No longer trusting what they read and see and hear, people in western democracies are questioning as never before, particularly via the internet. Why, they ask, is the great majority of news sourced to authority and its vested interests? Why are many journalists the agents of power, not people?
This is a purely military-centric game – the logic of the whole mechanism ultimately decided in Washington, not in Brussels. It’s about NATO expansion, not ‘democracy’. When neo-con State Department functionary Victoria Nuland had her 15 seconds of fame recently, what she actually meant was “We’re NATO, F**k the EU.” No wonder there will be an urgent NATO Defense Ministers meeting in Brussels on Wednesday, centered on Ukraine.
Brandishing the official excuse that near-nonagenarian King Abdullah was not able to receive him, Charles of Arabia declined to discuss with the House of Saud the absolutely appalling women’s rights, migrant workers’ rights and for that matter the full human rights situation in the kingdom. Of course not; this is only brought up when demonizing Russia, China and/or Iran.
These changes could also reduce household debt. In the current system, new money is only created when banks lend. Banks will only lend if someone is willing to go into debt. That is why the government wants to fuel growth by encouraging more household borrowing. But with household debt at its highest level in history, any further increase could lay the foundations for another financial crisis. Only the Bank of England has the ability to create new money without having to wait for someone to go into debt.
Despite the entire industry, both private and governmental, devoted to whipping up fear, it is plain to pretty well everyone by now that terrorism is about the most unlikely way for you to die. A car accident is many hundreds of times more likely. Even drowning in your own bath is more likely. Where is the massive industry of suppression against baths?
That such repressive measures come from British political culture is to be expected. The political elite of that country cling desperately to 17th century feudal traditions. Grown adults who have been elected or appointed to nothing run around with a straight face insisting that they be called “Lord” and “Baroness” and other grandiose hereditary titles of the landed gentry. They bow and curtsey to a “Queen”, who lives in a “palace”, and they call her sons “Prince”.
It’s laudable for Prince William to campaign to protect these endangered animals – at stake is nothing less than the survival of the African and Asian elephants – but his sincerity would ring a lot more true if he showed the same respect for other animals, instead of shooting and killing them without a second thought.
A covert game is being played with protest groups in this country which requires that the general population (and media) readily believe the propaganda of establishment voices. This game has absolutely nothing to do with protecting the public and everything to do with protecting corporate profits.
Britain’s rulers went to war, therefore, not to protect little Catholic Belgium, or so that small nations might be free, but in the selfish interests of a class that profited from privileges gained by governing an empire on which the sun was not supposed to set. In the process this class was entirely indifferent to the mass slaughter that inevitably ensued.
The US Empire, in its efforts to contain, and therefore dominate and control such a strategic and resource-rich region, is more than content to allow its reactionary and sectarian clients to incite the conflict necessary to subvert, fracture and divide the inevitable power a unified Middle East could claim: if only their progressive aspirations and unity were not repeatedly “set back” by Zionist occupation and manufactured antagonism.
The recent media coverage of severe floods in the UK demonstrates this assimilation and herd mentality of corporate media professionals about as well as any other topic today. No matter how extreme the weather, and how awful the hardships endured by ordinary people in the floods, the culpability of corporate-driven industrial ‘civilisation’, its inherent ecological unsustainability, and the urgent need for radical changes, must not be addressed in any meaningful way.
Suspicions are being raised in Geneva, Syria and among certain UN aid agencies in Homs and elsewhere that those they are trying to save from starvation, were ‘set-up’ to fail as a result of power politics and influences emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv.
