Ei bine, banuiesc ca stiti toata povestea cu scandalul din ultimele zile, asa ca nu voi face o sinteza a tuturor filmelor si ideilor de pe bloguri/din ziare. Si banuiesc ca cei care sunteti cititori mai vechi stiti cat de mult imi place mie sa merg la vot ca sa aleg intre doua rele.

Ei bine, desi intentionam sa nu particip la turul II (la turul I am mers de fapt pentru referendum) deoarece consideram ca Basescu si Geoana sunt rele similare, “mogulii” tocmai m-au convins ca Basescu e rai pe pamant pe langa ei. Felicitari!

PS: Ma intreb cati altii au ajuns in situatia mea.

Now its “Der Spiegel” making with the Carter comparisons.

Meanwhile,President Obama’s Mission to hug everybody in the world in order to prove he is not George Bush has opened a new problem:

Brazil Elbows U.S. on the Diplomatic Stage
By ALEXEI BARRIONUEVO

BRASÍLIA — Brazil’s ambitions to be a more important player on the global diplomatic stage are crashing headlong into the efforts of the United States and other Western powers to rein in Iran’s nuclear arms program.

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president, is set to receive Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, here on Monday in his first state visit to Brazil. The visit is part of a larger push by Mr. da Silva to wade into the seemingly intractable world of Middle East politics, and follows visits in the last two weeks by Israel’s president, Shimon Peres, and Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority.

But the visit is drawing criticism from lawmakers and former diplomats here and in the United States, who say it could undercut Western efforts to press Iran on its nuclear program, and consequently chill Brazil’s relations with the United States and damage its growing reputation as a global power.

…“This state visit is a gross error, a terrible mistake,” said Representative Eliot L. Engel, Democrat of New York, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere. “He is illegitimate with his own people, and Brazil is now going to give him the air of legitimacy at a time when the world is trying to figure out how to prevent Iran from having nuclear weapons. It makes no sense to me, and it tarnishes the image of Brazil, quite frankly.”

But stop, hold on! If it is good enough for President Obama, why not Da Silva? Or so says the State Department:

But Mr. da Silva’s overture to Iran is consistent with President Obama’s policy of engagement, and the Obama administration says it is optimistic that the meeting will not damage and at best could reinforce the efforts already under way by Washington and European powers to deal with Iran.

“We would hope that all our friends and allies would understand that this is really a critical moment for Iran itself,” Ian C. Kelly, a State Department spokesman, said Thursday. “We would hope that Brazil would play a constructive role in trying to get Iran to do the right thing and fulfill its international obligations.”

Yes we all have hope….. a new beer sumit?

I wouldn't mess with him either

The news breaks this morning that, apparently, the North Korean regime is going to ensure that it’s long suffering residents will only be able to see their national team play if they are fortunate enough to achieve yet another Glorious Victory.

Denial of the facts and rearrangement of them to prove otherwise is as old as humanity itself. Repressive regimes certainly don’t have a monopoly on it. After all, its what our politicians attempt to do on a daily basis. Spin is the name of the game.

The real difference is that rather than sitting back and taking such arrant nonsense from our politicians, we are, for now, allowed to hit back. Well, I say we, but most of us just sit back and let the media do it on our behalf. That’s not always a good thing, but it’s better than nothing. And it keeps those dastardly pols on their toes.

But what intrigues me most is that we like to forget about North Korea. OK, we’re a bit worried about the crackpot in charge of the country, and whether he has or hasn’t got nuclear weapons. But otherwise, we don’t really have anything to say about the fact that the vast majority of the country are living in great poverty, and the regime doesn’t tolerate any dissent.

Over here in the West, we call those human rights abuses. Sometimes we use terms like “crimes against humanity” or even “genocide”.

When it suits us (which is definitely not when anyone talks about China), we like to use such positions to sit atop a high horse of moral superiority. And, perhaps, rightly so. After all, in a direct matchup between state-sponsored murder of trouble-makers we really ought to come out much lower than they do.

Some years ago, some of you may remember a small conflict that occurred in the Middle East. It involved a country called Iraq. There was an exchange of gunfire, and a small handful of military largesse, and soon enough we’d got rid of the blighters. Our justification at the time was that the country was posing a grave threat to the West. “45 minutes from destruction”, some fella quipped. That convinced everybody.

As the years passed, we realised we’d been duped a little. It seems, in fact, that the leader of the country was playing us along, hoping we’d believe he did have weapons of mass destruction and so would leave him alone just in case he was crazy enough (and he was) to use them against us.

But just like politicians, they cannot be trusted. All of a sudden the war was never about WMDs. No. It was because the leader of Iraq was an “evil dictator”. A brutal repressor of human rights. Stock footage of the man firing shotguns off balconies and ordering people to be executed soon rolled on the airwaves. Apparently, without us even knowing it, the war was actually fought to liberate the Iraqi people of such tyranny. And who could disagree? The man was batshit, after all.

Yet there remained troubling questions to those who were sceptical all along. “Why Iraq? Why now?” was what they used to say, before they would get shouted down by some Blair character for daring to have no compassion for the suffering of their fellow humans in Iraq.

It was classic memory hole stuff. The original pretexts for war were shuffled into the fire, and an ex post facto justification emerged.

The unfortunate consequence of such a doctrine can be seen in the headline to this post. A little facetious, yeah, but I’ve gotta get your attention somehow.

Got a repressive regime? Genocidal tendencies? Feeling the need to butcher a few of those people with the wrong skin colour or religion?

Well watch out, cos the World Police will soon be knocking on your door. Maybe. If they can be bothered.

And you aren’t China, or one of their chums.

Here’s to realpolitik!

No additional comment required:

“After more than 56 years in office, 92-year-old Senator Robert C. Byrd (D-WV) has become the longest-serving member of Congress.”

Titel gestohlen von hier

Gestern in die Arena reingeschaut. Zynisch die Industrievertreter, unverständnisvoll Doris “das Rehauge” Leuthard: “Die Maschinenpistolen werden nur von Erwachsenen bedient”. Ach wie tröstlich (und so schwer nachprüfbar!).

Ihr solltet euch mal hören. Versucht zu verteidigen, dass Schweizer Kriegsmaterial nur für gute Zwecke eingesetzt wird. Wer’s glaubt.

Diese Haarspaltereien habe ich so was von satt. Fakt ist, dass sich die Schweiz mit den Waffenexporten auf moralisches Glatteis begibt und wirtschaftlichen Profit höher gewichtet als Moral (Arbeitsplätze! Industrie! Wirtschaft! Bla!). Wie sie das immer macht. Und ihr zynischen Menschen probiert das auch noch zu verteidigen! Aber ihr könnt es zerreden wie ihr wollt, rechtfertigen kann das nichts.

Frau Leuthard macht einen auf Sachverständig: Nur sie weiss, was Sache ist, die Initianten haben nicht gut gelesen, die Völkerrechtsprofessorin (und die 69 anderen) haben das ganz und gar falsch verstanden, und diese Spassvögel da haben eh keine Ahnung, denn sie ist the only real Bundesräten und weiss wie’s läuft, und die anderen nicht (“es wird sehr viel behauptet, das nicht stimmt”, mit diesem halb verächtlichen, halb bemutternden Ton – ich erzähl euch jetzt mal die Wahrheit.)

In ihrem Schlusswort schiesst sich Leuthard, professionell wie sie ist, ganz direkt auf Jo “das sanfte Stimmchen” Lang ein, bringt das Völkerrecht wieder ins Spiel (in dieser Minute hätte ich ganz gerne die Völkerrechtsprofessorin gesehen – ob sie wohl den Kopf geschüttelt hat?), labert was davon, das symmetrische Bewaffnung gut sei fürs Miteinander-Reden (wie abstrus wirds eigentlich noch?!? Erst wenn beide ganz viel Waffen haben, kann man miteinander reden?), und bringt nochmals den Mythos von der restriktiven Kontrolle aufs Tapet (wie soll die Schweiz kontrollieren, wie ihr Material verwendet wird, wenn es mal in Pakistan oder in Afghanistan ist?).

Schön ist es allerdings, die Kommentare darunter zu lesen – allerdings muss das kein Indikator sein für den 29. November. Darum: alle abstimmen gehen! Hopp!

Und nächsten Donnerstag wird gesmartmobbt!

Joyeux anniversaire, Berlin

Vingt ans, c’est le bel âge, l’âge des fêtes, des nuits blanches et des double Merkel, réjouissons nous, Berlin, la ville est belle, le mur est loin

Vingt ans, tapons des mains, Rostropovitch est mort, Gorbatchev… non, vivant, ta légende est intacte, et on visite tes tags, festoyons festoyons, avalons nos questions

Vingt ans, vingt ans déjà, vingt ans à peine, l’Europe est à tes pieds, pleine d’archives, de souvenirs, l’Est gît dans les creux, on vend des bouts de murs aux touristes ennuyeux

Vingt ans, oui, souviens toi, la grisaille et Charlie, les cornichons Trabi, Honecker la Stasi, tout ça, c’est bien fini

Et c’est bien

Mais, bordel, secouons nos fourmis. Les commémorations, c’est gentil, c’est joli. Les vieux racontent, les jeunes s’extasient. Et puis? C’est du tout cuit. Du recraché remâché revomi. De l’inintéressant barbouillage branlette, des événements en barquette, face au mur, on tape des mains, on n’apprend rien. Et ça fait mal à la tête. Le Mal, le Bien, dans une pochette. Victoire! Victoire! Et générique de fin.

Pendant ce temps

Protégé par l’absence de murs

Le capitalisme gargarisé

Baille

Se gratte les couilles

Profitant, sifflotant, de sa bonne conscience

Finie la crise, finie, joignez vous à la ronde, la ronde autour du monde des enfants malfaisants, adeptes des bonbons et des supermarchés, veulent jouer à la bagarre sans trop se faire blesser, forçant les différents à bien leur ressembler, sinon: exclus de la cour de récré

Papa capitalisme encourage ses bébés: allez y, les petits, la force est avec nous, le Bien est de notre côté, ces débiles sudophiles nous remercieront à genoux quand ils se rendront compte du bien qu’on leur a fait. Vous verrez.

La preuve?

Le mur, ô miracle, est tombé.

Bleu.

Petit bruit derrière la porte fermée des toilettes d’un appartement bourgeois. Il est 2h, 3h peut-être. Bleuh. La soirée est finie. Cachés derrières les portes transparentes, les jeunes fous vomissent.

Bleu. Une jambe, puis l’autre. On enfile. Un bras, puis l’autre. On ajuste sur les épaules. Zip. Par dessus les oripeaux uniformes de villes fatiguées, on va pointer. Il est 6h, 7h avec de la chance. Dans son bleu de travail, le levé-tôt enrobé du mépris des jolis, s’enfonce dans l’usine sale.

Blanc.

Silence gêné. La télévision s’est éteinte. Soudain, l’absence de conversation humaine, le vide des corps, les yeux rougis et frustes n’ont plus l’éclat du néon criard sonore et réconfort. Le meuble ultime écroulé, le son creux de la pièce fait un blanc encombrant. Et on va se coucher.

Blanc. Fier de ses origines séculaires, il frappe le pavé capital de ses chaussures premier prix fraîchement cirées. Vacances à Paris. On déguste les monuments avec une gloriole bien placée. Mon pays si beau. Dans le métro, croise une grappe de joggings à la peau inconvenante. Z’habitent ici peut-être. Oui mais moi je suis blanc. Descend à Gare de Lyon, démarche crâne, et leur lâche un regard méprisant.

Rouge.

Une fleur pour toi ma chérie. Couleur de ma passion. Sans épine, enrobée dans son petit plastique déprimant. Egayer de ce rouge pétalesque notre repas d’anniversaire au restaurant, sortie annuelle autour d’une nappe à chandelles. Tant pis si elle t’encombre mon amour, et qu’elle ne dégage que l’odeur sinistre de la rue, tout le monde sait que les femmes aiment les roses. Surtout quand elles sont rouges.

Rouge. A la tribune, une source autorisée à la langue boisée et au regard pervers éreinte l’auditoire de grommellements insipides et terribles, des centaines de micros et de caméras pendus croassant autour de sa boutonnière. Rouge. Mise en évidence par son costume sans intérêt. A la fin du discours, il claque des talons. Aveugle et heureux, il prend les clapotements de quelques mains molles pour les applaudissements de la France.

First, let’s be clear:  this article is a product of the Associated Press wire service, not FoxNews.

Second, though, and more to the substance of the thing:  the fire-breathing left just roasted President Bush for his ostensible “unilateralism” in foreign affairs.

Admittedly, Bush never really got the eunuchs at the U. N. to climb aboard, but he did get Poland, the UK, the Italians and Aussies and Spanish for a while…in other words, it’s not quite fair to say Bush acted “unilaterally.”  But even if he had…

…now we have the current administration hedging its own bets and leaving the door open for actual unilateralism:

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration planning.

“We have to be prepared to act and we are not going to let this drag out forever,” said one administration official.

Officials stress that they do not want the administration to act alone and would far prefer to have any new sanctions be adopted by the U.N. Security Council.

Indeed.

*chuckle*

qb

Obama doesn’t care what happens to them, nothing else will:

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is quietly laying the groundwork for long-range strategy that could be used to contain a nuclear-equipped Iran and deter its leaders from using atomic weapons.

U.S. officials insist they are not resigned to a nuclear Iran and are pressing negotiations to prevent it from joining the world’s nuclear club. But at the same time, the administration has set in place the building blocks of policies to contend with an Iran armed with atomic weapons.

“Oh no, we’re not giving up; we still have great hopes that Ahmadinedschad will come to the table and recognize the holiness of The Obama and do what He wants.” Despite being lied to and ignored and laughed at…

In recent weeks, U.S. diplomats have pushed with its international partners to nudge Iran into agreeing not to use its nuclear facilities to build atomic weapons.

oh yeah. Like leaving the Poles and Czechs hanging in the name of ‘better missile defense’ that won’t be, but makes the Russians happy because it reduces the defenses of the Poles and Czechs. And won’t help them against Iranian missiles, but since President Obama is into appeasing the 12th Imam nutcases, so that’s a small price!(to Obama)

And at the end,

Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights advocate and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said in an AP interview that Washington is mistaken in insisting that it would be intolerable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.

“Just as the world tolerates North Korea and Pakistan it would have to tolerate Iran as well,” she said.
Exactly. Pakistan at least had the point of being run by people who weren’t willing, for instance, to see half or more of their people dead in the name of killing so called infidel; North Korea has been run for decades by first-class communist dirtbag murderers, and nobody likes them but nobody wants to deal with them, either. And if the mullahs in Iran pop a couple of nukes at Israel, the EU(nuchs) and company will whine and moan and I’d estimate at 90%+ that they’ll actually do nothing. And Iran knows it.

Hell, President Obama doesn’t even like the word ‘victory’ when he’s the CIC of American troops in battle; does anyone actually think he has the balls, integrity or will to stand up to Iran?

W ubiegły weekend w moim rodzinnym Wrocławiu odbyła sie parada równości.Nie obyło sie bez zgrzytów.Na wyzwolonych gejów i lesbijki czekali narodowcy i kibice wrocławskiego Śląska.Cała akcja była obstawiana przez Milicje  która nie dopuścila do starcia bezpośredniego.

Jestem ciekawy  jeżeli  popieracie paradę to czy zgodzilibyście się by  po waszej śmierci i waszego partnera(ki)  wasze dziecko zostało adoptowane przez parę homoseksualistów?

Przecież o taką równość im chodzi !

stłuc; rozwalić; zniszczyć

pierwszy plik który zamieściłem na “box” to arykuł dotyczący odwołania konferencji naukowej z udziałem osób o przekonaniach atykomunistycznych na Uniwersytecie Wrocławskim.

Zauważam zbieżnośc między czerwona chołotą w PZPN a  UWr.

 Przypominam ze kilka tygodni temu Komisja Ligi Ekstraklasy  nałożyła na klub Lechia Gdańsk grzywne za wywieszenie przez kibiców transparentu z hasłem: “17.09.1939 – czwarty rozbiór Polski”.

Niby wolność słowa….a jednak

nazwa pliku : uniwersytet wrocławski.pdf

Zapraszam do lektury !

Political commentator Charles Krauthammer delivers this great column in the Weekly Standard last week.
Mr. Krauthammer recognizes that American decline is not a new theory and that foreign affairs is a zero sum, and deadly, game. The Soviets saw weakness in President Kennedy and acted which spawned the Cuban Missile Crisis. They saw it again in President Carter and invaded Afghanistan, stirred up trouble in Nicaragua, Angola, and Ethiopia.
US decline seems to arise whenever the Democrats control Washington, unsurprisingly. US decline is not inevitable, and the rise of India and China does not necessarily mean that the power of the USA has been diminished.

The corollary to unchosen European collapse was unchosen American ascendancy. We–whom Lincoln once called God’s “almost chosen people”–did not save Europe twice in order to emerge from the ashes as the world’s co-hegemon. We went in to defend ourselves and save civilization. Our dominance after World War II was not sought. Nor was the even more remarkable dominance after the Soviet collapse. We are the rarest of geopolitical phenomena: the accidental hegemon and, given our history of isolationism and lack of instinctive imperial ambition, the reluctant hegemon–and now, after a near-decade of strenuous post-9/11 exertion, more reluctant than ever.

Which leads to my second proposition: Facing the choice of whether to maintain our dominance or to gradually, deliberately, willingly, and indeed relievedly give it up, we are currently on a course towards the latter. The current liberal ascendancy in the United States–controlling the executive and both houses of Congress, dominating the media and elite culture–has set us on a course for decline. And this is true for both foreign and domestic policies. Indeed, they work synergistically to ensure that outcome.

The Democrats seem to prize multilateralism above victory in war, security at home, or stability around the world. This is why the UN is given such preeminence by the left. Mr. Krauthammer ridicules such naive idealism in international institutions riddled with corruption:

The president then denounced the idea of elevating any group of nations above others–which takes care,
I suppose, of the Security Council, the G-20, and the Western alliance. And just to make the point unmistakable, he denounced “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” as making “no sense in an interconnected world.” What does that say about NATO? Of our alliances with Japan and South Korea? Or even of the European Union?

This is nonsense. But it is not harmless nonsense. It’s nonsense with a point. It reflects a fundamental view that the only legitimate authority in the international system is that which emanates from “the community of nations” as a whole. Which means, I suppose, acting through its most universal organs such as, again I suppose, the U.N. and its various agencies. Which is why when Obama said that those who doubt “the character and cause” of his own country should see what this new America–the America of the liberal ascendancy–had done in the last nine months, he listed among these restorative and relegitimizing initiatives paying up U.N. dues, renewing actions on various wholly vacuous universalist declarations and agreements, and joining such Orwellian U.N. bodies as the Human Rights Council.

Further Information is delivered in this Video Lecture for the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research in New York on October 5. (48:05 Min)

The German Blog Zettels Raum has an interesting comment on this topic as well

Excelente o programa “Abre Aspas” exibido hoje na GloboNews. Apesar da arrogância e empáfia habituais, William Waack deu um banho em Mônica Waldvogel e Tonico Ferreira ao comentar a política externa brasileira.

Foi de Mônica, entretando – ao comentar o Nobel de Obama e a popularidade de Lula -, a frase do dia: “o charme tá ganhando da realpolitik“. É, infelizmente…

Die Bundestagswahlen 2009 bescherten uns eine “Tigerenten-Koalition”. Diese Wortschöpfung stammt von der früher sympathischen Maybritt Illner und soll hier als ein Mini-Indiz für die Linke Republik Deutschland angeführt werden. Die Tigerente ist eine Kinderbuchfigur des grundgütigen Janosch, die es mittlerweile auch als Holzspielzeug gibt. Doch begegnet sie uns v.a. als Button an den Rucksäcken linksalternativer Mädchen bis weit in deren Pubertät hinein. Sie ist dort Symbol für Harmlosigkeit, verschmitzte Putzigkeit und ein kindliches Gemüt, das sich gerade so etwas wie Ironie erobert und dennoch auf der Machbarkeit von “Anarchie” beharrt – gleich neben der Tigerente prangt das schwarze “A”.
Wieso Tigerente? Sie ist gelb-schwarz gestreift, trägt also – entenuntypisch – die Farben des Tigers. Und das ist der Punkt – denn die neue Regierung aus CDU/CSU/FDP hätte man durchaus “Tiger-Koalition” nennen können. Sie wissen schon: Kraft, Jagd, Schnelligkeit, Ausdauer, Zupacken, Durchsetzungsvermögen. Doch nein – die linke Republik schätzt das Infantile, die zur Schau getragene Niedlichkeit, das Spielerische; niemand will hier irgend etwas wollen.
Der Tiger ist ein eher weniger geeignetes Symbol für den herrschaftsfreien Diskurs – der Tiger ist Nietzsche (“Fürchtet den Zurückgezogenen! Zum Springen bereitet sich der Tiger!”) und damit – NS.
Maybritt Illners Gefühl hat nicht getrogen. Die geistige Verfasstheit dieses Landes ist mit roten Söckchen, dem Kifferparadies Jamaika und Janoschs Tigerente zureichend beschrieben.

What may the British Royal Prince Edward’s visit to India portend for Sathya Sai Baba interests? Will Sathya Sai Baba’s top associates – again – attempt to exploit the British Royal Family for propaganda purposes?

The Earl of Wessex Prince Edward is the third son and fourth child of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip.

Prince Edward in India, Oct. 2009

Summary Background

1. In late 2006, officials of The Duke of Edinburgh Awards and Buckingham Palace were upset by the manner of publicity by those such as Dr G. Venkataraman and Shitu Chudasama about Award connections. (Dr. G. Venkataraman is deputy world head of the Sathya Sai Organization. He also directs Sai Baba’s international 7 days 24 hours propaganda satellite radio service via the WorldSpace International corporation. See HERE. Shitu Chudasama is the UK Sai Baba national youth coordinator. This and other matters were exposed by Paul Lewis’s Saturday 4 November 2006 article in The Guardian (UK):

The Indian living god, the paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards

2. After efforts via, once might almost say, ‘friends at court’, Superiors to Peter Westgarth, the Director of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards, were of the view that he lacked, in this issue, both judgement and experience, and had missed the significance and risk of his dealings with the Sathya Sai Baba officials. One may note in passing that Westgarth, currently faces further unpleasant controversy in another matter about his Award’s job performance. See The Herald Scotland.  Charity chief says UK boss forced her out. By Paul Thornton

3. When matters were finally taken in hand, both Awards and Palace dropped connection with the Sathya Sai Organization

4.  The Royal authorities, via Peter Westgarth, CEO of the Duke of Edinburgh Awards,

Peter Westgarth. CEO, Duke of Edinburgh Awards. Buckingham Palace over-ruled him in Sathya Sai Baba affair

who had already blundered (See story in The Guardian) asked that the embarrassing and untrue material (it was stated that the award had been given to ‘Sathya Sai Baba’) be taken down. Venkataraman and his associates promptly complied

This official Puttaparthi website withdrawal did not stop the Australian Sathya Sai Organization from nonetheless trumpeting the UK youth wing’s award:

5. The FCO (Foreign and Commonwealth Office), had a view to both avoiding any blowbacks in Anglo-Indian relations and further embarrassment to the Royal Family

6. As revealed by The Guardian newspaper, the Duke’s representatives sought legal advice

7. Our efforts made to seek out a well-reputed news agency with clout resulted in IANS (Indo Asian News Service) running with a part of the story independently of The Guardian. See:

Indian Media’s Reticence on Top Guru, Sathya Sai Baba, Weakens

This was a major breakthrough, and signalled sections of the Indian media, where there were previously years of strong censorship of materials inimical to Sathya Sai Baba, carrying the IANS feed. Paul Lewis’s The Guardian article was also referred to.

Will Realpolitik-bent British FCO and Indian Government Interests Exploit Prince Edwards Visit To India?

One of the most persistent ploys of Sathya Sai Baba’s propagandists has been to make it appear that India’s interests are identical with Sathya Sai Baba predispositions. For a glaring example of what, often, is confined to the hushed corridors of power, see: The Case of UNESCO’s Missing Media Advisory. The BBC exposed machinations by Venkataraman and the then Indian Foreign Affairs Minister and others, but this successful revelation was, alas, effected too late to be included in the BBC’s ‘The Secret Swami’.

Prince Edward Currently Duke of Edinburgh Awards Emissary

Prince Edward is the Duke’s Awards proxy in a current visit to India. He may not have much of his grandfather Phillip’s stuffing or even lasting effects of his tough (late) uncle Earl Mountbatten’s mentorship. Still further, Edward is of a very different generation, and not likely to have his father Charles’s flirtations with Sathya Sai Baba, – that hapless Prince Charles whom we know to have been warned off Sathya Sai Baba by insistent government authorities. Nevertheless, it is not beyond doubt that Sathya Sai Baba interests will try to curry favour with him, and dally with Edward’s political masters.

The Sathya Sai avidity to bask in British Royal sheen (or what is left of it) has already been amply demonstrated, and any further attempt by Sathya Sai Baba interests that would attempt to borrow lustre from British Royalty will likely be exposed here and elsewhere, as was previously the case, and indeed by the same forces which ensured former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s last minute cancellation of a meeting at Brindavan, Whitefield with Sathya Sai Baba. See:

Tony Blair Was to Visit Sai Baba. Plan Thwarted

Posted by Barry Pittard on March 17, 2007

An acquaintance who has worked close to the hub of power in the UK has  written to me vis a vis some current moves by the British government that may have relevance to power plays by Sathya Sai Baba’s high-level emissaries.

As my reader can see from the links to my earlier articles and those of Robert Priddy, representation on our behalf to the Duke of Edinburgh’s advisors was successful. It obtained the removal of propagandist and untrue information that was put out by Sathya Sai Baba’s officials such as Dr G. Venkataraman. An observer  has recently written to me:

“The UK Govt made the mistake long ago of allowing the Indians to get away with the badly flawed argument that to criticise Sathya Sai Baba was to insult India. This was weak and unprincipled, and senior diplomats admit this privately and regret it. The FCO is all out to try to get the Indians alongside the UK in matters of security, foreign policy, the war on terror, and inward Indian investment in our bankrupt UK economy.

Prince Edward’s appearance in Indian affairs is a pallid affair. He and his advisors are at the whim of the FCO. The UK Government needs India. In pursuit of its own narrow cynical policies, the FCO has a long record of ignoring the plight of British nationals in favour of trade perspectives and other political expediences. The Labour and Conservative India players are alike in this “….

The Guardian (UK) article: ‘The Indian living god, The paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards’

In the article: UK Guardian On Sathya Sai Baba and Duke’s Awards , I wrote:

”His Royal Highness’s officials had to act on top of a ‘politically’ not very experienced or competent UK Duke of Edinburgh Awards CEO, Peter Westgarth – see HERE. They were slow off the mark. However, after very high level representations from our side, the Duke of Edinburgh Award Scheme trustees and Prince Philip’s Private Secretary, Brigadier Sir Miles Hunt-Davis KCVO, CBE,

realized that a serious matter was at hand. Questions were also raised by some powerful citizens, including a former Home Minister, Tom Sackville. The Duke of Edinburgh Awards required of Dr G. Venkataraman, head of Sathya Sai Baba’s international propaganda apparatus and deputy world chairman of the Sathya Sai Organization, that an official Sai Baba website take down the triumphant – but absurdly mistaken – information that the Duke of Edinburgh Award had been awarded to Sai Baba himself. Venkataraman complied”.

Further Reading

At ‘Call For Media and Government Investigation of Sathya Sai Baba’

• UK Guardian On Sathya Sai Baba and Duke’s Awards

Posted by Barry Pittard on October 21, 2008

• The Indian living god, The paedophilia claims and the Duke of Edinburgh awards by Paul Lewis

A Duke Stops An Emperor. Edinburgh Routs Sai Baba

“Officials of The Duke of Edinburgh Awards and Buckingham Palace were upset by the boasting of those such as Dr G. Venkataraman and about the Award connections. (Dr. G. Venkataraman is Sai Baba’s deputy world head, who also directs Sai Baba’s international 7 days 24 hours propaganda satellite radio service via the WorldSpace International corporation. See Shitu Chudasama HERE. Shitu Chudasama is the UK Sai Baba national youth coordinator”.

Robert Priddy writes on the issue

• Queen Elizabeth ‘manipulated’ by omnipresent Sathya Sai Baba?

Posted by robertpriddy on October 15, 2009

• Sai Baba God Incarnate needs Duke of Edinburgh endorsement?

Posted by robertpriddy on October 14, 2009

• The Guardian newspaper, UK. questions The Duke of Edinburgh Award
  - an award made out by subterfuge in the name of Sathya Sai Baba
• The Guardian newspaper, UK. questions The Duke of Edinburgh Award
• Sathya Sai Baba official website deceit exposed
• Sathya Sai Baba lack of awards
• Sathya Sai Baba and the Duke of Edinburgh Award

—————————————————————–

Sathya Sai Organisation – Further Subterfuge and Misinformation

Four-part article by Robert Priddy and Barry Pittard

—————————————————————–

General

Excerpt From Public Petition

(Note: You may prefer to proceed straight to the Petition):

Public Petition For Official Investigations of Sathya Sai Baba and His Worldwide Organization

There is a Spanish version available:

PETICIÓN PÚBLICA PARA  ”>INVESTIGACIONES OFICIALES DE SATHYA SAI BABA Y SU ORGANIZACIÓN A NIVEL MUNDIAL)

David Ignatius at The Washington Post, claims the U.S. has a “responsibility” to use its military to simply “buy some time” for Kabul’s effort to forge relations with the Taliban. What he calls “Mission Impossible” is chronicled in Dexter Filkins’ feature at The New York Times Magazine, “Stanley McChrystal’s Long War.”

15 Oct 09 | InfoShop News

David Ignatius writes in his column at The Washington Post today, “Obama’s challenge on Afghanistan is to identify a mission there that is achievable, and then to provide the necessary resources”, arguing that “stabilizing the whole country is Mission Impossible”.

Dexter Filkins writes at The New York Times Magazine this weekend of the recommendation to the White House given by the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal: “McChrystal’s plan is a blueprint for an extensive American commitment to build a modern state in Afghanistan, where one has never existed, and to bring order to a place famous for the empires it has exhausted. Even under the best of circumstances, this effort would most likely last many more years, cost hundreds of billions of dollars and entail the deaths of many more American women and men.”

“There will be a lot of fighting,” Gen. McChrystal told Mr. Filkins. “If we do this right, the insurgents will have to fight us. They will have no choice.”

“At the heart of McChrystal’s strategy are three principles: protect the Afghan people, build an Afghan state and make friends with whomever you can, including insurgents,” Mr. Filkins adds.

Mr. Ignatius writes that a counterinsurgency strategy would be to “provide security for major population centers in the south and east” in order to “buy some time to train the Afghan army and encourage President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to reach a political reconciliation with the Taliban”— whether or not “this strategy [is] really doable”, he’s “still looking for answers”.

Last week, he seemed to have those answers. In his October 8 column, he stated the U.S. has “continuing responsibilities” to: train the Afghan army and provide security; support economic development and more effective governance from Kabul; and “[encourage] Afghan political reconciliation”.

Today, he is saying that the U.S. has a “responsibility” to take on a ‘mission’ to “buy some time” for the Kabul government with a likely end of a ‘cost too high’? Buy time for what? If stability is “Mission Impossible”, what’s to debate?

Mr. Ignatius consistently agrees with Mr. Obama that a withdrawal from Afghanistan is not an option, but “a reckless course at a time when neighboring Pakistan is facing its own brutal onslaught from the Taliban”.

‘Buying some time’ in the pursuit of “Mission Impossible” isn’t a “reckless course”?

Mr. Ignatius wrote on October 11: “It may actually be easier for the Pakistani military to battle the Taliban and al-Qa’ida if it’s seen by the public as standing up defiantly to American pressure.”

Deliberately manufacturing anti-American sentiment in a region the U.S. is a colonial power isn’t a “reckless course”?

He wrote that Pakistani intelligence is to ‘blame’ for still “playing a double game with the terrorists”, but the U.S. mission should “encourage President Hamid Karzai’s efforts to reach a political reconciliation with the Taliban”? Who’s playing the “double game” now?

Isn’t this “double game” a far more “reckless course” than troop withdrawal?

“It’s not self-evident that doing more will accomplish more,” Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass told Mr. Filkins. “And I’m skeptical about how central Afghanistan is anymore to the global effort against terror. I’m not persuaded that you can transform the situation there.”

Last week, Taliban leadership—consistent with their historical ambitions—says the group “did not have any agenda to harm other countries including Europe, nor… such agenda today”, but if a foreign power would “want to turn [Afghanistan] into a colony”, it will maintain “an unwavering determination and have braced for a prolonged war”.

“You can kill Taliban forever,”—Gen. McChrystal told Mr. Filkins—“because they are not a finite number,” adding later that the idea would not be to flip Taliban leadership to ally with the U.S.-led coalition, but the “foot soldiers”—a stark contrast with the Iraq Surge.

Mr. Filkins adds: “The notion that large groups of Taliban fighters could be persuaded to quit is not new. Previous efforts have ended in failure, often because neither the Americans nor their allies were able to protect people who changed sides.”

He reports that Gen. McChrystal’s assessment of the Taliban and Pashtun culture is: “most of the people fighting the United States, he argued, are motivated by local and personal grievances.”

Mr. Filkins adds: “The killing of Afghan civilians, usually caused by inadvertent American and NATO airstrikes, has become the most sensitive issue between the Afghans and their Western guests. Each time civilians are killed, the Taliban launch a campaign of very public propaganda.”

Zbignew Brzezinski, Carter Administration National Security Adviser and the most significant crafter of Realpolitik theory, recently assessed the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan runs the “risk of suffering the fate of the Soviet Union” due to the “Afghan perception that they are foreign invaders” that “suggests transformation of the conflict is taking place”.

Isn’t a mission strengthening the Taliban propaganda of the U.S. as occupying colonists the “reckless course” that Gen. McChrystal, said would “likely result in failure”?

“Gentlemen, I am coming into this job with 12 months to show demonstrable progress here — and 24 months to have a decisive impact,” Gen. McChrystal said in a June 2009 briefing, Mr. Filkins reports. “That’s how long we have to convince the Taliban, the Afghan people and the American people that we’re going to be successful. In 24 months, it has to be obvious that we have the clear upper hand and that things are moving in the right direction. That’s not a choice. That’s a reality.”

“In a tour of bases around Afghanistan, McChrystal repeated this mantra to all his field commanders: Time is running out,” Mr. Fiklins reports.

“So many things could scuttle McChrystal’s plans,” he adds later. “A Taliban more intractable than imagined, the fractured nature of Afghan society and, no matter what President Obama does, a lack of soldiers and time. But there is something even worse, over which neither McChrystal nor his civilian comrades in the American government exercise much control: the government of Hamid Karzai, already among the most corrupt in the world, appears to have secured its large victory in nationwide elections in August by orchestrating the stealing of votes,”

Asked how the U.S. can build “security forces” for the Afghan government seen as widely illegitimate by the locals, Gen. McChrystal said, “Then we are going to have to avoid looking like we are part of the illegitimacy. That is the key thing”

Mr. Ignatius is correct. Buying some time with priceless, exploited blood for the war profiteers’ pockets is the best “Mission Impossible” can hope for.

Obama eindigde 2008 met de benoeming tot “Man of the Year” in Time magazine en deed de wereld uitkijken naar een jaar van verandering. In 2009 zou de wereld Amerika opnieuw zien als een tot samenwerking bereide natie die de diplomatie hoogtij laat vieren. Maar in hoeverre is de jonge Amerikaanse president hier in het begin van zijn woelige ambtstermijn in geslaagd? Terwijl de goedkeuring van zijn beleid in het Amerikaans binnenland zienderogen daalt, lijkt internationaal de zwaarste economische crisis in 80 jaar grotendeels bezworen, mede dankzij het baanbrekende economische beleid van de nieuwe president. Ook het charme-offensief dat samen met Secretary of State Hilary Clinton werd opgezet ging niet onopgemerkt voorbij.

Rusland en China

Gezien het toenemend belang van Azië in een wereld na de crisis en de gedeelde economische afhankelijkheid van China en de V.S., zijn goede wederzijdse contacten onontbeerlijk. De Obama administratie zendt echter tegenstrijdige signalen uit: enerzijds wenst ze een constructieve dialoog op te zetten en stelt ze een onderhoud met de Dalai Lama uit om de onderlinge vrede te bewaren, anderzijds tracht de Amerikaanse senaat de economische reus steviger aan te pakken en werd reeds eind januari 2009 gedreigd met diplomatieke sancties. Terwijl vriend en vijand met argusogen toekijken, zoekt Amerika haar plaats in een vernieuwde wereldorde.

Aangezien Amerika vaak moet opboksen tegen een diplomatieke alliantie tussen China en Rusland, zijn ook de contacten met de voormalige vijand uit de Koude Oorlog van primordiaal belang. In een snel veranderende wereld probeert Rusland als grootmacht te herrijzen, terwijl Obama een sterk partnership wil vormen met de heren van Moskou en daarom ook het raketschild in Oost-Europa voor onbepaalde duur in de ijskast plaatste. In het thuisland wordt gevreesd dat Obama, zoals Roosevelt met Stalin na W.O.II, de tweespan Medjedev-Poetin onderschat.

Kostbare evenwichten

Een goede relatie met deze twee BRIC-landen is onlosmakelijk verbonden met het Midden-Oosten, waar Obama zich verwikkeld ziet in twee netelige oorlogen, een zware erfenis van de Bush administratie. In Washington beseft men dat een goede relatie met de buurlanden van cruciaal belang is wanneer men Afghanistan stabiliteit wil brengen. Zoals aangekondigd tijdens Obama’s verkiezingscampagne, zal deze oorlog er één van lange adem worden. Van de beloofde steun voor economische ontwikkeling in arme Afrikaanse en Aziatische landen is echter nog weinig te merken.

Ook aan de oorlog in Irak lijkt niet onmiddellijk een einde te komen. Ondanks zijn verkiezingsbeloftes, staat Obama niet langer achter een snelle terugtrekking. Hij verkiest het land geleidelijk te verlaten, wederom bouwend op regelmatig diplomatiek overleg met de buurlanden. Daarnaast lijkt ook de, in de eerste dagen van zijn ambtstermijn beloofde, sluiting van Guantanamo in het gedrang te komen. Ondanks zijn idealisme en goede bedoelingen, zorgt Obama’s wispelturigheid ervoor dat hij zowel aan linker- als aan rechterzijde de steun in eigen land verliest. Het Amerikaanse volk wil “Realpolitik” en de vergelijking met president Carter klinkt steeds luider. Zeven jaar na de Amerikaanse oud-president won ook Barack Obama de nobelprijs voor de vrede.

Barack Obama wint de Nobelprijs voor de Vrede 2009

Ook in het Israëlisch-Palestijns conflict zijn akkoorden en vrede nog veraf. Obama lijdt zowel onder interne als externe omstandigheden: thuis dient hij de beloftes aan de joodse lobby uit zijn verkiezingscampagne recht aan te doen, maar ondertussen grepen extremisten aan beide kanten van het conflict de macht. Ergo lijken opgestarte onderhandelingen en diplomatie meer kwaad dan goed te doen.

De uitzichtloosheid van dit conflict heeft de hele regio van het Midden-Oosten in een houdgreep. Zoals beloofd in 2008, biedt Obama Ahmadinejad, de immer onvoorspelbare president van Iran vandaag een partnerschap aan. De Amerikaanse president kent het aandeel dat dit land houdt in de stabiliteit van de regio, maar controversiële uitspraken van de Iraanse president op internationale conferenties en openlijke experimenten met nucleaire energie doen steeds meer stof opwaaien, wat ook Obama in een lastig parket brengt.

Obama, die via internationale samenwerking tot een algeheel kernwapenverbod wenst te komen, beseft dat de nucleaire ambities van Iran en Noord-Korea de nationale veiligheid bedreigen. Hoewel hij in de zomer van 2009 in een interview met Gorbatsjov een groeiende bewegin in de richting van een kernwapenvrije wereld beklemtoonde, zit de situatie vandaag muurvast. Ook hier hoopt Obama met economische steun en constructieve diplomatie het isolement te verbreken. Vraag blijft echter of zijn woorden zwaar genoeg wegen.

Ondertussen in Brussel…

Air Force One

Ondertussen wordt vanop het Oude Continent sceptisch toegekeken hoe het zwaartepunt van de Amerikaanse diplomatie verder naar het Oosten verschuift. In Parijs, Londen en Berlijn doven de lichten, terwijl Air Force One van Moskou naar Peking reist. Het pad van de diplomatie is lang, smal en vol gevaren. Ondertussen pakken donkere wolken echter samen boven het Witte Huis: Obama kiest er voor de Gordiaanse Knopen te ontwarren in plaats van door te hakken, maar zijn tijd tikt.

Naar: “Barack Obama vs. John McCain, “Barack Obama en het Buitenland” en “Het buitenlands beleid van Barack Obama”, Faucompret, 2008-2009

Consolation Prize (Amended)*- Español

By Atilio A. Boron

English translation: Machetera

In an astonishing decision, the Norwegian Nobel Committee put an end to seven months of searching among the 205 nominees for the Nobel Peace Prize and conferred it upon Barack Obama.   Piedad Córdoba, the brave Colombian senator whose efforts in search of peace for her violence-ridden country largely deserved to be rewarded with the Nobel Prize was tossed to the wayside so that it might be granted to the American president. It is not a minor surprise to know that Obama’s nomination was submitted to the Norwegian Committee two months after his inauguration. What did he do in such a short period of time on behalf of the world peace? He delivered gentle speeches and made rather nebulous exhortations to end violent confrontations. The Colombian senator, on the other hand, has spent the last ten years in a tireless effort to put an end to armed struggle and to pacify her country. She put her own body and her actions on the line. But the Norwegian Committee did not share this appreciation and Piedad was once again passed over. A woman, black, leftist, and Latin American: too many flaws and defects for the cautious members of the Committee, always politically correct, forever sanctimonious, who only by mistake would it confer the prize upon a public figure whose struggles for peace were unacceptable to the empire. The Dalai Lama is acceptable; Piedad Córdoba is not. For him, the Prize; for her, the cold shoulder.

The Norwegian committee’s decision provoked very mixed international reactions: ranging from stupefaction to huge laughter.  The statement by the organization’s president, Thorbjørn Jagland got straight to the point: “It’s important for the Committee to recognize those people who are struggling and idealistic, but we cannot do that every year.  We must from time to time go into the realm of realpolitik.  It is always a mix of idealism and realpolitik that can change the world.”  The problem with Obama is that his idealism remains at the level of rhetoric, while in the world of realpolitik, his initiatives could not be more antagonistic to the search for peace in this world.

According to Robert Higgs, a specialist in military expenditures for the Independent Institute in Oakland, California, the way Washington prepares its defense budget systematically conceals the real total.  Upon analyzing the figures submitted to Congress by George W. Bush for the 2007-2008 fiscal year, Higgs concluded that they represented just over half of the figure that would actually be disbursed, therefore surpassing the previously unthinkable barrier of a trillion dollars, that is, a million times a million.  And this because, according to Higgs, one must add to the base sum originally designated for the Pentagon, the expenditures related to defense which are spent outside the Pentagon; the extraordinary funds demanded by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; the interest associated with the indebtedness incurred by the White House to meet these expenses; and those arising from the medical and psychological attention for the 33,000 men and women wounded in the wars of the United States which require a hefty budget for the National Veterans Administration.  Obama has done absolutely nothing to stop this infernal machine of death and destruction whose total budget is now well over the one trillion dollar mark, and when through the mouthpiece of his Secretary of State he denounces arms purchases which “outpace all other countries,” instead of beholding the beam in his own eye, the target of his criticism is the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela!

Obama increased the budget for the war in Afghanistan while pondering to increase the number of troops to be deployed in that country as the American forces continue its ruthless occupation of Iraq; he has given no sign of changing George Bush Jr.’s decision to activate the Fourth Fleet; he has moved ahead with a still secret treaty with Álvaro Uribe to open seven new U.S. military bases in Colombia, and it is said that there are five more that are about to be confirmed, through which he is preparing (or has become complicit in) a new wave of warmongering against Latin America; he maintains his ambassador in Tegucigalpa when practically all others have been withdrawn, thereby supporting the Honduran putschists; he maintains the blockade against Cuba and is not in the least perturbed by the unjust imprisonment of the five anti-terrorist Cuban fighters incarcerated in the United States.  Of course, the Norwegian Committee periodically suffers some delusions which translate into decisions as absurd as the present one – whether brought on by its ignorance of world affairs, opportunistic pressures, or the delights of Norwegian aquavit, no-one can be totally sure.  But if at one time it granted the Nobel Peace Prize to Henry Kissinger, correctly defined by Gore Vidal as the biggest war criminal wandering loose in the world, how could they have denied it to Obama, especially after the rebuff he suffered at the hands of Lula in Copenhagen?  Realpolitik demanded an immediate rectification of this error.  Because after all, as the very President of the United States stated upon learning of his prize, it represents a “reaffirmation of [U.S.] American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations.”  And so, in a sudden attack of “realism,” the comrades on the Committee put forward their grain of sand to fortify the declining hegemony of the United States in the international system. Many people suspect that for this little help the members of the Committee will in due time be properly rewarded.

*Boron revised this piece slightly after the original English translation was posted.

Argentinean sociologist and author Atilio Boron is a friend of Tlaxcala.

Machetera is a member of Tlaxcala, the network of translators for linguistic diversity. This translation may be reprinted as long as the content remains unaltered, and the source, author, and translator are cited.

In un paese normale se il primo ministro commette degli errori pesanti, il suo partito lo fa dimettere. Così accadde quando emerse che Tony Blair aveva deliberatamente mentito sulle armi chimiche di Saddam Hussein per muovergli guerra. Gordon Brown, forse non se lo ricordano in tanti, ma non è su grazie a “democratiche elezioni” ma per nomina dopo l’abdicazione di Blair.

Il nostro problema è che la coalizione attualmente al governo non ha un piano “B”, non ha panchina. Tutto poggia sulla figura di Re Silvio. Se Re Silvio scivola si porta dietro tutto, anche perché lui non mollerà niente e il suo partito non lo mollerà mai, in quanto sono in strettissima simbiosi: se muore uno muore l’altro.

Non è assurdo? In un paese normale un primo ministro con tutti questi problemi ad un certo punto verrebbe preso dal suo partito e gentilmente messo a svernare, mentre il governo concluderebbe la legislatura con la stessa coalizione ma cambiando primo ministro.

In Italia questo non è possibile, non è nemmeno preso in considerazione…

Houston, we gotta a problem!

Anne Applebaum makes the case for a U.S. taxpayer-funded “human rights campaign that battles Iran from within”.

In today’s Washington Post (WaPo), Anne Applebaum—who is also a ‘realist‘ adjunct fellow at the neoconservative, State apologist think-tank, the American Enterprise Institute—makes the case for an overt non-military campaign against the Iranian government by using the stolen fruits of Americans’ labor to aggressively support “a sustained and well-funded human rights campaign” because (a) sanctions “probably won’t work”; (b) a bombing campaign “might not hit all of Iran’s nuclear facilities”; and (c) war would be a “catastrophe”, adding:

What do Iran’s rulers truly fear? I’ll wager that the answer is not sanctions and that it might not be a bombing raid, either. An economic boycott can be circumvented, after all, with the help of Venezuela or maybe the Russian mafia, and an attack on Iranian soil might help the regime once again consolidate power. By contrast, a sustained and well-funded human rights campaign must be a terrifying prospect. So what if we told the Iranian regime that its insistence on pursuing nuclear weapons leaves us with no choice but to increase funding for dissident exile groups, smuggle money into the country, bombard Iranian airwaves with anti-regime television and, above all, to publicize widely the myriad crimes of the Islamic Republic? [my emphasis]

Forget that Iran is not a threat. Ms. Applebaum asserts that Iran “leaves [the U.S.] with no choice” but to intervene by “[increasing] funding for dissident exile groups [et al.]” because “one can learn quite a lot about how these Iranian decision-makers will behave abroad by observing their behavior at home”.

Translation: If you don’t fear Iran’s non-operational facilities because there’s no reason to believe its intent is anything but a civilian nuclear energy program, you should fear governments that torture innocent people and militarize local thugs to abuse the domestic population and extend your resources to overthrow said governments. And to overthrow those governments way over there—who commit such atrocities toward mankind—you should fully consent to contracting the atrocious government here to carry out the task. You know, the government that:

• killed 1.3 million people right next door in Iraq during the prior regime and over a million—including 500,000 children—during the regime before that in the 90’s;
• created millions of refugees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan;
• unleashed a pseudo-genocidal terrorism campaign on Latin America;
• has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians by proxy; and
• tortured hundreds of kidnapped men to death in its War of Terror.

All of this is among a wealth of “human rights violations” committed by the U.S. since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 in Iran. I didn’t even get into crimes against Africans and the millions of petty so-called “criminals” kidnapped and held captive in the domestic Gulags, but Ms. Applebaum wants us to focus on the fact that “the people who make decisions about Iran’s nuclear program are the same people who order the arrests, tortures and murders of dissidents”. Never mind that “the same people who order the arrests, tortures and murders” on behalf of the U.S. government are the “people who make decisions” about its policy on Iran and are those called on by Ms. Applebaum to lead “dissident exile groups” in a “human rights campaign”.

Ms. Applebaum adds: “[T]he West has some foreign-policy tools in Iran that it has not yet seriously tried to use”—fully acknowledging that doing so “would allow [Iran] to cry ‘foreign meddling’ and attack its opponents as spies,” to which she says: “But so what? They do that already.”

As if the accusations by the Iranian government are fully fallacious.

Never mind that the U.S. government already conducts covert operations in Iran and supports militant Iranian “dissident exile groups” such as the Marxist Mujahideen-e-Khalq (M.E.K.) and Jundallah—once “allegedly” headed by the mainstream-accepted 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

U.S. officials were outwardly “not happy” with the Iraq government raiding M.E.K. camps in late July.

Abdolhamid Rigi, brother of Jundallah leader Abdolmalek Rigi and a high ranking member of the Balochi separatist movement which “has been launching high profile suicide bombings for years“, claimed, “that the U.S. was directing the group’s attacks, saying, ‘[the U.S.] told us whom to shoot and whom not to. All orders came from them,’ ” AntiWar News editor Jason Ditz wrote last month, adding: “Previously, U.S. officials had insisted the government was deliberately avoiding direct funding to avoid Congressional oversight, but the Bush Administration did funnel considerable money into ‘covert’ operations against the Iranian government.”

Days after the heavily-disputed Iran presidential election last June, Legislative Aide to Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) Daniel McAdams at The LRC Blog blogged an informative post titled, “Who Put the ‘Green’ in the Green Revolution?” My thoughts on how the Green Revolution was manufactured is more along the lines of AntiWar.com editorial director Justin Raimondo than Mr. McAdams or Former Assistant Treasury Secretary and Wall Street Journal editor Paul Craig Roberts. That said, Mr. McAdams brought to light—in the midst of media insanity—that Ms. Applebaum’s own WaPo reported in June 2007 that Congress “allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from spying on Iran’s nuclear program to supporting rebel groups opposed to the country’s ruling clerics” based on Seymour Hersh’s reporting at The New Yorker of U.S. support for Iranian “dissident exile groups”, adding admission of Beltway support for dissident groups within:

Arch neo-conservative Kenneth Timmerman spilled the beans on activities of the other arm of U.S. meddling overseas, the obscenely mis-named National Endowment for Democracy, in a piece written one day before the election, stating curiously that “there’s the talk of a ‘green revolution’ in Tehran.” Interesting. I wonder where that “talk” was coming from. Timmerman did not appear to be writing from Iran.

Timmerman went on to write, with admirable candor and honesty, that:

“The National Endowment for Democracy has spent millions of dollars during the past decade promoting ‘color’ revolutions in places such as Ukraine and Serbia, training political workers in modern communications and organizational techniques.

“Some of that money appears to have made it into the hands of pro-Mousavi groups, who have ties to non-governmental organizations outside Iran that the National Endowment for Democracy funds.”

Yes, you say, but what does a blow-hard propagandist like Timmerman know about such things? Well, he should know! His very spooky Foundation for Democracy in Iran has its own snout deep in the trough of NED’s “open covert actions” against the Iranian government.

In a June 23 post, Sayyid and I wrote—citing Daniel Luban at AntiWar.com—that the powers that be would begin “playing up an intervention under a Democratic Party president to be some sort of ‘humanitarian intervention’, the M.O. of Democratic Party-backed warmongering, analyzed best by Prof. Noam Chomsky. The Neo-Con’s adopted this angle to sell the Iraq War after Plan A of selling weapons of mass destruction was an ex post facto fail in the face of empirical evidence. Plan 1A was: spreading democracy [sic]. What are the Neo-Con’s Plan 1A for selling intervention in Iran after Plan A of selling Iran as a nuclear threat has failed against empirical evidence? Spreading democracy [sic].” (For more read: “U.S. Funding Regime Change in Iran“)

With all due respect to Ms. Applebaum, I’m currently reading and heavily engaged by her Pulitzer-winning work on the Soviet labor system and the atrocities committed by its concentration camp administration, Gulag: A History (2003). It’s sucked me in for the last couple of weeks and I’ve found myself re-reading chapters to further bookmark excerpts and am somewhat encouraged to see an voice as important as hers clearly stating that “potential for disaster” is “lurking behind almost every other policy option” which involve high degrees of violence—civilian-crippling economic sanctions, self-defeating bombing campaigns and ‘catastrophic’ war. But, one of the lessons from her book is that short-term alliances in the name of short-term ‘interests’ sow the enabling seeds for de facto collabortion with long-term atrocity.

Conveniently ignored is Ken Ballen of Terror Free Tomorrow: The Center for Public Opinion. Mr. Ballen is one of the very few polling Iranians leading up to the June 12 election. On June 8, Mr. Ballen wrote a commentary at CNN that his polls [.pdf] revealed that incumbent President Mahmound Ahmadinejad was leading, but was not at the 50% to avoid a runoff—let alone the ~62% majority asserted by the Iranian government on June 13—but wrote with his partner, Patrick Doherty, at Ms. Applebaum’s WaPo on June 15: “[O]ur nationwide public opinion survey of Iranians three weeks before the vote showed Ahmadinejad leading by a more than 2 to 1 margin—greater than his actual apparent margin of victory in Friday’s election.”

The significance of this is that Ms. Applebaum’s claim—like those of so-called “liberals” like Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington—all go back to the assertion that Iran’s election was significantly less legitimate than the ones commonplace in the U.S (where a Rasmussen poll says today that 50% of Americans believe U.S. election rules are “rigged to benefit members of Congress”, only 23% of people believe Congresspeople get reelected because “they do a good job representing their constituents”, and only 15% “say that voters carry more sway” over “special interest lobbyists”). This assertion creates the illusion that the U.S. has the legitimacy as a government to participate in overthrowing the ‘unpopular’ regime in Iran—’democratically’, but aggressively.

I’m neither validating the Iran government’s authority nor am I contesting that hanky-panky by pro-incumbent factions existed to distort the data of the presidential election, but the assertion that an election in ‘good faith’ accordance with Iran’s election policy would’ve yielded different results is inconclusive, at best. Without proving that assertion as true, the Iran government possesses the political capital to brutally persecute dissidents catalyzed by “foreign meddling” and Ms. Applebaum’s version of an overtly U.S.-backed “human rights campaign” would become even more self-defeating than the logic is flawed from the start.

The suggestion of Ms. Applebaum today that the U.S. engage in “foreign meddling” because the U.S. is accused of it anyway, suggests that the status quo is unacceptable and that said status quo is devoid of current meddling by the U.S.

Ms. Applebaum assumes that the U.S. would be capable of intervening peacefully—but, disinterested—and ignores that meddling is the cause of the U.S. geopolitical nightmare in the Middle East. Fueling it ignites fires unimaginable by the darkest night terrors.

You won’t see me objecting to individuals funding the overthrow of brutal regimes—especially through peaceful means—or aggressive advocacy for civil liberties, but how the deteriorating wealth of everyday people is used should be the decision of those individuals. Not the murdering inflationist thieves of the State to cynically prop up those sold as ‘lesser evils’ and certainly not the assertions of Anne Applebaum.

It hasn’t been a great week for the Obama administration plans regarding the closing of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay.
On Sep 24 AP reported that the administration would

“not seek a new law spelling out how it can hold terror suspects indefinitely without bringing charges…that the government’s authority to hold someone indefinitely without charge will be based on the congressional military force authorization passed after the 2001 terror attacks.”

The 2001 AUMF (Authorization for Use of Military Force) was the same rationale that the previous administration used to deal with the “Group Five” detainees this spring, following President Obama’s speech on the subject.

September 25, 2009 Washington Post reports that the Obama administration isn’t meet the deadline for shutting down Gitmo:

“With four months left to meet its self-imposed deadline for closing the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the Obama administration is working to recover from missteps that have put officials behind schedule and left them struggling to win the cooperation of Congress.

Even before the inauguration, President Obama’s top advisers settled on a course of action they were counseled against: announcing that they would close the facility within one year. Today, officials are acknowledging that they will be hard-pressed to meet that goal.”

Now it seems likely that, in the eyes of the anti-Gitmo section of his party, President Obama will turn out to be not much of an improvement over President Bush on this matter.
The facility will still be open, and the AUMF will still be used to justify indefinite detention, thus demonstrating yet again how different campaigning is from governing.
Where Have All The Protesters Gone?

Violet Elizabeth Bott, the UN Secretary General, announced a terrible sanction regime against Iran over its covert nuclear weapons programme:

“I’ll thcream and thcream ’till I’m thick.”

Las Vegas. Deux personnes discutent. Un avocat, une “enquêteuse” jolie blonde.

“Après 15 ans dans le couloir de la mort, mon client, exposé bras en croix dans une vitrine, l’injection dans le bras, les yeux révulsés, est réanimé. Il est passé à 15 secondes de la mort.”
Que voulez-vous que je fasse semble dire la jolie blonde? C’est comme ça, on a rouvert son dossier au mauvais moment. Il fallait le réanimer pour reprendre l’enquête, être sûr qu’il était coupable avant de l’exécuter.

Quelques minutes plus tard, encore sonné par cette image, un instant de poésie dans un campus transformé en scène de crime. L’enquêteur fait une métaphore. Et il compare le condamné à mort à quoi? Une cigale.

Le temps passe. Quelques minutes encore. Le condamné est finalement vraiment exécuté, devant les yeux reconnaissants de la famille de la victime, de son avocat, et de l’enquêteuse du début.

C’est quoi? Le cauchemar de Dostoïevski, revivant la torture de sa fausse exécution? Un délire macabre de Kafka? Une histoire pour dénoncer la peine de mort?

Non non non. C’est un série. Plus de 3 millions de télespectateurs pour l’épisode en question. C’est Les Experts Las Vegas, mais ça pourrait être une autre.

Tous les soirs, sans limite d’âge ou de recommandation pour la bonne santé mentale (pour être en bonne santé, ne regardez qu’une série par semaine, de préférence accompagné d’un expert en droit), les séries américaines nous familiarisent avec la peine de mort. On est choqué peut-être d’abord, ou peut-être même pas, ça passe comme ça. C’est normal. Il requiert la peine capitale, et on la requiert avec lui. On y pense. Et pourquoi pas, c’est pas si mal, il l’a bien mérité, ce serial killer!
De temps en temps, une bonne conscience murmure dans la télé:
“Je ne sais pas si je suis pour, ça me fait bizarre, c’est la première fois que j’assiste à une exécution”.
Mais on le fait quand même. Dans les séries télé, la première exécution, c’est comme la première autopsie: un passage obligé, un rite d’initiation, si on l’accepte, on a le droit de devenir un héros, sinon, on fait partie de ces marginaux qui manifestent devant la porte de la prison où a lieu l’exécution pour exprimer leur colère. Ils sont bizarres, hein, ces gens! Ce n’est que justice après tout! Qu’il crève ce salopard!

Réjouissons-nous, ils crèvent. Et pas plus tard que la semaine dernière, ou hier, même.
Un condamné à mort est resté plusieurs heures dans la salle d’exécution parce qu’on ne réussissait pas à lui faire l’injection létale. Avec les analyses ADN, on découvre des sacrés paquets d’erreurs judiciaires, et hop, des pauvres choukis innocents condamnés à mort. Niak niak, de quoi faire un bon scénar’, faire pleurer dans les chaumières. De toute façon, plus c’est moche, plus le condamné est méchant, plus on veut qu’il crève, c’est normal! HAHAHAHAHA! Allez, des condamnés à mort, des peines capitales, des injections létales, des chaises électriques et des pendaisons, des victimes vengées, des avocats bien payés, pour la plus grande gloire de l’humanité, et la sainte jouissance animale. ALLEEEEEEEEZ, ENCOORRREE!!!!!! OUI!

Le pire, c’est que je me suis endormie devant ma télé…