Trouble is brewing in Herat, the ancient and beautiful city in western Afghanistan that has served as a cultural capital for centuries. It was once famously said that you could not stick your leg out in Herat without kicking a poet, and the city's 3500 years of history have yielded a rich collection of sites and artefacts that are prized the world over. But Herat's multi-layered past is in danger of disappearing, victim of the general destruction and lawlessness of the past three decades. Local officials are attempting to place the blame on Iran, a country with which Afghanistan has had a very complicated relationship of late. According to statistics compiled by the Herat Department for the Preservation of Historic Sites, Herat has lost more than 100 sites or artefacts since the city was added to UNESCO's tentative list of World Heritage Centres in 2004. Ayamuddin Ajmal, head of the department, told IWPR that over the past few months the city's historical sites and artefacts have been targeted even more than usual, resulting in significant losses. According to Ajmal, 22 artefacts, some of them more than 3,000 years old, were taken from the National Museum of Herat in late September. Twelve historical sites, including an ancient mosque and engraved headstones in a cemetery, have also been desecrated in recent weeks. While Ajmal refused to speculate on who might be behind the thefts and vandalism, other government officials have not been so reticent. The target of their ire is Iran, a country that has been accused of meddling in Afghanistan's affairs over the past several years. Neamatullah Sarwari, head of the Department of Information and Culture Department in Herat, told IWPR that Iran was motivated by competition for UNESCO – the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation – World Heritage Centre status. “A number of circles and individuals in our neighbouring countries, who share a similar culture with us, want to sabotage the process of Herat province's inclusion on the UNESCO list,” he said. Once on the list, an historical site is eligible for UNESCO funding and restoration projects. So far in Afghanistan, only Bamian and the Minaret of Jam have acquired the sought after status. “According to our information, Isfahan, in Iran is also one of the nominees for the UNESCO list,” said Sarwari. “This has raised suspicions that specific individuals in Iran are orchestrating the thefts of historical artefacts and participating in the destruction of historical sites.” Sarwari cited the recent break-in at the National Museum of Herat, which, he maintained, could not have been accomplished without the assistance of a foreign power. ~ more... ~
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Heratis suspect Iran of cultural sabotage
Adam Curtis - The Living Dead
Part 1: On the Desperate Edge of Now
This episode examined how the various national memories of the Second World War were effectively rewritten and manipulated in the Cold War period. For Germany, this began at the Nuremberg Trials, where attempts were made to prevent the Nazis in the dock—principally Hermann Göring—from offering any rational argument for what they had done. Subsequently, however, bringing lower-ranking Nazis to justice was effectively forgotten about in the interests of maintaining West Germany as an ally in the Cold War. For the Allied countries, faced with a new enemy in the Soviet Union, there was a need to portray WW2 as a crusade of pure good against pure evil, even if this meant denying the memories of the Allied soldiers who had actually done the fighting, and knew it to have been far more complex. A number of American veterans, including the writer Kurt Vonnegut, told how years later they found themselves plagued with the previously-suppressed memories of the brutal things they had seen and done. The title comes from a veteran's description of what the uncertainty of survival while in combat is like.
Part 2 - You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough
In this episode, the history of brainwashing and mind control was examined. The angle pursued by Curtis was the way in which psychiatry pursued tabula rasa theories of the mind, initially in order to set people free from traumatic memories and then later as a potential instrument of social control. The work of Ewen Cameron was surveyed, with particular reference to Cold War theories of communist brainwashing and the search for hypnoprogammed assassins. The programme's thesis was that the search for control over the past via medical intervention had had to be abandoned and that in modern times control over the past is more effectively exercised by the manipulation of history. Some film from this episode, an interview with one of Cameron's victims, was later re-used by Curtis in his The Century of the Self. The title of this episode comes from a paranoid schizophrenic seen in archive film in the programme, who believed her neighbours were using her as a source of amusement by denying her any privacy, like a pet goldfish.
Part 3: The Attic
In this episode, the Imperial aspirations of Margaret Thatcher were examined. The way in which Mrs Thatcher used public relations in an attempt to emulate Winston Churchill in harking back to Britain's "glorious past" to fulfil a political or national end. The title is a reference to the attic flat at the top of 10 Downing Street, which was created during Thatcher's period refurbishment of the house, which did away with the Prime Minister's previous living quarters on lower floors. Scenes from The Innocents (film) the adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James are intercut with Thatcher's reign.
This episode examined how the various national memories of the Second World War were effectively rewritten and manipulated in the Cold War period. For Germany, this began at the Nuremberg Trials, where attempts were made to prevent the Nazis in the dock—principally Hermann Göring—from offering any rational argument for what they had done. Subsequently, however, bringing lower-ranking Nazis to justice was effectively forgotten about in the interests of maintaining West Germany as an ally in the Cold War. For the Allied countries, faced with a new enemy in the Soviet Union, there was a need to portray WW2 as a crusade of pure good against pure evil, even if this meant denying the memories of the Allied soldiers who had actually done the fighting, and knew it to have been far more complex. A number of American veterans, including the writer Kurt Vonnegut, told how years later they found themselves plagued with the previously-suppressed memories of the brutal things they had seen and done. The title comes from a veteran's description of what the uncertainty of survival while in combat is like.
Part 2 - You Have Used Me as a Fish Long Enough
In this episode, the history of brainwashing and mind control was examined. The angle pursued by Curtis was the way in which psychiatry pursued tabula rasa theories of the mind, initially in order to set people free from traumatic memories and then later as a potential instrument of social control. The work of Ewen Cameron was surveyed, with particular reference to Cold War theories of communist brainwashing and the search for hypnoprogammed assassins. The programme's thesis was that the search for control over the past via medical intervention had had to be abandoned and that in modern times control over the past is more effectively exercised by the manipulation of history. Some film from this episode, an interview with one of Cameron's victims, was later re-used by Curtis in his The Century of the Self. The title of this episode comes from a paranoid schizophrenic seen in archive film in the programme, who believed her neighbours were using her as a source of amusement by denying her any privacy, like a pet goldfish.
Part 3: The Attic
In this episode, the Imperial aspirations of Margaret Thatcher were examined. The way in which Mrs Thatcher used public relations in an attempt to emulate Winston Churchill in harking back to Britain's "glorious past" to fulfil a political or national end. The title is a reference to the attic flat at the top of 10 Downing Street, which was created during Thatcher's period refurbishment of the house, which did away with the Prime Minister's previous living quarters on lower floors. Scenes from The Innocents (film) the adaptation of The Turn of the Screw by Henry James are intercut with Thatcher's reign.
CEOs “cashed out” prior to economic crisis
Balzac's maxim that "behind every great fortune lies a great crime" may yet prove a fitting epitaph for American capitalism. A recent survey by the Wall Street Journal reveals that CEOs at major US financial and real estate firms converted tens of millions of dollars of overvalued stock into cash prior to the eruption of the current financial crisis, even as many of their corporations approached the precipice.
The Journal analyzed the fortunes of CEOs from 2003 to 2007 based on executive compensation and stock sale data. Fifteen of these CEOs took home more than $100 million in cash during this period. At the high end was Charles Schwab, who made over $816 million from his self-named accounting firm, almost all of it from stock sales.
Of the 120 publicly traded firms the Journal analyzed, CEOs cashed out a total of more than $21 billion. However, data was gathered only from publicly traded companies, and thus does not include similar fortunes that have been made by "hedge fund chiefs, Wall Street traders, and executives who sold their companies outright." Nor did it include data related to exit packages, the multimillion-dollar "golden parachutes" awarded to retiring or fired executives.
The Journal's findings underscore the parasitism and criminality of the US financial elite. Defenders have long justified extravagant CEO pay by claiming that these were the talented "risk-takers" who generated enormous wealth for investors. But the Journal's data shows that there is no correlation between compensation and a firm's success. On the contrary, many CEOs rewarded themselves just as their corporations approached ruin.
These included Richard Fuld, the CEO of Lehman Brothers, who transformed his firm's stock into well over $100 million in cash. When added to his salary and bonuses, Fuld pocketed nearly $185 million in the five years before 2008, even as he guided his 150-year-old investment bank to ruin. James Cayne of Bear Stearns did nearly as well at his investment bank, collecting over $163.2 million, the vast majority of which was garnered from selling stock that would soon be scarcely worth the paper upon which it was printed.
Maurice Greenberg of American International Group (AIG) made $132.8 million between 2003 and 2005, when he was forced to resign. Well over $100 million of this came from windfall stock sales of the giant insurer. AIG collapsed in September, but was determined to be "too big to fail" by the federal government, and was bailed out twice in less than one month to the tune of some $120 billion.
In August, the sub-prime mortgage giant Countrywide Financial Group collapsed spectacularly, and was absorbed by Bank of America. In the previous five years, however, Countrywide's CEO, Angelo Mozilo, took home $471 million, over $400 million of which came from sales of the company's soon-to-be-worthless stock.
A look at the sectors of the economy where these richly remunerated executives worked, moreover, demonstrates the advanced rot of the US economy as a whole. Without exception, they represented corporations that engaged in financial speculation—"industries closely tied to the financial crisis," as the Journal puts it—and that produced no real value. These until recently "vibrant" parts of the economy functioned only to siphon off enormous social wealth and deposit it in the bank accounts of the CEOs and big investors.
~ more... ~
Evidence suggests CIA funded experiments at state hospital
Few people in Vermont remember Dr. Robert W. Hyde, but one of his former patients can't forget him. The doctor was involved in one of the nation's darkest chapters in medical science: In the 1950s, Hyde conducted drug and psychological experiments at a Boston hospital through funding that apparently originated with the CIA. Later, he became director of research at the Vermont State Hospital.
The patient, Karen Wetmore, is convinced that Hyde and other researchers subjected her and possibly other patients to experiments paid for by the CIA at the Waterbury facility.
In addition to her claim, new evidence, though incomplete, suggests that such tests might have been conducted at the Vermont State Hospital.
Several books and numerous newspaper accounts have detailed how techniques developed through testing, including on mental health patients at hospitals in other parts of the country, are related to the interrogation methods used in Guantanamo and other locations in the war on terror. These well-known and well-documented drug experiments began in secret after the Korean War and were sponsored by the U.S. government.
News accounts and histories of the experiments have not mentioned the Vermont State Hospital, but a congressional committee concluded that dozens of institutions, some of which have never been identified, were involved in secret experiments for the CIA.
A complicated, disturbing story
Wetmore, who grew up in Brandon and now lives in Rutland, resided at the Vermont State Hospital for extended periods in her teens and early 20s.
Hyde had a long and distinguished career as a psychiatrist and university researcher before he returned to Vermont in the late 1960s. He died in Bakersfield, his birthplace, in 1976.
This story centers on the possible intersection of Hyde's research work and Wetmore's experiences at the state hospital. The strands of the narrative, constructed from government documents and her memory, is complicated, confusing and sometimes disturbing.
Her claim, that the Waterbury hospital was involved in experimentation on patients, has never been reported despite numerous instances in which it could have come to public attention, including a lawsuit that Wetmore settled out of court.
Further complicating matters is Wetmore's severe memory loss, which she says is the result of her treatment at the Vermont State Hospital where she says she was given experimental drugs, experienced repetitive electroshock therapy and was subjected unwittingly to other tests. Her medical records from the Vermont State Hospital, including daily logs and summaries of her treatment support these claims.
Another obstacle for Wetmore is the social stigma of mental illness. She says once a patient is committed to a mental hospital, "the first thing they take away from you is your credibility."
In order to figure out what really happened to her at the Vermont State Hospital and to overcome this credibility gap, Wetmore has spent more than 12 years collecting and analyzing reams of government documents, including state hospital records, declassified CIA paperwork and histories of MK-Ultra, the code name of the CIA's best-known clandestine research projects on mind-control.
At many points Wetmore reached dead ends: The government denied her requests for certain documents and heavily redacted key evidence from others. Some documents were destroyed.
In 1997, Wetmore decided to bring a lawsuit against the state. A psychiatrist and a Rutland lawyer agreed to help her with the case and spent months collecting and poring over evidence. They both came to the conclusion that Wetmore was the subject of drug experiments at the hospital.
The patient, Karen Wetmore, is convinced that Hyde and other researchers subjected her and possibly other patients to experiments paid for by the CIA at the Waterbury facility.
In addition to her claim, new evidence, though incomplete, suggests that such tests might have been conducted at the Vermont State Hospital.
Several books and numerous newspaper accounts have detailed how techniques developed through testing, including on mental health patients at hospitals in other parts of the country, are related to the interrogation methods used in Guantanamo and other locations in the war on terror. These well-known and well-documented drug experiments began in secret after the Korean War and were sponsored by the U.S. government.
News accounts and histories of the experiments have not mentioned the Vermont State Hospital, but a congressional committee concluded that dozens of institutions, some of which have never been identified, were involved in secret experiments for the CIA.
A complicated, disturbing story
Wetmore, who grew up in Brandon and now lives in Rutland, resided at the Vermont State Hospital for extended periods in her teens and early 20s.
Hyde had a long and distinguished career as a psychiatrist and university researcher before he returned to Vermont in the late 1960s. He died in Bakersfield, his birthplace, in 1976.
This story centers on the possible intersection of Hyde's research work and Wetmore's experiences at the state hospital. The strands of the narrative, constructed from government documents and her memory, is complicated, confusing and sometimes disturbing.
Her claim, that the Waterbury hospital was involved in experimentation on patients, has never been reported despite numerous instances in which it could have come to public attention, including a lawsuit that Wetmore settled out of court.
Further complicating matters is Wetmore's severe memory loss, which she says is the result of her treatment at the Vermont State Hospital where she says she was given experimental drugs, experienced repetitive electroshock therapy and was subjected unwittingly to other tests. Her medical records from the Vermont State Hospital, including daily logs and summaries of her treatment support these claims.
Another obstacle for Wetmore is the social stigma of mental illness. She says once a patient is committed to a mental hospital, "the first thing they take away from you is your credibility."
In order to figure out what really happened to her at the Vermont State Hospital and to overcome this credibility gap, Wetmore has spent more than 12 years collecting and analyzing reams of government documents, including state hospital records, declassified CIA paperwork and histories of MK-Ultra, the code name of the CIA's best-known clandestine research projects on mind-control.
At many points Wetmore reached dead ends: The government denied her requests for certain documents and heavily redacted key evidence from others. Some documents were destroyed.
In 1997, Wetmore decided to bring a lawsuit against the state. A psychiatrist and a Rutland lawyer agreed to help her with the case and spent months collecting and poring over evidence. They both came to the conclusion that Wetmore was the subject of drug experiments at the hospital.
~ more... ~
"This is an obvious vaccination genocide"
Release: No. 18-Thimerosal-6
Date Mailed: Dec. 1, 2008
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jackie Lindenbach--208/265-8065
CDC and Congress Secrets Vaccine Mercury Report:
Experts Expose Lucrative American Genocide
Sandpoint, ID--Congressional investigators and federal health officials have secreted a report prepared by experts proving vaccine mercury is harming children far worse than previously known. The "Thimerosal VSD Study: Phase I" document was secreted in 2000, and subsequent congressional hearings and news reports neglected it.
The study, conducted by scientists commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), shows statistically significant links between vaccine-injected mercury and "neurological developmental disorders" including misery, depression, and suicide. Additional links to autism were strongly suggested by the data that heavily discourages the use of the drug Thimerosal containing mercury used for vaccine sterility.
The official documents marked "CONFIDENTIAL . . . DO NOT COPY OR RELEASE" were obtained by class action attorneys through Freedom of Information petitions and posted this week on the Internet attached to a filmed commentary by public health expert, Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz. The iMovie is viewable on YouTube.
"This is an obvious vaccination genocide," Dr. Horowitz said. He called it "gross criminal negligence and murderous official malfeasance" that the report was secreted by congressional investigators and public health protectors. "These traitors have purposefully manipulated and impaired millions of American children, and the economic burden of caring for their special needs with be catastrophic."
The VSD Study data was referenced in 2003 by researchers publishing in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons; then rebutted by the American Academy of Pediatrics commissioned to establish vaccination schedules on behalf of the drug industry. The rebuttal failed to note the VDS data had been sequestered, then used its lacking availability to argue inadequacy of data with which to condemn mercury as the cause of skyrocketing rates of autism.
Genocide is defined as the mass killing or enslaving of people for profit, politics, and/or ideology. All motives are evident in this vaccination atrocity with powerful drug lobbyists conspiring with corrupt health officials to profit by injecting children with mercury. This is why most health workers and school administrators still believe this practice is safe rather than dangerous and damaging.
Dr. Horowitz, a Harvard-trained humanitarian knighted for his work in vaccine risk awareness and consumer protection has asked CDC officials on several occasions to explain the suppression of vaccine science and side-effects without a response. Last year he released a documentary film, In Lies We Trust, to cite to the government's immunization agenda and ongoing televised propaganda as "genocidal."
Regarding another vaccine-administered genocide, President-elect Barack Obama's long time minister and spiritual counsel, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, told reporters at the National Press Club, "I believe our government is capable of doing anything." He recommended Dr. Horowitz's book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola--Nature, Accident or Intentional?, (Tetrahedron Press; 1-888-508-4787) as best proving HIV/AIDS came from chimpanzees that were used by American biological weapons developers to produce the hepatitis B vaccines given to New York homosexuals and African villagers in 1972 as reported by CNN.
"Yes, it is genocide," said Ingri Cassel, regarding the secreted Thimerosal study. The director of Vaccination Liberation Organization has researched and written on the mercury accumulating in children from vaccinations for nearly 20 years. "The government has always been involved with Big Pharma; so this suppression of scientific evidence condemning vaccine mercury and the child abusers in government and industry does not surprise me."
The officials who knew of this study, yet neglected or suppressed its reporting should be indicted under federal organized crime (RICO) laws for "conspiring with the vaccine industry to commit mass murder; condemning children to suffer serious illnesses managed pharmaceutically capriciously and terminally for profit," Dr. Horowitz commented.
Health officials have consistently promoted vaccines as central to their 'War on Preventable Diseases,' luring families with children and elders into serious depression and drug addictions restricting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Millions of people now must cope with vaccine injuries--maladies ranging from eczema and allergies to crippling autoimmune diseases, psychopathologies, and certain cancers.
Given these revelations about Thimerosal, the mind-set of health officials and vaccine administrators is reminiscent of last century's doctors who recommended cigarettes for health. The secreting of cigarette smoking risks and physical damages done is much like this suppressed "VSD Study:" neglected by those licensed-to-kill pushing vaccines instead of tobacco.
-end-
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: For interviews with Dr. Horowitz, please call Jackie Lindenbach at 1-208-265-8065. To view "The CDC's VACCINATION GENOCIDE" search Google or YouTube.
217 Cedar Street, Suite #326, Sandpoint, ID 83864, 208-265-8065, http://www.tetrahedron.org
Date Mailed: Dec. 1, 2008
For Immediate Release
Contact: Jackie Lindenbach--208/265-8065
CDC and Congress Secrets Vaccine Mercury Report:
Experts Expose Lucrative American Genocide
Sandpoint, ID--Congressional investigators and federal health officials have secreted a report prepared by experts proving vaccine mercury is harming children far worse than previously known. The "Thimerosal VSD Study: Phase I" document was secreted in 2000, and subsequent congressional hearings and news reports neglected it.
The study, conducted by scientists commissioned by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), shows statistically significant links between vaccine-injected mercury and "neurological developmental disorders" including misery, depression, and suicide. Additional links to autism were strongly suggested by the data that heavily discourages the use of the drug Thimerosal containing mercury used for vaccine sterility.
The official documents marked "CONFIDENTIAL . . . DO NOT COPY OR RELEASE" were obtained by class action attorneys through Freedom of Information petitions and posted this week on the Internet attached to a filmed commentary by public health expert, Dr. Leonard G. Horowitz. The iMovie is viewable on YouTube.
"This is an obvious vaccination genocide," Dr. Horowitz said. He called it "gross criminal negligence and murderous official malfeasance" that the report was secreted by congressional investigators and public health protectors. "These traitors have purposefully manipulated and impaired millions of American children, and the economic burden of caring for their special needs with be catastrophic."
The VSD Study data was referenced in 2003 by researchers publishing in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons; then rebutted by the American Academy of Pediatrics commissioned to establish vaccination schedules on behalf of the drug industry. The rebuttal failed to note the VDS data had been sequestered, then used its lacking availability to argue inadequacy of data with which to condemn mercury as the cause of skyrocketing rates of autism.
Genocide is defined as the mass killing or enslaving of people for profit, politics, and/or ideology. All motives are evident in this vaccination atrocity with powerful drug lobbyists conspiring with corrupt health officials to profit by injecting children with mercury. This is why most health workers and school administrators still believe this practice is safe rather than dangerous and damaging.
Dr. Horowitz, a Harvard-trained humanitarian knighted for his work in vaccine risk awareness and consumer protection has asked CDC officials on several occasions to explain the suppression of vaccine science and side-effects without a response. Last year he released a documentary film, In Lies We Trust, to cite to the government's immunization agenda and ongoing televised propaganda as "genocidal."
Regarding another vaccine-administered genocide, President-elect Barack Obama's long time minister and spiritual counsel, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, told reporters at the National Press Club, "I believe our government is capable of doing anything." He recommended Dr. Horowitz's book, Emerging Viruses: AIDS & Ebola--Nature, Accident or Intentional?, (Tetrahedron Press; 1-888-508-4787) as best proving HIV/AIDS came from chimpanzees that were used by American biological weapons developers to produce the hepatitis B vaccines given to New York homosexuals and African villagers in 1972 as reported by CNN.
"Yes, it is genocide," said Ingri Cassel, regarding the secreted Thimerosal study. The director of Vaccination Liberation Organization has researched and written on the mercury accumulating in children from vaccinations for nearly 20 years. "The government has always been involved with Big Pharma; so this suppression of scientific evidence condemning vaccine mercury and the child abusers in government and industry does not surprise me."
The officials who knew of this study, yet neglected or suppressed its reporting should be indicted under federal organized crime (RICO) laws for "conspiring with the vaccine industry to commit mass murder; condemning children to suffer serious illnesses managed pharmaceutically capriciously and terminally for profit," Dr. Horowitz commented.
Health officials have consistently promoted vaccines as central to their 'War on Preventable Diseases,' luring families with children and elders into serious depression and drug addictions restricting life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Millions of people now must cope with vaccine injuries--maladies ranging from eczema and allergies to crippling autoimmune diseases, psychopathologies, and certain cancers.
Given these revelations about Thimerosal, the mind-set of health officials and vaccine administrators is reminiscent of last century's doctors who recommended cigarettes for health. The secreting of cigarette smoking risks and physical damages done is much like this suppressed "VSD Study:" neglected by those licensed-to-kill pushing vaccines instead of tobacco.
-end-
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: For interviews with Dr. Horowitz, please call Jackie Lindenbach at 1-208-265-8065. To view "The CDC's VACCINATION GENOCIDE" search Google or YouTube.
217 Cedar Street, Suite #326, Sandpoint, ID 83864, 208-265-8065, http://www.tetrahedron.org
Musical Innerlube: Georges Brassens - Le Gorille (1954)
From Wikipedia:
Le gorille — tells, in a humorous fashion, of a gorilla with a large penis (and admired for this by ladies) who escapes and, mistaking a robed judge for a woman, forcefully sodomizes him; the song contrasts the wooden attitude that the judge had when sentencing a man to death by the guillotine, with his cries of mercy when being assaulted by the gorilla; this song, considered pornographic, was banned for a while; the song's refrain (Gare au gori – i – i – i – ille, "beware the gorilla") is widely known; (translated by Jake Thackray as Brother Gorilla, Greek songwriter and singer Xristos Thivaios as Ο Γορίλας (The Gorilla), Spanish songwriter Joaquín Carbonell as 'El Gorila' (The Gorilla) and Italian songwriter Fabrizio De André (Il Gorilla).
From Georges Brassens and the French “Renaissance of Song”:
Georges Brassens (1921-1981) was a lifelong anarchist, and his songs express a lively antiauthoritarian spirit, even if most of them are about the simple pains and pleasures of life rather than about specifically political topics. Unfortunately, few English-speaking people are aware of him.
For French people he is at least as significant as Bob Dylan is for us (or at least was for people of my generation). But they don’t resemble each other very much. Brassens retains a connection with an older and in some ways wiser culture that was no longer available to Dylan, who was thus driven to a more desperate, apocalyptical mental and verbal dissociation sometimes almost reminiscent of Rimbaud. I don’t think Brassens, or anyone else, approached the brilliance of Dylan during his greatest period (Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited, Blonde on Blonde). But even then Dylan was erratic, and his bitter sarcasm often seems petty and immature compared with Brassens’s worldly-wise humor and irony.
Leaving aside their rather dissimilar musical styles, Dylan might have written something like “Mourir pour des idées” (suggesting that those who urge us to die for ideas be the first to set an example) or “La ballade des gens qui sont nés quelque part” (about the “happy imbeciles” who take patriotic pride in being from wherever they happen to be from). Leonard Cohen might have written something like “Le petit joueur de flûteau” (a fable about a wandering musician who refuses to sell out) or “Le blason” (a delicate paean to the “most beautiful treasure of the female anatomy”). But I doubt if either would have been capable of the innocent rambunctious joy of “Les copains d’abord” (celebrating the camaraderie of a bunch of boys who used to sail around a duck pond in a little boat) or the simple poignancy of “Auprès de mon arbre” (bewailing his folly in cutting down a old tree, throwing away an old pipe, and abandoning an old lover) or the urbane drollery of “La traîtresse” (the mistress who betrays her lover by sleeping with her husband) or “Quatre-vingt-quinze pour cent” (contending that women fake orgasms 95% of the time). For that matter, what other Frenchman besides Brassens could have conceived of “Fernande” (“An erection is not a matter of will power”)?
[Re: 'Fernande', there's a clip of France's First Lady Carla Bruni singing it here.]
More on Clinton's ineligibility as Secretary of State
Senator Hillary Clinton is forbidden from being the nation's Secretary of State—by the Constitution! All the hope in the world can't get around that little document, you monster. Here's the Constitutional bit in question, Article I, Section 6:
No Senator or Representative shall, during the Time for which he was elected, be appointed to any civil Office under the Authority of the United States which shall have been created, or the Emoluments whereof shall have been increased during such time.
~ more... ~
New York Times misleads on Taliban role in opium trade
The role of the Taliban in the opium trade is often greatly exaggerated by the U.S. corporate media. But even if one was to accept accounts like those the New York Times gives of the Taliban's role, it nevertheless still remains self-evident that the Taliban's cut is "trivial" if one considers the bigger picture.
That is not to say the profits gained by the Taliban and other insurgent groups are not significant. As Mr. Costa notes in the UNODC report, given an estimate of nearly $500 million going to insurgents, it is not surprising that "the insurgents' war machine has proven so resilient".
While acknowledging that "the Taliban will only receive a rather small fraction of the overall Afghan income from the opiate trade", Mr. Pietschmann also emphasized, "But even the 'little money' of let's say US$150-200 million is a lot for financing insurgency activities. Our information is that Taliban fighters earn several times more than people in the Afghan army."
The question still remains of who is really responsible for the lion's share of the highly profitable Afghan opium trade. Mr. Pietschmann suggested a role of Kurdish groups in trafficking the drug from Iran into Turkey.
In Turkey, some have suggested the existence of a shadow government, or what is termed the "deep state", that really controls things behind the scenes. Even a former president and seven-time prime minister of Turkey, Suleyman Demirel, has said, "It is fundamental principle that there is one state. In our country there are two." He added, "There is one deep state and one other state. The state that should be real is the spare one, the one that should be spare is the real one."
Writing in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, John Gorvett, a free-lanced journalist based in Istanbul, said: "Defining the 'deep state' is not so easy, however. Some argue that it is a hangover from the Cold War, when Western powers sought to establish a network of armed groups that would stay behind in countries that might have fallen to the Soviet bloc. While these groups were then abolished in most countries when the Soviet Union collapsed, the theory is that in Turkey this never happened. Instead, the group continues to operate, an unofficial underground army tied to organized crime and a bevy of corrupt politicians, police and bureaucrats."
In one case, a heroin trafficker on Interpol's wanted list named Abdullah Catli died in a car accident in 1996 near the town of Susurluk and was found carrying a diplomatic passport signed by the Interior Minister of Turkey. Writing in Druglink Magazine in 2006, journalist and television producer Adrian Gatton commented, "The Susurluk Incident became Turkey's Watergate, exposing the deep links between the Turkish state, terrorists and drug traffickers. It revealed what Turks call the Gizli Devlet, or Deep State – the politicians, military officers and intelligence officials who worked with drug bosses to move drugs from Afghanistan into Europe."
That corruption extends to the United States, according to former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds. According to Ms. Edmonds, U.S. officials were involved in helping foreign intelligence agents acquire sensitive nuclear secrets. She also says she was approached by a mole within the FBI who attempted to recruit her. The woman who approached her was a member of the American Turkish Council, which was the target of an FBI investigation because it was suspected of being involved in, among other things, drug trafficking. When she went to her superiors with concerns over possible misconduct and espionage within the FBI, she was fired. The Department of Justice then gagged her under the "state secrets privilege".
~ more... ~
Bush’s unintended “gift” for Obama
On October 16, 2008, the Bush administration's Director of National Intelligence (DNI), Mike McConnell, signed Intelligence Community Directive (ICD) Number 623. The new directive, possibly with an eye on a surprise election win by Senator John McCain, permits the DNI to "select, appoint, compensate, and detail highly qualified experts (HQEs) within Intelligence Community (IC) elements."
Had McCain won the election, a torrent of neoconservatives would have likely descended upon the Intelligence Community from all the think tanks and right-wing news organizations in the greater Washington, DC, area.
But McCain did not win the election but ICD 623 remains in force. From the department of unintended consequences Obama's DNI could reinstate into the intelligence community all those individuals purged from the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI counter-intelligence division, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and other agencies because they dared to challenge the neocon party line emanating from Vice President Dick Cheney's office and the rival intelligence apparatus set up in the Pentagon under Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
John O. Brennan, fluent Arabic speaker, former CIA station chief in Riyadh, and graduate of the American University in Cairo, in other words, a so-called "Arabist" much hated by the neocons, is rumored to be a top choice for DNI or CIA director. Brennan would, under ICD 623, be able to bring in "from the cold" such targeted, sacked, or compromised intelligence employees as the CIA's Valerie Plame Wilson, NSA's Russ Tice, or the FBI's Sibel Edmonds and Colleen Rowley. To sweeten the deal, the DNI may set the pay scale for HQEs "up to or equal to the salary of the Vice President of the United States." The Vice President's salary is set at $198,600 a year.
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