Like other political desperados, I watched all three US presidential debates “live” on television and, just for good measure, the vice-presidential debate as well.
The debates left me deeply puzzled by American political life. During the Q&A on domestic issues – health, education and tax – I was totally confused while the debate on the economy was juvenile. Neither candidate dealt with the issues concretely or directly. The answers were carefully rehearsed but empty of meaning.
The “expert” panel selecting who won and who lost was even more disturbing: their focus wasn’t on what the candidates said but on how they said it, how they looked, their body language, the colour of their ties and even their facial expressions.
In the US political conversation “liberals” are “socialists” and “socialists” are “communists”. It becomes a futile, arid and one-sided debate with one half of America locked out of the discussion which appears to be led by Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Network and radio fruit cakes.
It is redolent of the way that Zionists have hijacked the debate over Israel: critics of Israel’s policies are labelled “anti-Semites” and Jewish critics are labelled “self-haters”.
Former ABC and SBS managing director Brian Johns said recently: “People are always saying that Australians are just like Americans. I don’t think we are like Americans at all. We are very different people.”
He’s right, and the election debates (and the US media coverage) proved it.
For example, the final debate on foreign policy centred almost exclusively on three issues: the security of Israel, a possible war with Iran (opposite sides of the same topic) and the future care of US veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In other words, the debate was obsessed with war, conflict, killing and associated matters. Nothing about nuclear non-proliferation, disarmament, the role of the United Nations, building peace partnerships or extending US aid to developing countries.
The US marches on the strength of Wall Street and the manufacture of arms, warplanes and warships. The military-industrial-banking complex governs the economy and the politics of Washington.
Who is Australia’s foreign affairs helmsman through this maze of international mayhem? Bob Carr, aka Chauncey Gardiner, the main character in Jerzy Kosinski’s novel Being There.
MURDOCH TWEETS AGAINST THE BBC
Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers in Britain have been quick to adopt wall-to-wall coverage of the late Sir Jimmy Savile’s sexual misconduct. So has his pay TV channel BSkyB.
Seizing on the chance to bash the BBC, Murdoch tweeted: “Saville (sic) BBC story long way to run, BBC by far the biggest most powerful organisation in UK.”
The widely reported message was an instruction to his global media outlets to go in hard, kicking the BBC where it hurts most.
His favourite toilet paper, The Sun, in London splashed a colour photo of Savile surrounded by five young women whose faces were pixelated to avoid their identification. The captain read: “In his element – Jimmy Savile surrounded by girls on Top of the Pops.” No, he wasn’t. The “girls” in the picture were in fact members of a famous pop group known as “Pan’s People”.
Writing in The Spectator, TV columnist James Delingpole sourly commented on the coincidence of the Jimmy Savile affair and Murdoch’s hacking scandal:
“Which is the worse crime, would you say: eavesdropping on celebrities’ answer-phones? Or hosting and covering up for a ruthless predatory paedophile ring – led by your biggest, most heavily promoted star – over a period of four decades?
Mm, me too. In fact, I’d say the Savile affair is as close as we’ll ever get to proving that God really hates the BBC. I mean, the timing is far too perfect to be coincidental, isn’t it? First we get Leveson – essentially a stitch-up by the BBC and The Guardian to entrench power of the bien-pensant establishment, increase regulation and destroy the free market (essentially Rupert Murdoch). Then, just when the tofu-eating turbine-huggers think they’ve won – zing! – a lightning bolt from heaven in the form of a scandal so sordid, so vast, so compromising that it makes Leveson look about as inconsequential as gossip overheard at the laundrette while waiting for your smalls to finish their tumbledry.”
When the Savile story started to stumble, Scotland Yard quickly supplied its Tory political masters and the media hyenas with more raw bait – by arresting Gary Glitter for questioning.
Next they’ll be digging up poor Oscar Wilde in his Paris graveyard.
ONLY IN AMERICA
A New York City police officer has appeared in federal court on charges of plotting to kidnap, rape, torture, kill, cook and eat body parts of a number of women.