Blair plans new 'Ministry of Truth'?
Oh, yeah. Just Gotta Love that Mainstream Media
George's world
It's a world of laughter | A world of tears | It's a world of hopes | And a world of fears | There's so much that we share | That it's time we're aware | It's a small world after all
Yeah, over three hundred dead in the Iraqi War and a new Ministry of Truth planned by Tony Blair on the departure of his close friend and disgraced spin doctor, Alastair Campbell. Where do they get this stuff? It's precisely this kind of toxic propaganda that gets to me because I see it seeping into the minds and thinking of people to whom I'd usually pay attention.
Somewhat unfairly, I abused a comment by Joe Duemer [a thinking person to whom I will listen at any time of the day or night] to respond to assertions that U.S. presidential hopeful Howard Dean represents something other than 'more of the same'. My response takes the following [revised] form:
Given support by Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the Senate for Governor Bush, who stole the presidency on an isolationist rather than imperialist ticket, and recognising that his regime's imperialist agenda has been 40 years in the planning, what chance this [Dean] or any other flip-flop:Let's not even begin to discuss U.S. forward bases such as the murderous State of Israel under the Butcher of Shatila, Ariel Sharon, or the renewed injection of U.S. troops into Ronnie Reagan's old stomping grounds in South East Asia. Let's not even begin to look at Bush's blunt use of the Mexico City 'gag' Rule to reduce his five-year, $15bn AIDS package, which he used to gain access to Africa and his oil buddies, to Exactly Nothing.
- taking the U.S. out of the Middle East,
- leaving Africa alone,
- dismantling bases strung from Western Europe through Asia to China,
- ending the U.S.' blatant disregard for international institutions such as the U.N. [why did that ponce Annan allow the U.N. to be so sodomized?],
- loosing the IMF and WTO's grip on Third World countries, and...
- leading the U.S. to rehabilitation?
I'd say none. You need a revolution over there, in thought and deed. The way so-called U.S. liberals have come to speak of 'the war' [what war?] and its cost in dollars [US] and lives [US] appals me [and millions like me]. The Bush regime seems to have taken the whole country into a moral, intellectual and spiritual [ethical] black hole. My fear is that he's taking all of us with him. Fighting Bush with the instrument of his own ascendance [the U.S. democratic process] seems a pretty dumb way of changing things.
The fact is, the U.S. is the most powerful nation on Earth. It plays a leadership role by default. However, the American national psyche seems incapable of grasping anything but Medicare or whatever it's called while the rest of the world goes to hell in a handbasket. I live elsewhere. I do not know Dean or very much of Wes Clark. What are their clearly stated policies on Africa? Or anything, for that matter?
Simply put, the gag rule denies distribution of U.S. aid to clinics in other countries offering abortion or abortion counseling or who lobby for change in abortion policies. Does anyone seriously think we have separate facilities for AIDS, abortion, family planning, or any gynaecological health matters in the Third World? We don't and are therefore disqualified from receiving any of Bush's promised US$15bn package, most of which was intended to shore up the Global AIDS Fund. In South Africa alone, George Bush's unwillingness to lend relief, or loose the promised monies unconditionally, leads to 1,000 dead people each day.
Frankly, this sort of thing pisses me off.
Look at it this way. For each day the Bush regime chooses to pursue the interests of Halliburton, Bechtel and other companies in Iraq, the average South African will continue to look forward to living a life some thirty years shorter than that of the average American. In my book, and in a world where there's enough to go around, that's just not good enough. It's incremental genocide.
But we weren't going to look at that, were we? I tend to go off at a tengent. Sorry. The nut of it is that the South living at the mercy of and for the wellbeing of the North is an already well-established and generally accepted Northern mindset. So what's some fat-cat Democrat, schooled in the same cynical niceties of global murder, going to do to reverse entrenching the trend to a worldwide version of Dickensian England?
I'm not offering any solutions here; I'm merely trying to communicate the size of the problem. U.S. citizens, living in a country where government is subordinate to vested commercial and economic interests, do not live in a democracy. I doubt any fashionable term adequately describes the deplorable state of affairs whereby democracy has been so thoroughly throttled. I'm not saying there is no place for democracy in the U.S.A. I'm saying it does not exist at present. The United States has become a rogue or terror state of a magnitude not seen since the days when Rome held sway over global affairs. My problem is living with it. Your problem is changing it.
Some Commander-in-Chief
There is just one moon | And one golden sun | And a smile means | Friendship to ev'ryone | Though the mountains divide | And the oceans are wide | It's a small world after all
As far as casualties suffered in Iraq during the first five months of the illegal U.S. invasion and occupation of that country are concerned, I'd rather read the somewhat unpopular John Pilger and Robert Fisk on such matters. Pilger sums up international sentiment at the human toll in Iraq alone:
Credible research shows that up to 10,000 civilians were killed in the attack on Iraq, together with perhaps 30,000 Iraqi soldiers, many of them teenage conscripts. A slaughter. These people were killed by weapons designed to reduce human beings to charcoal or to shred them. The British Army littered urban areas with cluster bombs, while the Americans did the same and in greater quantity, adding uranium-coated munitions, whose radiation poison is ingested with the desert dust.Like it or not, the accumulated evil of all war crimes is epitomised by, not George W. Bush who is perceived as an instrument of his handlers, but the government of the United States of America. Decades of the game of musical chairs indulged in by self-serving Republican and Democrats have ensured that they are viewed as sharing remarkably similar objectives. How will Howard Dean change this perception? He won't. Opposition to the United States will grow until there is fundamental change in the way it does business with its less powerful cousins. Even U.S. antagonism to Canada and the perpetuation of Mexico's poverty is seen as an indication of the United States' active involvement in exacerbating global conflict.
In my experience, the unseen deaths are far more numerous. Today, malnourished children are dying from thirst and gastroenteritis because the world's biggest military machine, including the British, fails to restore power and clean running water as its most basic obligations require.
This carnage, wrought in an unprovoked illegal assault on a sovereign country, is a crime by any measure of international law: be it the United Nations Charter or the Geneva conventions. The "supreme international crime", the Nuremberg judges decided, was that of unprovoked aggression, because it contains "the accumulated evil'' of all war crimes. more...
These perceptions have to change or the United States is on to a long-term hiding to nothing. The ugly reality is that the United States has a greater responsibility for changing these perceptions than those holding them. A great deal of goodwill has been extended the U.S. and it has been squandered or betrayed in the most duplicitous way.
Robert Fisk sums up the remarkable ability Americans have of taking an already bad situation and making it a hundredfold worse.
But in the end, the bloodbath at Najaf - and the murder of Mohamed al-Hakim - will be seen for what it is: yet further proof that the Americans cannot, or will not, control Iraq. General Ricardo Sanchez, the US commander in Iraq, said only 24 hours earlier that he needed no more troops. Clearly, he does if he wishes to stop the appalling violence. For what is happening, in the Sunni heartland around Baghdad and now in the burgeoning Shia nation to the south, is not just the back-draft of an invasion or even a growing guerrilla war against occupation. It is the start of a civil war in Iraq that will consume the entire nation if its new rulers do not abandon their neo-conservative fantasies and implore the world to share the future of the country with them. more...Yeah, Iraqis are getting hacked off at finding themselves included in neocon dreams. Fisk's astute use of "cannot, or will not" signals a basic mistrust of American motives in all things. I've blogged at length on the neo-con agenda and, in five months, nothing has happened to alter my view that global chaos and fragmentation suits the neo-con agenda. They are horribly wrong and deserve little better than to be shot out of office or imprisoned for betraying their country.
At the rate things are going, dead Americans will be washing up on the shores of the United States for years to come and few living outside the good ol' U.S.A. will find it in themselves to feel anything but a mild sense of satisfaction. I'm sick and tired of thinking this but, really, it was so clear at the outset that this tragic state of affairs would result from the Bush regime's warmongering. Thousands used tools such as blogs to argue against it, but to no avail. What is wrong with the average American? Is he or she just plain dumb, selfish, vindictive, or what?
The Great Appeaser
It's a small world after all | It's a small world after all | It's a small world after all | It's a small, small world
Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman | It's a Small World
The Brits appear to be more honest with themselves. As far as Tony Blair's "Ministry of Truth" is concerned, Andy McSmith and Jo Dillon of the Independent are, after detailing plans to overhaul Downing Street dross, pretty blunt.
Mr Blair has been accused today of being the "real misleader" whose "culture of deceit" has "poisoned the whole of politics", with Mr Campbell acting as his loyal assistant. The leader of the Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, writing in today's Independent on Sunday, says the "excesses of the New Labour project" - personal vendettas, the emasculation of the civil service and the "shameful" treatment of Dr David Kelly - carried out by Mr Campbell, all had Mr Blair's "blessing".Were Americans to inform themselves of the actions being carried out in their name and the words of their tattered Constitution, I'm pretty sure most would look to building "a different type of government altogether."
He writes: "While it is true that the British people are now angry at New Labour, they don't just want to change the occupant of Downing Street. They want a different kind of government altogether." more...
