Tuesday, February 27, 2007

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Operation Falcon and the Looming Police State

By Mike Whitney

02/26/07 "ICH" --- - On 29th June, 1934, Chancellor Adolph Hitler, accompanied by the Schutzstaffel (SS), arrived at Wiesse, where he personally arrested the leader of the Strum Abteilung (SA), Ernnst Roehm. During the next 24 hours 200 other senior SA officers were arrested on the way to Wiesse. Many were shot as soon as they were captured but Hitler decided to pardon Roehm because of his past service to the movement. However, after much pressure from Hermann Goering and Heinrich Himmler, Hitler agreed that Roehm should die. At first Hitler insisted that Roehm should be allowed to commit suicide but, when he refused, Roehm was shot by two SS men. (Spartacus.schoolnet.co)

Later, Hitler delivered a speech at the Reichstag in which he justified the murders of his rivals saying:

"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people. It was no secret that this time the revolution would have to be bloody; when we spoke of it we called it 'The Night of the Long Knives.' Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot."

The Night of the Long Knives is seen by many as the turning point where Hitler made it clear that he was above the law and the supreme leader of the German people.


Operation Falcon: Blueprint for removing dissidents and political rivals

The Bush administration has carried out three massive sweeps in the last two years, rolling up more than 30,000 minor crooks and criminals, without as much as a whimper of protest from the public.

Operation Falcon is the clearest indication yet that the Bush administration is fine-tuning its shock-troops so it can roll up tens of thousands of people at a moment’s notice and toss them into the newly-built Halliburton detention centers. This should be a red flag for anyone who cares at all about human rights, civil liberties, or simply saving his own skin.

Operation Falcon was allegedly the brainchild of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his counterpart in the US Marshal's office, (Director) Ben Reyna. But its roots go much deeper into the nexus of right-wing Washington think tanks where fantasies of autocratic government have a long history. The name, Falcon, is an acronym for “Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally.” It relates to the more than 960 state, local and federal agencies which are directly involved in the administration’s expansive criminal dragnets.

Typically, law enforcement agencies are protective of their own turf and wary of outside intervention. The Falcon program overrides these concerns by streamlining the information-sharing processes and setting up a chain-of-command structure that radiates from the Justice Department. This removes many of the traditional obstacles to agency interface. It also relocates the levers of power in Washington where thy can be manned by members of the Bush administration.

Dictatorships require strong centralized authority and the Falcon program is a logical corollary of that ambition. It creates new inroads for Bush to assume greater control over the nationwide police-state apparatus. That alone should be sufficient reason for alarm.

The first Operation Falcon took place during the week of April 4 to April 10, 2005. According to the US Marshal’s official website, “The emphasis centered on gang related crimes, homicides, crimes involving use of a weapon, crimes against children and the elderly, crimes involving sexual assaults, organized crime and drug related fugitives, and other crimes of violence.” More than 10,000 criminal suspects were arrested in a matter of days. It was the largest criminal sweep in the nation’s history and, according to U.S. Marshall chief Ben Reyna, “produced the largest number of arrests ever recorded during a single initiative.” The Washington Times noted, “The sweep was a virtual clearinghouse for warrants on drug, gang, gun and sex-offender suspects nationwide.”

The emphasis was clearly on quantity not quality.

Still, this doesn’t explain why state and federal agencies had to be integrated with local law enforcement simply to carry out routine police work.

More importantly, it doesn’t explain why local police ignored their duty to protect the public just so they could coordinate with outside agencies. According to one report “162 accused or convicted of murder” were picked up in the first sweep. That means that the police knowingly left murderers on the street and put the public at risk while they orchestrated their raids with federal agencies.

That’s irresponsible. It also suggests that there may be a more sinister motive behind the program than just ensuring public safety. The plan appears to have been devised to enhance the powers of the “unitary” executive by putting state and local law enforcement under federal supervision. Once again, it’s an attempt by the administration to extend its grip to the state and local level. We saw a similar strategy unfold after Hurricane Katrina when the Bush administration used the tragedy to seize control of local police and National Guard units so they could establish de facto martial law. Troops, armored vehicles and mercenaries were deployed to New Orleans to fight lawlessness and looting even though desperate people were still stranded on their rooftops waiting for food, water and medical attention.

Operation FALCON II was another massive dragnet which covered the western half of the country and focused primarily on “violent sex offenders”. The raids took place from April 17-23, and succeeded in apprehending 9,037 alleged fugitives. The US Marshals web site boasts that the operation “took some of the country's most dangerous wanted criminals off the streets and made America's communities safer”.

Nonsense. Despite the claims of success, only 462 “violent sex crime” suspects were arrested, along with 1,094 “unregistered sex offenders” and other minor “sex crime” suspects. That leaves 7,481 suspects who were rounded up for other unrelated reasons.

Who are they and what crime did they commit? Were these drug violations, dads who were delinquent on child-support payments, traffic tickets, jay-walking?!?

7,481 people who were incarcerated are unaccounted by the government’s estimate. This means that the bulk of them were probably undocumented workers who were shunted off to the INS (Immigration and Naturalization) or dispatched to Cheney’s tent-city gulags in western Texas. (See: Democracy Now “Human Rights Groups Call for Closure of Texas Jail Holding Undocumented Immigrants” 2-23-07)

Similar inconsistencies appear in “Operation FALCON III, which covered the eastern half of the country from October 22 - 28, 2006.” State, local and federal police-units arrested 10,773 fugitives; including 1,659 sex offenders, 971 unregistered sex offenders, 364 gang members, 140 homicide suspects, and 3,609 drug violations. Once again, the US Marshal’s official tally doesn’t pencil out. This time, 4,030 extra people were rounded up without any further explanation.

Who are they and have they been charged with a crime?

Furthermore, sex offenders, drug users and gang-bangers are not what we normally consider “some of the country's most dangerous wanted criminals”. In fact, there are indications that the great majority of these people are not violent at all. For example, of the 30,110 total fugitives who were apprehended in all three Falcon sweeps, a measly 586 firearms were seized.

Clearly, the people who were arrested for the most part were not “armed and dangerous” nor were they a serious threat to public safety. They were probably just the unwitting victims of an overzealous US Marshals office and an ideologically-driven Justice Department.

So, what was the real impetus for the Falcon raids? Was it just a bean-counting exercise to see how many people would fit in the back of a Paddy-wagon or are they a dress rehearsal for future crackdowns on potential enemies of the state?

Bogus News Reports

The Falcon operation illustrates the incestuous relationship between the media and the state. They are two wings on the same plane. The Justice Department provided the TV networks with official footage of policemen and government agents raiding homes and handcuffing suspects; and the media dutifully aired the video on stations across the country. The scenes were accompanied by a reassuring commentary lauding the administration’s new crime fighting strategies and linking homeland security with the nebulous war on terror.

Attorney General Gonzales told reporters, “Operation FALCON is an excellent example of President Bush’s direction and the Justice Department’s dedication to deal both with the terrorist threat and traditional violent crime.” He added, “This joint effort shows the commitment of our federal, state, and local partners to make our neighborhoods safer, and it has led to the highest number of arrests ever recorded for a single initiative of its kind.”

So far, not one of the more than 30,000 victims has been charged with a terror-related crime.

The media-hype surrounding the raids has been celebratory and uniform; cookie-cutter articles appeared throughout the US press (most of them unsourced) highlighting the cooperation between the divers agencies while providing an upbeat account of what amounts to police repression. Thousands of nearly identical articles appeared in the nation’s newspapers which seem to have been authored by high-ranking officials at Homeland Security and protégés of George Orwell; although the difference between the two is far from certain.

Even stranger, most of the articles in the mainstream media can no longer be retrieved via a Google search. They seem to have vanished into the black-hole of Homeland propaganda.

No matter. If the media was supposed to make Gestapo-like crackdowns look like normal police operations; they succeeded admirably. Mission accomplished.

Former Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long once opined, “When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag.” Indeed, he could have added that the corporate media will gladly provide the flag and the public relations campaign as they have with Falcon.

Falcon; new drills for a new world order

The Falcon operations can only be understood in the broader context of the ongoing assault on the constitutional system of checks and balances; including the repeal of habeas corpus, warrantless wiretaps and searches, and the use of torture.

For the last 6 years, the Bush administration has been busy dismantling the legal safeguards which protect the citizen from the arbitrary and, oftentimes, ruthless actions of the state. To that end, detention camps are being prepared by Halliburton within the U.S., secret courts have been established which deny due process of law, American citizens are arrested without charge, law enforcement is increasingly militarized, and the media has strengthened its alliance with the central government.

Additionally, in October 2006, George Bush quietly changed the Insurrection Act, which prevented the President from deploying troops inside the United States. Bush’s revision effectively overturns the Posse Comitatus Act which put strict limits on the executive’s power to use US troops in domestic situations. Just days earlier Bush signed a similar bill, "The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" which gives Bush the power to take command of National Guard units across the country which are traditionally under the control of the state governors.

Without fanfare, Bush has taken control of all armed forces and militias inside and outside of the country and now has a monopoly on all the state-sanctioned tools of organized violence. It’s a coup that could never have succeeded without the tacit cooperation of the media.

Bush is now free to declare martial law in response to a natural disaster, a pandemic or a terrorist attack. The congress is powerless to stop him.

Also, Bush recently signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which allows the president to arbitrarily declare citizens and non citizens “enemy combatants” and imprison them indefinitely without charge. The new law gives Bush the authority to disregard the Geneva Conventions and the 8th amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment and apply “harsh interrogation” which may include torture. The act effectively repeals habeas corpus, the cornerstone of American jurisprudence and the Bill of Rights.

The Military Commissions Act cannot coexist with the US Constitution; the two are mutually exclusive.

The Military Commissions Act, The John Warner Defense Authorization Act, the Homeland Security Act, the Patriot Act, and the myriad presidential signing statements have conferred absolute power on George Bush. The question is whether or not some incident will arise that will persuade Bush to use his extraordinary new powers.

General Tommy Franks predicted that a “massive, casualty producing event” might cause “our population to question our own Constitution and begin to militarize our country;” a scenario that many see as likely now.

Is that it? Will another terrorist attack provide the rationale for overturning republican government and declaring martial law?

If so, then we should know what to expect.

According to FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) it would mean “the suspension of the normal functions of civilian government, implying the cancellation or postponement of state and federal elections.” (Global Research) It would also “close public and government facilities not critical for continuity of essential operations.” (FEMA)

Northern Command would assume control and under “the classified 'Continuity of Government” (COG) Operations Plan' a secret 'shadow government' would become functional, redeploying key staff to secret locations.” (Global Research)

Also, “all forms of public gatherings or citizen's protests which question the legitimacy of the emergency procedures and the installation of a police state” would be banned. The military would be deployed to carry out “police and judicial” functions.

Martial law in the US would be applied with the utmost attention to public sensibilities and perceptions, avoiding the garish display of force we see in Iraq. It would be a “kinder and gentler” martial law with a limited number of military personnel on the streets (just enough to remind us that things have changed) and an emphasis on “preemptive” policing operations. (Expect Falcons’ 4, 5 and 6 etc) It would probably be disguised by a carefully crafted public relations campaign and a predictably cheery moniker, such as, “The Security Enhancement and Homeland Fortification Act”. The possibilities are limitless.

The Bush administration is also prepared if some unforeseen tragedy befalls congress, like another anthrax attack.

In fact, the American Enterprise Institute, to which the Bush team is closely aligned, has already "issued proposals for the operation of Congress following a catastrophic terrorist attack". They advocate the "APPOINTING" of individuals to the House of Representatives "to fill the seats of dead or incapacitated members, a first in American history" "The Continuity of Government Commission is self-commissioned', its members being neither elected nor appointed by any government body and mostly made up of professional lobbyists". (Read the whole article: http://www.conservativeusa.org/cog-ronpaul.htm) (Coincidentally, Newsweek article “White House Rehearses for Domestic Attack” 2-23-07; “The White House is staging a high-level exercise Saturday to test responses to the prospect of a massive domestic terrorist attack.” These drills are a critical part of the C.O.G. regimen dating back to the Reagan administration)

According to the AEI’s plan, the future United States congress will be comprised of lobbyists and industry representatives. What else would one expect from an organization that believes that corporate interests should determine policy?

These are the chilling precedents which have paved the way for further government lawlessness and abuse. They foreshadow the ominous transition from representative government to autocratic rule; from inalienable rights to martial law.

The Falcon operations are just a small part of this larger paradigm. The program is not designed for rounding up minor crooks and drug dealers, (which no one really cares about anyway) but for removing leftists, dissidents and political rivals. These are the real targets. The power of the state is measured in terms of how effectively it defeats or eliminates its enemies. And, the Bush administration has shown a remarkable aptitude for crushing its rivals.

The Crawford Fuehrer

One day, after a particularly savage domestic purge; we can expect President Bush to stride to the presidential podium and reiterate the same words that were uttered by his German predecessor 60 years ago:

"If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the American people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the American people….Everyone must know for all future time that if he raises his hand to strike the State, then certain death is his lot."

Monday, February 26, 2007

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Eisenhower, Nimitz Wait Around for “Accidental War”
Sunday February 25th 2007, 9:16 pm

“While the [USS] Eisenhower is ostensibly assisting US operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is the looming threat of Iran that increasingly occupies its attention,” writes Damien McElroy for the UK Telegraph. “Recent tensions between America and Iran over Teheran’s attempts to develop a nuclear weapon have raised the prospect of its third regional war in a decade.”

Indeed, the key word here is “ostensibly,” because the Eisenhower, now teamed up with the Nimitz, is not primarily in the Arabian Sea to help out in Afghanistan, but rather to attack Iran. In order to make this coming mass murder more palatable, at least for the yahoos at home, the corporate media is obliged to tell the same lie over and over, sort of like a mantra or a broken record—Iran is developing a nuke, Iran is developing a nuke…

Excuse me, Iran is developing nuclear energy, not nuclear weapons, and has a right to do so under the NPT.

“The quiet-spoken Capt Cloyd [the Eisenhower’s commanding officer] embraced the suggestion that the dual deployment is at the forefront of efforts to stop Iran getting a nuclear bomb, pointing out that his maritime assets have been tasked to quash any challenge to global security.”

Does this remind you of the Iraq invasion? Remember those pesky weapons of mass destruction? Recall at least some of us insisting all those weapons—sold to Iraq by the United States and Europe—were destroyed soon after the “Gulf War,” otherwise known as Iraq Attack I, the Bush Senior version. It really is difficult to call it a “war” because, usually, in a war there are two sides roughly paired. Of course, there was no such thing as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq—same as there is no program to develop nukes in Iran—and the objective had and has nothing to do with disarming Iraqis or Iranians. It has to do with wrecking Iraq and Iran.

“The Eisenhower is not only the flagship of the carrier group that protects The Gulf through which one-fifth of the world’s oil is shipped. It has also helped overthrow a hard-line Islamic regime in Somalia during a stint off the Horn of Africa.”

In other words, the Eisenhower is a “flagship” of intervention, used to attack and kill people who do not pose a threat to the United States, although the Union of Islamic Courts, supported by most people in the war-torn country, by its mere existence threatened Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips, or rather their ability to “maximize profits.”

“In the carrier’s Combat Direction Centre, Warrant Officer Michael Myers can spot anything untoward in a 256 mile radius from his radar screen. He can identify objects as small as wooden boats on the open sea and small aircraft in a swathe of countries from the Arabian peninsula to the northern shore of the Sea of Arabia.”

Not that it particularly matters, as Iran has Russian 3M-82 Moskit cruise missiles, designed specifically for use against military vessels. Warrant Officer Michael Myers may spot these on his radar, streaking in a Mach 2.5, 30 feet above the water with a 750 pound bomb payload, but there is absolutely nothing he can do about it because the United States has no defense against the Moskit, or Sunburn.

“As it patrols the shipping lanes of the Strait of Hormuz, the Eisenhower ensures the safe passage of oil tankers. It also prevents the trading routes being used to transport materials that would help rogue nations build a nuclear weapon.”

As it now stands, the “rogue” nation of Israel has around 400 nuclear weapons, although they are not officially declared, or is Israel an NPT signatory, and Israel has something called the “Samson Option,” a variant on the policy of mutually assured destruction, a rather meaningless policy as none of Israel’s neighbors have nuclear weapons. Another “rogue” nation, the United States, actually used two nukes on a nation ready to surrender, killing well over 200,000 people, virtually all of them civilians.

“Iran’s belligerent posture has increased the challenges facing the Eisenhower since it deployed to the Middle East last October. Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, the commander of the Fifth Fleet, issued a stark warning that Iran risks triggering an ‘accidental war’ during aggressive military maneuvers.”

It must be those warships Iran has parked in New York harbor that may trigger an “accidental war,” certainly not the U.S. armada in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Last month, a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine “collided with a large Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. tanker in the Persian Gulf, causing damage to the submarine’s bow and the tanker’s stern,” reported the Daily Yomiuri Online. “It was highly likely that the nuclear submarine hid itself in bubbles created by the commercial ship’s screws to sneak past surveillance by Iran,” Koh Young Choul, a former South Korean National Defense Ministry officer, told the newspaper. “That’s the best way for a submarine to slip through airplane patrol searches.”

“US commanders ascribe the increase in instability to increasingly aggressive actions by Teheran. For that reason the deployment of the carriers in the region is designed to intensify the pressure on Iran to step back from the brink.”

Meanwhile, the CIA long ago crossed the brink. As reported earlier today, the CIA is funding and supporting terrorist organizations inside Iran, as some of us have long suspected. “In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials.”

“In the past year and a half it [Iran] has become much more strident, more vocal and in your face,” said Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, commander of the Fifth Fleet. “What concerns me is miscalculation.”

It is, of course, a “miscalculation” the neocons hope for in order to kick off World War Four.

Short of that, no doubt they can engineer another Gulf Of Tonkin event or maybe even another September 11th attack.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Meria Heller - February 23, 2007

Meria Heller's Keynote Address, Chandler, Arizona.
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Israel's Contining Genocide

Sunday, February 25, 2007
Israeli Troops Raid Nablus, Start Curfew
Sunday February 25, 2007 12:01 PM


By ALI DARAGHMEH

Associated Press Writer

NABLUS, West Bank (AP) - Dozens of Israeli jeeps and armored vehicles poured into Nablus overnight Sunday, placing large areas of the city under curfew and conducting house-to-house arrest raids in one of the largest West Bank military operations in months.

The army also took over local television and radio stations, ordering people to remain indoors and warning residents that the clampdown would remain in effect for several days, Palestinian residents said. Two soldiers and several Palestinians were lightly wounded in clashes, officials said.

An Israeli military spokesman said the operation was aimed at countering ``terrorist threats'' in Nablus. The raid came a day after Israeli troops discovered an explosives laboratory in the city. Nablus, the West Bank's largest city and commercial center, is known as a stronghold of Palestinian militants.

Palestinian officials condemned the raid, saying it threatened President Mahmoud Abbas' efforts to restart peace talks with Israel.

Abbas held a rare meeting last week with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Although little progress was made at the meeting, participants said they discussed the possibility of extending a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip to the West Bank.

``We condemn this military incursion,'' said Saeb Erekat, a confidant to Abbas. ``This will undermine the efforts that are being made to sustain the cease-fire with Israel.''

The Israeli forces began moving into Nablus about 3 a.m. and continued to move in for several hours, Palestinian witnesses said. They said about 80 military vehicles, along with several bulldozers, were in the city.

The bulldozers erected huge piles of rubble to block movement on main roads, witnesses said. The main entrance to the city also was closed.

The operation was focused on Nablus' Old City, or casbah, a densely populated area of narrow alleyways, apartment buildings and markets. About 50,000 people were placed under curfew, residents said.

Soldiers moved from door to door, entering homes in search of suspects.

At one point, nervous soldiers forced a Palestinian youth to lead a small group of soldiers up some stairs and into a home ahead of the forces. The soldiers then took the youth, along with several young Palestinian men, into a military vehicle. A group of young boys peeked out from the window of a neighboring building.

Israel's Supreme Court in 2005 banned the practice of using Palestinian civilians as ``human shields,'' though the army challenged the decision. The army had no immediate comment on Sunday's incident, which was filmed by AP Television News.

While the operation largely shut down Nablus, sporadic clashes were reported. Soldiers were pelted with stones and cement blocks, and exchanged fire with Palestinian gunmen, the army said, adding that two soldiers were lightly wounded by a Palestinian bomb.

The army responded to the protests with rubber bullets and stun grenades, witnesses said. In one incident, soldiers entered a cemetery to search for Palestinians who had pelted their vehicle with stones.

Palestinian medical officials said four Palestinians were wounded by rubber bullets during Sunday's unrest.

The raid came at a sensitive time for Abbas, a political moderate who is trying to cobble together a unity government with the radical Hamas movement.

Hamas and Abbas' Fatah party reached a power-sharing deal earlier this month in the Muslim holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, though a new government has not yet been formed.

Abbas says the arrangement has forced Hamas to moderate its violently anti-Israel ideology and should pave the way for the lifting of international sanctions imposed on the current Hamas-led government.

Israel and Western donor nations have not yet made a decision on lifting the sanctions, but they have warned the agreement falls short of international demands to renounce violence and recognize Israel's right to exist.

In the Gaza Strip, Hamas officials said the Israeli raid was undermining the Palestinian unity efforts.

``We question why these military campaigns are increasing now,'' said Ghazi Hamad, spokesman for the Hamas-led government. ``This indicates the Israeli government is trying to turn what was agreed upon in Mecca into a failure.''
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In US, record numbers are plunged into poverty: report AFP
Published: Saturday February 24, 2007



The gulf between rich and poor in the United States is yawning wider than ever, and the number of extremely impoverished is at a three-decade high, a report out Saturday found.

Based on the latest available US census data from 2005, the McClatchy Newspapers analysis found that almost 16 million Americans live in "deep or severe poverty" defined as a family of four with two children earning less than 9,903 dollars -- one half the federal poverty line figure.

For individuals the "deep poverty" threshold was an income under 5,080 dollars a year.

"The McClatchy analysis found that the number of severely poor Americans grew by 26 percent from 2000 to 2005," the US newspaper chain reported.

"That's 56 percent faster than the overall poverty population grew in the same period," it noted.

The surge in poverty comes alongside an unusual economic expansion.

"Worker productivity has increased dramatically since the brief recession of 2001, but wages and job growth have lagged behind. At the same time, the share of national income going to corporate profits has dwarfed the amount going to wages and salaries," the study found.

"That helps explain why the median household income for working-age families, adjusted for inflation, has fallen for five straight years.

"These and other factors have helped push 43 percent of the nation's 37 million poor people into deep poverty -- the highest rate since at least 1975. The share of poor Americans in deep poverty has climbed slowly but steadily over the last three decades," the report said.

It quoted an American Journal of Preventive Medicine study as having found that since 2000, the number of severely poor -- far below basic poverty terms -- in the United States has grown "more than any other segment of the population."

"That was the exact opposite of what we anticipated when we began," said Dr. Steven Woolf of Virginia Commonwealth University, a study co-author.

"We're not seeing as much moderate poverty as a proportion of the population. What we're seeing is a dramatic growth of severe poverty."

US social programs are minimal compared to those of western Europe and Canada. The United States has a population of 301 million, but more than 45 million US citizens have no health insurance.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

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Monkey Shines

2/21/2007
Monkeyshines
Filed under: Constructive Criticism — MrBogle @ 4:06 pm
When I was a kid, everybody loved chimpanzees. The Today Show had J. Fred Muggs. Reagan had Bonzo. Toby Tyler had Mr. Stubbs. Zippy the chimp could be found hanging with everyone from Ed Sullivan to Howdy Doody. Heck, Cheetah even cracked Tarzan up! We liked funny chimps because they made us laugh.

What nobody knew, of course, that chimps forced to dwell too long in the world of humans often displayed odd character traits. They shrieked, spit and sometimes bit. When all else failed, they crapped in their hands and flung it.

Which, somehow, brings us to Bush’s interaction with the press this past week; indeed, with the American people.

On Presidents’ Day, standing in front of George Washington’s home, he grinned (as bombs went off in Baghdad): “I feel right at home here. After all, this is the home of the first George W. I thank President Washington for welcoming us, today. He doesn’t look a day over 275 years old.”

Aheh-heh. Stop it! You’re killing us! Literally!

He also likened America’s Revolutionary War to his War on Terror, not quite getting the fact that, in the first war mentioned, Americans were the guerilla fighters battling the occupiers.

Crap, anyone?

Bush began flinging it in earnest last week, hot on the heels of a botched “off the record” U.S. presentation linking the Iranian government to Iraqi insurgents via weaponry. When many of his military leaders responded with a ‘WTF?’ chorus, Bush decided to stage one of his kamikaze press events: gatherings to prove that he’s still in charge (although, at this point, nobody is quite sure of what) and that he’s on top of whatever situation he chooses to ignore.

In terms of Iraq, he immediately got the White House press corps and the American populace in an upbeat mood by dropping such bunker busting bon mots as: “The operation to secure Baghdad is going to take time, and there will be violence.”

And: “If you think the violence is bad now, imagine what it would look like if we don’t help them secure the city, the capital city of Baghdad.

“I fully recognize we’re not going to be able to stop all suicide bombers. I know that.”

And, the always cheerful: “You know, victory in Iraq is not going to be like victory in World War II. It’s one of the challenges I have to explain to the American people what Iraq will look like in a situation that will enable us to say we have accomplished our mission.

“First, the — Iraq will be a society in which there is relative peace. I say ‘relative peace’ because if it’s like zero car bombings, it never will happen that way.”

So, we’re sending in a surge of troops to make sure that car bombings only occur on odd numbered days of the year?

On the Iranian/Iraqi insurgent connection, when confronted by the fact that even General Peter Pace said there was no way of knowing where Iranian munitions came from, be it the black market or Tehran, Bush twitched and replied: “What we do know is that the (Iranian) Quds force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. That’s a known. What we don’t know is whether or not the head leaders of Iran ordered the Quds force to do what they did.

“But here’s my point: Either they knew or didn’t know, and what matters is, is that they’re there. What’s worse, that the government knew or that the government didn’t know? But the point I made in my initial speech in the White House about Iraq was, is that we know they’re there and we’re going to protect our troops.”

The reporters in attendance arched their eyebrows, rolled their eyes and dropped their jaws in a synchronized manner that could actually qualify as a future Olympic event.

Bush, moments later, tried to clear things up: “I can say with certainty that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, has provided these sophisticated IEDs that have harmed our troops. And I’d like to repeat, I do not know whether or not the Quds force was ordered from the top echelons of government. But my point is what’s worse — them ordering it and it happening, or them not ordering it and it happening? And so we will continue to protect our troops.”

There was a collective ‘WTF?’ visual moment from those in attendance.

A moment later, Bush definitively cleared up the issue, stating: “…and I told you, I was confident that the Quds force, a part of the Iranian government, was providing weaponry into Iraq. And to say it is provoking Iran is just a wrong way to characterize the Commander-in-Chief’s decision to do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm’s way. And I will continue to do so.”

Bush’s explaination was the verbal equivalent of Cheetah jumping up and down in place, while shrieking and slapping himself over the head with both hands. Unfortunately, neither Tarzan nor Jane was there to calm him down. Not even Tony Snow.

When asked, a minute later, if the American people could trust this new intelligence – intelligence that eerily resembled the solid stuff that led up to the Iraqi invasion (and is rumored to be based on a study of Magic Eight Ball technology as well as conversations with a Gypsy woman named Bernice), Bush looked steamed: “I can’t say it more plainly: there are weapons in Iraq that are harming U.S. troops because of the Quds force. And as you know, I hope, that the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. Whether Ahmadinejad ordered the Quds force to do this, I don’t think we know. But we do know that they’re there, and I intend to do something about it. And I’ve asked our commanders to do something about it. And we’re going to protect our troops.”

Reporter: “But given some of contradictions, Mr. President…”

Bush: “There’s no contradiction that the weapons are there and they were provided by the Quds force.”

Reporter: “What assurances can you give the American people that the intelligence this time will be accurate?”

Bush: “Ed, we know they’re there, we know they’re provided by the Quds force. We know the Quds force is a part of the Iranian government. I don’t think we know who picked up the phone and said to the Quds force, go do this, but we know it’s a vital part of the Iranian government.

“What matters is, is that we’re responding. The idea that somehow we’re manufacturing the idea that the Iranians are providing IEDs is preposterous. My job is to protect our troops. And when we find devices that are in that country that are hurting our troops, we’re going to do something about it, pure and simple.”

Fortunately, Bush didn’t actually bite anyone.

Nor did he cover his eyes, bare his teeth, shake his head from side to side and scream “eeeek, eeeek, eeeek.”

But it was close, as he hovered in a zone existing somewhere between Zippy the chimp and Zippy the pin-head.

Now, words can’t accurately describe Bush’s performance before the cameras, a combination of snark and psychosis. He blinked, sneered, laughed, smirked, squinted, licked his lips and clutched the podium while curling up one leg behind him and raising it up on its tippy-toe in quite the coquettish manner.

He also showed great disdain for the reporters, tweaking them about their jobs and their equipment as well as their questions. Here’s an exchange with one reporter who asked our Zippy-in-chief to comment, not on the Libby trial per se, but on the other three (then) Bush staffers who also leaked the name of Valerie Plame to the press.

“Thanks, Pete. I’m not going to talk about any of it.”

“They’re not under investigation, though.”

Peeved, Bush replied: “Pee-ter. I’m not going to talk about any of it.”

“How about pardons, sir? Many people are asking whether you might pardon…”

In full frat house mode, now, Bush smirked: “Not going to talk about it, Peter. Would you like to think of another question? Being the kind man that I am, I will recycle you.” (Aheh-heh.)

As the uncomfortable audience tittered, Bush grinned at one attendee. “You like that one? ‘Recycling’ him.”

When asked about holding talks with Iran, Bush replied in a singsong voice: “This is a world in which people say, meeeet – sit down and meeeet.”

So, I’m guessing no-one’s meeeeting soon.

Told by one reporter that, in interviews with troops on the ground, he found that morale over the Iraqi invasion is flagging, Bush said: “What I hear from commanders is that the place where there is concern is with the family members; that our troops, who have volunteered to serve the country, are willing to go into combat multiple times, but that the concern is with the people on the home front…I know there’s concern about the home front. I haven’t heard deep concern about the morale of the troops in Iraq.”

If you think that last comment suggests that Banana Boy is still in his infamous bubble, check out this response to the question “Do you think there’s a civil war in Iraq?”

Flashing a Bonzo smile, Bush stated: “It’s hard for me, living in this beautiful White House to give you an assessment, firsthand assessment. I haven’t been there. (Note: So, the phony turkey Thanksgiving trip was done in a phony location?) You have. I haven’t. But I do talk to people who are and people whose judgment I trust, and they would not qualify it as that. There are others who think it is. It is, however, a dangerous situation, thereby requiring action on my part.”

When in doubt, shout ‘Ungowa!’

Bush’s last bit of snappy patter prompted Keith Olbermann to remark that Bush was admitting “he is isolated inside the confines of the White House, so much so he does not really know what is going on in Iraq, never mind that he’s commander in chief, including whether or not that conflict is civil war.”

Uh-oh.

A guest on Olbermann’s show, Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, suggested: “Clearly he doesn’t want to call it a civil war, because if he does, Democrats are going to argue, ‘Well, we didn’t authorize the dispatching of American troops to that part of the world to preside over a civil war.’

“So that’s the reason he shied away from it. Professing his own ignorance, however charming he was trying to be, wasn’t a very good way to do it. And his allies outside the White House cringed when they saw that.”

During his non-news conference, Bush also dissed those who are dissing his new “surge” idea (before they even know whether it’s a success or not) and, in a somewhat Freudian slip, admitted: “I’ve listened to a lot of voices; people in my administration heard a lot of voices.”

That would explain sooo much.

Meanwhile, Bush’s monkey madness was spreading, with Republicans beating the tribal drums, accusing anyone who opposed the new General Custer surge of, not only aiding the enemy, but killing troop morale by even bringing up the concept of a Congressional debate.

Again, Olbermann: “To anyone with a brain or faith bigger than a walnut it remains a mystery why anyone would think democracy’s vital signs, debate, dissent and disagreement, would demoralize defenders of democracy, the men and women of America’s armed forces, but that is a central claim of those who argue that true Americans would not question the president’s deployments of those troops, presumably any deployment of those troops.”

Highlighting the senseless scrambling of the Republican simian suck-ups was the fact that while hawks John McCain and Joe Lieberman were claiming that, per their recent trip to Iraq, U.S. troops were supporting the surge, Fox’s Ollie North, also a recent returnee, claimed that these guys were both full o’ crap. North spoke to the same troops on the ground in Iraq and claimed that U.S. forces didn’t want any part of it.

Paul Rieckhoff, author of “Chasing Ghosts,” and founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, weighed in on “Countdown,” “Everybody I talked to inside Iraq, and most of the people coming home, who have come home in recent months, don‘t support the surge because they don‘t think it will work. An increase in troop numbers, especially this small level, is not going to be the silver bullet solution to all our problems in Iraq.

“And the administration hasn‘t listened to any of the generals throughout this war, so what makes anyone think that now they are going to start going down to the sergeants and lieutenants, who are at the tip of the spear and kicking in doors every day? They are not talking to the troops on the ground, because they don‘t support this, and surprisingly, Oliver North gets that.”

Asked about debate hurting U.S. troop morale, Rieckhoff said, bluntly: “I think it‘s a (political) shield for a flawed policy and I’m personally offended by it. You know, the troops are not anybody’s political chew toy. We’re not somebody you can just throw back and forth, or some kind of a political shield. We are tough. We are taking mortar fire, there are roadside bombs going off. We are going back for repeated deployments. Those are the things that affect morale profoundly, not what Trent Lott or Nancy Pelosi is saying back home.

“The reason guys like me join the military is to preserve that free right to have a real dissent and a real debate about the most important issue facing our country. That is why we joined the military. It’s why we take up arms, to defend exactly that type of right. So I think it is a really dangerous road to go down when it comes to the political dialogue.”

A few days after both Bush’s monkeyshines and Rieckhoff’s comments, the Republican pols of the Apes, shrieked, spit, bit and flung their crap in the Senate, shutting down any real debate about Bush’s last stand. They wrapped themselves in the flag and called all would-be debaters cowards and troop dissers.

(Then, they went home to try to bash gays and undercut middle-class workers even further. Taa-daa!)

Get your hands off my government, you damned, dirty apes!

Meanwhile, on the chimp’n’chief front, on Presidents’ Day, Bonzo, waxing eloquently about President George Washington’s legacy, intoned, “After winning the war, Washington did what victorious leaders rarely did at the time. He voluntarily gave up power.”

Hey! That’s an idea! Dubya? Just declare the war over and move on, okay? Give us all a break. There’s too much monkey business going on, these days.

I mean, as much as the world loves the funny things chimps do, nobody is laughing, anymore.

Except you.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

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George Monboit's Sour Grapes

Note: as ALWAYS, Kurt NAILS IT!




Tuesday February 20th 2007, 8:07 pm

It stinks of desperation. George Monbiot, inveterate leftist of the foundation financed environmentalist persuasion, has once again taken a swing at the “conspiracy idiots” who believe government is capable of mass murder, including the reflexive murder of its own subjects.

Not unlike his brethren, most notably Noam Chomsky and Alex Cockburn, Monbiot buys the Ward Churchill version of events in regard to the attacks of September 11, 2001—that is to say Osama and a small number of cave-dwelling Wahhabi fanatics magically made NORAD stand down and defied the immutable laws of physics, thus delivering one to the conclusion a piece of paper cannot be slipped between Monbiot and the moonstruck followers of the neocons, as they all buy the same Brothers Grimm fairy tale.

“Why do I bother with these morons? Because they are destroying the movements some of us have spent a long time trying to build,” complains the former BBC employee. “Those of us who believe that the crucial global issues—climate change, the Iraq war, nuclear proliferation, inequality—are insufficiently debated in parliament or congress, that corporate power stands too heavily on democracy, that war criminals, cheats and liars are not being held to account, have invested our efforts in movements outside the mainstream political process. These, we are now discovering, are peculiarly susceptible to this epidemic of gibberish.”

In fact, Mr. Monbiot and his ilk are part and parcel of the “mainstream political process,” especially considering the degree of foundation funding and support his cherished “movements” receive, from the likes of the Ford, Schumann, Rockefeller, and MacArthur foundations, to name but a handful.

Monbiot’s “progressive” left was long ago sold down the river. In effect, the foundation oiled “movements” so dear to Monbiot’s heart are completely and utterly ineffectual, having accomplished dreadful little over the decades, and instead serve as a facile target of convenience for Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, Michael “Savage” Weiner, Sean Hannity and the neocon fascists dominating the corporate media.

For all his effort and that of his pals, Monbiot has managed to make the machine of progress, as he gauges it, turn in reverse. It is not the 9/11 “morons” destroying Mr. Monbiot’s “movements,” but his own enervated struggle, his own inability to understand reality and deal with it, even as he has made a career out of complaint minus substantial result.

According to Monbiot, questioning the official version of events, replete with bad science and glaring omission, is “a displacement activity” and avoidance “of the real issues we must confront,” never mind Monbiot and his fellows have confronted for decade after decade “issues” they swear are “real,” only to slide backward down a long slope into the muck of irrelevance, made a laughingstock and a cavalcade of clowns by the corporate media.

For Monbiot, the documentary Loose Change is a “concatenation of ill-attested nonsense,” never mind the good professor, from on-high at Oxford Brookes University, does not bother to detail such ill-attestation, caring only to tell us Benjamin Chertoff, the “senior researcher” of Popular Mechanics tasked with slamming 9/11 research far and wide, is not related to Michael Chertoff, a fact disputed by none other than Benjamin’s mother, Judy Dargan, in Pelham, New York. “Yes, of course, he is a cousin,” she told journalist Christopher Bollyn.

Mr. Monbiot is determined to attack the “crazy distraction” that supposedly “presents a mortal danger to popular oppositional movements,” never mind by and large such movements long ago went to fossil precisely because of the inability of intellectual doyens—represented by Chomsky, Cockburn, and Monbiot—to accept the fact that, indeed, George Bush and the neocons—and yes, even the faceless bureaucrats the progressives submit grant applications to over at the Ford and Rockefeller foundations—are cold-blooded killers who are determined to not only slaughter Iraqis as they did Vietnamese, but no small number of innocent office workers on a sunny morning in New York as well.

But not to despair, George, there is still time.

If you put aside your petty jealousies and hurt feelings and join the 9/11 truth movement you claim to despise, we actually may be able to effectuate change before it is too late.

Short of that, and the possibility of the unthinkable now breathing down our necks, we will know who will share the blame come the day after.
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Eisenhower's Worst Nightmare Now Harsh Reality For U.S.A

By John Hanchette

02/20/0 "Niagara Falls Reporter " - -- OLEAN -- I have come to believe Dwight David Eisenhower, our 34th president, is one of the most underrated and unappreciated men ever to hold that office.

Until recently, Eisenhower was generally regarded as a terrific general (commander of all Allied Forces in World War II) but mediocre president. Now, he is proving to be one of the most prescient visionaries of our modern age.

All of my high school years occurred during Ike's second term. Think "Happy Days" of TV fame, with Fonzi and the malt shop. To most parents, the biggest crisis seemed to be this terrible rock 'n' roll music that was sweeping the nation and corrupting our youth. The new dance sensation the Twist (in which partners never even touched each other) was banned at my high school, despite being downright puritanical by today's standards.

The White House coverage was pretty boring, and so was Ike. The American public loved him because not much all that bad was happening and he'd gotten us out of the Korean War, but he was viewed by most commentators as an unimaginative avuncular type.

Young people paid so little attention to him that my birth cohort was dubbed the Apathetic Generation. (We dispelled that unfair tag when Vietnam came along.)

Eisenhower, however, in January of 1961, in his last speech before vacating the White House to make room for the just-elected John F. Kennedy, warned America of a "disastrous rise of misplaced power" if we continued allowing the germination of a new historical entity he called "the military-industrial complex."

Very few Americans knew what the heck Eisenhower was talking about. We do now.

It's 46 years later, and we are rapidly coming to realize the federal government really doesn't run this country anymore. Huge, shady corporations with fat federal contracts do.

The public's concept of federal government was basically forged by FDR's all-encompassing, can-do successes of ending the Depression and winning World War II. That no longer holds. Recent presidents and Congresses -- under pressure from taxpayers and voters -- have downsized government to the point where private companies are under federal contract to perform a broad scope of functions and get the actual work done. Almost everything is farmed out.

Don't believe me? Consider this mind-twisting equation from a well-researched article in the current issue of "Vanity Fair" magazine: Private federal contractors now "absorb the taxes paid by everyone in America with incomes under $100,000."

Viewed a bit differently, "more than 90 percent of all taxpayers might as well remit everything they owe directly ... to some contractor rather than to the IRS."

Disastrous "misplaced power" indeed. Ike was right.

The "Vanity Fair" article is written by two of the best investigative reporters of our time, Donald L. Bartlett and James B. Steele, who used to ply their craft for The Philadelphia Inquirer until that double digit-Pulitzer Prize winning newspaper lost its appetite for expensive investigative reporting. Bartlett and Steele, who won two of those Pulitzers and 50 other national journalism awards, went to "Time" magazine and now to the increasingly aggressive "Vanity Fair."

Their first article for the big, slick magazine lays open the above situation, which the authors call "Eisenhower's nightmare." They illustrate the dominance of the military-industrial complex by describing the success of a powerful private company only a tiny fraction of Americans have even heard of -- Science Applications International Corporation, or SAIC.

I first came across SAIC about 15 years ago while toiling as a Washington reporter covering the Pentagon and other bureaucracies in the wake of the Persian Gulf War -- Bush the Elder's speedy eviction of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, and equally speedy pullout once the work was done. (Daddy Bush was smarter than his son in suspecting an American occupation force in Iraq would lead to deadly and ruinous civil war, a conflict of religions and disruption of political balance in the entire Middle East.)

Thousands of troops had come home from that war with mysterious, multi-symptom maladies -- some deadly -- that for years drew persistent Pentagon scorn for the afflicted vets as gold-bricking shirkers and benefit-seekers who weren't really sick at all, or if they were, the Defense Department held, the illnesses were minor and mostly in their heads.

Non-government doctors and medical experts in the Veterans Affairs Department tended to think otherwise, validating the illnesses as serious and chronic under the general term Gulf War Syndrome, but still seeking the causes. The ensuing conflict of professional opinions led the Pentagon, VA and Department of Health and Human Services to hire dozens of private-sector consultants to advise the federal defense, health and intelligence communities.

One of the favorite consultant firms that kept cropping up on this or that aspect of the debate was SAIC -- and surprise of surprises, SAIC almost always backed the Pentagon view, despite the evolving government admission the debilitating mystery illnesses eventually affected almost a fifth of those who served.

Editorial interest in pursuing descriptions of some vague consulting firm waned, and I never got the go-ahead to write much about SAIC, but now Bartlett and Steele have nailed this spooky firm they call a "stealth company."

SAIC, founded in 1969, employs more than 44,000 workers and took in about $8 billion in revenue last year, almost all of it from the federal government. It currently holds more than 9,000 active federal contracts. More than 100 of them, state the authors, are worth more than $10 million each. Two of them are worth more than $1 billion. If all the contracts negotiated and pending are eventually signed, federal taxpayers will shell out another $13.6 billion to SAIC. Indeed, it is hard to keep current with the federal government's use of SAIC.

Over the weekend, as this column was in preparation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration hired SAIC for $13.5 million to "support" NASA's Johnson Space Center "financial and administrative system services" in procurement, human resources and daily operations. The contract will be worth $25 million if two additional one-year options are signed. The language says SAIC will provide "sustaining engineering and system integration support for administrative systems." That's about as specific as most federal contracts get these days.

In its recent existence, SAIC was the largest employee-owned research and engineering firm in the country, ranking 285 on the Fortune 500 list and boasting a return on revenue larger than ExxonMobil's storied percentages. SAIC stock went public last fall. Its share price rose 40 percent within a matter of days.

What SAIC purports to do is provide the federal government with the brainpower and computer expertise to run its vast and extensive defense, security and intelligence operations. According to Bartlett and Steele, "no Washington contractor pursues government money with more ingenuity and perseverance than SAIC. No contractor seems to exploit conflicts of interest in Washington with more zeal. And no contractor cloaks its operations in greater secrecy."

SAIC, according to the "Vanity Fair" article, "has become the invisible hand behind a huge portion of America's national-security state."

Talk about conflicts of interest. SAIC hires top federal officials at such a prodigious rate the Washington "revolving door" spins so fast it makes the mind blur. SAIC, write Bartlett and Steele, "might as well operate an executive shuttle service between its McLean, Virginia offices and the CIA, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy."

Some examples:

New Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates is a former SAIC board member.

Former defense secretary Melvin Laird is a former SAIC board member.

Former CIA director John M. Deutch is an SAIC board member.

Donald Foley, until recently a top executive at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the military agency that invented the Internet, is a current SAIC director.

Rear Admiral Bobby Inman went from head of the National Security Agency to SAIC board member.

Undersecretary of Defense Ryan Henry is former senior vice president of SAIC.

William B. Black Jr. retired from a top National Security Agency office in 1997 to become SAIC vice president. In 2000, he returned to the NSA. Two years later, NSA awarded SAIC a $280 million contract for "Trailblazer" -- a much-touted effort to redesign an NSA computer system that had failed to highlight and interpret such missed such 9/11 terrorism clues as the intercepted Arabic message on Sept. 10: "Tomorrow is zero hour."

"Four years and more than a billion dollars later," write Bartlett and Steele, "the effort has been abandoned." SAIC is not fretting. It recently was awarded another $361 million intelligence contract to have another go at the Trailblazer concept.

The company is "packed ... with generals, admirals, diplomats, spies, Cabinet officers -- people with access." SAIC, write the authors, is "a private business that has become a form of permanent government." SAIC developed expertise in getting both ends of the play -- "writing regulations on the recycling of radioactive metals even as it went into the recycling business."

But things may be changing. Government audits, employee lawsuits and federal whistleblowers have been key in revealing a trail of SAIC failures to fulfill contract promises despite the river of taxpayer money. Still, there's a long road ahead for taxpayer satisfaction. Steele, interviewed for the magazine's "Contributors" blurbs, said, "There is no oversight; no one is watching the money, taxpayers' money."

You will hear more about this hugely powerful firm. Bartlett and Steele -- despite their intrepid digging -- have only scratched the surface. Write your members of Congress ... if they aren't on SAIC's payroll already.

John Hanchette, a professor of journalism at St. Bonaventure University, is a former editor of the Niagara Gazette and a Pulitzer Prize-winning national correspondent. He was a founding editor of USA Today and was recently named by Gannett as one of the Top 10 reporters of the past 25 years. He can be contacted via e-mail at Hanchette6@aol.com.

Army's Latest Toy ?!Or Practicing Mass Poisoning...hmmmm

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Pentagoon Balloons Spotted

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Monday, February 19, 2007

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Like....Not Suprized...

I will screw him in the ass!”

Legendary Israeli reporter Uri Dan’s posthumous biography of Ariel Sharon, “Ariel Sharon: An Intimate Portrait,” also contains a revealing portrait of The Decider. According to Ha’aretz, Dan reports:

Speaking of George Bush, with whom Sharon developed a very close relationship, Uri Dan recalls that Sharon’s delicacy made him reluctant to repeat what the president had told him when they discussed Osama bin Laden. Finally he relented. And here is what the leader of the Western world, valiant warrior in the battle of cultures, promised to do to bin Laden if he caught him: “I will screw him in the ass!”

Hmmmmmmm

Pentagon to float balloons as part of a chem-bio defense test Fri Feb 16, 6:25 PM ET



The Pentagon plans to float balloons off its roof Saturday as part of a test of a new system to protect it against chemical or biological attack, a Pentagon spokeswoman said.

"It's an advanced chemical and biological protection system for the Pentagon and its occupants," said Major Rebecca Goodrich Hinton.

She said three balloons that are each six feet (1.8 meters) in diameter will be raised 100 feet (30 meters) over the Pentagon during the test, which is part of a series called "Pentagon Shield."

The balloons will be raised and lowered from four locations on the roof of the Pentagon, she said.

She declined to provide other details about the test, which is being conducted by the Pentagon Force Protection Agency and the Defense Department's Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Directorate.




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Sunday, February 18, 2007

What a Tool

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Shithead Alert

Bush Moves to Quell War Dissenters
Facing increasing resistance to his war plans, President Bush is being pressured from all sides on the Iraq war. This resistance was evidenced by the House of Representatives successful vote today on an anti-surge resolution, a great victory for Nancy Pelosi and the American People.

Attempting to try for a more favorable venue, President Bush today visited the local YMCA. But it appears that Bush was greeted with what David Postman commonly refers to as "Anti-War Activists" (WaPo):

"In a brightly lighted basement gym, he visited children bending paperclips into different shapes and urged Americans to volunteer as mentors. He talked not of armies in Iraq but of "armies of compassion" at home. Even the kids seemed confused. One asked why he came. "I came to see you," the president responded. As the cameras clicked away, a 7-year-old boy made peace signs. "Put your hands down," Bush chided playfully.
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Burns: Israel and U.S. Agree Iran Must be Bombed
Sunday February 18th 2007, 7:31 pm

Nicholas Burns, under secretary for political affairs for Israel—er, excuse me, the United States—has told the neocon-infested Jerusalem Post “that America and Israel are on the same page when it comes to Iran,” in other words, both agree the Islamic country will be attacked, as Israel has demanded this for years now.

“We have a very clear uniformity of views with the Israelis,” said Burns, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Order of St. John, headed until his death by the former SS official, Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. “One of our major [priorities] is obviously to work very closely with Israel and to be a good partner with Israel.” Burns made the comments while speaking at the Brookings Institute, home of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy (the Israeli-American media-mogul, Haim Saban, has proudly declared, “I’m a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel”).

Burns said he does not believe “a conflict with Iran is inevitable; it is certainly not desirable,” but then, of course, this is what neocons always say, as it alienates people when you come off in public as a ghoulish proponent for mass murder and mayhem.

So, how do the Iranians prevent the destruction of their country, the nuclear-tipped bunker-buster slide into the Stone Age?

It’s a no-brainer, really—they simply must go prostrate, give up their nuclear energy program (as there is absolutely no evidence they are working on nuclear weapons, according to both the CIA and the International Atomic Energy Agency), boot out Ahmadinejad and the mullahs, allow Reza Pahlavi to reclaim the throne, and go back to the good old days when multinationals ran roughshod and SAVAK tortured all who dared oppose dictatorial, monarchial rule.

Otherwise, the neocons will nuke the place, although, if we are to believe Burns, they want sanctions to have a chance to work, probably the same way they worked in Iraq—ultimately killing 1.5 million Iraqis, 500,000 of them children. Of course, this will take too long, as the neocons are determined to “democratize” Iran with depleted uranium and “mini-nukes” before their cardboard cut-out of an appointed unitary decider leaves office in early 2009.

Bombing Iran, naturally, is a done deal. And that’s why big-wig neocon James “World War Four” Woolsey can get away with performing for Arnaud de Borchgrave on the sidewalk outside of the Metropolitan Club. “In response to my question about how he rated the odds of a bombing campaign against Iran,” writes de Borchgrave for the Moonie, er Washington Times, Woolsey did a little “parody of the Beach Boys hit ‘Barbara Ann’—’Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb-Bomb Iran.’”

In Bushzarro world, attacking sovereign countries with nuclear weapons passes for a comedy routine.
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Creating the North American Union
by Dennis Behreandt
October 2, 2006

The plans for a North American Security and Prosperity Partnership are steps on the way to a North American Union. (Tell your representative and senators "NO North American Union!" Also, click here to send a message to your representative and senators in support of H. Con. Res. 487 to stop the NAU.)

On June 21, viewers of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight heard the alarming introduction to a segment of the program devoted to the future of the United States of America. "The Bush administration's open-borders policy and its decision to ignore the enforcement of this country's immigration laws is part of a broader agenda," Dobbs intoned. "President Bush signed a formal agreement that will end the United States as we know it, and he took the step without approval from either the U.S. Congress or the people of the United States."

The agreement Dobbs was talking about was crafted a year earlier. On March 23, 2005, then-Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin and Mexican President Vicente Fox met with President Bush in Waco, Texas, to discuss plans for integrating Canada, the United States, and Mexico. During that meeting, the three heads of state argued that the three nations are "mutually dependent and complementary" and need to work together more closely on a range of issues. "In a rapidly changing world, we must develop new avenues of cooperation that will make our open societies safer and more secure, our businesses more competitive, and our economies more resilient," the three leaders said in a joint statement.

The standard diplomatic language was a prelude to a radical proposal calling for the merger of the three nations in several important ways. Under a so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP), the nations will no longer have separate borders, but will "implement common border-security." The three nations will no longer respond on the national level to emergencies but will have a "common approach to emergency response." And, in a move that has tremendous implications for the growing immigration crisis, the three leaders agreed that the United States' north and south borders would be eliminated. Under the SPP plan, the three nations will "implement a border-facilitation strategy to build capacity and improve the legitimate flow of people and cargo at our shared borders."
This plan is nothing short of revolutionary. As Dobbs put it on his CNN program, it is "an absolute contravention of our law, of our Constitution, every national value." Though the plan sounds like a new innovation, it is not new. It is the next step in a progression of steps that, in a manner very similar to the process used in Europe to supplant individual nations with the European Union, will ultimately lead to the formation of a new government for the United States, the North American Union. If not stopped, the plan for a North American Union will supplant the former independent states of Canada, Mexico, and the United States. And this is not conjecture. The North American Union is official U.S. policy.

The European Template


The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) serves as the intellectual incubator for most of the foreign policy direction followed by the executive branch of the federal government. Before the trilateral meeting between the heads of state in Waco on March 23 of last year, the CFR had already undertaken an initiative with its counterparts in Mexico and Canada (Consejo Mexicano de Asuntos Internacionales and the Canadian Council of Chief Executives) to study the possibility of integrating the three nations. Laying the foundation for the Waco meeting, the CFR produced a document entitled Creating a North American Community: Chairmen's Statement Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. The document called for "the creation by 2010 of a community to enhance security, prosperity, and opportunity for all North Americans."

The CFR is proposing nothing less than a plan to create a North American Union, similar to the European Union. The CFR protests that this is not its intention. "A new North American community will not be modeled on the European Union or the European Commission, nor will it aim at the creation of any sort of vast supranational bureaucracy," the Chairmen's Statement said.

But this is exactly the kind of statements that were made about the EU during its earlier phases of development. The EU got its start in 1950 with the plan for European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). The plan was developed by Robert Schuman, who would become a socialist prime minister in France, and French planning minister Jean Monnet in 1950. The so-called Schuman Plan was adopted via the Treaty of Paris in 1952. The ECSC merged the coal and steel industries of West Germany, France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg and created a supranational governing organization. According to Georgetown University historian Carol Quigley, "This was a truly revolutionary organization since it had sovereign powers, including the authority to raise funds outside any existing state's power." As Quigley noted, "This 'supranational' body had the right to control prices, channel investment, raise funds, allocate coal and steel during shortages, and fix production in times of surplus." In short, "The ECSC was a rudimentary government," Quigley concluded.

Creating a regional, supranational government was always the aim in Europe. In 1990, the European Commission admitted as much in the publication Europe — A Fresh Start: "Monetary union and economic integration are two long-standing ambitions which the six founding States ... set themselves." The document continued, describing the intent of the EU's founders: "We see, then, that the institutions set up since 1950 on the initiative of Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet are responding well to the aim of their founders: broadening the scope of democratically and efficiently organized collective action to cover the new arenas of interdependence among Europeans." The end result of this gradual planning has been union in Europe.

That union was the goal all along was not readily apparent during the decades of its development. The long-term aim of the ECSC was hidden by its purportedly narrow scope. From its name alone, it appeared that the six-nation arrangement had only to do with coal and steel. Later EU precursors followed the same plan. The European Economic Community, at first glance, appeared to be nothing more than a free trade arrangement. It was nevertheless founded on the Monnet doctrine that economic integration must precede political integration.


Such deception, in fact, remained one of the key elements in crafting the EU, right up until recent years, a fact referenced by Villy Bergström, a recent former deputy of the Swedish central bank. "I have never before seen such manipulated, obscure and faked policies as in relation to Swedish relations to the EU," Bergström wrote a few years ago. "Information has been evasive and unclear, giving the impression that membership of the EU would mean much less radical change than what has been the case."

The strategy of building the EU through piecemeal means paid off. Following the creation of the ECSC, European internationalists supported by the U.S. government added additional elements to the emerging European superstate. Though they suffered setbacks — a nascent European Defense Community was rejected by France, and initial plans for a European Political Community were shelved shortly after the creation of the ECSC — those setbacks were temporary. The Treaty of Rome created the European Economic Community in 1957. The EEC was the immediate predecessor of today's European Union.

An EEC for North America

North American integration got its big start with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The arrangement was billed as little more than the creation of a free trade arrangement between Canada, Mexico, and the United States. But it really was the initial step toward regional integration. According to professor Guy Poitras of San Antonio's Trinity University, one of the factors motivating the creation of NAFTA was the view that it was an important early step toward further integration. In his book Inventing North America, Poitras noted that NAFTA's creation of regionalized interdependence gave "a structural foundation for the task of inventing North America."

In a pro-NAFTA article in the Washington Post in 1993, William Orme, Jr. pointed out that the then-fledgling trade pact was indeed a steppingstone to further integration. "NAFTA," Orme admitted, "lays the foundation for a continental common market, as many of its architects privately acknowledge. Part of this foundation, inevitably, is bureaucratic: The agreement creates a variety of continental institutions — ranging from trade dispute panels to labor and environmental commissions — that are, in aggregate, an embryonic NAFTA government."

That free trade agreements like NAFTA must evolve into political unions is taken for granted among academics that work closely with such issues. In 1998, Glen Atkinson, professor of economics at the University of Nevada in Reno, described this step-by-step process in an article entitled "Regional Integration in the Emerging Global Economy" in the Social Science Journal. Integration "must be an evolutionary process of continuous institutional development," Atkinson wrote. Indeed, the development of supranational governing organs is inevitable, though it will erode national sovereignty, he writes. "The need for shared institutions among the parties is critical for integration, which will lead to a weakening of national sovereignty in some areas of interest. Sovereignty, however, must reside someplace in order to enforce regional working conditions, intellectual and other property rights and other concerns." NAFTA, being a "free trade" arrangement, is only a preliminary step. According to Atkinson:

The lowest level of integration is a free trade area which involves only the removal of tariffs and quotas among the parties. If a common external tariff is added, then a customs union has been created. The next level, or a common market, requires free movement of people and capital as well as goods and services. It is this stage where institutional development becomes critical. The stage of economic union requires a high degree of coordination or even unification of policies. This sets the foundation for political union.

Now, according to those most concerned with creating a North American Union, it's time to move beyond NAFTA. Professor Robert Pastor of American University serves also as vice-chair of the CFR Task Force on North America and is one of the primary intellectual architects of North American regionalism. According to Pastor, even after NAFTA, U.S. policy has been too nationalistic. "Instead of trying to fashion a North American approach to continental problems, we continue to pursue problems on a dual-bilateral basis, taking one issue at a time," Pastor said in testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere on June 9, 2005. "But incremental steps will no longer solve the security problem, or allow us to grasp economic opportunities. What we need to do now is forge a North American Community," Pastor stated.

This, in fact, has been a major goal of the Bush administration and of the Mexican administration of Vicente Fox. In a paper entitled Closing the Development Gap: A Proposal for a North American Investment Fund, Pastor and coauthors Samuel Morley and Sherman Robinson point out that Mexican President Vicente Fox has long advocated a North American common market. "Soon after he won Mexico's presidential election on July 2, 2000, Vicente Fox proposed a Common Market to replace the free-trade area," Pastor, Morley, and Robinson wrote. "He invited President George W. Bush to his home in February 2001 and persuaded him to endorse 'The Guanajuato Proposal.'" President Bush quickly signed on to the plan. In a joint statement with Fox released by the White House on February 16, 2001, Bush described the outcome of the meeting. "After consultation with our Canadian partners, we will strive to consolidate a North American economic community whose benefits reach the lesser-developed areas of the region and extend to the most vulnerable social groups in our countries," said the Bush/Fox statement announcing a new "partnership for prosperity."

A Deepening Union

With the announcement on March 23, 2005 of the Security and Prosperity Partnership, the Bush administration, along with the governments of Mexico and Canada, has taken the next step toward a European Union-style superstate in North America. The SPP features a wide range of initiatives on matters related to security and commerce. These include:



Create a proto-parliament called the North American Competitiveness Council. According to official SPP documents, this body will "address issues of immediate importance" and provide "strategic" advice. It will also "provide input on the compatibility of our security and prosperity agendas."


Under the purported threat of an avian flu pandemic, the parties to the SPP will harmonize plans for continuity of government in the event of a crisis.

Begin harmonizing security organs by creating a "common approach to critical infrastructure protection," and "develop and implement joint plans for cooperation for incident response, as well as conduct coordinated training and exercises in emergency response."

Create a single energy policy for North America by "improving transparency and regulatory compatibility."
The SPP also has tremendous implications for immigration. As NAFTA erased most remaining barriers hampering the flow of capital between Canada, Mexico, and the United States, the SPP will look for ways to eliminate bottlenecks hampering the flow of people. According to the official SPP agenda, the new international body will work to "identify measures to facilitate further the movement of business persons."

Specific policies likely to be followed by the SPP can be found in the CFR report entitled Building a North American Community that was released just after the March 23, 2005 SPP meeting in Waco, Texas. In its recommendations, the CFR report suggests, "The three governments should commit themselves to the long-term goal of dramatically diminishing the need for the current intensity of the governments' physical control of cross-border traffic, travel, and trade within North America. A long-term goal for a North American border action plan should be joint screening of travelers from third countries at their first point of entry into North America and the elimination of most controls over the temporary movement of these travelers within North America." This goes a long way toward explaining the maddening lack of urgency that is apparent in Washington concerning the issue of illegal immigration from Mexico. If the SPP follows the CFR template — a virtual certainty — there will no longer be a border to cross illegally.

Moving Fast

Perhaps the most important difference between the formation of the European Union and the effort to build a North American Union is the speed at which the North American version is moving ahead. In Europe, union took decades, with efforts starting just after World War II and culminating in the 1990s. In North America, issues related to union first began only in 1965. According to economist Glen Atkinson, "NAFTA has evolved over several stages beginning with the Canadian-U.S. automobile pact of 1965 and the Canadian-U.S. Free Trade Agreement of 1989." Now, little more than a decade after NAFTA comes the SPP.

A measure of the rapidity with which this drive for a North American Union can affect the lives of citizens is the planned super highway linking the U.S.'s northern and southern borders. The plan for this highway is breathtaking. It includes plans to start construction in 2007 on the so-called Trans Texas Corridor, to be built in large part by a Spanish construction company.

According to the magazine International Construction Review, the project "would be part of the 'super-highway' spanning the United States from the Mexican border at Laredo, making its way through Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma and connecting with the Canadian highway system north of Duluth, Minnesota. Because it would provide a connection all the way between Canada and Mexico, the project is also described as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) super highway."

A further measure of the speed with which a North American Union is likely to develop is found within the CFR's recommendations for the SPP. That organization, which so often drafts the foreign-policy blueprints followed by the federal government, calls for "the creation by 2010 of a North American community.... Its boundaries will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe. Its goal will be to guarantee a free, secure, just, and prosperous North America."

It is incredible, but just four years from now — if the CFR template is followed — the United States may cease to exist as an independent political entity. Its laws, rules, and regulations — including all freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution — will be subject to review and nullification by the North American Union's governing body. Sure, the United States will still be here in name. American soldiers will still fight, mostly, under the U.S. flag. There will be a U.S. president and both houses of Congress will continue to meet and pass legislation. Nevertheless, in very important ways, the United States will become nothing more than a province — albeit an important one — in the emergent North American superstate.
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9 - 11 Living In the Matrix

by Peter Zaza




"During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act." - George Orwell

Have you seen the movie, "The Matrix"? A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality, and his role in the war against the controllers of it.



What is the true nature of our reality? Of course everyone's definition is going to be different, but reality and facts are not really subjective, only interpretations. Two months ago, my reality was diametrically opposite to what it is now. I believed what I was told, what the media reported, what I thought I saw happening on 9-11. Now, when I express my opinion, I'm ridiculed, scorned, and labeled as a crackpot. My interpretation of the facts may be different from two months ago, but the reality of events on 9-11 have remained exactly the same as on the day they occurred. I was simply too ignorant of the facts to realize that what I was told by those that I trusted, was a complete lie.

We are all together, and all alike. My evolution of thought is much the same as the next person's. When I first heard about the 9-11 truth movement, I shrugged it off and said, "that's crazy, you're paranoid and delusional", or "there are always going to be some crazy conspiracy theories". Thank goodness my friend persisted and weeks later mentioned it again. This time, I opted to honour his integrity and respect his intelligence enough to take some time and do some research.

After five years of believing in something as fact, and having no other information to the contrary - it took me just one hour to see the real truth about this issue. There was an epiphany; a huge light went on inside my head, and suddenly so many things finally made sense about this tragedy. Especially the subsequent events dependent upon it, for 9-11 truly is the lynch-pin for the justification of so many atrocities perpetrated by its architects.

Heuristic logic and basic cognitive reasoning depend on elemental constructs of accepted thought and a fundamental understanding of physical laws, which can't be abrogated by such buffoonery as perpetrated by the US government. The buildings obviously came down because they were deliberately imploded, most notably the third one, which wasn't even hit by a plane. (David Copperfield would pay big bucks for that trick!) Why is it obvious? Let's look at this localized event of a plane crashing into the higher floors of such a tall building. One simply cannot rationalize how each floor underneath suddenly explodes into dust, loses all structural integrity, and allows a point in time/space at the top of the structure to fall down to earth at free-fall speeds, just as if there was only air to impede its descent. All those intervening floors suddenly decide to synchronously disintegrate into a total global collapse, and offer no resistance. Reason alone should dictate that those structures could only come down in this fashion by demolition. There simply is no other way to get a building to collapse like that, other than controlled demolition. Now, this point is really the key, like the first micro-second of the Big Bang Theory, so much is riding on this 9-11 catastrophe: the fake war on terror, the war against Afghanistan, the war in Iraq (Enough with the freedom and democracy already, you guys are killing me).

It makes sense, even to a non-engineer like myself, that if we are to believe the official "fire" theory, we would be forced to imagine that the steel be required to weaken under severe, and very long-lasting exposure to a heat source of incredible magnitude, to effect the entire steel frame, with all its heat dissipating potential over such a voluminous area of metal. That steel would get so extremely hot, that it would bend, buckle and sway in a non-symmetrical fashion. Instead, it broke into distinct sections - along with everything else being pulverized - and fell straight down into its own footprint. Add to this the many documented eye-witness testimonies of massive explosions occurring in the substructures and other floors, which could only account for the rivers and pools of molten metal found weeks after the event. This can be reasoned as follows:

Steel melts at X degrees. Fossil fuel fires, such as kerosene jet-fuel, can only obtain maximum temperatures of far less than X in these conditions over this elapsed time period. The fact of the matter is, stated temperature is far too cool to cause evaporation and melting of steel - unless we are to believe that a one-hundred and ten story building could crash down onto some steel, and heat it up to thousands of degrees only by the dynamic of friction alone. Let's think about this - let's try and drop a few steel beams off a tall building, and see if they turn into a molten state after hitting other steel on the ground. Is that what they'd have us believe? I dare say, next time someone tries to tell you a story about how Osama bin Whatsit and a bunch of nimrods with box cutters are to blame, ask them how we end up with molten steel - Tell me the process. While you're at it, ask how the hell did they get a forty-seven story building to fall down beside the ones that were hit by the airplanes? How did the steel in building Seven become so incredibly weakened, as to cause a total, global, synchronously beautiful, he said he was goona pull it, can't you all see that it was a controlled demolition collapse?

So, along our journey we must proceed.

Simply by using our Einstein-like thought experiments, along with physical evidence and eye-witness testimonies, and sometimes relying on critical thinking alone, we can say with utter certainty that these buildings were imploded. We can't rely on examination of ALL the physical evidence, most of which was whisked away by the authorities too quickly, a fact that tends to incriminate them. They can spend years reconstructing a plane crash to try and figure out forensically what happened, but not the US government on 9-11. No way. Not after the biggest, most diabolical, horrendous event of the new century. Just hours after the attacks we had pictures of the guys who did it, and a myth about a guy in a cave who masterminded this grandiose scheme to outwit the entire defense system of the biggest super-power on earth. No black boxes or video tapes released, gag orders issued, destruction and suppression of evidence, manipulation of media, etc. etc. etc.

Would it not seem reasonable to want to explore all potential eventualities and probable causes before coming to a hasty decision regarding the biggest mass-murder in history? Would one not at least consider a demolition theory, instead of sticking with a "official conspiracy theory" that required physical laws of nature to behave like in some bizzaro world. But no - because as soon as we admit that there were explosives, then we MUST admit that it was an inside job - ergo there must be collusion at the highest levels - case closed.

The entire government theory hinges upon there not being any controlled demolition. Unfortunately, anyone who looks at the evidence in an honest, scientific manner could hardly deny it. But still, they must adhere to this ridiculous explanation, and conveniently, anybody who questions it must be a terrorist, or somebody who supports terrorism, and on and on. Yes, my dear people of the United States and the World, it was definitely done by the very ones who have suppressed all the evidence and insisted on this impossible story. Ergo, there is no real war on terror as such, except for the one that the US government is inflicting upon us all. It's a hoax, a sham, and too many people on this planet are either uninformed, misinformed, or just plain dis-informed. Let's talk about Jaylo's new hair style, or Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction, or any other such inane drivel that those corporate slaves who call themselves journalists serve up on the idiot box every night.

"Our greatest difficulty at the moment is that our media is totally corrupted - starting with the New York Times - the media belongs to our rulers."

"In the old days when something ghastly went wrong you could count on journalists writing something about it....there are no voices expressing disagreement, " Gore Vidal

I'm ashamed that I spent five years not even questioning 9-11 But once apprised of a few facts, and taking into account the totally shameful behaviour of the media, and the egregious actions of the US government to cover-up and obfuscate the truth, I realize I shouldn't be too hard on myself, or others who also must alter their mental paradigms about our world, no matter how comfortably they fit. We all must shudder at the thought that those entrusted to lead and protect us, could be so twisted as to commit such acts. It's time to wake up and do the right thing. All of us. We must get those psychopaths out of office, and don't bother with the other party, that's just part of the scam, in case you haven't figured it out. Take those trillions of dollars spent on killing people, and put it towards solar power, wind power, or any other kind of power that doesn't destroy our once-beautiful planet, or motivate a part of our society to become so dehumanized, that they could commit such heinous acts, all for profit and control.

The US government is leading its nation down a path to ruin. History does not look kindly towards tyrants who spread terror and perpetrate wars like the Bush administration. I was truly disgusted when it was demonstrated to me how the United States government has sanctioned the dumping of depleted uranium in some of the ammunition used on Iraq. Scores of babies born disfigured, both Iraqi and American, are a grim testament to this horrific practice. Bad enough that they kill and maim them, but to add insult to injury, do they really need to torture them, as well as subject future generations to such a ghastly existence? And why? Oh, right. Halliburton up five points.

I just don't understand how any American can feel good about watching football, going bowling, waving their flags, when their government is committing such atrocities in the so-called name of freedom and democracy. I grieve for the families of those victims in New York; the families of those Afghanis who were just innocently trying to struggle through their lives; the allied soldiers dying in Iraq and their families trying to rationalize why; and the countless thousands of Iraqis who are still being killed, dragged out of their homes and called terrorists, while their wives and children are forced to witness such nightmares. If you are truly cognitive of what has happened, and what is still happening, then there's just no way you can sit around the table with your big fat turkeys, raising a glass and singing, "God Bless America". I must agree with Howard Zinn, "Why not, God bless everyone?".

And all of it predicated on the lie of 9-11.

We are inexorably a part of that lie by continuing our denial of its existence, and that makes us all a party to everything that has been happening as a result. It is incumbent upon the "US" and the rest of "us" to prove what really happened that fateful day. Let's go to court. We've got the likes of Griffin, Ryan, Fetzer, Jones, and countless others who have the expertise and moral integrity on our team. We've got science. We've got the truth. What have they got? A bullshit story any eighth grade science student could refute, and a bunch of experts who don't seem to mind going down in the annals of history as being dreadfully incompetent, however loyal, and completely unwilling to even debate their so-called findings, therefore, a bunch of anals.

And so the fascists are now getting the detention centers ready- those are for you "doubting" Americans you know - because the huge stinking pile of horse manure known as 9-11 isn't going to go away, rather it will just keep getting worse. Like a flood that starts from a few small drops, understanding of the truth will continue to grow and gain strength. They can't hide from truth. Truth is not spin, or what they tell their bootlicking media to cover. Truth doesn't care if they think they can keep on repeating the same lies, over and over, until the world has heard them enough times to believe them.

"First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a communist; Then they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a socialist; Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a trade unionist; Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out-- because I was not a Jew; Then they came for me-- and there was no one left to speak out for me." -Pastor Martin Niemöller, 1945

"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident" - Arthur Schopenhauer

Don't be afraid of telling the truth regarding 9-11. Tell everybody you can - shout it out. Let them call you names, let them ridicule. We truly are very much alike, and just as I scorned the first person who told me while I still lived under the yoke of my own ignorance, you will plant the first seeds of doubt and inquiry within others. Over time, this crazy idea will move through its natural evolution into becoming accepted thought.

The operative question being whether we collectively let too much time elapse before those murderous tyrants plunge us further toward apocalyptic extinction.

What are you going to do about 9-11?

"There are none so enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free" - Goethe



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