2 February 2006
Now as regular readers maybe aware I often have a go at the Independent for its crass and often just plain inaccurate reportage but in the edition of 31/1/06 it outdoes itself in deception, myopia and dissembling regarding the Bush presidency and its significance for those of us living in the real world.
13 June 2005
“The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy’’ – Downing Street Memo, 23 July 2002
The Washington Post this morning is still at it. They quote that sentence, and they say, “Well, this is vague, but intriguing.” Well, there’s nothing vague about that at all, and it’s not at all intriguing. It’s highly depressing. Now, we veteran professionals, we professionals that toil long and hard in the intelligence arena are outraged at the corruption of our profession, but we are even more outraged by the constitutional implications here because as Congressman Conyers has just pointed out, we have here a very clear case that the Executive usurped the prerogatives of Congress of the American people and deceived it into permitting, authorizing an unauthorizeable war. – Ray McGovern, 27-year career analyst with the CIA and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.
As the memos pour forth from who knows where (somebody on the inside is obviously very pissed off with the actions of the Blair government), aside from the two articles in the Sunday Times, as far as I’ve been able to ascertain not a single mainstream media outlet in the UK has picked up on what is now known as DSM or the Downing Street Memos.
20 January 2005
In a shrinking world, which now faces the threat of atomic warfare, it is not an adequate objective merely to seek to check the Kremlin design, for the absence of order among nations is becoming less and less tolerable. This fact imposes on us, in our own interests, the responsibility of world leadership.
The US National Security Directive 68, April 1950
An awful lot of energy was expended in 2004 on the ‘Anybody But Bush’ debate, with the ABB brigade predicting really dire consequences if Bush got reelected (as opposed to just dire consequences if Kerry got the job). I tried to present the various for and against arguments here although my own opinion was (and still is) that it would make little difference as to who purchased the position given that the job of president is in any case pretty much that of a figurehead. Much more important is to understand what’s going on in the real centres of power that promoted both candidates.
30 July 2004
Review: Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President by Justin A. Frank, M.D.“We have to face the very real possibility that the President of the United States is loony tunes”
Unnamed GOP political consultant
The English, for whatever reason, have a deep distrust of anything to do with peering into the workings of the mind, let alone the mind of (nominally) the most powerful man on the planet, George W. Bush. And whatever one thinks of the many competing approaches to the nature of the mind – from the Jungian to the Freudian, RD Laing or whomever, gaining some insight into the workings of Bush’s brain may be useful to understanding the workings of overdue capitalism, if for no other reason than that of unpacking the addictive nature of the capitalist system and how the workings of an individual’s mind can be useful in the maintenance of the system, even one as batty as Bush’s.
20 April 2004
“All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those toward whom it is directed will understand it…. Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.”
Adolf Hitler“I simply say to you”
Blair’s most used phrase.
Sometimes, writing about current events becomes just too much for me. After all, I’ve got feelings too you know. And the events of the past couple of weeks have not only stretched my analytic powers to their limits, my feeling of utter disgust at the hypocrisy never mind the lies, has reached an all-time low (or is it extreme?). Whatever, it strikes me that they get more brazen with every passing day in their utterances. Is it because they know we switched off ages ago or simply because they know there’s nothing we can do about any of it except whinge?
30 December 2003
“The only solution is for the Bush administration to return to foreign policy sanity, starting with a more cooperative, less vindictive approach to European allies who could help share America’s military burdens. ” – New York Times, Dec 29 2003
What could be clearer than this NYT editorial of the dire straights of US strategy under Bush. And when the NYT speaks it is speaking to (and for) the power elite. But will its voice be heeded and are the major powers of Europe (France and Germany) even listening?
24 September 2003
Bush the smaller’s speech at the UN on 23/09/03 finally spells out the conditions the imperialists want in exchange for recognising the UN’s role in the world, namely for the UN to alter its charter to recognise the right of the US to invade whoever the hell it feels like and under whatever pretext.
20 September 2003
“11 September was not an isolated event but a tragic prologue. Iraq; another act; and many further struggles will be set upon this stage before it is over. We are bound together as never before”
“[In] another part of the globe, there is shadow and darkness where not all the world is free, where many millions suffer under brutal dictatorship and poverty.”
“Here it is that the poison is incubated. Here it is that the extremist is able to confuse in the mind of a frighteningly large number of people, the case for a Palestinian state and the destruction of Israel; and to translate this into a battle between East and West; Muslim, Jew and Christian.”
“[W]e know there are states in the Middle East now actively funding and helping people who regard it as God’s will, in the act of suicide, to take as many innocent lives with them on their way to God’s judgement.” – Extracts from Tony Blair’s speech to the joint houses of the US government, July 2003.
8 September 2003
Bush the smaller made his pitch to the nation over the weekend to “save civilisation” from terrorism and told us that the “frontline” was now Iraq. So Saddam disappears not only literally but also figuratively to be replaced by the generic ‘threat’ that has been the real core of the propaganda since 9/11. And in a complete volte face, Bush the smaller now wants the UN to take on its “responsibility” to pay for the war unleashed on the world by the USUK imperium.
Investigating Imperialism 