Top Journalist: "We are intellectual prostitutes"

John Swinton, the foremost journalist of his day, was asked to toast an independent press at a New York banquet given in his honor by other journalists. His response was clear and forthright:"There is no such thing, at this stage of the world's history in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it. There is not one of you who dare write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinions out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinion to appear in one issue of my papers, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone."

"The business of the journalist is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press? We are jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men."

John Swinton, New York 1890

HAS ANYTHING CHANGED SINCE THEN?

Click here for Afghanistan timeline of oil and violence

July 3, 1979: President Carter made a deal with the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, calculated to induce the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan

Mid to Late 1980's: President Reagan, aware of our deal with the Soviets, authorizes the shipment of Stinger missiles via Pakistan to Afghanistan

1993: US Oil companies reach for the 200 billion barrels of oil in the Caspian Sea area.

1995: Unocal signs an agreement with Turkmenistan for natural gas purchasing rights for transport through a proposed pipeline in Afghanistan.

1996: Unocal makes a deal with Russia's Gazprom and Turkmenistan's Turkmenrusgaz to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

Please click on the Title, then, in the upper left corner of that web page, on the word "timelines" for the rest of the sordid details, which require the spilling of many hundreds, perhaps thousands of gallons of American and NATO blood!

US Aircraft kill 50 to 90 Innocent Civilians near the Kunduz Riverw

According to the British Mail + Guardian newspaper, US aircraft killed between 50 and 90 people near the Kunduz River in Afghanistan. All of them were civilians, many of them innocent children, who gravitated to a stranded gasoline filled tanker, to help themselves to heating oil and tractor fuel, which would otherwise have gone to waste.

Israel to patrol Mediterranean as part of global war on terror??

Well, they are certainly qualified, since they sank the American ship Liberty. No, there was no possible way they could have misidentified our vessel: It was flying the American flag, and, according to the classified report I read while serving as Intelligence Operations Officer of our 4th US Armored Division in Goeppingen, Germany, their planes approached our ship at such a proximity that our men could see the color of their eyes.

As our close "allies", they apparently just wanted to test us, and see whether we could still love them after they deliberately killed our men.

With the Israelis as "friends", we no longer need enemies!

Nothing we do will compel 125 million Muslims in Pakistan

to make common cause with a US in league with the two states that are unambiguously anti-muslim: Israel and India. As Porky Pig used to say: "Ibbedi, ibbedi, THAT'S ALL, FOLKS!!"

(Colonel Douglas Mac Gregor, USA, Retired.)