This note added on 7.7.08: Two newly revealed facts:
One - On taking office Bush/Cheyney ordered their most zealous henchmen to urgently seek a pretext for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Two - The owners of the WTC had discovered to their dismay that the structures were solid with asbestos. They also knew that as sson as this became public knowledge the WTC would have to be vacated until the asbestos was removed: a project that would cost $billions. They chose instead the far more lucrative solution: to collect the insurance money from 'terrorist' demolition. This explains the former weird suggestions that explosions in lower sections of the structures were detected, which assisted their collapse.
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see: *http://www.911truth.dk/first/en/fac.htm *
"In examining any crime, a central question must be: 'who benefits?' The principle beneficiaries of the destruction of the World Trade Centre are in the United States: the Bush administration, the Pentagon, the CIA and FBI, the weapons industry, the oil industry. It is reasonable to ask whether those who have profited to such an extent from this tragedy contributed to bringing it about.'
- Investigative Journalist Patrick Martin
There is no doubt that the 9/11 attacks were masterminded and directed by the US Establishment (whose orders emanate from Tel Aviv: ie, Mossad). The purpose, obviously, was to create a pretext for invading Afghanistan and Iraq - invasions which were crucial in the Bush administration foreign policy and Israeli foreign policy respectively, and neither of which could otherwise have gone ahead with any kind of ostensible justification (whether absurd, immoral, pointless or genocidal).
Sooner or later, if not already, this will become accepted general knowledge, unchallenged historical fact, as it is becoming in the US. What is so appalling is that the culprits, just as with Vietnam, will never answer for their crimes. Massacre millions and get away scot free. Will Bliar, together with his Spanish and Italian collaborators of the time, be brought to trial at the International Criminal Court? Unlikely. But if they are not, then that just gives a green light to their successors for more massacre and attempted pillage - and destruction of further vast sums of US taxes. The US refused to sign-up to the ICC, so Bush and his mob are in the clear - so long as they remain home.
What Bliar did was only possible with support from those around him - and from the Labour Party itself: the NEC, the General Secretary (at the time David Triesman), and other high-ranking members. They are all responsible for the massacres, because they could have stopped Blair. As for Bush, he's simply a numbskull figurehead, as we know.
Two of the presumed most 'free and democratic' nations on Earth are responsible for some of the worst ever tyranny, genocide and theft - in the case of the US, over more than 5 decades (ie, see: http://www.killinghope.org). Quite apart from their heinous activities around the world, these countries, the US and UK, are fine places to live, yet their citizens are largely enslaved by a twisted economic system in which they have to work for most of their lives. If you can somehow escape that (as the middle classes - or anyone with money - can) - or at least, as I have managed to do, curtail the years of slavery - then life can be extremely agreeable, even if one is reduced to living on the breadline.
But if you drive around the UK you will notice there are many thousands (perhaps millions) of big estates owned by the middle and upper classes who not only never have to work but enjoy a continual huge income which derives from the work of the enslaved. How much less the enslaved would have to work and how much higher would be their standard of living if that massive perpetual theft could be stopped.
When will we wake up and realise our enforced predicament, and wonder, in spite of our unconscious compliance, why we should continue to accept without question this absurd situation? It's nothing new what I'm saying here, but the consequences of carrying on as things are may soon prove fatal to humanity as we know it.
'It's not civil disobedience we need to worry about, but civil obedience!' Howard Zinn.
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THE WAR
................................................... (An assessment from 2004)
Just as Israel's atrocities against Palestinians scarcely ever cease, hardly too does a day pass when violence doesn't also take place in Iraq or Afghanistan. Does anyone remember the few months at the start of 2003 when reporters in the streets of Iraq interviewed people there who cheerfully expressed their eagerness to fight should the US and UK invade? Were those youths and others really much different from us? Weren't they reacting precisely as we might if we were threatened with invasion? Never mind their leader's past west-assisted cruelties, they were faced with the imminent and extreme brutality (ie, 'shock and awe') of two of the most powerful and notoriously rapacious nations on Earth.
Many of these people are now either dead or living in chaos and rubble - and intermittent (if any) electricity and water supplies. It is reported that 55,000 people have been killed in Iraq alone by the US and UK military - (checking this item today 12.1.07 I see that figure should read 655,000 - and that refers only to civilians). So much for western rulers' regard for ordinary people there; ie, NONE.
Everyone knows now what most of us knew before: that the invasion was an act of unjustified barbarity carried out by brutal maniacs who represent the highest echelons of business; and that the only rational explanation for their horrendous crimes is stupendous corporate greed - and Israel's aim to destroy or enslave Arab nations (at least) . Does anyone believe that 'regime change', 'humanitarian imperative' or a now defunct WMD claim, explains the vast allocation (by a covey of oil men who run Washington) of more than $100bn (on 12.1.07 $356bn) so far of US tax-revenue? We are talking about invading the world's second oil-richest nation.
We know that no ordinary terrorist attack could ever begin to approach the level of death and destruction the US and UK have caused in Iraq, the thousands of B-52 flights which for several days bombarded Baghdad, the numerous cluster bombs and depleted uranium shells that were subsequently used - and the MOABs that killed thousands of Iraqi conscripts at a stoke. How can such an onslaught be measured on the same atrocity scale as ten train bombs or any other so-called 'terrorist' attack?
The actual and corrupt US (and UK) motive is common knowledge now. Everyone the world over knows their agenda. No-one questions it any more. Corporate-perverts who claim even now that the invasion was a good thing, can't deny the injustice and barbarity of the slaughter and impending plunder. Scores of Nobel Laureates, hundreds of revered commentators, thousands of academics and artists and millions of ordinary people around the world - all who voiced their opposition before the invasion - have been appalled by what those who rule the US and UK have done. The internet is swamped with sites that carry ongoing evaluation and commentary. Here's just a few, ZNet being, I think, the most outstanding:
http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm
http://www.medialens.org/alerts/index.html
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info
http://www.iraqwar.org/
http://www.socialistalternative.org/
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/index.html
http://www.costofwar.com/
http://www.owos.info/index.php
http://www.johnpilger.com/
http://www.commondreams.org
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1172
But what about our 'rulers'? How did they get there? Who are they? Speaking for the UK, our MPs are elected by the votes of barely more than half the population - maybe 70% if you're lucky. And many of them secure less than half of that percentage of votes. That tallies to perhaps a third of total possible votes. More significant: how do these people get to stand in the first place? They have to pass rigorous tests - from which they emerge as well-behaved conformist career politicians for whom their leaders will bend-over-backwards to protect and get re-elected, so long as they promote the party and toe the line. They may as well be factory clones. Otherwise, if they rebel - apart from an exceptional small handful of 'personality' mavericks - caput.
And how about those who rise to the top, the ones who make decisions such as whether to invade another country, and who direct those cringing conformist robots we 'elect'? Who are they? Why do they nearly always turn out to be so detestable? Why are they so barbaric, uncaring, ruthless, stubborn - see how Bliar refused even to consider the overwhelming public opposition to his proposed killing spree in Iraq. The blood-lust (or was it plain political avarice?) seemed to ooze from his face as he attempted to persuade people of the rightness of his twisted intentions. No-one, so far as I know, even wavered from their former view after hearing his arguments. Usually they became confirmed in their judgment that he was wrong - if not insane. This is not surprising; after all, how does one justify such barbarity, such slaughter - scarcely to mention the spending of £billions of tax-payers' money on such an attack, precisely the opposite of what most of those tax-payers wanted.
So these are our leaders, those who have set themselves (and each other) up to take control of a whole country, its parliament - so called democratic when it's actually anything but - its money, mostly extorted from the poorest - its resources… everything.
True, our leaders don't have it all their own way. They have to contend, for instance, with unions - which one way or another, they generally dominate (consider the ludicrous minimum wage). Also true is that they have to allow most of us some sort of an acceptable lifestyle: booze and baccy and other little comforts that ensure we don't complain too much. For entertainment there's the soaps and slop that gets dished-up for evening and weekend entertainment (along with other social propaganda and other manipulative trash to keep us 'happy'). But they have it pretty cushy: we're easily pacified, readily adaptable, and often will accept almost any amount of fiscal abuse (huge mortgage for a rabbit hutch, minimum wage...) - a tough deal for a peaceful non-confrontational life. Maybe when we really get worked up we might indulge in a strike or demonstration, but usually we're a compliant lot, passive and obedient - and real protest is actually quite rare.
As for me, I'm a kind of Houdini, an escape artist extraordinaire. An amateur, I admit, and very much small-time, but an escapee all-the-same. A contemporary philosopher recently presented an equation that went something like:
contentment = success/aspiration
But what's success? If you've achieved a situation which you find very acceptable, and you wish for little (if any) more, then isn't that success?
And if you aspire to achieve little (if any) more than you currently achieve, and enjoy the way you spend your time, then aren't your aspirations necessarily low?
This is not to say that if an appropriate opportunity presented itself you would not take advantage. Nor that you do not aspire to ultimately find bliss or nirvana - or a £billion or whatever else provides an added purpose or motivation in life.
So the magnitude of 'success/aspiration' depends entirely upon whether you consider yourself successful or unsuccessful, or whether you dwell more on what you don't have or on what you do have. For most of us - in the west at any rate - we can choose at any moment both that we are successful and that what we now have is of great value. In other words, our level of contentment is our own choice.
But in spite of this, in spite of moderate success as an escapee - having abandoned the rat-race and the mad clamour for power, status or financial obesity - and in spite of material comforts, I still don't experience uninterrupted contentment. To find that, I have to opt out entirely. I have to dismiss from my head the activities of our rulers; I have to avoid the news; I have to avoid contemplating the massive pollution that's endlessly taking place, the horrendous massacres that are being committed in my name, and the use of my money (yes, I too pay taxes) to carry out these things. Or I have to view it all from an oblique and unconventional angle.
I can, of course, consider that my taxes pay only for play-parks and care-homes and other important projects. But taxes are split proportionally between everything, and I'm not sure I can rest comfortably with a lie in my head while knowing that my tax is helping to buy depleted uranium which in a decade from now will cause the horrible slow agonising death of some poor old Iraqi woman who in all probability is one of the kindest souls that ever lived.
So, however unpleasant, truth, for me, is preferable. This is probably because I've always prefered a practical scientific approach, and have an interest in gadgets. I'm always keen to know how and why things work - which means if cogs don't fit or if chemicals don't mix, then there's a dissatisfying inconsistency which I feel compelled to get to the heart of and unravel.
In everyday matters, lies can be annoying or can improve and smooth rough edges - they can be fun - and are usually trivial anyway. But when it comes to using them to justify massacres, for the plundering and destruction of a whole society - then LYING takes on a whole new meaning.
So what is the hideous truth? The answer stares at us from all sides. It is that we live in a jungle, the dominant dominating and the meek obeying - or keeping their heads down. Parliament is a microcosmic jungle. The world is a macrocosmic jungle. Survival once meant killing whoever might pose a threat. Then it became a matter of exploiting and dominating whoever you could, and killing everyone that was (or might become) a threat - that is, a threat not merely to your physical survival but to your dominance, your power.
One should not forget that the effect of war was once little more than a family squabble for all the damage they caused on a planetary scale. Nowadays, as in the 'cold war', we're coming close to huge-risk destruction - we squander resources as though they have no limit, we fight over and despoil this beautiful planet in the process, like so many spoiled brats, and to an extent that causes permanent harm. By 'we' I mean those who've taken power. Most of us, probably 95%, just want an easy pleasant life and have no wish to hurt or swindle anyone, much less destroy the environment which on a personal level we at least half-heartedly try to protect.
The whole big overriding problem in the world now stems from this: that the automatic mandate of a company, corporation, business, is to create profit for investors. On the surface this may sound fine, to some people admirable - until you extrapolate a little into precisely where it leads. Ultimately, the mandate means that if a company can outsmart its rivals and even take them over, it will eventually own everything on the planet. By creating an implicit alliance this in effect has already happened.
For instance: An 'alliance' of (oil) companies -which includes the oil-guzzling automobile and aviation industries, and defence with all their aircraft, missiles and tanks etc, always a colossal budget... an alliance decides, quite legally, to become not merely a sponsor of a political party, but to have one of its employees run for the presidency of the most powerful and heavily-armed country in the world - the US - which already dominates more than half the planet. The alliance thereby extends its power and improves prospects for its shareholders. Well, why not? That's the company's primary obligation, after all.
If using US military resources to invade oil-rich nations will further the alliance's power, then in their eyes that is entirely 'legitimate'. The alliance has no mandate regarding ethics: brutality, massacres, destruction, damage to the atmosphere, the future, peace, security, contentment, fairness, etc. None of those come into it. Though bribing and threatening other nations into supporting their exploits is all part of the game. Once big enough, even this becomes irrelevant to the corporate monsters that now has effective charge of almost 750 military bases dispersed throughout the world. These companies will stop at nothing. This, dear reader, is the path of capitalism - a system that is still regarded as very fine, but now portends ultimate global annihilation.
.....OUR LEADERS ARE SLAVES TO THE MACHINE
.............THAT WILL DESTROY THE PLANET
Can all this really be true? Or is the art of logical deduction together with clear-sighted observation… dead?
Above all, the main purpose of government is to 'manage' the country it governs. This means it is charged with the obligation to order things so that as many people as possible can go about their lives contented and fulfilled - and that the aspirations of as few people as possible (or as few aspects of life as possible) are restricted. Obviously, there is a balance between freedom and an order that will make our lives acceptably comfortable and worthwhile.
That - and more learned assessments of what a government's purpose should be - is nothing new. And in practice, of course, all this is bollocks. But government means nothing if their most vital duty is flouted: ie, to avoid war.
Shortly before the invasion of Iraq it seemed that the only people who were determined that the UK should join the invasion were the PM, most of the cabinet and a few government officials - together with an ever aggressive bulk of Tory MPs (some of whom, having lost their seats in the '97 New Labour landslide, had - tellingly -been recruited into New Labour).
This means, despite all conflicting evidence (now proved to be correct) and despite huge public opposition, that the UK government did precisely the opposite of what it is there to do - ie, avoid war. It was an unquestionable example of treason. It is the equivalent of a bank manager spending all his bank's money at the bookies - and failing to place a single winner.
The very fact that after more than a year, those who engaged in this expensive and bloody venture are still in place is a travesty. It just exemplifies the severe shortcomings of a system of government in which the least fit to govern rise to the top - and after having shown themselves worse than incompetent are still a year later in place making decisions, and doing so for a public who no longer believes what they say or trusts their motives.
Since only those with power can change the rules, nothing will be done; they are not likely to jeopardise their own position. This has been the situation since before time immemorial. The difference now being that the scale and significance of their actions go far beyond the mere exploitation of the poor by the rich (or the meek by the strong) as has been the case throughout history. These 'gangsters' who hoist themselves and each other into power are no less greedy, arrogant or stupid than their predecessors; if anything they are more so. Their reach, their sights and the extent of the damage they cause, has become global. Surrounded by bodyguards and other protection, they are unconcerned about reprisals from those they oppress and attempt to kill or control, which at present - having mastered their own populations - seems to have focussed on the Arab world where most of the oil is.
So far as I know, our rulers have never before exposed themselves to such scrutiny as now. Of course, they are not at all happy about this; possibly it will lead to their downfall - though I'm not holding my breath. But this exposure has happened for several reasons.
Unlike their predecessors our rulers seem to lack an understanding of basic psychology, which has previously enabled them to keep people in the dark. This, combined with their lack of subtlety and an astonishing complacency, is clearly evident in the following extract from Naomi Klein's March 20th 2004 ZNet article 'The Year of the Fake'. The whole article is worth reading if only because at one level it is highly amusing - until you reflect soberly on its implications.
After beginning the article with the FBI directive to 18,000 law enforcement agencies to monitor anyone they find during routine investigations to be carrying an almanac (a book of facts: population figures, weather predictions, diagrams of buildings and landmarks, etc) - adding that the library in almost every American town carries this information, and much more - Klein goes on to describe how 80% of regular watchers of Murdoch's Fox News thought WMDs had been found in Iraq, that Iraq and Al Qaeda were linked and that world opinion supported the war, then writes:
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'On December 19 the Federal Communications Commission gave Murdoch the right to purchase the top US satellite broadcaster, DirecTV. The FCC vote took place just five days before the FBI's almanac bulletin, and they can best be understood in tandem: If books that fill your brain with facts make you a potential terrorist, then media moguls who fill your brain with mush must be heroes, deserving of the richest rewards.'
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Never have I seen a more apt and deserving expression of cynicism. And there it is: ZNET(http://www.zmag.org/ZNET.htm): available along with much more (in several languages) to all - presumably the world over - who have access to a computer.
Also, quite apart from the awesome propaganda effort (see Micky Z's March 18th 2004 'Dreams For Sale'), following the 'success' of the hanging-chad debacle in Florida there have been several new attempts to rig voting in the US, to 'fix' machines and otherwise corrupt public voting intentions in time for the next US presidential election in November. These have been reported in detail on the net - and perhaps have therefore been (or are being) investigated and properly dealt with. But who knows what unidentified method might actually be in place by November to favour the re-election of Bush?
When hundreds - or thousands - of billions of dollars are at stake, when perhaps even a curtailment of Israel's ongoing atrocities and long-term aims are in the balance, who knows to what lengths, to what crimes, to what depravity the ruling factions in Washington (and Tel Aviv) will stoop? They ignored the UN - that is, most of the rest of the world - in invading Iraq, so why should they cower before their own 'pliant' electorate? Probably Kerry will be under the same henchmen as Bush, so - and as John Pilger elucidates in his March 4th 2004 'Bush or Kerry?'- perhaps it makes no real difference what the electors decide. Just as in the UK, the rulers rule and the rest are destined for the time being at least to continue as pawns, to be done with as their rulers wish.
Of course, all this is only possible while we play along, while we allow ourselves to be drawn into the conspiracy, while we obey the rules. If the General's orders fall on stony ground, then his army may well all end-up in the glass-house (if the glass house can cope), but one truth is clear: the General will not get his war. Once we realise this - and act on it - our rulers and all their greed and brutality with them will be defeated. They will be as good as dead.
Any more dreamers out there? Just pause and imagine it: if everyone became, like me, an escape artist - just for one measly week (excluding genuine essential service workers, of course) then that would shake our rulers to the core, and might just leave them so affected that they would be forced either to resign or at the very least to reassess their position. We have that power - why don't we have the courage to use it?
Remember several months ago when former cabinet minister Michael Meacher (search http://www.guardian.co.uk/) announced that he had seen irrefutable evidence that the US government had had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks? That Washington deliberately ignored agents who warned that such an assault was imminent? Remember? Well, these past few days a senior terrorism adviser to the White House Richard Clarke (no relation!) announced that even before they took office ('took' being the operative word) the current Bush administration was hell bent on demolishing Iraq - never mind what else happened, that was their primary and most pressing objective. But they had to create a pretext ….
Do I need to fill between the lines? These details and the history that has since unfolded before our eyes gives it all away. The following extract from 'The War on Freedom' is from Nexus, August-September 2002 edition. That's probably about the time when Bliar agreed to abandon his allegiance to his employers (ie, us - that is, all UK citizens) and instead, and utterly against the UK's interest, surrender (or should that be 'grovel') to his chosen US masters.
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