http://mierleeu.blogspot.be/2012/07/dieselfde-geld-vir-my-en-my-land-suid.html
Joerie, joerie, botter en brood,
as ek jou kry, slaat ek jou dood
Monday, July 30, 2012
Monday, July 23, 2012
Sunday, July 15, 2012
Monday, July 9, 2012
DIE GROOT LIG VAN DIE WÊRELD
07 July 2012 6:28 PM
They sold us 'happy pills' - but all we got was suicide and misery
This is Peter Hitchens’ Mail on Sunday column
A scandal can exist for ages before anyone notices. Here is one such. Ten years from now we will look back in shame and regret at the way the drug companies bamboozled us into swallowing dangerous, useless ‘antidepressant’ pills.You’d be far better off taking a brisk walk. The moment of truth must come soon, though most of Britain’s complacent, sheep-like media will be among the last to spot it.
I would have thought it was blaring, front-page, top-of- the-bulletin news that GlaxoSmithKline, one of our biggest companies, has just been fined £2 billion (yes, you heard that right, £2 billion) in the US for – among other things – bribing doctors, and encouraging the prescription of unsuitable drugs to children.
Its drug Paxil, sold here as Seroxat, was promoted as suitable for teenagers and children, even though trials had shown it was not.
Doctors were sent on free trips where they were treated to snorkelling, sailing, deep-sea fishing, balloon rides and spa treatments (and cash payments), to persuade them to prescribe these drugs, or to reward them for doing so.
A medically-qualified radio host was allegedly paid more than £150,000 to plug one GSK antidepressant for unapproved uses. GSK paid for articles approving its drugs to appear in reputable medical journals.
It is well known now among doctors that other drug companies have suppressed unwelcome test results on modern antidepressants. These results show they are largely useless for their stated purpose. In many cases they were not significantly more effective than dummy tablets in lifting the moods of patients. Thanks to Freedom of Information investigations, the truth is now out.
Even worse than this is the growing suggestion that, far from making their users happy, these pills can increase suicidal thoughts in their minds, perhaps with tragic results.
The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency undertook trials which showed that teenagers and children who took Seroxat were significantly more likely to experience such thoughts.
Sara Carlin, an 18-year-old Canadian student with everything to live for, hanged herself in 2007 despite official warnings (and warnings from her mother) that the drug could lead to self-harm.
Quite why it should magically be safe for adults, I am not sure. Nor was the coroner in the 2003 inquest on Colin Whitfield, a retired headmaster, aged 56, who slit his wrists in his garden shed two weeks after starting to take Seroxat. The coroner recorded an open verdict and said the drug should be withdrawn until detailed national studies were made.
Mr Whitfield’s widow Kathryn said: ‘We have no doubt that it was the drug that caused him to do it.’
I would also remind readers of the recent statement by Dr Declan Gilsenan, Ireland’s former Assistant State Pathologist, who says he has seen ‘too many suicides’ after people had started taking antidepressants and is sure the evidence is ‘more than anecdotal’.
The defenders of this nasty, profiteering enterprise – including doctors who ought to know better – will come up with the usual bleat of ‘correlation is not causation’.
Just remember that this was the same sly song that Big Tobacco sang, when it first became obvious that cigarettes caused cancer. It is time for a proper investigation, with evidence on oath and the power of subpoena.
............................................................................................................
Mr Slippery, who pretended to have wielded the European veto when he hadn’t, now pretends he is offering a referendum when he isn’t. The Tory leader’s struggle to avoid commitment on anything increasingly resembles that favourite entertainment at American country fairs, the greased pig contest. It takes quite a few honest citizens to catch one well-lubricated hog.
The CPS will put anyone on trial... except crooks
The main purpose of the Crown Prosecution Service is to save money by pretending that crime and disorder are not as bad as they really are.
That is why it is almost impossible to get it to prosecute anyone, unless you have clear, high-definition film of the crime actually being committed.
Burglary? Why bother? Here’s a crime number, if you can still get insurance in your postcode. Car theft? Happens all the time. Probably your fault. Assault? How about a caution? Drugs? Well, Chuka Umunna, the Shadow Business Secretary, reckons that it isn’t news any more that he smoked dope. So why would we trouble ourselves over that?
In which case, why on earth did the CPS think it was worth spending heaps of our money on prosecuting Cinnamon Heathcote-Drury after a bizarre and faintly comical scuffle in Tesco, in which nobody was hurt?
Could it be because her accuser was a Muslim who alleged she was a ‘racist’?
But now that a jury has thrown out this ludicrous case after 15 minutes of deliberation (God bless them), will anyone in the CPS be disciplined?
No real army and no real country
A country without an army isn’t a country any more. And, thanks to the Coalition, among the worst and most irresponsible and incompetent Governments in our history, we no longer have an army.
We will pretend we do. But nobody will believe us. The British Army will soon be smaller than the sad, rump defence force that Vichy France was allowed to keep by Hitler. Something very similar has happened to the Royal Navy, now a demoralised, politically corrected remnant.
Meanwhile, money is poured into overseas aid, and into the huge apparatus of bureaucrats and sinecures that our state maintains to hide the level of unemployment.
This Government will be remembered in ten years’ time for its bad management of the economy, its failure to reform schools, its pitiful inability to cope with crime and disorder, its stupid tinkering with the constitution and its cave-ins to Brussels.
But it will be remembered in 20 years’ time, with bitterness and remorse, as the Government that stripped our defences bare in a dangerous world.
............................................................................................................
The latest deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan are, as usual, needless – and are Mr Slippery’s direct personal responsibility.
David Cameron has long promoted the fantasy that we must stay in that hopeless country while we train Afghans to take over from us.
But everyone in Helmand knows perfectly well that the Afghans hate us, and that as soon as we go, the Taliban will take over.
A large share of our casualties now result from Afghans, who we have trained and armed, murdering the British troops who are supposed to be their allies. This fact is itself the proof that our policy will never work.
Only one thing prevents an immediate exit from this worse-than-pointless pit of grief and loss.
It is Mr Slippery’s cowardly refusal to admit that the whole deployment was a stupid mistake, and that his braying support for it, trumpeted in the Murdoch press, was the price he paid for the backing of the Sun newspaper during his fraudulent Election campaign.
A country without an army isn’t a country any more. And, thanks to the Coalition, among the worst and most irresponsible and incompetent Governments in our history, we no longer have an army.
We will pretend we do. But nobody will believe us. The British Army will soon be smaller than the sad, rump defence force that Vichy France was allowed to keep by Hitler. Something very similar has happened to the Royal Navy, now a demoralised, politically corrected remnant.
Meanwhile, money is poured into overseas aid, and into the huge apparatus of bureaucrats and sinecures that our state maintains to hide the level of unemployment.
This Government will be remembered in ten years’ time for its bad management of the economy, its failure to reform schools, its pitiful inability to cope with crime and disorder, its stupid tinkering with the constitution and its cave-ins to Brussels.
But it will be remembered in 20 years’ time, with bitterness and remorse, as the Government that stripped our defences bare in a dangerous world.
............................................................................................................
The latest deaths of British soldiers in Afghanistan are, as usual, needless – and are Mr Slippery’s direct personal responsibility.
David Cameron has long promoted the fantasy that we must stay in that hopeless country while we train Afghans to take over from us.
But everyone in Helmand knows perfectly well that the Afghans hate us, and that as soon as we go, the Taliban will take over.
A large share of our casualties now result from Afghans, who we have trained and armed, murdering the British troops who are supposed to be their allies. This fact is itself the proof that our policy will never work.
Only one thing prevents an immediate exit from this worse-than-pointless pit of grief and loss.
It is Mr Slippery’s cowardly refusal to admit that the whole deployment was a stupid mistake, and that his braying support for it, trumpeted in the Murdoch press, was the price he paid for the backing of the Sun newspaper during his fraudulent Election campaign.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down
Friday, July 6, 2012
KÁN DIT DUIDELIKER?
by
craig on Jul 5th in Uncategorized
The hopelessness of New Labour as a vehicle of
change is underlined by their fixation with “judge-led” inquiries into anything
that crops up. Remember the Hutton whitewash? Will a senior judge really
recommend the fundamental reform of casino banking in the City of London and
the careers of the banking squillionaires he undoubtedly knows so well at his
club, lodge and golf course?
Which of these best describes most senior judges?
a) A fearless crusader for truth and social justice
with unimpeachable morals and the intellectual stringency of a great
philosopher
or
b) A very well paid establishment figure with an
authoritarian streak who got his position from Jack Straw or his predecessors
by very carefully in his career never stepping out of line with the very
powerful.
Frankly, it makes no difference at all whether
politicians or judges conduct the inquiry into banking practices. It’ll be the
same old whitewash. Andrew Tyrie MP happens to be one of the very few
decent people in parliament. But if he does chair the inquiry as Cameron
proposes, be sure the forces of control will rapidly close over his head.
I didn’t
bother to watch the Bob Diamond select committee appearance yesterday. In fact, I have come to terms with the
(to me) shocking fact that I now believe our political system to be so corrupt
that our horribly and increasingly unequal society will eventually, and
rightly, be changed by extra-parliamentary means. Probably not in my lifetime,
but one day. I never imagined I would end up believing that.
The political blogosphere will buzz today with
parliamentary debate on the banks. It seems obvious to me that parliament is
not going to do anything against the financial services paymasters of the
politicians.
Parliament
is irrelevant.
Wednesday, July 4, 2012
HUIGELARY BLÝ HUIGELARY
In the Wake of World War
II: The European Atrocity You Never Heard About
by Prof. R.M.
Douglas
Global Research, June 29, 2012
In the largest episode of forced migration in history, millions of
German-speaking civilians were sent to Germany from Czechoslovakia and
other European countries after World War II by order of the United States,
Britain, and the Soviet Union.
The screams that rang throughout the darkened cattle car crammed with
deportees, as it jolted across the icy Polish countryside five nights before
Christmas, were Dr. Loch's only means of locating his patient. The doctor,
formerly chief medical officer of a large urban hospital, now found himself
clambering over piles of baggage, fellow passengers, and buckets used as
toilets, only to find his path blocked by an old woman who ignored his request
to move aside. On closer examination, he discovered that she had frozen to
death.
Finally he located the source of the screams, a pregnant woman who had
gone into premature labor and was hemorrhaging profusely. When he attempted to
move her from where she lay into a more comfortable position, he found that
"she was frozen to the floor with her own blood." Other than
temporarily stanching the bleeding, Loch was unable to do anything to help her,
and he never learned whether she had lived or died. When the train made its
first stop, after more than four days in transit, 16 frost-covered corpses were
pulled from the wagons before the remaining deportees were put back on board to
continue their journey. A further 42 passengers would later succumb to the
effects of their ordeal, among them Loch's wife.
During the Second World
War, tragic scenes like those were commonplace, as Adolf Hitler and Joseph
Stalin moved around entire populations like pieces on a chessboard, seeking to
reshape the demographic profile of Europe according to their own preferences. What was different about the deportation
of Loch and his fellow passengers, however, was that it took place by order of
the United States and Britain as well as the Soviet Union, nearly two years
after the declaration of peace.
Between 1945 and 1950,
Europe witnessed the largest episode of forced migration, and perhaps the
single greatest movement of population, in human history. Between 12 million
and 14 million German-speaking civilians—the overwhelming majority of whom were
women, old people, and children under 16—were forcibly ejected from their
places of birth in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Yugoslavia, and what are
today the western districts of Poland. As The New York Times noted in
December 1945, the number of people the Allies proposed to transfer in just a
few months was about the same as the total number of all the immigrants
admitted to the United States since the beginning of the 20th century. They
were deposited among the ruins of Allied-occupied Germany to fend for
themselves as best they could. The number who died as a result of starvation,
disease, beatings, or outright execution is unknown, but conservative estimates
suggest that at least 500,000 people lost their lives in the course of the
operation.
Most disturbingly of all, tens of thousands
perished as a result of ill treatment while being used as slave labor (or, in
the Allies' cynical formulation, "reparations in kind") in a vast
network of camps extending across central and southeastern Europe—many of
which, like Auschwitz I and Theresienstadt, were former German concentration
camps kept in operation for years after the war. As Sir John Colville, formerly
Winston Churchill's private secretary, told his colleagues in the British
Foreign Office in 1946, it was clear that "concentration camps and all
they stand for did not come to an end with the defeat of Germany."
Ironically, no more than 100 or so miles away from the camps being put to this
new use, the surviving Nazi leaders were being tried by the Allies in the
courtroom at Nuremberg on a bill of indictment that listed "deportation
and other inhumane acts committed against any civilian population" under
the heading of "crimes against humanity."
By any measure, the postwar expulsions were a manmade disaster and one
of the most significant examples of the mass violation of human rights in
recent history. Yet although they occurred within living memory, in time of
peace, and in the middle of the world's most densely populated continent, they
remain all but unknown outside Germany itself. On the rare occasions that they
rate more than a footnote in European-history textbooks, they are commonly
depicted as justified retribution for Nazi Germany's wartime atrocities or a
painful but necessary expedient to ensure the future peace of Europe. As the
historian Richard J. Evans asserted in In Hitler's Shadow(1989) the
decision to purge the continent of its German-speaking minorities remains
"defensible" in light of the Holocaust and has shown itself to be a
successful experiment in "defusing ethnic antagonisms through the mass
transfer of populations."
Even at the time, not
everyone agreed. George Orwell, an outspoken opponent of the expulsions,
pointed out in his essay "Politics and the English Language" that the
expression "transfer of population" was one of a number of euphemisms
whose purpose was "largely the defense of the indefensible." The
philosopher Bertrand Russell acidly inquired: "Are mass deportations
crimes when committed by our enemies during war and justifiable measures of
social adjustment when carried out by our allies in time of peace?" A
still more uncomfortable observation was made by the left-wing publisher Victor
Gollancz, who reasoned that "if every German was indeed responsible for
what happened at Belsen, then we, as members of a democratic country and not a
fascist one with no free press or parliament, were responsible individually as
well as collectively" for what was being done to noncombatants in the
Allies' name.
That the expulsions would inevitably cause death and hardship on a very
large scale had been fully recognized by those who set them in motion. To a
considerable extent, they were counting on it. For the expelling
countries—especially Czechoslovakia and Poland—the use of terror against their
German-speaking populations was intended not simply as revenge for their
wartime victimization, but also as a means of triggering a mass stampede across
the borders and finally achieving their governments' prewar ambition to create
ethnically homogeneous nation-states. (Before 1939, less than two-thirds of
Poland's population, and only a slightly larger proportion of Czechoslovakia's,
consisted of gentile Poles, Czechs, or Slovaks.)
For the Soviets, who had "compensated" Poland for its
territorial losses to the Soviet Union in 1939 by moving its western border
more than 100 miles inside German territory, the clearance of the newly
"Polish" western lands and the dumping of their millions of displaced
inhabitants amid the ruins of the former Reich served Stalin's twin goals of
impeding Germany's postwar recovery and eliminating any possibility of a future
Polish-German rapprochement. The
British viewed the widespread suffering that would inevitably attend the expulsions
as a salutary form of re-education of the German population. "Everything
that brings home to the Germans the completeness and irrevocability of their
defeat," Deputy Prime Minister Clement Richard Attlee wrote in 1943,
"is worthwhile in the end." And the Americans, as Laurence
Steinhardt, ambassador to Prague, recorded, hoped that by displaying an
"understanding" and cooperative attitude toward the expelling
countries' desire to be rid of their German populations, the United States could
demonstrate its sympathy for those countries' national aspirations and prevent
them from drifting into the Communist orbit.
The Allies, then, knowingly embarked on a course that, as the British
government was warned in 1944 by its own panel of experts, was "bound to
cause immense suffering and dislocation." That the expulsions did not lead
to the worst consequences that could be expected from the chaotic cattle drive
of millions of impoverished, embittered, and rootless deportees into a
war-devastated country that had nowhere to put them was due to three main
factors.
The first was the skill
with which the postwar German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, drew the expellees
into mainstream politics, defusing the threat of a potentially radical and
disruptive bloc. The second was the readiness of most expellees—the
occasionally crass or undiplomatic statements of their leaders
notwithstanding—to renounce the use or threat of force as a means of redressing
their grievances. The third, and by far the most important, was the 30-year-long
"economic miracle" that made possible the housing, feeding, and
employment of the largest homeless population with which any industrial country
has ever had to contend. (In East Germany, on the other hand, the fact that the
standard of living for the indigenous population was already so low meant that
the economic gap between it and the four million arriving expellees was more
easily bridged.)
The downside of "economic miracles," though, is that, as their
name suggests, they can't be relied upon to come along where and when they are
most needed. By extraordinary good fortune, the Allies avoided reaping the
harvest of their own recklessness. Nonetheless, the expulsions have cast a long
and baleful shadow over central and southeastern Europe, even to the present
day. Their disruptive demographic, economic, and even—as Eagle Glassheim has
pointed out—environmental consequences continue to be felt more than 60 years
later. The overnight transformation of some of the most heterogeneous regions
of the European continent into virtual ethnic monoliths changed the trajectory
of domestic politics in the expelling countries in significant and unpredicted
ways. Culturally, the effort to eradicate every trace of hundreds of years of
German presence and to write it out of national and local histories produced
among the new Polish and Czech settler communities in the cleared areas what
Gregor Thum has described as a state of "amputated memory." As Thum
shows in his groundbreaking study of postwar Wroclaw—until 1945 and the removal
of its entire population, the German city of Breslau—the challenge of
confronting their hometown's difficult past is one that post-Communist
Wroclawites have only recently taken up. In most other parts of Central Europe,
it has hardly even begun.
Still less so in the English-speaking world. It is important to note
that the expulsions are in no way to be compared to the genocidal Nazi campaign
that preceded them. But neither can the supreme atrocity of our time become a
yardstick by which gross abuses of human rights are allowed to go unrecognized
for what they are.
Contradicting Allied rhetoric that
asserted that World War II had been fought above all to uphold the dignity and
worth of all people, the Germans included, thousands of Western officials,
servicemen, and technocrats took a full part in carrying out a program that,
when perpetrated by their wartime enemies, they did not hesitate to denounce as
contrary to all principles of humanity.
The degree of cognitive dissonance to which this led was exemplified by
the career of Colonel John Fye, chief U.S. liaison officer for expulsion
affairs to the Czechoslovak government. The operation he had helped carry out,
he acknowledged, drew in "innocent people who had never raised so much as
a word of protest against the Czechoslovak people." To accomplish it,
women and children had been thrown into detention facilities, "many of
which were little better than the ex-German concentration camps." Yet
these stirrings of unease did not prevent Fye from accepting a decoration from
the Prague government for what the official citation candidly described as his
valuable services "in expelling Germans from Czechoslovakia."
Today we have come not much further than Fye did in acknowledging the
pivotal role played by the Allies in conceiving and executing an operation that
exceeded in both scale and lethality the violent breakup of Yugoslavia in the
1990s. It is unnecessary to attribute this to any "taboo" or
"conspiracy of silence." Rather, what is denied is not the fact of
the expulsions themselves, but their significance.
Many European commentators
have maintained that to draw attention to them runs the risk of diminishing the
horror that ought properly to be reserved for the Holocaust and other Nazi
atrocities, or giving rise to a self-pitying "victim" mentality among
today's generation of Germans, for whom the war is an increasingly distant
memory. Czechs, Poles, and citizens of other expelling states fear the legal
ramifications of a re-examination of the means by which millions of erstwhile
citizens of those countries were deprived of their nationality, liberty, and
property. To this day, the postwar decrees expropriating and denationalizing
Germans remain on the statute book of the Czech Republic, and their legality
has recently been reaffirmed by the Czech constitutional court.
Some notable exceptions aside, like T. David Curp, Matthew Frank, and
David Gerlach, English-speaking historians—out of either understandable
sympathy for Germany's victims or reluctance to complicate the narrative of
what is still justifiably considered a "good war"—have also not been
overeager to delve into the history of a messy, complex, morally ambiguous, and
politically sensitive episode, in which few if any of those involved appear in
a creditable light.
By no means are all of these concerns unworthy ones. But neither are
they valid reasons for failing to engage seriously with an episode of such
obvious importance, and to integrate it within the broader narrative of modern
European history. For historians to write—and, still worse, to teach—as though
the expulsions had never taken place or, having occurred, are of no particular
significance to the societies affected by them, is both intellectually and
pedagogically unsustainable.
The fact that population transfers are currently making a comeback on
the scholarly and policy agenda also suggests that we should scrutinize with
particular care the most extensive experiment made with them to date. Despite
the gruesome history, enthusiasts continue to chase the mirage of
"humane" mass deportations as a means of resolving intractable ethnic
problems. Andrew Bell-Fialkoff, in a much-cited study, has advocated population
transfers as a valuable tool so long as they are "conducted in a humane,
well-organized manner, like the transfer of Germans from Czechoslovakia by the
Allies in 1945-47." John Mearsheimer, Chaim Kaufmann, Michael Mann and
others have done likewise.
Few wars today, whether within or between states, do not feature an
attempt by one or both sides to create facts on the ground by forcibly
displacing minority populations perceived as alien to the national community.
And although the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court has attempted
to restrain this tendency by prohibiting mass deportations, Elazar Barkan
maintains that such proscriptions are far from absolute, and that "today
there is no single code of international law that explicitly outlaws population
transfers either in terms of group or individual rights protections."
The expulsion of the ethnic
Germans is thus of contemporary as well as historical relevance. At present,
though, the study of many vital elements of this topic is still in its earliest
stages. Innumerable questions—about the archipelago of camps and detention
centers, the precise number and location of which are still undetermined; the
sexual victimization of female expellees, which was on a scale to rival the
mass rapes perpetrated by Red Army soldiers in occupied Germany; the full part
played by the Soviet and U.S. governments in planning and executing the
expulsions—remain to be fully answered. At a moment when the surviving
expellees are passing away and many, though far from all, of the relevant
archives have been opened, the time has come for this painful but pivotal
chapter in Europe's recent history to receive at last the scholarly attention
it deserves.
R.M. Douglas is
an associate professor of history at Colgate University. This essay is adapted
from his new book, published by Yale University Press, Orderly and Humane:
The Expulsion of the Germans After the Second World War.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
ANGELTJESAANHALING
Democratische politiek is de kunst om het volk wijs te maken dat het regeert.
En démocratie, la politique est l'art de faire croire au peuple qu'il gouverne.
En démocratie, la politique est l'art de faire croire au peuple qu'il gouverne.
Louis Latzarus, La Politique, 1928
BEDROG TIER WELIG
Social Networking, Military Expeditions and America's Holy Crusade
by Felicity Arbuthnot
Global Research, June 25, 2012
|
“Diplomacy: The
conduct of the relations of one state with another by peaceful means; skill
in the management of international relations … “
“Duplicity: deception;
double dealing.” (Collins
Dictionary.)
“Crusade: Medieval
military expeditions undertaken by the Christian powers … to recapture the
Holy Land from the Muslims.”
Remember that “Crusade”? It is back, it seems – if it ever went away.
On 16th September 2001,
George W. Bush announced: ". . . this Crusade, this war on terrorism, is
going to take a while."
Six months later that
designated “dove” of the Bush Administration, General Colin Powell, gave an
ultimatum to Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf demanding he be on board
to topple the Taliban and neutralize “al-Qaeda” in Afghanistan.
Powell, in testimony
before a Commission investigating the 11th September attacks (24th March
2004) stated that: “We gave them twenty four (or) forty eight hours and then
I called President Musharraf and said: ‘We need your answer now. We need you
as part of this campaign - this Crusade.’ “
Now, Robert S. Ford, US
Ambassador to Syria, has imaginatively resurrected the “Crusade” as
diplomatic representative of a President who pledged, at Cairo University in
June 2009: “I’ve come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the
United States and Muslims around the world … America is not – and never will
be – at war with Islam.”(i)
In his article: “The Salvador Option for Syria” (ii)
Michel Chossudovsky gives a crash course on the multiply diverse Ambassador
Ford, to whom, it must be said, diplomacy would seem to be yet another far
away land..
However, even the
insightful Professor Chossudovsky was unlikely to have foreseen that after
Ambassador Ford slunk out of Syria in October last year, having indulged in
ten months of provocative, divisive, inflammatory and politically
confrontational actions, he would set up a Facebook page (iii)
its massive profile picture being the UNESCO World Heritage listed site of
what T.E. Lawrence (“Lawrence of Arabia”) described as: “Perhaps the best
preserved and most wholly admirable castle in the world (which) forms a
fitting commentary on any account of the Crusading buildings of Syria.”
This dominant image on
the Ambassador’s “social networking” site is of the Krak de Chevaliers, a
Crusaders’ castle considered perhaps the finest example of such anywhere. The
current fortress was completed in 1031 but captured in the First Crusade in
1099 by Raymond 1Vth of Toulouse.
Robert Ford’s choice for
visual statement of his vision for dominance of Syria could, surely, hardly
be more symbolic and enlightening.
Via Facebook, the
Ambassador accuses, incites and rambles to the Syrian people and the world.
On 20th June, with an
arrogance that should be breathtaking - but little is that comes from the US
any more - he lectured Syria’s armed forces:
“For this posting, I want
to address the members of the Syrian military and their role in this crisis.
The role of any nation’s military is to defend the country and to protect the
people, not to harm them. The United States believes the Syrian military
should have an invaluable, integral role to play in the new democratic Syria,
if it decides to fulfill its true purpose and stand with the Syrian people
now.”
Ford queries the army
wanting: “ to help secure the role of the professional military in a
democratic Syria by supporting the Syrian people and their transition …”
He talked of them being
used in: “President Assad’s campaign of torture and terror”, of destruction,
massacre, thus: “abhorrent (running) counter to international law and the
ethics of military professionalism … Soldiers should know that, under
international law, they have a responsibility to uphold basic human rights
and that they do not escape responsibility for violations simply because they
are subject to orders.”
Quite. Has the Ambassador
glanced toward the behaviour of US forces in neighbouring Iraq or in
Afghanistan? The massacres, rapes of young and old, the use of children as
human shields, often luring them with sweets,toys - now well documented -
plus torture, disappearances and Stalinesque “re-education centres”?
It has never been
adequately established what those scarily names “re-education” centres did or
taught.
Prior to invading Iraq,
prominent military leaders such as Lt. Gen. William Boykin also described the
war in evangelical terms, casting the U.S. military as the "Army of
God."
Indeed Mikey Weinstein,
President of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has stated that a
cadre of forty U.S. chaplains took part in a 2003 project to distribute 2.4
million Arabic-language Bibles in Iraq.
A 2003 newsletter for the
group note that: "The goal is to establish a wedge for the kingdom of
God in the Middle East, directly affecting the Islamic world."(iv)
A Lt. Colonel Gary
Hensley expounded on the need to spread the Gospel:
"The special forces
guys - they hunt men basically”, he said. "We do the same things as
Christians, we hunt people for Jesus. We do, we hunt them down. Get the Hound
of Heaven after them, so we get them into the Kingdom. That's what we do,
that's our business."
Back to the Ambassador
who hit the “road to Damascus” on his personal Crusade and who clearly
subscribes to the “activists say”school of “fact” gathering, since his claims
come from barely a single named source on the ground, and from “informants”
in Paris, London and Washington who have risen without trace.
The Syrian military was
also, opined Robert Ford: “acting as a leading destabilizing force.” That
should win hearts and minds of a proud army, from a proud country, losing
numerous friends and colleagues fighting a seemingly foreign fermented
insurgency.
Ford should know a bit
about destabilizing: “A few short weeks after his arrival” (surely
coincidentally) “a wave of pro-democracy protests swept through the Middle
East and public protests in Syria launched an uprising …
“Ford’s robust diplomacy
on the ground in Syria centered on a strong show of support for the Syrian
opposition movement.
“Ford’s physical presence
in Hama, without official sanction from the Syrian government, functioned as
a visible statement of support (for the opposition.) Ford continued to
support the opposition by attending protestor funerals, speaking with Syrians
on the ground and through social media, and educating Americans via satellite
images and descriptions of the conflict on the Embassy’s official
website.”(v)
Former CIA intelligence
officer Michael Scheuer has alleged that prior to Ford's flight from Syria,
he was traveling across the country inciting groups to overthrow the
government.
On 15th June, the
Facebook update displayed a map: “This map is an update of the one we
originally posted on April 27 which shows the number of people displaced by
the violence in Syria. The Assad regime is a destabilizing force both within
Syria and throughout the region.” Verifiable facts were noticeable by
omission.
Of course no US
propaganda campaign would be complete without a mass grave, so an aerial view
of a patch of land which contextually means absolutely nothing, is obligingly
declared one. (Don’t mention Falluja, Najav, Kerbala, Basra, Baghdad, Mosul,
Tel Afar …)
On 22nd June the entry
cited Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accusing Syria of: “… not doing
enough to stop slavery …” That one really does come from the: “Must do
better” collection.
The following day was the
gleeful announcement that: “The head of the Syrian Olympic Committee, General
Mowaffak Joumaa, has been refused a visa to travel to London for the Olympic
Games.” (Given London’s missile-loaded war ships, ground to air missiles on
the roofs, the attack helicopters, the drones, the experimental “sonic
weapon” and thousands of twitchy, armed to the teeth FBI agents, for the
Olympics, he may anyway feel safer in Syria.)
The Ambassador without an
Embassy is also worried about the Crusaders’ castle. His entry on the subject
reads:
“The Krak de
Chevaliers/Qala’at al-Hosn was chosen as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because
it is a gem of Crusader … architecture. Are the Syrian authorities fulfilling
their obligations to the Syrian people and to the international community
when it comes to site preservation and protection?”
Apart from the fact that
the “Syrian authorities” may have other things on their minds and the Castle
has stood for approaching a thousand years, perhaps Robert Ford’s concern for
the regional heritage of the “international community” should also address
America’s destruction of Babylon, damage to Ur (ongoing under his watch
whilst serving at the US Embassy in Baghdad 2004-2005) the sacking of Iraq’s
treasures in the National Museum, the looting of libraries, which has been
compared to the historic tragedy of the destruction of the great Library of
Alexandria up to sixteen centuries ago. (vi)
The Ambassador’s
outreach, however, is not getting an entirely glitch free ride, there are
persistent dissenters. One, Brian Souter, leaves uncomfortably insightful
one-liners, they disappear, but he doggedly returns. Another Anas Salih, left
this:
“Hey Yankees, I’m an
Iraqi and know all your Hollywood stories in Iraq, so you better not fall in
the same mistake again. Al Qaeda in Syria killing hundreds of people each day
in the name of their belief - there is no way that the Syrian regime is doing
all this to stay in power.
“It is crystal clear now
that this is not a revolution, it is insurgency and terrorism. Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, and Qatar (funding) every day millions of dollars to arm the
opposition … no matter how hard those terrorists will try eventually you will
see that Bashar (al Assad) has nothing to do with any killing or bombing.
“Hopefully not too late
because each day another soul is being taken from its body. The lives we have
lost in Iraq, kids ,women, men and animals all because of you, USA, so don’t
try to be a hero and show compassionate (sic) now … “ (Removed in last twenty
four hours, but copied directly and only spelling corrected.)
Ambassador Ford has
written that there are “parallels” with Syria and the Balkans. The cynic
might say the “parallel” is the alleged “hired hands.” Historian David
Halberstam (“War in a Time of Peace” pb 2003, p347) quotes deputy to Balkans
“Tzar” Richard Holbrooke, Bob Frasure - regarding US training and arming of
the Croats - who passed Holbrooke a scribbled note in a meeting, on the back
of a place card: “Dick, we ‘hired’ these guys as our junkyard dogs because we
were desperate … this is no time to get squeamish …”
On 7th May: “Robert S.
Ford was presented with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award at the
John F. Kennedy Presidential Library by Caroline Kennedy. He was honored for
his bold and courageous diplomacy which has provided crucial support to
Syrians …”
“Crusade: Medieval
military expeditions undertaken by the Christian powers … to recapture the Holy
Land from the Muslims.”
|
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DIE SOUT HET NIE LAF GEWORD NIE...
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the appropriation of news and contemporary history by public relations, or psy-ops, as President Obama launches a campaign to conceal the truth about the war in Vietnam - so that 'other Vietnams' can proceed, suitably disguised.
http://www.johnpilger.com/
History is the enemy as 'brilliant' psy-ops become the news
21 June 2012
Arriving in a village in southern Vietnam, I caught sight of two children who bore witness to the longest war of the 20th century. Their terrible deformities were familiar. All along the Mekong river, where the forests were petrified and silent, small human mutations lived as best they could.
Today, at the Tu Du paediatrics hospital in Saigon, a former operating theatre is known as the "collection room" and, unofficially, as the "room of horrors". It has shelves of large bottles containing grotesque foetuses. During its invasion of Vietnam, the United States sprayed a defoliant herbicide on vegetation and villages to deny "cover to the enemy". This was Agent Orange, which contained dioxin, poisons of such power that they cause foetal death, miscarriage, chromosomal damage and cancer.
In 1970, a US Senate report revealed that "the US has dumped [on South Vietnam] a quantity of toxic chemical amounting to six pounds per head of population, including woman and children". The code-name for this weapon of mass destruction, Operation Hades, was changed to the friendlier Operation Ranch Hand. Today, an estimated 4.8 million victims of Agent Orange are children.
Len Aldis, secretary of the Britain-Vietnam Friendship Society, recently returned from Vietnam with a letter for the International Olympic Committee from the Vietnam Women's Union. The union's president, Nguyen Thi Thanh Hoa, described "the severe congenital deformities [caused by Agent Orange] from generation to generation". She asked the IOC to reconsider its decision to accept sponsorship of the London Olympics from the Dow Chemical Corporation, which was one of the companies that manufactured the poison and has refused to compensate its victims.
Aldis hand-delivered the letter to the office of Lord Coe, chairman of the London Organising Committee. He has had no reply. When Amnesty International pointed out that in 2001 Dow Chemical acquired "the company responsible for the Bhopal gas leak [in India in 1984] which killed 7,000 to 10,000 people immediately and 15,000 in the following twenty years", David Cameron described Dow as a "reputable company". Cheers, then, as the TV cameras pan across the £7 million decorative wrap that sheathes the Olympic stadium: the product of a 10-year "deal" between the IOC and such a reputable destroyer.
History is buried with the dead and deformed of Vietnam and Bhopal. And history is the new enemy. On 28 May, President Obama launched a campaign to falsify the history of the war in Vietnam. To Obama, there was no Agent Orange, no free fire zones, no turkey shoots, no cover-ups of massacres, no rampant racism, no suicides (as many Americans took their own lives as died in the war), no defeat by a resistance army drawn from an impoverished society. It was, said Mr. Hopey Changey, "one of the most extraordinary stories of bravery and integrity in the annals of [US] military history".
The following day, the New York Times published a long article documenting how Obama personally selects the victims of his drone attacks across the world. He does this on "terror Tuesdays" when he browses through mug shots on a "kill list", some of them teenagers, including "a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years". Many are unknown or simply of military age. Guided by "pilots" sitting in front of computer screens in Las Vegas, the drones fire Hellfire missiles that suck the air out of lungs and blow people to bits. Last September, Obama killed a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, purely on the basis of hearsay that he was inciting terrorism. "This one is easy," he is quoted by aides as saying as he signed the man's death warrant. On 6 June, a drone killed 18 people in a village in Afghanistan, including women, children and the elderly who were celebrating a wedding.
The New York Times article was not a leak or an expose. It was a piece of PR designed by the Obama administration to show what a tough guy the 'commander-in-chief' can be in an election year. If re-elected, Brand Obama will continue serving the wealthy, pursuing truth-tellers, threatening countries, spreading computer viruses and murdering people every Tuesday.
The threats against Syria, co-ordinated in Washington and London, scale new peaks of hypocrisy. Contrary to the raw propaganda presented as news, the investigative journalism of the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung identifies those responsible for the massacre in Houla as the 'rebels' backed by Obama and Cameron. The paper's sources include the rebels themselves. This has not been completely ignored in Britain. Writing in his personal blog, ever so quietly, Jon Williams, the BBC world news editor, effectively dishes his own 'coverage', citing western officials who describe the 'psy-ops' operation against Syria as 'brilliant'. As brilliant as the destruction of Libya, and Iraq, and Afghanistan.
DIE And as brilliant as the psy-ops of the Guardian's latest promotion of Alastair Campbell, the chief collaborator of Tony Blair in the criminal invasion of Iraq. In his "diaries", Campbell tries to splash Iraqi blood on the demon Murdoch. There is plenty to drench them all. But recognition that the respectable, liberal, Blair-fawning media was a vital accessory to such an epic crime is omitted and remains a singular test of intellectual and moral honesty in Britain.
How much longer must we subject ourselves to such an "invisible government"? This term for insidious propaganda, first used by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud and inventor of modern public relations, has never been more apt. "False reality" requires historical amnesia, lying by omission and the transfer of significance to the insignificant. In this way, political systems promising security and social justice have been replaced by piracy, "austerity" and "perpetual war": an extremism dedicated to the overthrow of democracy. Applied to an individual, this would identify a psychopath. Why do we accept it?
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