Jolly Paul Wolfowitz
For me the biggest news in recent days was the death of Kurt Vonnegut, but for U.S. television's prime time news and commentary shows, the big news was the firing of a particularly repulsive “talk show host”, Don Imus, because of his insulting racial comments about a women’s basketball team. Imus deserved to be fired and exiled to an especially small, cold island in the Atlantic, but did his idiocy deserve more than half of hour-long news programs for several nights?
The rest of the evening TV “news” centered on the stale tale of U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who oversaw the mass firing of U.S. Attorneys seen as unsupportive of the Bush-Republican political machine.
A more important story about a more important person was never mentioned at all. There was not a hint that Paul Wolfowitz, “the architect of the Iraq war” who was kicked upstairs by Bush to the presidency of the World Bank when criticism of the war became hot, was in trouble for having engineered the transfer of his girlfriend from the World Bank to the U.S. State Department with a huge salary rise to a bloated salary of almost $200,000 a year. There was no justification for the pay raise. Wolfowitz tried to cover his tracks and at first denied the charges, but recently “apologized” for poor judgment.
World Bank personnel are literally shouting for Wolfowitz to resign. Last Thursday, World Bank staffers heckled Wolfowitz by shouting "resign" as he spoke about the issue. Wolfowitz has “declined to address any details of the controversy.” He has been very unpopular at the World Bank not only for his rude manner but for trying to engineer special privileges for himself.
President Bush, of course, of course, “has confidence” in Wolfowitz. The U.S. Secretary of the Treasury has made public expressions of support.
The “New York Times” wire service mentioned the Wolfowitz scandal online a few days ago, and later I found the story on Google news. Today the wire service headlines are to the effect that Wolfowitz intends to “weather the storm” and remain president of the World Bank in spite of demands for his resignation.
My point, of course, is that the U.S. news media are protecting Wolfowitz by not featuring his story – and generally not mentioning it at all on television -- for the same reason that the media screamed for I. Lewis Libby to be pardoned after his conviction for perjury. ”Let’s Hear it for Libby, Folks!”
In the case of Wolfowitz’ s misdeeds, still being debated, silence is the best protection while support is being organized (and paid for) behind the scenes. In Libby’s case, the object is to keep him out of jail after he was convicted, and so the best course was a loud public outcry about “injustice”.
Those two men are being supported and protected in one way or another because they are Jewish. (The publicly whipped Alberto Gonzales, by the way, is Catholic.) I’ve discussed this phenomenon and will discuss it in future posts. Again and again we’ve seen Jews receiving news media support in situations where gentiles have not. In financial scandals and frauds where several guilty parties are involved, it is mostly the non-Jewish miscreants whose names appear in the headlines, while the Jewish participants are hardly mentioned even if they had the leading roles. At the least, the volume is turned down when Jews are mentioned. There is a history in financial and corporate crime of gentile “front men” going down amid loud publicity while the Jewish co-criminals somehow fade away with no or little punishment.
Wolfowitz earned notoriety and condemnation long before he committed misdeeds as head of the World Bank. He is more responsible than any other single individual for engineering the invasion of Iraq. It was he who jumped in front of a camera shortly after 9/11 and said that it would be necessary to "end states that support terrorism." I was shocked at the ominous words “end states”, which were soon translated into, “Attack Iraq.” Wolfowitz and his fellow “neocons” such as Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, William Kristol, and Lewis Libby did everything possible to boost arguments and manufacture false evidence to justify a United States war on Iraq. Of course Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld were also involved. Interesting, is it not, that Rumsfeld was forced to resign in disgrace, while Wolfowitz – who bears much more responsibility for the Iraq debacle than Rumsfeld – escaped to a plush job as head of the World Bank.
3 comments:
Your efforts, like mine, are praiseworthy, Fleming, but have little impact. Who is listening? Who cares?
Our masters care nothing for our thoughts no matter how reasonable, how truthful. They exist in another world, the one where the power resides. They have different rules, different values to us. Or is it no values?
Daniel, what you say is sad but undeniable. Basically, nobody cares about the things we feel that it is important for them to know. By their choice, they live in Disneyland, or more like that amusement park where Pinocchio went.
And certainly our master don't care. Do they have values? I certainly think they do not have any ethical or moral values, and telling lies is as natural and frequent with them as breathing. Lately I've been overwhelmed with the evidence that our rulers and their minions lie all the time. Almost everything we're told is lies --- from advertising to the top levels of government.
Who is listening? In my case, Sitemeter tells me that after a initial rise in readers, I'm now in decline. And I thought I was so clever, and creating a valuable resource.
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