Posts by Simon Grigg
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Please do not forget that good old Osama was trained with the Afghan Mujahideen by erm the CIA.,
My understanding was that whilst there were tentative links to the CIA (he had the code name Tim Osman), OBL's 1980s Afghani time was spent with the MAK, an organisation funded by the Pakistani ISI and Saudi agencies, albeit using funds largely provided by the CIA, this being the group that became Al Qaeda in the early 1990s.
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Over a ten year period, the number of attacks in the west by right wing fanatics matches that of Islamists (and without the WTC "success" would have been as bloody):
you missed this, although I have no idea where to place Aum Shinriko on any spectrum, but clearly they are not Islamist.
The recent bombings in Bangkok are an odd (is it a developed nation....Bangkok itself feels far more developed than many western cities in 2007) one to attribute too: nobody still knows exactly who was responsible, or at the very least they are not saying.
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Oh no, I'm a thread killer.
....no, I think it was more my appalling refusal to check my posts using the very advisable preview tab, yet again:
**strong** insider links
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I'd guess that the relative strength of the hard left in the UK is responsible for Labour's (historical) poor showing there.
I would guess that the overwhelming reach of the, almost exclusively, aside from The Mirror, right wing tabloid press has something to do with it too
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Back to Novak. If we assume, and I think we can, that Novak has very string insider links to the Senate and Congressional Republicans (his role seems to be as much a journalistic hitman, he says the things they want to say but can't, as anything else), then this piece in the WaPo yesterday is fascinating.
"Gonzales never has developed a base of support for himself up here," a House Republican leader told me. But this is less a Gonzales problem than a Bush problem. With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, George W. Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.
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As for Fox gunning for Obama, I haven't seen much if any negative press from anyone on Obama yet
you can seriously write that?
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James,
I'd suggest reading that American Dynasty book I linked to above before saying:Americans have every right to know who Bill and Hill owe IOUs to, and what this money has been spent on
The IOUs that the current administration have incurred over the past decades make a lot of what is going on in Washington right now, make a little more sense (and they are fairly well researched and annotated too).
And then we have Rupert Murdoch too, who has his own IOUs.....
Darryl,
Maybe Ayam al-Zawahiri paid for the tin-foil lined roof?
One liner of the day fer shure.......
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One more thing about Clinton that leaves a bad taste in my mouth - let's say she's elected President and serves two terms. The US will have then been lead by people from either the Bush or Clinton family for 28 consecutive years. There's something basically wrong there . . .
Kevin Phillips' (a former Reagan / Nixon staffer and Republican strategist) American Dynasty is worth reading on this, essentially arguing that the corruption and cronyism of the Bush White House is the outcome of pre-determined Dynasism, the inevitable result of a power structure that slowly manifested itself and gained momentum over the past century.
The chapter relating to Bush Senior's role in keeping the US hostages in Iran until after Nov 1979, in order to facilitate Reagan's election is fascinating. How things come back to bite....
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Had a wee issue with eMusic and Rhapsody this week over pirated music on their servers....coming out of Australia, ripped off vinyl without my knowledge. EMusic were proactive and fantastic..it came straight off as soon as there was a sniff of a problem.
Rhapsody (Real) (who use DRM) showed little interest and the pirated, DRM protected, product remains on their sites. I know who I would rather deal with.