Category Archives: politics

movies, politics

>Great movies of the 80’s: Threads

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>Originally posted June 10, 2007.

You’re in for something really dark and depressing here. Mick Jackson’s Threads (1984) really got to me the first time I saw it, and by reading the reviews it seems I wasn’t the only one having a hard time sleeping for a couple of nights. Some say they still have nightmares twenty years after watching this movie.

So what makes this film so horrifying? Obviously because it’s so very real.
It’s set in Sheffield, England, in the mid 80’s during the Cold War, and in short shows what might happen if the world would face a nuclear war. It brings society to its knees, forcing us to go back to our very basic principles and needs. There’s no comfort to be found anywhere. Everything is bleak and hopeless, still the people are fighting for survival. Survival for what? one might ask. Survival to face even more death and destruction? There’s no electricity, no clean water, hardly any food and all hope is gone. Outside the world is dying as rulers of the earth wage their pretty little video game war.
What would you do?


The documentary style along with the grim scenes makes for some truly memorable moments. The fact that it could happen any day, without warning, adds to the realism. You won’t find any over the top Hollywood special effects in this movie, just the disturbing truth of what would really happen living in a radioactive environment while there’s a war going on outside no one is safe from (hi Mobb Deep!). There’s no second chances here.

When will we push the button?
When will the warheads hit?
When will the madness end?


Keep in mind that there are many thousand nuclear weapons ready to be fired at any time aimed at any place in the world within minutes. Look at the US and the Soviet Union at this very moment, june 2007:
USA is planning to place missile defence systems in eastern Europe (according to the US: “to counter the threat from Iran”), and Putin (who fears USA is planning to aim their missiles towards Russia, since he argues that the threat from Iran is non-existent) will respond by aiming his nuclear arms towards Europe!
Holy fuck, this surely is a video game to those asshole leaders!
Seems like there’s a new arms race around the corner… Read about it in Swedish here, and in English here.

You really should watch this film on a proper system, but for those of you who can’t get a hold of the DVD it’s available online here. Please, do NOT fast forward – you’ll miss out on the whole thing, you dumb fuck.

But then again, mushroom clouds and fireballs can look pretty beautiful…



Afterword: Square Leg was a British government project made in 1980 that estimated what would happen in Britain in the event of an actual nuclear attack. It projected the mortality rate at 29 million, serious injuries at 7 million and short term survivors at 19 million.

philosophy, politics

>Oswald Spengler – The Decline of Cultures

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>Originally posted June 03, 2007.

Excerpt from the Sick Of It All song Just look around (1992):

The question they keep asking me
How can one so young be so bitter and angry
Well, the answer is plain to see
Maybe if they weren’t so blind they’d see what I see
I see the homeless livin’ out on the street
on every corner they’re asking for money
I try to help them whenever I can
but sometimes I can’t afford to help myself
I see diseases and modern plagues of our times
The greed of our leaders has made them blind
to our problems, they spend millions overseas
people right here are fightin’ wars everyday

I see the whites that hate the blacks
blacks against the jews
race against religion
and they’re all too blind to see
…

So you digest that for a moment. Take a look around. What do you see? It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the world is marching towards death in the fast lane, speaking of morals, art, spiritual beliefs and the environment.

Oswald Spengler (1880-1936), german philosopher and historian, took this look around and came to some mighty fine conclusions. He summarized those in 1918 in his book Der Untergang des Abendlandes (The Decline of The West – Form and Actuality), which later on was completed by a second volume, Perspectives of World History (1923).

Spengler makes two clear points:
• That histories of various cultures can be shown to follow a similar pattern
• That all aspects of a culture – arts, politics, mathematics, science, etc– have related underlying principles, which differ from culture to culture

Spengler looks upon history as an organic cycle, rather than linear, that has to pass through the stages of birth-development-fulfillment-decay-death. In the West we tend to look upon history as something always moving forward, evoluting to the better. This, according to Spengler, is the result of the Western man’s ego, thinking that everything in the past pointed to him, making him the center of the world and so on.
The cyclical movements of history are not those of nations, states, races and events, but of High Cultures, each and everyone of equal importance. So when Spengler speaks of the decline of the West, he speaks of the decline of its culture. Thus, the people live on, but their culture is destroyed.

The eight High Cultures so far are:

• Babylonian
• Egyptian
• Chinese
• Indian
• Mexican (Mayan/Aztec)
• Classical (Greece/Rome)
• Arabian
• Western (European-American)

These eight cultures have all had a life span of 1000 years.

Spengler uses seasons as an analogy to elaborate:
Spring is the birth of religion and where the basic principles of this culture are being formed.
Summer is when acts of lasting value and great accomplishments are being made. This is the peak and the cultural prime.
Autumn is when all this start to break down and turn into Winter. We’re there already.
Politics is motivated by money and moves through imperialism. Science no longer reaches certainties. There is much cultural confusion. The arts do not speak from or to the soul of the people, but rather follow materialistic fashions with lots of changes of styles, not asking much from neither the artist nor the people. After a moment of atheism the people will turn to a renewal of religion and spiritual faith, based on the religion developed in the spring of the culture.


Spengler also uses a “prime symbol” for every culture. For example, the ancient Egyptian culture had the “Way” or the “Path” as symbol, pointing to their preoccupation in art, religion and architecture and its symbolism – the passages of the soul.
The prime symbol of the Western Culture is the “Faustian soul” (soul meaning “mentality”), symbolizing the upward reaching for the infinite, which in itself is an impossible feat (which we all know), and thus we will soon face the final doom and the end of our culture.

And so we’ve entered the Civilization phase which is – as opposed to the Culture phase we’ve just left behind – occupied with materialism, continual wars, mass movements of people, environmental crises, rootlessness and lack of vitality, strenght and intellect.
The history of High Culture is the only history that counts, according to Spengler, because pre- and after-Cultural man is simply without history: as man plunges into materialism and advocates the degeneration of his mentality he loses his historical weight.

Spengler speaks of cities, mega-cities, “megalopolis”, huge urban and suburban centers that breed a mindless mob and suck the life and vitality out of the countryside. Religion starts in the open, moves in to the cities where it loses its gist and then dies in the world-cities, engulfed in the flames of materialism.


Spengler is, just as Nietzsche, seen by some as an intellectual precursor for National Socialistic ideas. However, Sprengler didn’t see any bright future for Europe and his motherland, and he defied the Nazi ideas of racial superiority and anti-semitism until the very end. His thoughts on these subjects can be explored in his work The Hour of Decision (1933).
As for the term “race” used by Spengler, he is quoted saying: “race that one has, not a race to which one belongs. The first one is ethos, the other – zoology”. Apparently not the narrow definition as used by the National Socialists at the time.

On another note, in his book Man and Technics (1931) he is occupied with the development and usage of the technical, a development which is unique to the West. His prediction read that coloured people of the Earth will use the very technology of the West to destroy the West.

Public Enemy said it on Fear of A Black Planet (1990):

Breakdown, 2001
It might be best to be black or just brown
Countdown!


For further reading:
The Oswald Spengler Collection
On The Decline of The West from Wikipedia

music, politics

>Tool and die

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>Originally posted April 17, 2007.


NOV 2007 UPDATE: Click here.

The Virginia Tech Massacre.
30+ killed this time.
And still people ask the same stupid question: Why does this always happen in the United States of America – the land of the free, the biggest and best democracy in the world?
To answer this, once again I turn to rap music: one of the few genres where social realism and urban youth is allowed to collide head to head, no holds barred, free from moral restrictions (as we all know, punk and hardcore ought to be like this, but is far from it…).

Back in 1992 there was this pretty strange rap group called Consolidated. Strange because they were white, and strange because they were dealing with political issues on a higher level than most other rappers at the time. They weren’t in it for the fame. And not for the game either. They wanted world wide change. They were the white equivalent of Public Enemy, in a way, and they started already in 1989 unleashing the This is Fascism EP.
Their song Tool and Die is still as relevant today as it was back then, 15 years ago. Sadly, not much has changed. The NRA and the gun lobby are working hard for gun rights instead of gun control.


Download Tool and Die here, and get with the lyrics. Truly great stuff!
No lame bling-bling shit, this is true hardcore.
Can you deal with it?

Consolidated – Tool and Die

Damn, this is madness
its the fourth consectutive week I’ve had this
reoccuring nightmare of a woman who tries to walk her child to daycare
they pass some liquor store
see an average looking kid running out the door
in a moment frozen
they watch as he reveals a handgun
terror in her voice, no sound,
he unloads a round, her son goes down
then I wake up screaming but am I dreaming
cause its just another day
so many killings repeated until people have no feeling
when every two years guns take more
american lives than the whole vietnam war
Six teens and children die every day in gun homicides
and the NRA lobby fool
pay athletes to tell kids to stay in school
whoever said that must be joking
go tell that to the kids in Oakland,
DC. Detroit and Newark
and you wonder why kids don’t do their homework
the school is a warzone
teachers and students alike are afraid to leave home
hallways are an innocence tomb
the principal’s office a grieving room
this is a malignant cancer
guards and metal detectors won’t be the answer
hundreds of thousands of students say
they carry guns to school daily
growing up with fear and panic.
Bang – Nine – Automatic!

It’s genocide
America has the most homicides
Society devouring its own young
Take away the guns we need gun control

How can we stop the violence
when everywhere we look is the image of gun death
the Rodney King explosion is just one result of inner city erosion
take away all hope and kids will turn to robbery and dealing dope
you don’t care about elections
what urban youth want is protection
from a life of war
could be the Iraqi war or war in the Filmore
There is no more tragic sight
than a heavily armed youth with no respect for life
The leading cause of death in African American males under thirty five
at the funeral the friends will cry
but on the streets they tool and die
and Hollywood has done
more than anyone to glamorize the gun
movies, music and TV.
Its Genocide…can’t you see…
Got to take the profit out of crime
stop glamorizing death on primetime
Cities are the only places
where kids are waging arms races
in suburbs and rural areas
Across the country kids are carrying
three more hours and another teenage youth will have committed suicide
while his mothers crying
gun advocates are on TV lying
to the public
about how people are the ones who kill and guns don’t
until we have gun control
we can’t stop these ten year olds
from going in their father’s closet
were the gun was left unlocked and loaded
Where does it end?
When everyone gets their own piece, dividend

Driving down Guerrero
cut off a psycho kid looked like Sendero
Luminoso, words were froze so
I don’t start talking shit or acting macho
you could get popped in a minute
this is the wild, wild west and we’re in it
and my kids don’t want to play
when they have to worry about ducking spray
or two drunks having an argument
in front of our apartment
when I hear that sound
I yell: Everyone get inside and get down!

politics

>Living with the dying

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>Originally posted February 12, 2007.




Global warming.
It’s a fact.
And a terrible threat.

So what can we do about it?
I truly believe that it’s already too late. We’ve fucked with nature for far too long, being far too ignorant and failed to see the consequences of our utterly stupid and egotistical actions.
I believe in the apocalypse now.

I believe that when and if I reach the age of, say 70 or 80 (in year 2050 or something), we’ll see the beginning of the end quite clear. It’ll probably happen much sooner, but hey, I’m trying to be optimistic here…
Some people I talk to seem to have forgotten about the extremely disastrous Katrina already. And look at Jakarta right now. There’s natural disasters happening all the time and I wouldn’t be surprised if they soon got to our territory as well. In a way they already have…
Remember Gudrun, Swedes?

Sure, there’s always been big, drastic changes in nature. No newsflash there. The thing is that this time it’s happening incredibly fast. A quick example:
The ten hottest years on record have all occured in the last 14 years. Five of them in 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2005. That ought to ring a bell, baby. A bell of doom.

On another topic: I got into a long discussion the other day about the future and stuff like that, and a friend asked me if I didn’t want kids of my own. Sure, it’d be cool as hell raising a child, but looking at the world today I would never do it. What kind of world would this poor child enter? What kind of future are we looking at? And top that with all the fears and fuck ups you have to live through just being a regular normal human being. No way I’d place another baby here. I’m simply not that sadistic.
I’m thinking about the child here, not about my pity self.
Let’s face one horrible truth: The child would suffer and face a future not worth facing.

Apparently, I’m a humanist, and the best thing would be if this whole godforsaken planet and all of its futile inhabitants got wiped off the map of the universe forever. That’s my humanism right there.

Back to topic. Global warming.
I really recommend you watching An Inconvenient Truth, an astonishing documentary on Al Gore‘s campaign to make the issue of global warming a recognized problem worldwide. Oh, if he’d been president…

Watch the movie. That’s the least one can do.

“And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race that can understand.“
George Bernard Shaw, Irish playwright


By the way, Living with the dying is a brilliant song by Night Sun, a 70’s progressive hard rock band from Germany that you really ought to check out. They only made one album, Mournin’ (1972), and it’s bloody amazing.

politics

>The U.S. Lynch Mob

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>Originally posted January 07, 2007.


This was actually happening in 2006. No, the photo is not from some old Western movie.
You’ve seen it all – and it was not a proper execution, it was a dirty lynching instigated by a vicious mob.

Saddam was – all of a sudden, without further due – to be executed. They didn’t even finish the trials properly. And what a “trial” then… Did it conform to international standards for a fair trial? No way. Mock trial is the only word for this shit.

So why the sudden rush to execute this monster? Simply because by doing the only right thing – sentence Saddam to a lifetime imprisonment and thus being able to distinguish between lies and truth through thorough questioning (not through torture…) – would reveal war criminals on the “wrong” side of the track. Those in power would have been forced to open up. Be sure they are sighing in relief now that most of their war crimes won’t ever have to be brought to court… Their propaganda and distractions can continue. Israel and USA are already marching towards Iran.

In the words of Manuel Garcia, Jr:
“There is no doubt that Saddam was guilty of great crimes, and any truly independent tribunal would have found him undeserving of retaining his liberty. A victory for the world public would have been a judgment requiring Saddam to reveal all the details of his career, during the course of a lifetime imprisonment. Historians and prosecutors in many countries would work from this record to winnow the truth from the lies, and to then enable the many agencies making up our international system of justice to pursue other perpetrators implicated in the tale.

The quick execution of Saddam Hussein is not simply “victor’s justice,” it is a demotion in a Mafia-style re-organization, the elimination of capo fallen from grace, to protect the power elite from any exposures that would threaten its control.”

Because that’s what it’s all about: control, power, money…
You should know the drill by know. US of A sure do.

Full article here.

politics, religion

>False media – we don’t need it, do we?

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>Originally posted December 17, 2006.


False media – we don’t need it, do we?
Public Enemy sure as hell got a point there.
And Noam Chomsky put it this way:
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

I got mad and furious the other day when I read the newspaper.

“Teacher gave speech at anti-Semitic conference“.

I guess you’ve heard of it.
The teacher, Jan Bernhoff, now branded as a “Holocaust teacher” (he’s not even teaching history, he’s teaching computers…), is now temporarily suspended from work, and the city of Stockholm, his employer, wants him gone for good. However, that will be hard since he gave this speech on his spare time.
(UPDATE nov 2007: He lost his job.)

Let’s just say he was teaching history then. Is it unappropriate of him doing that considering his personal viewpoints? Let’s say he doesn’t agree 100% with the established history of the holocaust that occurred in Rwanda instead… Or let’s say he’s a christian teaching religion. Is he unsuitable as a teacher?
You digest that for a second.

People get upset by him visiting this conference, and that’s merely because they don’t know what they’re talking about, and they certainly don’t know what he is talking about.
So, let’s see what’s wrong with all this crap.

The conference in Teheran is NOT anti-semitic. That’s just the easy way out, told by uneducated people scared to face the horrible facts.
Sure, there are most certainly those visiting this conference who share a common hatred against the Jews, who have racist opinions and who would prefer that Israel was nuked to oblivion and so forth, but again – the conference is not anti-semitic.

The newspapers are very eager to mention that David Duke, ex-KKK leader, took part in this conference, and they also manage to mention Robert Faurisson because of his skepticism regarding the established version of the Holocaust (not mentioning his constant fight for your right to express yourself in whatever context possible without being put to jail for it…), but no one mentions the Rabbis, the orthodox Jews, in the audience. One can see that for himself by looking at the photos, but people rarely do any thinking by themselves nowadays…


“We came here to put the Orthodox Jewish viewpoint,” said British Rabbi Ahron Cohen. “We certainly say there was a Holocaust… But in no way can it be used as a justification for perpetrating unjust acts against the Palestinians.”
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6490BD25-3FFA-4E7D-9D1F-D3A23F7E84DF.htm

When the papers write “the revisionists are denying the Holocaust, they are Holocaust deniers” it comes across like revisionists and skeptics claim it didn’t happen, when in fact they are merely questioning the facts that we’re given today – and for that they are being sent to jail. It is obviously a crime to ask questions. That is the horrible truth.

The conference makes it possible to have a serious open debate about the Holocaust. That has not been the case earlier on because skepticism regarding the Holocaust has been a crime for over 60 years – and still is in a lot of “democratic” countries.
Don’t believe me?
Are you willing to learn some hard facts?

First, there are no easy answers. You’ll have to do some reading, some research and some thinking for yourself instead of relying on speculations, rumours, hearsay and what you think you know about the Holocaust.
Ask yourself: What did I learn in school regarding the Holocaust and what have I learned since then? Not much, right?

First, you should learn the difference between anti-semitism and anti-zionism.

Second, check out the site http://www.jewsagainstzionism.com/.

Third, learn the basic facts about Holocaust revisionism and always keep them in mind. Do it here.

Fourth, read about the relationship between Israel and USA, and its connection with the Holocaust. Try this page.

Fifth, get a hold of the book The Holocaust Industry by Norman Finkelstein and read it.

Sixth, look up what has happened to David Irving, Germar Rudolf and other people who’ve dared to question the official version of the oh-so-holy Holocaust. (Hint: Expressing a different opinion regarding the Holocaust than what’s written in the history books equals jail.)

Seventh, ask yourself: How many Jews died in the Holocaust? Six million, right? Then ask yourself: How many german civilians died? How many gypsies? How many homosexuals? You don’t know? You don’t have a clue? Hmm… Why is that?
You should really learn how zionist forces use lobbyism to gain monopoly using the term Holocaust. Mind you, in their eyes there’s only one Holocaust. Forget about the Turks eliminating millions of Armenians, forget about Pol Pot in Cambodia, forget about Stalin and Rwanda…
Damn, I could continue with this list for weeks.

So let’s have a look at some hard facts instead.

Remember, history is revised all the time, every day, and history always has to be re-written as we go along exploring new facts, getting more information and learning new things. Pretty obvious, isn’t it? How come you can’t even ask questions about it without being sent to jail then?

The Holocaust history is drastically different if you look back some 50 years and compare with what we know today, but there’s still some obviously wrong “facts” being presented in history books and newspapers, even though they have officially been dismissed as facts a long time ago – even by established historians.

Examples:

1. On May 12th, 1945, a few months after the liberation of Auschwitz, a Soviet State Commission reported that not less than four million people were murdered there. This number was displayed at the Auschwitz State Museum until 1991, when it was lowered to 1.1 million. So, from four million to one million overnight… What had been established facts for over 40 years, and thus being claimed as truth and norm, was all of a sudden totally wrong. And we’re talking millions of people here, not some small details.
Of course, this doesn’t lessen the gravity of the crime (remember the basic revisionist claims?) – even one murdered is one too many – but it makes one hell of a difference when talking politics.
Still, the six million figure is what most people refer to when being asked about the number of deaths.


2. When writing about the concentration camps, newspapers very often use the term extinction camps. Not too long ago one of the largest newspapers in Sweden referred to Dachau as an extinction camp where people were gassed to death.

Here’s two links to well known (non-revisionist) sites admitting that there were no gassings in the Dachau camp. It’s an established fact. And people have been sentenced to death for this, because witnesses have lied about massgassings in Dachau.
http://motlc.learningcenter.wiesenthal.org/pages/t016/t01679.html
http://www.holocaust-history.org/dachau-gas-chambers/

Also note that the death statistics for Dachau today are estimated to 32,000. Compare that to the sign outside the camp asking visitors to remember the 238,000 people who died in the camp… It was there for many years. It was completely wrong.

The photos…

Read the revisionist basic claims again. Revisionists do NOT claim that there weren’t any deaths in the war. People died horrible deaths. They were slain, executed, died of illness, starvation… No doubt about that. No one has ever denied that either, and if they do they’re just plain stupid. Again, get your facts straight.


Why is it forbidden by law to examine the earth where people claim there are massgraves? Why don’t they allow people to investigate all the archives that have been closed for sixty years? Wouldn’t that be a good way to get rid of all this controversy? In short, why can’t we let historians do their research like they always do?
Well, it’s certainly not happening…

If you accuse a whole nation of the most horrific crime in the history of mankind, then we must of course commence the most thorough investigation of the crime scene ever. How strange it hasn’t happened yet.


What’s the point with all this Holocaust revisionist stuff?

The swedish online magazine Kulturen wrote something interesting the other day.

“Som den israeliska journalisten Tom Segev visat har den specifika berättelsen som Israel byggt upp kring andra världskrigets judeförföljelse, där omkring 6 miljoner judar mördades, medfört att dagens israeler anser sig vara offer för utrotningslägren i betydligt större utsträckning än den generation som faktiskt utsattes för dem. Förintelsen har, enligt dessa synpunkter, således kommit att inkorporeras som en del av staten Israels berättelse om sig själv.”

In short: The Israel citizens (of Jewish origin) of today seem to claim to be even more affected by the Holocaust than the generation of people who were there and took part in the actual Holocaust.
There you have one point out of many. Reading The Holocaust Industry you’ll come up with a lot more if your mind is not all crooked and corrupt.
(Note: Förintelseindustrin is available in Swedish, published by Ordfront)

———-

Do you think all of the above are the opinions of nutcases, maybe a part of some mindless conspiracy theory? Please, think again.

“Eisenhower’s Crusade in Europe is a book of 559 pages; the six volumes of Churchill’s Second World War total 4,448 pages; and de Gaulle’s three-volume Mémoires de guerre is 2,054 pages. In this mass of writing, which altogether totals 7,061 pages (not including the introductory parts), published from 1948 to 1959, one will find no mention either of Nazi “gas chambers,” a “genocide” of the Jews, or of “six million” Jewish victims of the war.”
Richard Lynn
Professor Emeritus,
University of Ulster
http://www.rlynn.co.uk
http://www.rense.com/general69/porof.htm

———-

The biggest problem here lies in the fact that when questioning the Holocaust you might be accused of doing the dirty work of the nazis. On the other hand, if you support the official version of the Holocaust – not questioning the obvious myths and lies – you support zionist hatred and violence.
Or you simply don’t care at all about these things. It’s your choice.
However, I despise both nazis and zionists equally. I’m all in it for the truth.

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored” as Aldous Huxley once so truthfully said.

———-

One last note:

In the early days you got punished or executed if you denied God.
Galileo Galilei – the father of science, modern astronomy and modern physics – was forced to abjure, on his knees in front of the mighty Inquisition, his heretical views that the Earth moves around the Sun.
We haven’t evolved much since then, have we?

PS. Jan Bernhoff’s speech is available here for download. You go ahead and find the alleged anti-semitism in there… Good luck.

PPS. Headline quote taken from the Public Enemy song Don’t believe the hype.

politics

>The war on/in Iraq

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>Originally posted December 11, 2006.


WARNING:

This post may steal some of your precious TV-time. Or the time spent drinking beer in bars. Or the countless hours you spend on MySpace, waiting in line for recognition…

”Oh my God, not another text about the war in Iraq!”, I hear you christian sheep moan. “Why aren’t there more?”, is my reply. There sure as hell should be. Each and everyone of us in the Western World should sit down, read the relevant facts, think them through, analyze and criticize and then write something about it – so we at least know what the fuck is going on.

We need enlightenment to make the necessary connections. We need to know about the neocons and their thirst for power and blood. We need knowledge about the seriously unhealthy relationship between Israel and USA. There’s tons of trash we need to sort out and it’s gonna take most of your precious TV-time. Sorry about that.

But hey, I’m really writing this for myself, to collect my own thoughts and sort out relevant information amongst my billions of bookmarks… So when I say “You might want to read…” below, I’m actually saying “I, Mattias Pettersson, really should read…”.
So now you know. So here we go.

First, you might want to read “The rise and and decline of the neo-cons” published in Asia Times Online. This essay gives the necessary background on the neoconservatives’ march to power and pain.

You may then continue with “How Neoconservatives conquered Washington – and launched a war” published on the Antiwar.com site.

For a fresh opinion, a newsflash and a short history of neoconservatism: read Gary Kamiya’s brief but well put together article simpy entitled “Neoconservatism – RIP”.

For fairly straight facts about the war in/on Iraq, click here for the Aljazeera version.

And as a reminder, here’s all the gruesome Abu Ghraib files – 279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army’s internal investigation record (check the left column). Shocking truth.

If you’re into fat, well written, thought provoking books then read on just a bit further.

George Packer, a liberal intellectual who supported the invasion of Iraq, has written an excellent book which shows how not all journalists are close minded scum writing on behalf of somebody else’s truths. Packer was truly convinced that the invasion had good intentions, but the book shows how these intentions went terribly wrong.
I haven’t had the time to finish this one (far from it…), but just by skimming through the pages you get the idea that this man is here for the truth in all its honesty and he’s prepared to change his mind if his beliefs turn out to be false.
Read an extensive review of his book Assassin’s Gate: America in Iraq here.


The photo above is taken from AfterDowningStreet.org and shows war as it really is, not like the censored version we see on TV or in Saving Private Ryan. No matter how strange this may sound to you, I’m telling you straight: Some people don’t know what a war looks like.