Kewell Stuff

Like me, I am sure you are all baffled by Harry's decision to join Galatasaray.

Where do old blog comments go to die?

Kim at Larvatus Prodeo disses the Murdoch meejah blogs:

They’re not “the blogosphere”, just another adjunct to the media money-making machine. News Limited’s way of hoovering up online advertising revenue, now that print is a very dicy business proposition for the most part. Their mission is to create as much noise as possible to attract as many eyeballs as possible. That’s about the sum total of what they’re there for.

Does that include Tim Dunlop, Kim?

Doesn't Mark Bahnisch have an occasional News Ltd blog too?

Just asking.

Since I get repeatedly and publicly ostracised for making the same point.

(NB: I just posted this as a comment at LP and it got deleted).

Hulk Smash

Andrew Denton had a great interview with Helen Thomas last night. This is from the transcript:

ANDREW DENTON: The old saying that that power corrupts absolute power corrupts absolutely. Do you believe that's true?

HELEN THOMAS: Yeah. I think it can. I've seen people men go into the Oval Office with some trepidation. In a couple of days they think they're President and they think that's all powerful and people worship at their shrine and every wish is a command, no yeah I think very corrupting.

ANDREW DENTON: Who have you seen most changed by that office?

HELEN THOMAS: This man. I think he thinks he's President and he's led us into a very big quagmire morass.

Thomas talks about her family emigrating from Syria long ago, inspired by The American Dream, and being taught old-fashioned values. She talks about racism in Washington, and how she was ostracised by the Bush White House:

ANDREW DENTON: You did write to him after you were reported as having called him the worst President. How did he respond?

HELEN THOMAS: Very nice. Wrote me a nice note and he thought as I he thought it was a peace offering and then ah ha so he called on me the next time I said, "Why did we go to war?"

LAUGHTER

HELEN THOMAS: So ah again I was in the dog house. Deep freeze this time.

There's an interesting exchange where Denton talks about the Kennedy assassination, then moves on to talk about Thomas's husband, who died from Alzheimers:

ANDREW DENTON: You saw him decline and die from that. You are somebody who lives in your mind and you saw the man you love lose his. That must have had a powerful impact on you.

HELEN THOMAS: Oh yes but I more powerful was my family helped me. I never put him in home or...

ANDREW DENTON: Yes that is remarkable. Your sister in particular ah took him in, is that right?

HELEN THOMAS: No. This is the moment you wanted.

ANDREW DENTON: No, not at all and if you'd rather I didn't.

HELEN THOMAS: I don't want to sit around and and to apologise for my life.

ANDREW DENTON: I don't want you to apologise for your life. Far from it. I'm what we're talking about here is what's happened in your life and what -

HELEN THOMAS: What do you think happens for God's sakes? You see someone deteriorate before your eyes.

Denton apologises and Thomas pulls herself back together: that's one tough lady!

ANDREW DENTON: Do you feel optimistic about us as a species?

HELEN THOMAS: I mean I don't know. I don't feel happy about human nature, no. The passivity. I mean look ah look what the Germans did. They tolerated Nazism, they tolerated gas chambers, they tolerated. Look at us the passivity. We tolerate torture, we tolerate killing innocent people. Who are we? What have we become? No. I mean I mean I'm facing the immediate problems. I'm not worried about the planet. I'm worried about us right now...

ANDREW DENTON: Do you see in the new generation coming through, do you see seeds for hope?

HELEN THOMAS: Who can live without hope? Of course there's hope. I don't know about the new generation per se but I mean there'll always be hope. Can't go any further down in my opinion.

ANDREW DENTON: What would say to a suicide bomber?

HELEN THOMAS: Why? What is it about our country that have we have not tried to understand what why are they doing these things. You can tell a suicide bomber has reached the end of his rope. I think you have to find out why. There has been no attempt in this country of finding out what is terrorism? What motivates these people? Why would they give up their lives when they we know people cherish their their lives? Because they see no hope and they also have felt so pushed down. I do think that ah our lack of curiosity of what motivates these people. See I don't believe it's 12 virgins in in ah heaven that baloney. I think it's it's a deeper feeling of being absolutely the end of the road.

ANDREW DENTON: To many people in this country a suicide bomber represents the darkest of dark forces.

HELEN THOMAS: Well it is. But wh-what's the difference between a suicide bomber and dropping a missile in in a house and and blowing up everybody? Napalm and things that we've done in Vietnam and now. I mean we what did we do at Falljah? We left one tree. We wiped them out because they had fired ah rebelled and and ah revolted and and pushed us back for a while. Came in with a vengeance and nobody even mentions it. It was carthage at the end.

BTW that transcript from "your" ABC is pretty shocking: the writer doesn't even seem familiar with Abu Ghraib or Al-Maliki, let alone know how to spell them. Funny world, isn't it?

Cartoon above from Luckovich.

Will Iraqis Support John McCain?

I doubt that ordinary Iraqis, who have more reason than most to be cynical about politics, care very much who wins the White House in November. Despite Obama's carefully nuanced talk of withdrawal, all the concrete signs in Iraq point to business as usual for the US military machine abroad in 2009 and beyond.

But the US election cycle does present a window of opportunity for Iraqis to publicly pressure US politicians. An emboldened PM Al-Maliki is now demanding a pullout timetable in US defence pact talks. Good luck with that, mate:

Whitman said the United States had made clear "that we have no long term desires to have forces permanently stationed in Iraq.

"But timelines tend to be artificial in nature," he said. "In a situation where things are as dynamic as they are in Iraq, I would just tell you, it's usually best to look at these things based on conditions on the ground."

Hmmmn, "conditions on the ground" eh? Massive permanent military bases, continued immunity for US soldiers, regular oil pipeline sabotage, no justice for dead Iraq civilians, violence, chaos, poverty, et cetera. You get the message. How could US forces ever withdraw from Iraq while "conditions on the ground" remain so miserable??!

And of course Obama is also using phrases like "conditions on the ground" and "listen to the commanders". Josh Marshall says we should not be too cynical about that:

"Most people who are so keyed into specifics and hard deadlines are that way because we've had five years of a policy of deliberate deception in which vague promises of bringing the troops home in the pretty near future are hung out in front of the public's collective nose as a means of obscuring the real policy of keeping American troops in Iraq permanently as a way of securing oil reserves and projecting US power and in the region."

So I guess you just gotta have faith, right? Again: close your eyes, clap your hands, and say it with me, children:

"I DO believe in fairies Obama! I DO believe in fairies Obama!"

Like Australian voters last year, US voters in November will have a choice of a hardcore War Candidate and a softcore War Candidate. The results will probably be pretty similar: political posturing supported by expert media analysis, with little real change for ordinary Iraqis "on the ground".

So it's up to Iraqis to forge change themselves if they want US forces out. Violence has been down (to merely horrific levels) since Al Sadr called a ceasefire, and he is supporting the latest moves to negotiate a deal with Washington. Obviously, the next month presents a political window of opportunity, with a "Status of forces" agreement required by 31st July.

Writing in The Nation, Robert Dreyfuss says Maliki's call for a timetable is a bombshell:

Don't think for a minute that Maliki, or his Shiite allies, want the US forces to leave. But they are under a lot of pressure. First of all, they are under pressure from Iran, whose regime remains the chief ally of the ruling alliance of Shiites, including Maliki's Dawa party and the powerful Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (ISCI), led by Abdel Aziz al-Hakim. Iran's goal is to neutralize Iraq as a possible threat to Iran, and Iran's leaders are pressuring Maliki and Hakim to loosen their reliance on the United States. Interestingly, Maliki reportedly told President Bush personally, in a video teleconference on Friday, that the United States cannot use Iraqi territory to attack Iran, and he added that "fomenting tension in the region and pushing for military action against Tehran could wreak havoc on the entire region, including Iraq."

Maliki is also under pressure from a broad coalition of Iraqi nationalists, from angry, disenfranchised Sunnis to Muqtada al-Sadr's movement.

But Maliki's statement is a big deal. At a minimum, it presents an enormous problem for Bush and John McCain, who are arguing for an indefinite US stay in Iraq til "victory," and who oppose a timetable. True, Maliki seems to be linking his timetable to Iraqi military success, which is not too different from the Bush-McCain formula. But inside Iraq, the pressure is building day by day for a US withdrawal, and Maliki is by no means in control of the process. The fact that both Iran and Sunni nationalists, who are on a collision course, agree that US forces need to leave Iran, only means that pro- and anti-Iranian factions will settle their differences (either by peaceful diplomacy or by violence) once the United States is gone.

Another factor is that Maliki, who is visiting the United Arab Emirates, is working hard to gain the support of the Sunni-led Arab regimes for his shaky coalition. The UAE and Jordan have both announced that they will be sending ambassadors to Baghdad, and King Abdullah of Jordan will himself make a visit to Baghdad soon, the first by an Arab head of state since the US invasion.

Despite US bungling, it seems increasingly likely that Iran and Saudi Arabia are working behind the scenes to negotiate a Shiite-Sunni accord in Iraq, but both Tehran and Riyadh will want it conditioned on a US withdrawal.

Think Progress notes Bush's promise from May 2007:

We are there at the invitation of the Iraqi government. This is a sovereign nation. Twelve million people went to the polls to approve a constitution. It’s their government’s choice. If they were to say, leave, we would leave.

UPDATE: It looks like this will lead to a written Memo Of Understanding regarding the future departure of US troops. Look again at exactly what Al-Maliki said:

"The direction we are taking is to have a memorandum of understanding either for the departure of the forces or to have a timetable for their withdrawal."

And this is the US response:

"Any agreement would not have any hard timetables for withdrawal, but could include the desire by the U.S. and Iraq to withdraw troops based on conditions on the ground," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.

So now somebody has to write some clever little bit of text which can be easily re-interpreted as needed in future.

Al-Maliki said in a meeting with Arab diplomats in Abu Dhabi that his country also has proposed a short-term interim memorandum of agreement rather than the more formal status of forces agreement the two sides have been negotiating.

The memorandum "now on the table" includes a formula for the withdrawal of U.S. troops, he said.

"The goal is to end the presence (of foreign troops)," al-Maliki said.

Bush still has not responded to optimistic Iraqi talk about the US dropping immunity for private contractors and giving up control of Iraqi air space. Like Juan Cole said recently:

It is amazing what $70 billion a year in petroleum revenue will do for a prime minister's self-esteem.

Interestingly, both Al-Maliki and Bush are insisting they do not need political consensus in Congress or parliament to cement any such deal. There is a lot of short-term political selfishness evident on both sides of this deal.

"Oil Be Back"

Suddenly everybody in the US of A is wondering why nobody did anything about this looming crisis for so many years. (And hey, WP, check the error correction on that story - whoops!)

And apparently we are supposed to feel sorry for the oil majors now too:

Of course, with a barrel of oil at more than 140 US dollars, they are seeing major profits, but the future has never seemed so uncertain.

The problem is access to reserves. The oil majors now control less than 10 percent of world resources of gas and oil, against 70 percent in the 1970s, according to figures released by the office of Ernst and Young at the World Petroleum Congress in Madrid.

As a result they are being forced to explore in increasingly extreme conditions.

Here's an idea: why not fully nationalise Iraq's oil? Hmmn? Hello, Washington, can you hear me yet????

Who Cares?

And you thought Australia's hospital system was bad:

A woman who had waited nearly 24 hours to be seen in a Brooklyn public hospital collapsed, fell face-down on the floor, convulsed and for nearly an hour -- while several hospital staff members looked at her and one staff member even prodded her with her foot -- received no aid. At some point during that time, she died.

More at WaPo and Alternet.

UPDATE: CNN covers the funeral. The lady's name was Esmin Green:

A Jamaican immigrant in New York for more than a decade, Green spent years working at a daycare and other odd jobs to send money back home for her six children.

She suffered emotional problems for which she had previously been hospitalized, friends say. And most recently she had been distressed after losing her job and apartment.

On Sunday, the sight of her lying in a casket was too much for her oldest daughter, Tecia Harrison.

The 31-year-old had to be helped to stand.

Harrison, who lives in Jamaica, had not seen her mother in eight years and she refused to see her mother's last moments on the surveillance video.

"I don't think I have the heart or mind to watch it because that's my mother there," Harrison said earlier to CNN. "That's the woman who gave birth to me 31 years ago."

The Chicago Tribune talks to Dr. Nada Stotland, president of the American Psychiatric Association, who tries to explain the hospital staff's behaviour:

Q. It seems there was a horrific failure of compassion here. How do you understand that?

A. When you see a constant flood of terribly ill and terribly deprived people come into a facility that does not have the means to care for them, day after day, hour after hour, week after week, you have to harden yourself to a certain degree. Because there’s nothing you can do about it.

Imagine what it’s like for these staff, hearing people screaming in pain, crying for help – children, young adults, old people. Some of these staff get post-traumatic stress syndrome, just like soldiers returning from Iraq. Some of them wake up at night remembering the last horrible sight they saw. And some of them adapt by shutting down.

I’m not excusing anything, you understand. But to just point the finger and not realize we have a huge problem here, that doesn’t help anybody...

Q. What solutions are needed?

A. First of all, we need more psychiatric beds, properly staffed with properly trained people... Then, you need ongoing care in the community in locations where people can find it without taking seven forms of transportation in the Chicago winter. And again, be sure these places have enough staff to take care of very sick people. The services we have today are just not sufficient.

Q. What was your personal reaction to what happened to Esmin Green in Brooklyn?

A. It’s heart-wrenching. The sad thing is, we can help these people. We know how. This is absolutely needless for anyone to die for want of care. We’re the richest country in the world. And our first obligation as a society, as far as I’m concerned, is to take care of the people who are least able to take care of themselves.

Like the Iraq War, this small incident holds up a mirror to US society in the early 21st Century. The reflection is not pleasant.

Gabe Pressman cites Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel:

The opposite of love is not hate. It’s indifference.

The mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, is one of the richest men on earth. But it's not just the politicians to blame, is it? A million people have died deaths just as horrible, and just as hopelessly ignored as Esmin Green's, in Iraq over the last five years.

Look and learn, America. This is you, like it or not.

Is This Our Future?

Check out this shocking video report on Haiti's dire situation, from Al Jazeera (via Juan Cole):



I was thinking of taking my family out of Australia a few years ago, but I looked around the world and wondered where I could take them to be free of the coming madness. Haiti is the canary in the coal mine: eight million people trapped in near anarchy.

Australia has been the USA's compliant bitch since WWII

Here's proof:

Defence files have revealed the United States military was planning to test deadly nerve gas on Australian troops in a far north Queensland rainforest in the 1960s.

Australian Defence Department files obtained by Channel Nine show the US was planning to test Sarin and VX nerve gas on up to 200 Australian combat troops by aerial bombing areas around Lockhart River.

The plan never went ahead, but American survey teams inspected the proposed testing site.

The Australian government was aware of this plan and it went all the way to the final stages before Harold Holt had the good sense to veto it.

Fast forward 40 years, and John Howard commits Aussie troops to the invasion of Iraq based on WMD lies which his criminal government apparently never had the temerity to question. What's changed?

UPDATE: More info dribbling in... It's not totally clear whether or not the tests went ahead.

The US proposal for nerve gas tests was made by US defence secretary Robert McNamara in July 1963, according to Defence Department and Prime Minister's Office documents obtained by the Nine Network's Sunday program.

The documents stated that of the 200 troops to be used in the tests, "only four to six would need to know the full details of the operation".

The US proposal recommended that the Australian government keep the nerve agent tests secret, describing them as either "equipment testing" trials or "land reclamation" experiments.

The Australian government is believed to have not responded to the initial US proposal in 1963, but in 1966 Washington approached the new prime minister, Harold Holt, with a request to drop tear gas on Australian troops. Again, Canberra quietly ignored the request.

Mr Fitzgibbon said yesterday it was "difficult to believe any such request came forward, but if it did, surely it would have been rejected by the conservative government of the day out of hand".

"I have asked Defence for an urgent and full briefing on this matter. I can certainly rule out any such testing in the future."

Former prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who was minister for the army from 1966 to 1968, denied knowledge of the US requests. He said it was "extraordinarily unlikely" the testing on Australian troops took place, although he could not rule it out.

"If anything like that had ever been put to me as army minister, defence minister or prime minister, I would not only have said no, I also would have queried ... with the American president: what the hell are your people doing?" Mr Fraser said.

He said he had no doubt Mr McNamara would regret the request. "I've gotten to know him quite well over the last 25 years, and I'm quite sure today he'd be thoroughly ashamed of that request," Mr Fraser said.

Peter Bailey, a former adviser to Mr Holt, told The Australian that the US request was taken seriously by the Australian government and he believed cabinet was divided on the issue.

He said Holt saw the implications of the request.

"He hadn't yet made his 'All the way with LBJ' speech - that was later in the year - but that was a reflection of his propensity to want to be with the Americans and do what they would like to do, but within reason, of course."

Mr Bailey said he briefed Holt on the implications, but Holt never discussed the request with him.

"There were really major issues about breaking international law, and a treaty that we'd signed up to and all sorts of defence implications," Mr Bailey said.

"And I'd seen what had happened to people who'd been gassed in World War I. They were still around at that time, lying out on verandas, ill, with very little comprehension."

Mr Bailey said the issue quietly went away - although he never saw any documents to suggest the government had rebuffed the request. He said he did not believe the testing took place, but it was possible it did. "It's one of those things governments quietly let drop at some point, and then it went away," he said.

Mr Bailey said the documents were first considered by the Defence Department, before coming to the attention of the prime minister.

I Was About To Quit Blogging...

... and then I saw this quote from John McCain:

“Now we’ve got the cables. We’ve got talk radio. We’ve got the bloggers. I hate the bloggers. We’ve got all kinds of sources of information.”

It's all worth it. :-)

You see, WP? I told you a bit of recognition feels good!!! Ha ha ha.

More On Anthrax

The wikipedia entry on the 2001 Anthrax attacks is also (see below) worth a look:

The letters were addressed to two Democratic Senators, Tom Daschle of South Dakota and Patrick Leahy of Vermont. At the time Daschle was the Senate Majority leader and Leahy was head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both were identified in the media as holding up the proposed Patriot Act because of concerns that some parts of it would violate civil liberties.

Now if somebody thought it was a good idea to have a "New Pearl Harbour" like 9-11, mightn't they think that getting the Patriot Act though in the aftermath was also critically important?

The New York Post and NBC News letters contained the following note:

09-11-01
THIS IS NEXT
TAKE PENACILIN NOW
DEATH TO AMERICA
DEATH TO ISRAEL
ALLAH IS GREAT

The second note that was addressed to Senators Daschle and Leahy read:

09-11-01
YOU CAN NOT STOP US.
WE HAVE THIS ANTHRAX.
YOU DIE NOW.
ARE YOU AFRAID?
DEATH TO AMERICA.
DEATH TO ISRAEL.
ALLAH IS GREAT.

If Bin Laden's Al Quaeda did this, or even some other radical Islamic supporters, do you think they would have targeted Democrats or Republicans? Hmmn?

Then there is the origin issue again:

Although the anthrax preparations were of different grades, all of the material derived from the same bacterial strain. Known as the Ames strain, it was first researched at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland. The Ames strain was then distributed to at least fifteen bio-research labs within the U.S. and six locations overseas.

Now go back and read Raimondo's article about the "Camel Club" - the person who sent that letter was fingering an Arab-American scientist who worked at that lab. Presumably the letter-writer knew that it would be possible to trace the anthrax to that lab. And presumably they also worked at that lab, or knew someone who did (or how else did they get the material).

Now ask yourself - as I ask myself - in what kind of top secret, dangerous bio-terrorism work environment do colleagues harrass their co-workers with racist missives, "including a rubber camel outfitted with a sex toy" accompanied with a lengthy poem? Isn't that totally bizarre and completely inappropriate? Why didn't senior staff intervene? And why were security precautions at the lab so lax?

Or were they really all that lax - could that story just be a deliberate pointer to outside operators?

It seems clear that the prime suspects in the anthrax case today must be Dr. Philip M. Zack, Dr. Marian K. Rippy, their "camel club" colleagues, and their supervisors.

But of course, the wide-spread cover-up is of far more concern than the incident itself, even though the latter killed 5 people. And in the case of the cover-up, we encounter the usual suspects. For example, Rupert Murdoch's FOX News delivered this story on March 28, 2008:

But in an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues.

"Then he said he had to look at a lot of samples that the FBI had prepared ... to duplicate the letter material," the e-mail reads. "Then the bombshell. He said that the best duplication of the material was the stuff made by [name redacted]. He said that it was almost exactly the same … his knees got shaky and he sputtered, 'But I told the General we didn't make spore powder!'"

Who is that [name redacted]? Are they still framing Assad? How did FOX get this email?

But it's not just FOX - why haven't other media outlets given more attention to this story? Why was it only the Hartford Courant which ran a series of articles?

This site has more - much more....

So, why did they do it? The Washington Post only says this:

We may never know the truth about the anthrax murders. For that, the Justice Department and the FBI are to blame.

Mmmm .... not really. I think there's a good chance that we will learn "the truth" about the anthrax murders. And when we do, there's an excellent chance that a lot more people will realize where the blame for the Hatfill fiasco should really fall. Once people in the media stop assuming that the FBI is just incompetent, they would have to ask some meaningful questions about why Dr. Hatfill was harrassed...

My analysis explained it all long ago, but there are few who believe me. People just cannot believe that a manager at the FBI can be pressured into doing such things by some little old lady from upstate New York (who, incidentally, was once a science advisor to President Clinton and a key expert on bioweapons for the Federation of American Scientists). Facts mean nothing when beliefs are so certain.

The "little old lady" is Barbara Hatch Rosenberg (yes, you DO want to click on that link).

UPDATE: Now put this suggestion from Ed Lake in the context of Bush, Gonzales and the DoJ:

The facts indicate that the FBI was ready to make an arrest long ago, but they cannot make an arrest without approval of the lawyers in The Department of Justice.

What if it's not so much the FBI who have stuffed up this investigation (albeit certain persons may have actively conspired to do so) but the Dept. of Justice which is blocking investigation of the real culprit? Like I said, the usual suspects are lining up here eh? Even the Bush team's favourite bankers, Goldman Sachs, makes an appearance, with threat letters sent late June of 2007:

Lake's words, not mine:

I do not believe al Qaeda had anything to do with the letters. It's all just too childish and convoluted for them. But, like the person who sent the anthrax letters, this guy seems to want people to believe the letters were sent by radical Muslims.

Well of course Lake is way ahead of me on this:

Investigators' interest was piqued by the claim that the letters were wiped with furniture polish to erase forensic evidence, which was confirmed by tests.

I'd be very intrigued if the furniture polish was silicone-based instead of wax-based. It would almost certainly be the letter writer's attempt to show how silicon and oxygen showed up in the anthrax spores mailed in October of 2001.

I don't have time to drill down to that level of nuance. But perhaps this is a situation where my more high-level observations of the Bush cabal and their enablers is a more useful perspective, after so may years?

The modus operandi here is all too familiar to anyone who has watched carefully for all these years. But of course it would be "anti-Semitic" to talk about potential Zionist influences here...

Two other Zionists, A Dr. Philip M. Zack and Dr. Marian K. Rippy -- voluntarily left Fort Detrick soon after Assaad filed charges of harassment, and collusion.

A surveillance camera recorded Zack being let in at 8:40 p.m. on Jan. 23, 1992, apparently by Dr. Marian Rippy, a lab pathologist and close friend of Zack's, according to a report filed by a security guard.

Zack could not be reached for comment. In an interview this week, Rippy said that she doesn't remember letting Zack in, but that he occasionally stopped by after he was transferred off the base.

That comes from a site which includes Holocaust denial stuff (so I wont link to it). Are the camel clubbers Zionists? Wikipedia suggests Zack may not even be Jewish, let alone a Zionist, despite his surname:

According to the Zanesville Ohio Times Recorder, Dr. Zack was a member of the St. Nicholas Catholic Church when he lived in Ohio. [Zanesville Ohio Times Recorder (July 28, 1974)]

I had a look at that paper's website, and you cannot see old editions, nor does a search for Zack give any info. And um... 1974??? How would you even know that's the same Dr Zack - he probably wasn't even finished school then!

The site above also says that Barbara Hatch Rosenberg was an associate of Bill Daschle - is that true?

And (going off topic) it also notes that an officer from Israel's Sayeret Matkal, an elite and secretive intelligence unit, was sitting right in front of one of the Arab hijackers of American Airlines Flight 11 on 9-11 - Daniel Lewin's wiki entry confirms this:

A 2002 FAA memo suggests he may have been killed by hijacker Satam al-Suqami after he attempted to foil the hijacking. According to the FAA, Lewin was seated in business class in seat 9B, close to hijackers Mohammed Atta and Satam al Suqami (who was possibly seated behind him). It was first reported that he had been shot by al Suqami, which was later changed to being stabbed.

Lewin supposedly had his throat cut from behind by al-Suqami. How do they know that? Who survived to tell? Is it just a coincidence that an elite Israeli soldier was sitting right in front of one of the terrorists supposed to have crashed the first plane into the WTC?

Man, there is just too much of this shit out there, too many potential explanations, and not enough time to track it all down.

Alex Jones notes that all the major newspapers targeted with anthrax letters (ABC, CBS and NBC news and the New York Post) were in NYC. USA Today reporter Tony Locy, who fingered Hatfill, refused to give police her sources. The taxpayers footed the Hatfill settlement costs, nobody has been sacked or held accountable for the fiasco, and whoever did it remains on the loose "and probably still have access to the anthrax". Closing paras are interesting too:

According to an Associated Press report (October 23, 2001), “On the night of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House Medical Office dispensed Cipro (the antibiotic used to treat anthrax) to staff accompanying Vice President Dick Cheney as he was secreted off to the safety of Camp David, and told them it was ‘a precaution,’ according to one person directly involved.” The first anthrax letters were not postmarked till September 18.

Where's The Outrage, Australia?

I just spent an hour trawling through the wikipedia sites for Rupert Murdoch, The Australian newspaper, and associated historical phenomenon like Don Dunstan and Thomas Playford the Fourth.

There is some interesting stuff out there, particularly regarding Rupert. Did u know Rupert supported Whitlam, for example? Or that he was was made a Grand-Officer in the Order of St. Gregory the Great by Pope John Paul II?

But there is also a whole lot of stuff that is NOT out there. I might dedicate a few years of my life to updating the entries, or maybe I should spend some time trawling through wikileaks to see if anyone at News Ltd has been actively deleting content first? I mean, he did delete a lot of stuff about his new wife Wendi Deng. Sorry, I mean one of his compliant lapdogs did it for him.

It's odd, considering how much outrage against Murdoch and the Australian has been exhibited by Aussie bloggers. But it just goes to show how the anti-right bloggers in Australia totally lack cohesion, in either an idealogical or organisational sense.

We bitch, we moan, we hit "PUBLISH".

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Building Seven

What? The BBC has a story about Building Seven? Wow - let's take a look...

9/11 is the conspiracy theory of the internet age.

Put "9/11 conspiracy" into Google and you get 7.9 million hits. Put in "9/11 truth" and you get more than 22 million.

Opinion polls in the US have picked up widespread doubts among the American people.

A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 found that 53% of those questioned thought the Bush administration was hiding something. Another US poll found a third of those questioned thought government officials either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or allowed them to happen.

In the UK a survey by the BBC's The Conspiracy Files, carried out by GfkNOP in 2006, found that 16% of those questioned thought there was a "wider conspiracy that included the American government".

This summer will be a key moment for those who question the official explanation of what happened on 9/11, the self-styled "9/11 truth movement".

Nearly seven years after the terrible events of that September day, the US authorities are due to publish the final report on a third tower that also collapsed on 9/11. Unlike the Twin Towers, this 47-storey, 610-foot skyscraper was not hit by a plane.

So far so good, right? I mean, at least they are talking about this and putting some basic facts in the public domain, right?

The official explanation is that ordinary fires were the main reason for the collapse of Tower 7. That makes this the first and only tall skyscraper in the world to have collapsed because of fire. Yet despite that all the thousands of tonnes of steel from the building were carted away and melted down.

The way official bodies have investigated Tower 7 at the World Trade Center has made some people think they're hiding something. It's destruction was never mentioned in the 9/11 Commission Report.

An inquiry by the Federal Emergency Management Agency said the building collapsed because intense fires had burned for hours, fed by thousands of gallons of diesel stored in the building for emergency generators. But its report said this had "only a low probability of occurrence" and more work was needed. That was in May 2002.

Can this be happening? Is the BBC set to blow the lid on this story?

Errr.... no.

First they report disparaging comments from officials at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), who are conducting the enquiry. Then they note that " oh yes, even the BBC" has been subject to conspiracy theories.

This summer we will find out whether NIST's report has answered the many questions that have been raised, or whether it will suffer the same fate as the Warren Commission on the assassination of President John F Kennedy and merely add fuel to the conspiracy theories.

Just don't expect the BBC or any other mainstream news media to take the lead. Oh, and don't expect anything but official cover-up crap from NIST. In fact, what will be most interesting - as with so much before - will be what they DON'T say.

Just to give an idea of how puerile reporting of this incident is, take a look at this "IT WASN'T US!" BBC video disclaiming any part in a Building 7 conspiracy. They actually read out a premature wire from Reuters about the collapse of Building Seven (yes, that building specifically) before it even happened, yet they never even ask how Reuters knew about that, or how such a coincidence could have happened. Just so long as nobody blames Aunty!

9-11 changed everything you know. Coincidences just started growing on trees...

The First Anthrax Suspect

The first suspect in the anthrax case was not the person who was fingered in a mysteriously anonymous letter to police BEFORE the case had even gone public, but the person who sent that letter. Justin Raimondo has the details.

Just before the anthrax letters became public knowledge but after they'd been mailed, military police headquarters at Quantico, Virginia, received a letter that accused an Arab scientist who once worked at the USAMRID facility, a biowarfare lab at Ft. Detrick, of being a terrorist about to unleash biological warfare against civilian targets in the U.S.

The author of this anonymous missive claimed to have been one of the scientist's former co-workers, and appeared to have a detailed knowledge of Assaad's career and daily routine. When the anthrax letters were opened, the FBI paid a visit to Dr. Ayaad Assaad, a former Ft. Detrick employee, and questioned him extensively.

The FBI cleared Assaad of any connection to the anthrax letters early on, but then seemed to have let this significant clue grow quite cold, failing to follow up on it until the winter of 2004, when they launched an investigation into the Quantico letter. It seems clear that whoever sent that letter had at least foreknowledge of the anthrax attacks, and discovering the writers' identity could certainly lead us to the source of the attacks. Yet for years the FBI did nothing...

Let's put two and two together here (after you've read the link of course).

Let's suppose that those who allowed 9-11 to happen were pro-Zionists, and let's further suppose that they further concocted the anthrax scare to help cover up the embarrassing details emerging in the weeks after the WTC attacks. Let's suppose they had some connection to the "Camel Club", who could supply them with anthrax. Wouldn't such people have a strong motivation to "finger all Arab-Americans, and Muslims, as potential terrorists"? Wouldn't they strongly want to promote that anti-Muslim narrative to the traumatised US national psyche?

And if so, didn't they do a swell hum-dinger of a job?

I mean, just supposing, of course... !

UPDATE: More here.

Yes, Australia, We Are Still Very Much In Iraq

"In Iraq you’ve got a nation that’s got the second-largest oil reserves in the world, second only to Saudi Arabia. It will generate billions of dollars a year in cash flow if they get back to their production of roughly three million barrels of oil a day, in the relatively near future. And that flow of resources, obviously, belongs to the Iraqi people, needs to be put to use by the Iraqi people for the Iraqi people and that will be one of our major objectives."
- Dick Cheney, NBC interview March 16, 2003

In January 2003, two months before the invasion of Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair ridiculed allegations of a looming war-for-oil as "conspiracy theories". A few weeks later, these "conspiracy theorists" turned out en masse for the biggest demonstrations the world has ever seen:

According to BBC News, between six and ten million people took part in protests in up to sixty countries over the weekend of the 15th and 16th [February 2003]; other estimates range from eight million to thirty million.

The Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, insisted that the protests were not representative of public opinion:

"I don't know that you can measure public opinion just by the number of people that turn up at demonstrations."

The war went ahead anyway, of course. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Or is it? It all depends which version of history you read: the facts on both sides are still being regularly, sometimes manically, revised and updated. And Australia’s continuing role in Iraq remains, even after more than five years of war, studiously under-reported and curiously unchallenged. If you accept, as those 2003 “conspiracy theorists” did, that this was a war for oil, then you have to ask yourself whether Australia still hopes to secure a share of those oil resources (and if so, how). Just don’t expect your government or the Australian corporate media to help you find the answer.

Last week the Bush administration responded to a New York Times story, claiming they were not involved in the latest discussions between Iraq's Ministry Of Oil and major western oil companies. The negotiations set up no-bid deals (payable in oil, not cash) which open the door for Big Oil companies - including Exxon, Mobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP - to return to Iraq after decades in absentia. But yesterday the New York Times confirmed that US government lawyers were closely involved in drafting the new laws.

Andrew Tilghman at TPM picked up an interesting mistake in the NYT story:

Near the end of the story, the Times reports:

Advisers from the State, Commerce, Energy and Interior Departments are assigned to work with the Iraqi Oil Ministry, according to the senior diplomat. In addition, the United States Agency for International Development has a contract for Management Systems International, a Washington consulting firm, to advise the oil and other ministries. The agency's program is called Tatweer, the Arabic word for development.

A Washington consulting firm? Actually, Management Systems International is a subsidiary of a massive Australian company, Coffey International Ltd. focusing on mining, oil and gas infrastructure projects.

And guess who some of their clients are? Global oil companies including Cheveron, Royal Dutch Shell and BP.

So the company that touts big oil as clients is helping the Iraqi government negotiate with those companies -- and getting paid by the U.S. government to do so.

Not coincidentally, Australia's own BHP Billiton is one of the big oil companies now set to return to Iraq. Specialist oil blogger Greg Muttit notes that technical service contracts, of the kind being awarded, usually go to specialist contractors.

"In no other country are the likes of BP or ExxonMobil carrying out such TSCs."

Meanwhile, the "sovereign" Iraqi government is now suing AWB for paying almost $300 million in bribes to Saddam Hussein. It's not clear how this will affect Iraqi negotiations to buy wheat from AWB, particularly as the AWB has just lost its single-desk monopoly on exports.

But it's interesting that BHP Billiton's corporate development boss, Tom Harley, who was named in the Cole inquiry as one of the architects of BHP's plan to use AWB to ship large bundles of wheat to Iraq, has just resigned.

And of course, Alexander Downer, who knew nothing - nothing! - about the AWB bribes is also resigning this week. The Rudd government’s support for Downer’s move to the UN suggests they do not plan to bring him before any embarrassing enquiries. This is unfortunate, but it further confirms suspicions about Rudd’s stance on Iraq.

Our Aussie "combat troops" (not to be confused with the "soft, cuddly troops") may have returned home from Iraq last month, but our new government remains deeply committed to "the mission". By failing to explore the details and logic of our continued engagement in Iraq, the Australian media also betrays a continued commitment at the corporate level.

Do ordinary Australians support continuing efforts to secure Iraq’s oil resources for our nation’s corporate profit? Who knows? Nobody's asking and nobody's telling. But this is hardly an idle question. As Sunshine Coast blogger Bill Hoffnan warns:

History will eventually see the Iraq War of 2003-ad infinitum as either the first or the last of the big 21st century battles for control of global resources.

It will either become a footnote in the emergence of a more enlightened world or a glimpse into the horror of the legacy we are building for our sons and daughters and our grandchildren.

PS: Nicole Johnson is an Aussie reporting for Al Jazeera:

OIL IS UP, MARKETS ARE DOWN, THE SHIT IS ABOUT TO HIT THE FAN BIG TIME, SO ... TIME TO HAVE SOME FUN!!!

"L'ombeligo del mondo" is Italian for "the belly-button of the earth". This is a brilliant song by Jovanotti (best known for A Te).

I couldn't find any English translation on the Web, so this is my own best effort:

This is the belly-button of the world
Where you find strange faces, with a somewhat disarming beauty
Ebony skin of an aboriginal father and emerald eyes like a diamond
Mixed faces from new races like the millennium that is now arriving
This is the belly-button of the world and now we are dancing!

This is the belly-button of the world
Where you don’t know where it’s all going to end
And searching within yourself for the source of the breathing
This is where you find naked men with the baggage of fantasy
This is the belly-button of the world where you feel this energy coming out!

This is the belly-button of the world, this is the sink-hole of imaginations
Where experiences converge and are transformed into expressions
Where love is made precious and our love becomes action
Where rules do not exist, only exceptions!

This is the belly-button of the world, this is where energy is born
The nerve center of the universe, from whence all new roads depart
From the provinces of the great empire I hear a voice which is rising
This is the belly-button of the world and now we are dancing!

This is the belly-button of the world!

If you really wanna have some fun with this song, open it in two or more windows simultaneously, then play one track just a few seconds after the other. I just did it by accident and the effect was brilliant!

And now, as a special treat for my long-timesuffering readers, a great new product from Jovanotti: PENSO POSITIVO! (Think Positive)

"I think positive because I am alive... nobody and nothing in this world is going to shut down my reasoning... " (see if you can spot the "Gandhi" reference).

Finally, a simple song about the sheer joy a beautiful woman can bring into one's heart.


And speaking of beautiful women...

Two Thousand Words

Here's a pic from a story about Iraqis queuing for miles to put petrol in their cars... Why did we invade again?



And here's a pic of sailors preparing to race in theChina Olympics, sailing in a sea of green algae.... Why did we give them the Games again?

Digging Downer's Grave

Bernard Keane at Crikey suggests that "if nothing else can unite the divided citizens of Cyprus, maybe five minutes with Alex will do the trick":

In the end, AWB summed up Downer’s foreign ministership perfectly: the deliberate turning of a blind eye to the bribery by a National Party scam of a tyrant against whom Downer was at that very moment making the case for war, about whose toppling Downer would later boast -- and against whose forces we would shortly send our troops. The wilful failure of accountability and the intellectual dishonesty of Downer’s response upon discovery -- along with that of Howard and Mark Vaile -- turned even the Howard Government cheerleaders at The Australian against him.

Unfortunately, Keane also takes the opportunity to slag off Mark Latham, who openly despised George W. Bush.

Downer and Howard inflicted significant damage on Australians’ perception of our relationship with the US which, had Mark Latham fluked his way to an election victory in 2004, might have been made long-term.

Would that really be a bad thing right now, given that the USA is descending into Fascism and dragging the planet down an environmental and economic black hole?

Downer could receive $100,000-plus a year for the rest of his life when he joins the UN - while leaving taxpayers with a $500,000 by-election bill. That's you and me, folks.

But maybe we should feel more sorry for the poor bastards whose long-running conflict he is supposed to walk in and fix:

"It's a conflict where everybody has to be really careful about the vocabulary used. It's been going on for decades. Actually it started in 1955 and there's a whole Cyprus vocabulary, in fact a fat dictionary of it and people who get it wrong get terribly punished in Cyprus."

No worries, mate. This is a bloke who once said that Islamic fundamentalists were being supported by the "corporatocracy", remember? And he didn't mean it in this sense either.

Here's the view from Al Jazeera:

In an interview with The Australian newspaper on Tuesday, Downer pointed to his experience as a diplomat in some of the world's major hotspots, but admitted that the job of uniting Turkish and Greek Cypriots was "not going to be a cakewalk".

"These things are always untidy. It's never easy to do. We ended the civil war in Bougainville. We played our part in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why not try to fix up Cyprus as well," he was quoted as saying.

Beh

I will always wonder why Michael Moore did not do a follow-up documentary to Fahrenheit 911. I mean, he could have pushed out a doco every year and won enough Oscars to fill the garage. It's not like there wasn't enough content available.

Arthur Chrenkoff Is Still Linked To Senator Brett Mason

I've long been wondering what happened to Arthur Chrenkoff, the war-mongers' favourite online propagandist. In fact, I made it a New Years Resolution to track the bastard down. And now I know.

Check out Arthur Chrenkoff's profile at LinkedIn. It seems that the new job where "I will not be allowed to blog" was a role as an "advisor" to Peter Dutton MP, John Howard's Minister for Revenue and Assistant Treasurer, from September 2005 (when Chrenkoff quit blogging) until December 2007 (just after the election debacle).

Now Chrenkoff is back working with QLD Liberal Senator Brett Mason - he's just moved from being an "Electorate Officer" to a "Political/Policy Adviser". I wonder why he hasn't started blogging again about all the good news from Irag and Aghanistan? After all, his previous role with Senator Mason "allowed me flexibility to write outside of" his proscribed job role.

I wonder what sort of taxpayer salary Chrenkoff enjoys these days? Does he get to go on the study tours?

"To stand in the temple of Athena and cast your eye over across the vista to the sea one relives a view saturated with both history and mythology".

Does he help write shit like that? And I wonder what sort of policy advice a git like Chrenkoff can offer the (ahem!) Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education? Keep your head down, follow 0.07%'s lead, and just carp on relentlessly?

PS: The career as a budding novelist didn't exactly take off - Night Trains is being remaindered at Amazon for just $1.21.

Why Doesn't Anybody Understand Me?

"What we have here is a failure to communicate..."