This could be 1983

The Conservatives haven’t changed. It is true that they are the epitome of what it means to be wealthy, privileged, and have an in-built mechanism of contempt for anybody who isn’t wealthy and privileged. I find their politics to be vicious and nasty, and their economics to be self serving and hypocritical. They are typical of the type who wish to use a system to climb to the heights they have, and then burn the ladder up which they or their family before them, climbed.

They will always use the “deficit” (which isn’t that bad) to justify the unjustifiable, simply because no one except a tiny band of elite scumbags will ever accept their economic principles. Libertarianism is dangerous and unhealthy to a civilised society. It is built on the premise of judging a nation by how rich its most wealthy have become, how concentrated that wealth has become, rather than how society protects its most vulnerable.

Their language is arrogant, vicious, dirty, and out dated, to match their political stance. Here is a few examples of Tories being Tories.

Wandsworth Council today announced plans for the Autumn, to charge children £2.50 to use the local park. It is in response to the £55mn it needs to find in spending cuts. Instead of fighting the obvious manipulation of figures from the Treasury which suggest we’re on the verge of becoming Greece (which we aren’t), and instead of pointing out that the Treasury is in worse shape now than it was when Labour left office, and expected to get worse, with regard to inflation and unemployment……… the Council has just accepted the bullshit, and decided that along with the disabled and the unemployed, children should be the next to be hit. We now have more property millionaires than anywhere in Europe – creating an horrendous property apartheid especially in the South, we have a banking system that has managed to get away with causing chaos, and we have a mass of Corporate tax avoiders costing the system £25bn a year….. and yet Wandsworth Council think the way to go is to make children aware that from now on, any ounce of fun, is going to cost them money. The excuse? The same typical excuse Libertarians use all the time, the same tired, nasty excuse Tories have been using for decades:

“Why should Wandsworth taxpayers subsidise children from other boroughs?”

– Who thinks like that? It makes me squirm.
If that’s the case, why should the majority of left leaning voters (over 57% at the 2010 election) subsidise the jobs of a right wing government? I don’t want our family tax money to pay for our Tory MP to live so comfortably. I don’t want our tax money to go to paying a National debt whilst the very wealthy manage to pump their money into offshore accounts, and be allowed to claim expenses on running those offshore companies, against the UK tax they don’t pay. We are subsidising their ability to pay nothing. They couldn’t run a successful business in the UK, and offshore its profits, without functioning roads, a decent healthcare system, a property protection system like the police force, an education system to prepare their future workforce. And yet, their right to offshore, is supported by our Government who instead choose to attack children’s parks. Great.

The Tories main campaign poster in 2010 was this:
– So imagine our surprise when Mark Britnell, who made it into the Top Ten of the most influential people when it comes to healthcare in the country by the HSJ, former Director-General for Commissioning and System Management for the NHS and now “health policy expert” on David Cameron’s personal NHS advisory group said this to a group of Private Healthcare lobbies, organised by private equity firm Apax:

“In future, the NHS will be a state insurance provider not a state deliverer. The NHS will be shown no mercy and the best time to take advantage of this will be in the next couple of years.”

Minister for Health Andrew Lansley, who is worth an estimated £700,000, and spent the Labour years flipping his second home, claiming expenses for renovating a cottage designated his second home, before selling it for a tidy profit, before claiming for furniture for his flat in London now designated his second home, insists that he isn’t considering NHS privatisation. One wonders what his most charitable donor, John Nash, of Private Health company Care UK thinks about that. Nash donated £21,000 to Lansley’s private office, whilst they continue to make 96% of their profit from the NHS. Care UK stand to make a great deal more from increased involvement of the private sector in the NHS.

Cameron promised that front line jobs would not be cut from the NHS, before the election. Vowing to protect the NHS is a big vote winner in the UK. Cameron knew that. He then didn’t win the election, didn’t get a mandate, and so decided to rip the NHS to shreds. According to Unison, 500 jobs at St George’s Hospital in South London are to go, along with three wards and 100 beds. Similarly, Kingston Hospital in South West London announced that around 20% of its workforce will need to go, to meet the governments cost saving demands. The government repeatedly claims it is increasing spending on the NHS in real terms. Another lie. NHS spending is set to grow by less than under the Thatcher years, which is when the NHS was gutted almost to complete meltdown. Here’s how that “increase” looks on a graph:
Between 1997 and 2010, the number of doctors increased by 57% and nurses by 31%. Funding rose from around £1bn a year (less than Philip Green paid his family in dividends in 2009, which he financed by taking out a loan, which in turn reduced his Corporate tax rate as the interest on the loan could be offset against Corporate profits of his firm Arcadia) under the Tories, to £4.3bn under Labour, which increased the activity of the NHS by over 40%. It worked. We are healthier now than we were in the 1980s, we are living longer, and morale in the NHS was higher than the 1980s. Increases in spending this year, when adjusted for inflation, will be 0.024% from April 2011. Great. In fact, Sir David Nicholson, Chief executive of the NHS said this about the new spending plans for the NHS:

there has never been a time where we have had four years of flat real growth. It is unprecedented.

– There are many Tories that will argue consistently and poorly, that Osborne and the Tories are championing the NHS and funding it amazingly well beyond all recognition. Listening to them, is perilous.
Waiting lists are already sky rocketing. In Coventry, it was reported that there would be a 13 week waiting list for Hernia repair at Walsgrove University hospital. That has now increased to 26 weeks and should be considered “just a guideline” as lists are likely to increase again this year.
According to County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust:

Trust is undertaking a £60m cost cutting exercise to be delivered by 2014, including £20m in 2010/11. The trust is also cutting 300 beds. 300 nursing jobs will be lost through natural wastage Cumbria Partnership NHS Foundation Trust: equivalent cost savings of around 200 fewer jobs are required to meet financial targets. In cash terms, the trust is making cost efficiencies of £25m over 3 years. City Hospitals Sunderland: The Trust undertook a £22.5m cost cutting exercise for financial year just gone. NHS County Durham and Darlington : The NHS service providers in County Durham and Darlington are undertaking a £200m cost cutting exercise over the next 3 years. The trust is cutting 62 senior nurse posts and replacing them with 78 more junior posts. In addition, County Durham PCT has identified 110 management posts for redundancy.

The managerial posts are “in addition” to front line nursing.

Cameron told a female Labour MP in the House of Commons – the NATIONAL LEGISLATURE – to “calm down dear”. One wonders what Tory MP for Loughborough Nicky Morgan thought of this childish, sexist outburst from our Prime Minister, given that she was seen visibly laughing in the House of Commons at that pathetic remark, yet accused ME of being sexist when I simply asked if she had asked a planted question a few weeks back.
This comes a few weeks after Cameron took a swipe at ethnic minorities in his attack on multiculturalism, in which he mentioned Islam and Muslims 36 times in twenty minutes, and Sikh, Hindu, Jewish, Taoist, Buddhist not a single time. It was an attack on Islam, to the point where even Nick Griffin called the speech “provocative” and members of the EDL said that Cameron “understands us”.
That came about a week after Osborne referred to an openly Labour MP in the Commons as the “pantomime dame”. It isn’t surprising, their stance on homosexuality, given that whilst 100% of Lib Dems, and 99% of Labour MPs voted to repeal the nasty little Section 28 law that banned anything positive being said about homosexuality in schools, only 24% of Tories voted to repeal it. And whilst 100% of Lib Dems, and 95% of Labour MPs voted in favour of allowing gay adoption……. only 6% of Tories voted for it. So that’s homophobia, sexism, and racism all within a year. What else is left? Ah yes, class.
David Shakespeare, leaders of the Tory Councillor for Buckinghamshire Council said that poor northerners who are losing their jobs due to the cuts, should go down to London and pick the fruit of the land owners down south, instead of seeking job seekers allowance. He also said:

‘The North may replace the Romanians in the cherry orchards, that may be a good thing’

– Not even a necessary thing? Not even a regretful thing? A GOOD thing? He doesn’t mind kicking people out of their work and their jobs, he thinks it’s a great thing, because they’ll come to the south and work on his land for next to no money! He’s happy that the North is about to be gutted, again, of all funding whilst the south thrives, again, like the 1980s. Luckily I am from the Midlands, so I’m not sure i’d have to pick this overweight Tory prick’s fields, but i’m not sure if I have to bow as he drives past in his luxurious horse and cart.

Osborne announced this week that he was going to make it easier for companies to cut pay, cut pensions, dismiss people, and be allowed to get away with being discriminatory. In essence, he plans to make job security as unsafe as possible. It will be golden news to people like my boss. It is an attack on the workforce again. Presumably he will moan about Unions trying to hold the country to ransom whilst he attacks the rights of as many workers as possible, expecting us all to just bend over and take it. I hope the Unions unite and fight, I hope for a period of industrial action on a scale never seen before, and I hope a general strike is called as soon as possible If it is going to be a case of a very wealthy minority making life as miserable and difficult as possible for the many, then I hope the many fight back. Osborne claims employment rules are holding back job creation. He of course, is wrong. Job creation is held back significantly by a vast majority of big bosses plundering money into dodgy stocks or increasing their salaries beyond recognition. Why not cap private sector managerial wealth to a percentage of the lowest paid? Therefore when the lowest paid gets an increase, so does the highest paid. The extra-profit to be used to employ new people. Why attack the right of the workforce to a decent level of job security and working conditions? Why is that the only solution? Do you know what else creates job losses? It is happening on a smaller scale across the country, cuts are having affects on jobs and livelihoods. Cuts….

Derby’s Historic Industrial museum has had to close, 9 job losses.

Bishop Aukland College – 179 jobs losses.

South Tyneside College – 200 jobs to go.

Tyne Metropolitan College – 66 jobs to go.

Stockton Riverside College – 23 jobs to go.

City of sunderland College – 69 jobs to go.

Newcastle College – 171 jobs to go.

East durham college – 76 jobs to go.

New Cross library, Crofton Park library, Sydenham library, Grove Park library, Blackheath library all to close.

Oxford Brookes University – 400 support staff received “at risk” letters.

Diss weekly Youth Centre praised by police for helping troubled children, to close, and staff to lose their jobs.

Taunton Primary School – no more music teacher, no more music lessons.

A Big Society initiative – new volunteers to help out at museums in Hampshire – to replace 25 staff who have lost their jobs. Unpaid staff to replace paid staff. Great.

Five libraries in Lewisham to close.

Cuts to NHS disabled transport in Dumfries – jobs losses expected.

50% of pupil support assistants assigned to children with special needs, to be cut in Aberdeen.

21,000 job losses at Lloyds……..

….. former Lloyds boss Eric Daniels takes home a bonus of £1.45mn…..

….. new Lloyds boss António Horta-Osório takes a signing on fee of £6mn and a salary of £1.6mn.

In short, the poor need jobs to live. The rich need the poor to be as close to slaves as possible, reliant entirely on them to be able to eat, to be called lazy and scroungers and attacked as greedy if they unionise or refuse to work for a piss poor boss in piss poor conditions for piss poor pay. It is not a plan to increase job creation, it is a plan to enable the very wealthy, to get even more wealthy – to buy an extra yacht to fill the void in their soul – by asking more and more of their staff for as little as possible, and it’s always been the case. The project is designed to make people believe their tax money is wrongly being used, not just by people who claim to have a physical disability whilst they play tennis and golf 24 hours a day, but also by children playing on swings in the town next to yours, as opposed to the fact that your tax money is actually used to make sure that the wealthiest get massively insane tax cuts with Corporation tax expected to drop from 28% in 2010….. to 15% in 2020. That is what your tax money is funding. Make sure the man in the expensive house in Notting Hill thanks you for his lovely new Mercedes….. but don’t let your kids play on the park next to his house, you scrounging scumbag.

The progress the country has made since the hell of the 1980s, is about to be burnt to the ground. Do not be fooled into thinking this “has to be done”, it is Conservative party ideology, they have waited over a decade to have this chance.

They are attempting to replace compassion, with greed, and it’s working.

…solidarity to pure wind

“Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give the appearance of solidarity to pure wind.”
– George Orwell

Everybody on the planet is capable of synesthesic thought. Usually we only identify the most extreme and unusual cases of synesthesia and single them out for investigation at the most and a nice little story to tell your mates at the pub at the least. Synesthesia is the ability to transfer the sensation of the stimulation of one sense, to the sensation of the stimulation of another sense. For example, people who see colours and hear a sound corresponding to that colour. Or vice versa. The truth is though, we all do, every moment. The simple way to measure this affect is the bouba keke test. Look at the picture underneath and decide to yourself which is called bouba and which is called keke:

If you are like everyone else, you will call the rounded shape bouba and the spikey shape keke. The reason is the rounded shape we see, corresponds to the rounded sound of “bouba“. Around 1% of people who take the simple bouba keke test will not instantly see bouba as rounded and keke as sharp and spikey. Similarly, 99% of people will not instantly understand why someone else sees green when they think of the number 2. It similar to seeing a bright green shirt and calling it loud. In short, synethesia is involuntary metaphor.

You have all no doubt seen this. Try to say the colour, rather than the word:

This is an example of cognitive dissonance. The tension we feel when the literal translation is somehow impaired by another perception we are simultaneously holding. The above will make you struggle when you get to the word and colour that conflict with each other, because human thinking cannot disregard what we consider to be the literal meaning. We cannot shake that.

This brings me onto the point of this blog.
A few days ago, was the Royal Wedding. Predictably discussion turned to Patriotism. There is a sort of expectation in the minds of the collective, that we are supposed to feel a sense of sacrificial pride to the landmass on which you were born, loyal only to the abstraction of the National flag under which you had no choice in. And I am left in two conflicting minds.

I cannot fight the powerful urge to feel a sense of community when England play (and inevitably hopelessly lose) at a World Cup. I feel a defensive sense of anger, when I hear American Republicans insist that a British style NHS will result in refusal to treat the elderly. When I’m abroad and I hear a British accent, I feel a slight tinge of kinship, even though I have no idea who that person is. The feeling of patriotism is there. The idea of a Nation creates an automatic expectation within each individual to feel a sense of loyalty and pride toward it. Yet, it doesn’t exist. It is the solidarity of pure wind.

The sense of Patriotism and its expectations are quite unnerving. It is a type of respect and loyalty that is supposed to be given without question. We bow in its presence as if its worship is just as natural as breathing. To even question the validity of such authority is considered unpatriotic. We group ourselves, not on merit or on objective morality, but on the idea of where we were born. When the British armed forces are in Iraq, they are there for “our freedom“. Our, being the key word. We are all apparently connected by an abstract principle. They are the “heroes” and those fighting against “us” are “terrorists“, “extremists“, “insurgents” or any other noun we choice to aimlessly proscribe to entire groups of people who don’t agree with the mainstream cultural sentiments of that specific country. We are asked to look at the “enemy” as an “other“. They are not like us, because they are not from our land and our land means we are all one. They are the “enemy” because they are from another land. We look at what happened on 7/7 and see a great evil, we see the deaths of innocent people amplified because “they” are “us”. We hear news of a bombed town or village in Fallujah, and we ignore it, because “they” are far away. But if “they” shoot “our” troops, we get angry.

When Wikileaks released the video of the the American Apache pilots killing twelve innocent people, and talking about it as if it were a video game, or when video was released of American soldiers firing into a prison and throwing a grenade at the building whilst laughing and joking, no one called these people animals, or criminals, or terrorists (in fact, what we do instead, is imprison the guy – Bradley Manning – who released the video). We ignore it. We ignore it, because we have built a Patriotic narrative that whatever crime they commit, they are heroes, but the “enemy” are always “terrorists“.

This comes at a time when Americans are on the streets celebrating the death of Bin Laden. One wonders why? It will almost certainly cause a revenge attack and America may well be the target. Celebrating a death of what is perceived to be the enemy (remember, much of the World considers America to be a great threat and enemy) simply seeks to perpetuate division. President Obama said justice had been served. Justice? Hundreds of thousands of people have had to die in a war, to seek one man? And that’s justice? It isn’t a video game.

The ultra-Patriotic movement in America also creates its antithesis. There is a section of the Left that is so viciously anti-war it presumes and subtly declares as loudly as it can, that America perhaps deserved 9/11 or at least had it coming. The problem is that America didn’t create militant religious activity, it is simply a case that Nation States that aren’t built around militant religion will always come into conflict it, because the abstraction of a Nation is similar to that of religion; divisive.

It isn’t a case of Islam vs America. America, by its very nature has always been imperialistic and expansionist. It has had designs on Cuba for centuries and it shares this trait with organised religion. When Nation States mix with Capitalism, it is inevitably going to create a strain on religions, and the old power structure in which religion was built into the system is slowly eroded away to the dismay of those who quite liked the old ways, and having had the opportunity to follow the industralised Nations of their own accord, rather than being forced to for the sake of profit.
That tension between the old religiously-led system, and the new more secular way of governing was essentially forced upon the Muslim World for the sake of a more integrated global community, imposed by those in the West who thought our way was somehow “better”. Hassan al-Banna, the creator of the Muslim Brotherhood in the 1920s said:

“Politics is part of religion, Caesar and what belongs to Caesar is for God Almighty alone Islam commanded a unity of life; to impose upon Islam the Christian separation of loyalties [into church and state] is to deny it its essential meaning and very existence.”

– Here is the conflict. Islamic nations under the control of fundamentalist dictatorships consider religion to be a necessary part of the existence of the Nation State. The West doesn’t. I would up and leave the UK if we were even to impose strict religious theocratic guidelines to the politics of the country. Islamic nations in the 1920s (and arguably today) are not ready to accept the separation of religion and state, and they must be allowed to walk down that path to religious freedom themselves, without America claiming to be on a moral mission, whilst plundering the area of its resources. We cannot impose Lockean principles on Nations that are not ready for it, because by definition that is not Lockean in itself. That being the case, it is absolutely no excuse to fly planes into buildings killing innocents. If they believe their religion promotes that kind of act, then that religion deserves no respect. If it can be interpreted to include violence and death against innocent lives (which it can) then it deserves no respect. I am deeply suspicious of anyone who tells me I am offending their religion, when their religion says people like me will burn in the pits of hell for eternity. I do not respect that religion. Any religion. In the same breath, I do not respect the armed forces of a Nation who are in a foreign land, killing, to protect its resources. The two systems do not work well together. There will never be peace whilst Nation States and Religion exist.

There was a sudden burst of outrage against the “ground zero mosque” on the grounds simply of “us” and “them“. Nothing more. It was right winged outrage and very hypocritical. The right wing of America tend to have an almost Messiah-like obsession with free market capitalism. But only when it works in their favour. The buying up of the space for the what they have termed the “mosque“. It is like saying “We want no government interferen……what? They’re building a mosque for brown people? WHY ISN’T THE GOVERNMENT STOPPING THIS!!!” It is surely property rights that the American Right believe the government should not be interfering with? Property rights for everyone except those that don’t fit the American Right’s narrow vision of the World? As I stated on my blog entry last year, on the the subject, it wasn’t just a Mosque, it was the Cordoba Center. It will include a Theatre, a Performing Arts centre, a Basket Ball court, Bookstore, Child care, Prayer space, Restaurant, culinary school and fitness centre. It is already being used as a place of prayer for Muslims, and has been for quite some time. As I stated in that blog:

There is nothing that honours the victims of religious intolerance more, than a center dedicated to building relations, and showing that there does not have to be such separation, anger and fear. A symbol of the coming together of Islam and the West, and particularly Islam and America is a stage in contemporary times that we REALLY need to get to, and this Centre is an attempt to provide that link. We should be celebrating it. We should be celebrating that we are trying to move away from the past decade. We no longer want people like Palin and Bush and Cheney making sure fear is the order of the day. Innocent, decent Muslims are no different to innocent, decent Americans.

I stand by that today. Artificial, yet deafening boundaries like religion (built by faith) and nationality (built by patriotism) are dangerous and lead only to violent tension – always has.

The Imam of the Omar-E Farooq Mosque in Madrassa, Kabul in Afghanistan teaches his students to hate America. He does this, not for political reasons, but, as he puts it:

God says… we can never be friends with unbelievers

Whatever the foreign policy of the United States, Imams like this one, will also preach division and hate, because their religion tells them to. “Religion poisons everything“. One child in the school said that:

America are doing suicide attacks and blaming Osama Bin Laden……. we can never be friends”

– Absolute indoctrination of the worst kind.

The two systems (religion and secular nation states) were always going to come into conflict and I dislike them both. It is easy to say that the Reagan administration created the Taliban and militant Islam to deal with the Soviet threat during the 1980s, but it stands to reason by that very logic that fundamental protestantism created America, and so Christianity, by proxy, created militant Islam. That is the sum total of the logic taken to its limit, by the delusional anti-war Left. The truth is, militant Islam has always existed. It is based on religion and nothing else. The militant branch of Islam had no problem when America was in Latin America supporting right winged terrorists; in fact the militant branch of Islam was working with America at that point. Militant Islam is expansionist by its very nature and has been responsible for both empire, and human rights abuses, much like the nation of America, over the centuries. The two are similar. Patriotism creates two breeds of lunatic; firstly the type who refuse to accept their nation could do anything wrong, and cheer on the streets of Washington when the leader of the supposed “enemy” is killed, like they’ve just beat the top bad guy on Call of Duty but refusing to acknowledge that hundreds of thousands have been killed or displaced using their tax dollars. The second type, is the antithesis mentioned above, who are content with defending militant Islam as a by-product of aggressive American foreign policy choosing to ignore the history of organised religion as one of sheer violence and coercion long before Nation States came onto the scene. Patriotism, like adherence to religion is simply a perpetuation of the inherent problems the two mutually exclusive yet very similar abstractions inevitably create.

I don’t know if it is a natural reaction, when we are constantly exposed to patriotic sentiment, that we adhere to this us VS them principle. I know I certainly do, and it takes me a minute or two to logically think through the implications of unquestioning Patriotism. That, leaves me feeling slightly uneasy.

We are blinded by the perception of what we expect to see.

Obama 2012

It has been a fantastic week for President Obama. His poll ratings hang around the 46% mark at the moment but the killing of Bin Laden is likely to boost those ratings some what. Interestingly, Clinton, Reagan and Carter all had lower approval ratings than Obama at the moment, after the same amount of time in Office.

For a couple of years now, slightly racist Americans have been demanding an Obama birth certificate, to prove that the dark skinned man with a funny name is actually American. Interestingly, they didn’t demand the same level of suspicion and inquiry of the Senator for Arizona, and Obama’s opponent in 2008, John McCain. McCain was born in 1936 on the Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone. Panama Canal at that time was under U.S Control, but does that make McCain a “natural born citizen“? If that’s the case, can anyone born in a US controlled zone at a certain point, become President? The US had control of the green zone in Iraq in 2003. Could a muslim in that Green zone born in 2003 become President? Sarah Palin’s head would explode. What if my girlfriend were to have a baby inside the American embassy in London? Could I be the dad of the future President? What about someone born in Guam? Or Northern Mariana Islands? or Puerto Rico? or American Samoa? What if you were born in Palau before 1994? or the Federated States of Micronesia before 1986? If we follow John McCain’s lead, pretty much anyone can become President, if their parents just run to a US military base or embassy to give birth. In fact, there is more reason to question McCain’s eligibility to run for President, than there is Obama, which seems to just be that he’s a bit brown.

Obama’s brilliant take down of Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner was good, but the killing of the World’s most wanted terrorist, was the icing on the cake, and probably just sealed a second term for Obama. I was a bit annoyed when Obama said that “justice had been done“. American justice seems to involve killing hundreds of thousands of innocents, to avenge the deaths of 3000. It is the equivalent of a man killing my family, fleeing, and me spending the next ten years killing anyone who happens to live in a 2000 mile radius of his supposed location, finding him, killing him, and claiming it was “just”. However, it is almost certainly going to boost Obama’s chances in 2012. Though it isn’t a tough challenge, given the lack of Republican talent in the field for 2012.

Predictably, certain Republicans were not impressed with the Osama killing. Bush Sr said:

There’s no disagreement on this; this wasn’t some risky, gutsy, unique thing that he wanted to do.

I can’t imagine Bush would have had the same response, had his slightly useless son achieved the same goal.

Let’s look at two of my favourite possible candidates for the Republican nomination for 2012:

Michele Bachmann. She is currently serving as US House of Representatives member for Minnesota’s 6th Congressional district.
She is a tea party supporter. She suggested that Obama is associated with known terrorists (ignoring the Bush’s ties to the Bin Laden family, and the Saudi Royals, obviously). She then apologised for saying that Obama was anti-American. She then effectively apologised for apologising in March 2010, saying:

“I said I had very serious concerns that Barack Obama had anti-American views. And now I look like Nostradamus”

“I’m very concerned about Barack Obama’s views. I don’t believe that socialism is a good thing for America.”

She genuinely believes that whoever doesn’t share her warped view of America, must be anti-American…. and a Socialist (a socialist, bailing out Wall Street? Interesting take on Socialism she had). She believes social security and medicare should be abolished (isn’t that pretty anti-American?) She said in dealing with Iran, a nuclear strike option should not be off the table.
She believes Global warming is a hoax because CO2 is needed for life, and so CO2 can’t be harmful. She stated:

“Carbon dioxide is not a harmful gas, it is a harmless gas. Carbon dioxide is natural; it is not harmful…. We’re being told we have to reduce this natural substance to create an arbitrary reduction in something that is naturally occurring in the earth.”

Seriously, I’m not making this up. She really did say that. She is at odds with 99% of the scientific community. She supports the teaching of intelligent design (philosophy) in science class. She stated that evolution is just a theory that has never been proven (she’s wrong). Again, she is at odds with 99% of the scientific community. A Republican claiming to know better than 99% of the scientific community is nothing new, which brings me neatly onto another candidate:

Rick Santorum. Ex-Republican senator from Pennsylvania and Chairman of the Senate Republican Conference.
On the subject of running for President, Santorum said:

“After talking it over with my wife Karen and our kids – I am considering putting my name in for the 2012 presidential race. I’m convinced that conservatives need a candidate who will not only stand up for our views, but who can articulate a conservative vision for our country’s future.

Let’s explore that conservative vision he has for America’s future….
He has already declared war on Iran and Syria, stating:

I believe we are at war with Islamic fascists and I singled out Iran and Syria as examples of Islamic fascist regimes.

Great.
He is a typical American conservative, in that he opposes big government and interference, unless it meets his narrow vision of what it means to be American. For example, he once called himself a “compassionate conservative” (rather amusingly), and stated:

Compassionate Conservatism relies on healthy families, freedom of faith, a vibrant civil society, a proper understanding of the individual and a focused government to achieve noble purposes through definable objectives which offers hope to all.

He wants everyone to be free and the individual to be understood!!! Except, he doesn’t. Because he states in his book “It takes a Family” that socially liberal policies, like the acceptance of homosexuality, have destroyed the typical American family. He wants to use government to effectively tell people what it means to be a family. If you’re gay and you love your partner, tough, you are destroying Rick Santorum’s view of what it means to be a family. He doesn’t want to understand. He wants to punish you. He is all for individualism, if the individual is a good, white, Christian, conservative, heterosexual individual.
In the same book he speaks of a single mum who got off welfare and made a lot of money for herself. He absolutely loves this woman. He fails to point out the irony in the fact that without public funded schooling, without public funded shelters, and without the help that Welfare gave to her, she wouldn’t have been able to move up in the World. He is essentially arguing against the welfare system, whilst showing how it works. Genius.
He pushed for the teaching of intelligent design in science lessons, whilst focusing on questioning the theory of evolution, rather than teaching it outright, like he wished for intelligent design. He was criticised for wanting to craft the curriculum to present evolution as a dying theory that was essentially nonsense, whilst teaching intelligent design as a very credible scientific alternative. In 2002 he went so far as to state:

“Intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in science classes.”

– This is a man who wants to run for President!!
He proposed a bill in 2005 called National Weather Service Duties Act of 2005, which would have prevented the National Weather Service from releasing data on the weather, to the public,because it hinders the profitablility of private sector weather companies. Rick Santorum wanted to privatise the weather.
He blames homosexuality for Priests molesting children. He states that the right to privacy doesn’t exist in the US Constitution and that sodomy laws existed to prevent homosexual acts that:

“undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family”

Again, he wants to use the government to legislate against the individual, when it doesn’t suit his narrow vision of what is decent and correct. All other uses of government, he considers evil. What a hypocrite.
Quite viciously, he once said:

“Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be. It is one thing. And when you destroy that you have a dramatic impact on the quality”

Here Santorum is misleading. The institute of marriage has changed vastly over the centuries. The Bible (as pointed out on my blog on Biblical marriage) is quite clear that marriage is between a man, brother, rapist and a virgin woman, another woman, another woman, a few more women, a hostage, a rape victim, and the female children of parents who have just been slaughtered. A few hundred years later, and marriage was about power and prestige. You married into a wealthy family to increase wealth. Santorum claims that marriage is just about children. What is a woman can’t have children? Should she be banned from getting married because she’s keeping a man from potentially having children with someone else? He sounds like he’s advocating the biggest government known to man. He’s right that no society has included gay marriage……. but i’d suggest that we’ve progressed. He wants to remain in the dark ages.
If you need further convincing that he is a horrific hypocrite who actually advocates huge government interference, to further his rather terrible ideology, here is what he said after Hurricane Katrina:

I mean people who don’t heed those warnings and then put people at risk as a result of not heeding those warnings. There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.

He wants the government to criminalise people who don’t leave their homes when a hurricane is on its way. He wants government to be in control of your movements during severe weather (privatised severe weather).
In 2006, he declared that Weapons of Mass Destruction had been found in Iraq.
The man is amazing.

Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich more grey haired old overweight Reaganite hypocrites with the charisma and passion of a retarded goat, may put their names forward, but non inspire confidence or progress. Perhaps they should offer a coalition with Nick Clegg?
President Obama is almost certainly looking at a 2nd term.

The Kennedy Assassination

It is my mission in life, to stand on Dealey Plaza. I want to understand the setting for myself. I want to stand at the picket fence. I want to, quite morbidly, stand on the cross in the road. I want to stand where Abraham Zapruder stood.

The assassination of Jack Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 is a subject of which I take great interest. I have read book after book by credible authors like Mark Lane who concludes that the assassination was a CIA lead conspiracy. He doesn’t ask why, or how. He simply concludes that the Warren Commission and the aftermath including the House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations were incredibly flawed, with much effort being made to divert attention away from the intelligence agencies.

I don’t think anyone had considered the possibility that someone would film the entire event. Zapruder managed to get a spot at Dealey Plaza that a Hollywood film director could not have chosen so perfectly. We have all seen the Zapruder film, and that violent moment when Kennedy’s head is struck by the bullet that ultimately killed him. The film is one of the key elements casting doubt on the official story.

The story goes; Lee Harvey Oswald, an ex-Marine corps Marxist who defected to the Soviet Union briefly before coming back to the States, shot President Kennedy, from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book depository window. He fired three bullets in six seconds, killing Kennedy and injuring Governor Connalley. 90 seconds later, Oswald had apparently ran down to the ground floor and onto a bus, heading home. According to his landlady, he was in a rush as he grabbed his jacket and ran out the door. Here, he was seen walking along a street near his home when Office Tippit pulled along side him to ask him questions. Tippit got out of his car, and Oswald shot him four times, before fleeing to a nearby cinema.
After his arrest he was interrogated for two days. He said he had not known a man named A.Hiddell. This is significant because on his person at the time of his arrest, he was found to be in possession of a fake draft card bearing his picture with the name A.J Hiddell. Similarly, the Commission notes, the rifle found in the Texas bookstore depository had been bought using the mail order name “A.Hiddell“. Oswald denied owning a rifle at all, but the police uncovered the now famous photo of him holding the rifle. Oswald said the picture was faked. A day later, whilst being walked through the basement of the Dallas police station, night club owner Jack Ruby shot and killed Lee Oswald live on TV. And so the theories began.

The physical evidence, when weighted up, seems very much to point to Lee Oswald as the lone assassin of President Kennedy. But I cannot for the life of me explain away massive discrepencies in the story. I will outline a few now.

Why did the police officer on the second floor of the depository, along with Oswald’s supervisor, say that he seemed relax and not at all out of breath? The man had apparently just killed the President, hid the gun, ran down four flights of stairs, and he looked relaxed and calm, and drinking a soda? He only started to panic, after he had been told of the assassination. Why was that?

Why did E.Howard Hunt (ex-CIA who was involved in the Bay of Pigs) confess on his deathbed to his son, that he was involved in the assassination, implicating Frank Sturgis (another CIA member, arrested at Watergate) as the shooter; the same Frank Sturgis implicated by his ex-lover (and ex-lover of Fidel Castro) Marita Lorenz. The same Frank Sturgis, clearly pictured dressed as a tramp coming out of the Dallas police station after the assassination, and whose records of police questioning have never been found.
Here are two photos of Sturgis (right and left) and one of the supposed “tramp”.

Here is a photo comparison of E.Howard Hunt, and a man in the same hat and overcoat as E.Howard Hunt (a long buttoned up overcoat on a 50 degree day) pictured strolling slowly across the street in Dallas, just after the shooting. Same guy?

Remember, E.Howard Hunt confessed to his son on his deathbed, that he was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. He says he was a “bench warmer”. This confession came thirty years after Hunt claimed he was actually in Washington on the day of the assassination. Hunt implicates Vice President Lyndon Johnson as the man responsible for ordering the assassination. But then, if it were Johnson, why would he be so dismissive of the Warren Commission report, which effectively drew suspicion away from a conspiracy? Surely he’d be supporting the findings? He is recorded from the White House airing his doubts about the magic bullet theory. Why draw attention to the possibility of a conspiracy, if you’re involved in that conspiracy? But then, why would a dying E.Howard Hunt, lie to his son on his deathbed, and be so specific with the details?

Why did CIA member Frank Sturgis’ real name (Frank Fiorini) appear in Oswald’s diary?

Why did Oswald run to a theatre? It makes very little sense. If he had planned this assassination meticulously, to the point of being able to walk into a room with a rifle, and shoot the President of the United States, surely he would have planned a getaway?

Why would a Communist shoot the left-leaning President, in the most Right Winged state in America? Oswald was pro-civil rights, and Kennedy was the hope that the pro-civil rights movement had gambled on. A leftie taking out a leftie? Really?

Why after Oswald’s connections to CIA members, had the question not surfaced that Jack Ruby was once an FBI informant, and later in prison, why did Ruby say:

“Everything pertaining to what’s happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I’m in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world.”

Why did the Commission not question deeply, the head of the CIA’s Deputy Director for Plans (the CIA’s assassinations and covert operations department)Richard Helms when he told the Commission that:

“the commission would have to take his word for the fact that Oswald had not been an agent”

If that was the case, what would possess Antonio Veciana – a Cuban exile who created the Alpha 66 group, a group of anti-Castro Cuban exiles who had conducted many raids against Castro targets and whom were funded primarily by the CIA – to just invent a story in which he claims to have met a man he refers to as “Bishop“, and whom he considers his counterpart in the CIA, along with Oswald, to discuss the raid on the Soviet Shipping Docks in Cuba in 1963. He also provides back up for the claim that Oswald was in Dallas two weeks before the assassination, by saying that he, Veciana had met with “Bishop” and Oswald in Dallas in September 1963. The House Select Committee on Assassinations ignored the claim back in the 1970s because there was no evidence that this “Maurice Bishop” ever existed. But, a document released by the U.S. Assassination Records Review Board shows that the intelligence community said that a man named “Bishop” :

“has contact with the Alpha 66 group”

Alpha 66 were responsible for the blowing up of Cubana Airlines Flight 455. 73 people died.

Why did the CIA provide no real substantial documents to prove that Oswald had been to the Cuban Embassy in Mexico? The CIA minutes of the meeting between Helms and the Commission, itself claims the “most significant gap appeared in the Mexican phase“. The Mexican part of the story was just taken as fact, because the CIA said it is true. They offered no substantial evidence.

Why was Eugene Brading in Dallas, and specifically, in the Dal-Tex building opposite the depository? Brading had a history of Mafia involvement. He was arrested for acting suspiciously in the Dal-Tex building, but claimed he’d only gone in to make a phone call. He then went back to his room in the Cabana Hotel and met with Jack Ruby. Ruby was in that same hotel the night before the assassination. Brading was later in Los Angeles, the night Robert Kennedy was assassinated. Brading claims he was in Dallas to meet with Oil Tycoon H.L Hunt. In his book “Blood, Money & Power: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K”, Barr McClellan claims that a smudged fingerprint on the rifle belonged, almost certainly, to a man named Malcolm “Mac” Wallace. Wallace was a good friend and associate of Johnson. McClellan claims that the assassination was funded…… by oil Tycoon H.L Hunt. This claim is further backed up by Lyndon Johnson’s ex-mistress, Madeleine D. Brown who claimed Johnson and H.L.Hunt had met prior to the assassination in private, and that the night before the assassination, Johnson had been in a meeting with the Kennedy brothers, and had stormed out, grabbed her by the arm, and said “After tomorrow, those son’s of bitches wont embarrass me again.”

Why do we not question Oswald’s ability as a sniper? He supposedly shot a moving target, with three bullets, in six seconds, obstructed by a tree. Not only that, but the pressure of killing the President must have been intense. How did he do it? Well, his buddy, Nelson Delgado in Marines who saw him shoot weren’t that impressed with his ability when he spoke to the Commission:

Commission: Did you fire with Oswald?
Nelson Delgade. Right; I was in the same line. By that I mean we were on line together, the same time, but not firing at the same position, but at the same time, and I remember seeing his [shooting]. It was a pretty big joke, because he got a lot of “Maggie’s drawers,” you know, a lot of misses, but he didn’t give a darn.
Commission. Missed the target completely?
Delgado. He just qualified, that’s it. He wasn’t as enthusiastic as the rest of us. We all loved–liked, you know going to the range.

Similarly, in an interview with Mark Lane, Delgado said:

Lane. Was Oswald interested in guns?
Delgado. They [the Warren Commission] say he was a gun enthusiast, but I recall many instances where we stood inspections, and he was constantly being gigged for having a dirty weapon and for taking improper care of his weapon. He was always reminded when he had to clean the weapon. He never took it upon himself to do so.
Lane. Do you have personal knowledge of Oswald’s ability with a rifle?
Delgado. At the range he couldn’t prove by me that he was a good shot.

As any person who has ever served in the armed forces could tell you, there’s a part in the qualification that calls for rapid firing. This is done with ten shots, eight in the clip and two that you load by hand. They give you forty-five seconds to fire these ten rounds. Well, when you fire these, then you stand you stand away from your firing position, till everyone has finished firing. Then the targets are brought down and scored. The targets are run back up, and there are disks for the number that you have hit–fives, fours, threes, or misses.

Well, in Oswald’s particular case, it was quite funny to look at, because he would get a couple of disks. Maybe out of a possible ten he’ll get two or three Maggie’s drawers. Now, these [the Maggie’s drawers] are a red flag that’s on a long pole, and this is running from left to right on the target itself. And, you don’t see this on a firing line too often–not a Marine firing line. You can’t help but noticing when you’re seeing disks, round cylinder things, coming up and down, and farther on down the line you see a flag waving [i.e., a Maggie’s drawer]. Well, that was gonna catch your eye anyway. And we thought it was funny that Oswald was getting these Maggie’s drawers so rapidly, one after the other. And this is why I can’t think that he could be a good shot, because a good shot doesn’t pull this. He’ll pull a three, but he won’t pull a Maggie’s drawer– that’s a complete miss.
Lane. How did the FBI react to your statement that Oswald was a poor shot?
Delgado. They tried to disprove it. They did not like the idea when I came up with the statement that Oswald, as far as I knew, was a very poor shot.
Lane. Do you feel that the agents of the FBI actually tried to get you to change your statement that Oswald was a poor shot.
Delgado. Yes, sir, I definitely do.

Sherman Cooley who also worked with Oswald in the Marines was quick to verify Oswald’s impotence with a rifle:

If I had to pick one man in the whole United States to shoot me, I’d pick Oswald. I saw the man shoot. There’s no way he could have ever learned to shoot well enough to do what they accused him of doing in Dallas.

But most damaging to the official story of Oswald’s immense skill with a rifle that day in Dallas, comes from Monty Lutz, an expert rifleman and ballistics expert who served on the firearms panel of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. When conducting a mock trial of Lee Oswald, trial attorney Gerry Spence cross examined Lutz:

Spence: Let’s do this right. You don’t of anybody that has ever duplicated what Lee was supposed to have done, do you?
Lutz: I do not.
Spence: Not even master marksmen. Isn’t that true?
Lutz: I do not.

Lutz himself tried to recreate the conditions of the assassination, and could not pull off what Oswald supposedly did.

Why did future President, and member of the Warren Commission, Gerald Ford change the description of Kennedy’s wounds, to make the single bullet theory sound more plausible? What motives a man to change such important details, when your Commission is supposed to be establishing facts? And why did Ford secretly advise the FBI that two members on the Commission doubted that Oswald acted alone? Even more damagingly, for Congressman Ford’s reputation, was a memo he secretly sent to FBI’s Assistant Director Cartha DeLoach, and its date:

December 17, 1963:
Two members of the commission brought up the fact that they still were not convinced that the President had been shot from the sixth floor window of the Texas Book Depository”

“These members failed to understand the trajectory of the slugs that killed the President. He stated he felt this point would be discussed further but, of course, would represent no problem.”

– Still not convinced? Why would it represent a problem if they didn’t believe it? In December 1963? Less than a month after the assassination? This was 11 days after the Warren Commission was set up and months before they’d seen the Zupruda film. Why had they already begun from the premise that Oswald was the lone assassin, and why was it considered a problem to dispute that?

Why did they arrest Silvia Duran? Duran was working at the Cuban Embassy in Mexico at the time Oswald apparently visited. After the assassination, she was questioned about Oswald’s visit and she made a statement (as she did to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in the 1970s) that the man who was being accused of shooting the President, was not the same Lee Harvey Oswald that had arrived at the Cuban embassy that day in 1963. Similarly another man at the embassy, Eusebio Azcue, said that the blonde haired short man he met in the embassy called Oswald, was not the same as the man arrested in Dallas. Duran was arrested and beaten by the Mexican police department on instruction by the CIA. Mark Lane, in his book “Plausible Denial” says:

The cable sent by the director of the CIA reads:
“With full regard for Mexican interest, request you ensure that her arrest is kept absolutely secret, that no information from her is published or leaked, that all such information is cabled to us, and that fact of her arrest and her statements are not spread to leftist or disloyal circles in the Mexican government.” It is reasonable to conjecture that the “statements” that so concerned the CIA had to do with Oswald’s appearance – or nonappearance – at the Cuban embassy

Duran, bruised and beaten and scared, signed a statement agreeing that she had seen Oswald that day at the embassy and that it was the same Oswald as the one arrested in Dallas. She was ordered never to speak of the subject again. A year later she began to disobey that order, and spoke out against the fact that she had been beaten and made to signed a lie. She was rearrested, after a CIA cable to the Mexican police department, demanded that:

to be certain that there is no misunderstanding between us, we want to ensure that Silvia Duran gets no impression that Americans are behind her rearrest.

The CIA wanted her arrest to seem entirely motivated by the Mexicans and no one else. Subsequently, she was not called as a witness before the Warren Commission and in fact, the only testimony of hers the Commission bothered to listen to, was the signed lie. They referred to the signed lie as being from sources of “extremely high reliability“.

Those are just a few of my issues with the official story. I usually don’t bend to wild conspiracy theories, but this one seems full of holes. The 1960s were crazy for assassinations. The creation of CIA convert Operation 40 by Eisenhower in the late 1950s was set up to arrange political coups and assassinations in order to stop the spread of Communism. Frank Sturgis was a member of Operation 40. Felix Rodriguez, the man who was responsible for the execution of Che Guevara, and played an important role in the Bay of Pigs invasion, was part of Operation 40. Felix Rodriguez was indicted on charges of perjury and false statements to Congress for a separate matter. He was pardoned by President Bush in 1992. President Bush was also ex-CIA. E.Howard Hunt was also a member of Operation 40. Theodore Shackley was involved in Operation 40, by training Cuban Exiles to direct psychological warfare together with acts of sabotage against the Cuban government in the 1960s. America has always had designs on Cuba. Operation 40 was the height of that obsession with the island. For decades previous, America had not cared for the appalling treatment of the Cuban citizens by regimes like that of Batista, because the Batista regime opened its markets to American business opportunities. The lack of healthcare, education, and the horrific abuses of power by Batista were irrelevant to America. America has always wanted Cuba. The Cuban Project of Operation 40, like the Bay of Pigs, was a complete failure. Air Force Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty, who worked in the Pentagon, as a military liaison to the CIA, and later worked for as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy, said:

“I have no doubts that the murder was a carefully planned job. Remove the protection and you’re going to have someone assassinated. And it was evident in the area of Dallas. Secret Service coverage either did not exist or was at minimum…it was absolutely effective.”

Whilst there is ample evidence to suggest that Oswald acted alone. But there is so much speculation, so much secrecy, so many little details that come out to the contrary. Can we really say we believe Hunt, Sturgis, the CIA, Cuban exiles had no idea this was going to happen? That Hunt, lying on his deathbed just invented an elaborate story for no reason? That in a decade when political assassinations were rife, and for each one it takes less than a minute to establish a connection to the CIA, it isn’t possible Kennedy was another victim of that program? That Silvia Duran lied originally and told the truth after being beaten? Why would she lie? Do we really believe that Jack Ruby killed Oswald for the sake of sparing Jackie Kennedy the pain of having to go through a trial, as he claimed? Do we really believe that 35 people who testified that they heard shots fired from behind the picket fence, were just deluded? Do we refuse to accept that the methods used to assassinate Diem, and to attempt to assassinate Castro and more could not have been used to assassinate Kennedy? Do we really believe that Oswald (who had qualified as a military marksman – the lowest rank) carried out three shots in six seconds, obstructed by a tree, with precision that even the very best shooters could not replicate? Do we honestly think that the assassinations of the 1960s was not an attempt to halt the progressive movement that taken shape in America? That there was no method to the madness? Is that what we have chosen to believe?

Personally, I cannot say with any certainty what happened that day in Dallas in 1963, but I am convinced that it would be vastly ignorant to ignore the evidence that appears to contradict the official findings of the Warren Commission. It is a supremely fascinating subject that runs into deep, murky waters, but no matter what angle to look at it from; be it the CIA, the Cubans, the Soviets, the Mafia, or just the lone nut, the same names crop up within minutes of research, and that cannot be ignored. Kennedy was assassinated at the height of the power of the intelligence community. Whatever official title you want to give them, the CIA was a terrorist organisation in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and it is not inconceivable that that same group of terrorists could conspire to assassinate the President of the United States.