A brief orientation for the ‘self-radicalizing’ reader of this blog
When I started this blog, in 2009, I planned to post all my political and religious material here. (I already had a blog, kiwidollar.com, where I was posting my economic material.) But as time passed, I found that I needed yet another blog — a place where I could post personal comments and long articles that I had copied. This has now been running for some time here, under the title Hardcaw: Something to crow about. I have not tried to make blimpdeflator.com visually attractive, for reasons that will become apparent as you scroll down. It contains numerous newspaper clippings, which don’t lend themselves to any sort of aesthetic design. For that, you will have to go to my main site — Hourglass era.
Today, as in 1914, the military windbags have the national podium
Every Anzac Day, we hear the same line: When the bugle sounded, our brave boys went off to defend our freedom. And now, thanks to their sacrifice, we don’t have any beastly foreigners telling us what to do. Nothing is said about World War I setting the stage for World War II, or about World War II setting the stage for the Cold War — a confrontation that led, inexorably, to the endless “War Against Terrorism”. Nothing is said about the use of the latter contrivance to extend American power abroad, criminalize dissent at home, and subject everyone to unprecedented surveillance. In all the fulsome eulogies, there is no mention of the Nuremberg Principles, the Geneva Conventions, or the Conven-
tion Against Torture — all of which have been abandoned in the name of security.
The shape of things to come: A policeman in the sky keeps watch
The concept of all-seeing authority is as old as the technology that made it possible — as this Punch cartoon from 1914 shows. In 2010, Nicky Hager reported that new cyber-monitoring measures had been quietly introduced in New Zealand, giving police and security officers the power to monitor all aspects of a person’s online life. “The measures are the largest expansion of police and SIS surveillance capabilities for decades, and mean that all mobile calls and texts, email, internet surfing and online shopping, chatting and social networking can be monitored.”
Boston bombings editorial deserves award for ignorance
My reply to the paper, published on May 1, 2013, was as follows:
It wasn’t a case of George W Bush responding inappropriately to 9/11 by invading Afghanistan and Iraq (editorial, April 26). It was a case of 9/11 enabling GWB to implement a programme of aggression that was already in place. Indeed, 9/11 was eagerly anticipated by the neocons, who stated in Project for the New American Century that their hopes would be difficult to realise “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor”.
According to General Wesley Clark, former commander of Nato forces in Europe, the plan was to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”. Give or take one or two countries, and one or two changes in their order, that programme is still in place.
It’s too early to speculate about the aim of those behind the Boston bombings. Suffice it to say that there is no shortage of anomalies in the official narrative. Some of these become apparent in a frame-by-frame scrutiny of a film of events at one of the crime scenes, which initially shows no blood — despite what purports to be a severe injury.
Another interesting feature of the Boston bombings is that, as in the case of 9/11 in New York and 7/7 in London, a terror drill “coincidentally” scheduled for the same place at the same time, and “coincidentally” constructing the same scenario, somehow managed to go live. (Letter ends here.)
Note the confidence with which Acting Editor Rob Mitchell says the “masterminds [of 9/11] lived beyond America’s borders”. He evidently hasn’t read what Nicholas Rockefeller said to Aaron Russo in 2000 — 11 months before 9/11:
There’s gonna be an event, and out of that event we’re gonna invade Afghanistan to run pipelines from the Caspian Sea. We’re going to invade Iraq to take the oilfields and establish a base in the Middle East, and to make it all part of the New World Order…”
After quoting Rockefeller, Russo says: “In my relationships with some of these people, I can tell you, that’s as evil as it really gets.” So, Mr Mitchell, who are the real “bad guys”?
Sources: At the time of writing, Russo can be heard speaking (to Alex Jones) here. See also Prison Planet.
Same-sex marriage: Just a joke?
I have never involved myself in this issue, but believe in treating it seriously — without the locker-room jocularity of this cartoon by Manawatu Standard cartoonist Evans. It was published on April 18, 2013.
Lesson time at the Bush-Blair Library
The GCSB is the (New Zealand) Government Communica-
tions Security Bureau, which has recently been accused of spying illegally on New Zealanders. The cartoon is from the Manawatu Standard of April 17, 2013.
Invasion of Afghanistan wasn’t legal
In an article headlined “Afghan war troubling for Clark, Key”, published in the Manawatu Standard on April 6, 2013, reporter Tracy Watkins quotes former prime minister Helen Clark as saying:
I didn’t have any qualms about the legality [of Afghanistan]. It was absolutely legal. But it was also just the knowledge that Afghanistan as it was had been a failed state and, in failed states, very bad things can happen, including what are obviously terror groups like al Qaeda being able to move around with impunity.
Watkins continues: “She is comfortable she can look the families of all our combat casualties in the eye in the belief New Zealand did the right thing.”
I would say that without hesitation. Just as I would say to families who lost loved ones in World War II, the cause was right.
MY NOTE: So if a country is a “failed state” (as defined by us), it’s okay to invade it, and kill thousands, possibly hundreds of thousands, of people? And no doubt, like the criminal Tony Blair, she’d “do it all again”. See Helen Clark on Afghanistan in 2001 at hardcaw.com.
The North Korean ‘juggler’
Meanwhile, the United States threatens Iran with nuclear annihilation (“all options are on the table”) on a daily basis. The cartoon by Tom Scott is from The Dominion Post of April 9, 2013.
When only ‘selfish busybodies’ opposed smoking
Above: My letter of April 6, 2013, to the editor of the Manawatu Standard. The two doctors mentioned above were Charles Noble and David Chrisp. They deserve to be named and shamed. (Their names were in my original letter, but were removed by the editor.) Below: The 1978 Manawatu Standard article by then-editor John Harvey. During the next few years, he and tobacco industry groups tried to turn the “right to smoke” almost everywhere into a civil rights issue.
Take me with you, please
As in the case of Vietnam, the local collabora-
tors are desperate to leave with us. Cartoon by Malcolm Evans from the Manawatu Standard of April 6, 2013.
Way to crucifixion barred
If the Berlin Wall was an obscenity, why isn’t the Palestine Wall an obscenity? Cartoon by Malcolm Evans from the Manawatu Standard of March 28, 2013.
10th anniversary of the Iraq War
Cartoon by Malcolm Evans from the Manawatu Standard of March 20, 2013.
We’ll do almost anything to please our masters in Washington
Yes, that’s the long and the short of New Zealand’s “involvement” in Afghanistan. The cartoon, by Malcolm Evans, is from the Manawatu Standard of March 18, 2013.
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