As America elects the leader of the free world, Malta discusses electricity rates

Published: November 6, 2008 at 11:22am

Written in the first hours of yesterday morning and published in The Malta Independent today.

It’s not easy focusing on trivialities while the leader of the free world is being voted in, but I’ll have to try. In all the years I’ve been writing a newspaper column, I have hated the obligatory annual budget speech duty. It’s the biggest thing that happens in the week, so I can’t ignore it as I invariably want to do – except that this year it’s not, because there’s an election going on somewhere else. The choice of Budget Day was a smart one. I learned a long time ago that while we all want to know the budget details immediately they become available we’re absolutely not interested in reading anything more about them after that. There was more scope for entertainment in the days when the budget speech read something like this: tonn taz-zejt tal-marka Flying Saucer, ghaxar centezmi u sitt millezmi; sardin tal-marka Smiling Cat, hmistax il-centezmu u hames millezmi; mekril tal-marka Laughing Elephant, tnax il-centezmu u tlett millezmi; lancimit tal-marka Spinning Top, tmien centezmi u zewg millezmi; kornbif tal-marka Bully Boy, hdax il-centezmu u sitt millezmi.

I am left with the lingering suspicion that lots of people still hanker after this sort of thing in a perverse kind of way, because judging by the comments on the internet, they still think of the budget speech as a kind of glorified price list telling them how much things will cost and how much they can expect to spend. So they avoid looking at the bigger picture and focus instead on how much it’s going to cost to renew their car licence. As far as they’re concerned, the finance minister might as well skip those boring bits about spending €332 million on education and cut to the chase. How much is a pack of cigarettes going to cost?

I’m writing this while watching America go to the polls, on the BBC World News, annoyed that I will have to go to sleep and wake up before I find out whether the US has a glamorous new president or the dangerously comic pairing of an uneducated moose-hunter and the very respectable John McCain, whose accent and intonation I just love and could listen to for hours. He was so badly undermined by that glorified white trash Sarah Palin; there were too many differences in social class and education between them. McCain’s father and grandfather were distinguished admirals. Sarah Palin seems to come from one of those backwoods environments where 50 years ago people might have taken sandwiches to watch a lynching, in between butchering the occasional moose.

This means that the budget speech and the usual comments about energy-saving bulbs and petrol-pumps are shrinking even further into irrelevance. Right now on the screen there’s something with which most Maltese can identify: people queuing for hours to vote for the candidate they favour but more crucially, to vote against the candidate they fear will get in. People who haven’t voted for years have turned up to vote for Obama. And now there’s a little old lady who’s swallowed the propaganda, and who says that she is very afraid that “the other man” will get in because “he doesn’t have the experience, there were lots of things wrong with his growing up, he doesn’t belong, and he’s been planted here because he’s been mixing with all those terrorists.” Off-camera, somebody nudges her and she reacts: “But I’m saying the truth.”

Now there’s a really exciting bit on about how mice deep-frozen for 16 years have been brought back to life in laboratory experiments, and how people are talking about the possibility of doing the same with mammoths found intact in Siberian permafrost, except that their DNA is far too badly degraded after all this time. Maybe those who wanted to have themselves frozen in case science finds a way to resurrect dead bodies were not so cracked. But I have to rip my eyes away from the television and enthralling digital recreations of mammoths walking the earth and focus instead on something utterly tedious: the fact that the leader of the Opposition hasn’t worked out yet that the government doesn’t send its wife out to work to bring in the euros, and so hasn’t got any money of its own. It must use ours, after having first devised ingenious ways of getting us to hand it over, to add to the time-honoured ways employed by Caesar’s tax-collectors in the Roman provinces and King John’s man in the tales of Robin Hood.

I’m beginning to wonder whether Joseph Muscat imagines he is addressing idiots or if it’s just that he doesn’t think about what a sentence actually means as long as he thinks it makes a good sound-bite. What was it he said the other day? “The government should be putting money into people’s pockets, but instead people are being asked to put money in the government’s pocket.” The man is turning into a dead ringer for Sarah Palin and still he thinks he’s Barack Obama. Charlie Mangion, who knows all about these things, should take the boss gently aside and explain that people putting money in the government’s pocket is the normal order of things, given that the government is neither gainfully employed nor kept in clover by a rich parent’s trust fund.

Another thing that perplexes me is the odd tone of the coverage given to the raised electricity rates and the cost of fuel here in Malta. The coverage in the London newspapers is one of pragmatic acceptance: the price of fuel goes up; we have to pay for it. There are no letters from readers blaming Gordon Brown for their higher fuel bills, though they blame him for pretty much everything else. The features sections are full of practical measures to help readers cut their costs. And people in Britain really do know what a fuel bill is, because they have no choice but to heat their homes between October and June, using fuel-hungry central heating.

Here in Malta the attitude is completely different. The higher fuel prices are the government’s fault. The higher electricity rates are just that damned government, behaving like the Sheriff of Nottingham fleecing the starving peasants, with Joseph Muscat cast in the role of Robin Hood – though mercifully minus the tights.

A couple of non-Maltese people recently asked, in a genuine spirit of enquiry, why the Maltese don’t want to pay for their electricity. The mistake they made was to select the comments-board beneath the stories on an on-line newspaper to seek an answer. Dear heaven, were they stomped upon. One of them, who pointed out that everyone else in the rest of Europe pays the full price for fuel and electricity, was almost eaten alive. Why should we pay the full price for fuel when salaries in Malta are lower than they are “in Europe” (like Malta isn’t part of Europe but still hovering on the outside), people screamed. Malta’s salaries are actually pretty good compared to much of Europe, but there are people about who still labour under the delusion that if they were doing the same job in, say, Italy, Greece, Spain, Portugal, Poland, Bulgaria and several other states, they would be earning 10 times as much as they do here.

It’s the flaw in their economic reasoning that gets me most: the fuel-producing countries don’t set a special sympathy price for Malta on the grounds that the Maltese don’t earn as much money as the Germans or the Swedes. Malta has to pay as much for its fuel as Denmark does, and the fact that we are nowhere near earning as much as the Danes is irrelevant. You can’t just walk into the Missoni boutique in Rome and demand to pay €50 for the gown in the window because all you can afford is a Top Shop dress. Well, same difference with fuel. However much it costs, we’ve got to pay for it. And I mean ‘we’. There is no such thing as the government paying for it. The government, as we have established already, doesn’t go out to work or craft jewellery for sale in its spare time. It gets its money from us. So whether we pay for the fuel directly through the bill that comes to our door or indirectly through taxes, we’re still going to be paying for it.

What these people are really saying, though, is that they want other people’s taxes to pay for it, not theirs. They want other people’s taxes to be increased so that the government can use the money to subsidise their electricity. Fascinating stuff.

Now I’ve gone to sleep and have woken up again to find that America has its first-ever black president. Perhaps I should put that differently: the world has the first black American president. And there’s Jesse Jackson now, crying alone at the back of a crowd, not recognised or acknowledged by anyone other than the CNN reporter and the camera that focuses on him briefly and moves on.

You really have to say it: God bless America. From time to time it reminds us of the dream that everything is possible, that the son of an African villager and an eccentric Hawaiian drifter, brought up by his grandparents, can become the leader of the free world. On the home front, this means that the racists’ battle-cry of the hopeless inferiority of Africans has lost all of its zing. Even now, they are probably rewriting their message to read that it’s his white genes which did it.




25 Comments Comment

  1. Drew says:

    “So whether we pay for the fuel directly through the bill that comes to our door or indirectly through taxes, we’re still going to be paying for it.

    What these people are really saying, though, is that they want other people’s taxes to pay for it, not theirs. They want other people’s taxes to be increased so that the government can use the money to subsidise their electricity. Fascinating stuff.”

    By that logic, we should then privitise everything, because this is exactly how the government finances health care, education, stipends, children’s allowance, housing etc.

    [Daphne – Read my lips: electricity is not a social service. The government subsidises the electricity of 30,000 low-earning households. It is not obliged to make electricity cheaply or for free to all.]

  2. Kev says:

    “the very respectable McCain”? Go tell that to war veterans – he’s the most hated politician in their books and with good reason for he’s the front man positioned against them. The real McCain plays the maverick, when in fact few lackeys of his calibre have yet to exist.

    [Daphne – Which war, Kevin – or is there only one in your world? McCain is a war veteran too. Those were ‘the sacrifices that are unimaginable to the rest of us’ for which Obama thanked him in his victory speech.]

  3. Biker Bob says:

    I’m all for having cleaner cars and reduced car sizes and average age but surely the reduction in the purchase of new cars could have been accompanied by some sort of a ‘transition period’ before slapping hefty road taxes on existing cars.

    Has it occurred to anyone that people keep older cars because they have to and not because they want to? Had the government said that I have for example two years to change to a newer cleaner model or face a steep rise in taxes, I would put any future projects on hold and concentrate on replacing the car.

    As it is, now I have to replace my car asap and despite having kept in very good condition, it has been rendered practically worthless and costing twice as much to keep it on the road.

    [Daphne – Where did this idea come from that it is more environmentally sound to buy a new car than to run an old one? Al Gore? The environmental religious police ironically in league with car manufacturers? It can never be environmentally sound to change your car every five years, but rather the opposite. It’s silly when the same people who encourage us to re-use, maintain and recycle are also the ones who tell us not to run older cars. If older cars are to be taken off the road, then it should be for safety reasons and not environmental reasons. Every new car made uses up considerable material resources in a process that causes a great deal of environmental harm. Every old car scrapped is another big problem.]

  4. John Meilak says:

    “they still think of the budget speech as a kind of glorified price list telling them how much things will cost and how much they can expect to spend. So they avoid looking at the bigger picture and focus instead on how much it’s going to cost to renew their car licence. “

    Well, do you expect them to be happy so that they have fork out additional money for their road license? I for one, have to pay an additional 35 euros a year for my license just because I have a car which is older than 15 years and I cannot afford to buy a new one. Not to mention the higher petrol price when gasoline prices elsewhere are cheaper than milk and bread. As always, the middle-class suffers the brunt of the budget, while the ‘poor’ are given more benefits and the rich are do not even feel any pinch to their budget whatsoever.

    With regards to electricity, I must say that those 30,000 ‘low earning’ families are not ‘low earning’ at all. A case in point, there is one such family who lives near me. They take this electricity subsidy, children’s allowance (they brag about it in fact), free healthcare and the whole package of benefits whilst sporting three expensive (and high consumption) cars, a boat, and a house the size of a football ground. The government should really start employing inspectors (unbribable) to take a tally of each household’s assets and income (declared and ‘taht il-maduma’ also) before discharging benefits. So you see, I get to pay extra fuel costs, electricity bills, licence fees and what not, so these scoundrels can have a more comfortable life.

    [Daphne – I don’t expect anyone to be happy because they have to pay another EUR35 for their road licence, but I do expect them to bring out a calculator and work out that it’s Lm15, not Lm150. You have to be living on the breadline or on benefits for that kind of money even to register, let alone be made a fuss about. If you describe yourself as middle-class then I can’t see why you’re making a fuss about Lm15 a year. If anything, this measure affects ‘the poor’ from whom you distinguish yourself, because they are usually the ones with old bangers. Please don’t expect me to believe you when you say you are ‘middle-class’ but can’t afford to change your 15-year-old car. The market is saturated with second-hand cars just three or four years old for a fraction of their original price, and you can get a brand-new car for as little as Lm4,000 paid by installments. You really have no excuse.

    Where is petrol cheaper than bread and milk? Please explain. Your neighbours? Report them. It’s your duty.]

  5. Kev says:

    Daphne, you ask which war?

    Vietnam and Iraq (I and II) – there is a lot of info on this – some of which is amazing.

    War vets are treated extraordinarily badly by the establishment, especially when they try to take legitimate political action (this insightful interview is a recent case in point: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahP4Y-8_JgY)

    Another interesting piece of McCainism emerged when he said he ‘always aspired to be a dictator’. Strange as this may sound, the media typically failed to react. Watch him say it clearly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6cMnpCZfMJ8 (I’ve checked the longer version and there is nothing out of context).

    [Daphne – McCain is a veteran of the Vietnam war, Kevin.]

  6. John Meilak says:

    US Retail Gasoline Prices including taxes

    http://www.eia.doe.gov/oil_gas/petroleum/data_publications/wrgp/mogas_home_page.html

    “Please explain. Your neighbours? Report them. It’s your duty.”

    Mela tridni nsib xi barxa mal-karozza jew xi vendikazzjoni ohra? Nahseb taf kemm jaslu certu nies. I don’t to end up paying fees for lawyers and legal proceedings. Hekk jonqos ukoll. hah.

    “Please don’t expect me to believe you when you say you are ‘middle-class’ but can’t afford to change your 15-year-old car.”

    Maybe I want to spend my money on other things rather than buying a new car. For example, I prefer buying a bottle of wine to share with friends or rent a farmhouse for the weekend. My 18 year-old Skoda has served me well for the past 4 years and I take very good care of it. I’ve bought it for Lm1,000 in a good condition. Okay, maybe it does not have fancy extras such as ABS brakes, power steering, a/c, and GPS but I’m able to get from A to B with no problems. I’ve no need of a new one. Because I’m middle-class doesn’t mean I’m loaded with so much cash.

    [Daphne – The US? Everything is way cheaper in the US, not just petrol. We’re in Europe. Compare to another EU state. Your last paragraph just sums up the prevalent Maltese attitude, which I find UNBELIEVABLE: you’ve just told me that you’re cheesed off because you now have to pay Lm15 more for your car licence, and then in the next breath you tell me that you’d rather spend the money on buying wine or renting a farmhouse for the weekend. NOW I’M GOING TO HAVE TO SHOUT: EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD, RENTING A HOLIDAY COTTAGE FOR THE WEEKEND IS A LUXURY, NOT AN EXPECTATION. First the road licence, then the holiday cottage. First the road licence, then the bottle of wine. Please explain to me why in heaven’s name you paid Lm1,000 for a 14-year-old Skoda. The seller must have seen you coming.]

  7. Kev says:

    And you think I don’t know that McCain is a veteran? Geezus Daphne, please. But do you know the whole story?

    [Daphne – Guess what, Kevin? I’m not interested in people who are out of the picture. I’m not even interested in Sant anymore.]

  8. John Meilak says:

    I prefer to spend money on things which I like rather than giving them to the state. Maybe with those Lm15 I would go to the cinema 3 more times in a year. Or I could buy some good books. Or spend them on new clothes.

    I paid Lm1,000 because it was as I said in a very good condition and with less mileage. Its previous owner was very meticulous. The engine still gave no trouble whatsoever during these last 4 years and the only thing I replaced since is the side mirrors which had rusted a bit. Don’t think that he ripped me off. The week after I bought it, me and my brother dismantled the engine to check for any hidden surprises. Surprisingly we did not. All engine parts where functioning as expected and do so until today.
    Usually people tend to get ripped off for Lm1,000 because they do not simply have sufficient knowledge in cars. Trust me I know when a car is good or not. Age is irrelevant. Skoda cars are known to be very reliable cars having transported thousands of citizens across unforgiving wastelands and muddy icy roads. A Skoda is always value for money.

  9. Kev says:

    Daphne – And you think I’m interested in McCain? He was past his sell-by date well before he got nominated.

    Obama is another matter, of course. Lots of pertinent info here too – but you wouldn’t be interested so let’s all clap our hands on the basis of the sporadic information we’re fed by the mainstream media.

    Pity Obama never speaks of peace, though. And pity he does not say anything more substantial than the usual horseplay rhetoric. And by the looks of this MSM interview with Ralph Nader it is politically incorrect to criticise Obama: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jC4ZYdkuWuc (just note the incredulous reaction of the interviewer – it’s as if Nader said that 911 was an inside job).

    What a silly world we live in. And what bliss to live in a Soviet-style cocoon where the truth remains unknown to those who are unaware that they should seek it.

  10. Daphne Caruana Galizia says:

    Read this article for some light relief from the antics of Joseph Muscat and Michelle:

    http://egan.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/11/05/this-american-moment-the-surprises/?8ty&emc=ty

  11. Amanda Mallia says:

    Would it not be better to be able to control your expenses (within limits) by minimising use of water / electricity, than have the government subsidising the fees and so having to raise taxes across the board?

  12. Antoine Vella says:

    Daphne, maltastar also offers some light relief. I’ve just read what passes for their editorial and have learned that since 9/11 “it was a string of poor rationality by Bush”. As for Obama, he “does not make miracles” but his speech was “driven by a sense of strength”, whatever that means.

    The writer is a cautious person and advises us to be wary because “There was so much enthusiasm in the first hours after the new President was elected that few were the people who would stop an think, ‘yeah, now what next?’ ”

    I’m beginning to suspect that these howlers (of which I have only mentioned a few) cannot be genuine. Some PN joker must be hacking into the maltastar website and inserting them to keep us amused.

    [Daphne – No, Antoine, they’re genuine. You really have no idea what a hapless, hopeless unprepossessing prat the editor is – Kurt Farrugia. Here he is in a still from his ‘pre-wedding video’ http://www.maltastar.com/pages/msrv/msfullart.asp?an=24470

    Looks like a toby jug and has the brain of a pigeon. ‘A string of rationality’ – that might make a nice necklace.]

  13. Aidan Zammit Lupi says:

    “I prefer to spend money on things which I like rather than giving them to the state”

    John – has it occurred to you that this is exactly the same way your neighbours think? Anyway, it’s up to you people in the community to help let the authorities know about their fraudulent behaviour. There are ways to do it anonymously, you know? Otherwise you have to live with the knowledge that YOU are paying for their expensive cars and boats.

    I’ve always been amazed by the high prices of second-hand cars in Malta. It’s unbelievable that a 14 year-old Skoda could cost Lm1000.

    And to think that my wife’s 1996 Ford Escort Ghia 1.6 is worth €500 or less here in Italy…..

  14. Kev says:

    Here’s some more light relief from the life and times of Joseph and Michelle – it’s official ‘Nader’s career is over after criticising Obama!’

    http://www.prisonplanet.com/fox-news-angrily-smears-nader-for-daring-to-criticize-obama.html (there’s a cute panel discussion at the end)

    How dare he call the president-elect “Uncle Tom”, implying he’s a toady to the white man! Nader must be a racist!

    [Daphne – Very impressive, quoting prisonplanet.com. Might as well quote Maltafly.com, what do you think? You obviously don’t have a strong background in American literature, and the racial slight went right over your head. This is where ‘Uncle Tom’ comes from, Kev – http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20060608.shtml ]

  15. Kev says:

    Apparently you don’t know who Nader is and the Faux Noose anchor impressed you greatly. Uncle Tom is exactly what Obama is like. Don’t presume others don’t know when the greatest hole lies closer to home.

    [Daphne – Kevin, nobody who reads or watches the news and its attendant commentary can fail to know who Ralph Nader is. On the other hand, not many people know about Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and its significance in terms of the American Civil War. In historical terms, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is important but Ralph Nader is not. Only those who are obsessed with the idea of the US as the Great Satan – the European version of Iranian thinking on America – fixate on these things.]

  16. Lorna says:

    Frankly, I think we’re a bunch of whiners and spoilt brats. Of course, I would love to have my electricity and water for free and my car for free and not having to go to work and work for endless hours to be able to lead a decent life. However, the truth is we’ve been spoilt for far too long and sooner or later we have to face the circumstances.

    Let’s get real, why don’t we? I’d much rather pay for higher electricity bills and know that the money the government used to subsidise our bills with would be invested in other things (such as renewable energy sources for the industry, for example). And all this hullaballoo about the car licenses – my license went up by some 30 euros. So what? It’s not that I’m rich but we can’t expect to have everything for free.

    I really can’t understand why we expect everything to be state-subsidised. I’m sure we all want our holidays abroad and luxuries but, indeed, in order for us to achieve a higher quality of life, we have to restructure the economy. And the reduction of subsidies (from my limited economic knowledge) is one of the measures which needs to be adopted in order for this to be achieved.

    Therefore, let’s stop whining and let’s consider this as yet another step in the direction of long-term improvement in our quality of life.

  17. John Meilak says:

    @Aidan Zammit Lupi

    I do not claim benefits which I don’t need unlike them. I’m merely stating that I do not steal from other people’s pocket. I just want to keep my savings.

    “Anyway, it’s up to you people in the community to help let the authorities know about their fraudulent behaviour. There are ways to do it anonymously, you know? Otherwise you have to live with the knowledge that YOU are paying for their expensive cars and boats.”

    We live in Republic of Bananas. Tahseb li il-gvern ha joqod jibat xi hadd bix imur jiccekja lil Cikku? L-ewwel ma jaghmel jara hekk hux tal-istess fehma politika tieghhu umbad jara jekk jibatux jew le. That is how Malta works, with either party in government.

    I’ve always been amazed by the high prices of second-hand cars in Malta. It’s unbelievable that a 14 year-old Skoda could cost Lm1000.”

    As I said before. Value for money. It has endured enough bumpy roads and rapid accelerations/decelerations and it still works perfectly. Today they don’t make things that LAST. Today’s mentality is ‘usa e gietta’. Skoda was engineered by brilliant Czech engineers and the company was later acquired by Volkswagen, which is world-renowned for quality and reliability.

  18. Kieli says:

    Kevin Ellul Bonici: “Uncle Tom” is a euphemism for “house nigger”. That says more about Nader than it does about Obama.

  19. Pat says:

    Holy nostalgia, Batman!

    Deep in our hearts we all miss Adam West.

  20. Alex says:

    Nadar is not insignificant. He’s a voice in the wilderness. The day I hear Obama equate Israeli children’s fear of terrorism with Palestinian children’s fear of the Israeli army is the day I’ll say “Obama = change”. Till then it’s wait and see but I’m not holding my breath. He looks and sounds great but …

    Here’s Howard Zinn (a great American historian) discussing Obama’s chances of bringing change:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_M2W5SisPs&feature=related

    Note how he also unwittingly provides Daġhne with an interesting argument to be used against AD in future elections.

  21. Kev says:

    Well said, Alex. In politics the plot is always much thicker than what appears in the media, especially when important whistleblowers are not just ignored, but prosecuted.

    Take Obama’s choice for Chief of Staff: Rahm Emanuel. There’s plenty of baggage there – you can do your research (include Irgun as a keyword). One interesting facet of this man is his obsessive to introduce “complusory service” for all between the age of 18 and 25 – not unlike the draft or the Soviet “Sluzhba”. Obama has also spoken of a powerful, well-funded “civilian security force” to assist the “military”.

    This is a warmongering nation gone mad! I wouldn’t put it past another false flag operation, this time with chemical or biological weapons – there is a lot of preparation going on in this field. Something is going to happen because the usual suspects are rattling.

    Terr’rsts are everywhere, people! Check beneath your beds before you go to sleep! Al CIAeda are coming! Al CIAeda are coming! But your government will protect you!

  22. Corinne Vella says:

    Kevin Ellul Bonici: “In politics the plot is always much thicker than what appears in the media”

    You may not want to reveal your secret ways and means, but maybe you can tell everyone here how they can find the inside story rather than relying on what appears in the media.

  23. Kev says:

    Corinne, you read the alternative media, and not let the MSM feed you more structured lies. You think with an objective mind, fully aware that the truth is so far off what we’ve been told you cannot dismiss anything without investigation. Then you chase those stories to their sources, check official documents, leaked or forced out by freedom of information law-suits (getting rarer and rarer).

    The best link to start with is infowars.com – and it is not pro-Republican, now that Obama will be prez. It is managed by genuine truthseekers – they’re big in the alter-world. Much of the news comes from the ms press – but they join the dots and link to important side stories. The matter is too complex to tackle in blog comments.

    You see, you people are so self-righteously cocooned in your little ‘sane’ world, calling us, the investigators of tyranny, ‘kooks’, that it is difficult to know at which level to start. But if I am a tin-foil wearing kook, then so were former presidents John F Kennedy, Woodrow Wilson and Dwight Eisenhower, as also was 19th century British PM Benjamin Disraeli.

    A good way to start is to see what they had to say. Here are a few good quotations (they weren’t kidding):

    John F. Kennedy not long before his assassination:

    “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions.

    Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon by those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment. That I do not intend to permit to the extent that it is in my control. And no official of my Administration, whether his rank is high or low, civilian or military, should interpret my words here tonight as an excuse to censor the news, to stifle dissent, to cover up our mistakes or to withhold from the press and the public the facts they deserve to know.”
    …………….

    Woodrow Wilson:

    “The government, which was designed for the people, has got into the hands of the bosses and their employers, the special interests. An invisible empire has been set up above the forms of democracy.”

    And:

    “Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.”
    …………………

    Dwight Eisenhower, 17.01.1961 (from farewell speech):

    “This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.”
    ……………….

    Benjamin Disraeli:

    “The governments of the present day have to deal not merely with other governments, with emperors, kings and ministers, but also with the secret societies which have everywhere their unscrupulous agents, and can at the last moment upset all the governments’ plans.”
    ……………….

    And finally, the master himself, Joseph Goebbels, gives us a peep into his secret ways:

    “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
    ……………

    Now if you want to know what Obama thinks you will never find out by following his speeches, for he says nothing substantial. But you can start be researching the people he will be appointing… they’re coming out:

    Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff – a proven tyrant, known for mailing a stinking dead fish to an ‘enemy’: http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/10236

    Intelligence ‘Czarina’ Jane Harmon for top post at CIA or Homeland Security (she was one of the staunchest defenders of President Bush’s eavesdropping laws).

    And possibly Dennis Ross as senior foreign affairs advisor, one of the main architects of the Israeli-centred policy in the Middle East for both Clinton and George Dubya.

    So, start with http://www.infowars.com, http://www.prisonplanet.tv, http://www.waynemadsenreport.com and http://therealnews.com/t
    – these are sufficient, ‘lite’ sources for whoever wants to start waking up. Then there are non-US sites like http://www.russiatoday.com (with 24 hr TV news, also on youtube.com/russiatoday) and the Iranian http://www.presstv.ir. Few British sites are up to standard – Britain is going down the loo at a much faster rate.

    You build up your own sources as you go along. But remember, just as we used to check the dissident press, not Pravda, to find out what’s going on in the USSR, we cannot rely on the five major networks that control the West’s news.

    [Daphne – I think you need a blog of your own.]

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