"Billy" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:
"Billy" wrote in message news:wildbilly-
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote:
"0tterbot" wrote in message
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message


Tut tut. I'm sure you do care as I can't imagine that you could
possibly
approve of the invasion of Iraq based on falsified information.

i didn't, i don't.

:-)) Thought not.

but i don't give a flying **** who the president of the usa is, &
that's
the truth!! :-D whether i care or not i can't do anything about it,
so
i
therefore don't invest any energy in caring about any of them.

Well there is that. Given how sick I am of the coverage of the
Democratic
contest, by the time the real contest comes round to elect the new
President, I don't think I'll give a flyer either.

honestly, all we are seeing is the bush effect - nobody in the world
wants
to see anyone like that in power again, EVER.

Sorry to say but Bush isn't the problem.

Well he certainly isn't part of the solution either, but he and anyone in
his position should be.

Is it just me? I'm feeling a whole lot of 'tude here. Are you reacting t
what I said or what you think I said? If this is to be a conversation,
then let's keep it in response to what is written.

It's must be just you because I DID respond to what you wrote. You wrote
"Bush isn't the problem". There is absolutely no way to misinterprete that
sentence as he is either the problem or he's not the problem. I think he's
certainly a huge part of the problem as he's complicit and that is what I
wrote.

Bush is guilty but he isn't the puppeteer who orchestrates the show. He
is a political hack representing his moneyed backers over the interests
of the electorate.

And nothing I wrote in the sentence which you think has ""tude", disagrees
with what you've NOW written. You are now saying he's guilty, whereas
before you said he wasn't the problem. He is the problem just as there are
also many other problem individuals and corporations and vested interests
etc.

If the new government doesn't go after the malfeasance of this
administration, then we are all in deep doo.

Welcome to our world Billy. We had the a similar situation here for the
past 11 years. I have voted for both sides of the political spectrum in
this country but I am very pleased that not once did I vote for anyone in
the last Government. By the time they got the axe, they too had become a
weeping sore just as Bush seems to have done for you. You get your
chance
next year but I have to say that so far I'm underwhelmed with your
choices.
You ain't the only one sister.

No. Despite all the hoopla, I've picked up from my reading that there are a
lot of people around who aren't convinced by any of the candidates.

oh dear. i think the truth is that most people worldwide are "a
bunch
of
idiots". truly. the modern world is ridiculously complicated & lots
of
people simply can't keep up.

Especially when their governments and the media present them with bald
faced lies or information that is so freakin' skewed, that reality is
imperceptible. If you're a democratically elected leader of a country
that opposes American foreign policy, you're a militant. If you're a
ruthless dictator who supports American foreign policy, you're our ally
for peace.

But I see that as the fault of a lazy public as all politicians will try
to
use that sort of idiotic brain washing. It's designed to manipulate
those
within the populace who are gullible and/or stupid. Anyone capable of
any
degree of clear thinking should only be caught by it once. How many
times
does Joe Public have to be bludgeoned over the head about whatever the
current political issue is, get all excited and whipped up because of the
patriotic (usually) rubbish he's being spoon fed before he finally starts
to
think for himself and realises that the last time he was sucked in and
believed the lies, he felt like a total fool when it all came unstuck?

It seems that Joe Public either doesn't care or is too stupid to know
that
he's being manipualted.

With access to the internet, there is no way that anyone should accept
unquestioningly anything they are fed by the media. The world is a big
place and access to all sorts of differing of views is only a few clicks
away (or should be).
I don't know how Ruppert Murdock plays in Australia, but he is the most
egregious example of media incompetence in America, but still, only the
most egregious.

He pops over here now and again to see his mother and he owns a lot of media
here but there is still good competition for all of his media including good
free to air media, so he isn't seen as too much of a problem. We were all
delighted though when he took out American citerzenship as we could claim
that he no longer belonged to us.

Studies have shown that views of Fox News are worse
informed than people who don't watch anything. Viewers of Fox News are
still likely to think that Saddam Hussein had WMDs.

Yeah. Sad that.

The rest of the
media here is similar. The hysteria from the "corporate press" and the
"reputable" N.Y. Times, and Judith Miller, helped convince the country
that intervention was necessary. They were aided and abetted by
Gen.Colin Powell, who most of us thought was a good guy.

I've always wondered how much of an orchestrated campaign it was in the US
to whip up support for the invasion of Iraq whatever the cost. IIRC, the
statistics supporting the war were about two thirds against and one third
for in the rest of the world and the reverse in the US. I've always thought
it was a deliberate and well planned con job and I've also thought that
Colin Powell was conned too and that is why he slunk off into the night when
it al came unstuck. How embarrassing for him.

Nearly all of our the media depends on advertising (except for
free-speach radio like Pacifica and some college stations), advertising
that would disappear for an un-American media that didn't support the
government's declared intent of protecting the American people.

Indeed. And given that any one of us is far, far, far more likely to die as
a result of a car crash or even the flu, the hype over terrorism was rather
over the top given the circumstances as terrorism wasn't new and had been
building up since the Munich Olympics.

I've always thought that only 3,000 people dying in the WTC collapse was an
alsolute miracle. It's appalling for the families and it was a huge tragedy
but on the other hand, a quarter of a million people a day entered that
complex yet only 3,000 were lost. It could have been so much worse so the
survival of so many really is a triumph of American building skills,
emergency procedures, heroism etc.

In the case of the Tampa and much else in the past 11 years it was a
case
of
sinking backwards into the primordial ooze, not furthering the cause
of
rational thinking or high human ideals.
I must have been asleep when this happened, thanks for bringing it to
our attention. We do the same thing to Haitians all the time:-(

It was a shameful incident and until that happened, I had never felt ashamed
to be an Australian.

Speaking of rational thinking, it was good to hear one of your
countrym . ., hehem, citizens, Helen Caldicott, on the radio last
thursday, http://www.flashpoints.net/ . She is supposed to be starting
a
new radio programm soon on KPFT, Huston http://www.kpft.org/index.php .
Always refreshing to be exposed to reality.

I've only ever read a few of the things she has written and heard her a
few
times as she has mostly lived in the US. What I have seen of her is
impressive, as at least she seems to be able to use her loaf. Sadly
there
don't seem to be enough of such people around.

Loaf? Typo or Aussi argot?

Use her loaf = use her head.

She seems to tour a lot. My understanding was that she was live from
Australia and her guest David Lockebaum (sp?) could have been anywhere.
If You Love This Planet, hosted by Dr. Helen Caldicott
http://www.kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=26076

I think she lives here now and has a place in a forest somewhere in either
south eastern NSW of north eastern Victoria. I've seen her on a few panel
interviews etc and she is a very good analyst of the issues

I'll check out your cites, but can't do them from this ISP that I use to
read newsgroups.