Warmongers Jerk Off To Chrenkoff

Australia's ABC Mediawatch program has chastized a Murdoch journalist, Janet Albrechtson, (think Ann Coulter with an Aussie twang) for promoting the "Good News From Iraq" blog of Arthur Chrenkoff.

The segment reveals that Chrenkoff works for John Howard's Liberal Party, on the staff of Senator Brett Mason. As one commenter said:

Given the breadth and sheer volume of links that Arthur includes in each post one can only assume that a great deal of Arthur's posting occurs during public tax-payer funded work hours. Quite a great deal in fact. So do we now conclude that the Australian tax payer funds this blog???

It's good to see someone on Chrenkoff's case. Like Albrechtson, he is an embarrassment to Australia.

Chrenkoff's "Good News" site is part of a tight little network of US propaganda blogs, including Iraq The Model, Little Green Footballs, Roger L Simon, etc (just check the mutual links on each site).

Any intelligent observer quickly comes to suspect that there is far more to these sites than meets the eye.

For example, Chrenkoff celebrated his blog's first anniversary with some intriguing nods of thanks to supporters including "Major Tammes at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, our special correspondent and tireless translator Haider Ajina, and friends at CENTCOM, various embassies and ministerial offices, who have to remain nameless."

Another example. I became suspicious that Omar Fadhil, one of the bloggers at Iraq The Model, was actually running a Berlin-based radio show. According to my Google search, about the only person in the world who posted a link to this German "Election Radio" show was Australian-based blogger Arthur Chrenkoff, who just happens to be a very big fan of the brothers at Iraq The Model (the feeling is mutual). Chrenkoff's link to the German radio show was included in part 20 of his "Good News From Iraq" series. Surprise, surprise, Omar Fadhil at Iraq The Model then just happened to post a link to Chrenkoff's Good News From Iraq Part 20 story! (click here for my previous post on this)

As regular readers know, I have written extensively about Iraq The Model (see here and here).

The USA has acknowledged that it is running PsyOps in Iraq and it requires little imagination to argue that sites like these are all on the US government payroll.

(story thanks to Tim Dunlops excellent Road To Surfdom).

UPDATE: I am now being attacked by Chrenkoff and his mates like Tim Blair as a conspiracy theory / tin foil hat blogger spouting "blatant insanity". So for anyone visiting from those sites who may be interested in the truth, I present:

A short history of recent "Conspiracy Theories"

1. Saddam has no WMDs.

2. Saddam has no connection to Al Quaeda.

3. Our governments lied to us.

4. The invasion of Iraq was illegal, making Bush, Blair and Howard War Criminals.

5. Israel is manipulating US foreign policy.

6. There is not and cannot be any such thing as a "War on Terror".

7. The invasion of Iraq has actually increased the terrorism threat.

et cetera et cetera et cetera...

Of course you won't hear the truth about these "conspiracy theories" at places like Chrenkoff. If you want to know more, read on....

UPDATE 2: Now someone called Judith calls me an asshole for voicing suspicions about the Kesher Talk website's extensive coverage of Omar and Mohammed Fadhil's trip to the USA (where these Iraqi bloggers just happened to meet with George W. Bush and Paul Wolfowitz in the White House). Predictably, Judith also comes very close to calling me anti-Semetic.

Judith argues that Howard Fienberg has not run Kesher Talk since sometime in 2003, even though he still owns the site. So what does that prove?

My point is that there exists an extensive network of blogs and websites with the mutual objective of spreading pro-war propaganda (if not outright lies). And as I said, given all the lies we have been told, it would be naive to think that none of these sites is on the US (or Israeli) government payroll.

Ask yourself what motivates people like Arthur, Judith, Simon, the Fadhil brothers and Howard? Are they really decent, caring right-wingers who sincerely dedicate their free time to such sites in the belief that the Bush agenda - including the Iraq War - is a great leap forward for freedom? If so, why are they not angry at all these lies we have been told? Indeed, why do they themselves help to spread such lies with such voracity? Or could it be that they are pursuing their own selfish agendas by jumping on the pro-war bandwagon?

I mean... Arthur Chrenkoff just happens to work for a Liberal senator? Come on, folks. Use your heads.

UPDATE 3: Heads up! Here's another US$81 billion being poured down the tube! You folks at the bottom just divvy it up among yerselves, as per usual...

The Battle For Australia's Soul

I had a bad dream last night. I think it was a flashback to a job interview I had at News Ltd about 20 years ago, when I briefly entertained the idea of becoming a journalist (I gave it up after a whisky-sodden Reuters editor told me I was too good a writer for the job).

A spotty-faced Janet Albrechtsen, wearing cheap lipstick and black lingerie, was doing a lesbian-style pole dance with Pauline Hanson and Amanda Vanstone in the middle of the News Ltd foyer in Surrey Hills, while over the office speakers Rupert Murdoch's disembodied and soul-less CEO voice was whispering repeatedly "Welcome to the Dark Side... Welcome to the Dark Side.. Welcome to the Dark Side.."

Next thing you know I am in the interview room. It's pitch dark and my arms are shackled to the wooden chair. A faceless News Ltd editor is leaning over me and shining a bright light in my face:

"The invasion of Iraq was legal, fair and justified, wasn't it?" he hisses.

"No!" I cry.

"9/11 changed everything. We must all support the War On Terror. Those who are not with us are with the terrorists."

"No! No!"

"Those prisoners in Gitmo deserved what they got. Your government knows what's best for you. We've gotta support the Bush Doctrine agenda. Nothing you do or say is going to change it anyway. Two plus two is five... Guards! Take him away to Uzbequistan!!!"

I woke up in a cold sweat. Out in the garden, a cat in heat was making wierd gurgling noises...

It was 5:00 am. I got up, made myself a coffee and logged on to my PC to check out the latest happenings in the raging online controversy about Arthur Chrenkoff's bogus blog.

Under pressure, Tim Dunlop at Road To Surfdom had decided to edit my comments and removed contact details for Chrenkoff's employer, Liberal Senator Brett Mason:

As should be pretty clear, I don't think AC should be sacked... I do, however, think his employment is relevant given the political nature of what he does. Media Watch has already noted who he works for, and the info recorded in ghandi's comment is easily and publicly available.

People can call for AC's sacking, though, again, it's not a position I support. On balance, though, I think there is maybe a case to remove the contact details, so that's what I've done.

What a lame, half-ass response, Tim.

But ain't that just the way it always goes with these warbloggers? Liberals and middle-of-the-road observers, overwhelmed with a stream of hysterical invective and sensationalized lies, far too often decide they had better give the warbloggers/neocons/neonazis the benefit of the doubt. So instead of getting headlines screaming BUSH LIED! we get reports that Saddam MAY have WMDs still hidden somewhere, or MAY have been planning to get them someday, or MAY have... blah blah blah.

For example, Tim posts a link to some Chrenkoff propaganda eye candy published in the New York Times. Now why is the NYT publishing this crap? Because they have got hundreds of readers and shareholders and politicians telling them that they are way too biased against Bush & Co and they had better do something to maintain the "balance" if they don't want to expose themself to further criticism and - inevitably - some unspecified form of retribution from Bush's powerful friends.

This is what it must have been like in pre-war Germany when anyone dared voice criticism of the Fuhrer's plans for racial purification and global domination. It's a Washington sickness that has spead across the globe. And thanks to Rupert Murdoch, Australia is in the thick of it.

You want an example of over-the-top hysteria? The Murchoch-owned The Australian editors decided this Chrenkoff affair is so very important that they dedicated a weekend editorial to the issue. Here it is in full:

VIEWERS of ABC television's Media Watch program last week must have felt that The Australian's columnist Janet Albrechtsen had done something really wrong. For the "soft left" journalism of Media Watch, her real crime was to contest the media focus on the bad news out of Iraq. But, rather than substance, Media Watch searched for a chink to smear Albrechtsen. It came in an Albrechtsen quote: "When something positive does happen it either gets filtered through the anti-war eyes of the media or is all but ignored. And that's what the terrorists are counting on. They must detest The Wall Street Journal. Each fortnight the paper's website (www.wsj.com) includes a round-up of good news from Iraq ..." Gotcha, suggested Media Watch's Liz Jackson. Media Watch couldn't find the good news round-up on wsj.com. That was until it linked to a "spin-off site", a "sister site" or a "Dow Jones" website OpinionJournal.com. There, the round-up of Iraq good news was the work of a Brisbane blogger, not a WSJ journalist. His blog was not edited, nor paid for. Albrechtsen had falsely given it the credibility of The WSJ.

Not. The Opinion Journal editor James Taranto points out that Opinion Journal is in fact a WSJ website. It's the website of the paper's highly influential editorial page. Both he and its assistant editor work for the WSJ print edition as well. They pay the Iraq good news contributor a modest fee and edit his work. Taranto would have told Media Watch this if they'd have rung. Albrechtsen was correct to say The WSJ's website carries the Iraq good news round-up. Her "honest, and very small error" was to refer to the wrong WSJ website. "Since the goal was to make another journalist's honest mistake look like a deliberate misrepresentation, one cannot credit Media Watch with acting in good faith," Taranto says. The Australian looks forward to Media Watch's correction on Monday night.

Pressure, pressure... There will be a lot of eyes on Media Watch tonight. Let's hope they have the balls (or whatever the female equivalent is) to stand up for The Truth. That's what they are being paid for, right?

And here's the thing. The people at Media Watch know exactly what Janet Albrechtsen's agenda is, as do we all. And we all know what Arthur Chrenkoff is doing with his Good News series. Of course it is pure propaganda. Look, for example: here's some guy in Toledo quoting Chrenkoff as an expert to make his own pro-war spiel sound more professional:

"The Sunni involvement in the new government … is a nightmare scenario for (the insurgents) - it means the loss of their only constituency," said the Australian web logger Arthur Chrenkoff, on whose blog I found the al Sharq al Awsat story.

Sickeningly incestuous crap, isn't it? And remember, Arthur not only does not get paid (much), he also does not do commentary (much).

The big question, really, is not whether these people are biased but why? What does Chrenkoff get out of supporting the Bush lie machine? What does Albrechtsen get? What does Rupert Murdoch get?

Well, Murdoch gets relaxed media ownership laws (for starters). Albrechtsen gets by-lines, sicko celebrity status and kudos from the well-attached. And Chrenkoff is on a nice little earner, not to mention comfortably employed by a Liberal Senator who swore on oath that PM John Howard is NOT a "Lying Rodent" (who's got yer ass, eh, Johnny?).

Personally, I am still waiting for the Australian's apologies for helping John Howard mislead the public about Children Overboard, the invasion of Iraq and assorted and associated lies. That's the real scandal.

As TVnewslies dares to ask the editors of the NY Times:

On the front page of every issue of your publication you proclaim that we will find "All the News That's Fit to Print." Unfortunately you have not lived up to that proclamation for quite some time...

UPDATE: Well done, MediaWatch, for not backing down on this. Tim Dunlop picks up the threads of a dying story, complaining all the while that journos don't take bloggers seriously enough. Well, no wonder. Meanwhile, taxpayer-funded Arthur Chrenkoff would rather talk about Star Wars.

The Double Life Of Omar Fadhil?

Sure there must be more than one guy named Omar Fadhil in Iraq, and maybe even a few in Baghdad itself, but what are the chances that two guys with the same name would be actively working in international journalism during the Iraq vote last week?

Check out this report from Deutsche Welle:

Puffing on cigarette after cigarette, Iraqi journalist Omar Fadhil taps away at a keyboard, chatting online from his Berlin office to his radio correspondents in Baghdad.

For the past month, Fadhil, who lives in Baghdad, has been heading the staff of "Election Monitor Iraq," a program broadcast from Berlin via the Internet to Iraq, where it appears on local radio stations once a day, five days a week. Sponsored by a German foundation, with support from the German Foreign Office, Election Monitor Iraq is designed to give Iraqis something they don't get much of: trustworthy news about the country's first democratic election in more than 50 years.

"We want to explain to people why it's important, why they should go to vote," said Fadhil, who came up to Berlin from Baghdad to coordinate the team during the elections.

Fadhil, who will stay in Germany another 20 days said that, while many people are too scared to go out and vote, just as many will head out because they see no other alternative.

"I want to have security," he said. "At the moment, we can't go out after 7 p.m. If a dog is hungry he just has to go outside and eat. Animals are better off than humans at the moment."

The 27-year-old will vote in Germany, along with an estimated 26,000 other Iraqis this weekend in polling places in Mannheim, Munich, Cologne and Berlin.

Can this be our old friend Omar Fadhil from the Iraq The Model blog?

Here's another report:

Der Neunundzwanzigjährige ist einer von zwei Irakern, die extra für das Projekt nach Berlin gekommen sind. Fadhil spricht deutsch, weil er bis zu seinem fünften Lebensjahr in Süddeutschland gelebt und in Bagdad nach dem Einmarsch der Amerikaner für deutsche und österreichische Journalisten gearbeitet hat....

Seine Radiobeiträge produziert er zur eigenen Sicherheit unter einem Pseudonym.

Translated, that means

The twenty-nine-year-old is one of two Iraqis, who came specially for the project to Berlin. Fadhil speaks German, because he lived up to the age of 5 in South Germany and worked in Bagdad after the invasion of the Americans for German and Austrian journalists...

He produces radio contributions using a pseudonym for his own security.

The Iraq The Model blog says Omar is 26 years old, while these reports indicate 27 or 29 years of age. The blog information could well be outdated. The ages are close enough for a match. The one part that doesn't seem to match up is this bit:

Noch mehr als islamistische Terroristen fürchtet er die amerikanischen Besatzungstruppen, „weil die jeden Iraker für einen möglichen Terroristen halten“. Eine amerikanische Panzergranate traf bei dem Sturm auf Bagdad sein Haus. Bei einer Straßenkontrolle hat ein Soldat mit dem Gewehr auf seinen Kopf gezielt und dann mit dem Kolben eine Beule in seinen Mercedes geschlagen, sagt er.

Translated:

He is more afraid of American occupation troops than Islamic terrorists "because they consider each Iraqi a possible terrorist". An American armor-piercing shell hit his house during the storm on Bagdad. A soldier at a roadblock aimed a rifle at his head and then dented his Mercedes struck, he says.

UPDATE: Chrenkoff On The Payroll?

According to my Google search, about the only person in the world who has posted a link to this German "Election Radio" show was Australian-based blogger Arthur Chrenkoff, who just happens to be a very big fan of the brothers at Iraq The Model (the feeling is mutual). Chrenkoff's link to the German radio show was included in part 20 of his "Good News From Iraq" series:

German-financed Election Radio also hit in the airways in the run-up to the poll. The program utilized Iraqi correspondents on the ground around the country using MP3 recorders and emailing their segments to Germany for editing and broadcast.

Surprise, surprise, Omar Fadhil then just happened to post a link to Chrenkoff's Good News From Iraq Part 20 story!

Both Ali's Free Iraqi site and Iraq The Model provide permanent links to Chrenkoff (reciprocated, of course), whose stories they frequently cite as evidence of even more good news from Iraq. In fact, they have already provided six links this month.

Chrenkoff is a fiction writer who advertises his writing services for sale on his blog. His blog includes on-going, multi-part series on "Good News From Afghanistan" and "Good News From the Islamic World".

By the way, anyone wondering if the Iraq elections were a farce can check out this page showing the candidates from the Fadhil brothers' Iraqi Pro-Democracy Party.

Good News From Australia

Finally, some really good news from Arthur "His Master's Voice" Chrenkoff - the state-sponsored propaganda whore has quit the blogosphere!

Chrenkoff, the author of an endless stream of pro-war "good news" propaganda pieces, says he has been offered a new job which does not allow blogging. I guess that all but concedes that his previous job with pro-war Queensland Liberal Senator Brett Mason DID allow blogging. Indeed, I have always suspected that it was a key component of his job.

It's surely a sign of the times that such blinkered propaganda is no longer required. Chrenkoff's sad efforts to put a positive spin on the calamity of Iraq and the half-assed operation in Afghanistan have long been looking farcical to all but his most hard-core wingnut supporters.

I would like to think that my own widespread complaints to and about Senator Mason might somehow have helped close down Chrenkoff's blogging career, but I suspect that this is more a case of another opportunistic ideologue climbing the greasy neocon pole. If anybody knows where Chrenkoff is going, please let me know...

Where's Omar Fadhil Now?

Still picking up cheques from Rupert Murdoch, still writing opinion pieces for the WSJ, but now under the name Omar Fadhil Al-Nidawi.

Omar is still following the money, obviously, as a mouthpiece for the US military-industrial complex. Calling for more missiles, a bigger airport, more spending. You know the game. And if you don't, this clip from Motley Fool should help:

The Obama administration has proposed, and Congress is currently reviewing, a possible $7.8 billion sale of Patriot PAC-3 missiles to Turkey. Congressmen who've been stymied in their efforts to funnel government funds to Lockheed for its F-22 fighter jet (killed for good last week in the Senate), and to Raytheon for its subcontracting role in the Kinetic Interceptor (also now DOA), get a second bite at the funding apple. Both Lockheed and Raytheon were named as contractors to build the Patriot batteries, if the sale gets approved.

And that's just the start. In other Mideast news, The Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by Iraqi commentator and political analyst Omar Fadhil Al-Nidawi last week, calling on Congress to provide Iraq with a robust air defense system. Headlining Mr. Al-Nidawi's wish list: F-16 fighter jets from Lockheed, and -- you guessed it -- Patriots from Raytheon.

(BTW: His WSJ co-author Austin Bay is a (former?) US Army Colonel who served in Iraq and wrote a book called "The Other Side Of Brightness". Irony much?)

Omar also wrote an Op-Ed for Rupert's The Australian back in June, titled Iraq Was A Just War. No trace of irony here either:

Corruption is a serious problem, but worse than corruption itself is if there is a lack of checks and balances that can stop it. In Iraq this used to happen all the time, but now a wind of change is blowing...

In fact, Omar Fadhil is now a summer associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. They are connected to the National Review and The Weekly Standard, and they publish a number of blogs including "Faster Please" by Michael Ledeen, "Iraq Status Report" and a blog called "The Long War Journal". There's that old neocon money trail.

Omar Fadhil is also now a graduate student of international affairs at Columbia University in New York City. He has 300 friends on Facebook, including media "guru" Jeff Jarvis, the mysterious Kerry Dupont (who offered all that cash to the boys in Baghdad), and Arthur "Good News" Chrenkoff.

Here's Omar's pic:



Here's brother Mohammed Fadhil:



And here's their old mate Arthur Chrenkoff:



Interesting that brother Ali is either not on Facebook, or totally estranged from the clan.

Also interesting to follow Kerry Dupont's links. You remember Kerry, a plain old mother of two from Maine who offered the Fadhil brothers $300,000, promised to get them help from the Department of Defense, and met George W. Bush with them and Paul Wolfowitz in the Oval Office. Here's a Facebook pic of Kerry:



Who is friends will Kelly Dupont:



Who is friends with Edward Dupont:



He looks pretty hard-core, doesn't he? There are a few Washington DC "friends" in the Dupont portfolio too. Wonder where Spirit Of America was getting all that money? There's another trail to follow...

Now I am just wondering if these crazy Dupont kids are not somehow related to these guys:

The Dupont Group is a Concord, New Hampshire-based business consulting firm focused on government affairs and public relations. The firm specializes in advocacy and communications associated with complicated public policy issues and regulated industries. The firm's services include lobbying and government affairs representation with an emphasis on New Hampshire state government, including the Legislature, executive branch as well as regulatory agencies. In addition, The Dupont Group's public relations division, White Birch Communications Group provides clients with a full array of corporate communications services ranging from integrated news media programs to corporate identification programs.

The head of the Dupont Group is a guy called Edward Dupont, a former Senator and founder of Strafford Fuels, Inc. But the pic doesn't look like the same guy:



Still, there could be a family resemblance. What do you think? Kerry Dupont comes from Maine, which is not too far from New Hampshire, where the Dupont Group is based.

PS: For anyone who doesn't know who Omar Fadhil is, this old blog post explains.

Another Kind Of War Profiteer

Arthur Chrenkoff is back. This time he is flogging his new book. This bit from the blurb is interesting:

He has now closed down his blog to work in politics as well as pursue a writing career.

I still get hits on my previous Chrenkoff post from people Googling "jerk off".

The War On Trolls

I hate it when stupid politicians make stupid laws about cyberspace, or other subjects on which they quite obviously have no real knowledge and no credibility. Would you believe that anonymously "annoying" people on the Internet is now a crime in the USA. And just how did such a ridiculous law get passed? Yep, it's the old "buried-in-a-bill" trick again:

To grease the rails for this idea, Sen. Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, and the section's other sponsors slipped it into an unrelated, must-pass bill to fund the Department of Justice. The plan: to make it politically infeasible for politicians to oppose the measure.

The tactic worked. The bill cleared the House of Representatives by voice vote, and the Senate unanimously approved it Dec. 16.

I suggest enraged readers go tell Senator Specter and his colleagues exactly what they think of this stupid law - anonymously of course!

UPDATE: A little much-appreciated love for the Gandhi-man from the scattered debris of one of Chrenkoff's last posts (the Star Wars thing):

I agree with Ghandi. Perhaps it takes 'trolls' (which he certainly isn't one: check it out- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_troll) like him to shake up all the yes-men out there who like to think of President Bush as a noble and heroic leader.

It is possible to love America, and love democracy, and love everything that makes this country great AND HATE GEORGE W. Why this fact is so easy to ignore amazes me.

There are no absolutes here. Bush leaves me wanting for a more inspiring leader that doesn't pander to religionists nor 'police' the world. But that doesn't mean I am anti-American nor does it mean I don't deserve to live in this country of my birth.

Thanks Ghandi!
bastion | 05.23.05 - 10:41 pm | #

Hey, folks: whatever happened to Arthur Chrenkoff anyway? I'm suspecting that he was picked up by one of these professional pro-Bush media outfits like Direct Marketing. I have been Googling his old boss, Senator Brett Mason, with little luck.

Any help appreciated: email me with any news. It's one of my New Years Resolutions to track the bastard down.

No News Would Be Good News

In case you haven't heard, Arthur "Good News" Chrenkoff has been exposed as a liar on the Australian government's payroll.

Now a close look at his "Good News" series shows this disturbing pattern:

Despite 13 Chrenkoff posts since May 2004 about "Good news" on Iraq electricity, the daily average has gone from 11 hours a day to just 8.8 hours a day, while total production has dropped from 3902 to 3260 megawatts.

Thanks to tex at antiwar.com for the link.

The Best Of BushOut

Top ten posts since I started this blog in 2003:

1. How Bush's friends manipulated Global Oil Prices in the lead-up to the 2006 mid-term elections.

The real question is not why they manipulate oil prices for political profit, but how do they do it...

2. Killing Arabs: Bush, Camus and the Politics Of The Absurd:

Camus’ writing is marked by an intellectual rigor that shines like a bright light through all his work. By contrast, Bush cannot even be bothered to analyze complex issues in anything more than a superficial way...

3. Bush Cites Fadhils For Proof Of "Success" In Iraq:

When the President of the United States of America is reduced to quoting propaganda nonsense fabricated by his own neocon supporters, that's pathetic. When he does so specifically in order to justify failed policies which continue to see dozens, if not hundreds, dead every day in Iraq, that's worse than tragic. It's criminal...

4. Iraq The Model: The Full Story

The NYT article only skimmed the surface of my allegations against the Fadhil brothers, gently suggesting they might be working with the CIA but quickly concluding that they probably are not. So here is the full story, from my point of view, for anyone who is interested...

More on Jim Hake here. More on the Fadhil brothers here. One day I might get around to pulling all this shit together.

5. Warmongers Jerk Off To Chrenkoff

If normal companies are using buzz and direct-advertising techniques, there's no reason to think that the most powerful military complex on the planet hasn't caught on...

More on Chrenkoff here.

6. Bush Versus Confucius

Others are clear and bright,
But I alone am dim and weak.
Others are sharp and clever,
But I alone am dull and stupid.

7. Too Incredible To Be True: The Khaled El-Masri Story

Regular readers might remember that it was not so long ago that this humble blog was - quite incredibly - rated the #2 resource on the Web for a Google search on his name...

More on Khaled El-Masri here. Original Bush Out blog post here. Latest Wikipedia info here.

8. A hit from the Executive Office Of The President Of The United States:

The hit came from Washington, D.C., on April 16th at 11:46:42 pm. It was a Google blog search (blogsearch.google.com) for the words "George Tenet" and it led to this post...

9. My very first blog post, from way back in Feb, 2003:

Who are we? Where are we going? What kind of world do we want to create? ...

The industralised behommeth [sic] of 21st Century "Civilisation" races at full steam towards a destination most thinking people no longer wish to attain... Who built this cursed machine? Who controls it? Should we be trying to stop it, destroy it or re-direct it? Or should we just be jumping off?!?

After centuries of disenfranchisement, subjugation and de-humanisation, the Internet promises to re-empower the individual and unite ordinary people around the globe. Personal web sites like Blogger give us a medium to make our voices heard like never before. This Blog is my voice on the Internet.

10. My second blog post, just two months into the war:

We are now witnessing the collapse of the myriad Bush administration myths about why the USA had to invade Iraq... So now it it time to ask: WHY DID THEY DO IT?

The answer, obvious enough once the other myths are exploded, is OIL.

So, what now? Iraq is perhaps the only nation on earth capable of seriously challenging Saudi Arabia as the World #1 oil exporter. The Americans will clearly want to maintain control of this oil for the next hundred years (or at least until it is all gone). The obvious fix would be to "sell" all the Iraqi's oil to the USA at very attractive prices. In return, the USA will give the Iraqis ... what? Hmmn... How about ongoing military and administrative support? Well, that won't be necessary once the Iraqis regain control of their country and set up a stable, model democracy, right?

Hands up anyone who thinks the instability in Iraq will be resolved anytime soon.

And a follow up more than four years later:

If the truth was obvious to me, a relatively uninformed middle-aged nobody, way back then, why couldn't the whole world see it? Why couldn't our politicians admit it? Why was the media silent? Why has it taken us four long years of lies, and over half a million deaths, to reach this point of public outrage? How on earth did Bush, Blair and Howard manage to get re-elected?

The disturbing answers to these questions tell us much about who we are, what we have become, and where we are going.

I have now spent over four years blogging nearly every day against Bush, Howard, Blair and their Big Money backers. It has been a process of learning and self-realisation as much as a politically-oriented campaign for truth and accountability.

The knowledge I have accumulated has been quite shocking, in many respects, and almost always depressing. Much that was dismissed, just a short time ago, as wild Conspiracy Theory, is now accepted as common knowledge. I have learned a good deal about of politics, business, and Western society, but I have learned far, far more about human nature.

See also this 9-11 timeline.

WSJ's New Writers: The Fadhil Bros

Why didn't somebody tell me about this earlier? What do I pay you guys for?

A few weeks ago, the Fadhil brothers (still excluding Ali the traitor, who has escaped to Germany) had an article published in the WSJ Opinion Journal. Not surprisingly, it was their usual topic about how well everything is going in Baghdad these days.

The Wall Street Journal, which previously touted Arthur "Good News" Chrenkoff's malarky, is a highly respected financial news publication owned by Dow Jones & Company, Inc. You would think that their readership might be a little disturbed at being repeatedly misinformed about the situation in Iraq, but apparently the loss in credibility is worthwhile to ... somebody.

Guess that explains those hits I was getting in the days after the story was published. Also worth noting that the Allawi takeover scenario, which the Fadhil neocon shrills were touting at the time, is now looking highly unlikely.

Where's Chrenkoff?

Atrios goes exploring:

While looking into something I decided to head to the web page of the House Armed Services Committee web page. It's a truly beautiful site.


Then I noticed the "Victory in Iraq Caucus" link led to... nowhere.

Then I decided to see what's been going on under the title "Success stories - building freedom in Iraq and Afghanistan."


After clicking on the link we're helpfully informed that we should "Check back often - because there is a lot of good news to tell about Iraq and Afghanistan."

The last functioning update is from May 18, 2005.

Spinning To Victory?

E&P looks at the man behind Bush's new "Victory" buzzword. It seems much of Bush's latest speech, and much of his "Plan for Victory" document, was authored by Dr. Peter D. Feaver, a 43-year-old Duke University political scientist who joined the National Security Council staff as a special adviser in June. Feaver argues that the US public will continue to support the war in Iraq as long as they believe that victory is in sight.

For a more realistic view, here's Paul Krugman on Bush's "Plan for Victory":

It's simply the same old talking points - "victory in Iraq is a vital U.S. interest"; "failure is not an option" - repackaged in the style of a slide presentation for a business meeting.

It's an embarrassing piece of work. Yet it's also an important test for the news media.

Krugman de-constructs some blatant lies about progress in Iraq by way of example. He says the continued lies from the Bush administration exhibit contempt for both the public and the news media:

And why not? The truth is that the level of misrepresentation in this new document is no worse than that in a typical speech by President Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney. Yet for much of the past five years, many major news organizations failed to provide the public with effective fact-checking.

So Mr. Bush's new public relations offensive on Iraq is a test. Are the news media still too cowed, too addicted to articles that contain little more than dueling quotes to tell the public when the administration is saying things that aren't true? Or has the worm finally turned?

E&P also has more on those out-sourced US PsyOps in the Iraq Media:

A June 11, 2005, Washington Post article reported that the Pentagon had just awarded three contracts, potentially worth up to $300 million over five years (if the effort panned out), to three companies to handle "psychological operations" to improve foreign public opinion about the United States, particularly the military. The contract winners: Lincoln Group, Science Applications International Corporation, and SYColeman, Inc., a subsidiary of L-3 Communications.

O'Dwyer's, a leading trade publication in the public relations field, reported in July that BKSH & Associates, one part of the giant communications company, Burson-Marsteller's, had been hired by The Lincoln Group, "one of three firms selected last month by the U.S. Special Operations Command to wage psychological warfare on behalf of the Pentagon in Iraq and other hot spots. BKSH has experience on the Iraqi front earned from work for Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. Col. James Treadwell, director of the Joint Psychological Operations Support Element, said TLG was selected to develop 'cutting-edge types of media,' including radio/TV ads, documentaries, text messages, Internet spots and podcasts for the U.S. military."

BKSH & Associates is a Washington-based firm that provides government relations services for domestic and international clients. It's headed by Charles R. Black Jr., a leading Republican political strategist and former advisor to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.

A few facts to chase right there, for anyone interested. Wonder who Arthur Chrenkoff is working for these days...?

"Blow-Back" PsyOps

Looks like all my rants against Spirit Of America, Iraq The Model, Chrenkoff and others are finally becoming topical. This article is worth reading in full: U.S. military pays Iraqis for positive news stories on war:

Under military rules, information operations are restricted to influencing the attitudes and behavior of foreign governments and people. One form of information operations -- psychological warfare -- can use doctored or false information to deceive or damage the enemy or to bolster support for American efforts.

Many military officials, however, said they were concerned that the payments to Iraqi journalists and other covert information operations in Iraq had become so extensive that they were corroding the effort to build democracy and undermining U.S. credibility in Iraq. They also worry that information in the Iraqi press that's been planted or paid for by the U.S. military could 'blow back' to the American public.

That blow-back issue is all about US voters being mis-informed via Iraqi sources, as the planted news stories filter back to the USA:

the U.S. public is at risk of being influenced by the information operations because what's planted in the Iraqi media can be picked up by international news organizations and Internet bloggers.

As if such blow-bakc were an unintended consequence!!! This has always been a Media War, a War of Propaganda and a War of Spin - the PNAC members knew that's how it would be from the day they first planned it! All these people can do is Spin!

And the real targets of the propaganda were always the US voters, not the miserable Iraqis in the front line of the disinformation assault, whose wretched lives the neocons could care less about!

UPDATE: Everybody blames everybody else. Everybody is "demanding answers" except General Casey, who feebly protests that this stuff should not be discussed publicly because it's classified.

And hey! Look! He-e-e-ere's Scotty!

At a briefing with reporters, the White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, responded to a barrage of questions about the program, which military contractors and officials said also pays friendly Iraqi journalists with monthly stipends.

"We're very concerned about the reports," the White House spokesman said. "We have asked the Department of Defense for more information."

Iraq Lies: Follow The Money... Down The Hole

Via Informed Comment:

Iraq issued indictments against 27 officials of the government of Iyad Allawi, charging them with over $1 billion worth of fraud. The accused include the Minister of Defense, Hazem Shaalan, and 4 other cabinet ministers. Most of these former officials, installed by old-time CIA asset Iyad Allawi when he was shoe-horned in as prime minister by the US and the UN in late June 2004, have fled the country.

Meanwhile:

The U.S. government is running out of money. The higher than expected cost of protecting workers against insurgent attacks - about 25 cents of every reconstruction dollar now pays for security - has sent the cost of projects skyward.

The result: Some projects have been eliminated and others cut back.

"American money has dried up," says Brent Rose, chief of program/project management for the Army Corps of Engineers in southern Iraq.

And tracking the billions of dollars that flooded into a war zone in the wake of the U.S.-led invasion has proved difficult, too. Nearly $100 million in reconstruction money is unaccounted for...

The Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works initially planned to use U.S. funds for 81 much-needed water and sewage treatment projects across the country, says Humam Misconi, a ministry official. That list has dwindled to 13...

Some progress has been made. More than 2,800 projects have begun since the transfer of sovereignty last summer, and 1,700 of those have been completed, according to the Army Corps of Engineers. They include refurbished schools, new police stations, hospitals, bridges and new roads.

It is the larger, more expensive projects such as water treatment plants, sewage networks and power grids that are being cut back. [gandhi: bold case, just in case Mr. Chrenkoff and/or the Fadhil's are reading!]

Nearly half of all of Iraqi households still don't have access to clean water, and only 8% of the country, excluding the capital, is connected to sewage networks.

And despite progress in fixing Iraq's antiquated oil production system, the country's oil wells produce about 1.9 million barrels of crude oil a day, lower than 2003 levels and well under the 3.5 million barrels Iraq was producing before the 1991 Gulf War...

So much for all that talk about a "free and prosperous Iraq"!

This little tidbit of info could help explain a lot:

Much of the security cost is buried in "cost-plus" contracts in which companies get reimbursed for all costs plus a percentage of those costs as a fee.

All 11 multinational firms working on projects through the Iraqi Project and Contracting Office have "cost-plus" contracts, says Karen Durham-Aguilera, the office's director of programs.

So the more you spend, the more you make... Sounds like a recipe for disaster, and it is:

One "cost-plus" project is the water treatment plant under construction here, which is managed jointly by London-based AMEC and California-based Fluor Corp. The project was originally estimated to cost $80 million, according to Army Corps of Engineers records.

But the original Iraqi subcontractor pulled out after he was threatened. Delays, drive-by shootings and land-acquisition snags followed, driving security and other costs up, according to Corps officials and records. The project's estimated completion cost rose to $200 million, the corps said.

And as ever:

Iraqi contractors, not saddled by steep security costs, say they can do the work for less..

"We keep saying, 'Give us the money and we could do it better, cheaper,'" Misconi says.

I remember Riverbend making the same point about two years ago.

Bad News...

A Newsweek reporter on a US propaganda junket explodes the much-repeated right-wing lie that "good news from Iraq" is never reported:

Around the same time I chatted with the teacher, 100 miles to the south in Baghdad, about a dozen bombs went off throughout the city, killing more than 150 and injuring hundreds more. Six American convoys were also hit, wounding 10 U.S. soldiers... It was Baghdad’s deadliest day since the fall of Saddam.

Long-time "good news" propagandists like Chrenkoff have dropped out and even my old friends at Iraq The Model are runing out of shit to say. Meanwhile, TIME Magazine rips the whole WMD/Terrorism/Democracy/Whatever rationale for the Iraq War to shreds.

Grow Your Own Terrorists

What a crock of horse dung.

The latest Al Quaeda video aired on TVs around the world featured an Aussie soldier gone AWOL in Afghanistan and now presumably training terrorists. Breathless TV newsreaders said the terrorist "appeared" to have an Australian accent. But any real Aussies (like me, mate) knew as soon as we heard him that the man was either a fair dinkum Aussie or Meryl Frikkin' Streep.

Friends and acquaintances were quick to identify him as Mathew Stewart from Queensland's Sunshine Coast, an Aussie who had suffered psychological trauma while serving in East Timor, but whose problems had been unceremoniously dumped by the Australian Army.

PM John Howard tried to suggest that this bloke was speaking with a "British regional accent". Now Murdoch's "The Australian" newspaper reports that our government spy agency, ASIO, is still struggling to identify him.

In other words, if it's not Chrenkoff-style good news, it can't be true. Wishful thinking will protect us from terrrrrrsts!!!

The worst thing is that Stewart is reportedly only one of at least seven Aussie soldiers who have defected to the "terrorists".

Who is exporting terrorism to whom, eh?

Is The USA Really #1???

As a very interested foreign observer, I've been waiting a long time for this article:

Our government, media and schools start burnishing the false notion of American moral superiority into our brains at a very young age...

More specifically:

There is a great body of evidence which obliterates the inane notion that the United States is a benevolent world leader. Despite the ready availability of contrary evidence, many Americans remain blind to the truth about our despised nation, and choose to believe the fairy tale version of “truth, justice and the American Way ”. The sad reality is that America is an imperialistic, avaricious war machine ruled by the wealthy...

And oh, yes...!

Acting with impunity and arrogance, America’s leaders have an unprecedented military might at their disposal, possess a nuclear arsenal powerful enough to destroy the world thousands of times over, ignore international law but impose it on others, use the UN to inflict damage on other nations but openly defy its rules, hoard the world’s riches and resources, defile the Earth which sustains us, support ruthless dictators, and employ terrorism through the CIA...

If you are a patriotic US liberal, I know this is hard to accept. True, the USA has been a beacon of hope for many, many people over the past 50 years. But was that hope ever truly justified? Nowadays, it appears that we have all been duped by a USA which, whoever the President may have been, has only ever had its own interests at heart.

I know there are good people in Bush's USA who despair of the direction in which their country is heading. But from a foreigner's perspective, it is simply impossible to understand how the US public can remain so damned ignorant. Even now, 38 percent of US citizens still think Bush is doing a good job. As Juan Cole says, someone please tell me what these people are smoking!

Because that is what's going on, isn't it? Bush-lovers get pissed or stoned or watch the NFL or "go shopping" on a daily basis, ignoring the plight of their own country just as they ignore the daily realities of the wider world. Similarly, across the glove, the rich generally get pissed or stoned or distract themselves by other measures, ignoring the plight of the poor and oppressed in nations beyond shooting distance. We don't rate the deaths of foreigners on the TV news as anything equitable to the loss of "our own". We know that millions are starving in Africa and the rest of the Third World, but we choose to ingore that uncomfortable fact because it poses an extremely uncomfortable challenge to our much-cherished "lifestyle choices".

And that, in essence, is the dilemma at the heart of this whole Iraq conflict: some of us are happy to look upon the rest of the world as "untermenschen" (the Nazi term for those somehow "less human" than ourselves) while others among us hold firm to the ideal that "all men (and women) are created equal". Some of us bleed a little bit with each and every Iraqi death, while others could care less.

Of course, the majority of people in my own alleged "democracy" in Australia have re-elected pro-war, anti-immigrant, racist scum and liar PM John Howard three times, so what they hell are we smoking? But at least our ignorance does not contribute to global decline at quite the same rate as the USA (even if we are responsible for dog-droppings like Chrenkoff).

Our leaders are out of control but we let them get away because we have no answer to their obscene public displays of moral relativism.

Or, to put it another way: fascist dictators have generally acted under Machiavelli's principle that "if the act accuse him, the result will excuse him" ...

20th century manifestation of such a way of life was called "Fascism." In 21st century, it is the same thing but the fascists call it “freedom and democracy.” The original fasces were bundles of thin rods bound together with an ax among them; they were carried before the highest magistrates of imperial Rome as a symbol of authority and of the strength that comes from tight unity. Recent fascism is distinguished not by the novelty of its elements or the profundity of its thought but by the flair and efficiency with which these elements have been interwoven and presented as the most humane ideology and civilized way of life.

BushWorld: Ignorance Is Bliss

What does it take for a story to get "traction" these days? Why do some stories run and run ad nauseum, while others cannot even get a mention on page 99?

For example, the WaPo today says new information suggests that senior intelligence officials in the government appear to have had doubts about the Bush's case for war with Iraq. Well, excuse me, but that's not gonna get much traction, is it?

How about a big cover saying BUSH LIED and then a 20-page spread documenting every single one of the Bush lies in full detail. How about reporting the facts:

New Information Proves Bush Lied!

That's the big picture issue, of course. But the same thing is happening time and time again with countless minor stories.

For example, an Australian Liberal senator employs a liar to spread pro-war propaganda and who cares? The media rush to his defence instead of demanding his resignation!

Another example. An Iraqi blogger exposes a US charity as a bogus propaganda fraud. Who cares?

Well, certainly not all the crazed right-wingers who worshipped his every word while he was telling them what they wanted to hear! No word of Ali Fadhil's controversial (well, you would think so) accusations against Spirit of America on Roger L. Simon's blog today, even though he once called for SoA CEO Jim Hake to take over Kofi Annan's job. Glenn Reynolds is already over it. So is Michael Ubaldi. Tim Blair and Arthur Chrenkoff don't even seem to know about it. Hell, even Ali's own brothers at Iraq The Model are treating him as an embarrassment that is best ignored.

If a tree falls in the Amazon and nobody blogs about it, is it really dead? If millions of people around the world know Bush lied, but Rupert Murdoch doesn't want his papers to report it, does that mean it didn't happen? If we all want the moon to turn blue, and if we all close our eyes and wish hard enough, and then we all pretend it's blue, is it really blue?

Attack Of The Loons

Judge a person by the company they keep? Following the recent controversy over exposed warblogging liar Arthur Chrenkoff, my blog has come under attack from a number of sides. Someone called Meryl Yourish graciously provides a few helpful links:

If this doesn't make you laugh, nothing will. First, put down your drink and stop eating your lunch. Now, read Dave's take. Then Judith's. Then Tim's. Here's Arthur's response. And the blogger that started this laff-fest, using the pseudonym — I kid you not — Gandhi.

So who the John Howard is Meryl Yourish?

I am a writer. My first non-assigned piece of writing was a poem I wrote in sixth grade; it is titled "Ode to a Hummingbird," and the first lines were "If I were a hummingbird/A little, tiny hummingbird," ...

I am a Zionist. I am an avowed, unabashed, unashamed supporter of Israel and Zionism (the establishment and maintenance of a Jewish state) and an uncompromising foe of anti-Semitism. If you hate Israel and Jews, you're going to have an unpleasant time on my weblog if you try to bash Israel and Jews. Do the smart thing: Leave now. And do let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Another Jewish blogger named David - who at least admits "I do not know enough about Islam to hate it" - joins in the ridicule:

Furthermore, if Gandhi is so against lies, how come he doesn't speak out against some of the biggest lies to have been perpetuated in recent times, including the lie of the "Palestinian" nation?

Judith's right. He really is the hole of a donkey.

Here's another example of rigorous intellectualism from David:

After months of blogging, I have decided to change my policy of referring to the Arabs who claim to be "Palestinians" as "palestinians".

Where possible, I shall now refer to them as "PLO Arabs."

I strongly encourage all other right-wing bloggers to follow suit, since even the word "palestinian", with no capital letter, somehow aknowledges their claim that they were a distinct national group living in what was then known as Palestine. But the more I learn about the history of the time, the more I realize that the only group referred to as "Palestinians" were the Jews living there at the time.

Now, these guys are just itching to call me an anti-Semite. Because that's how their narrow little world-view works. With us or against us, right or wrong be damned. Bereft of logic, their only arguments against me are personal ridicule.

As Mahatma Gandhi himself once said:

First they laugh at you.

Then they fight you.

Then you win.

Gloating Time

Rightwing "good news" Aussie warblogger Arthur Chrenkoff admits that he lied to the ABC's MediaWatch program (and his readers, and his critics) about his financial payments from Dow Jones (the company that owns and runs the "Opinion Journal" and the "Wall Street Journal") for their republication of his "good news" segments.

Poor Arthur says he was just "responding to what I thought was an intrusive and irrelevant question". In other words, when the Media Watch producer asked him whether he received payment for his sickeningly one-sided propaganda pieces, Arthur panicked and lied. He then went on to attack the Media Watch program for their lack of ethics!

But don't be too hard on the poor man:

By the way, if you are coming here to gloat, please make sure you leave your contact details in the comments sections, as I will want to visit you in person to pay homage to a person who has never told a lie in their life. I'll be also bringing a rock or two as a gift, to add to your already large collection of first stones.

What a wanker.