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BARBWIRE
by
ANDREW BARBANO


Abreast of the news
Expanded from the 9-10-2006 Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune
Updated 9-17-2006

Have you ever considered the world from the standpoint of your friendly neighborhood terrorist?

Osama bin Laden hisself has said that he considered the World Trade Center a military target and that his conversion of commercial aircraft into cruise missiles constituted a counterattack.

Look back on all the governments we've overthrown since 1953, starting with that of democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran. Mossadegh had the effrontery to demand that Iranians share in their nation's oil wealth and nationalized the industry. British Petroleum (owner of the price-fixing ARCO station on the corner and the leaky Alaska pipeline) wanted its cash cow back.

The Brits were not strong enough to invade Iran in 1952. Just after Dwight Eisenhower's election, a British official flew to the U.S. to meet with incoming secretary of state John Foster Dulles and his spooky brother Alan, who would be named to head the CIA.

The Brit knew he needed a gimmick to convince the dumb Americans to get the BP refinery back. On the plane, he thought up a creative lie: Mossadegh is a closet commie, so you've got to overthrow him and put one of our guys in there.

Immersed in the miasma of McCarthyesque America, the Dulles brothers bit and staged the 1953 insurrection which crushed democracy in Iran.

Fast forward 50 years. Author Stephen Kinzer traveled to Iran to research All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.

He made it his business to interview some of the students who overran the American embassy in 1979, held hostages for 444 days, toppled Jimmy Carter and brought Ronald Reagan and Oliver North to power.

They told him something you don't see in American media. They remembered how U.S. embassy operatives had stolen their democracy in 1953. They didn't want another coup orchestrated out of the same place now that they had finally rid themselves of our stooge, the bloody Shah Reza Pahlevi, whom we installed to replace Mossadegh.

You can date the dawn of modern international terrorism at various times, including some of the more murderous activities of future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the late 1940s.

But if you want to peg a date which Osama might endorse, try 1953.

It is thus understandable that a president who doesn't read books would totally misread the middle east, endangering this nation for the foreseeable future.

WINSTON TASTES GOOD. There's been a lot of use of the label "appeasement" of late as the Dubyites try to place their opponents with British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, the infamous appeaser of Hitler's aggression.

Winston Churchill said "history will not be kind to Neville, for I shall write the history." Only lately has Chamberlain's infamous Munich agreement been looked upon more favorably. England was in no shape to go to war in 1938 and Chamberlain bought almost a year for England to ready herself to fight and win the Battle of Britain.

But Winston wrote the history and we are still unkind to wussy old Neville.

ABC TV rewrites history tonight with its "docu-drama" blaming Bill Clinton for 9/11. Who cares about the truth if a lie makes a better story, right?

Some people are more concerned with dirty words used by 9/11 firefighters in an actual documentary CBS re-aired about that infamous day. Network affiliates have quaked in fear of $350,000 fines for every utterance of the f-bomb. Some moved the show to 10:00 p.m. when we all know that every impressionable youngster under 21 is safely in bed – often with the impressionable youngster who lives next door. Speaking of dirty words…

GUB FLUB. Last week, California Gov. Rheingold Scheizendexter showed a twinge of the racism the public was assured did not exist. Big-breasted superstar Schwarzenegger got busted for saying Puerto Ricans are naturally feisty and temperamental because of their combination of "black blood" and "Latino blood."

He of course immediately apologized, missing the point entirely. You're the governor of California, little boy. Remember to watch what you say, just like mommy taught you. You are not just some hotblooded street geek anymore. When you talk, people listen.

DIRTY DEEDS. As the Tribune's Janine Kearney reported last week, state officials continue to do all they can to see that terminally ill William Albiniano, age 8, dies as quickly as possible.

As I've previously noted, the much-ballyhooed Nevada Checkup health insurance program for low-income children acts like any insurance company: its primary job is to deny claims.

PARADISE BY THE CARNY LIGHT — With a Ferris Wheel evident in the background, can the political merry-go-round be far away? Don't forget, money is the mother's milk of politics. [Photo copyright © 2006 NevadaLabor.com]

KRNV TV-4's Joe Hart will report this Wednesday evening on the latest bureaucratic roadblock to getting the kid some help with his medicine, a demand for a down-to-the-penny accounting of any money the family has received in various fundraisers. Watch his report. Call your assemblymember, senator or candidates therefor and tell them to help this boy and his valiant family.

The case of William Albiniano is the best example I know of the hollowness and shallowness of Gov. Dudley Do-Right's tenure as the state's top dog.

EMBARRASSED SILENCE. Seventeen days have now elapsed since City of Sparks staff was informed that the Reno-Sparks NAACP would like to have a meeting with the chief of police. Sparks has stonewalled the civil rights organization's request for many years, so long that even oldtimers can't remember the last time any such meeting was held, if ever.

City staff was also informed by an NAACP member (me) that they should advise city attorney Chet Adams of the negative effects of his ill-advised adversary attitude toward the public. Apparently that message has likewise been ignored at city hall.

TUBING ALONG THE MUCKY TRUCKEE. Join me and the usual suspects on Nevada Newsmakers on KRNV TV-4 at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday. For those afflicted with Charter cable, the Sam Shad soiree repeats at 9:30 p.m. in Washoe-Carson Douglas. The web edition of this column at Barbwire.info will have the full statewide rerun schedule, as usual.

BUSTED, PART DEUX. Seen last week at the corner of El Rancho and Oddie in Sparks, a graffitus-altered sign for Sen. Dina Titus' campaign for the state's top job: TIT_S for governor. It's time.

Arnold resembles that remark.

Be well. Raise hell.

SMOKING GUNS...

The Barbwire Mossadegh Files
Gas pedals and peddlers: BOHICA at the pump
4-28-96
Falwell and Robertson are dead to rights
9-23-01
Nostradamus, Bob Dylan, Ugly Americans and Usama bin Laden
9-30-01
BARBWIRE OILOGOPOLY ARCHIVE: The best oil sump on the Internet


 LABOR LEADERS: Wild West mentality lingers in Nevada
LABOR DAY 2006 Guest Editorial, Reno Gazette-Journal, 9-4-2006

ORDER Taking the Risk Out of Democracy
Corporate Propaganda versus Freedom and Liberty
By Alex Carey
Edited by Andrew Lohrey
Foreword by Noam Chomsky
University of Illinois Press

     SEE ALSO: Lapham, Lewis H.; Tentacles of Rage: The Republican Propaganda Mill, A Brief History; Harper's Magazine cover article; September, 2004, page 32.

     By one conservative estimate, the corporate right has spent about $3 billion over the past three decades manufacturing public opinion to suit big business goals. Lapham's number covered the early 1970's to the present day. Alex Carey noted that by 1948, anti- New Deal corporate propaganda expenditures had already reached $100 million per year, not adjusted for inflation, for advertising alone. (Carey, ibid; page 79)

     Adjusted for inflation, that 1948 $100 million becomes $801,659,751.04 in 2005 dollars.

Conservatives Help Wal-Mart, and Vice Versa
As Wal-Mart struggles to rebut growing criticism, it has discovered a reliable ally: conservative research groups.
New York Times 9-8-2006, Free registration may be required

      BARBWIRE: Labor Day '94: People vs. corporate con job, 9-4-94
Chilling forecasts from Alex Carey

      BARBWIRE: The Nevada Republican Party Becomes Communist, 3-30-97
A prescient Plato on the dangers of oligarchy

...and more ammo


      Olbermann, Keith: Rumsfeld & Chamberlain, Churchill & Murrow
                                                MSNBC 8-30-2006

      Rinfret, Pierre A.; "Peace is Bullish"; Look Magazine, 5-31-1966

      BARBWIRE: Lemming Cliff Notes, 6-5-2005

      BARBWIRE: We have met the enemy and he is us, 5-29-2005

      BARBWIRE: Payback Time, 8-7-2005

      BARBWIRE: Getting Focused, 8-14-2005

      BARBWIRE: Patriot Games, 8-21-2005

      BARBWIRE: Media Howlers, 8-28-2005

      BARBWIRE: Deadly Spin in the oil slicks of New Orleans, 9-4-2005

      BARBWIRE: Four more years? 9-11-2005

      BARBWIRE: Amoral Moralists, 9-18-2005

      Barbwire Oilogopoly Archive
I've been telling you so for 10 freakin' years

State of Nevada
Secretary of State


 

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Copyright © 2005, 2006 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 37-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks (Nev.) Tribune since 1988.

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