Cole, Edward Bernays, Bulgaria

Juan Cole not now radical?
"In Indonesia during the past decade, it is democracy that has gone from strength to strenght, [sic]"
I just added Juan Cole to my RSS feed (where I spend most of my waking hours natch]
I note that JC, who was a great anti-Iraq war writer, now has hitched his wagon to the Iran-election-stolen star and,evidently, Indonesia is fine...
guess I'll delete his rss feed... me, I'm a fan of Ahmadinejad... hes never said a wrong thing... not sure about that 'halo' in the UN but...
must be a free-Papua feed I can replace him with...
re Jakarta, I note the kiwi who got fragged in his luxury hotel was "liked by everyone" - well I guess the JI wasnt on the "everyone" list.

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Orwellian...

On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.
In a move that angered customers and generated waves of online pique, Amazon remotely deleted some digital editions of the books from the Kindle devices of readers who had bought them.

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Joli
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Hilary as tough cop, not a good look

Citing the disastrous 2003 US invasion of Iraq as an example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today warned that by continuing to refuse to abandon its civilian nuclear program, Iran was risking the possibility of an invasion by the US or “some other enemy that would do that to them.”

The comments came during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” program, and when asked by interviewer and former Clinton-era official George Stephanopoulus, Secretary Clinton reiterated “that’s right, as a first strike.”
antiwar

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Unnecessary War, Unnecessary Empire
Pat Buchanan on the folly of U.S. intervention in WWII,,,
com
dissentradio

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Pilger 15July

...Edward..Bernays, described as the father of the media age, was the nephew of Sigmund Freud. “Propaganda,” he wrote, “got to be a bad word because of the Germans . . . so what I did was to try and find other words [such as] Public Relations.” Bernays used Freud’s theories about control of the subconscious to promote a “mass culture” designed to promote fear of official enemies and servility to consumerism. It was Bernays who, on behalf of the tobacco industry, campaigned for American women to take up smoking as an act of feminist liberation, calling cigarettes “torches of freedom”; and it was his notion of disinformation that was deployed in overthrowing governments, such as Guatemala’s democracy in 1954.
antiwar

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antiwar

Bulgaria ...Sofia, though a member of the EU and NATO and a client of Washington, nonetheless signed enery agreements with Moscow. At the time of the gas crisis in January ‘09, well-informed analysts predicted that Washington might seek regime-change in Bulgaria for that very reason.
Sure enough, just a week after the July 5 general elections, Bulgaria signed on to Nabucco.

Empire’s Pet Project
The July 5 vote went overwhelmingly in favor of a new party, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), led by Boyko Borisov. .One of the first things he did, however, was to suspend the existing energy contracts with Moscow,...the South Stream and a nuclear power plant project.

On Monday, July 13, representatives of Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Turkey officially signed the deal to begin the construction of Nabucco. ...The U.S. was represented by Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy Richard Morningstar and Sen. Richard Lugar..

The fact that Washington has a "special envoy for Eurasian energy" in the first place, and that he was present at the signing, indicates that Nabucco is more than just a project for European energy supply. Nabucco is supposed to provide a mere 10 percent of Europe’s gas needs if and when it is completed – and assuming the conglomerate finds a supplier – and that Washington and Brussels have ruled out Iran as a source, and everything points to the conclusion that Nabucco is not business, but politics.

Pattern of Hostility
..Now Obama comes to Moscow and lectures Russians about sovereignty, democracy, and international law, even though his own country is the prime violator of all three. Meanwhile, the U.S. is sponsoring a pipeline seeking to bypass Russia....

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Rock Fail
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AT&T has donated handsomely to McCain's International Republican Institute (IRI). McCain chairs this group and though he seldom talks about it, he has gotten much of his foreign policy experience working with the operation that is funded by the U.S. government and private money. The IRI, which receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year, claims to promote democracy worldwide. In 2006, AT&T gave the IRI $200,000. AT&T spokesman Michael Balmoris declined to elaborate on why the international telecommunications provider wrote a big check. "AT&T contributes to a variety of charitable organizations," he said flippantly.

IRI and Telecom Agenda in Latin America

The IRI has fought against regimes in Latin America that resist privatization of the telecom industry. In Venezuela, where the government nationalized the telecom firm CANTV, IRI generously funded anti-Chávez civil society groups that were opposed to the regime. Starting in 1998, the year Chávez was elected, IRI worked with Venezuelan organizations to produce anti-Chávez media campaigns, including newspaper, television, and radio ads.
buzzflash

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Uzi Arad
This guy needs an anthrax booster shot
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stuff
John Minto has a blog, but no RSS feed.... zut alors...

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NZ credit based on #1Tourism #2 fancy animal protein ..... gosh, those will look good (not) on the national CV After the money's gone..