The National Free Press - World Edition: Free Speech, Free Press and Human Rights

“A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.” - Walter Lippman

No one should be surprised that U.S. interference in the Caucasus has led to the Russian intervention in South Ossetia. By intruding into the volatile politics of the Caucasus, and trying to recruit the governments there to become American ‘fitters’ for various purposes, the United States has only drawn rebuttal Russian fire.

In Washington, Bush stepped out to the White House Rose Garden to declare that “Russian assaults inside Georgia – a swift and crushing deployment of military force that the Russians called ‘Operation Clean Field’ – must cease”.

‘How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct.’ - Benjamin Disraeli

Please help me keep my sanity! As I watched the corporate media coverage of the protests and disruptions during the Olympic torch route, I became angrier than usual over the hypocrisy. Goodness knows how many anti-war protests over the last years have been down-played and under-covered by the corporate media.

Many crimes against humanity are rendered invisible to the public eye, while issues, like those of Sudan and Tibet are highlighted as the only objects of acceptable moral outrage and action.

TV screens and the press in general have given saturation coverage to the point of nauseating hypocrisy. It is very unfortunate to note that many of the comments in the media are negative towards China and few realize that these opinions are just repetitions of the disinformation gushed by the Western press.

“Negotiation in the classic diplomatic sense assumes parties more anxious to agree than to disagree.” - Dean Acheson

There is no doubt that the structural changes in the world over the past two decades have been profound. These include not only the collapse of the Soviet Union (and the end of the balance of power which had provided an equilibrium) but with it the beginnings of a new era.

We are not living in a sound and rational world. A World War III is no longer a hypothetical scenario.

We are today living in a U.S. unipolar world – a world in which there is one master, one sovereign, one centre of authority, one centre of force and power and one centre of decision making. This has nothing to do with democracy.

“What is a cynic? A man who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.” - Oscar Wilde

I do not know about you, but I am constantly astounded by the arrogance of most of our political leaders. This is glaringly evident in the top political echelon of our poor country….starting by our Prime Minister with his persistent cynical and sarcastic smile of the ‘big brother’, a ‘non plus ultra’. Moreover, however pitifully, this attitude is permeating throughout the whole governing body. It appears that they have lost all ability to listen, see and reason and that they have been caught in the old adage that ‘power corrupts’.

Why is it that allegations of corruption and of other murky situations are simply being laughed at by our Prime Minister? Incredible lies are routinely passed as truth and the genuine responsibility of government as we once knew it is simply disintegrating. Don’t we, poor voters, deserve better treatment? He should have, since long ago, taken the bull by the horns and had them properly, seriously and independently investigated if he had really wanted to attain and retain the people’s confidence and trust.

"Corporations have been enthroned .... An era of corruption in high places will follow and the money power will endeavor to prolong its reign by working on the prejudices of the people... until wealth is aggregated in a few hands ... and the Republic is destroyed." - Abraham Lincoln

We are today so ensnared in the process of selling and buying things in the market place, that we cannot imagine human life being otherwise.

ALLIANCE, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third. Ambrose Bierce

As the Western media turns its attention to and prattles about the fate of the 15 Britons detained for allegedly trespassing into Iranian waters, the status of the five Iranian officials captured in a US military raid on a liaison office in Northern Iraq on January 11, remains a mystery.