, the steadily shrinking area of Mogadishu still controlled by the over 6,000 AU troops,mainly from Uganda and Burundi. Occasionally manned bomb attacks successfully penetrate the defenses surrounding the UN/AU Green Zone and do some serious damage.

 

Response from the UN/AU forces comes in the form of mortar and artillery fire, punishing the surrounding neighborhoods without regard for any actual presence of armed fighters. When the smoke and dust clears, with the Bakara market place seeming to be a favorite target, the dead are quickly buried, as in the Islamic tradition, and the bodies of those killed that lay unclaimed by family or friends end up in the local morgue. Estimates run for every one body turned into the morgue, an official death, 4 others are buried unreported.

 

When a leading Somali web site reports “On December 20, 2009 UN[AU] indiscriminate shelling killed 14 civilians and wounded 33 at the Bakara Market” the real body count was more like 70 dead. The Somali site goes on, “October 28, 2009...4 civilians killed, October 26...5 civilians killed...October 22...17 civilians killed...September 29,,,12 civilians killed...”. The year since has seen a dramatic upswell of violence.

 

The western media regularly reports body counts from Mogadishu as if these torn and broken bodies are the result of people being caught in some sort of crossfire. The reality is nearly all of these dead and wounded are innocent civilians killed by UN/AU “peacekeepers”.

 

Those of us who live in the Horn of Africa can only shake our heads and wonder, once again, where is the justice in this world? Why is this is slaughter being allowed to continue?

 

Is it because the world must continue it’s war on terror? Terror as in Al Queda and its local Somali wing Al Shabab?

 

Al Shabab as an independent armed group didn't even exist until the USA and UN/AU sent the Ethiopian army to invade Somalia at the end of 2006 and destroy the first peace seen in Mogadishu in 15 years. Up until the US backed Ethiopian invasion in 2006 Al Shabab was the youth arm of the Union of Islamic Courts and helped establish law and order in Mogadishu. The Union of Islamic Courts, with Al Shababs support established the beginnings of a new government that Somalis all over the world had been praying for. When the western instigated Ethiopian invasion took place followed by the retreat into temporary exile of the Union of Islamic Courts if was left to the likes of Al Shabab to step up and lead the Somali resistance, something is has done all to well.

 

Destoy the peace and create a new nightmare for US foreign policy in the form of “Al Queda linked Al Shabab”? What else should have been expected of the latest insanity by the worlds lone superpower when it comes to the Horn of Africa.

 

Of course we shouldn't forget to mention that the UN/AU “peacekeepers” are in Mogadishu to protect “democracy”. This democracy is presently in its third version of the “Transitional Federal Government of Somalia” headed this incarnation by one Sheik Sharif.

 

Sheik Sharif? Didn't he use to be part of the “Al Queda linked Union of Islamic Courts”? Wasn’t he the guy I used to raise my expresso to in the lobby of the former Imperial Hotel here in Asmara during the Somali unity conference and laugh about how I was sitting next to someone from “Al Queda”? Sheik Sharif? Is this the guy who went to bed one night being linked to Al Queda and woke up the next morning as a “democratically elected leader of the Somali Government”...? Democratically elected not in Somalia but in Djibouti, all the while surrounded by US and French military.

 

The western press continues to report that the UN/AU troops are “peacekeepers” rather than a foreign occupation army. Readers of the corporate media are told that the “peacekeepers” are there to protect the world from terrorism and are not actually slaughtering thousands of innocent Somali civilians. We are told that Instead of ending this crime against humanity support for the ongoing slaughter in Mogadishu must be stepped up or god forbid, Somalia will become a haven for terrorists from around the globe.

 

These “peacekeepers” hail from Uganda and Burundi, both countries with a long history of civil war and horrific massacres. Uganda is at war with the Lords Resistance Army, still continuing its decades long terror in the north. Worse, Uganda is once again facing ethnic unrest, and the next election could see ethnic cleansing break out, started by the largest tribe, the Bugandans.

 

So why are Ugandan troops in Somalia? Uganda gets some 40% of its budget from foreign aid and until the long dreamed of petroleum bonanza comes rolling in it must dance to the masters tune. After the Ethiopians were routed by the Somali resistance the west needed a new enforcer, and President Musuveni was induced into filling the role. As for Burundi, as in Rwanda, the Hutu-Tutsi bloodletting has been erupting of and on since independence, and the capital of Burundi could well use the Burundi troops in Somalia to help keep the peace at home. Burundi is increasingly dependent on western dollars just to feed its people, and “peacekeepers” earn hard currency for their government.

 

Unfortunately, the Ugandan and Burundian generals pocket much of their troops salaries and UN/AU “peacekeepers” end up selling their western weaponry for hard cash on the black market all to often to the very ones the UN/AU so loudly condemns, “Al Queda linked Al Shabab”.

 

The facts of the matter are that the west does not want peace in Somalia. Almost two decades ago the USA did its best to massacre the leading voices for peace of the Somali indigenous, clan based leadership during its ill fated invasion. Fifteen years later, when peace finally broke out in Somalia, Ethiopia was given the dirty task of destroying it.

 

With Ethiopia’s defeat, Ugandan and later Burundian troops filled the gap. Recently there has even been talk of Guinea sending troops. Just last year Guinea’s army was being roundly condemned by the west for its own massacres, yet are now being put forward as “peacekeepers” for Mogadishu?

 

As has been said here before, truth is so often stranger than fiction, and when it comes to the Horn of Africa fiction is passed as fact. Peace Keepers or Peace Killers,in Mogadishu? Again, you be the judge.

 

Thomas C. Mountain

 

Asmara, Eritrea

 

thomascmountain at yahoo dot com