Happy Valentine's Day
In fact, the Bush administration is not “haunted by the history of intelligence blunders,” as there was no blundering, or for that matter intelligence, but simply a series of calculated lies and fabrications, designed to pave the way for the invasion of Iraq. As should be obvious, the “Bush administration,” or rather the unelected neocons, are plotting a repeat in Iran.
--Kurt Nimmo
[W]hen the authorized image of reality is shattered, the American media and powers that be are thrown into confusion. So many aspects of US public life are carefully stage-managed and calculated, from election campaigns and major party conventions to film premieres and entertainment award programs, to ensure that no hint of life’s more troubling aspects will appear.
--David Walsh
As far as the situation in Iraq is concerned, the major shift is that US forces will now move against the Mahdi army in Sadr city, with or without the go-ahead of the Maliki government.
--Nick Beams
[W]hy has the United States, which throughout its whole history has cast itself as an anti-colonial power, now undertaken the colonisation of Iraq?
--Nick Beams
It should be remembered, first of all, that the Hitler regime did not come to power primarily because of the efforts of the would-be dictator himself or his followers. While Hitler had a mass movement, the Nazis were never able to win a majority of the popular vote, even under the most favourable conditions in the elections of March 1933. Hitler did not seize power. Rather, he was hoisted into the office of chancellor by the German ruling classes. They recognised that the Nazis represented the only way of fulfilling their need for an authoritarian regime to crush the working class at home, and to pursue the interests and demands of German imperialism internationally. The historical contradictions of German capitalism and its political history meant that the type of regime demanded by the German ruling classes could only be realised by elevating the Nazis.
--Nick Beams
How the key 9/11 myths were implanted
Live footage before the disinformation campaign took root
It's amazing, really, how many levels of gatekeepers we seem to need. Those must be some very vulnerable gates. Let's not even mention the educational gatekeepers; but even after you've squeaked through the sheepskin gate, like Giles Goat-Boy, there are agents, and editors, and publishers, all of whom have the thumb down by default. And if you get through that crowd--if, for example, Bill Buckley is taken with your dusky, sloe-eyed, moon-faced charm--you still have to deal with the Millikan Cacafuegoes.
--Michael J. Smith
The Dixie Chicks’ five Grammys are a slap in the face of the right-wing radio station owners and the country music establishment, whose “backlash” has now fallen flat. Moreover, the award success vindicates the stand taken by Maines and her bandmates. There’s more than enough spinelessness to go around in the film and music business in America. A willingness to stick one’s neck out; to sacrifice, temporarily or even permanently, a portion of one’s fame and celebrity; to swim against the current--these are qualities that ought to be encouraged. It was pleasant to see them appreciated and rewarded Sunday night.
--Tom Carter
The Peckerwood Pericles (thanks Werther) made the quote available for any one interested in it.
--(Worth repeating after fixing a few more dead links)
The invasion of Afghanistan, carried out for naked imperialist interests, has resulted in the further decimation of an already shattered society. The country is wracked by huge social and political tensions and is awash with guns and drugs. Warlord commanders and local officials can impose their will with impunity, and President Hamid Karzai is little more than a city mayor.
--Harvey Thompson
The Illinois junior senator and Democratic Party presidential hopeful’s The Audacity of Hope is a calculated effort, from its title to its final page, designed to demonstrate his readiness to take the reins of political power in the US. That is to say, while Obama directs portions of his book toward sections of the more well-heeled and complacent Democratic Party faithful, those most inclined to wishful thinking, the audience that primarily concerns him consists of the powerful corporate, financial and media figures who organize and ultimately shape the campaigns of the two major parties’ candidates.
--David Walsh
If the Bush administration and the US mainstream media are united on any one issue, it’s an absolute refusal to rock the political boat as they sail mercilessly through the seas of corporate profit on the good ship Terrorbush. For the most part, each group is an incurious lot--undead creatures who neither care, nor dare, to glance over the side of the ship at the bloated, swirling bodies in the blood-red water below. From the beginning, their mission has been to perform so fantastically against a backdrop of such violent, explosive madness on so many fronts that we watch hypnotically but do not see--listen intently but do not hear.
--Sheila Samples
Americans have never been very good at looking at their government in the mirror. They see the cogent and pithy words of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison about our system of government and reach the conclusion that the United States can do no wrong in the international arena because it has one of the world’s best systems at home. Yet the two have nothing to do with each other.
--Ivan Eland
[M]ost Israeli archaeologists have always been the loyal foot-soldiers of the official propaganda. Since the emergence of modern Zionism, they have been engaged in a desperate endeavor to ‘find’ archaeological evidence for the historical truth of the stories of the Old Testament. Until now, they have gone empty-handed: there exists no archaeological proof for the exodus from Egypt, the conquest of Canaan and the kingdoms of Saul, David and Solomon. But in their eagerness to prove the unprovable (because in the opinion of the vast majority of archaeologists and historians outside Israel--and also some in Israel--the Old Testament stories are but sacred myths), the archaeologists have destroyed many strata of other periods.
--Uri Avnery
But if…. speaks for itself, as a sensory and emotional experience. To describe it in text makes it sound like an obliquely hardcore art movie, full of little references about politics and history. To watch it is to feel it, and be stunned by how it moves to that amazing hail of bullets at the end. Thirty-five years after its release, it does not look irrelevant or dated; it's not a relic of the rebellious sixties, or about a Britain whose values have been overhauled. It still has something to say about repression, unfairness and the hate it causes. It still pretty much captures the way school can feel, and yes, school really is as good a microcosm as you're ever likely to find. At the time, the poster quote called it "a hand grenade of a film" that "makes you laugh even as your blood chills." I like that.
--Ian Waldron-Mantgani
Although it openly lifts the plot and symbolism of Jean Vigo's 1933 Zero de Conduit, a film that was considered so incendiary that the French authorities banned it until 1945, If... is a true British classic.
--Jamie Russell
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