PROMOTING “FREEDOM”
IRAQ ELECTION DEBATE
NO PROGRESSIVES ON TV

“Heeeeere’s Johnny!” We can safely predict that the death of late night comedy king Johnny Carson, former host of the Tonight Show will be marked by an outpouring of televised nostalgia, specials, commemorations and the like, even though his family plans no memorial. He was on the air for thirty years and was 79 at his passing. Ironically, just before the news disrupted a no-news snowy Sunday afternoon, this press release dropped into my in-box:

“CBS senior vice president Peter Lassally said, retired Carson occasionally sends Letterman new jokes that are sometimes incorporated into Letterman´s nightly “Late Show” monologue. Carson regards him as rightful successor instead of Jay Leno.

“Since retiring, Carson has completely withdrawn from public view, but stayed in touch with TV and news business and is yet keeping an eye on current affairs. Missing the monologue part of his show the most, Carson began sending his thoughts to Letterman.”

PRESIDENTIAL MONOLOGUE

Speaking of monologues I was caught off guard by President Bush’s inaugural address which sounded in part as if he was a refugee from Amnesty International. That made it ironic to me even as it was delivered with so much self-righteousness.

Years ago when the Clinton Administration tried its best to ignore Rwanda and Bosnia, I wish we had a President then who would speak out that way. But in Bush’s mouth the words sounded like they had been processed by the reincarnation of George Orwell’s Big Brother and interpreted Alice and Wonderland style where the Red Queen, or in this case the Red State King says “word mean what I want them to mean.”

A SALVO FROM SAUDI

In Saudi Arabia, one of those countries allied with Administration but also not democratic, there was uncertainty about Bush’s intentions as this editorial from Arab News expressed:

“President George W. Bush peppered his inauguration speech with inspiring words such as “freedom,” “democracy” and the “end of tyranny.” Coming as they did from the world’s most powerful man, those words should have set off celebrations across the world. If they have not, it is because the world has heard the same words from the same man and has seen him using them for quite different purposes. Joseph Cirincione of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace summed up what the words could mean: “I fear that he is presenting a justification for a greater expansion of US military presence in the rest of the world… He seems to be putting an anti-tyranny veneer on a policy of US expansion and regime change.”

For a strong analysis and good read:
A Demobilized Press in a Global Free-Fire Zone
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=2144

BEHIND THE SPEECH: SHARANSKY

And where did Bush’s words come from? Who is advising the President this time around? Michael Collins Piper reveals:

“Supporters of Israel were delighted to learn that President George W. Bush’s recent call in his much-heralded inaugural address for worldwide democratic revolution was based on the philosophy of Israeli cabinet minister Anatoly ‘Natan’ Sharansky.

“Although a recent popular documentary, Bush’s Brain, suggested that Karl Rove, the president’s political advisor, was the mastermind who tells the president what to think, it is now clear - based on solid evidence - that Sharansky is the one who actually has bragging rights to that title.

“Although he gained worldwide attention in the 1970s as a Soviet dissident and ‘human rights activist,’ Sharansky emigrated to Israel and soon emerged as one Israel’s most outspoken hard-line extremist leaders who damns even Israel’s heavy-handed Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as being ‘too soft’ on the Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

“The role of Sharansky in guiding Bush’s thinking is no ‘conspiracy theory.’ Instead, recent disclosures from the White House itself - published, although not prominently, in the mainstream media - demonstrate that not only did Sharansky personally consult with the president in drafting the now-controversial inaugural address, but that - in addition - at least two of Sharansky’s key neo-conservative American publicists, William Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, were among those brought in to compose Bush’s revolutionary proclamation…

http://www.rense.com/general62/brain.htm

HARD SELL

The White House seems to be backing away to some degree from the policy implications of Bush’s call for tyranny-free world. Bush senior has apparently expressed displeasure and the Washington Post reports it’s going to be a “hard sell” with Congress.” At the same Time Dick Cheney went on Imus in the morning and threatened Iran. Reports the International Herald Tribune:

“Just hours before being sworn in for a second term, Vice President Dick Cheney publicly raised the possibility that Israel “might well decide to act first” to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons.”

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2005/01/21/news/iran.html

MENTAL TEST?

A petition is being circulated demanding George W Bush submit to psychiatric examination, as per:

http://www.petitiononline.com/ocnsdxm5/petition.html