A modern day Rumi?

I think we may have a new master poet for the middle east.
He is a deep mystic who writes and speaks of unknown unknowns.
He is apparently called "Rummy", perhaps after the great sufi mystic also called "Rumi".

So enchanting is the new poet that the tail spin of American war in Iraq is described as a success story.

I really love Rumi. He is one of my favourite poets. He writes of his devotion to "the friend". Perhaps he was thinking mystically and prophetically of Mr Blair or Mr Reid.

America is running out of friends fast as they pack their bags and leave Iraq.

I wonder if Bushco has friends in Yorkshire. They are famously quoted about things being a "rum do."



t r u t h o u t - Maureen Dowd | W.'s Head in the Sand: "Talk about your unknown unknowns, as Rummy would say.

The National Strategy for Victory must have come from the same P.R. genius who gave President Top Gun the 'Mission Accomplished' banner about 48 hours before the first counterinsurgency war of the 21st century broke out in Iraq.

It's not a military strategy - classified or unclassified. It's political talking points - and not even good ones. Are we really supposed to believe that anybody, even the most deeply delusional Bush sycophant, believes the phrase 'Our strategy is working'?

The president talked about three neatly definable groups of insurrectionists. But, as Dexter Filkins reported in yesterday's New York Times, there are dozens, perhaps as many as a hundred, groups fighting the US Army in Iraq, and they have little, if anything, in common.

Mr. Bush's presentation claimed that the US was actually making progress in Iraq. But outside the Bush-Cheney-Rummy bubble, 10 more marines were killed by a roadside bomb outside Fallujah, for a total of 2,125 US military deaths so far.

The administration must realize it needs a real exit strategy, because it's advertising for one. The US Agency for International Development is offering more than $1 billion for anyone - anyone at all - who can come up with a plan to pacify and rebuild 10 Iraqi cities seen as vital in the war.

Maybe the White House should apply - Usaid's proffer says the 'invitation is open to any type of entity.'"

United Press International - Security & Terrorism - U.S. ex-general calls for Iraq pull out

The key point here is that the big winners out of Bush's Iraq adventure are Al quaida and Iran.
When the Brits go southern Iraq will be dominated by Iran.
Central Iraq will continue to be a refuge for terrorists from all over.

Only the puppet Government benefits from the coalition staying, and most of the coalition are already planning or implementing withdrawal.


Retired three star Lt. Gen. William Odom, writing for NiemanWatchdog.org, wrote that while President George W. Bush wants to bring democracy and stability to the Middle East, the only way to achieve that goal is for the U.S. armed forces to get out of Iraq now.

Odom, one of the most respected U.S. military analysts and a prominent figure at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington, wrote, 'We have seen most of our allies stand aside and engage in Schadenfreude over our painful bog-down in Iraq. Winston Churchill's glib observation, 'the only thing worse that having allies is having none,' was once again vindicated.

'There is no chance that our allies will join us in Iraq,' he wrote. '... Iraq is the worst place to fight a battle for regional stability. Whose interests were best served by the U.S. invasion of Iraq in the first place? It turns out that Iran and al-Qaida benefited the most, and that continues to be true every day U.S. forces remain there.'"

An Islamic empire from Indonesia to Spain

I missed the first references to "an Islamic empire", but this latest speech from Bush indicates to me at least that the war o terror is really a war against the re-emergence of Islam on the political map.
The drive to bring Turkey inside the EU is all part of trying to fight religious thinking with western secularism.

t r u t h o u t - Ray McGovern | Bush Offers "Clear Strategy" for Disaster: "Thursday 01 December 2005

But the bromide-heavy speech that President George W. Bush gave yesterday at the Naval Academy presents a clear strategy for quagmire and eventual disaster. Despite the gathering storm of opposition to his approach to the war in Iraq, the speech was bereft of new ideas, calling to mind the words of Emerson: 'A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.'

The problem is that this hobgoblin has consequences. Bush's renewed warning of a future 'Islamic empire from Indonesia to Spain' at first seemed to me as outlandish as President Ronald Reagan's warning that the Russians planned to transit Nicaragua to invade Texas. On second thought, Bush's concern may become self-fulfilling prophecy, since the course he is on could hardly be better designed to usher in an eventual Islamic, rather than American, 'empire.'"

Embedded=encapsulated=inside the regime's delusional bubble

I always remember my old school enemy Jeremy Paxman filmed running away as a youngish BBC foreign reporter.

These days the BBC avoids the risks of such exposure to real battle by embedding journalists inside "our forces". Can we blame them when we know that many unembedded journalists were simply shot dead by the Americans?

Nevertheless, given this problem, it rings hollow when the BBC claims commitment to "evidence based journalism" in relation to Iraq battles, unless evidence from inside the bubble is acceptable as good evidence. We know from multiple sources that it is not good evidence, however. America knows it lost the Vietnam war through reporting the truth. This time it determined to make sure all evidence was as skewed as the evidence for starting the war.

Thanks to the Blogoshere we know that the BBC gave us a false picture of the battle for Falluja, based on the Government's story rather than the observed facts.

This is more evidence to suggest the BBC has been taken over by the Government since Hutton. Why should we believe otherwise?


"Helen Boaden, director of BBC News, said earlier this year:

"We are committed to evidence-based journalism. We have not been able to

establish that the US used banned chemical weapons and committed other

atrocities against civilians in Falluja last November. Inquiries on the

ground at the time and subsequently indicate that their use is unlikely to

have occurred.” (Email forwarded to Media Lens, July 13, 2005)

Sadly, their use has occurred, as the Pentagon has now been forced to admit.

Readers may recall from previous media alerts that we did not know then

whether unusual or banned weapons ­ including cluster bombs, depleted

uranium, napalm, white phosphorus and poisonous gas ­ had been used in

Fallujah, or whether atrocities had been committed by ‘coalition’ forces

against civilians. We did know, however, that the BBC had consistently

overlooked credible testimony from multiple sources suggesting such weapons

had been used and such acts had taken place.

Last November, Fallujah was placed under “a strict night-time shoot-to-kill

curfew” with “anyone spotted in the soldiers’ night vision sights... shot”;

male refugees were prevented from leaving the combat zone; a health centre

was bombed killing 60 patients and support staff; refugees claimed that “a

large number of people, including children, were killed by American snipers”

and that the US had used cluster bombs and phosphorus weapons in the

offensive.

Recent US military offensives in Ramadi, Baghdadi, Hit, Haditha, Mosul, Qaim,

Tal Afar and elsewhere, have likely also killed many civilians and created

thousands more refugees. (For sources and further details see:

www.rememberfallujah.org/why.htm)"

t r u t h o u t - New York Times | Shake and Bake

t r u t h o u t - New York Times | Shake and Bake: "Shake and Bake
The New York Times | Editorial

Tuesday 29 November 2005

Let us pause and count the ways the conduct of the war in Iraq has damaged America's image and needlessly endangered the lives of those in the military. First, multilateralism was tossed aside. Then the post-invasion fiasco muddied the reputation of military planners and caused unnecessary casualties. The W.M.D. myth undermined the credibility of United States intelligence and President Bush himself, and the abuse of prisoners stole America's moral high ground.

Now the use of a ghastly weapon called white phosphorus has raised questions about how careful the military has been in avoiding civilian casualties. It has also further tarnished America's credibility on international treaties and the rules of warfare."

t r u t h o u t - Wilkerson Continues Assault on Bush, Cheney Was Powell hood whigged?

NOT the BBC version of Wlikerson. I am not sure it even makes sense.
The really important point is that even Bushco people are beginning to accept that Cheney's WHIG was covering their eyes, and making them look stupid.

t r u t h o u t - Wilkerson Continues Assault on Bush, Cheney: " Wilkerson blamed Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and like-minded aides. He said Cheney must have sincerely believed that Iraq could be a spawning ground for new terror assaults, because 'otherwise I have to declare him a moron, an idiot or a nefarious bastard.'"

What price a foolish war

The big question is whether Bushco will be held accountable for the debacle that is Iraq, or whether they will sneak out just as the American troops will sneak out.

On the Today programme this morning one of the Powell team more or less accused Cheney of war crimes and accused him outright of committing crimes against US law.

The investigation of Rove starts to go deeper.

What revelation will come next?
t r u t h o u t - James J. Zogby | Adrift and No Substantive Debate: "What had to come, has come. The question is no longer if American forces will be withdrawn, but how soon - and at what cost. In this respect, as in so many others, the obvious parallel to Iraq is Vietnam.

Confronted by a demoralized army on the battlefield and by growing opposition at home, in 1969 the Nixon administration started withdrawing most of its troops in order to facilitate what it called the 'Vietnamization' of the country. The rest of America's forces were pulled out after Secretary of State Henry Kissinger negotiated a 'peace settlement' with Hanoi. As the troops withdrew, they left most of their equipment to the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam - which just two years later, after the fall of Saigon, lost all of it to the communists.

Clearly this is not a pleasant model to follow, but no other alternative appears in sight."

t r u t h o u t - James J. Zogby | Adrift and No Substantive Debate

While the Americans debate the fact there is no debate on Iaq worth having, over here instead of a debate we have Minges Campbell blowing into the wind.

Still, the Tory leadership race is almost over.
Currently I expect Cameron to duck the issue.

t r u t h o u t - James J. Zogby | Adrift and No Substantive Debate: "Adrift and No Substantive Debate
By James J. Zogby
truthout | Perspective

Monday 28 November 2005

We are adrift in Iraq, and there is no serious policy debate equal to the dangers of the current situation. The problems are many.

It is not just that the Bush administration's current course isn't working, it's that there is no clarity as to what that course is. There are slogans: 'supporting our troops,' 'fighting terrorists there so we won't have to fight them here,' 'advancing democracy,' etc. They all sound clear and quite simple, but they do not provide a realizable goal, let alone a strategy. It should be clear by now that elections alone do not constitute a functioning democracy (either in Iraq or Afghanistan). With the original goal of a secular, Western-style democracy in Iraq exposed for the unrealistic objective it always was, there is a need for new metrics to measure success in Iraq."

art and terror

Veritas satire

evil live

t error

I love this stuff.

Go check out the mix of art music and poetry

We have to make a new st art

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold: Fitzgerald Targets Rove Again

It has taken a while, but now Fitzgeralsd seems to be moving forward again. It is looking bad for Rove, and for another top Bushco aid. We can't be sure which one yet though.

t r u t h o u t - Jason Leopold: Fitzgerald Targets Rove Again: "two things are very clear: either Rove will agree to enter into a plea deal with Fitzgerald or he will be charged with a crime, but he will not be exonerated for the role he played in the leak, based on numerous internal conversations Fitzgerald has had with his staff. If Rove does agree to enter into a plea, Fitzgerald is not expected to discuss any aspect of his probe into Rove, because Rove may be called to testify as a prosecution witness against Lewis 'Scooter' Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney. Libby was indicted last month on five counts of lying to investigators, perjury, and obstruction of justice related to his role in the leak.

Moreover, a second high-ranking official in the Bush administration also faces the possibility of indictment for making false statements to investigators about his role in the leak: National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley."

t r u t h o u t - Frank Rich: Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...

Working on the Cheyne gang
going down down down down!

Meanwhile the London Times has a front page full of the brutalisation of our own British Troops.

They clearly need to be brutalised before they go out and commit war crimes in Iraq.


t r u t h o u t - Frank Rich: Dishonest, Reprehensible, Corrupt ...: "each day brings slam-dunk evidence that the doomsday threats marshaled by the administration to sell the war weren't, in Cheney-speak, just dishonest and reprehensible but also corrupt and shameless. The more the president and vice president tell us that their mistakes were merely innocent byproducts of the same bad intelligence seen by everyone else in the world, the more we learn that this was not so. The web of half-truths and falsehoods used to sell the war did not happen by accident; it was woven by design and then foisted on the public by a P.R. operation built expressly for that purpose in the White House. The real point of the Bush-Cheney verbal fisticuffs this month, like the earlier campaign to take down Joseph Wilson, is less to smite Democrats than to cover up wrongdoing in the executive branch between 9/11 and shock and awe.

The cover-up is failing, however. No matter how much the president and vice president raise their decibel levels, the truth keeps roaring out. A nearly 7,000-word investigation in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times found that Mr. Bush and his aides had 'issued increasingly dire warnings' about Iraq's mobile biological weapons labs long after U.S. intelligence authorities were told by Germany's Federal Intelligence Service that the principal source for these warnings, an Iraqi defector in German custody code-named Curveball, 'never claimed to produce germ weapons and never saw anyone else do so.' The five senior German intelligence officials who spoke to The Times said they were aghast that such long-discredited misinformation from a suspected fabricator turned up in Colin Powell's presentation to the United Nations and in the president's 2003 State of the Union address (where it shared billing with the equally bogus 16 words about Saddam's fictitious African uranium)."

BBC NEWS | UK | Education | Islam underpins schools' lessons

Many years ago when I was training to be a teacher I did a practice in a Roman Catholic school.
The conflict between religion and secular state was palpable in the tension between the training agency and the school.

We used to have a department for education and science.
Now it is education and skills.

I guess we are not bothered about science in education anymore. We are running out of physics teachers in the state sector.

Mr Blair is obviously much more interested in faith education. He has an education minister from an extreme Catholic sect.

I guess we will soon have lots of Christian Schools that don't bother much with biology, and lots of Muslims Schools which don't have laboratories. Once upon a time the Muslims led the world in science. Not any more.

I wonder if we will soon have special science academies, where pupils are encouraged to believe in "science."

"Islam underpins schools' lessons

By Linda Pressly
Producer: Inside a Muslim School

BBC Radio 4 visits a privately-run Muslim school in Lancashire to see how Islam affects the curriculum and how such a school equips its students for their role in modern Britain."

Independent Online Edition > Another step in the creation of a police state

Another step in the creating of a police state.

Robert Fisk is warning us loud and clear of the demise of freedom in our country under Blair. He writes about the destruction of Al Jazeera in Baghdad by the Americans as well as the threat to destroy them elswhere in the middle east.

"Of course, al-Jazeera is no golden child of journalism. Its discussion programmes are often weighed down with uncompromising Islamists, its dutiful presentation of bin Laden's tiresome sermons balanced by interviews with
Western leaders far tougher than any questions put to al-Qa'ida's bearded leadership. But it is a free voice in the Middle East - and so was attacked by the Americans in Kabul and in Baghdad. And almost in Qatar. And thus British journalists must now be suppressed by Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara if they dare to reveal the latest revelation from the dark and bloody pit into which Messrs Blair and Bush have plunged us."


Independent Online Edition > UK Politics: "The decision of the Attorney General, Lord Goldsmith, to approve the prosecution and warn the media against coverage of the leaked document has surprised many at Westminster. The affair has renewed accusations of 'control freakery' by the Government. MPs said the decision to go to court and gag the media was 'heavy handed' and a sign that Tony Blair was losing his grip on power. Some in Whitehall see it as a 'warning shot' to journalists following a string of embarrassing leaks revealing the internal workings of Tony Blair's government."

Iraq Torture Like Saddam's Era Claim - Yahoo! News UK

Well now!
The first puppet prime minister of Iraq is not happy.
He thinks there is less liberty and more torture now than in Saddam's day.
Meanwhile the British army dresses its corporals as school girls and encourages naked fighting, where the loser is kicked unconscious. Unless that was just to encourage him to fight harder.

The authorities, who have been handed a film of the event involving our marines, has suggested that punishment will be in order, if rules have been broken.

That leaves me unsure if this kind of thing is a normal part of our forces training.

That would not be surprising. Other reports include stories of face sitting among recruits, which remind us of the happy little chappies in Abu whatever.

After all, two police inquiries have concluded that an army recruit managed to shoot himself in the head, not once, but twice.

God, our chaps are good! That shows incredible talent and amazing determination.

"Never say die".

Sorry! Not the right expression that time.

More like, "if at first you don't succeed try try try again". Well done private. See what the public school system does for us.
"Iraq Torture Like Saddam's Era Claim
Sky News Sunday November 27, 01:21 PM

Iraq's former prime minister claims human rights abuses are now as bad as they were under Saddam Hussein's rule.Ayad Allawi said Iraqis opposed their former dictator because of human rights abuses but now 'people are doing the same as (in) Saddam's time and worse'.Mr Allawi, talking to The Observer, accused fellow Shi'ites in the government of being responsible for death squads and secret torture centres.

The brutality of some security officers rivals that of Saddam's secret police, he said."

Sunday laugh time

This came in this morning. There is an attribution below, but I have seen much of this before unattributed.

Enjoy.

DEMOCRATIC
You have two cows
Your neighbor has none.
You feel guilty for being successful.
Barbara Streisand sings for you.

REPUBLICANISM
You have two cows.
Your neighbor has none.
So what?

SOCIALIST
You have two cows.
The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.
You form a cooperative to tell him how to manage his cow.

COMMUNIST
You have two cows.
The government seizes both and provides you with milk.
You wait in line for hours to get it.
It is expensive and sour.

RALPH NADER'S PARTY

No one has any cows because they are considered unsafe and are regarded as religious symbols

LIBERTARIANISM

You have fifty cows.

One neighbor has thirty-two cows

Another neighbor has forty-five cows.

Everyone is happy because the government not involved and there are no taxes.

People who want milk or steak, pay for it in gold.

CAPITALISM, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
You sell one, buy a bull, and build a herd of cows.

BUREAUCRACY, AMERICAN STYLE
You have two cows.
Under the new farm program the government pays you to shoot one, milk the other, and then pour the milk down the drain.

AMERICAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You sell one, lease it back to yourself and do an IPO on the 2nd one. You force the two cows to produce the milk of four cows. You are surprised when one cow drops dead. You spin an announcement to the analysts stating you have downsized and are reducing expenses. Your stock goes up.


FRENCH CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You go on strike because you want three cows.
You go to lunch and drink wine.
Life is good.

JAPANESE CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.
They learn to travel on unbelievably crowded trains.
Most are at the top of their class at cow school.

GERMAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You engineer them so they are all blond, drink lots of beer, give excellent quality milk, and run a hundred miles an hour. Unfortunately they also demand 13 weeks of vacation per year.

ITALIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows but you don't know where they are.

While ambling around, you see a beautiful woman.
You break for lunch.
Life is good.

RUSSIAN CORPORATION
You have two cows.
You have some vodka.
You count them and learn you have five cows.
You have some more vodka.
You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.
The Mafia shows up and takes over however many cows you really have.

TALIBAN CORPORATION
You have all the cows in Afghanistan, which are two.
You don't milk them because you cannot touch any creature's private parts. You get a $40 million grant from the US government to find alternatives to milk production but use the money to buy weapons.

IRAQI CORPORATION
You have two cows.
They go into hiding.
They send radio tapes of their mooing.

POLISH CORPORATION
You have two bulls.
Employees are regularly maimed and killed attempting to milk them.

BELGIAN CORPORATION
You have one cow.
The cow is schizophrenic.
Sometimes the cow thinks he's French, other times he's Flemish.

The Flemish cow won't share with the French cow.
The French cow wants control of the Flemish cow's milk.
The cow asks permission to be cut in half.
The cow dies happy.

FLORIDA CORPORATION
You have a black cow and a brown cow.
Everyone votes for the best looking one.
Some people who actually like the brown one best accidentally vote for the black one.
Some people vote for both.
Some people vote for neither.
Some people can't figure out how to vote at all.
Finally, a bunch of guys from out-of-state tell you which one you think is the best-looking cow.

CALIFORNIA CORPORATION
You have millions of cows.
They make real California cheese.
Only five speak English.
Most are illegals
Arnold likes the ones with the big udders.

Thomas "Rocky" Costanzo


British Corporation

You have two cows.
One is New Labour in Milton Keynes new town
It is modernist, and made of concrete
One is Tory
It no longer gives milk
Because the supermarkets pay too little for it
No one drinks milk any more anyway

t r u t h o u t - Paul Rockwell | How Do We Honor Our Fallen Troops in a Wrongful War?

"If any question why we died
Tell them because our fathers lied." Kipling.

My daughter is applying for her first job teaching.

She has even shown interest in the Combined Cadet Forces of our Public Schools.

At present we are all accessories to a terrible war crime. I cannot bare the thought of my daughter endorsing a system that, in the case of my own house in my own school, encouraged us to think "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

The thought of her actively encouraging our youth to be part of an active part of a state that invades other countries on the back of a conspiracy of lies is utterly sickening.

The Americans are moving fast on this one now.

As usual we are lagging.





"How Do We Honor Our Fallen Troops in a Wrongful War?
By Paul Rockwell
t r u t h o u t | Book Review

Friday 25 November 2005

A review of Cindy Sheehan's uplifting and soulful book.

The agony of war can transform any human being.

In 1914, at the outset of World War I, Rudyard Kipling, the bellicose poet of the British empire who coined the infamous phrase 'white man's burden,' urged his own son to join the British military. One week after his son enlisted, he was dead. Overwhelmed with grief, Kipling wrote two 'Epitaphs for War.' In the first, dead soldiers speak:

If any question why we died,
Tell them because our fathers lied.

In the second, 'The Dead Statesman,' a statesman speaks:

And now all my lies are proved untrue.
And I must face the men I slew.
What tale shall serve me here among
Mine angry and defrauded young.

There are many kinds of betrayal in human affairs - forgery, embezzlement, adultery, murder. But in the affairs of state, there is no greater disloyalty, no greater act of betrayal, than to send young men and women to their deaths on the basis of fraud.

To lie is to murder."

t r u t h o u t - Rep. Norm Dicks Sees War Vote as Mistake

First a democrat hawk now even a republican hawk wakes up and smells the putrifying rat of Bush's war.

t r u t h o u t - Rep. Norm Dicks Sees War Vote as Mistake: "Dicks thought Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and wouldn't hesitate to use them against the United States.

After visiting Iraq early in the war, 'Norm told me the Iraqis were going to be throwing petals at American troops,' Murtha said in an interview this week.

Dicks now says it was all a mistake - his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war.

While he disagrees with Murtha's conclusion that US troops should be withdrawn within six months, Dicks said, 'He may well be right if this insurgency goes much further.'"

Hard News: Life Goes On in Fallujah's Rubble

The story of Falluja continues.

Let us remember that it all began with a peaceful protest against US forces taking over a school. Just as in Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland 15 people were shot dead, when someone thought they heard a gun shot.

Violence just escalates. Murder leads to murder. Civilised people become barbarians. That is the way of war, especially an unjust war.

Hard News: Life Goes On in Fallujah's Rubble: "Dahr Jamail

SAN FRANCISCO, California, Nov 23 (IPS) - A year after the U.S.-led 'Operation Phantom Fury' damaged or destroyed 36,000 homes, 60 schools and 65 mosques in Fallujah, Iraq, residents inside the city continue to suffer from lack of compensation, slow reconstruction and high rates of illness.

The Study Centre for Human Rights and Democracy based in Fallujah (SCHRD) estimates the number of people killed in the city during the U.S.-led operation in October and November 2004 at 4,000 to 6,000, most of them civilians. Mass graves were dug on the outskirts of the city for thousands of the bodies."

TomDispatch - Tomgram: Jonathan Schell, Welcome to Camp Quagmire

This is beautiful writing. How sweet it is to move on from Thomas Hobbes.

I think we have seen an attempt to move from an American Republic to an empire. It is failing.
The citizens of Falluja will end as martyrs to the deafeat of the first global fascist dictatorship of the twenty first century.

Blair's decision to be the lieutenant of that imperial power will be his and our lasting shame and disgrace.

TomDispatch - Tomgram: Jonathan Schell, Welcome to Camp Quagmire: "'Most important, in the political arena, the United States is weak, precisely because in the contemporary world military force no longer translates easily into political rule. ‘Covenants, without the sword, are but words,' Hobbes said. Since then, the world has learned that swords without covenants are but empty bloodshed. The Romans in ancient times were able to convert military victories into lasting political power. The United States today cannot. In the political arena, the lesson of the world revolt -- that winning military victories may sometimes be easy but building political institutions in foreign lands is hard, often impossible -- still obtains."

t r u t h o u t - John Pilger | The News Revolution Has Begun

Here comes Pilger steeming up in support of Blairy England. He does not exactly say the BBC has been infiltrated, just that the BBC always supports the British establishment. The examples in my last two posts suggest it is now going further than that, though, actively massaging the news to make the British establishment look better.

Luckily more and more of us are finding the truth through the internet blog resports. There are several good ones mentioned below.

t r u t h o u t - John Pilger | The News Revolution Has Begun: " The BBC and most of the British political and media establishment invariably cast such a horror as a public relations problem while minimizing the crushing of a city the size of Leeds, the killing and maiming of countless men, women and children, the expulsion of thousands and the denial of medical supplies, food and water - a major war crime.

The evidence is voluminous, provided by refugees, doctors, human rights groups and a few courageous foreigners whose work appears only on the internet. In April last year, Jo Wilding, a young British law student, filed a series of extraordinary eye-witness reports from inside the city. So fine are they that I have included one of her pieces in an anthology of the best investigative journalism.* Her film, 'A Letter to the Prime Minister,' made inside Fallujah with Julia Guest, has not been shown on British television. In addition, Dahr Jamail, an independent Lebanese-American journalist who has produced some of the best frontline reporting I have read, described all the 'things' the BBC failed to 'see.' His interviews with doctors, local officials and families are on the internet, together with the work of those who have exposed the widespread use of uranium-tipped shells, another banned weapon, and cluster bombs, which Campbell would say are 'technically legal.' Try these web sites: dahrjamail.com, zmag.org, antiwar.com, truthout.org, indymedia.org.uk, internationalclearinghouse.info, counterpunch.org, voicesuk.org. There are many more.

'Each word,' wrote Jean-Paul Sartre, 'has an echo. So does each silence.'"