US President Barack Obama is working to move the mighty American war-machine from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
To do that he needs an agreement with Iran about Iraq (and it would seem that agreement has already been found) and a propaganda campaign to convince the public opinion a) that the war in Iraq is over and the US will withdraw from the country and b) that Aghanistan and Pakistan are the centre of terror.
In this frame, let's see how the British liberal media presented to their readers two major events of these past days.
(Read on...)
The State has decided to recognize the Israelis murdered in the Mumbai terror attacks as victims of terrorism and pay for their funerals, but not all are happy with this decision. The family of slain Hasid Aryeh Leib Teitelbaum has informed the government that it would like the State not to intervene with his funeral.
According to a family member, "Holding a Zionist funeral for Teitelbaum, who was a Satmar Hasid, would desecrate the dead man's honor." The family demanded not to have a government representative at the funeral and that the casket, which will be flown into Israel today, would not be covered with the Israeli flag.
In my view, Woolworths ought to be on Business Secretary Lord Mandelson’s list of companies which the government should intervene to save, as a matter of urgency. It’s on sale for just a £1 and, although there would be additional costs to keep it as a going concern, the government could turn it into a people’s Woolies, employing local people, buying from local producers and ensuring it provided the services and goods local people on low incomes need. The alternative is to allow the vultures to pick it apart for their own profit.I like George, I really do, but can you imagine Woolies run by some government department? It doesn't bear thinking about. I'd rather see the old girl slip away peacefully than go through the torture of public ownership.
Revenge is sweet. As the official files show, the Chagos conspiracy and cover-up involved three prime ministers and 13 cabinet ministers, including those who approved “the plan”. But elite corruption is unspeakable in Britain. I know of no work of serious scholarship on this crime against humanity. The honourable exception is the work of the historian Mark Curtis, who describes the Chagossians as “unpeople”.Via JsansF
The reason for this silence is ideological. Courtier commentators and media historians obstruct our view of the recent past, ensuring, as Harold Pinter pointed out in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, that while the “systematic brutality, the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent thought” in Stalinist Russia were well known in the west, the great state crimes of western governments “have only been superficially recorded, let alone documented”.
To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue.
New Labour, like Old Labour, wants to look out for our welfare ‘from cradle to grave’, but now in a strictly authoritarian manner on the assumption that experts are more capable of managing our lives than we are. So we are advised, vetted, banned, ordered and cajoled on everything from smoking, eating and drinking to how we dispose of our waste and where we drive our cars...
None of that will change. Even the new economic plans are simply the result of technocratic debate amongst government insiders and their advisers. New Labour - indeed, the entire political class - remains fundamentally suspicious of the opinions and behaviour of ordinary people...While the economy goes down the drain, the rest of us remain passive spectators.
Alastair Darling, in a pale pastiche of John Maynard Keynes, might want to create a few jobs to prop up the economy. But the obituary writers for New Labour will remain unemployed for the foreseeable future.
Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless. You are not held back from any of your desires by guilt or shame, and you are never confronted by others for your cold-bloodedness. The ice water in your veins is so bizarre, so completely outside of their personal experience that they seldom even guess at your condition.
To this day, the willingness of a Wall Street investment bank to pay me hundreds of thousands of dollars to dispense investment advice to grownups remains a mystery to me. I was 24 years old, with no experience of, or particular interest in, guessing which stocks and bonds would rise and which would fall. The essential function of Wall Street is to allocate capital—to decide who should get it and who should not. Believe me when I tell you that I hadn’t the first clue. 
