Sexy Hot Photo Blogs

THEY'RE HERE! I SAW 'EM BACK IN 82'-ALIENS! WATCH IN FULL SCREEN! COURTESY OF NASA!

JOHN ROBERTS INTERVIEWS RUSH
QUESTION? HOW COME RUSH HAS NOT BEEN INDUCTED INTO THE ROCK HALL OF FAME?
FROM WIKIPEDIA

Alex Lifeson, OC (born Aleksandar Živojinović; August 27, 1953) is a Canadian musician, best known as the guitarist of the Canadian rock band Rush. In the summer of 1968, Lifeson founded the band that would become Rush with friend and original drummer John Rutsey. He has been an integral member of the three-piece band ever since.

For Rush, Lifeson plays electric and acoustic guitars as well as other stringed instruments such as mandola, mandolin, and bouzouki. He also performs backing vocals in live performances, and occasionally plays keyboards and bass pedal synthesizers. During live performances, Lifeson, like the other members of Rush, performs real-time triggering of sampled instruments, concurrently with his guitar playing.^[1] The bulk of Lifeson's work in music has been with Rush, although Lifeson has contributed to a body of work outside of the band as well. Aside from music, Lifeson is part owner of the Toronto restaurant The Orbit Room, and is a licensed aircraft pilot.^[2]

Along with his bandmates Geddy Lee and Neil Peart, Lifeson was made an Officer of the Order of Canada on May 9, 1996. The trio was the first rock band to be so honoured, as a group.^[3] Lifeson and the rest of the band recently finished touring North and South America on the Time Machine Tour, which finished October 17 in Santiago, Chile.

Early life

Lifeson was born Aleksandar Živojinović in Fernie, British Columbia to Serbian immigrants, Nenad and Milka Zivojinovich (from Serbian: Живојиновић, Živojinović), and raised in Toronto, Ontario.^[2] His assumed stage name of "Lifeson" is a semi-literal translation of the name "Zivojinovich", which means "son of life" in Serbian.^[4] His first exposure to formal music training came in the form of the viola, which he renounced for the guitar at the age of 12. His first guitar was a Christmas gift from his father, a six-string Kent classical acoustic which was later upgraded to an electric Japanese model. During his adolescent years, he was influenced primarily by Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton and Jimmy Page.^[5] In 1963 Lifeson met future Rush drummer John Rutsey in school. Both interested in music, they decided to form a band. Lifeson was primarily a self-taught guitarist with the only formal instruction coming from a high school friend in 1971 who taught classical guitar lessons. This training lasted for roughly a year and a half.

Lifeson recalls what inspired him to play guitar in a 2008 interview:

My brother-in-law played flamenco guitar. He lent his guitar to me and I grew to like it. When you're a kid, you don't want to play an accordion because it would be too boring. But your parents might want you to play one, especially if you're from a Yugoslavian family like me.^[6]

Lifeson's first girlfriend, Charlene, gave birth to their eldest son, Justin, in October 1970, and they married in 1975. Their second son, Adrian, who is also involved in music, performed on two tracks from Lifeson's 1996 solo project, Victor.

Rush

Lifeson is a founding member of the progressive rock band Rush. His neighbour John Rutsey began experimenting on a rented drum kit and, in early 1968, Lifeson and Rutsey formed The Projection, which eventually became Rush following the recruitment of original bassist/vocalist Jeff Jones. Geddy Lee assumed this role soon after.^[7]

Instrumentally, Lifeson is regarded as a guitarist whose strengths and notability rely primarily on signature riffing, electronic effects and processing, unorthodox chord structures, and a copious arsenal of equipment used over the years.^[8][9][10] Despite his esteem, however, Lifeson is often regarded as being overshadowed by his bandmates due to Lee's on-stage multi-instrumental dexterity and Peart's status as a drummer.^[11]

Rush was on hiatus for several years starting in 1997 owing to personal tragedies in Neil Peart's life, and Lifeson had not picked up a guitar for at least a year following those events.^[12] However, after some work in his home studio and on various side projects, Lifeson returned to the studio with Rush to begin work on 2002's Vapor Trails. Vapor Trails is the first Rush album since the 1970s to lack keyboards—as such, Lifeson used over 50 different guitars in what Shawn Hammond of Guitar Player called "his most rabid and experimental playing ever." Geddy Lee was amenable to leaving keyboards off the album due in part to Lifeson's ongoing concern about their use. Lifeson's approach to the guitar tracks for the album eschewed traditional guitar riffs and solos in favor of "tonality and harmonic quality."^[12]

During live performances, he is still responsible for cuing various guitar effects, the use of bass-pedal synthesizers and backing vocals.

Victor

While the bulk of Lifeson's work in music has been with Rush, Lifeson's first major outside work was his solo project, Victor, released in 1996. Victor was attributed as a self-titled work (i.e. Victor is attributed as the artist as well as the album title). This was done deliberately as an alternative to issuing the album explicitly under Lifeson's name.

Side projects

Lifeson has also contributed to a body of work outside of his involvement with the band in the form of instrumental contributions to other musical outfits. He made a guest appearance on the Platinum Blonde album Alien Shores (1985) performing guitar solos on the songs "Crying Over You" and "Holy Water". Later, in 1990, he appeared on Lawrence Gowan's album, Lost Brotherhood to play guitar. In 1995, he guested on two tracks on Tom Cochrane's Ragged Ass Road album and then in 1996 on I Mother Earth's "Like a Girl" from the Scenery and Fish album. In 2006, Lifeson founded The Big Dirty Band, which he created for the purpose of providing original soundtrack material for Trailer Park Boys: The Movie. Lifeson jammed regularly with The Dexters (The Orbit Room house band from 1994–2004). Recently, Lifeson made a guest appearance on the 2007 album Fear of a Blank Planet by UK progressive rock band, Porcupine Tree, contributing a solo during the song 'Anesthetize'. He also appears on the 2008 album Fly Paper by Detroit progressive rockers, Tiles. He plays on the track "Sacred and Mundane". Outside of band related endeavors, Lifeson composed the theme for the first season of the science-fiction TV series Andromeda. He also produced 3 songs from the album Away from the Sun by 3 Doors Down.

Television and film appearances

He made his film debut as himself under his birth name in the 1972 Canadian documentary film Come on Children.^[13]

In a 2003 episode of the Canadian mockumentary Trailer Park Boys, titled "Closer to the Heart", Lifeson plays a partly-fictional version of himself. In the story, he is kidnapped by Ricky and held as punishment for his inability (or refusal) to provide the main characters with free tickets to a Rush concert. In the end of the episode, Alex reconciles with the characters, and performs a duet of "Closer to the Heart" with Bubbles at the trailer park.

In 2008, Lifeson and the rest of Rush were invited to play the full version of their song "Tom Sawyer" at the end of the TV show The Colbert Report. According to Stephen Colbert, the host of the TV show, this was their first appearance on American television, as a band, in 33 years.^[14]

Lifeson appeared in Trailer Park Boys: The Movie, as a traffic cop in the opening scene and then again in Trailer Park Boys: Countdown to Liquor Day but this time in drag as an undercover vice cop. In 2009, he and the rest of the band appeared as themselves in the comedy I Love You, Man.^[15]

In 2010 Lifeson has appeared in the independent Canadian film Suck playing the role of an American border guard who initially tries to make problems to the band members wishing to enter the US, upon hearing that they are a band his attitude changes, he mentions that he was also in a band once and let's them enter while saying "Rock On".^{[citation needed]}

In 2010, Lifeson will also appear in The Drunk and On Drugs Happy Fun Time Hour, a new series from the Trailer Park Boys team.^[16]

The Naples incident

On New Year's Eve 2003, Lifeson, his son, and his daughter-in-law were arrested at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Naples, Florida.^[17] Lifeson, after intervening in an altercation between his son and police, was accused of assaulting a sheriff's deputy in what was described as a drunken brawl. In addition to suffering a broken nose at the hands of the officers, Lifeson was tased six times. His son was also tased repeatedly.^[18]

On April 21, 2005, Lifeson and his son agreed to a plea deal with the local prosecutor for the State's Attorney office to avoid jail time by pleading no contest to a first-degree misdemeanor charge of resisting arrest without violence.^[19] As part of the plea agreement Lifeson and his son were each sentenced to 12 months of probation with the adjudication of that probation suspended. Lifeson acknowledged his subsequent legal action against both the Ritz-Carlton and the Collier County Sheriff's Department for "their incredibly discourteous, arrogant and aggressive behaviour of which I had never experienced in thirty years of travel."^[20] Although both actions were initially dismissed in April 2007,^[21] legal claims against the Ritz-Carlton were reinstated upon appeal, and ultimately settled out of court in August 2008, with Lifeson and his son agreeing to a confidential settlement from Ritz-Carlton.^[22]

In his journal-based book Roadshow, Peart relates the band's perspective on the events of that New Year's Eve.

Guitar equipment

In Rush's early career, Lifeson used a Gibson ES-335 for the first single and the first four Rush studio albums. For the 2112 tour, he used a 1974 Gibson Les Paul and Marshall amplification. For the A Farewell to Kings sessions, Lifeson began using a Gibson EDS-1275 for songs like Xanadu and his main guitar became a personally customized white Gibson ES-355. During this period Lifeson used Hiwatt amplifiers. For effects Lifeson used various phaser and flanger pedals, a Cry Baby Wah Wah, along with Marshall 100 watt Super Lead amplifiers and 4x12 cabinets. Beginning in the late 1970s, he increasingly incorporated twelve-string guitar (acoustic and electric) and used a Boss CE-1 Chorus Ensemble and later, the Boss Dimension C.

By 1982 Lifeson's primary guitar was a modified Fender Stratocaster with a Bill Lawrence high-output humbucker L-500 in the bridge position and a Floyd Rose vibrato bridge. Lifeson increasingly relied on a selection of four identically modified Stratocasters from 1980 to 1986, all of them equipped with the Floyd Rose bridge. As a joke, he called these Hentnor Sportscasters - a made-up name based Peter Henderson's name, who was the producer of Grace Under Pressure.^[23] For the Moving Pictures and Signals albums, and on concurrent tours, Lifeson used up to four rare Marshall 4140 Club & Country 100W combo amps. In the mid 1980s Lifeson switched from vacuum tube to solid-state amplification, all with an increasingly thick layer of digital signal processing. He became an endorser of Gallien-Krueger and Dean Markley solid-state guitar amplifier lines and Dean Markley Blue Steel strings respectively, gauges .009-.046. In the late 1980s he switched to Carvin amplifiers in the studio. By 1987, Lifeson exclusively switched to using his Signature Guitar Co brand guitars onstage and in the studio. These guitars were most noted for generating his unique sound through the use of Evans single coil pickups wired to an onboard active preamp circuit. This enabled him to produce higher frequencies to "cut through" the heavy use and sounds of Geddy Lee's keyboards.

Lifeson primarily used PRS guitars during the recording of Roll The Bones in 1990/1991. When recording 1993's Counterparts, Lifeson continued to use PRS Guitars and Marshall amplifiers to record the album, and for the subsequent tour. Lifeson continued to use PRS along with Fender and Gibson guitars, Hughes & Kettner Triamp MK II and zenTera amplifiers and cabinets.

In 2005, Hughes & Kettner introduced an Alex Lifeson signature series amplifier with $50 from each amplifier sold will be donated to UNICEF.^[24]

For the 2007 Snakes & Arrows Tour, Lifeson replaced his PRS Guitars with Gibson Les Pauls. In a 2007 interview for Guitarist magazine, Lifeson states "I hear PRS on everything these days and I wanted a little bit of a change ... I love them [PRS] but they have a smaller sound than the bigger heavier Gibsons ... I just wanted to be more traditional."^{[citation needed]} He has Fishman Aura piezoelectric pickup systems installed in his Les Pauls to model acoustic guitar sounds without changing guitars. As of July 2008, Lifeson uses Floyd Rose tremolos on his main Les Pauls. He has also replaced his Hughes & Kettner zenTera amp heads with Switchblade heads (which, like the zenTeras, include built-in programmable digital effects, such as chorus and delay, but use vacuum tubes instead of transistors) for the amplification circuits, while retaining his signature series H&K Triamp heads. His effects for the 2007 tour include a TC Electronic G-Force rack multi-FX, a TC Electronic 1210 spatial expander and a Loft 440 Delay Line/Flanger, as well as the effects built into his Switchblade heads.

In addition to traditional stringed instruments such as acoustic and electric guitars, Lifeson has also played mandola, mandolin and bouzouki on recent Rush studio albums, including Test For Echo, Vapor Trails and Snakes & Arrows. During live Rush performances, Lifeson uses a MIDI controller that enables him to use his feet to trigger sounds from digital samplers, without taking his hands off his guitar. (Prior to this, Lifeson used Moog Taurus Bass Pedals before they were obsolesced and replaced by Korg MIDI pedals in the 1980s.) Lifeson and his bandmates share a desire to accurately depict songs from their albums when playing live performances. Toward this goal, beginning in the late 1980s the band equipped their live performances with a capacious rack of samplers. The band members use these samplers in real-time to recreate the sounds of non-traditional instruments, accompaniments, vocal harmonies, and other sound "events" that are familiarly heard on the studio versions of the songs. In live performances, the band members share duties throughout most songs, with each member triggering certain sounds with his available limbs, while playing his primary instrument(s).^[1] It is with this technology that Lifeson and his bandmates are able to present their arrangements in a live setting with the level of complexity and fidelity that

Favourite guitar solos

When MusicRadar asked Lifeson, in 2009, which were his favourite guitar solos that he ever wrote with Rush, he responded with:

"Limelight" (1981)

“

I love the elasticity of the solo. It's a very emotional piece of music for me to play. The song is about loneliness and isolation, and I think the solo reflects that. There's a lot of heart in it. It's a feel thing: you have to feel a solo as you play it, otherwise it's going to sound stiff. I never had that problem with "Limelight". The first time I laid it down in the studio, I felt a real attachment to it and I could tell it was special. Even now, it's my favorite solo to perform live. I never get tired of it. Each time I'm about to play it, I take a deep breath and I exhale on that first note. I guess that sounds corny, but for me, it releases something.[26]

”

"Kid Gloves" (1984)

“

That song is from our Grace Under Pressure album. What I like about the solo is, it's the opposite of "Limelight": it's got a hip, kind of slinky attitude, a little goofy humor. When I play it, I feel a certain confidence, almost like a prankster, which is not the way I am in real life at all. What's funny about it, too, is that it has a plot to it, and I only realized that after I recorded it for the first time - I never have a plot in mind when I'm recording solos; I always just kind of wing them. The "Kid Gloves" solo guided me; it's like it knew what it wanted to be and I just had to allow myself to follow.[26]

”

"Freewill" (1980)

“

It's a really hard solo to play. I think I feel a certain amount of pride in that fact alone. Every time I play it, I'm amazed I got through it. It's so frenetic and exciting. The rhythm section too - Geddy and Neil are all over the place. It's probably one of the most ambitious pieces of music Rush has ever done. In a sense, everybody's soloing at the same time. Recording it, I didn't have anything planned; I was just responding to what the other guys did. Basically, I was just trying to keep up! But I think it worked out pretty well. I'm rather happy with it, and I can usually find fault with everything I do.[26]

”

Awards

• "Best Rock Talent" by Guitar for the Practicing Musician in 1983
• "Best Rock Guitarist" by Guitar Player Magazine in 1984 and May 2008
• Runner-up for "Best Rock Guitarist" in Guitar Player in 1982, 1983, 1985, 1986
• Inducted into the Guitar for the Practicing Musician Hall of Fame, 1991
• 1996 - Officer of the Order of Canada, along with fellow bandmates Geddy Lee and Neil Peart
• "Best Article" for "Different Strings" in Guitar Player (September issue).
• Most Ferociously Brilliant Guitar Album (Snakes & Arrows) - Guitar Player Magazine, May 2008

External links

• Audio-Technica interview with Alex
• Read 2002 CNN interview with Alex
• Alex Lifeson gear, by songs
• Order of Canada citation
• CHECK OUT THESE RIFFS--------------------------------------------
  

Wikileaks DADT

A sends:

The unexplained delay by the Swedish Prosecution Authority in advancing the case against Julian Assange may be due to the time needed to complete blood tests on the alleged victims for sexually transmitted disease, especially for HIV, tests for which require 6 to 12 weeks, rather than for pregnancy test results obtainable much quicker.

If the sexual activity was in part anal in which condom breakage is common, condom failure would have terrified the other parties suddenly confronted with the threat of bi-sexual misogyny characterized by female seduction as prelude to conflicted male homophilic aggression -- residue of witnessed father-and-mother coupling parental incest desire.

If HIV is suspected, or found, there is a requirement to track other potential victims by interviews and other forms of tracing. This begins with testing of the transmitter, if available and willing, followed by interviews on the sexual history of the transmitter and suspected victims, then notification and testing of suspects. The time required for this can be lengthy or short depending on the history and candor of the transmitter, many of whom lie to evade culpability.

These investigations are customarily kept confidential to induce candid revelations. In some instances courts may order disclosure if a transmitter balks so that affected parties can receive tests and medical care.

Beyond this, Assange is suspected of being bi-sexually promiscuous and not attentive to partners after brief or extended relationships, often concurrently multiple as in the Swedish instance, in which he insists on being a dominant controller and insensitive to the after-needs of his companions.

More generally, defiance toward him leads to immediate breakoff of relationships, with dissidents blamed and denigrated.

He has repeatedly demonstrated intolerance toward those he recruits for his various ventures, Wikileaks the latest. He recruits with flattery of targets and promises of important stature in the actions, maintains dominance over those less capable than he with vulgar bragging about his recruitment successes, and dismisses anyone who challenges his supremacy. Refusing or walking out of interviews and halting discussions is typical. He much prefers to orate without interruption, inveterately solipsistic.

He is hyper-sensitive to criticism and loses his temper rather than answer disagreements. He believes he is smarter than his doubters and has no patience with those who do not succumb to flattery, oration and bullying.

In turn, he craves praise and flattery, and becomes depressed and suicidal if he does not get those from admirers he cultivates for that purpose -- susceptible adorants and especially those more notable than he. "Kicks down, kisses up."

He has left a trail of persons infected by what he promises, were used by him so long as they were believers, then abandoned when not. His wife and children among them; only his mother remains as loyal as a dominating wife -- perhaps the source of his misogynism and homophilic longing for a dominant father (a characterisic among many shared with Obama).

He suffers an emotional and intellectual messianism for which he believes there is no antidote. He does not expect to be punished for infecting with promises of glory and love as done with Bradley Manning and others yet untracked. If he is also spreading a fatal disease such as HIV he is intentionally sacrificing victims as his last god-like action so common in narcissists.

His quick cooperation with Swedish blood tests could put this frightening scenario to rest, or provide aid for immediate treatment of those who may have been victimized. This can be done quietly without public disclosure although Wikileaks has published confidential sexual investigations with names of innocents.

NOW, ASIA TIMES;

THE ROVING EYE
Cracks in the wilderness of mirrors
By Pepe Escobar
The temptation to see WikiLeaks as a neo-
Baudelairean artificial paradise - the
marriage of libertarian anarchism and cyberknowledge
- could not be more seductive.
Now no more than 40 people are helping
founder Julian Assange, plus 800 from the
outside.
All this with a 200,000 euro (US$264,000)
annual budget - and a nomad home base.
WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn
Hrafnsson maintains that this is still a
"gateway for whistleblowers", where
sources are unidentified and even unknown.
You can get a whistleblower to show the
emperor has no clothes with just 200,000
euros - just as someone, be him Osama bin
Laden or not, could usher the real "new world order"
in on 9/11 with $500,000.
Daniel Ellsberg, who broke the Pentagon
Papers in 1971, sees Assange as a hero. For
vast swathes of the United States
establishment, he is now public enemy
number one - an unlikely echo of bin Laden.
He may be now in southeast England,
contactable by Scotland Yard, and about to
be arrested at any minute courtesy of an
Interpol mandate based on his being wanted
in Sweden. Canadian scholar Marshall
McLuhan may be doing the twist in his
media tomb; if the media are the message,
when you can't eliminate the message why
not eliminate the media?
The book of sand
Let's examine Assange's crime. Here he is,
in his own words, in "State and Terrorist
Conspiracies":
To radically shift regime behavior
we must think clearly and boldly
for if we have learned anything, it
is that regimes do not want to be
changed. We must think beyond
those who have gone before us,
and discover technological
changes that embolden us with
ways to act in which our forebears
could not. Firstly we must
understand what aspect of
government or neo-corporatist
behavior we wish to change or
remove. Secondly we must
develop a way of thinking about
this behavior that is strong enough
to carry us through the mire of
politically distorted language, and
into a position of clarity. Finally
we must use these insights to
inspire within us and others a
course of ennobling, and effective action.
So Assange understands WikiLeaks as an
anti-virus that should guide our navigation
across the distortion of political language. If
language is a virus from outer space, as
William Naked Lunch Burroughs put it,
WikiLeaks should be the antidote. Assange
basically believes that the (cumulative)
revelation of secrets will lead to the
production of no future secrets. It's an
anarchic/romantic/utopian vision.
It's vital to remember that Assange
configures the US essentially as a huge
authoritarian conspiracy. American political
activist Noam Chomsky would say the same
thing (and they wouldn't want to arrest him
for it). The difference is that Assange
deploys a combat strategy: he aims to
corrode the ability of the system to conspire.
That's where the metaphor of the computer
network fits in. Assange wants to fight the
power of the system, treating it as a
computer choking in the desert sands. Were
he alive, it would be smashing to see the
great Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges
penning a short story about this.
On top of writing his own "Book of Sand",
Assange is also counter-attacking the
Pentagon's counter-insurgency doctrine.
He's not in "tracking-the-Taliban-and
taking-them-out" mode. This is just a detail.
If the conspiracy is an electronic network -
let's say, the (foreign policy) Matrix - what
he wants is to strike at its cognitive ability
by debasing the quality of the information.
Here intervenes another crucial element.
The ability of the conspiracy to deceive
everyone through massive propaganda is
equivalent to the conspiracy's penchant for
deceiving itself through its own propaganda.
That's how we get to the Assange strategy of
deploying a tsunami of leaks as a key
actor/vector in the informational landscape.
And that takes us to another crucial point: it
doesn't matter whether these leaks are new,
gossip or wishful thinking (as long as they
are authentic). The - very ambitious -
mother idea is to undermine the system of
information and thus "force the to
crash", making the conspiracy turn against
itself in self-defense. WikiLeaks believes
we can only destroy a conspiracy by
rendering it hallucinatory and paranoid in
relation to itself.
All this also takes us farther into crucial
territory. The bulk of the cablegate-inspired
global-talk-show tsunami has totally missed
the point. Once again, it doesn't matter that
most cables are gossip - trashy tabloid stuff.
See it as Assange's way of illustrating how
the conspiracy works. He is not interested in
journalistic scoops (as much as his media
partners, from the Guardian to Der Spiegel
may be); what he wants is to strangle the
nodes that make the conspiracy possible - to
render the system "dumb and dumber".
No doubt cablegate shows how the US State
Department seems to be in dumb-anddumber
territory - not even creative enough
to do their own versions of "pimp my
cable". This is already an extraordinary
victory for an organization different from
anything we have seen so far, which is
doing things that journalists do or should be
doing, and then some. And there will be
more, on a major bank's secrets (probably
Bank of America), on China's secrets, on
Russia's secrets.
Mirror, mirror on the net
The US government and most of corporate
media predictably rolled out their defense
mechanism, as in "there's nothing new in
these cables". Some might have suspected
that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had
ordered American diplomats to spy on their
colleagues at the United Nations. Another
thing entirely is to have an official cable
confirmation. If UN Secretary General Ban
Ki-moon was not such a wimp, he would be
throwing a monumental diplomatic fit by
now.
And then, at the same time, the US
government and virtually the whole
establishment - from neo-conservatives to
Obama-light practitioners - want to pull out
all stops to delete WikiLeaks or, even take
out Assange, as George W Bush wanted to
do with bin Laden. Grizzly nutjob Sarah
Palin says Assange is worse than al-Qaeda.
Such hysteria lead an Atlanta radio station
to ask listeners whether Assange should be
executed or imprisoned (no third option;
execution won). Redneck Baptist priest
Mike Huckabee, who might have been the
Republican contender for president in 2008
and is now a talk-show fixture, goes for
execution as well.
Who to believe? These freaks, or two
frustrated US federal investigators who told
the Los Angeles Times that if WikiLeaks
had been active in 2001, it would have
prevented 9/11?
French philosophers avid to escape their
own irrelevancy foment conspiracy theories,
lamenting that WikiLeaks gives the media
unprecedented powers; other blame the
Internet ogre for gobbling up journalists.
That's the beauty of the leaks - this is the
stuff conspiracies are made of.
Under this framework it is very enlightening
to listen to what eminent Cold Warrior
Zbigniew Brzezinski has to say. He told the
US Public Broadcasting Service that
cablegate is "seeded" with "surprisingly
pointed" information, and that "seeding" is
too easy to accomplish.
Example: those cables saying that the
Chinese are inclined to cooperate with the
US in view of a possible Korean unification
under the aegis of South Korea (I debunk
this in my previous article, See TheNaked
Emperor, Asia Times Online, December 1,
2010).
Dr Zbig says that WikiLeaks may have been
manipulated by intelligence services with
"very specific objectives". They could be, as
he hints, internal US elements who want to
embarass the Barack Obama administration.
But he also suspects "foreign elements". In
this case, the first on the list would be none
other than the state of Israel.
As conspiracy theories go, this one is a
cracker; could WikiLeaks be the head of a
real invisible "snake" - a massive Israeli
disinformation campaign? Evidence would
include cables seriously compromising the
US-Turkey relationship; the cumulative
painting a picture of a Sunni Arab-wide
consensus for attacking Iran; and the fact
that the cables reveal nothing that
demonstrates how Israel has jeopardized US
interests in the Middle East over and over
again.
In an interview with American talk show
host Larry King, Russian Prime Minister
Vladimir Putin went Dr Zbig and said this
was in fact a manipulation - the cables as a
deliberate plot to discredit Russia (this was
before Russia clinched the 2018 World Cup;
now everyone is drowning in of Stoli
and no one gives a damn about cables
anymore). Iranian President Mahmud
Ahmadinejad said virtually the same thing
regarding Iran.
And then there's the conspiracy that didn't
happen: how come the Pentagon, for all its
ultra-high- ways, has not been
willing, or able, to completely shut down
WikiLeaks?
There's thunderous chatter everywhere on
WikiLeaks' "motives" for releasing these
cables. We just need to go back to Assange's
thinking to realize there's no "motive". The
intellectual void and political autism of
America's diplomats is self-evident; they
can only "understand" the Other: the world
in terms of good guys and bad guys. The
great French-Swiss film director Jean-Luc
Godard is 80 this Friday. How fresh if he
would shoot a remake of Made in USA, now
featuring the perplexity of the system as it
contemplates its reflection in a giant,
mirror.
Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan:
How the Globalized World is Dissolving
into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and
Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad
during the surge. His new book, just out, is
Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books,
2009).
He may be reached at
pepeasia@yahoo.com.