Helen Thomas, the extraordinary 89 year old American reporter, whose coverage of US Presidential politics spans five decades, was interviewed a couple of years ago about the quality of the White House press corps in the Bush era.

Her account is damning. Although Helen Thomas didn’t spell it out, the conclusion is inescapable that there was a large measure of collusion in the way the press corp pursed a common agenda.

Helen Thomas

Who decided, from the time Bush arrived in the White House, to hype up the ‘threat’ posed by Iraq? That kind of convergent bias doesn’t happen by accident.

The Bush Administration itself played ball, but virtually no-one in the press corps asked Bush and Cheney hard questions about 9-11, the ‘Patriot Act’, the Anthrax attack, the War on Terror, Afghanistan, Iraq… and Israel.

From 2001 until Bush was elected for a second term, the Bush Administration and US mass media engaged in an orgy of mutual admiration, all directed towards a massive expansion of America’s military and ’security’ budget, the launch of new illegal wars to serve Israel’s agenda that helped bankrupt America, the establishment of police state machinery with the USA and the drastic curtailment of Americans’ civil liberties.

This is what Helen had to say:

Hat-tip to HomePageDaily where I spotted this video, It’s a fine online news service by the Australia’s one and only Richard Neville that goes beyond the enervating mainstream consensus.

Israel has a bad habit of picking fights with vessels named after the finest aspirations of human civilization. Three examples:

• the USS Liberty, viciously and deliberately attacked by Israel in June 1967
• the Dignity, a relief vessel to Gaza, rammed by Israel in December 2008
• the Spirit of Humanity, the latest Free Gaza Movement relief ship, hijacked by Israel in late June 2009

The USS Liberty after Israel's attack

The attack on the USS Liberty was arguably one of the most significant – yet least reported – events of recent history. The most lethal attack on a US naval vessel in the post-World Two Two era, it took place during the 1967 ‘Six Day War’ between Israel and its neighbours.

The attack on the Liberty is the subject of an excellent 2002 BBC 4 documentary Dead in the Water by British  journalist Peter Hounam. Available via Google Video, where you can currently download a copy, it might be a good idea to do just that if you’d like to watch it again! The Thought Police have already chased Max Blumenthal’s powerful ‘Feeling the Hate in Jerusalem‘ video off (Google-owned) YouTube.

Peter Hounam is also the author of Operation Cyanide: How the Bombing of the USS Liberty Nearly Caused World War III, published in 2003.

Dead in the Water is the British Broadcasting Corporation at its best. Viewers of the BBC’s war-glorifying and Zionist-dominated International TV service never see quality programs such as this.

… fortunately ex-Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney prerecorded a pithy message to the world, previously featured on this blog with  the title A Green Leader with Guts in late December 2008:

McKinney, who ran as the Greens Presidential candidate in 2008,  is currently banged up in an Israeli place of detention. It’s been several days now.

Predictably, the sycophantic pro-Zionist western media has given this incident a pathetic amount of coverage. Much of it has been sneering and  disparaging.

The Spirit of Humanity - hijacked by Zionists

Her crime?

Along with a score of human rights activists, Cynthia McKinney was attempting to symbolically breach the cruel Israeli blockade of Gaza, which long preceded Israel’s brutal military attack in January this year – and which continues to this day, making reconstruction impossible.

Cynthia sees this as an first-order outrage.

Unlike most western politicians, she has the courage to say so. And for the second time in six months, McKinney boarded a small boat in late June, loaded with urgently-needed relief  supplies, and sailed towards Gaza. The video above shows McKinney after the first relief boat was rammed by Israel, endangering those aboard and terminating the voyage. This time, the Israelis are holding McKinney in detention. Let’s hope they aren’t torturing her in Facility 1391.

Earlier today I wrote to the Australian Greens imploring them AT THE VERY LEAST to protest the arrest of Cynthia McKinney.

Of the handful of political parties with representatives in the Australian national Parliament, I much prefer the policies of the Australian Greens.

I usually find complimentary things to say about the Greens’ Senators work in the Federal Senate. Senator Ludlum, for instance, has played a smart and constructive role in the Internet censorship debate. Christine Milne is superb on the Climate Change issue. Those are just two examples. Overall, the Greens’ team is grossly overstretched, with only five Senators to cover all issues; it’s also hardworking.

Australian Greens' Leader Bob Brown: vocal about Tibet, silent on Gaza

Yet overstretched or not, the Greens are timid to the point of embarrassed silence on other subjects that cry out for investigation and follow-up.

The leadership of the Australian Greens have been either too ignorant, too stupid, too cowardly or too ‘bought-off’ to raise hard questions about 9-11 in the Australian Senate, questions begging to be asked. I hope it’s just the former, but ignorance, as the saying goes, is really no excuse.

Among people from many lands, Australians died on that tragic day in New York City in quite horrible circumstances. Who in our Parliament pursues justice for them? The answer, as far as I can see, is no-one.

Australians are frequently reminded of the deep gratitude we should feel to the USA, which ’saved’ us from Japan in World War Two. The American Alliance, we’re told, is the essential bedrock of our freedom…

USS Essex: a warship America can't afford pissing on a post it doesn't need to foul

Over the last few days, a US warship has been berthed in Cairns, less than 50 kilometres from where I sit. The USS Essex may be bearing nuclear, biological or chemical weapons. Longstanding US policy is to ‘neither confirm nor deny’ whether weapons of mass destruction are carried on its military vessels into friendly ports.

Raise any complaint about this, and before too long at least one Australian will venture the standard opinion that “if it wasn’t for the Americans, we’d all be speaking Japanese!” (They never seem to explain why, fond as Australians are of sophisticated Japanese technology and its tasty cuisine, we should consider speaking Japanese a fate literally worse than death.)

Actually, the comfortable official saga of how our genial American cousins preserved Australia from the dreaded “yellow peril” in the 1940s leaves out some rather significant elements of a very complex story. As a reaction against the conformist verities that stultify debate and fresh thinking about contemporary ‘Defense’ policy, here’s another view on Australia and World War Two. I’ll call it the ‘Neutral and Pro-Peace version of events’. I admit it’s selective too. I’ve just selected different facts from those emphasised incessantly in the mainstream narrative…

Too much political debate has been imprisoned inside one dimension for far too long.

Since the early 19th century, the major ideological fault line has been between ‘Socialism’ and ‘Capitalism’. Yet these terms are better understood as descriptors of polarity within a single system than entirely separate recipes for complete, well-functioning societies.

Our Common Future

Take Capitalism. A simplistic but commonly held belief is that a free market system works best with little state interference. Taxation and other forms of regulation are regularly portrayed as enemies of capitalism.

That’s may well be true in a village economy. However, it’s been clear from the outset of the industrial revolution that a successful advanced free-market economy requires very effective regulation. Good common infrastructure encourages enterprise to flourish. Advanced capitalism depends on a clear set of legally enforceable rules – rules that curtail absolute individual freedom, yet provide for a better functioning whole. These ‘socialist ideas’ are a prerequisite for capitalist success – and always have been.

Socialism is the other end of the theoretical polarity. In it’s purest form, it’s also known as ‘Communism’.

In the pre-modern world, there certainly were societies with no classes or castes, devoid of private property and without a competitive economic system. These societies were small in scale. Karl Marx referred to them as ‘Primitive Communism’.

Jim Morrison

Like everyone else around the world who left their satellite/cable TV on over the last 24+ hours, I’ve just absorbed over a day’s worth of wall-to-wall Michael Jackson mass media hysteria.

Much of it has been presented by lying shysters such as Larry King, who on my observation revelled in this tortured artist’s troubles while the poor man was still alive.

I think it’s time to post about something completely different.

This is about another ’star’ that I miss – although I was barely aware of his existence during his lifetime.

Larry King: loves Michael Jackson, especially now he's dead

This is about Jim Morrison, who in my opinion was THE outstanding rock and roll poet of his generation.

Jim Morrison died before he was 30.

The video below conveys the power of a revolutionary music. It’s mysteriously, yet powerfully motivating. ‘The Doors’ was named after Aldous Huxley’s ‘The Doors of Perception‘.

When I travelled from country to country in the 1970s, shared familiarity with this haunting music was a passport to friendship with so many people from very different cultures, whether Hindu or Buddhist, Muslim or something else.

I believe Riders on the Storm is the warning we’ve so far failed to heed  - and no, this is not a claim to superior insight into the ‘real meaning’ of the words of an artist I didn’t know.

Another mixed week in Australia's news for Jews - but bullying anti-Zionists is a constant

Does the Australian Jewish News need to promote bigotry and paranoia to sell advertising? Or does it just like promoting bigotry and paranoia with the Jewish community – along with very curious standards for Australian citizenship?

The video below is not quite up to Max Blumenthal’s standards. Even so, it gives viewers some insight into the mentality of Jewish Zionists within Australia. The question posed, to a selection of Jews in Australia, was: “What would you say to Jews who dont believe Israel should exist?”

Responses include:

• You are traitors
• I would feed you to the Arabs
• You should be ashamed of youselves
• You’re disgusting
• You are a disgrace to our religion
• It’s very important for Jews to have a place where we feel welcome and not being persecuted
• Israel’s being is the…. most important thing for all the Jewish communities around the world

A few questions…

Does the woman with a strong Australian accent, who believes anti-Zionist Jews are ‘traitors’, consider them traitors to Australia – or to Israel? What does she mean by “feed them to the Arabs?” Does she consider Arabs carnivorous beasts? Is that a suitable stereotype to use to sell advertising space in a prominent newspaper such as the AJN?

Does the young woman, with an American accident, really feel persecuted in north America, Australia etc? If so, on what basis?

Mike Wallace and the Subversion of Democracy

Part 3 of 3: Celebrating Dominance

This is the final segment of a three part series concerning the veteran CBS interviewer Mike Wallace – and issues of freedom, democracy, subversion and manipulation. In Part One, a young Mr Wallace intervewed Aldous Huxley, a man who gave more informed consideration to the likely future directions of authoritarianism that most in his generation. Wallace asks Huxley a very curious question about freedom.

Iranian President Ahmenidijad portrayed as an 'Islamo-fascist'

In the Part 2 – Concealing the Conspiracy – we saw Wallace interview the Shah of Iran in the 1970s – and provide commentary on Iranian affairs at the time. Acting through agents such as Wallace, Zionists in the west pushed to destablize the Shah and usher in Iran’s Islamic Revolution.

Along with the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1982, this had a number of flow-on effects. It split Eygpt from Iran; led to war between Iraq and Iran; set the ‘Iranian hostage crisis’ trap, depriving Jimmy Carter of a second term as President; laid the foundations for the Iran-contra affair; led to a savage new round of repression of the left within Iran.

"And the winner is..." (Zionism?)

The resulting mayhem and bloodshed eventually killed millions in different parts of the middle east, especially Iraq and Iran. The key beneficary was the State of Israel.

Mike Wallace and the Subversion of Democracy

Part 2 of 3: Concealing the Conspiracy

At the height of his career as lead reporter on CBS 60 Minutes, Mike Wallace interviewed Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the Shah of Iran, in 1974 – and again in 1976.

At the time, the Shah’s hold on power within Iran seemed impregnable.

Note how Mike Wallace appears incredulous when the Shah ‘candidly’ discusses the enormous influence of the American Zionist Lobby. Even so, the Shah presses his point with some skill.

While it’s often an interviewer’s role to play ‘devil’s advocate’, Wallace was surely disingenuous in his reaction. He would certainly have known about the power of the Jewish/Zionist Lobby within the US mass media. After all, Wallace was part of it himself.

Born Myron Leon Woleck in 1918 of Jewish parentage, Mr Wallace rose to prominence within a Jewish-owned television network. Along with the the other major US TV networks, CBS  had a strong pro-Zionist bias throught his entire career.

The Shah: surprisingly candid...

Wallace may well have surprised by the Shah’s quite open criticism of the power of The Jewish/Zionist Lobby. It was rarely discussed in public within the USA at the time – and remains something of a taboo subject to this day, although in recent years the taboo has been weakening.

American support for the Shah evaporated soon after the 1976 interview. When Jimmy Carter came to power in 1977, Iran became a key target of the new President’s pro-human rights overseas policies.