by cameron | Feb 2, 2009 | Cuba, Iraq, Podcast, US politics
When I was visiting my girl Chrissy in Seattle last October, I met her best friend Jed Montgomery. The four of us (including Jed’s partner Chris) had some vigorous debates about American politics. I was trying to make my point that for all of Obama’s intelligence and oratory, at the end of the day he’s a member of the Democratic Party. In the last 60 years, the Democrats have provided a pretty appalling list of Presidents:
Harry Truman – Among other things, authorized the only use of nuclear weapons on a civilian population in history
John Kennedy – Among other things, authorized the attempted invasion of Cuba, nearly brought the world to the brink of nuclear war, was sleeping with Marilyn Monroe, etc.
Lyndon Johnson – Among other things, escalated the Vietnam war. Possibly implicated in the Kennedy assassination.
Jimmy Carter – Actually, a pretty good guy, defender of human rights.
Bill Clinton – Bombed and starved the people of Iraq, decided the best way to spend his days in the White House was to get blowjobs and stick cigars up an intern’s vag.
So… will Obama be another Jimmy Carter? Or… one of the others?
Anyway, Jed joins me on the show today to talk about our hopes and concerns for the Obama administration.
by cameron | Jan 14, 2009 | israel, US politics
From the “When You Can’t Even Trust Your Friends” department:
A boast by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that he persuaded President Bush to reverse a U.S. vote on a Gaza cease-fire at the United Nations is “just 100% totally completely not true,” the State Department declared Tuesday.
(from the LA Times – are they still running?)
So – one of them is lying.
You have to wonder – what incentive would Olmert have to lie about such a thing? To make it sound like he has pull with an out-going US President? What’s the point of that? Especially when his phone call didn’t stop the vote passing.
But if you ask yourself what incentive the USA would have for lying – that’s much easier to comprehend. They don’t want it to seem like the US President takes orders from Israel.
The LA Times story also says that diplomats from around the world were sure the vote was going to be unanimous minutes before it happened, so it seems obvious that the US State Dept is lying through their teeth.
What do you think?
(Update: Beyond The Fringe has a great and detailed analysis here.)
by cameron | Jan 14, 2009 | israel, US politics
Some interesting statements in this story.
In a speech late on Monday, (Ehud) Olmert (Prime Minister of Israel) said Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, was left “pretty shamed” at the vote and had to abstain on a resolution she had helped arrange.
(Al Jazeera – US denies Olmert influenced UN vote)
Olmert goes on to claim he rang Bush, who was pulled off stage to take the call, just minutes before the UNSC vote which insisted a halt to the Gaza offensive. Olmert told Bush that the US must abstain from the vote – and they did. Fourteen of the other fifteen members of the UNSC supported the resolution. Israel has, of course, totally ignored it. Wouldn’t you love to hear a copy of that phone call?
Let’s remember once again that the UN created Israel in the first place. Israel has been a member since 1949 and, as such, is legally bound to abide by decisions of the UNSC. As it isn’t, Israel is, by definition, a rogue nation.
by cameron | Dec 15, 2008 | CIA, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, US politics
Were the Mumbai attacks a false flag operation co-ordinated by the CIA?
Perhaps, according to this post:
informationliberation – Pakistani Security Consultant Calls Mumbai Attacks A “Botched” False Flag
False flags ops happen regularly and are a standard technique for creating violence and then blaming it on your enemies. Hitler used it in the burning of the Reichstag. According to “Legacy Of Ashes”, the CIA has funded and organised quite a few over the last 60 years, in places such as Iran and Cuba, as well as in Chile and Zaire.
Why would the CIA want to escalate the conflict between India and Pakistan?
Well in recent months, there have been growing tensions between Pakistan and the USA, in large part because of continual US bombings on Pakistani territory which have resulted in the deaths of Pakistani soldiers. The USA claims it is attacking “terrorists” (the catch-all excuse for everything these days) but the reality is probably that they are using drones to locate and destroy Pakistan’s nuclear facilities, as part of their long-term plan to protect Israel, their most important military base in the middle east, from attacks by regional Islamic interests.
In the last couple of years, we’ve seen the USA agree to assist India’s nuclear program and Australia do a deal with India to sell them uranium, despite India’s refusal to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Australia’s historical position to NOT sell uranium to any nation not signed up.
Musharaff, until recently the President/military dictator of Pakistan, was a strong puppet ally of the USA during their “War On Terror”, especially after Bush’s Undersecretary of State, Richard Armitage made the General an offer he couldn’t refuse… “either cooperate with us militarily, against the will of your own military, security service and people…and accept more than $10 billion over the next five years…or we will bomb you back to the stone age.”
Then, of course, we saw the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan, just as she seemed poised to bring a new era of democratic leadership to Pakistan, one which might have significantly altered the view of them worldwide. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardar, won the election just after her death and is the current President, after Musharaff was finally abandoned by George Bush and faced impeachment. Last week, Bhutto was posthumously awarded a human rights prize by the U.N. As we know, the last thing the USA truly wants is democracy in places like Pakistan. History has taught them that when a nation like that (take Venezuela for example) gets a democracy, they start looking after their citizens first and USA corporations end up getting the rough end of the stick. One can only imagine what kind of quid pro quo Musharaff signed up for when he took the $10 billion. It looks like the current administation aren’t as keen to get raped by the IMF.
So – back to Mumbai. If – and I have no evidence for this, it’s just a thinking point – if the CIA orchestrated a false flag op, blamed it on Pakistani ISI, and got their press puppets around the West to spin out the Pentagon-written media releases, just like they did during the Iraq invasion, then it might be their way of sending a message to the Zardar administration – “Take the money – and give in to our demands – or else.”
by cameron | Dec 4, 2008 | US politics
Wikipedia defines bigotry as:
“A bigot is a person who is intolerant of opinions, lifestyles or identities differing from his or her own, and bigotry is the corresponding attitude or mindset.”
Anyone who voted for Prop 8 in the recent Californian elections or who contributed money to the campaign for it – the Bill which introduced a ban on same-sex marriage into the Californian constitution – is a bigot, plain and simple. Prop 8 was, of course, mostly financed by the Mormons, The Church Of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
According to the Salt Lake Tribune, 77% of the funds for Prop 8 came from LDS families, who were asked/told to support it by the Church, according to an LDS press release.
The Mormons are understandably copping a lot of heat for their actions including an investigation into whether or not they broke Californian disclosure laws.
You can review a list of the major donors here or search a database of contributors here.
I think Jack Black has it right in this video:
http://player.ordienetworks.com/flash/fodplayer.swf
by cameron | Nov 2, 2008 | US politics
Interesting articles I’ve been reading today on Obama’s refusal to disclose the names of his millions of small donors. The Slate article sums up my thoughts:
Obama has campaigned (effectively) on a platform of making government more transparent, citing his efforts to do so in Chicago and Washington as signature achievements.
And yet…. they are avoiding disclosing the names of these small donors. Call me a crazy conspiracy theorist, but with such massively high stakes as are involved in an American Presidential election, I think it pays to be suspicious and naive to start with the assumption that ANY candidate is pure and holy. I think it was Eleanor Roosevelt who first said “The war for freedom will never really be won because the price of our freedom is constant vigilance over ourselves and over our Government.”
I’ve been reading Howard Zinn’s excellent work “A People’s History Of The United States” where he makes the argument that the American Revolution was orchestrated by the American wealthy elite (George Washington was the richest man in America) to preserve and extend their own wealth and power. During a time of increasing class struggles in the American colony, the elite found a way to focus the anger of the populace on a foreign enemy, a tactic which successive US administrations have perfected ever since.
Slate – Yes, He Can
Judicial Watch – Obama Should Disclose
