I’ve been saying for some time now that Fort Knox has no gold, probably hasn’t had any of the yellow shiny stuff for some decades now. Don’t believe me? Well, here is an exposé by Jeff Neilsen from Benzinga, having a quiet rant about the US Gold Reserves. I find his arguments fairly logical, irresistible and  irrefutable.

There are many who — like me — believe that gold is the only answer to global monetary stability. And there are many who would also assume that the American govt actually has some gold, and simply refuse to believe that the dollar will fall — due to its importance as a reserve currency — and if it does fall, then the dollar is bound to rise from the ashes a winner. Of course, for this to happen and be true, the US govt would have to own some gold.

Reasonable?

Article from Benzinga

In discussing the “gold reserves” of the U.S. government, the first point to make is that the only way in which this topic can be discussed is from a retrospective viewpoint. The reason for this is that while the U.S. government claims to have the largest reserves of gold in the world (supposedly over 8,000 tons) it has not allowed anyone to see this ‘gold’ in over 50 years.

Would anyone believe the balance-sheet claims of a Wall Street bank, if it had not been audited in over 50 years? If not, how could we put any credence in the gold reserve numbers of a government which is totally subservient to its Wall Street puppet-masters?

The next, most-important point to make is that the U.S. government defaulted on its gold obligations in 1971, roughly a decade after the last time any U.S. gold was actually seen. At this point, I think it would be helpful to view Wikipedia’s definition of “default”:

failure to satisfy the terms of a loan obligation or to pay back a loan.

The U.S. owed the world ten’s of thousands of tons of gold – obligations it racked-up during the Vietnam Decade, and it failed to satisfy those obligations.

Here’s a question to test readers. How often does the party defaulting on a loan end up with more money than its creditors? Answer: never. Thus, an obvious observation (yet one which is never made) is that the claims of the U.S. government to still have any gold at all after its gold-default are absurd on their surface – and the only way to rebut that absurdity would be to prove that it still held the gold, by showing it to someone.

It all comes down to Sunday’s match up between the Indianapolis Colts and New Orleans Saints. Making their first Super Bowl appearance, the Saints will be looking to complete a story book season that many observers are paralleling with the rebirth of their post-Katrina city. Interestingly, it is thanks to the vote buying lobbying of Congressmen that the Saints even came into existence. Senator Russell Long’s vote, which was necessary to obtain an antitrust waiver to allow the merger of the NFL and AFL, was purchased with the promise to locate the next expansion team in his home state of Louisiana, allowing the Saints to appear the following year. The Colts meanwhile are looking to repeat their performance from four years ago when they won the franchise’s second title. On paper it’s a dream final for the fans as it pits the #1 team from each conference against each other for the first time since Super Bowl XXVIII that saw my Dallas Cowboys clobber the Buffalo Bills. That’s where the comparison end though as both those 90’s teams had run first attacks featuring Emmitt Smith and Thurman Thomas, while Sunday’s game should be a pass happy affair. The league has definitely seen a ground shift towards the pass in the last couple of years and Sunday should provide ample evidence.

The Colts quarterback Payton Manning, coming off his fourth MVP season, will be dueling it out with his opposite number on the Saints side, Drew Brees, who led the league with 33 touchdown passes. Both passed for over 4300 yards thanks to the help of an arsenal of weapons. While wide receiver Reggie Wayne rightfully gets most of the attention when the Colts are on the field, it’s Haitian connection, Pierre Garcon, who I think will make the big down field plays and be a difference maker Sunday. Rookie Austin Collie proved a couple weeks ago in the Conference final against the Jets that he’s also a threat while tight end Dallas Clarke always gets his looks and should be good for a short touchdown. Meanwhile, the Saints may be able to spread the ball out even more, as Brees can pick and choose between Marques Colston, Devery Henderson and Lance Moore at wide receiver. Again though, I think it’s the up and coming Robert Meachem who will turn in the big play for the receiving corps. If tight end Jeremy Shockey has had enough time to recover with the bye week, look for him to make a few plays too.

Neither teams backfield gets the credit they deserve as they are overshadowed by the passing attacks, yet both teams have the ability to hurt you on the ground. Joseph Addai is the featured Colts running back and took the rock to the house 13 times this year, good for 6th best in the league and he’s ably backed up by rookie Donald Brown. Over the regular season the Saints running game turned into every fantasy football players nightmare - the three-headed monster. While it may not have done any good fantasy-wise, in real football it means Pierre Thomas, Mike Bell and oft-injured Reggie Bush suffered less wear and tear over the year, leaving them fresher now when the games count. In fact Reggie Bush literally took over the divisional match up against the Arizona Cardinals amassing 217 all-purpose yards and scoring on an on an 83-yard punt return and a spectacular 46-yard run. Look for him to once again make the most of his limited touches.

Defense? We don’t need no stinking defense! With the New York Jets and Baltimore Ravens eliminated, the defenses will be an afterthought come Sunday. Damage control will be the key; neither defense will be able to stop the other team, so the winner may be the one who slows the other down just enough. Most likely though, with the two teams so evenly matched, it’ll all come down to turnovers. Last week, the Saints were beaten in all aspects of the game but one, fumbleitis, as the Saints were the beneficiaries of six Minnesota Vikings fumbles and two Brett Favre interceptions. If I had to name a difference-maker for the game on this side of the ball it would have to be Darren Sharper, after all he tied for the league lead with nine interceptions. Even more impressively, he had a total of 376 return yards on those int’s, oh, and he took three of them back for touchdowns!

As usual, the game will actually play second fiddle to an even bigger event for many - the Super Bowl commercials. The ability to reach a third of the American audience, around 100 million folks, most of whom having entered a salty snack and beer induced stupor that leaves them more prone than ever to propaganda techniques, leaves advertisers, and many viewers, drooling. In a year when it’s become fashionable to have your commercial banned from airing by the network as a way of creating buzz, the biggest stir is being created by one that shouldn’t have been accepted, starring a quarterback who’s yet to even take a snap in the NFL. In case you missed it, Florida quarterback Tim Tebow will appear in a commercial during this year’s Super Bowl to promote the pro-life anti-abortion cause. The ad, which is paid for by the ultra-conservative evangelical Christian group Focus on the Family, is expected to recount the story of Pam Tebow’s 1987 pregnancy. She contracted amoebic dysentery while doing missionary work in the Philippines and ignored recommendations by doctors to abort her fifth child due to the associated health concerns and gave birth to Tim. Of course the story has the anti-abortionist’s dream ending: Tim was born healthy, so healthy in fact that he has gone on to win the 2007 Heisman Trophy and lead his Florida Gators to two BCS championships. His daddy, a preacher himself said of his son, “I asked God for a preacher, and he gave me a quarterback.” Well, it seems he got a two for one.

Of course the usual suspects are lining up on both sides of the argument over whether or not the commercial should be run during the Super Bowl. Conservatives and right wingers are going goo-goo over Tebow’s brave move to risk his draft position in the NFL by taking a stand on a divisive issue and CBS’s decision to air it. Meanwhile, for arguing against it, many woman’s groups and the left are being demonized by much of the press for their attempts to suppress free speech. Yet, the argument against its airing goes beyond the fact that we should be arguing the finer points of the game instead of an intractable issue like abortion for a few reasons.

One: Tebow and CBS have decided to align themselves with a group that openly promotes hate no matter the cost. CBS’s decision to not anger the group and its leader James Dobson is almost understandable given the influence that they wield they risk alienating a large segment of the viewing population. Of course they’ll possibly face a viewer backlash from anti-hate groups, but CBS has clearly ‘come out’ on which side they are on. Why Tebow would choose to associate with those who advocate misogyny, child-abuse and homophobia is bewildering. The Gator quarterback, who played every Saturday with biblical citations on his eye black, is being held up as an example for his bravery to make a stand despite the fact that it may cost him come NFL draft time. They could be right, add this to his slow release and skill set which many feel is ill-matched to the NFL and he could slide down the draft board, conceivably out of the first round, along with it’s guaranteed millions. Well, I guess he could already be campaigning for his inevitable jump to politics.

Two: In the past CBS has banned commercials on the basis that “The network simply does not accept any advocacy advertising of any kind“. Selling Coke, not beliefs. This argument was held up as the reason for not airing a commercial for the liberal-leaning United Church of Christ highlighting the UCC’s welcoming stance toward gays and others who might feel shunned by more conservative churches. Even this year they banned an ad for gay dating site Mancrunch as well as a GoDaddy ad featuring an ex-NFL player who discovers his feminine side upon retirement. It’s difficult not to question CBS’s position reversal; are they afraid of having the game and it’s latent homoeroticism linked to anything gay or are they simply choosing to support one side’s political agenda?

Three: This ad continues a dangerous precedent being set by celebrities pushing their medical quackery. Suzanne Sommers giving cancer advice, Jenny McCarthey and her MMR shot leads to autism scare and now the Tebows poking their noses into women’s wombs. Is it right for them to be telling a national television audience, in coded language or otherwise, that we should ignore science and pray extra hard because it all worked out for them? This is dangerous stuff. They’re telling women whose lives may be at stake, to gamble with their health and roll the dice with their god. What’s pro-life about that?

Four: The ad may in fact be based on an outright lie. You see, abortion has been illegal in the Philippines since 1930. I’m getting the feeling that this is all based on a feel-good goodnight story that Tim’s mom used to tell him when she was indoctrinating him with her beliefs and has now somehow taken on a life of it’s own. Lies have a tendency to do that. People are questioning the possibility that any doctor would have risked six-years in prison by offering any such advice. CBS will face legal action if the add proves to be misleading by not mentioning Filipino law. If this fact were to become known, there is potential for some irony here, as by promoting taking away a woman’s choice, the ad may create awareness of the desperate situation faced by women in countries where they have no choice such as the Philippines.

Final score predictions? The Colts look like they’ll go off as big favourites, but if I’m in Vegas I’m taking the Saints against the spread. The opening line had the Colts up by only a field goal but as the money’s piled on them, it’s risen to nearly a touchdown. With the over/under an astronomical 57.5, it seems we’re indeed in for a shootout, a 34-31 game doesn’t seem out of the realm of possibilities. Oh, the 34 will have Colts written above it giving them their second Super Bowl in the last four years. As for the Tebow ad, I’m afraid the “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” advocacy spot we’ll be subjected to this Sunday is foreshadowing what’s to come, as an onslaught of such ads has been guaranteed come election time due to the recent Supreme Court decision to loosen electoral sponsorship laws. While the nation’s stadiums may serve as Sunday churches for many and the Super Bowl has become a holy day as much as a sports event, we will already be force fed a steady dose of skyward finger pointing and god-thanking speeches. The anti-choice ad has no place on Super Sunday where we expect arguments about the better team and commercials featuring talking frogs or dancing lizards but not a debate about faith and politics stirred by a proselytizing Gator.

Writing in his “Side Glances” column in Road & Track (March 2010), Peter Egan says of an excursion with his wife, “I . . . started braking for a turn onto Union Road.  As I did so, a young woman in a small lozenge-shaped GM economy car (your guess is as good as mine) glided through the stop sign on Union Road at about 25 mph without looking our way.  She was on her cellphone, slouched against the door and gazing off in the other direction.

“The timing was perfect.  If I hadn’t already backed off the throttle and started braking, she would have killed us.

“I honked my horn, but the horn on my Triumph is pathetic.  It makes the same bleating sound a small sheep would make if you poked it in the butt with a sharp stick.  I hasten to say that I have never actually done this to a small sheep, but I think you can imagine the sound.

“In any case, the horn did not penetrate either the car window or the woman’s consciousness and she continued onward, without ever having seen us.”

It has been established that driving while talking on a phone, even a hands-free one, is even more dangerous than driving while intoxicated.  States have been slow to enact laws against the practice, presumably because big business deals are made in people’s vehicles, and even where there are such laws I have never heard of one being enforced, at least without an accident’s resulting from the infraction.

Well, then, of course this is the information age, and one must keep communicating, right?  Well, no; this information age coincides with some very serious problems with articulateness.  Have you listened to the typical cellphone conversation?  It’s hardly possible not to.  In most cases it’s dominated by the word “like” and includes nothing that wouldn’t have been better left unsaid.

So what is going on here?  I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s some sort of mirroring:  If someone is listening to me I must exist and be worth listening to.  (Maybe writing one of these columns is a related phenomenon.)  You know, R. D. Laing and some other psychologists concluded a few decades back that when a baby cries because its mother has left the area it’s not on account of any feeling of being in danger, but that the baby is afraid if it isn’t being observed it may not exist.

Maybe that’s it.  Young people especially, as the victims of that form of education that attempts to install self-esteem by simply telling children they are “special” and never telling them they are wrong, rather than motivating them to do something worthwhile, just might have a pretty tenuous hold on any sense of their own reality.  But must they take it out on the streets and roads?  And must our law enforcement people refuse to ticket them and fine them for endangering the lives of our children?  It’s pretty dang hypocritical to pretend to be out there to protect people from themselves and each other while ignoring what must be the most dangerous widespread practice of all among drivers.

I thought it telling that he began his lecture by stating that all Americans “of all faiths and no faith… share a recognition, one as old as time, that a willingness to believe, an openness to grace, a commitment to prayer can bring sustenance to our lives.” Excuse me? How could someone of no faith have a commitment to prayer? And why are they even being mentioned at this National Prayer Breakfast? Let the unfaithful have their own day of unprayers, oh wait, they do, it’s called Earth Day.

After this past year in office, no one should be surprised that President Obama took a bi-partisan prayer meeting and used it as a platform to give yet another diatribe. During his speech, Obama seemed to be scolding his listeners as he once again came across as the superior, condescending professor who is frustrated that his “students” continue to dare to disagree with him. It was telling that the President and his group in DC concluded a few weeks ago that the problem with the health care bill wasn’t the bill itself but rather that they didn’t communicate the benefits of it to the public in spite of all the press conferences, townhall meetings and speeches on health care. Running underneath these conclusions is the darker belief that the American people are just too stupid to understand the bill or to appreciate why it is good for them. This would explain why Speaker of the House Pelosi arrogantly stated that she will do whatever is necessary to pass the health care bill because she knows what is best for us.

During his National Prayer Breakfast lecture Obama continuously scolded the listeners and asked for “a return to civility”. This reminded me of Rodney King’s plea of “can we all get along” but in Obama’s case it really means that the bad conservatives need to get along with the wonderful democrats who are doing God’s work, such as the health care plan. And it was hard to miss Obama’s meaning when he “urged leaders to be empowered by faith, to step outside their comfort zone to bridge divisions and unite around their common goals.” What common goal? Or perhaps I should ask whose common goals? He further talks about the “erosion of civility” which “poisons the well of public opinion” and “makes politics an all or nothing sport” and that our crisis, such as health care become “contests for power”. Duh. Politics is a contest for power and the only time someone complains about it is when they find themselves on the losing end!

Barack Obama also took a slight detour in his lecture and provided some interesting insight into the man we call our President. During his civility lesson 101 he stated “.. surely you can question my policies without questioning my faith or for that matter my citizenship.” Oh my. The birthers are a small fringe group and yet liberals seem to love to talk about them; although not sure if mentioning them during a lecture on civility and on everybody getting along is really appropriate. As for questioning Obama’s faith, well, of course we will, in fact he has made it easy for us. As I stated earlier, he skipped the National Day of Prayer last year and has yet to attend church since his Sundays with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright. So President Obama has given us cause to question his faith. Granted, I might be accused of being a similar hypocrite as I am a Christian who also hasn’t set foot in a church in years. Then again, I am not the President of the USA, who appears to turn his “faith” on and off as the situation requires.

Within all this talk of civility was another plea – to not question his motives. “Challenging each other’s ideas can renew our democracy but when we challenge each other’s motives it becomes harder to see what we hold in common.” Does he truly not get it? Americans thrive on challenging not just ideas and policies but the motives behind them. There has never been anything wrong in asking a politician “why is he doing something”. You can’t truly understand a person unless you understand his or her motive.

I wonder, though, if having his motives questioned has been a new and uncomfortable position for the president. He is no longer surrounded by people of similar motives nor is he the darling of the media any more. People actually are daring to question him. How uncivil! Instead of blindly agreeing, they are questioning his motives, his faith, and wondering if his goals are our goals.

Obama’s decline in public opinion is due to the public beginning to realize that Obama’s actions are not matching up to his words. And you don’t resolve this by talking even more. Obama may give a great speech but we’ve stopped listening to what he says and are watching what he does instead. So yes we are starting to question him, no matter how uncivil it might seem. ]]> http://hypocrisy.com/2010/02/04/hasnt-got-a-prayer/feed/ http://hypocrisy.com/2010/02/04/the-republican-playbook-uncensored/ http://hypocrisy.com/2010/02/04/the-republican-playbook-uncensored/#comments Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:21:03 +0000 Snark Twain http://hypocrisy.com/?p=10712 My fellow Republicans, it’s been a tough few years, but we’re on our way back. Soon power will be ours, once again, if we stay strong, stay the course, and most important, stay on message.

And the message is this: Obama isn’t…

Wait, let’s rewind. This year’s tournament was held in Angola, a nation that has enjoyed less than eight years of peace since the end of a 27 year civil war. Among the 16 teams competing, the tiny west African nation of Togo (12 on the map) in fact boasts a relatively powerful squad. Touting a couple of English Premiership players, Manchester City striker Emmanuel Adebayor and Aston Villa midfielder Moustapha Salifou they were unfortunate both geographically and politically in having drawn to play their group stage games in Cabinda, one of four venues for the tournament. You see, Cabinda is an exclave. Not only is it separated from the rest of Angola by a strip of the DR Congo and does it share it’s northern border with the other Congo, but it’s also home to the last pocket of unrest leftover from the civil war. Despite the signing of a peace deal in 2006, the nationalist movement Flec (Front for the Liberation of the Enclave of Cabinda) has continued a low-level insurgency as it tries to claim independence from the Angolan government.

Ahh, seems I need to back up some more. Angola was plunged into 27 years of civil war from the moment it won it’s freedom from Portugal in the Angolan War of Independence, itself a 14 year struggle which was only brought to an end with the Carnation Revolution in Lisbon. While all civil wars are complex, a reading of Rysard Kapuscinski’s Another Day of Life would be an essential starting point in deciphering the complex web of armed faction acronyms, from the MPLA to UNITA, and supporting nations from Cuba to Zaire. It was a conflict which saw Chevron prop up a socialist regime and Cuban soldiers protecting American oil installations against CIA sponsored South African mercenaries. Fortunately for our purposes, focusing on Cabinda, only two factors need to be remembered, Flec and oil. Angola is sub-Saharan Africa’s 2nd leading oil producer, with the Cabinda region producing about 60% of its total output. In fact, while diamonds furnished most of the revenue for the rebel UNITA during the civil war, it was Cabinda oil that kept the government MPLA going. Diamonds versus oil, and in the end, oil emerged victorious.

Yet Cabinda has always been more than physically separate from the rest of Angola. Even though it too had been a Portuguese protectorate since the Treaty of Simulanbuco, of 1 February 1885 (Portuguese only), the area has a distinctive culture, ethnicity and history and thus Angola and Cabinda were kept as officially separate overseas provinces. Locals were never Portuguese citizens, being labeled indigenas and forced to pay a head tax or work for the state six months of each year. (p.103 gives a more thorough account) The rebel group, Flec, was not immune to the fracturing into splinter groups so common during civil war, with the result that when a peace deal was finally signed in 2006, most of the soldiers didn’t feel it applied to them. While the Angolan government marketed a lasting peace, future trouble was inevitable in a corrupt environment that breeds fierce competition for the spoils of natural resources (pp.30-36 for more).

So, that brings us to the fateful day for the Togolese national team. The question is how could the team be sanctioned with suspension from the next two editions of the tournament in 2012 and 2014 and slapped with a $50,000 fine when it clearly was the fault of the organizers for having scheduled the matches in such a volatile region where warnings of possible attacks had been issued? Caf’s executive committee’s case seems to be based on three points. First, the Togolese team shouldn’t have driven but flown; second, the team withdrew shortly before the tournament; thirdly, and most importantly it seems, there was ‘political interference’ in the decision to pull the team out of the tournament. The first claim rests on the organizers assertion that teams were told to fly in the regulations posted on the web site; the second on Article 78 of Caf’s regulations which specifies such a punishment for teams withdrawing shortly before the competition; the third on strict policy intended to separate politics from sport. Absurd, all three.

Prior to the tournament, the team had been practicing in the Congo, in Pointe Noire. A quick look at the accompanying map (zoom in top left, don’t mind the old school country names like Zaire) will show that without strict warnings about the lack of safety, which you wouldn’t expect when a major tournament is being played in the area, flying over the southern tip of the Congo, Cabinda, a bit of Congo DR (labeled Zaire on the old map) and then much of Angola to Luanda to turn around and fly back to Cabinda would seem ludicrous. As for the regulations stipulating the necessity to fly, the nearest I could find is 16.15. Satisfactory transportation means should be put at the disposal of the visiting team, the referees and the commissioner, either by road or by air if the distance is superior to 200 Km. The travel should be made on the day before the match at the latest and at a reasonable hour of the day, except if visiting team arrive late. Additionally, it’s clear that someone on the Angolan side knew they were planning on going by bus as the team was accompanied by an Angolan security force. Thanks to Google maps you can try to follow their route.

Next, while article 78 does specify punishment for “forfeit notified less than twenty days before the start or during the final competition“, a quick look down the page to Articles 80 and 89 reveal that “Reserves are made as to cases of force majeure and shall be decided by the Organising Committee.” - three dead and a backup goalkeeper with a bullet lodged in his spine as a result of a terrorist attack sounds like it would fit the bill. Additionally, just days before the decision to impose the penalties, Caf president Issa Hayatou was quoted as saying, “We wished they would have stayed but respect their decision to leave.” Shortly after the attacks he was quoted further saying, “It is left to you to decide to stay in a competition synonymous of fraternity, brotherhood, friendship and solidarity. And in case you decide to leave the competition, we will definitely understand your decision and it will be accepted.”

Point three is admittedly the stickiest. Amid the aftermath, the team wavered back and forth between going home and playing, finally holding a team vote and surprising everyone with the decision to stay. At this point however, Togo’s Prime Minister Gilbert Houngbo overruled the team’s decision and ordered them home, denouncing the security in Angola and sending the presidential plane to collect the squad. Technically, politics have entered the sporting realm at this point. Yet, wasn’t the choice of Angola as host nation politically motivated, seen as an opportunity to develop its facilities, tourism and infrastructure - over $1 billion was spent, $600 million for the four new Chinese built stadiums. The decision to have Cabinda serve as a venue was even more transparently politically charged in a brazen effort to prove to the outside world that peace and stability had been achieved in the region and therefore ready for foreign investment.

The organizers miscalculation also effects politics beyond Angola’s borders. The leader of the Flec movement that claimed responsibility for the attacks, Rodrigues Mingas, lives in exile in France. Tensions have arisen as the Angolan government has criticized France for not taking appropriate measures to have him extradited. Don’t forget, the tournament is officially known as the Orange Africa Cup of Nations, Orange of course being a French telecommunications company. Back in Cabinda, the government is using the attack to justify a crackdown on political opponents, rounding up priests, professors and lawyers. Needless to say, the authorities don’t have a very good record of treating their detainees very well. Meanwhile in Togo, presidential elections are due to be held later this month and I’ve got a feeling this tragedy will be an issue. It seems that politics have a way of getting involved in situations like this no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

Any other year and the whole tournament would most likely have been canceled, however, it comes in the same year that Africa will host it’s first World Cup, when South Africa takes center stage for the world’s most popular sport (No matter what you hear over the next few days, far more people will watch the World Cup than the Super Bowl). Somewhat ironically, 2010 also marks the African Union’s Year of Peace and Security. This tournament was to serve as further proof that the continent was ready for the challenge, but it has only given ammunition to those who have questioned the decision to hold the world’s biggest sporting event in ‘the dark continent‘; never mind that Cabinda is further from Johannesburg that London is from Moscow.

This latest in a string of bizarre decisions from football’s governing authorities came down from leadership represented by Issa Hayatou, a man who symbolizes many of the reasons Africa has seen so little progress. Hayatou has been dictator president of Caf for over twenty years and it is no coincidence that the leader of his home nation of Cameroon, Paul Biya, has also been president since 1982. These type of men have been great innovators in the world of phony elections, ensuring that the cycle of corruption (you’ll find Angola at 162 of 180 countries on the corruption index) and poverty will continue while they live like kings. Sport, much like oil, is a natural magnet for corruption as displayed in Angola where at least a third of oil revenue is siphoned off into the pockets of the politically connected while the people are left to suffer. At its best, football serves to bring the people of the world together, at it’s worst, it serves to further the political aims of the entrenched elite.

The remit of the Chilcot Inquiry is to consider the period from the summer of 2001 to the end of July 2009, embracing the run-up to the conflict in Iraq, the military action and its aftermath. To consider the UK’s involvement in Iraq, including the way decisions were made and actions taken, to establish, as accurately as possible, what happened and to identify the lessons that can be learned. Those lessons will help ensure that, if we face similar situations in future, the government of the day is best equipped to respond to those situations in the most effective manner in the best interests of the country. Sounds so nice, doesn’t it, noble almost - to learn from the mistakes of the past about how to behave in the future. Yet, we won’t learn much, there won’t be a smoking gun, instead of prosecuting politicians for committing illegal acts, a public forum has been created for Mr Blair and his kind to spread their hate, lies and deceit. Instead of fireworks Friday, we got a pop and fizzle; instead of revelations we got the seven techniques of propaganda as only Tony Blair could deliver them.

When was the last time an inquiry such as this has actually produced any results? The 9/11 Commission? The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission? The Copenhagen shenanigan? Any G-7, 8 or 20 meeting? All smokescreens, staged farces that are nothing but transfer propaganda. When public scepticism erupts in response to resultant extremes of criminality and violence that even the media are powerless to deny, the illusion must be bolstered. Somehow, these meetings still lend a stamp of some sort of approval for a good many people that something’s being done, justice being served. Hopes of this were raised just two days before Blair took the stand, a bombshell was dropped by his senior legal adviser of that era, Lord Goldsmith. The counsel had changed his mind over the legality of the conflict on the eve of the invasion after being whisked to Washington for a tete-a-tete with Condaleeza Rice and US government “lawyers”. (Is that what we’re calling the hired muscle these days?)

Anyway, the scene was set for a showdown between Blair and the hostile inquiry members. Oh, but wait, did I say hostile? Inquisitive perhaps? At least impartial? No, on all counts I’m afraid. If I’d have said hospitable, war-mongerers, handpicked by Gordon Brown to refer to the five members I’d have been on target, which explains the easy questioning of Blair. The biggest lie of the whole inquiry came only 10 minutes into it’s first session back in November when Sir John Chilcot said: “My colleagues and I come to this inquiry with an open mind.” Let’s quickly look at the five:

Martin Gilbert penned a piece December 26, 2004 on Blair and Bush likening them to Churchill and Roosevelt for their heroic leadership on Iraq. During the run up to war Sir Roderick Lyne was point man in deflecting Russian opposition in his role as ambassador in Moscow. Sir Lawrence Freedman wrote much of the speech Blair delivered in Chicago in 1999 outlining justifications for regime change, then later spoke of the “rather noble criteria” which lay behind the illegal invasion of Iraq in March 2003. During a Chilcot session in December he volunteered the information that he had “instigated” a pre-war seminar for Blair to discuss Iraq because, he said, “I was aware of misgivings among some specialists in Iraq about the direction of policy”. Baroness Prashar, another cozy insider who also ticks the female and minority boxes, is governor of Ditchley Foundation, whose director, Sir Jeremy Greenstock was the UK Ambassador to the UN who presented the lies about Iraqi WMD. And of course Chilcot himself was part of the Butler Review whose job it was to whitewash the fabrication of evidence of said WMD’s.

The biggest shock for me reading and watching the Blair testimony from Friday was how many references he made to Iran in an inquiry set up to discover the reasons for invading Iraq. You would think, as the UK’s special envoy to the Quartet on the Middle East, he would be promoting what the group claims to promote, peace, instead of excusing atrocities and promoting war. “It’s a constant problem for Israel, they use great force in retaliation. Before you’ve gone two weeks, they’re the people that started it all.” After saying that in the aftermath of the last Gaza conflict it should have come as no surprise to hear him hammering away using the oldest, most facile propaganda trick known to man, Name Calling. With an election on the horizon and Labour’s popularity lagging, Tony’s obviously decided to do his best for the team. He managed to squeeze the word Iran in 58 times over his testimony. Here’s a transcript. It’s even more interesting if you notice the context in which he mentions the Persian state, references are made to 9/11, WMD,  and al-Queda are peppered among his soliloquies. Blair said many of the arguments that led him to confront the “profoundly wicked, almost psychopathic” Saddam Hussein seven years ago now applied to the regime in Tehran. “We face the same problem about Iran today”.

What do you do when dealt a bad hand? Well if you’re Tony Blair and everything you asserted about Iraq before the war has been proven wrong, you do a little Card Stacking propaganda. This seemed to be his strategy heading in, to convince us that it’s better world thanks to the removal of Saddam Hussein as well as the inevitability of the war. “I genuinely believe that if we had left Saddam in power, even with what we know now, we would still have had to have dealt with him, possibly in circumstances where the threat was worse.” More astonishingly, he was then allowed to turn questioner at his own questioning, “What if I had not invaded Iraq? Where would we be then?”

Not recognizing the astonishing insensitivity of saying such a thing in a room in which at least 20 people could have replied: “My son would still be alive today”, Mr Blair went on to paint a picture of Iraq emerging blinking and frail from the darkness of despotism into the sunlight of freedom. Most Iraqis, he argued, are better off now, ignoring that the Iraq war made the Middle East less secure, emboldening Iran and making future moves to disarm Tehran doubly difficult. It debased the moral case for humanitarian intervention by undermining the authority of international law, legitimising unilateral action by imperious governments. Mr. Blair believes the end justified the means. But the methods used to take Britain to war perverted law and democracy. That was not some unfortunate byproduct of a greater moral endeavour, it was a fatal corruption of the diplomatic process that might have led to a better outcome for Iraq. The means sabotaged the end.

The ‘I’m gonna puke’ moment didn’t hit me until I saw Teflon Tony’s Plain Folks propaganda gambit. He had previously admitted in an interview that the WMD’s hadn’t really mattered in his decision to attack Saddam. In this exchange he tries to display that old Blair charm, instead he comes off like a double talking fool.

The out of the blue comments I’ll put under the testimonial propaganda banner. Between 2000 and 2002, Blair stated: “[Iraq] had a child mortality rate of 130 children per 1,000, as bad as in the Congo… Now the figure is 40 child deaths per 1,000…” Was this a dig at the Congo for some past slight or simply an attempt to deceive? Of course the statistic fails to take into account the draconian UN blockade of Iraq, under which child mortality more than doubled between 1990 and 1999, rising from 56 per 1,000 live births in the period 1984-89 to 131 per 1,000 in 1994-99. Later, his interlocutors allowed him to answer a question about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq with a reply about military action taken alongside Bill Clinton in 1998. He was permitted to repeatedly make the claim that Iraq was in breach of UN resolutions in general and 1441 in particular when in fact they weren’t.

Apparently, most people were surprised that Iran would try to destabilize post-Saddam Iraq, therefore who would have planned on that? Worse, he played on the surprise that al-Queda moved in post invasion by using the fact that most people were trying to argue they weren’t there pre-invasion. Um, yeah, that’s the point, the invasion gave them a foothold you pompous fool! “People didn’t think that al-Qaeda and Iran would play the role that they did. It was really the external elements of al-Qaeda and Iran that really caused this mission very nearly to fail.” So, though al-Qaeda had, as Lord Blair kept reminding us yesterday, “changed everything” with 9/11 and were one of the reasons why the British and Americans invaded Iraq because the Americans said Saddam had links with al-Qa’ida and might give them weapons of mass destruction, when it turned out that the links were as non-existent as the weapons, Lord Blair was surprised to find al-Qaeda turning up in post-invasion Iraq. “People did not think that al-Qaeda and Iran would play the role that they did.”

Remember the ‘coalition of the willing‘? Well Bandwagon propaganda is and was featured in the build up to war, drumming up support, or at least attempting to convey the illusion of support. Blair’s zeal as the head cheerleader of the tiny club has always been on display, and the pompoms were out Friday. Blair managed to get in some of that team America spirit at every turn, “I never regarded September 11 as an attack on America, I regarded it as an attack on us. And I had said we would stand shoulder to shoulder with them.” Pressed on the subject of the April 2002 Crawford meeting with Dubya in 2002 where some have claimed he signed his name in blood for invasion, he would only admit to “I think what he took from that was exactly what he should have taken, which was if it came to military action, because there was no way of dealing with this diplomatically, we would be with him.”

Last comes Glittering Generalities, Blair’s specialty, a man who obviously has no time for details, only grand gestures. Forgotten by most people today, Friday’s session shed a bit of light on an intelligence report, the September dossier, which contained among other things the infamous 45 minute claim. While most American will recognize the dossier for Dubya’s State of the Union claim “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa“, it was this sexed up report that was used by Blair to convince his ministers and ultimately parliament to go to war. In the foreword to the dossier, Tony Blair said the intelligence shows “beyond doubt” that Saddam was a WMD threat. Not only a vague, nebulous threat, but that Iraqi forces had WMD that could be used within 45 minutes of an order being given.

Of course since then, every claim, every one, has since been proven false. Friday we heard the former prime minister lightly dismiss it by saying that the dossier “assumed a vastly exaggerated importance later”. Yet it was Mr Blair, as the panel did not remind him, who invested that document with such importance by recalling Parliament for an emergency session so that he could wave it around to terrify MPs and a nation. He had been told by his own officials that the intelligence was “sporadic and patchy” and yet he represented it to the Commons as “detailed and authoritative”. Asked why he had not asked essential questions about the nature of the so-called intelligence, he was allowed to escape with the insouciant shrug, “I didn’t focus on it a great deal.”

Many had hoped for an “I’m sorry for lying” moment but Blair obviously looked upon his testimony as a chance to road-test the defiant passages planned for the self-justificatory chapters of his memoirs. Yet, if nothing else, Blair’s testimony left little doubt that his religious fervor in support of war wasn’t diminished by his snap conversion to Catholithism. Sadly, he seems to be a rule rather than the exception when it comes to his kind showing any kind of remorse or contrition for perpetrating a crime against humanity. Therefore he’ll be able to back to giving economic and political advice to governments and companies such as JP Morgan through his business venture, Tony Blair Associates, and also giving lectures across the world. This helps soothe any pangs of conscience he might feel as he’s believed to have amassed a personal fortune of £15 million since leaving office in 2007, including a significant amount in the Middle East. So, much like Edith…

Obama said that he was “giving” us $1.25 billion to build this, except that is only half of the full cost of $2.6 billion. Who is going to pay for the rest? If it is up to Floridians, forget it, we don’t have that money. So we may end up with a high speed train from the Orlando International Airport to Disney, which is Phase 1 of the project - a great boondoggle for Disney World but useless for Florida’s citizens.

But what about all the jobs it would create? It was stated that there would be 23,000 construction jobs and 1,000 professional jobs needed for this project. Let’s take the professional jobs, first. We would need to look to Europe or Japan for the expertise and professionals to oversee this project. The trains themselves, would also most likely be primarily built overseas, too. But there would still be the 23,000 construction jobs which would help Florida’s employment, right? I don’t think so.

Everybody jokes about seeing a group of construction workers standing around and watching one guy work but what about 229 men watching one guy? You see, there are approximately 80 miles between the Orlando International Airport and Ybor City, the proposed final destination. Let’s even say there is another 20 miles to go over to Disney and other tracks needed at the airport and Lakeland, another destination point. The proposed 23,000 jobs works out to 230 men per mile! I don’t’ know about you, but the 23,000 projected jobs seems as out of whack as most government projections.

Even if they found the money to complete it to Tampa, there is still the question of who would ride it. I just don’t see that there is enough demand for people going between Orlando and Tampa to support the $2.6 billion cost. I’ve driven this route frequently and it simply is not a bad drive.

They say the train will halve the current trip of about 90 minutes to roughly 40 minutes. But that omits the added time to get to the train station and find a parking space. Nor does it resolve the practicalities of getting where you need to go without a car if you arrive by train. Then add in our Florida weather. I read that they are thinking of powering it with electricity. Hmmm. I am not sure if I would want to get on a metal train attached to an electric line during the daily summer lightening storms. Not to mention how often we lose power which would mean the train could frequently be stranded somewhere in the middle of orange groves… Driving straight over would make more sense and would probably be quicker in the long run, all things considered.

In the shadow of the “excitement” for the Orlando to Tampa high speed train there was another quieter announcement this week about the other coast of Florida. Obama has proposed that NASA use its budget to maintain the International Space Station and keep it viable to 2020 and abandon the effort to return to the moon. In one stroke Obama will effectively destroy NASA’s future. This change in focus will cancel NASA’s Project Constellation which was working on replacing our aging space shuttles with new capsule based systems. This simply does not make sense and is not only detrimental to my state but to the whole country.

This new change in the focus of NASA is expected to result in the loss of 7000 jobs in Florida, on top of the 900 people let go last fall. And these are skilled engineers and scientists with high paying jobs who will be now removed from Florida’s tax base. There would be comparable losses in Houston, California and other states which have facilities that support NASA.

Obama’s budget would destroy our space program as we would no longer have any shuttles and nothing in the works to replace them. Even worse, it means that we would end up funding Russia’s space program as they would have the only remaining transportation to the ISS and our astronauts would have to hitch a ride with the Russians, for a price, of course. Thus Obama would destroy our space program while supporting Russia’s.

Last week, on the west coast Obama proposed a high speed train at a cost of at least $2.6 billion, which nobody wants or will use. He is giving us only half the cost so this state, which had already voted down a similar project, will now be saddled for the other half. On the east coast, NASA has been told to abandon our space programs which will loose 7,000 high paying jobs. We need to tell the President he has it backwards (again). Abandon the ridiculous and unwanted high speed train and instead support our future space programs. For in the long run, probably more men and women will fly into space then will ever ride that train.