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.
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.
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.
Armchair counter-espionage
Cartoon from the Manawatu Standard of October 10, 2012. The cartoonist is Malcolm Evans.
Afghan interpreters face dicey future
The New Zealand Government has indicated it will give political asylum to some Afghans who have worked as interpreters for the New Zealand forces in Afghanistan.
The cartoon is from the Manawatu Standard of October 9, 2012. The cartoonist is Malcolm Evans.
Cloak-and-dagger stuff Down Under
The “new security law” is presumably the Search and Surveillance Act 2012, which provides for “warrantless entry to prevent offence or respond to risk to life or safety” — which means, as far as I can see, that the police can break into your house whenever they like. (See Part 2, Subpart 4.) The legislation also provides for “entry without warrant to find and avoid loss of evidential material relating to certain offences”. The cartoon is from the Manawatu Standard of October 2, 2012. The cartoonist is Malcolm Evans.
Click on the “search and surveillance bill” tag to read earlier comments on this legislation.
Hager exposes New Zealand’s role in Afghanistan
We hardly needed Nicky Hager to tell us that “nearly everything controversial or potentially unpopular [in Afghanistan] had been kept secret or concealed by military public relations”. Long before this book was published, I was exasperated by TVNZ’s “feel-good” coverage of the New Zealand war effort. Watching its occasional documentaries, one might have imagined that the New Zealand base in Bamiyan Province was a glorified Boy Scout camp. Too bad that the Afghan inter-
preters took the gloss off the last attempt to show that everything was hunkydory by approaching the TVNZ reporters and asking them to help the interpreters to get political asylum in New Zealand — so that they wouldn’t be killed by a vengeful Taliban after the Kiwis’ withdrawal.
The article was published in the Manawatu Standard on October 1, 2012.
McCully mouths ‘humanitarian’ claptrap at UN
“McCully” is Murray McCully, New Zealand’s Minister of Foreign Affairs. The cartoonist, Evans, observes that the UN is little more than a tool of US foreign policy — and that the US either “protects” or punishes civilians entirely in accordance with its strategic aims. The UN would, of course, have intervened in Syria, under the banner of R2P (“Responsibility to Protect”), if Russia and China, stung by the US-facilitated regime change in Libya, had not vetoed the resolution that would have ensured the Syrian regime quickly met a similar fate. The cartoon was published in the Manawatu Standard on October 1, 2012. The cartoonist is Malcolm Evans.
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