22 October 2005

We take sides in a non-partisan way

[source, source]

On February 25, 1990, the people of Nicaragua went to the polls. I videotaped the parade held shortly before that. I spoke with and taped members of the Communist Party who disliked the Sandinistas intensely but agreed that probably they would win because “Nicaragua is not yet ready for Communism.” I talked with members of the Marxist-Leninist Party, who found Daniel far far too soft on landowners but agreed that he’d probably win anyway. On that day I taped conversations with people from fifteen different parties, and no one, however opposed to the Sandinistas, seemed to really believe that the coalition put together by the U.S. could defeat the incumbents.

On the night of the election, all of us who were with the press or worked as observers gathered in the huge Olaf Palme building, a gift to the Sandinistas from Sweden. Outside, men with machetes were expertly cutting the grass. Spirits were high and the biggest question was exactly how we would celebrate the victory.

The key point here is the open admission of just how un-biased the journalists were as they waited to “celebrate the victory”.

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What's next, Imelda Marcos on self restraint?

[source, source]

The United States has expressed “amazement” at a UN invitation to Zimbabwe’s President Robert Mugabe to address a hunger conference in Rome on Monday to mark the 60th anniversary of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

I have to agree with the source that any one could be amazed at this kind of behavior on the part of the UN and its agencies. After all, this is the same organization that asked to take over the Internet during a conference hosted in country that strongly censors online content.

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That's what happens when you mix savages and modern technology

[source, source]

THE United Nations withheld some of the most damaging allegations against Syria in its report on the murder of Rafik Hariri, the former Lebanese Prime Minister, it emerged yesterday.

The names of the brother of Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, and other members of his inner circle, were dropped from the report that was sent to the Security Council.

The confidential changes were revealed by an extraordinary computer gaffe because an electronic version distributed by UN officials on Thursday night allowed recipients to track editing changes.

What would we do for entertainment if the transnationalists and thugs of the UN weren’t so stunningly incompetent?

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Memhole Watch

[source, source]

[Chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, Laurence] Wilkerson confirmed that the US and other foreign intelligence agencies believed that what Powell presented to the UN was “the truth” and that the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research also believed Powell was “right” on Saddam’s chemical and biological weapons.

[…] I can’t tell you why the French, the Germans, the Brits and us thought that most of the material, if not all of it, that we presented at the U.N. on 5 February 2003 was the truth. I can’t. I’ve wrestled with it. I don’t know — and people say, well, INR dissented. That’s a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and running. That’s all INR dissented on. They were right there with the chems and the bio […]

When you see a satellite photograph of all the signs of the chemical weapons ASP — Ammunition Supply Point — with chemical weapons, and you match all those signs with your matrix on what should show a chemical ASP, and they’re there, you have to conclude that it’s a chemical ASP, especially when you see the next satellite photograph which shows the U.N. inspectors wheeling in in their white vehicles with black markings on them to that same ASP and everything is changed, everything is clean. None of those signs are there anymore.

But George [Tenet] was convinced, John McLaughlin [then deputy DCI] was convinced that what we were presented [for Powell’s UN speech] was accurate […]

Wilkerson also said that French intelligence believed the aluminum tubes were designed for centrifuges.

The French came in in the middle of my deliberations at the CIA and said, we have just spun aluminum tubes, and by god, we did it to this RPM, et cetera, et cetera, and it was all, you know, proof positive that the aluminum tubes were not for mortar casings or artillery casings, they were for centrifuges. Otherwise, why would you have such exquisite instruments?

As the original post notes, none of this was mentioned in the extensive coverage of other parts of Wilkerson’s remarks. Just not fit to print, you see.

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