Comments on Antony Loewenstein: News bytes

Shabadoo said... it's harder to get into that cou...

2005-12-16T05:58:00.000+11:00

Shabadoo said...
it's harder to get into that country than the royal sydney golf club - you'd be S.O.L. on account of being jewish!

Jews can join the Royal Sydney Golf Club ..... now. (I'm not so sure about Palestinians however. Time do change however.)

As usual Shab, you continue to shift the argument ...

2005-12-11T13:28:00.000+11:00

As usual Shab, you continue to shift the argument rather than admit that your logic is being diced.

Your throw up one argument, and when it's rebutted, you throw up another one, pending that you are winning along the way.

How many millions did Chavez win by? How many elections did Chavez have handed to him by a stacked high court? That the only thing you can actually come back with is my spelling shows how pathetic you are.

Someone so obsessed with spelling usually needs a really strong laxative. In you case, Drano might be in order.

Addamo, your cluelessness is almost as hysterical ...

2005-12-11T13:02:00.000+11:00

Addamo, your cluelessness is almost as hysterical as your spelling...how many millions did Dubya win by?

Little tip: you'll never win future elections if you keep fighting the last ones.

BTW. Shaby,Seeing as you worship the example bein...

2005-12-11T11:25:00.000+11:00

BTW. Shaby,

Seeing as you worship the example being set in the land fo the free, you might want to chekc out what's going on in Ohio.

A law that will make democracy all but moot in Ohio is about to pass the state legislature and to be signed by its Republican governor.[with the lowest governor approval on record (5%-8%)]. Despite massive corruption scandals besieging the Ohio GOP, any hope that the Democratic party could win this most crucial swing state in future presidential elections, or carry its pivotal US Senate seat in 2006, are about to end. House Bill 3's most publicized provision will require positive identification before casting a vote. But it also opens voter registration activists to partisan prosecution, exempts electronic voting machines from public scrutiny, quintuples the cost of citizen-requested statewide recounts and makes it illegal to challenge a presidential vote count or, indeed, any federal election result in Ohio. When added to the recently passed HB1, which allows campaign financing to be dominated by the wealthy and by corporations, and along with a Rovian wish list of GOP attacks on the ballot box, democracy in Ohio could be all but over.

Who the hell wants this kind of democracy? At least the mullahs are frank about their despotism.

Who gives a crap how many voted for him Shab? Why...

2005-12-11T11:21:00.000+11:00

Who gives a crap how many voted for him Shab? Why don't you ask all those who didn't come to vote against him?

Of course, you vould do what you always do and run to Timmy Blair for his take on it.

p.s. a couple of other things: to the person who s...

2005-12-11T10:37:00.000+11:00

p.s. a couple of other things: to the person who said that chavez was loved by the "hoi polloi", why did only 25% turn out to vote for him?

and anty, what's the point of this idiotic saudi reporter ripping up his visa application? rank arab hypocrisy i reckon; have you ever seen the saudi visa application? it's harder to get into that country than the royal sydney golf club - and in both cases, you'd be S.O.L. on account of being jewish!

OMG, addamo, your typo/malapropisms get funnier by...

2005-12-11T10:11:00.000+11:00

OMG, addamo, your typo/malapropisms get funnier by the day..."a fairly poultry sum"!?!?!?!? MaGRo herself couldn't come up with anything as good!

Calling Whitlam's government shady and inept is a ...

2005-12-11T04:36:00.000+11:00

Calling Whitlam's government shady and inept is a fair and balanced assessment.

... the Chinese have never shown expansionist desi...

2005-12-11T04:30:00.000+11:00

... the Chinese have never shown expansionist desires.

Tibet?
Taiwan?
Mongolia?

Read some history westmore.

I have mentioned it before, but John Perkins "Conf...

2005-12-10T16:37:00.000+11:00

I have mentioned it before, but John Perkins "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" is a true eye opener in this regard. It is the account of an economist who's job it was to cook the books so that 3rd world countries would be able to secure loans they woudl never be able to pay.

This would ensure the country in question woudl be forced to give over it's natural recources to US interests for next to nothing and keep the country under the thumb.

When the leaders of such countries could not be bought, Perkins talks about how the jackals (the CIA) were brought in to create unrest in the country. I that failed, then there was the miltary opition.

Before Chavez, there was Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama, both who accidently (not) died in fiery crashes.

Here is a brief interview Perkins did last year.

http://www.democracynow.org/print.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

neoleftychick says..And haven't you read about the...

2005-12-10T16:12:00.000+11:00

neoleftychick says..

And haven't you read about the processes, events, and personalities that drove matters in 1974 and 1975? They had absolutely nothing to do with the United States, and the fact that you insinuate otherwise helps to put many of your other bizarre political and historical "insights" into some perspective.

Absolute rubbish from your blind side, neoleftychick. While Kerr the cur may have acted independently (from the US at least, but it's hardly likely he wasn't in cahoots with Fraser, who must have KNOWN his tightrope was not going to snap) it is ridiculous to assert that the US wasn't busy in Australian politics in 1974-75, undermining the Whitlam govt. You obviously haven't heard of Christopher Boyce or Pine Gap for a start, or have chosen to forget about them.

The various pieces of puny financial kite flying that the media exaggerated to make the Labor govt. look scandalously shady and inept, were, as addamo has said, 'poulty' (was ever a typo more apt?)... and paltry. Ironically, at the next election after that Fraser, who had led the charge against the profligate Labor bastards who wanted to borrow so much, trumpeted something like $4billion dollars of loans from overseas that were going to do miraculous things to the economy.

On Chavez - haven't we heard this story before? Chile? Nicaragua? One thing that really gets up the noses of the right wingers like shab is that leaders like Allende, Chavez, Ortega and even Castro (till he made himself a dictator, but the US doesn't need such extreme action as an excuse to start its subterfuge) manage to retain the respect of the hoipolloi. The 1984 elections in Nicaragua, won by Ortega, were generally found to be free and fair, yet were boycotted by many opposition parties and former Somozistas. After that? You dont hear much about the Contras any more, or Oliver North. Anyway, the Contras' destabilisation of the country and American cash must have contributed a great deal to the defeat of the Sandinistas in 1990, after they had been expected to win.

While no government is perfect, Sandinistas or Chavez or Whitlam not excepted, there is no just cause for intervention of the type usually engineered by the USA, a country in which the unemployment rate is kept artificially low by the vast number of men in prison.

neoleftychick said... Australia is strategically i...

2005-12-10T15:09:00.000+11:00

neoleftychick said...

Australia is strategically isolated and vulnerable nation with a small population.

Vulnerable? Hardly. The only nation that can seriously threaten us militarily is the U.S.A. No one in our region has the capacity to land more than a token force here.

China may be able to in a couple of decades, but the Chinese have never shown expansionist desires. If we come to blows with them it'll be from following the Americans.

Nothing to do with Jews or Israel or Mossad Lefty....

2005-12-10T15:07:00.000+11:00

Nothing to do with Jews or Israel or Mossad Lefty. I think it's you that's getting a little paranoid.

The US has always had lot of leverage over banking, along with the UK. How else did Wolf get his position?

addamoOh dear. Another Mossad and Sep. 11. The "or...

2005-12-10T15:03:00.000+11:00

addamo

Oh dear. Another Mossad and Sep. 11. The "orientalists" are clearly bang on the money!

I am not discounting the other factors Lefty, but ...

2005-12-10T15:00:00.000+11:00

I am not discounting the other factors Lefty, but the fact that no financial institution inthe world was prepared to lend Australia a fairly poultry sum to buy back industry from foreign ownershiup smacks of US influence.

addamoAnd haven't you read about the processes, ev...

2005-12-10T14:47:00.000+11:00

addamo

And haven't you read about the processes, events, and personalities that drove matters in 1974 and 1975? They had absolutely nothing to do with the United States, and the fact that you insinuate otherwise helps to put many of your other bizarre political and historical "insights" into some perspective. ;)

Conspiracy Lefty? Darl, haven't you heard of Whit...

2005-12-10T14:38:00.000+11:00

Conspiracy Lefty? Darl, haven't you heard of Whitlam's plan to Buy Back thr Farm? Your perception of history is a tad limited.

antonyThere is no backbone without planes, boats, ...

2005-12-10T14:32:00.000+11:00

antony

There is no backbone without planes, boats, guns, and bombs. It is as simple as that. Australia is strategically isolated and vulnerable nation with a small population. We don't really have the luxury of eschewing powerful friends.

addammo

Again with the conspiracy nonsense. WHERE do you learn your history?

Yes, it's a really free press they've got there.B...

2005-12-10T14:26:00.000+11:00

Yes, it's a really free press they've got there.

Bitch all you want about a compliant press and sedition laws here, but name me a journo who's gone to jail here for "disrespecting" Howard?

Poor Whitlam tried that and look at what happened ...

2005-12-10T14:16:00.000+11:00

Poor Whitlam tried that and look at what happened to him.

Any kind of independence from the US is heresy and...

2005-12-10T14:13:00.000+11:00

Any kind of independence from the US is heresy and must be dealt with, according to some.
Shame most Western countries don't grow a backbone, like Australia.

Yeah Shab, I can tell you’re really pissed about V...

2005-12-10T14:08:00.000+11:00

Yeah Shab,

I can tell you’re really pissed about Venezuela. And sorry to break it to you mate, but if poverty and repression were on the increase, then Chavez wouldn’t have a base, seeing as the elite hate his guts. It was the poor after all that reversed the US sponsored coup in 2003 after all.

Facts sucks don't they?

The poor turnout was because Chavez's majority was a foregone conclusion. The poor all halve health care and he’s even providing cheap oil to poor US districts. What a black eye for the Bushies that in is!!

In fact, what you don't realize is that Venezuela's press is more free than just about any Western country, which being run by elites, is highly critical of Chavez.

Best you run back to Timmy baby with something more substantial than this lame piece Shab.

Steven Rosen, former the director of foreign-polic...

2005-12-10T14:01:00.000+11:00

Steven Rosen, former the director of foreign-policy issues at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was once quoted as saying “A lobby is like a night flower: it thrives in the dark and dies in the sun.”

You can read the articel from the New Yorker here:

REAL INSIDERS
A pro-Israel lobby and an F.B.I. sting.
by JEFFREY GOLDBERG
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050704fa_fact

So judgig by this, it would be the objective of a group like AIPAC to perpetuate the idea that it's influence is modest.

Gotta love an election where the opposition didn't...

2005-12-10T13:57:00.000+11:00

Gotta love an election where the opposition didn't even bother showing up, and where the voters stayed home in droves in protest. Poverty and repression grow unabated in Venezuela, while he pulls political stunts like offering oil to Massachussetts (shades of Mao's giving grain to the Soviets while Chinese starved). And of course, now that he's got a supermajority, he's essentially dictator for life, he can remove the two-term limit.

More here.

I know much is made of the power of AIPAC. My read...

2005-12-10T12:36:00.000+11:00

I know much is made of the power of AIPAC. My reading is that AIPAC's power is exaggerated by the Usual Suspects.

I have also often heard of the "christian Zionists." What is a good source that meticulously documents the power of organised Xian groups in influencing pro-Israel decision-making in the US?

I would imagine that a lot of "Xian Zionists" are like athiest Zionists (such as myself), whose views are not influenced by Xian lobby groups. My own Zionism is rooted in my liberal/left politics.