Source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akm3nYN8aG8
Title: Who Are our Real Enemies: An Iraq War Vet Asks the Question
By: Mike Prysner
I tried hard to be proud of my service but all I can feel is shame.
The racism could no longer mask the reality of the occupation these were people, these were human beings. I have since been plagued by guilt anytime I'd see an elderly man, like the one who couldn't walk we rolled
onto a stretcher, and told the Iraqi police to take him away.
I feel guilt everytime I see a mother with her children like the one who cried hysterically and screamed that we were worst than Saddam, as we forced her from her home.
2010-02-26
Ron Paul Wins CPAC Straw Poll, But Not Everyone Is Impressed
Title: Ron Paul Wins CPAC Straw Poll, But Not Everyone Is Impressed
Source: Personal Liberty Digest
By: News Desk
Date: February 26, 2010 @ 12:01 am
At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has once again called for a return to the gold standard and abolishing the Fed, and his message seems to be resonating with many conservatives. However, Paul’s growing popularity has many GOP insiders worried.
Source: Personal Liberty Digest
By: News Desk
Date: February 26, 2010 @ 12:01 am
At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) conference, Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) has once again called for a return to the gold standard and abolishing the Fed, and his message seems to be resonating with many conservatives. However, Paul’s growing popularity has many GOP insiders worried.
2010-02-25
Israeli Army Open Fire on Gazan Farmers and International Observors
Source: - The European Union Times –
Title: Israeli Army Open Fire on Gazan Farmers and International Observors
By: Europe
Date: 2/10/2010
Israeli Army Open Fire on Gazan Farmers and International Observors
Posted By Europe On 10/02/2010 @ 11:40 pm In Crimes, Jews, Middle East, Suppression | No Comments
Gazan farmers whose land lies in Israeli defined buffer zone accompanied by international observers have been held down in their field by live gunfire. The Israeli army shot live ammunition for a quarter of an hour after finding the unarmed group fertilizing wheat crops. The international observers loudly informed the soldiers they were unarmed civilians, but the bullets only landed closer. Khuza’a is located 7 kilometers southeast of Khan Yunis. It is about a kilometer from the fence that serves as a border between Israel and Gaza.
Title: Israeli Army Open Fire on Gazan Farmers and International Observors
By: Europe
Date: 2/10/2010
Israeli Army Open Fire on Gazan Farmers and International Observors
Posted By Europe On 10/02/2010 @ 11:40 pm In Crimes, Jews, Middle East, Suppression | No Comments
Gazan farmers whose land lies in Israeli defined buffer zone accompanied by international observers have been held down in their field by live gunfire. The Israeli army shot live ammunition for a quarter of an hour after finding the unarmed group fertilizing wheat crops. The international observers loudly informed the soldiers they were unarmed civilians, but the bullets only landed closer. Khuza’a is located 7 kilometers southeast of Khan Yunis. It is about a kilometer from the fence that serves as a border between Israel and Gaza.
2010-02-24
The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America - Part I
Source: provided by Jim Kirwan, Vatic Contributor
Article from AmpedStatus Report
Title: The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America - Part I
By: By David De Graw, AmpedStatus Report
Author
Date: Feb 15, 2010
This is the first part of a six-part report. Part two will be posted on Wednesday. To be notified via email, subscribe to our newsletter here.
Article from AmpedStatus Report
Title: The Economic Elite Vs. The People of the United States of America - Part I
By: By David De Graw, AmpedStatus Report
Author
Date: Feb 15, 2010
This is the first part of a six-part report. Part two will be posted on Wednesday. To be notified via email, subscribe to our newsletter here.
2010-02-23
The Drive to Eliminate Social Security Accelerates
Source: Article contributed by Jim Kirwan, Vatic contributor
Title: The Drive to Eliminate Social Security Accelerates
By: By Shamus Cooke, Information Clearinghouse
Date: February 23, 2010
In Washington each new day brings a fresh call to “reform entitlement programs” — Social Security, Medicare, etc., (in Congress, the word “reform” now means to eliminate, or drastically reduce). Tackling Social Security has been on the to-do list of the corporate elite for years, and they’re not waiting any longer. After years of promoting this cause, conservative think tanks have now garnered solid support from the political establishment as a whole, which includes the Republican and Democratic parties.
Title: The Drive to Eliminate Social Security Accelerates
By: By Shamus Cooke, Information Clearinghouse
Date: February 23, 2010
In Washington each new day brings a fresh call to “reform entitlement programs” — Social Security, Medicare, etc., (in Congress, the word “reform” now means to eliminate, or drastically reduce). Tackling Social Security has been on the to-do list of the corporate elite for years, and they’re not waiting any longer. After years of promoting this cause, conservative think tanks have now garnered solid support from the political establishment as a whole, which includes the Republican and Democratic parties.
2010-02-22
Project 2012 Intro: Predictions Coming True? Nuclear War Begins Soon?
Source: http://pakalert.wordpress.com/2009/01/06/project-2012-intro-predictions-coming-true-nuclear-war-begins-soon/
Title: Project 2012 Intro: Predictions Coming True? Nuclear War Begins Soon?
Date: 2010-01-06
Title: Project 2012 Intro: Predictions Coming True? Nuclear War Begins Soon?
Date: 2010-01-06
There are prophecies and oracles from around the world that all seem to point to December 21, 2012 as New World Age ( World is not going to end but millions of people could die in the process of New Age Transition). The ancient Mayan Calendar, the medieval predictions of Merlin, the Book of Revelation and the Chinese oracle of the I Ching all point to this specific date as the end of civilization. A new technology called “The Web-Bot Project” makes massive scans of the internet as a means of forecasting the future… and has turned up the same dreaded date: 2012. Skeptics point to a long history of “Failed Doomsdays”, but many oracles of doom throughout history have a disturbingly accurate track record.
Terrorism Law, the New McCarthyism
Source: http://www.truthout.org/terrorism-law-new-mccarthyism57092
Title: Terrorism Law, the New McCarthyism
by: Stephen Rohde
The LA Daily Journal
Monday 22 February 2010
Tomorrow, the US Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the first encounter with the free speech and association rights of American citizens in the context of terrorism since the 9/11 attacks, and in the first test of the constitutionality of a provision of the USA Patriot Act.
The "Material Support" law takes a sweeping approach to its ban on aid to terrorist groups, prohibiting the provision of cash, weapons and the like, as well as four more ambiguous categories - "training," "personnel," "expert advice or assistance" and "service." Opponents of the law say that when it comes to providing lawful legal advice or training in nonviolence, the law is nothing more than "guilt by association," reminiscent of the witch hunts of McCarthyism.
Title: Terrorism Law, the New McCarthyism
by: Stephen Rohde
The LA Daily Journal
Monday 22 February 2010
Tomorrow, the US Supreme Court will hear oral argument in the first encounter with the free speech and association rights of American citizens in the context of terrorism since the 9/11 attacks, and in the first test of the constitutionality of a provision of the USA Patriot Act.
The "Material Support" law takes a sweeping approach to its ban on aid to terrorist groups, prohibiting the provision of cash, weapons and the like, as well as four more ambiguous categories - "training," "personnel," "expert advice or assistance" and "service." Opponents of the law say that when it comes to providing lawful legal advice or training in nonviolence, the law is nothing more than "guilt by association," reminiscent of the witch hunts of McCarthyism.
2010-02-20
SIBEL EDMONDS: THE TRAITORS AMONG US
Source: http://larryflynt.com/?p=693
by Brad Friedman
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – March 2010
SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible? “Absolutely, she’s credible,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS’s 60 Minutes when he was asked about her in 2002. “The reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Edmonds’s remarkable allegations of bribery, blackmail, infiltration of the U.S. government and the theft of nuclear secrets by foreign allies and enemies alike rocked the Bush Administration. In fact, Bush and company actually prevented Edmonds from telling the American people what she knew—up until now.
SIBEL EDMONDS: THE TRAITORS AMONG US
SIBEL EDMONDS HAS NAMED NAMES. WHY ISN’T THE MEDIA REPORTING THE STORY?by Brad Friedman
for HUSTLER MAGAZINE – March 2010
SIBEL EDMONDS, a former FBI translator, claims that the following government officials have committed what amount to acts of treason. They are lawmakers Dennis Hastert, Bob Livingston, Dan Burton, Roy Blunt, Stephen Solarz and Tom Lantos, as well as at least three members of George W. Bush’s inner circle: Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz and Marc Grossman. But is Sibel Edmonds credible? “Absolutely, she’s credible,” Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) told CBS’s 60 Minutes when he was asked about her in 2002. “The reason I feel she’s very credible is because people within the FBI have corroborated a lot of her story.” Edmonds’s remarkable allegations of bribery, blackmail, infiltration of the U.S. government and the theft of nuclear secrets by foreign allies and enemies alike rocked the Bush Administration. In fact, Bush and company actually prevented Edmonds from telling the American people what she knew—up until now.
Sex abuse and Pedophilia claims against famed rabbi grip Israel
Source: http://www.reuters.com:80/article/idUSTRE61I3KX20100219
Title: Sex abuse and Pedophilia claims against famed rabbi grip Israel
By: Alastair Macdonald
Israeli police said on Friday they were looking into allegations of sexual abuse against one of the country’s most famous and politically influential rabbis, in a case that has triggered dramatic headlines this week.
Title: Sex abuse and Pedophilia claims against famed rabbi grip Israel
By: Alastair Macdonald
Israeli police said on Friday they were looking into allegations of sexual abuse against one of the country’s most famous and politically influential rabbis, in a case that has triggered dramatic headlines this week.
Two Israeli spies sentenced to death in Lebanon
Source: http://www.eutimes.net/2010/02/two-israeli-spies-sentenced-to-death-in-lebanon/
Title: Two Israeli spies sentenced to death in Lebanon
By: Author
Date: 02/20/2010
Two Israeli spies sentenced to death in Lebanon
Reporters take pictures of electronic instruments Lebanese security forces found with arrested Israeli spies.
A Lebanese court on Thursday sentenced two men to death on charges of espionage and involvement in the killing of senior members of Lebanese and Palestinian resistance groups.
Title: Two Israeli spies sentenced to death in Lebanon
By: Author
Date: 02/20/2010
Two Israeli spies sentenced to death in Lebanon
Reporters take pictures of electronic instruments Lebanese security forces found with arrested Israeli spies.
A Lebanese court on Thursday sentenced two men to death on charges of espionage and involvement in the killing of senior members of Lebanese and Palestinian resistance groups.
Immigrants riot in Milan after Egyptian killed
Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61D0RI20100214
Immigrants riot in Milan after Egyptian killed
MILAN (Reuters) - Dozens of immigrants from North Africa rioted during the night in a multi-ethnic district of Milan, smashing shop windows and overturning cars to protest at the knifing death of an Egyptian, Italian police said on Sunday.
Yet Another Congressman Questions 9/11
Source: http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/02/yet-another-congressman-questions-911.html
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Yet Another Congressman Questions 9/11
Congressman Jason Chafetz just said that we need to be vigilant and continue to investigate 9/11.
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Yet Another Congressman Questions 9/11
Congressman Jason Chafetz just said that we need to be vigilant and continue to investigate 9/11.
A nutjob, right?
Maybe.
But he joins quite a few other Congressmen:
2010-02-19
The Placeman Cometh: New IAEA Chief Stokes Iran War Fever for the Bush-Obama Regime
Source: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1928-the-placeman-cometh-new-iaea-chief-stokes-iran-war-fever-for-the-bush-obama-regime.html
Title: The Placeman Cometh: New IAEA Chief Stokes Iran War Fever for the Bush-Obama Regime
By: Chris Floyd
Date: Friday, 19 February 2010 00:25
In an astounding development, the brand-new director of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- who was narrowly elected to the post a few months ago with the strong, one might say insistent, backing of the United States -- has just issued his very first report on Iran's nuclear program. And guess what the new, American-backed director said? Go on, you'll never guess.
Give up? Well, hold on to your hats -- the American-backed director, Yukiya Amano, has "broken with the more cautious style of his predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei" -- you know, the man who was right about Iraq's lack of a nuclear weapons program -- to suggest (sans proof, of course) that there might be "possible military dimensions" to Iran's nuclear program, which just happens to be the most internationally inspected and regulated nuclear power program in history.
Title: The Placeman Cometh: New IAEA Chief Stokes Iran War Fever for the Bush-Obama Regime
By: Chris Floyd
Date: Friday, 19 February 2010 00:25
In an astounding development, the brand-new director of the International Atomic Energy Agency -- who was narrowly elected to the post a few months ago with the strong, one might say insistent, backing of the United States -- has just issued his very first report on Iran's nuclear program. And guess what the new, American-backed director said? Go on, you'll never guess.
Give up? Well, hold on to your hats -- the American-backed director, Yukiya Amano, has "broken with the more cautious style of his predecessor, Mohamed ElBaradei" -- you know, the man who was right about Iraq's lack of a nuclear weapons program -- to suggest (sans proof, of course) that there might be "possible military dimensions" to Iran's nuclear program, which just happens to be the most internationally inspected and regulated nuclear power program in history.
U.S. sought attack on al-Qaida: White House given plan days before Sept. 11
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4587368/ns/us_news-security
U.S. sought attack on al-Qaida: White House given plan days before Sept. 11
By Jim Miklaszewski and Alex Johnson
U.S. sought attack on al-Qaida: White House given plan days before Sept. 11
By Jim Miklaszewski and Alex Johnson
msnbc.com and NBC News
WASHINGTON, May 16, 2002 - President Bush was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaida two days before Sept. 11 but did not have the chance before the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, U.S. and foreign sources told NBC News.
The document, a formal National Security Presidential Directive, amounted to a “game plan to remove al-Qaida from the face of the earth,” one of the sources told NBC News’ Jim Miklaszewski.
The plan dealt with all aspects of a war against al-Qaida, ranging from diplomatic initiatives to military operations in Afghanistan, the sources said on condition of anonymity.
DOJ Report on Torture Memo: Yoo Said Bush Could Order "Massacre" of Civilians
Source: http://www.truthout.org/doj-report-torture-memos-released-yoo-bybee-offficials-cleared-congress-plans-hearings57039
DOJ Report on Torture Memo: Yoo Said Bush Could Order "Massacre" of Civilians
Friday 19 February 2010
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t
Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo argued that President George W. Bush’s commander-in-chief powers were so sweeping that he could willfully order the massacre of civilians, yet Yoo’s culpability in Bush administration abuses was deemed “poor judgment,” not a violation of “professional standards.”
DOJ Report on Torture Memo: Yoo Said Bush Could Order "Massacre" of Civilians
Friday 19 February 2010
by: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t
Former Justice Department lawyer John Yoo argued that President George W. Bush’s commander-in-chief powers were so sweeping that he could willfully order the massacre of civilians, yet Yoo’s culpability in Bush administration abuses was deemed “poor judgment,” not a violation of “professional standards.”
There's No Such Thing as a Free Market -- Just a Matter of Who Pays for It
Source: http://www.alternet.org/economy/145726/there%27s_no_such_thing_as_a_free_market_--_just_a_matter_of_who_pays_for_it
Raj Patel argues that the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis are the result of our bankrupt political system.
There's No Such Thing as a Free Market -- Just a Matter of Who Pays for It
By Terrence McNally and Raj Patel, AlterNet
Posted on February 19, 2010, Printed on February 22, 2010
Raj Patel opens his new book, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, with Oscar Wilde’s observation that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. Revealing the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger -- as much as $200 -- he asks how we came to have markets in the first place. Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our bankrupt political system. Searching for solutions, Patel goes back to basics in both economics and politics.
Raj Patel argues that the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis are the result of our bankrupt political system.
There's No Such Thing as a Free Market -- Just a Matter of Who Pays for It
By Terrence McNally and Raj Patel, AlterNet
Posted on February 19, 2010, Printed on February 22, 2010
Raj Patel opens his new book, The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, with Oscar Wilde’s observation that “nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Patel shows how our faith in prices as a way of valuing the world is misplaced. Revealing the hidden ecological and social costs of a hamburger -- as much as $200 -- he asks how we came to have markets in the first place. Both the corporate capture of government and our current financial crisis, Patel argues, are a result of our bankrupt political system. Searching for solutions, Patel goes back to basics in both economics and politics.
KERMIT DIES OF SWINE FLU
Source: Intergalactic Times
Title: Kermit Dies of the Swine Flu
By: Mission Control and the AP
Date: 9/12/09
Mission Control and Associated Presses –
Kermit, formerly of the Muppets, was found dead in an industrial area on the west side of New York City earlier this week. Kermit's body was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where doctors determined Pandemic Influenza (H1N1) 09 swine flu to be the cause of death. A hospital spokesman stated that the blood tests were conclusive and that Mount Sinai immediately contacted the World Health Organization to report the outbreak.
Title: Kermit Dies of the Swine Flu
By: Mission Control and the AP
Date: 9/12/09
Mission Control and Associated Presses –
Kermit, formerly of the Muppets, was found dead in an industrial area on the west side of New York City earlier this week. Kermit's body was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital where doctors determined Pandemic Influenza (H1N1) 09 swine flu to be the cause of death. A hospital spokesman stated that the blood tests were conclusive and that Mount Sinai immediately contacted the World Health Organization to report the outbreak.
2010-02-18
Afghan Push - Hype or History in the Making?
Source: http://www.truthout.org/afghan-push-hype-or-history-making57085
Afghan Push - Hype or History in the Making?
Thursday 18 February 2010
by: Jean MacKenzie and Mohammad Ilyas Dayee
Global Post
Few signs on the ground of the "spectacular advances" claimed by the combined U.S. and Afghan forces.
Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan - Six days into the battle for Marjah, the spin doctors in Kabul and Washington may be regretting all the advance hype. With 15,000 combined Afghan, American and British forces arrayed against what was thought to be a handful of insurgents, victory had seemed assured.
But instead of “breaking the back of the Taliban,” Operation Moshtarak is bogged down in a hostile landscape full of mines, snipers and increasingly frustrated residents.
Afghan Push - Hype or History in the Making?
Thursday 18 February 2010
by: Jean MacKenzie and Mohammad Ilyas Dayee
Global Post
Few signs on the ground of the "spectacular advances" claimed by the combined U.S. and Afghan forces.
Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan - Six days into the battle for Marjah, the spin doctors in Kabul and Washington may be regretting all the advance hype. With 15,000 combined Afghan, American and British forces arrayed against what was thought to be a handful of insurgents, victory had seemed assured.
But instead of “breaking the back of the Taliban,” Operation Moshtarak is bogged down in a hostile landscape full of mines, snipers and increasingly frustrated residents.
2010-02-16
America’s Shadowy Base World
Source: http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/02/09/americas-shadowy-base-world/
Title: America’s Shadowy Base World
By: Tom Engelhardt On February 9, 2010 @ 11:00 pm On Anti-War blog
Once is an anomaly; twice is the beginning of a pattern. Right now, we’re seeing the same sequence of events for the second time in less than a decade, and it looks like the signature American way of war in our time is coming into focus.
In 2003, when the Bush administration invaded Iraq, the Pentagon already had on its drawing boards plans for building a series of permanent mega-bases in that country. (They were charmingly called "enduring camps.")
Title: America’s Shadowy Base World
By: Tom Engelhardt On February 9, 2010 @ 11:00 pm On Anti-War blog
Once is an anomaly; twice is the beginning of a pattern. Right now, we’re seeing the same sequence of events for the second time in less than a decade, and it looks like the signature American way of war in our time is coming into focus.
In 2003, when the Bush administration invaded Iraq, the Pentagon already had on its drawing boards plans for building a series of permanent mega-bases in that country. (They were charmingly called "enduring camps.")
Kensington Rune Stone Decoded: Vikings, Templars & Goths in America in 1362?
Source: http://www.barnesreview.org/html/jan2010lead_127.html
Title: Kensington Rune Stone Decoded: Vikings, Templars & Goths in America in 1362?
By: Frank Joseph
Kensington Rune Stone Decoded: Vikings, Templars & Goths in America in 1362?
WHEN A SIMPLE IMMIGRANT FARMER discovered what seemed to be an ancient stone with “Vikingstyle” runes inscribed on it in Minnesota, people said he was crazy or lying. But more than 100 years later, additional discoveries have proved the stele was indeed the real McCoy, although left there by Knights Templar of the Middle Ages rather than Thor-worshipping Norsemen.
BY FRANK JOSEPH
Very few books are truly capable of rewriting history, but The Hooked X: Key to the Secret History of North America, by Scott F. Wolter, is certainly one of them. Although the author of this new Revisionist book, who is well known to longtime readers of TBR, is a professional geologist and not a historian, the discoveries made by Wolter in recent years and described in Hooked X are powerful enough to compel a fundamental rethinking of our view of the American past.
The centerpiece of his revelations is that controversial, even contentious artifact known as the Kensington Rune Stone [see TBR, March/April 2002—Ed.].
For those who are unfamiliar with it, this is a 200-pound greywacke sandstone stele found by Swedish immigrant farmer, Olof Ohman, while clearing his land in the largely rural township of Solem, Douglas County, Minnesota, during September 1898. Lying face down and entwined in the roots of a stunted, 30-year-old aspen, the 30-by-16-by-six-inch slab was covered on its face and one side with some sort of runic writing. Ohman brought it to the nearest town, Kensington, where his find was displayed at the local bank.
A badly flawed copy of the inscription was forwarded to the University of Minnesota, where a translation was attempted by Olaus J. Breda. It would take more than another 100 years for scholars, correcting for the imperfect copy, to properly translate the text. The front face reads, “Eight Gotlanders and 22 Norwegians on (this) reclaiming/acquisition journey far west from Vinland. We had a camp by two (shelters?) one day’s journey north from this stone. We were fishing one day. After we came home we found 10 men red with blood and death. Ave Maria. Save from evil.”
Inscribed on the side of the stone are the words, “There are 10 men by the sea to look after our ships 14 days journey from this island. Year 1362.”
PROFESSIONALS JUMP TO DEBUNK ARTIFACT
Although a professor of Scandinavian languages and literature, Breda’s runic knowledge was limited. He hastily proclaimed Ohman’s discovery a transparent hoax. Breda was supported by Norway’s leading archeologist of the late 19th century, Oluf Rygh, and his colleagues at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois.
Title: Kensington Rune Stone Decoded: Vikings, Templars & Goths in America in 1362?
By: Frank Joseph
Kensington Rune Stone Decoded: Vikings, Templars & Goths in America in 1362?
WHEN A SIMPLE IMMIGRANT FARMER discovered what seemed to be an ancient stone with “Vikingstyle” runes inscribed on it in Minnesota, people said he was crazy or lying. But more than 100 years later, additional discoveries have proved the stele was indeed the real McCoy, although left there by Knights Templar of the Middle Ages rather than Thor-worshipping Norsemen.
BY FRANK JOSEPH
Very few books are truly capable of rewriting history, but The Hooked X: Key to the Secret History of North America, by Scott F. Wolter, is certainly one of them. Although the author of this new Revisionist book, who is well known to longtime readers of TBR, is a professional geologist and not a historian, the discoveries made by Wolter in recent years and described in Hooked X are powerful enough to compel a fundamental rethinking of our view of the American past.
The centerpiece of his revelations is that controversial, even contentious artifact known as the Kensington Rune Stone [see TBR, March/April 2002—Ed.].
For those who are unfamiliar with it, this is a 200-pound greywacke sandstone stele found by Swedish immigrant farmer, Olof Ohman, while clearing his land in the largely rural township of Solem, Douglas County, Minnesota, during September 1898. Lying face down and entwined in the roots of a stunted, 30-year-old aspen, the 30-by-16-by-six-inch slab was covered on its face and one side with some sort of runic writing. Ohman brought it to the nearest town, Kensington, where his find was displayed at the local bank.
A badly flawed copy of the inscription was forwarded to the University of Minnesota, where a translation was attempted by Olaus J. Breda. It would take more than another 100 years for scholars, correcting for the imperfect copy, to properly translate the text. The front face reads, “Eight Gotlanders and 22 Norwegians on (this) reclaiming/acquisition journey far west from Vinland. We had a camp by two (shelters?) one day’s journey north from this stone. We were fishing one day. After we came home we found 10 men red with blood and death. Ave Maria. Save from evil.”
Inscribed on the side of the stone are the words, “There are 10 men by the sea to look after our ships 14 days journey from this island. Year 1362.”
PROFESSIONALS JUMP TO DEBUNK ARTIFACT
Although a professor of Scandinavian languages and literature, Breda’s runic knowledge was limited. He hastily proclaimed Ohman’s discovery a transparent hoax. Breda was supported by Norway’s leading archeologist of the late 19th century, Oluf Rygh, and his colleagues at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Illinois.
2010-02-15
Cheney Admits to War Crimes, Media Yawns, Obama Turns the Other Cheek
Source: http://www.truthout.org/cheney-admits-war-crimes-media-yawns-obama-turns-other-cheek56924
Title: Cheney Admits to War Crimes, Media Yawns, Obama Turns the Other Cheek
By: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
Title: Cheney Admits to War Crimes, Media Yawns, Obama Turns the Other Cheek
By: Jason Leopold, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis
Dick Cheney is a sadist.
On Sunday, in an exclusive interview with Jonathan Karl of ABC News' "This Week," Cheney proclaimed his love of torture, derided the Obama administration for outlawing the practice, and admitted that the Bush White House ordered Justice Department attorneys to fix the law around the administration's policy interests.
"I was a big supporter of waterboarding," Cheney told Karl, as if he were issuing a challenge to officials in the current administration, including President Barack Obama, who said flatly last year that waterboarding is torture, to take action against him. "I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques..."
2010-02-14
HAARP, Haiti, Brzezinski and the NWO
By Jerry Mazza
Online Journal Associate Editor
Jan 22, 2010, 00:30
On October 25, 2005, I wrote an article for Online Journal, headlined Is it the weather or government terror, detailing government manipulation of weather, including earthquakes, for terror and destruction, mentioning that “your local weatherman was surely not up to pointing this out,” and adding “let me help with the forecast, past, present and long-range. Well, déjà vu all over again seems to have struck in Haiti on January 12.
Online Journal Associate Editor
Jan 22, 2010, 00:30
On October 25, 2005, I wrote an article for Online Journal, headlined Is it the weather or government terror, detailing government manipulation of weather, including earthquakes, for terror and destruction, mentioning that “your local weatherman was surely not up to pointing this out,” and adding “let me help with the forecast, past, present and long-range. Well, déjà vu all over again seems to have struck in Haiti on January 12.
AFGHANISTAN: Taliban Regime Pressed bin Laden on anti-U.S. Terror
By Gareth Porter*
WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (IPS) - Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.
WASHINGTON, Feb 11 (IPS) - Evidence now available from various sources, including recently declassified U.S. State Department documents, shows that the Taliban regime led by Mullah Mohammad Omar imposed strict isolation on Osama bin Laden after 1998 to prevent him from carrying out any plots against the United States.
Federal court to hear cell phone tapping case
By Tony Romm - 02/11/10 10:35 AM ET
The Justice Department on Friday will begin making its case for new standards allowing law enforcement to use cell phone location data in criminal investigations.
Its case before the U.S. 3rd Court of Appeals in Philadelphia could provide more clarity to a bevy of murky cell phone location tapping laws, but it is sure to upset those who dread any federal encroachment in the realm of digital communications.
The Justice Department on Friday will begin making its case for new standards allowing law enforcement to use cell phone location data in criminal investigations.
Its case before the U.S. 3rd Court of Appeals in Philadelphia could provide more clarity to a bevy of murky cell phone location tapping laws, but it is sure to upset those who dread any federal encroachment in the realm of digital communications.
2010-02-08
Disinformation Tactics: The Methods Used To Keep You In The Dark
By Giordano Bruno
TV pundits are often trained in what are commonly called “Alinsky Tactics.” Saul Alinsky was a moral relativist, and champion of the lie as a tool for the “greater good;” essentially, a modern day Machiavelli. His “Rules for Radicals” were supposedly meant for grassroots activists who opposed the establishment, and emphasized the use of any means necessary to defeat one’s political opposition. But is it truly possible to defeat an establishment built on lies, by use of even more elaborate lies, and by sacrificing one’s ethics?
Today, Alinsky’s rules are used more often by the establishment than by its opposition. These tactics have been adopted by governments and disinformation specialists across the world, but they are most visible in TV debate. While Alinsky sermonized about the need for confrontation in society, his debate tactics are actually designed to circumvent real and honest confrontation of opposing ideas with slippery tricks and diversions. Alinsky’s tactics, and their modern usage, can be summarized as follows:
TV pundits are often trained in what are commonly called “Alinsky Tactics.” Saul Alinsky was a moral relativist, and champion of the lie as a tool for the “greater good;” essentially, a modern day Machiavelli. His “Rules for Radicals” were supposedly meant for grassroots activists who opposed the establishment, and emphasized the use of any means necessary to defeat one’s political opposition. But is it truly possible to defeat an establishment built on lies, by use of even more elaborate lies, and by sacrificing one’s ethics?
Today, Alinsky’s rules are used more often by the establishment than by its opposition. These tactics have been adopted by governments and disinformation specialists across the world, but they are most visible in TV debate. While Alinsky sermonized about the need for confrontation in society, his debate tactics are actually designed to circumvent real and honest confrontation of opposing ideas with slippery tricks and diversions. Alinsky’s tactics, and their modern usage, can be summarized as follows:
2010-02-04
Shadow Elite: How the World's New Power Brokers Are Upending Our Democracy
By Janine Wedel
The mover and shaker who serves at one and the same time as business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and government adviser glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services. It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible. Even the short-term consultant doing one project at a time cannot afford to owe too much allegiance to the company or government agency. Such individuals are in these organizations (some of the time anyway), but they are seldom of them.
Being in, but not of, an organization enables these players to pursue a “coincidence of interests,” that is, to interweave and perform overlapping roles that serve their own goals or those of their associates. Because these “nonstate” actors working for companies, quasi-governmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) frequently do work that officials once did, they have privileged access to official information—information that they can deploy to their own ends. And they have more opportunities to use this information for purposes that are neither in the public interest nor easily detected, all the while controlling the message to keep their game going.
...
Meanwhile, the official and private organizations in and out of which such movers and shakers glide either just go along to get along or are ill equipped to know what these actors are up to in the various venues in which they operate. In McCaffrey’s case, no institution, from the Pentagon to the defense contractor to NBC, had an incentive to be anything but complicit. Operators like the general have surpassed their hosts, speeding past the reach of effective monitoring by states, boards of directors, and shareholders, not to mention voters. And while the players sometimes cause raised eyebrows, they are highly effective in achieving their goals—and often benefit from wide acceptance. Much more than the influence peddlers of the past, these players forge a new system of power and influence—one that profoundly shapes governing and society.
This new breed of players is the product of an unprecedented confluence of four transformational developments that arose in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the redesign of governing, spawned by the rising tide of government outsourcing and deregulation under a “neoliberal” regime, and the rise of executive power; the end of the Cold War—of relations dominated by two competing alliances—which intensified the first development and created new, sparsely governed, arenas; the advent of evermore complex technologies, especially information and communication technologies; and the embrace of “truthiness,” which allows people to play with how they present themselves to the world, regardless of fact or track record. While it may be jarring to mention such seemingly disparate developments in the same breath—and to name “truthiness” as one of them—the changes unleashed by these developments interact as never before.
The proliferation of roles, and the ability of players to construct coincidences of interest by those who perform them, are the natural outcome of these developments. So, for example, increased authority delegated to private players (facilitated by privatization, the close of the Cold War, and new, complex technologies) has enabled them to become guardians of information once resting in the hands of state and international authorities. While supposedly working on behalf of those authorities, such players (working, say, as consultants for states or as special envoys or intermediaries between them) can guard information and use it for their own purposes, all the while eluding monitoring designed for the past order of states and international bodies.
The mover and shaker who serves at one and the same time as business consultant, think-tanker, TV pundit, and government adviser glides in and around the organizations that enlist his services. It is not just his time that is divided. His loyalties, too, are often flexible. Even the short-term consultant doing one project at a time cannot afford to owe too much allegiance to the company or government agency. Such individuals are in these organizations (some of the time anyway), but they are seldom of them.
Being in, but not of, an organization enables these players to pursue a “coincidence of interests,” that is, to interweave and perform overlapping roles that serve their own goals or those of their associates. Because these “nonstate” actors working for companies, quasi-governmental organizations, and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) frequently do work that officials once did, they have privileged access to official information—information that they can deploy to their own ends. And they have more opportunities to use this information for purposes that are neither in the public interest nor easily detected, all the while controlling the message to keep their game going.
...
Meanwhile, the official and private organizations in and out of which such movers and shakers glide either just go along to get along or are ill equipped to know what these actors are up to in the various venues in which they operate. In McCaffrey’s case, no institution, from the Pentagon to the defense contractor to NBC, had an incentive to be anything but complicit. Operators like the general have surpassed their hosts, speeding past the reach of effective monitoring by states, boards of directors, and shareholders, not to mention voters. And while the players sometimes cause raised eyebrows, they are highly effective in achieving their goals—and often benefit from wide acceptance. Much more than the influence peddlers of the past, these players forge a new system of power and influence—one that profoundly shapes governing and society.
This new breed of players is the product of an unprecedented confluence of four transformational developments that arose in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries: the redesign of governing, spawned by the rising tide of government outsourcing and deregulation under a “neoliberal” regime, and the rise of executive power; the end of the Cold War—of relations dominated by two competing alliances—which intensified the first development and created new, sparsely governed, arenas; the advent of evermore complex technologies, especially information and communication technologies; and the embrace of “truthiness,” which allows people to play with how they present themselves to the world, regardless of fact or track record. While it may be jarring to mention such seemingly disparate developments in the same breath—and to name “truthiness” as one of them—the changes unleashed by these developments interact as never before.
The proliferation of roles, and the ability of players to construct coincidences of interest by those who perform them, are the natural outcome of these developments. So, for example, increased authority delegated to private players (facilitated by privatization, the close of the Cold War, and new, complex technologies) has enabled them to become guardians of information once resting in the hands of state and international authorities. While supposedly working on behalf of those authorities, such players (working, say, as consultants for states or as special envoys or intermediaries between them) can guard information and use it for their own purposes, all the while eluding monitoring designed for the past order of states and international bodies.
Mind Control: America's Secret War (43 min)
History Channel video
This powerful History Channel video documents how for decades, top secret government projects worked virtually non-stop to perfect means of controlling the human mind. Though for many years the government denied that these projects even existed, the details have long been preserved in the thousands of pages of now declassified government documents mentioned above, which were reluctantly released through the Freedom of Information Act. LSD and electroshock therapy in huge doses given to unsuspecting citizens are only a part of this unbelievable program.Mind Control blows the lid off years of chilling experiments, drawing on the declassified documents and interviews with some of the victims and respected experts in the field. Hear from John Marks, the author of In Search of the Manchurian Candidate, who originally broke the story of the CIA's abuses by unraveling the mysteries contained in the declassified documents. Learn how many of the most important records pertaining to the mind control experiments were destroyed by the director of the CIA in an attempt to prevent the details from ever being known.
The projects involved brutal, at times lethal experiments on thousands of unsuspecting citizens in direct defiance of law, all ethical codes, and basic human rights. Interviews with top psychiatrists, lawyers, and victims send chills up the spine. U.S. intelligence agencies spent millions on these mind control projects with a goal of creating programmable human spies.
2010-02-03
Nullification: It’s Official
By Derek Sheriff
While speaking to a large crowd of over a thousand people on the campus of Arizona State University last December, Congressman Ron Paul mentioned one thing that might come about as the result of the federal government habitually ignoring the Constitution: Nullification.
While speaking to a large crowd of over a thousand people on the campus of Arizona State University last December, Congressman Ron Paul mentioned one thing that might come about as the result of the federal government habitually ignoring the Constitution: Nullification.
Attempted Terror Attack Likely, Intelligence Chiefs Warn
By Jason Ryan
An attempted al Qaeda attack against the United States is a high possibility in the next 3 to 6 months, the nations' top intelligence chiefs testified today.
...
CIA director Leon Panetta and FBI director Robert Mueller both told the committee they agreed with Blair's stark assessment, when asked by committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
...
The threat warning comes amid an ongoing debate over how the Obama administration and the Justice Department handled the case of Abdulmutallab, accused of attempting to set off a bomb on Christmas Day on Northwest flight 253, and whether the case should have been handled in the criminal justice system.
Abdulmutallab is still being interrogated by FBI agents and is providing useful information to investigators, even though he was read his Miranda rights the day after the attempted bombing of flight 253, Mueller said.
The issue over providing Abdulmutallab the Miranda rights required in the criminal justice system has become a political issue among some Republican members in Congress, who assert that the Obama administration should have moved the terror suspect into the military tribunal process so he could be interrogated for intelligence.
Justice Department officials have said that Abdulmutallab decided to stop speaking with federal investigators the day after the attempted bombing, even before he was given a Miranda warning by FBI agents.
An attempted al Qaeda attack against the United States is a high possibility in the next 3 to 6 months, the nations' top intelligence chiefs testified today.
...
CIA director Leon Panetta and FBI director Robert Mueller both told the committee they agreed with Blair's stark assessment, when asked by committee chairwoman Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
...
The threat warning comes amid an ongoing debate over how the Obama administration and the Justice Department handled the case of Abdulmutallab, accused of attempting to set off a bomb on Christmas Day on Northwest flight 253, and whether the case should have been handled in the criminal justice system.
Abdulmutallab is still being interrogated by FBI agents and is providing useful information to investigators, even though he was read his Miranda rights the day after the attempted bombing of flight 253, Mueller said.
The issue over providing Abdulmutallab the Miranda rights required in the criminal justice system has become a political issue among some Republican members in Congress, who assert that the Obama administration should have moved the terror suspect into the military tribunal process so he could be interrogated for intelligence.
Justice Department officials have said that Abdulmutallab decided to stop speaking with federal investigators the day after the attempted bombing, even before he was given a Miranda warning by FBI agents.
2010-02-01
'Blocked' jetstream to blame for freak weather in Russia and Pakistan, say scientists
By Niall Firth
Last updated at 11:36 AM on 12th August 2010
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1302225/Blocked-jetstream-blame-freak-weather-Russia-Pakistan.html
A massive heatwave in Russia and the current devastating floods in Pakistan could be linked by the unusual behaviour of the jetstream, scientists believe.
The jetstream is the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain.
But meteorologists who study the phenomenon say that it is producing unusual holding patterns which keep weather systems in one place and produce freak conditions.
Last updated at 11:36 AM on 12th August 2010
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1302225/Blocked-jetstream-blame-freak-weather-Russia-Pakistan.html
A massive heatwave in Russia and the current devastating floods in Pakistan could be linked by the unusual behaviour of the jetstream, scientists believe.
The jetstream is the high-altitude wind that circles the globe from west to east and normally pushes a series of wet but mild Atlantic lows across Britain.
But meteorologists who study the phenomenon say that it is producing unusual holding patterns which keep weather systems in one place and produce freak conditions.
Depopulation by Government Edict (2)
By Deanna Spingola
Population control serves the U.S. strategic, economic, and military interests at the expense of the developing Third World or Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs). The plan claims that their population growth is detrimental and a grave threat to U.S. national security in four ways: (1) large nations may gain political power (2) The U.S. and its allies need the strategic materials from those countries. (3) A high birth rate means more young people who are more likely than older people to challenge global power structures (4) Population growth in relatively disadvantaged countries jeopardizes U.S. investments.[27]
NSSM 200 has special implications for thirteen countries – India, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia. NSSM 200 listed Brazil which, at that time, had a population of over 100 million which dominated the continent demographically. By 2000, the population projections totaled about 212 million people.[28] That kind of population growth was unacceptable to the elite.
...
Nixon and Kissinger, along with John Negroponte, a Kissinger aide and the officer in charge of Vietnam on the National Security Council, arranged a chaos-creating government coup in Cambodia in March 1970. Negroponte would later act as Ambassador to Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and as director of national intelligence from 2005 to 2007. On March 26, 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported, “While ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85, Negroponte directed the secret arming of Nicaragua’s Contra rebels and is accused by human rights groups of overlooking—if not overseeing—a CIA-backed Honduran death squad during his tenure.” The CIA had unlimited funds to assist the government in its depopulation efforts. In concert with Oliver North, “He also helped orchestrate a secret deal, later known as Iran-Contra, to send arms through Honduras to help the Contras overthrow the Sandinista government.”[29] Negroponte had charge of the US Embassy in Honduras when hundreds of Hondurans labeled as “subversives” were seized, raped, tortured and slaughtered by Battalion 316, a Honduran intelligence unit trained, funded and supported by the Pentagon and the CIA. Battalion 316 also participated in the CIA’s covert operations in Nicaragua. [30] Negroponte was Deputy Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice.
On October 2, 1979, Robert S. McNamara, president of the World Bank and former secretary of defense during the Vietnam War, in speaking to a group of international bankers said, “We can begin with the most critical problem of all, population growth,” concluding that, “Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly, or the death rates must go up...There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, we can accomplish it very quickly and decisively.” It is a surprising statement in view of the crypto-eugenic position taken by the American Eugenics Society, a stand which McNamara, evidently a dedicated eugenicist, would have certainly been aware of. It can only be assumed that he did not agree with the society’s stand, and was arrogant enough to ignore it.” [31] McNamara and Maurice Strong, a Rockefeller operative and ecological agitator, organized the UN Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972.[32] The New York Times claimed that Strong was the “Custodian of the Planet.” Strong is indebted to George H. W. Bush who maneuvered Strong into the position of Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit, convened in Rio de Janeiro, which elevated global economic and environmental regulations.[33] Strong thinks that people should be required to have a license in order to have a baby.
The Population Plan was initially implemented by Brent Scowcroft, a long-time Kissinger colleague and Vice-Chairman of Kissinger Associates and National Security Advisor under Ford from 1974–1977 and George H. W. Bush from 1989–1993. CIA Director George H. W. Bush (November 1975 to January 1977) assisted Scowcroft who co-authored A World Transformed with George H. W. Bush. In addition to the National Security Advisor, the Secretaries of the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, and Agriculture are responsible for executing the population plan. Each administration uses those agencies and determines its own strategy for depopulating the planet. Scowcroft was President George W. Bush’s Chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2005 and also assisted President Barrack Obama in selecting his national security team. Scowcroft apparently facilitated Obama’s efforts to continue Bush’s warfare depopulating strategy in the Middle East.
...
The Reagan Administration accommodated Monsanto and other private companies who manufactured questionably safe food products designed for worldwide trade. Genetically modified (GMO) products, with little or no testing, were introduced in the U.S. market. Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, former CIA Director, was the chief proponent within the Reagan Administration for this innovative field of genetically modified products.[35] U.S. citizens were intentionally vulnerable, as GMO labeling had been forbidden by the FDA.[36] Monsanto’s expensive, elite Terminator seeds, fertile only for one planting, “in the hands of one or more governments intent on using food as a weapon, Terminator was a tool of biological warfare almost ‘too good to believe.’” [37] Given that so many third world countries are managed according to Anglo-American eugenics interests, Terminator seeds provide ample opportunity for tyrants to stage famines.
During the 1960s and 1970s the indigenous non-white population of the U.S., through the Indian Health Service of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, operated an methodical lost generation program against Native American women of childbearing age wherein they sterilized about forty-two percent of those living on reservations without informing them. This was accomplished in conjunction with other medical procedures. Allegedly, this program was terminated in 1976 after allegations were made and confirmed. No officials lost their jobs or suffered judicial consequences as a result of implementing of participating in this program. They were, after all, simply following government procedures as it pertained to domestic non-white populations.[38]
More recently, in the 1990s, the World Health Organization dispensed tetanus shots among women between the ages of fifteen and forty-five in Nicaragua, Mexico, the Philippines and some African countries. Unknown to the women, the tetanus shots were laced with Chorionic Gonadotrophin or (hCG), a natural hormone, which, when combined with tetanus toxoid, prevents a women from sustaining a pregnancy. This program, to impose a state of permanent sterilization, was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and began in 1972.
...
In 1998, in South Africa at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission the following testimony was given, “The United States encouraged South Africa’s apartheid regime to develop a Chemical Biological Weapons program that was aimed at the country’s black population. Dr. Wouter Basson, the South African general who headed the project from its inception in 1981, testified from notes he made of a meeting with US Major General William Augerson. He (Augerson) feels that chemical warfare is an ideal strategic weapon because infrastructure is preserved together with facilities and only living people are killed. The warm climate of Africa is ideal for this type of weapon because the diffusion of the poison is better and the absorption is increased by perspiration and increased blood flow in the persons who are targets.” [43]
Genocidal war is about body counts – un-armed men, women and children are all total war targets to fulfill the objective of world population reduction. However, war destroys a lot of infrastructure. Accordingly, other methods were developed that are equally effective and might even increase profits in other service industries, also affiliated with the elite who consistently view other humans as sources of profit or commodities, even in death. Genocide, under other pretenses, is regularly practiced to limit “excesses” in order to preserve the earth and its resources for the “fittest.” Elite-controlled governments are indifferent to the slaughter, starvation, slave labor, and suffering of others, as evidenced by a callous response from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when questioned about the 500,000 children who died in Iraq as a result of the U.S.-imposed sanctions. She said, “It was worth it.” [44]
27, National Security Study Memorandum NSSM 200, Implications of Worldwide Population Growth, For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM 200) – December 10, 1974, pp. 57-58
28, National Security Study Memorandum, NSSM 200, Implications of Worldwide Population Growth, For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, (The Kissinger Report), December 10, 1974, p. 31
29, Bush UN Choice Faces a Fight By Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster, Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2001
30, John Negroponte & The Death-Squad Connection, Bush Nominates Terrorist for National Intelligence Director by Frank Morales, World War 4 Report
31, Bush, Eugenics and Population Control by Alf Mendes
32, Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl, Global Research, Montreal, Canada, 2007, p. 127
33, Who is Maurice Strong? by Ronald Bailey, National Review, Sept 1, 1997
34, Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl, Global Research, Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2007, p. 43
35, Ibid, p. 4
36, Ibid, p. 13
37, Ibid, p. 261
38, A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present by Ward Churchill, City Lights Books, San Francisco, p. 249
39, The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance edited by M. Annette Jaimes, South End Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1992, p. 7 Jaimes Notes: Jacobs, Wilbur R., "British Indian Policies to 1783," in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 4: History of Indian-White Relations, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 10). As regards inculcation of smallpox among the Mandans in 1837, see Connell, Evan S., Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1984, pp. 15-6.
40, Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage by Brian W. Dippie, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1990, p. 331
41, Death Stalks the Yakama: Epidemiological Transitions and Mortality on the Yakama Indian Reservation, 1888-1964 by Clifford E. Trafzer, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, Michigan, 1997, p. 151
42, Rotting face : smallpox and the American Indian by R. G. Robertson, Caxton Press, 2001, Introduction, pp. 107-113
43, Rogue State, a Guide to the World's Only Superpower by William Blum, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2005, pp. 120-121
44, "We Think the Price Is Worth It" By Rahul Mahajan
Population control serves the U.S. strategic, economic, and military interests at the expense of the developing Third World or Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs). The plan claims that their population growth is detrimental and a grave threat to U.S. national security in four ways: (1) large nations may gain political power (2) The U.S. and its allies need the strategic materials from those countries. (3) A high birth rate means more young people who are more likely than older people to challenge global power structures (4) Population growth in relatively disadvantaged countries jeopardizes U.S. investments.[27]
NSSM 200 has special implications for thirteen countries – India, Brazil, Egypt, Nigeria, Indonesia, the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Mexico, Thailand, Turkey, Ethiopia and Colombia. NSSM 200 listed Brazil which, at that time, had a population of over 100 million which dominated the continent demographically. By 2000, the population projections totaled about 212 million people.[28] That kind of population growth was unacceptable to the elite.
...
Nixon and Kissinger, along with John Negroponte, a Kissinger aide and the officer in charge of Vietnam on the National Security Council, arranged a chaos-creating government coup in Cambodia in March 1970. Negroponte would later act as Ambassador to Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and as director of national intelligence from 2005 to 2007. On March 26, 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported, “While ambassador to Honduras from 1981-85, Negroponte directed the secret arming of Nicaragua’s Contra rebels and is accused by human rights groups of overlooking—if not overseeing—a CIA-backed Honduran death squad during his tenure.” The CIA had unlimited funds to assist the government in its depopulation efforts. In concert with Oliver North, “He also helped orchestrate a secret deal, later known as Iran-Contra, to send arms through Honduras to help the Contras overthrow the Sandinista government.”[29] Negroponte had charge of the US Embassy in Honduras when hundreds of Hondurans labeled as “subversives” were seized, raped, tortured and slaughtered by Battalion 316, a Honduran intelligence unit trained, funded and supported by the Pentagon and the CIA. Battalion 316 also participated in the CIA’s covert operations in Nicaragua. [30] Negroponte was Deputy Secretary of State under Condoleezza Rice.
On October 2, 1979, Robert S. McNamara, president of the World Bank and former secretary of defense during the Vietnam War, in speaking to a group of international bankers said, “We can begin with the most critical problem of all, population growth,” concluding that, “Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly, or the death rates must go up...There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, we can accomplish it very quickly and decisively.” It is a surprising statement in view of the crypto-eugenic position taken by the American Eugenics Society, a stand which McNamara, evidently a dedicated eugenicist, would have certainly been aware of. It can only be assumed that he did not agree with the society’s stand, and was arrogant enough to ignore it.” [31] McNamara and Maurice Strong, a Rockefeller operative and ecological agitator, organized the UN Earth Summit in Stockholm in 1972.[32] The New York Times claimed that Strong was the “Custodian of the Planet.” Strong is indebted to George H. W. Bush who maneuvered Strong into the position of Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit, convened in Rio de Janeiro, which elevated global economic and environmental regulations.[33] Strong thinks that people should be required to have a license in order to have a baby.
The Population Plan was initially implemented by Brent Scowcroft, a long-time Kissinger colleague and Vice-Chairman of Kissinger Associates and National Security Advisor under Ford from 1974–1977 and George H. W. Bush from 1989–1993. CIA Director George H. W. Bush (November 1975 to January 1977) assisted Scowcroft who co-authored A World Transformed with George H. W. Bush. In addition to the National Security Advisor, the Secretaries of the Departments of State, Treasury, Defense, and Agriculture are responsible for executing the population plan. Each administration uses those agencies and determines its own strategy for depopulating the planet. Scowcroft was President George W. Bush’s Chairman of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2005 and also assisted President Barrack Obama in selecting his national security team. Scowcroft apparently facilitated Obama’s efforts to continue Bush’s warfare depopulating strategy in the Middle East.
...
The Reagan Administration accommodated Monsanto and other private companies who manufactured questionably safe food products designed for worldwide trade. Genetically modified (GMO) products, with little or no testing, were introduced in the U.S. market. Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush, former CIA Director, was the chief proponent within the Reagan Administration for this innovative field of genetically modified products.[35] U.S. citizens were intentionally vulnerable, as GMO labeling had been forbidden by the FDA.[36] Monsanto’s expensive, elite Terminator seeds, fertile only for one planting, “in the hands of one or more governments intent on using food as a weapon, Terminator was a tool of biological warfare almost ‘too good to believe.’” [37] Given that so many third world countries are managed according to Anglo-American eugenics interests, Terminator seeds provide ample opportunity for tyrants to stage famines.
During the 1960s and 1970s the indigenous non-white population of the U.S., through the Indian Health Service of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, operated an methodical lost generation program against Native American women of childbearing age wherein they sterilized about forty-two percent of those living on reservations without informing them. This was accomplished in conjunction with other medical procedures. Allegedly, this program was terminated in 1976 after allegations were made and confirmed. No officials lost their jobs or suffered judicial consequences as a result of implementing of participating in this program. They were, after all, simply following government procedures as it pertained to domestic non-white populations.[38]
More recently, in the 1990s, the World Health Organization dispensed tetanus shots among women between the ages of fifteen and forty-five in Nicaragua, Mexico, the Philippines and some African countries. Unknown to the women, the tetanus shots were laced with Chorionic Gonadotrophin or (hCG), a natural hormone, which, when combined with tetanus toxoid, prevents a women from sustaining a pregnancy. This program, to impose a state of permanent sterilization, was financed by the Rockefeller Foundation and began in 1972.
...
In 1998, in South Africa at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission the following testimony was given, “The United States encouraged South Africa’s apartheid regime to develop a Chemical Biological Weapons program that was aimed at the country’s black population. Dr. Wouter Basson, the South African general who headed the project from its inception in 1981, testified from notes he made of a meeting with US Major General William Augerson. He (Augerson) feels that chemical warfare is an ideal strategic weapon because infrastructure is preserved together with facilities and only living people are killed. The warm climate of Africa is ideal for this type of weapon because the diffusion of the poison is better and the absorption is increased by perspiration and increased blood flow in the persons who are targets.” [43]
Genocidal war is about body counts – un-armed men, women and children are all total war targets to fulfill the objective of world population reduction. However, war destroys a lot of infrastructure. Accordingly, other methods were developed that are equally effective and might even increase profits in other service industries, also affiliated with the elite who consistently view other humans as sources of profit or commodities, even in death. Genocide, under other pretenses, is regularly practiced to limit “excesses” in order to preserve the earth and its resources for the “fittest.” Elite-controlled governments are indifferent to the slaughter, starvation, slave labor, and suffering of others, as evidenced by a callous response from former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright when questioned about the 500,000 children who died in Iraq as a result of the U.S.-imposed sanctions. She said, “It was worth it.” [44]
27, National Security Study Memorandum NSSM 200, Implications of Worldwide Population Growth, For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests (NSSM 200) – December 10, 1974, pp. 57-58
28, National Security Study Memorandum, NSSM 200, Implications of Worldwide Population Growth, For U.S. Security and Overseas Interests, (The Kissinger Report), December 10, 1974, p. 31
29, Bush UN Choice Faces a Fight By Maggie Farley and Norman Kempster, Los Angeles Times, March 26, 2001
30, John Negroponte & The Death-Squad Connection, Bush Nominates Terrorist for National Intelligence Director by Frank Morales, World War 4 Report
31, Bush, Eugenics and Population Control by Alf Mendes
32, Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl, Global Research, Montreal, Canada, 2007, p. 127
33, Who is Maurice Strong? by Ronald Bailey, National Review, Sept 1, 1997
34, Seeds of Destruction, the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation by F. William Engdahl, Global Research, Centre for Research on Globalization, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 2007, p. 43
35, Ibid, p. 4
36, Ibid, p. 13
37, Ibid, p. 261
38, A Little Matter of Genocide, Holocaust and Denial in the Americas 1492 to the Present by Ward Churchill, City Lights Books, San Francisco, p. 249
39, The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance edited by M. Annette Jaimes, South End Press, Boston, Massachusetts, 1992, p. 7 Jaimes Notes: Jacobs, Wilbur R., "British Indian Policies to 1783," in Handbook of North American Indians, Vol. 4: History of Indian-White Relations, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., 1988, p. 10). As regards inculcation of smallpox among the Mandans in 1837, see Connell, Evan S., Son of the Morning Star: Custer and the Little Big Horn, North Point Press, San Francisco, 1984, pp. 15-6.
40, Catlin and His Contemporaries: The Politics of Patronage by Brian W. Dippie, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, 1990, p. 331
41, Death Stalks the Yakama: Epidemiological Transitions and Mortality on the Yakama Indian Reservation, 1888-1964 by Clifford E. Trafzer, Michigan State University Press, East Lansing, Michigan, 1997, p. 151
42, Rotting face : smallpox and the American Indian by R. G. Robertson, Caxton Press, 2001, Introduction, pp. 107-113
43, Rogue State, a Guide to the World's Only Superpower by William Blum, Common Courage Press, Monroe, Maine, 2005, pp. 120-121
44, "We Think the Price Is Worth It" By Rahul Mahajan
Depopulation by Government Edict
By Deanna Spingola
[T]he concept of ‘eugenics’ ... encourages the reproductive efforts of those deemed to have ‘good’ genes, while discouraging or stopping procreation by undesirables.
...
George H. W. Bush of Texas, who served in Congress from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1971, originated a legislative investigation of world overpopulation.[18] Dr. D. M. MacArthur, Deputy Director of Research & Technology for the Pentagon, Department of Defense, requested $10 million from the Congressional House Subcommittee on Appropriations to develop a biological weapon through House Bill 15090. On June 9, 1969, the House Republican research task committee, chaired by George H. W. Bush, heard testimony from General William H. Draper, of the Population Crisis Committee and Dr. William Moran of the Population Reference Bureau. Draper reported that there were three issues relevant to population control – the census of 1970 in the U.S. and of 1971 in Britain should be worldwide and not limited to two countries, accelerating contraception, and the World Health Organization should implement their international programs such as inoculations, etc.[19] Leading World Health Organization scientists, as noted in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, had requested that viruses be created in order to study their affects on humans.
The Department of Defense, now funded with $10 million, intended to conduct studies on immune-system-destroying agents for biological warfare. In 1983 Dr. Robert Strecker, an internist and gastro-enterologist who is also a trained pathologist with a Ph.D. in pharmacology, produced The Strecker Memorandum wherein he claims that the AIDS virus is man-made. Working in conjunction with his brother, attorney Ted Strecker, they discovered thousands of documents verifying the man-made origin of AIDS. Strecker maintains that it was virologically impossible for HIV to have emanated from monkeys; the disease was unknown in Africa before 1975. Strecker claims that the World Health Organization (WHO), funded by the Department of Defense, initiated testing on a lymphotrophic virus, a bovine virus that could also infect humans. In 1977, the WHO instigated a massive campaign in Africa to eradicate smallpox among the urban population. Over 100 million Africans were deliberately inoculated with AIDS-contaminated smallpox vaccine. In 1978, over 2,000 white male homosexuals were inoculated against hepatitis B by the Centers for Disease Control and the New York Blood Center, also with AIDS-contaminated vaccine.[20] Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) funded the hepatitis B vaccine research that Dr. Strecker claimed spread HIV to homosexuals in the U.S.[21] These kinds of weapons were apparently a viable concern immediately after 9/11 as John Bolton gave an address at the Biological Weapons Convention on November 19, 2001 in Geneva, Switzerland, stating our concerns about “terrorists” using biological and chemical weapons.[22] We have trained many foreigners in the use of biological and chemical weapons at Fort McClellan, Alabama.
Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize after he directed the dispersion of tons of Monsanto’s toxic Agent Orange in Vietnam. This chemical, containing dioxin, continues to negatively affect Vietnamese citizens and former U.S. military personnel and their children with horrendous birth defects and neurological disorders. Conversely, Ali Hassan al-Majid, who dispersed chemicals in Halabja, was recently executed for the same activities. Kissinger orchestrated the precedent-setting secret bombing of neutral Cambodia over a four-year period, allegedly to protect Americans in Vietnam.
18, Emerging Viruses, Aids & Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional? By Leonard G. Horowitz, Tetrahedron Publishing, Inc., Rockport, Massachusetts, 1996, p. 521
19, Ibid, pp. 156, 159
20, Ibid, pp. 3-5
21, Ibid, p. 12
22, Biological Weapons Convention
[T]he concept of ‘eugenics’ ... encourages the reproductive efforts of those deemed to have ‘good’ genes, while discouraging or stopping procreation by undesirables.
...
George H. W. Bush of Texas, who served in Congress from January 3, 1967 to January 3, 1971, originated a legislative investigation of world overpopulation.[18] Dr. D. M. MacArthur, Deputy Director of Research & Technology for the Pentagon, Department of Defense, requested $10 million from the Congressional House Subcommittee on Appropriations to develop a biological weapon through House Bill 15090. On June 9, 1969, the House Republican research task committee, chaired by George H. W. Bush, heard testimony from General William H. Draper, of the Population Crisis Committee and Dr. William Moran of the Population Reference Bureau. Draper reported that there were three issues relevant to population control – the census of 1970 in the U.S. and of 1971 in Britain should be worldwide and not limited to two countries, accelerating contraception, and the World Health Organization should implement their international programs such as inoculations, etc.[19] Leading World Health Organization scientists, as noted in the Bulletin of the World Health Organization, had requested that viruses be created in order to study their affects on humans.
The Department of Defense, now funded with $10 million, intended to conduct studies on immune-system-destroying agents for biological warfare. In 1983 Dr. Robert Strecker, an internist and gastro-enterologist who is also a trained pathologist with a Ph.D. in pharmacology, produced The Strecker Memorandum wherein he claims that the AIDS virus is man-made. Working in conjunction with his brother, attorney Ted Strecker, they discovered thousands of documents verifying the man-made origin of AIDS. Strecker maintains that it was virologically impossible for HIV to have emanated from monkeys; the disease was unknown in Africa before 1975. Strecker claims that the World Health Organization (WHO), funded by the Department of Defense, initiated testing on a lymphotrophic virus, a bovine virus that could also infect humans. In 1977, the WHO instigated a massive campaign in Africa to eradicate smallpox among the urban population. Over 100 million Africans were deliberately inoculated with AIDS-contaminated smallpox vaccine. In 1978, over 2,000 white male homosexuals were inoculated against hepatitis B by the Centers for Disease Control and the New York Blood Center, also with AIDS-contaminated vaccine.[20] Merck, Sharp and Dohme (MSD) funded the hepatitis B vaccine research that Dr. Strecker claimed spread HIV to homosexuals in the U.S.[21] These kinds of weapons were apparently a viable concern immediately after 9/11 as John Bolton gave an address at the Biological Weapons Convention on November 19, 2001 in Geneva, Switzerland, stating our concerns about “terrorists” using biological and chemical weapons.[22] We have trained many foreigners in the use of biological and chemical weapons at Fort McClellan, Alabama.
Kissinger received the Nobel Peace Prize after he directed the dispersion of tons of Monsanto’s toxic Agent Orange in Vietnam. This chemical, containing dioxin, continues to negatively affect Vietnamese citizens and former U.S. military personnel and their children with horrendous birth defects and neurological disorders. Conversely, Ali Hassan al-Majid, who dispersed chemicals in Halabja, was recently executed for the same activities. Kissinger orchestrated the precedent-setting secret bombing of neutral Cambodia over a four-year period, allegedly to protect Americans in Vietnam.
18, Emerging Viruses, Aids & Ebola, Nature, Accident or Intentional? By Leonard G. Horowitz, Tetrahedron Publishing, Inc., Rockport, Massachusetts, 1996, p. 521
19, Ibid, pp. 156, 159
20, Ibid, pp. 3-5
21, Ibid, p. 12
22, Biological Weapons Convention
2010-01-21
Information Operations Roadmap
By Adam Brookes
The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.
All these are engaged in information operations.
...
Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.
"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.
The operations described in the document include a surprising range of military activities: public affairs officers who brief journalists, psychological operations troops who try to manipulate the thoughts and beliefs of an enemy, computer network attack specialists who seek to destroy enemy networks.
All these are engaged in information operations.
...
Perhaps the most startling aspect of the roadmap is its acknowledgement that information put out as part of the military's psychological operations, or Psyops, is finding its way onto the computer and television screens of ordinary Americans.
"Information intended for foreign audiences, including public diplomacy and Psyops, is increasingly consumed by our domestic audience," it reads.
"Psyops messages will often be replayed by the news media for much larger audiences, including the American public," it goes on.
The document's authors acknowledge that American news media should not unwittingly broadcast military propaganda. "Specific boundaries should be established," they write. But they don't seem to explain how.
2010-01-20
Obama confidant's spine-chilling proposal
By Glenn Greenwald
Cass Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs." In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites - as well as other activist groups - which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.
Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role." Sunstein's 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story's Daniel Tencer.
There's no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein's position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked. Regardless, Sunstein's closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote. This isn't an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein's close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class. All of that makes Sunstein's paper worth examining in greater detail.
...
Sunstein's response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself. He acknowledges that some "conspiracy theories" previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true... Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government "conspiracy theories," discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements? Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good
i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama:
But it's precisely because the Government is so often not "well-motivated" that such powers are so dangerous. Advocating them on the ground that "we will use them well" is every authoritarian's claim. More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture: when our side does X, X is Good, because we're Good and are working for Good outcomes. That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing.
...
Sunstein himself - as part of his 2008 paper - explicitly advocates that the Government should pay what he calls "credible independent experts" to advocate on the Government's behalf, a policy he says would be more effective because people don't trust the Government itself and would only listen to people they believe are "independent."
...
What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein's worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that "false conspiracy theories" are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world. That, he claims, is where these conspiracy theories thrive most vibrantly, and he focuses on various 9/11 theories - both domestically and in Muslim countries - as his prime example.
It's certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive "false conspiracy theories" have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, "crazy conspiracy theorist" has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption.
Who is it who relentlessly spread "false conspiracy theories" of Saddam-engineered anthrax attacks and Iraq-created mushroom clouds and a Ba'athist/Al-Qaeda alliance
the most destructive conspiracy theories of the last generation? And who is it who demonized as "conspiracy-mongers" people who warned that the U.S. Government was illegally spying on its citizens, systematically torturing people, attempting to establish permanent bases in the Middle East, or engineering massive bailout plans to transfer extreme wealth to the industries which own the Government? The most chronic and dangerous purveyors of "conspiracy theory" games are the very people Sunstein thinks should be empowered to control our political debates through deceit and government resources: namely, the Government itself and the Enlightened Elite like him.
It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein's desire to use covert propaganda to "undermine" anti-government speech so repugnant. The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned - rationally - to distrust government actions and statements. Sunstein's proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is. In other words, people don't trust the Government and "conspiracy theories" are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.
...
Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups," as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:
So Sunstein isn't calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) - having Government "ban conspiracy theorizing" or "impose some kind of tax on those who" do it - but he says "each will have a place under imaginable conditions." I'd love to know the "conditions" under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will "have a place." That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment. Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position.
Cass Sunstein is currently Obama's head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs where, among other things, he is responsible for "overseeing policies relating to privacy, information quality, and statistical programs." In 2008, while at Harvard Law School, Sunstein co-wrote a truly pernicious paper proposing that the U.S. Government employ teams of covert agents and pseudo-"independent" advocates to "cognitively infiltrate" online groups and websites - as well as other activist groups - which advocate views that Sunstein deems "false conspiracy theories" about the Government. This would be designed to increase citizens' faith in government officials and undermine the credibility of conspiracists. The paper's abstract can be read, and the full paper downloaded, here.
Sunstein advocates that the Government's stealth infiltration should be accomplished by sending covert agents into "chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups." He also proposes that the Government make secret payments to so-called "independent" credible voices to bolster the Government's messaging (on the ground that those who don't believe government sources will be more inclined to listen to those who appear independent while secretly acting on behalf of the Government). This program would target those advocating false "conspiracy theories," which they define to mean: "an attempt to explain an event or practice by reference to the machinations of powerful people, who have also managed to conceal their role." Sunstein's 2008 paper was flagged by this blogger, and then amplified in an excellent report by Raw Story's Daniel Tencer.
There's no evidence that the Obama administration has actually implemented a program exactly of the type advocated by Sunstein, though in light of this paper and the fact that Sunstein's position would include exactly such policies, that question certainly ought to be asked. Regardless, Sunstein's closeness to the President, as well as the highly influential position he occupies, merits an examination of the mentality behind what he wrote. This isn't an instance where some government official wrote a bizarre paper in college 30 years ago about matters unrelated to his official powers; this was written 18 months ago, at a time when the ascendancy of Sunstein's close friend to the Presidency looked likely, in exactly the area he now oversees. Additionally, the government-controlled messaging that Sunstein desires has been a prominent feature of U.S. Government actions over the last decade, including in some recently revealed practices of the current administration, and the mindset in which it is grounded explains a great deal about our political class. All of that makes Sunstein's paper worth examining in greater detail.
...
Sunstein's response to these criticisms is easy to find in what he writes, and is as telling as the proposal itself. He acknowledges that some "conspiracy theories" previously dismissed as insane and fringe have turned out to be entirely true... Given that history, how could it possibly be justified for the U.S. Government to institute covert programs designed to undermine anti-government "conspiracy theories," discredit government critics, and increase faith and trust in government pronouncements? Because, says Sunstein, such powers are warranted only when wielded by truly well-intentioned government officials who want to spread The Truth and Do Good
i.e., when used by people like Cass Sunstein and Barack Obama:
Throughout, we assume a well-motivated government that aims to eliminate conspiracy theories, or draw their poison, if and only if social welfare is improved by doing so.
But it's precisely because the Government is so often not "well-motivated" that such powers are so dangerous. Advocating them on the ground that "we will use them well" is every authoritarian's claim. More than anything else, this is the toxic mentality that consumes our political culture: when our side does X, X is Good, because we're Good and are working for Good outcomes. That was what led hordes of Bush followers to endorse the same large-government surveillance programs they long claimed to oppose, and what leads so many Obama supporters now to justify actions that they spent the last eight years opposing.
...
Sunstein himself - as part of his 2008 paper - explicitly advocates that the Government should pay what he calls "credible independent experts" to advocate on the Government's behalf, a policy he says would be more effective because people don't trust the Government itself and would only listen to people they believe are "independent."
...
What is most odious and revealing about Sunstein's worldview is his condescending, self-loving belief that "false conspiracy theories" are largely the province of fringe, ignorant Internet masses and the Muslim world. That, he claims, is where these conspiracy theories thrive most vibrantly, and he focuses on various 9/11 theories - both domestically and in Muslim countries - as his prime example.
It's certainly true that one can easily find irrational conspiracy theories in those venues, but some of the most destructive "false conspiracy theories" have emanated from the very entity Sunstein wants to endow with covert propaganda power: namely, the U.S. Government itself, along with its elite media defenders. Moreover, "crazy conspiracy theorist" has long been the favorite epithet of those same parties to discredit people trying to expose elite wrongdoing and corruption.
Who is it who relentlessly spread "false conspiracy theories" of Saddam-engineered anthrax attacks and Iraq-created mushroom clouds and a Ba'athist/Al-Qaeda alliance
the most destructive conspiracy theories of the last generation? And who is it who demonized as "conspiracy-mongers" people who warned that the U.S. Government was illegally spying on its citizens, systematically torturing people, attempting to establish permanent bases in the Middle East, or engineering massive bailout plans to transfer extreme wealth to the industries which own the Government? The most chronic and dangerous purveyors of "conspiracy theory" games are the very people Sunstein thinks should be empowered to control our political debates through deceit and government resources: namely, the Government itself and the Enlightened Elite like him.
It is this history of government deceit and wrongdoing that renders Sunstein's desire to use covert propaganda to "undermine" anti-government speech so repugnant. The reason conspiracy theories resonate so much is precisely that people have learned - rationally - to distrust government actions and statements. Sunstein's proposed covert propaganda scheme is a perfect illustration of why that is. In other words, people don't trust the Government and "conspiracy theories" are so pervasive precisely because government is typically filled with people like Cass Sunstein, who think that systematic deceit and government-sponsored manipulation are justified by their own Goodness and Superior Wisdom.
...
Just to get a sense for what an extremist Cass Sunstein is (which itself is ironic, given that his paper calls for "cognitive infiltration of extremist groups," as the Abstract puts it), marvel at this paragraph:
So Sunstein isn't calling right now for proposals (1) and (2) - having Government "ban conspiracy theorizing" or "impose some kind of tax on those who" do it - but he says "each will have a place under imaginable conditions." I'd love to know the "conditions" under which the government-enforced banning of conspiracy theories or the imposition of taxes on those who advocate them will "have a place." That would require, at a bare minumum, a repeal of the First Amendment. Anyone who believes this should, for that reason alone, be barred from any meaningful government position.
2010-01-18
666 to 1: The US Military, Al-Qaeda and a War of Futility
By Nick Turse and Tom Engelhardt
According to U.S. intelligence estimates, there are currently about 100 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, as well as "several hundred" in Pakistan and, so the latest reports tell us, a similar number in Yemen. Members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania) and those based in Somalia undoubtedly fall into the same category at several hundred each. According to authorities from the Iraq Study Group to the U.S. State Department, even at the height of the insurgency and civil war in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia never had more than 1,300-4,000 active fighters. Today, it is believed to consist only of "small, roving cells."
...
Over the years, and sometimes with good reason, Washington has lumped Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan with al-Qaeda and counted various militant groups, including Somalia's al-Shabab Islamic rebels, as al-Qaeda affiliates. Add such fighters in and you would swell these numbers by many thousands.
Additionally, al-Qaeda has an arsenal of weaponry. Members have access to rocket-propelled grenades, small arms of various sorts, the materials for making deadly roadside bombs, car bombs, and of course underwear bombs.
...
The active duty U.S. military alone enjoys a 666:1 advantage over the estimated number of al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Somalia. Adding in the reserves, the ratio jumps to an embarrassingly-high 1,286:1. Even if you were to factor in those hordes of nonexistent al-Qaeda sleeper agents, 300 each for 195 countries from Australia to Vatican City, the U.S. military would still enjoy a 23:1 advantage (or 45:1 if you included the reserves, now regularly sent into war zones on multiple tours of duty).
In sum, after the better part of a decade of conflict, the United States has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars on bullets and bombs, soldiers and drones. It has waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have yet to end, launched strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, dispatched Special Ops troops to those nations and others, like the Philippines, and built or expanded hundreds of new bases all over the world. Yet Osama bin Laden remains at large and al-Qaeda continues to target and kill Americans.
...
Al-Qaeda has no tanks, Humvees, nuclear submarines, or aircraft carriers, no fleets of attack helicopters or fighter jets. Al-Qaeda has never launched a spy satellite and isn't developing advanced drone technology (although it may be hacking into U.S. video feeds). Al-Qaeda specializes in low-budget operations ranging from the incredibly deadly to the incredibly ineffectual -- from murderous car bombs and airplanes-used-as-missiles to faulty shoe- and underwear-explosives.
Of course, comparisons of the strengths of the U.S. military and al-Qaeda "at war" would be absurd, if it weren't for the fact that the United States actually went to war against such a group. It was a decision about as effective as firing a machine gun at a swarm of gnats. Some may die, but the process is visibly self-defeating.
In the present War on Terror, called by whatever name (or, as at present, by no name at all), the two "sides" might as well be in different worlds. After all, al-Qaeda today isn't even an organization in the normal sense of the term, no less a fighting bureaucracy. It is a loose collection of ideas and a looser collection of individuals waging open-source warfare.
...
The Pentagon, with its giant bureaucracy and its miles of offices and corridors, is the headquarters of the U.S. war effort, but there is no central al-Qaeda headquarters, not in Afghanistan or Pakistan
not anywhere. There is probably no longer even an "al-Qaeda central." Osama bin Laden has vanished or, for all we know, may be dead. Think of it, at best, as an open-source organization that is remarkably capable of replicating by a process of self-franchising.
Isn't it time, then, to stop imagining al-Qaeda as a complex organization of terrorist supermen capable of committing super-deeds, or as an organization that bears any resemblance to a traditional enemy military force? With al-Qaeda, the path of war has undoubtedly been the road to perdition -- as we should have discovered by now, more than one trillion dollars later.
...
It's time to put al-Qaeda back in perspective
a human perspective, which would include its stunning successes, its dismal failures, and its monumental goof-ups, as well as its unrealizable dreams. (No, Virginia, there will never be an al-Qaeda caliphate in or across the Greater Middle East.) The fact is: al-Qaeda is not an apocalyptic threat. Its partisans can cause damage, but only Americans can bring down this country.
According to U.S. intelligence estimates, there are currently about 100 al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, as well as "several hundred" in Pakistan and, so the latest reports tell us, a similar number in Yemen. Members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (Algeria, Mali, and Mauritania) and those based in Somalia undoubtedly fall into the same category at several hundred each. According to authorities from the Iraq Study Group to the U.S. State Department, even at the height of the insurgency and civil war in Iraq, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia never had more than 1,300-4,000 active fighters. Today, it is believed to consist only of "small, roving cells."
...
Over the years, and sometimes with good reason, Washington has lumped Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan with al-Qaeda and counted various militant groups, including Somalia's al-Shabab Islamic rebels, as al-Qaeda affiliates. Add such fighters in and you would swell these numbers by many thousands.
Additionally, al-Qaeda has an arsenal of weaponry. Members have access to rocket-propelled grenades, small arms of various sorts, the materials for making deadly roadside bombs, car bombs, and of course underwear bombs.
...
The active duty U.S. military alone enjoys a 666:1 advantage over the estimated number of al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Iraq, Algeria, Mauritania, Mali, and Somalia. Adding in the reserves, the ratio jumps to an embarrassingly-high 1,286:1. Even if you were to factor in those hordes of nonexistent al-Qaeda sleeper agents, 300 each for 195 countries from Australia to Vatican City, the U.S. military would still enjoy a 23:1 advantage (or 45:1 if you included the reserves, now regularly sent into war zones on multiple tours of duty).
In sum, after the better part of a decade of conflict, the United States has spent trillions of taxpayer dollars on bullets and bombs, soldiers and drones. It has waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have yet to end, launched strikes in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia, dispatched Special Ops troops to those nations and others, like the Philippines, and built or expanded hundreds of new bases all over the world. Yet Osama bin Laden remains at large and al-Qaeda continues to target and kill Americans.
...
Al-Qaeda has no tanks, Humvees, nuclear submarines, or aircraft carriers, no fleets of attack helicopters or fighter jets. Al-Qaeda has never launched a spy satellite and isn't developing advanced drone technology (although it may be hacking into U.S. video feeds). Al-Qaeda specializes in low-budget operations ranging from the incredibly deadly to the incredibly ineffectual -- from murderous car bombs and airplanes-used-as-missiles to faulty shoe- and underwear-explosives.
Of course, comparisons of the strengths of the U.S. military and al-Qaeda "at war" would be absurd, if it weren't for the fact that the United States actually went to war against such a group. It was a decision about as effective as firing a machine gun at a swarm of gnats. Some may die, but the process is visibly self-defeating.
In the present War on Terror, called by whatever name (or, as at present, by no name at all), the two "sides" might as well be in different worlds. After all, al-Qaeda today isn't even an organization in the normal sense of the term, no less a fighting bureaucracy. It is a loose collection of ideas and a looser collection of individuals waging open-source warfare.
...
The Pentagon, with its giant bureaucracy and its miles of offices and corridors, is the headquarters of the U.S. war effort, but there is no central al-Qaeda headquarters, not in Afghanistan or Pakistan
not anywhere. There is probably no longer even an "al-Qaeda central." Osama bin Laden has vanished or, for all we know, may be dead. Think of it, at best, as an open-source organization that is remarkably capable of replicating by a process of self-franchising.
Isn't it time, then, to stop imagining al-Qaeda as a complex organization of terrorist supermen capable of committing super-deeds, or as an organization that bears any resemblance to a traditional enemy military force? With al-Qaeda, the path of war has undoubtedly been the road to perdition -- as we should have discovered by now, more than one trillion dollars later.
...
It's time to put al-Qaeda back in perspective
a human perspective, which would include its stunning successes, its dismal failures, and its monumental goof-ups, as well as its unrealizable dreams. (No, Virginia, there will never be an al-Qaeda caliphate in or across the Greater Middle East.) The fact is: al-Qaeda is not an apocalyptic threat. Its partisans can cause damage, but only Americans can bring down this country.
The wealthy accumulate wealth
By chlamor
The wealthy accumulate wealth by appropriating the wealth created by those who sell their wealth creating power to the wealthy. Everyone who receives a paycheck enhances the wealth of the wealthy by being paid less than the amount of wealth they produce. If you do not produce excess wealth for the wealthy, or otherwise contribute to the profit of the wealthy, your employment will be terminated.
The wealthy distribute that which they appropriate in a manner that in their judgment best insures their continued accumulation of wealth. Those who best serve the wealthy are best compensated for their successful efforts at accumulation of wealth from the producers of wealth for appropriation by the wealthy.
People commonly understand the wealthy as creators of wealth rather than appropriators of wealth. People desire to serve those whom they see as the the source of wealth for a share of the wealth, misunderstanding that in serving the wealthy they are serving the distributors of wealth, those who are also the appropriators of wealth, but not the producers of wealth.
Wealth production, appropriation, and distribution: this is the means by which the people are incentivized to serve the boards of directors, whether of capitalist enterprises or capitalist governments.
Peoples movements will always be secondary when the first choice available is to serve the wealthy masters. The masters have the power to distribute wealth to those who serve them best; and those who do not sufficiently demonstrate loyalty to the wealthy are cast out of the system and exposed to risks and insecurity of poverty.
The wealthy accumulate wealth by appropriating the wealth created by those who sell their wealth creating power to the wealthy. Everyone who receives a paycheck enhances the wealth of the wealthy by being paid less than the amount of wealth they produce. If you do not produce excess wealth for the wealthy, or otherwise contribute to the profit of the wealthy, your employment will be terminated.
The wealthy distribute that which they appropriate in a manner that in their judgment best insures their continued accumulation of wealth. Those who best serve the wealthy are best compensated for their successful efforts at accumulation of wealth from the producers of wealth for appropriation by the wealthy.
People commonly understand the wealthy as creators of wealth rather than appropriators of wealth. People desire to serve those whom they see as the the source of wealth for a share of the wealth, misunderstanding that in serving the wealthy they are serving the distributors of wealth, those who are also the appropriators of wealth, but not the producers of wealth.
Wealth production, appropriation, and distribution: this is the means by which the people are incentivized to serve the boards of directors, whether of capitalist enterprises or capitalist governments.
Peoples movements will always be secondary when the first choice available is to serve the wealthy masters. The masters have the power to distribute wealth to those who serve them best; and those who do not sufficiently demonstrate loyalty to the wealthy are cast out of the system and exposed to risks and insecurity of poverty.
2010-01-11
President Obama's Secret: Only 100 al Qaeda Now in Afghanistan
By Richard Esposito, Matthew Cole, Brian Ross
As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama's description Tuesday of the al Qaeda "cancer" in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.
A senior U.S. intelligence official told ABCNews.com the approximate estimate of 100 al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan reflects the conclusion of American intelligence agencies and the Defense Department. The relatively small number was part of the intelligence passed on to the White House as President Obama conducted his deliberations.
President Obama made only a vague reference to the size of the al Qaeda presence in his speech at West Point, when he said, "al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same number as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border."
A spokesperson at the White House's National Security Council, Chris Hensman, said he could not comment on intelligence matters.
As he justified sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan at a cost of $30 billion a year, President Barack Obama's description Tuesday of the al Qaeda "cancer" in that country left out one key fact: U.S. intelligence officials have concluded there are only about 100 al Qaeda fighters in the entire country.
A senior U.S. intelligence official told ABCNews.com the approximate estimate of 100 al Qaeda members left in Afghanistan reflects the conclusion of American intelligence agencies and the Defense Department. The relatively small number was part of the intelligence passed on to the White House as President Obama conducted his deliberations.
President Obama made only a vague reference to the size of the al Qaeda presence in his speech at West Point, when he said, "al Qaeda has not reemerged in Afghanistan in the same number as before 9/11, but they retain their safe havens along the border."
A spokesperson at the White House's National Security Council, Chris Hensman, said he could not comment on intelligence matters.
2010-01-10
Israeli firm blasted for letting would-be plane bomber slip through
By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent
The Israeli firm ICTS International (not to be confused with ICTS Europe, which is a different company), and two of its subsidiaries are at the crux of an international investigation in recent days, as experts try to pinpoint the reasons for the security failure that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest flight 253 and attempt to set alight explosives hidden in his underwear.
...
The failure was a twin flop: An intelligence failure, which U.S. President Barack Obama has already stated, in the poor handling of information that arrived at the State Department and probably also the CIA from both the father of the would-be bomber and the British security service; and a failure within the security system, including that of the Israeli firm ICTS.
The ICTS daughter company, I-SEC, has another daughter company - called PI (Pro-Check International). The firms provide security services to airports: consultation, instruction, training, inspection and supervision.
Two decades ago, ICTS adopted the system used in Israel, namely of profiling and assessing the degree to which a passenger is a potential threat on the basis of a number indicators (including age, name, origin and behavior during questioning). At the same time, a decade ago, the company developed a technological system called APS (Advanced Passenger Screening).
This system is based on a computerized algorithm, and is fed passenger information from the airline company. The system was offered to the Israel Airports Authority and the Shin Bet in the past, but rejected. According to the company's Web site, most of the large airlines in the United States use the system.
However - in real time - the system of ICTS failed. Even if U.S. intelligence failed and the name of the Nigerian passenger was not pinpointed as a suspect for the airline, he should have stirred the suspicion of the security officers. His age, name, illogical travel route, high-priced ticket purchased at the last minute, his boarding without luggage (only a carry on) and many other signs should have been sufficient to alert the security officers and warrant further examination of the suspect.
However, the security supervisor representing I-SEC and PI allowed him to get on the flight.
The Israeli firm ICTS International (not to be confused with ICTS Europe, which is a different company), and two of its subsidiaries are at the crux of an international investigation in recent days, as experts try to pinpoint the reasons for the security failure that enabled Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to board Northwest flight 253 and attempt to set alight explosives hidden in his underwear.
...
The failure was a twin flop: An intelligence failure, which U.S. President Barack Obama has already stated, in the poor handling of information that arrived at the State Department and probably also the CIA from both the father of the would-be bomber and the British security service; and a failure within the security system, including that of the Israeli firm ICTS.
The ICTS daughter company, I-SEC, has another daughter company - called PI (Pro-Check International). The firms provide security services to airports: consultation, instruction, training, inspection and supervision.
Two decades ago, ICTS adopted the system used in Israel, namely of profiling and assessing the degree to which a passenger is a potential threat on the basis of a number indicators (including age, name, origin and behavior during questioning). At the same time, a decade ago, the company developed a technological system called APS (Advanced Passenger Screening).
This system is based on a computerized algorithm, and is fed passenger information from the airline company. The system was offered to the Israel Airports Authority and the Shin Bet in the past, but rejected. According to the company's Web site, most of the large airlines in the United States use the system.
However - in real time - the system of ICTS failed. Even if U.S. intelligence failed and the name of the Nigerian passenger was not pinpointed as a suspect for the airline, he should have stirred the suspicion of the security officers. His age, name, illogical travel route, high-priced ticket purchased at the last minute, his boarding without luggage (only a carry on) and many other signs should have been sufficient to alert the security officers and warrant further examination of the suspect.
However, the security supervisor representing I-SEC and PI allowed him to get on the flight.
2010-01-08
Norway Time Hole “Leak” Plunges Northern Hemisphere Into Chaos
By Pakistan Daily
Russian scientists are reporting to Prime Minister Putin today that the high-energy beam fired into the upper heavens from the United States High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) radar facility in Ramfjordmoen, Norway this past month has resulted in a “catastrophic puncturing” of our Plant’s thermosphere thus allowing into the troposphere an “unimpeded thermal inversion” of the exosphere, which is the outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
To the West’s firing of this ‘quantum’ high-energy beam we had previously reported on in our December 10, 2009 report titled “Attack On Gods ‘Heaven’ Lights Up Norwegian Sky”.
To how catastrophic for our Planet this massive thermal inversion has been Anthony Nunan, an assistant general manager for risk management at Mitsubishi Corporation in Tokyo, is reporting today that the entire Northern Hemisphere is in winter chaos, with the greatest danger from this unprecedented Global event being the destruction of billions of dollars worth of crops in a World already nearing the end of its ability to feed its self.
...
To the long-term consequences of this thermal inversion caused by the West, these reports further warn that by the puncturing of our atmosphere by the HHARP radars our Planet has, also, been “needlessly exposed” to the growing threat posed to us by the giant mysterious object currently approaching us (named by NASA as G1.9) which we had previously reported on in our January 3rd report titled “Russia Prepares For Asteroid Strike As New Comet Nears Sun”, and which has been blamed for the rapid shifting of our Earth’s North Pole that was first documented in 2005.
Russian scientists are reporting to Prime Minister Putin today that the high-energy beam fired into the upper heavens from the United States High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP) radar facility in Ramfjordmoen, Norway this past month has resulted in a “catastrophic puncturing” of our Plant’s thermosphere thus allowing into the troposphere an “unimpeded thermal inversion” of the exosphere, which is the outermost layer of Earth’s atmosphere.
To the West’s firing of this ‘quantum’ high-energy beam we had previously reported on in our December 10, 2009 report titled “Attack On Gods ‘Heaven’ Lights Up Norwegian Sky”.
To how catastrophic for our Planet this massive thermal inversion has been Anthony Nunan, an assistant general manager for risk management at Mitsubishi Corporation in Tokyo, is reporting today that the entire Northern Hemisphere is in winter chaos, with the greatest danger from this unprecedented Global event being the destruction of billions of dollars worth of crops in a World already nearing the end of its ability to feed its self.
...
To the long-term consequences of this thermal inversion caused by the West, these reports further warn that by the puncturing of our atmosphere by the HHARP radars our Planet has, also, been “needlessly exposed” to the growing threat posed to us by the giant mysterious object currently approaching us (named by NASA as G1.9) which we had previously reported on in our January 3rd report titled “Russia Prepares For Asteroid Strike As New Comet Nears Sun”, and which has been blamed for the rapid shifting of our Earth’s North Pole that was first documented in 2005.
2010-01-07
The Real Top 10 News Stories of the Past Decade
By Robert Freeman
The media are awash with talking heads bloviating about the top stories of the last decade. The wired-in society. The growth of organic food. The new frugality. This is the ritual that reveals their true function in the culture: pacification. It's their way of signaling the masses that Bigger Thinkers are looking after things, so go back to your Wii or Survivor or Facebook reveries.
The amazing thing is how little is ever mentioned about the stories that really mattered, those that affected the very nature of our society, its institutions, and the relation of the people to their state and society. Those stories paint a picture of danger, of a people who have lost control of their government and the corporations that own it. But you'll hear nary a word about such difficult truths from any storyteller in the conventional media.
So here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties, the ones that really matter.
Robert Freeman writes on history, economics, and education. Email to: robertfreeman10@yahoo.com.
The media are awash with talking heads bloviating about the top stories of the last decade. The wired-in society. The growth of organic food. The new frugality. This is the ritual that reveals their true function in the culture: pacification. It's their way of signaling the masses that Bigger Thinkers are looking after things, so go back to your Wii or Survivor or Facebook reveries.
The amazing thing is how little is ever mentioned about the stories that really mattered, those that affected the very nature of our society, its institutions, and the relation of the people to their state and society. Those stories paint a picture of danger, of a people who have lost control of their government and the corporations that own it. But you'll hear nary a word about such difficult truths from any storyteller in the conventional media.
So here, in no particular order, are my Top Ten Stories of the Naughties, the ones that really matter.
- Iraq was all premised on lies, yet we're still there. Saddam Hussein wasn't pursuing Weapons of Mass Destruction. He wasn't involved in 9/11. He wasn't engaged with Al Qaeda. We know all these things. And we know they were false at the time they were proffered. Yet, there we are, with no intent to leave, our very presence spitting in the face of International Law and the international community we so unctuously pretend to respect. [To read a newspaper editorial showing the blatant lies of top US leaders used to promote war in Iraq, click here]
- The fact that 2/3 of all economic growth went to top 1%. John Kennedy's social contract had a rising tide lifting all boats. But over the last decade 2/3 of all economic growth has gone to the top 1% of income earners. Meanwhile the middle class has suffered a $13 trillion writedown in wealth as a result of the housing collapse. The banking bailout and the health care "reform" debate showed as never before the extent to which corporations have captured government and use it to redirect national wealth to themselves and their owners. [For revealing media reports on startling income inequality, click here]
- The Global War on Terror [GWOT]. Or more specifically, the ease with which the "GWOT" has replaced the Cold War as the justification for the ever-increasing militarization of society. What happened to the post-Cold War "Peace Dividend"? The U.S. continues to spend more on the military than all the rest of the world combined. It continues to maintain over 700 military bases around the world. And it continues to manufacture excuses for foreign interventions whenever weapons makers and military logistics companies need more profits — which is forever. [For a top U.S. general's highly revealing two-page essay exposing the roots of war, click here]
- Bush knew of 9/11 long before it actually happened. Three years before Bush took office, the neo-cons' Project For a New American Century called for a "new Pearl Harbor" to galvanize the nation into a war to seize Middle East oil. And even before the event itself, Bush-as-president was warned dozens of times of the imminent attack, the most notorious being the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing titled, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." Amazingly nothing was done to prevent the attack. But even less is it advertised that Bush knew. [For more powerful information on this, click here to read the two-page summary of major media reports with links raising serious questions about 9/11]
- The surrender of civil liberties. Despite the Fourth Amendment supposedly protecting us against unreasonable searches and seizures, the government can now read your email and listen to your phone calls without any probable cause. The Obama administration has gone to court to prevent the re-institution of Habeas Corpus, suspended during the Bush administration. We are much less free, much less protected from brutalization by our own government than we were just ten years ago. [For key major media articles revealing major erosion of privacy, click here]
- The Supreme Court hijacking the 2000 presidential election. This isn't even a historical controversy anymore. Al Gore won the national popular vote by 570,000. And we now know he would have won the Florida vote as well if the vote counting had not been stopped by the Supreme Court. This was literally a right wing judicial coup d' etat, so it's understandable that it's never mentioned in the "right" kind of circles. [For more critical information on this, read a BBC reporter's story available here]
- The Neo-Feudalization of the American economy. The top 1% of wealth holders own 41% of all the assets in the country while the bottom 40% own absolutely nothing. Meanwhile, workers are saddled with $12 trillion of national debt, an effective indentured servitude that will bind them to their corporate masters for the rest of their lives. This is the working definition of feudalism, where the rich own everything and everybody else has nothing but their proffered labor and their obligations to their masters. The Hapsburgs, the Tudors, and the Bourbons would be jealous. [For intriguing major media articles on powerful secret societies intent on keeping the rich in power, click here]
- The failure of "the free market" to sustain prosperity. The "free market" has long been an ideological dodge used to resist real government regulation of the economy. Still, the ideal was supposed to deliver prosperity in a stable, sustainable matter. Now we have the greatest global economic collapse since the Great Depression, with the government transferring $11 trillion to the banks to cover their sociopathically greedy bets that went bust. All in the name of deregulation, with future regulation vigorously resisted. Is this a deranged country or what? [For amazing media articles showing blatant greed, secrecy, and manipulation by top banks and bankers, click here]
- The collapse of the media. We once imagined it would guard the hen house. Yet that was an anomaly, a freak event around Vietnam and Watergate when it slipped its leash. Since then, sixty independent media outlets have consolidated into five, all retailing the ideology of the powerful, the perpetrators, laundering their lies, covering up the truth, and harassing the truth tellers. In every story mentioned above, the mainstream media have worked to ensure that the people didn't know the truth about the forfeiture of their government, their wealth, their security, and their rights. [For concise summaries of 20 award-winning journalists revealing how vitally important news stories are shut down by corporate media ownership, click here]
- The meaninglessness of elections. This is the most embittering revelation of all. Despite the greatest electoral majority since Johnson crushed Goldwater in ོ, Barrack Obama has betrayed everything he ran on. In nearly every case where he had the opportunity to confront power — in financial bailouts, financial regulation, health care, wars and military spending, utilities and global warming, national surveillance — Obama has sided with the rich and powerful against the interests of the American people. He has probably engendered more cynicism, more disaffection with government than any president since Richard Nixon. It will deal a staggering blow to the hopes of mobilizing masses of people again for a real takeback of government. And he's not even one year into it. [To understand why this has happened and what you can do to make a difference, click here]
Robert Freeman writes on history, economics, and education. Email to: robertfreeman10@yahoo.com.
2010-01-05
White House Investigating Rogue US Intel Group in Domestic Terror Attack
By Gordon Duff
Officials in the Obama White House are considering the possibility that the Christmas day attempt by Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Mutallab to blow up an airliner about to land in Detroit was deliberately and intentionally facilitated by unnamed networks inside the US intelligence community. This was the gist of a report by Richard Wolf delivered in this evening’s edition of cable network MSNBC’s Countdown program, hosted by Keith Olbermann. This report comes on the eve of a special White House interagency conference convoked by Obama to deal with the massive systemic failure of US intelligence in allowing the Yemen alumnus Mutallab to board the Amsterdam to Detroit flight while allegedly carrying a PETN explosive device on his person.
Wolf attributed his account to top officials in the Obama White House. The intentional sabotage of US antiterrorist screening procedures would explain why Mutallab had been able to use his US visa, escape interrogation and special searches, and board his flight, even though he was festooned with every red flag in the annals of airport security. If Wolf’s report is accurate, these Obama officials may be pulling on a thread which could begin to unravel the entire secret structure of illegitimate power which has afflicted this country — in this case, the apparatus which manufactures terrorist incidents for political purposes of mass manipulation, dictatorship, and war.
Wolf offered two possible explanations cited by his White House sources for the intentional sabotage of security procedures, resulting in yet another egregious failure to connect the dots. The first was a "turf war" inside the intelligence community, with one agency seeking to hoard information and deny it to others. The second was the desire to "embarrass" some leading figures, presumably referring to partisan animus or other resentments against Obama and his top appointees.
But Obama and his advisors should be urged to consider a third explanation far more plausible than either of these. This third explanation would include the desire of a rogue network inside the US government to unleash a new wave of Islamophobic hysteria to rehabilitate the discredited "global war on terror" strategy in a new and more sophisticated form, while imposing a new round of outrageous and degrading search procedures at airports (such as the full body scanners peddled by the venal Michael Chertoff) to soften up the American people for heightened totalitarian control and political repression. All of this, moreover, in ways that will be politically harmful to Obama.
The foreign policy rationale of Mutallab’s spectacular near miss in the skies over at Detroit would include the current US campaign of ginning up the three-cornered Yemen civil war so as to threaten and weaken both Saudi Arabia and Iran, each of whom is backing a faction in that civil war. Another benefit is to enhance the US presence in Yemen , a country which controls the exit from the Red Sea and thus all traffic coming out of the Suez Canal , one of the great naval chokepoints of the world and vital for the commerce of China , a leading US rival.
...
As a result of Mutallab’s handiwork, Obama has now declared a new Axis of Evil composed of Afghanistan-Pakistan , Somalia , and Yemen. Yemen in particular has been catapulted to the center of international attention by an Anglo-American propaganda blitzkrieg of monumental proportions.
...
If Wolf’s report is correct, these unnamed officials in the Obama White House might well be on the trail of the rogue network or secret government which has deliberately and cynically manufactured the majority of the large-scale terrorism incidents of recent decades.
...
Mutallab had been denied a visa to enter the United Kingdom , despite the fact that his family owned a luxury apartment in London ’s West End . His name had been placed on the UK watch list. Mutallab’s father, a prominent Nigerian banker, personally denounced him to the CIA and the State Department as a possible extremist who was then in Yemen , most probably at a training camp. Nevertheless, Mutallab’s visa was not revoked. Mutallab had met the infamous Anwar Awlaki, who had just received a wave of publicity for his relations with Major Hasan the Fort Hood patsy.
Chatter from the Yemen patsy milieu monitored by the US contained references to "the Nigerian" meaning Mutallab. Mutallab paid cash for his ticket in Ghana, checked no luggage, and entered Nigeria illegally, but was nevertheless permitted to embark on the first leg of his mission. In London , Mutallab was assisted by a "well-dressed Indian," who told the gate agent that Mutallab was a Sudanese who did not have a passport. Nevertheless, Mutallab was allowed to board. ... Only the active complicity of treasonous moles can explain Mutallab’s miraculous immunity to all surveillance and screening despite all these factors of suspicion.
Officials in the Obama White House are considering the possibility that the Christmas day attempt by Nigerian terrorist Umar Farouk Mutallab to blow up an airliner about to land in Detroit was deliberately and intentionally facilitated by unnamed networks inside the US intelligence community. This was the gist of a report by Richard Wolf delivered in this evening’s edition of cable network MSNBC’s Countdown program, hosted by Keith Olbermann. This report comes on the eve of a special White House interagency conference convoked by Obama to deal with the massive systemic failure of US intelligence in allowing the Yemen alumnus Mutallab to board the Amsterdam to Detroit flight while allegedly carrying a PETN explosive device on his person.
Wolf attributed his account to top officials in the Obama White House. The intentional sabotage of US antiterrorist screening procedures would explain why Mutallab had been able to use his US visa, escape interrogation and special searches, and board his flight, even though he was festooned with every red flag in the annals of airport security. If Wolf’s report is accurate, these Obama officials may be pulling on a thread which could begin to unravel the entire secret structure of illegitimate power which has afflicted this country — in this case, the apparatus which manufactures terrorist incidents for political purposes of mass manipulation, dictatorship, and war.
Wolf offered two possible explanations cited by his White House sources for the intentional sabotage of security procedures, resulting in yet another egregious failure to connect the dots. The first was a "turf war" inside the intelligence community, with one agency seeking to hoard information and deny it to others. The second was the desire to "embarrass" some leading figures, presumably referring to partisan animus or other resentments against Obama and his top appointees.
But Obama and his advisors should be urged to consider a third explanation far more plausible than either of these. This third explanation would include the desire of a rogue network inside the US government to unleash a new wave of Islamophobic hysteria to rehabilitate the discredited "global war on terror" strategy in a new and more sophisticated form, while imposing a new round of outrageous and degrading search procedures at airports (such as the full body scanners peddled by the venal Michael Chertoff) to soften up the American people for heightened totalitarian control and political repression. All of this, moreover, in ways that will be politically harmful to Obama.
The foreign policy rationale of Mutallab’s spectacular near miss in the skies over at Detroit would include the current US campaign of ginning up the three-cornered Yemen civil war so as to threaten and weaken both Saudi Arabia and Iran, each of whom is backing a faction in that civil war. Another benefit is to enhance the US presence in Yemen , a country which controls the exit from the Red Sea and thus all traffic coming out of the Suez Canal , one of the great naval chokepoints of the world and vital for the commerce of China , a leading US rival.
...
As a result of Mutallab’s handiwork, Obama has now declared a new Axis of Evil composed of Afghanistan-Pakistan , Somalia , and Yemen. Yemen in particular has been catapulted to the center of international attention by an Anglo-American propaganda blitzkrieg of monumental proportions.
...
If Wolf’s report is correct, these unnamed officials in the Obama White House might well be on the trail of the rogue network or secret government which has deliberately and cynically manufactured the majority of the large-scale terrorism incidents of recent decades.
...
Mutallab had been denied a visa to enter the United Kingdom , despite the fact that his family owned a luxury apartment in London ’s West End . His name had been placed on the UK watch list. Mutallab’s father, a prominent Nigerian banker, personally denounced him to the CIA and the State Department as a possible extremist who was then in Yemen , most probably at a training camp. Nevertheless, Mutallab’s visa was not revoked. Mutallab had met the infamous Anwar Awlaki, who had just received a wave of publicity for his relations with Major Hasan the Fort Hood patsy.
Chatter from the Yemen patsy milieu monitored by the US contained references to "the Nigerian" meaning Mutallab. Mutallab paid cash for his ticket in Ghana, checked no luggage, and entered Nigeria illegally, but was nevertheless permitted to embark on the first leg of his mission. In London , Mutallab was assisted by a "well-dressed Indian," who told the gate agent that Mutallab was a Sudanese who did not have a passport. Nevertheless, Mutallab was allowed to board. ... Only the active complicity of treasonous moles can explain Mutallab’s miraculous immunity to all surveillance and screening despite all these factors of suspicion.
2009-12-27
The More Things Change
By David Swanson
This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.
Which doesn't mean there aren't differences in the two moments. For one thing, Democrats have now joined Republicans in approving expanded presidential powers and even
in the case of wars, military strikes, lawless detention and rendition, warrantless spying, and the obstruction of justice
presidential crimes. In addition, in the new Democratic era of goodwill, peace and justice movements have been strikingly defunded and, in some cases, even shut down. Many progressive groups now, in fact, take their signals from the president and his team, rather than bringing the public's demands to his doorstep.
If we really were in Bush's third term, people would be far more active and outraged. There would already be a major push to really end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Undoubtedly, the Democrats still wouldn't impeach Bush, especially since they'd be able to vote him out before his fourth term, and surely four more years of him wouldn't make all that much difference.
This dark fantasy of a third Bush term is also an accurate portrait of Obama's first term to date. In following Bush, Obama was given the opportunity either to restore the rule of law and the balance of powers or to firmly establish in place what were otherwise aberrant abuses of power. Thus far, President Obama has, in all the areas mentioned above, chosen the latter course. Everything described, from the continuation of crimes to the efforts to hide them away, from the corruption of corporate power to the assertion of the executive power to legislate, is Obama's presidency in its first seven months.
Which doesn't mean there aren't differences in the two moments. For one thing, Democrats have now joined Republicans in approving expanded presidential powers and even
in the case of wars, military strikes, lawless detention and rendition, warrantless spying, and the obstruction of justice
presidential crimes. In addition, in the new Democratic era of goodwill, peace and justice movements have been strikingly defunded and, in some cases, even shut down. Many progressive groups now, in fact, take their signals from the president and his team, rather than bringing the public's demands to his doorstep.
If we really were in Bush's third term, people would be far more active and outraged. There would already be a major push to really end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan. Undoubtedly, the Democrats still wouldn't impeach Bush, especially since they'd be able to vote him out before his fourth term, and surely four more years of him wouldn't make all that much difference.
2009-12-16
It Seems Like Washington Wants Another Financial Disaster
By Paul Krugman
America emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system. The regulations worked: the nation was spared major financial crises for almost four decades after World War II. But as the memory of the Depression faded, bankers began to chafe at the restrictions they faced. And politicians, increasingly under the influence of free-market ideology, showed a growing willingness to give bankers what they wanted.
The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess.
But the proponents of deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape.
...
And the bankers — liberated both by legislation that removed traditional restrictions and by the hands-off attitude of regulators who didn’t believe in regulation — responded by dramatically loosening lending standards. The result was a credit boom and a monstrous real estate bubble, followed by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Ironically, the effort to contain the crisis required government intervention on a much larger scale than would have been needed to prevent the crisis in the first place: government rescues of troubled institutions, large-scale lending by the Federal Reserve to the private sector, and so on.
...
Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.
Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.
America emerged from the Great Depression with a tightly regulated banking system. The regulations worked: the nation was spared major financial crises for almost four decades after World War II. But as the memory of the Depression faded, bankers began to chafe at the restrictions they faced. And politicians, increasingly under the influence of free-market ideology, showed a growing willingness to give bankers what they wanted.
The first big wave of deregulation took place under Ronald Reagan — and quickly led to disaster, in the form of the savings-and-loan crisis of the 1980s. Taxpayers ended up paying more than 2 percent of G.D.P., the equivalent of around $300 billion today, to clean up the mess.
But the proponents of deregulation were undaunted, and in the decade leading up to the current crisis politicians in both parties bought into the notion that New Deal-era restrictions on bankers were nothing but pointless red tape.
...
And the bankers — liberated both by legislation that removed traditional restrictions and by the hands-off attitude of regulators who didn’t believe in regulation — responded by dramatically loosening lending standards. The result was a credit boom and a monstrous real estate bubble, followed by the worst economic slump since the Great Depression. Ironically, the effort to contain the crisis required government intervention on a much larger scale than would have been needed to prevent the crisis in the first place: government rescues of troubled institutions, large-scale lending by the Federal Reserve to the private sector, and so on.
...
Talk to conservatives about the financial crisis and you enter an alternative, bizarro universe in which government bureaucrats, not greedy bankers, caused the meltdown. It’s a universe in which government-sponsored lending agencies triggered the crisis, even though private lenders actually made the vast majority of subprime loans. It’s a universe in which regulators coerced bankers into making loans to unqualified borrowers, even though only one of the top 25 subprime lenders was subject to the regulations in question.
Oh, and conservatives simply ignore the catastrophe in commercial real estate: in their universe the only bad loans were those made to poor people and members of minority groups, because bad loans to developers of shopping malls and office towers don’t fit the narrative.
2009-12-14
The America Where They Do Prosecute Torture
By Sam Ferguson
Last week, 15 men entered a courthouse facing, amongst other crimes, 181 counts of torture. Their story, tragically, is familiar: in a fight against terrorism, the men allegedly kidnapped and held detainees in unknown black sites. They subjected the prisoners to brutal forms of interrogation, such as waterboarding, sensory deprivation and simulated executions. They denied the detainees all legal recourse, and they defended their secret practices as essential to combating an elusive enemy who refused to play by the rules.
But the courtroom is not in the United States, and the defendants are not members of the Bush administration. The defendants - retired officials from Argentina's last dictatorship - are on trial in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
...
It has been more than three months since Attorney General Eric Holder announced his probe into torture under the Bush administration, an investigation which seems to quickly be going nowhere. ... He may be inspired, however, by how some Latin countries have proceeded in the face of similar concerns.
One common argument against prosecution is that torture is effective, and we should not prosecute those who helped protect America.
This, however, was the same logic used by Latin America's military governments: they had to wage a "dirty war" on their enemy's terms. No doubt, the danger there was real, as it is in the United States. Leftist groups had killed hundreds before the wave of coups claimed the lives of thousands. But in retrospect, the dirty wars did more damage to the legal order than had the enemy it was fighting. Our southern neighbors have rejected the argument that one may break the law to save the law. They have restored the law by prosecuting those who broke it.
Another argument against prosecution is the supposed impossibility of figuring out who is responsible. Are those at the top, such as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or White House counsel John Yoo, responsible? Or should blame fall only on those who carried out the offensive practices?
In Latin America, the answer is both. Argentina's Supreme Court, in the 2005 Simon decision, held that torture is manifestly illegal and that no excuse justifies either giving or following orders to torture. Commander and commanded are equally responsible.
...
Finally, some excuse the Bush administration by saying what they did was not torture. Waterboarding is simply an "enhanced interrogation technique," as former Vice President Dick Cheney described it this August while defending the practice.
But this is a lexical sleight of hand. The debate is a nonstarter in Latin America. Though waterboarding is known by another name - the "submarino" - it is decidedly considered torture. Courts have repeatedly convicted defendants for subjecting prisoners to this "method," citing domestic and international prohibitions on the use of the practice. Ironically, our own government, lead by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, sanctioned Argentina in the late 1970s for using this very practice (amongst other concerns).
...
For centuries, the democracies of Latin America have looked north for inspiration: how to write their constitutions, how to design their government buildings, how to structure their economies. Perhaps it is time for us to look south.
Last week, 15 men entered a courthouse facing, amongst other crimes, 181 counts of torture. Their story, tragically, is familiar: in a fight against terrorism, the men allegedly kidnapped and held detainees in unknown black sites. They subjected the prisoners to brutal forms of interrogation, such as waterboarding, sensory deprivation and simulated executions. They denied the detainees all legal recourse, and they defended their secret practices as essential to combating an elusive enemy who refused to play by the rules.
But the courtroom is not in the United States, and the defendants are not members of the Bush administration. The defendants - retired officials from Argentina's last dictatorship - are on trial in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
...
It has been more than three months since Attorney General Eric Holder announced his probe into torture under the Bush administration, an investigation which seems to quickly be going nowhere. ... He may be inspired, however, by how some Latin countries have proceeded in the face of similar concerns.
One common argument against prosecution is that torture is effective, and we should not prosecute those who helped protect America.
This, however, was the same logic used by Latin America's military governments: they had to wage a "dirty war" on their enemy's terms. No doubt, the danger there was real, as it is in the United States. Leftist groups had killed hundreds before the wave of coups claimed the lives of thousands. But in retrospect, the dirty wars did more damage to the legal order than had the enemy it was fighting. Our southern neighbors have rejected the argument that one may break the law to save the law. They have restored the law by prosecuting those who broke it.
Another argument against prosecution is the supposed impossibility of figuring out who is responsible. Are those at the top, such as former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or White House counsel John Yoo, responsible? Or should blame fall only on those who carried out the offensive practices?
In Latin America, the answer is both. Argentina's Supreme Court, in the 2005 Simon decision, held that torture is manifestly illegal and that no excuse justifies either giving or following orders to torture. Commander and commanded are equally responsible.
...
Finally, some excuse the Bush administration by saying what they did was not torture. Waterboarding is simply an "enhanced interrogation technique," as former Vice President Dick Cheney described it this August while defending the practice.
But this is a lexical sleight of hand. The debate is a nonstarter in Latin America. Though waterboarding is known by another name - the "submarino" - it is decidedly considered torture. Courts have repeatedly convicted defendants for subjecting prisoners to this "method," citing domestic and international prohibitions on the use of the practice. Ironically, our own government, lead by the late Sen. Edward Kennedy, sanctioned Argentina in the late 1970s for using this very practice (amongst other concerns).
...
For centuries, the democracies of Latin America have looked north for inspiration: how to write their constitutions, how to design their government buildings, how to structure their economies. Perhaps it is time for us to look south.
2009-12-10
The Reason for 15 Million Unemployed: Poor Thinking at the Top
By Dean Baker
The United States has more than 15 million people unemployed. This is not their fault. It is the fault of really bad policy decisions by people who get paid more than almost all of the unemployed ever did or ever will. The failure of economic policymakers to recognize and attack an $8 trillion housing bubble led to the downturn. The continuing failure of economic policymakers to think creatively is why 15 million people remain unemployed.
The basic problem of unemployment is in fact a very simple one; we don't have enough demand in the economy. The collapse of bubbles in both residential and nonresidential construction led to a falloff in annual construction of close to $700 billion. The disappearance of more than $6 trillion in housing bubble wealth has forced consumers to pare consumption by approximately $500 billion a year. This creates a total shortfall in annual demand of $1.2 trillion.
...
If politics makes it impossible to increase the demand for labor, an alternative way to create jobs is through decreasing the supply of labor. Specifically, employers can be given an incentive to cut the hours of their current workforce, while keeping their pay constant. This should then cause them to hire more workers. This is not an untested idea. Germany has used work sharing tax credits to keep its unemployment rate from rising in this downturn, even though its recession has been more severe than ours.
...
It is absolutely unacceptable to have 15 million people unemployed just because the people who call the shots are too dumb to figure out how to get them back to work. We got into this mess because the people on top didn't know what they were doing. We shouldn't have to stay here because they still can't figure things out.
In Germany, they are experiencing the recession through short workweeks and longer vacations, rather than mass unemployment. We should be doing the same here.
The United States has more than 15 million people unemployed. This is not their fault. It is the fault of really bad policy decisions by people who get paid more than almost all of the unemployed ever did or ever will. The failure of economic policymakers to recognize and attack an $8 trillion housing bubble led to the downturn. The continuing failure of economic policymakers to think creatively is why 15 million people remain unemployed.
The basic problem of unemployment is in fact a very simple one; we don't have enough demand in the economy. The collapse of bubbles in both residential and nonresidential construction led to a falloff in annual construction of close to $700 billion. The disappearance of more than $6 trillion in housing bubble wealth has forced consumers to pare consumption by approximately $500 billion a year. This creates a total shortfall in annual demand of $1.2 trillion.
...
If politics makes it impossible to increase the demand for labor, an alternative way to create jobs is through decreasing the supply of labor. Specifically, employers can be given an incentive to cut the hours of their current workforce, while keeping their pay constant. This should then cause them to hire more workers. This is not an untested idea. Germany has used work sharing tax credits to keep its unemployment rate from rising in this downturn, even though its recession has been more severe than ours.
...
It is absolutely unacceptable to have 15 million people unemployed just because the people who call the shots are too dumb to figure out how to get them back to work. We got into this mess because the people on top didn't know what they were doing. We shouldn't have to stay here because they still can't figure things out.
In Germany, they are experiencing the recession through short workweeks and longer vacations, rather than mass unemployment. We should be doing the same here.
The Crushing Legacy of Bush and Cheney
By Joe Conason
Cheney, Rumsfeld and President Bush himself were distracted from the vital necessity of victory in Afghanistan - which meant not only driving out the Taliban but installing a real government in their place - by their obsession with Iraq.
...
The resulting neglect of Afghanistan - with all the corruption, disillusionment and anger that has ensued - had reached a critical stage when the Bush administration finally departed. Their own commanders were left behind to warn the new president that after eight years of war, the enemy had gained the upper hand.
No further recrimination is necessary - history will render sterner judgments than any that can be written now. But after eight years of incompetence and arrogance, how can the United States salvage what has become of the "good war"?
Escalation appears to be a self-defeating strategy. If the secretary of defense worried in 2001 that a few thousand Americans in Tora Bora would enrage the Afghan population, how will that population react to the presence of nearly 200,000 foreign troops next year? The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan further inflames suspicions of American domination not only in that country but across the Muslim world - as the war in Iraq also did - and especially in strategically vulnerable Pakistan.
As investigative reporter Aram Roston recently revealed in a cover story for The Nation, the Afghan countryside is already so deeply permeated by the Taliban that contractors shipping logistical supplies to our troops routinely bribe the enemy to allow safe passage. Military sources estimated that the payoffs amounted to as much as 10 percent of the cash value of those shipments. So if we spend another $30 billion a year to send in additional troops, roughly $3 billion will end up in the coffers of the Taliban, far more than they need to buy the ammunition and explosives that kill our soldiers.
Cheney, Rumsfeld and President Bush himself were distracted from the vital necessity of victory in Afghanistan - which meant not only driving out the Taliban but installing a real government in their place - by their obsession with Iraq.
...
The resulting neglect of Afghanistan - with all the corruption, disillusionment and anger that has ensued - had reached a critical stage when the Bush administration finally departed. Their own commanders were left behind to warn the new president that after eight years of war, the enemy had gained the upper hand.
No further recrimination is necessary - history will render sterner judgments than any that can be written now. But after eight years of incompetence and arrogance, how can the United States salvage what has become of the "good war"?
Escalation appears to be a self-defeating strategy. If the secretary of defense worried in 2001 that a few thousand Americans in Tora Bora would enrage the Afghan population, how will that population react to the presence of nearly 200,000 foreign troops next year? The U.S. occupation of Afghanistan further inflames suspicions of American domination not only in that country but across the Muslim world - as the war in Iraq also did - and especially in strategically vulnerable Pakistan.
As investigative reporter Aram Roston recently revealed in a cover story for The Nation, the Afghan countryside is already so deeply permeated by the Taliban that contractors shipping logistical supplies to our troops routinely bribe the enemy to allow safe passage. Military sources estimated that the payoffs amounted to as much as 10 percent of the cash value of those shipments. So if we spend another $30 billion a year to send in additional troops, roughly $3 billion will end up in the coffers of the Taliban, far more than they need to buy the ammunition and explosives that kill our soldiers.
2009-12-02
Scott Fenstermaker, the 9/11 Lawyer, Speaks Out: Judges Are Breaking the Law, Detainees Not Getting
By The Populist
Scott Fenstermaker has represented Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali in various legal proceedings at Guantanamo Bay. Mr. Ali stands accused of conspiracy, murder, destruction of property, hijacking, and terrorism for his part in the September 11th attacks. I could not understand why Mr. Fenstermaker would not defend his client in court, so I began the interview by asking him to clarify this:
TP: Why won’t you represent Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali when he stands trial in New York for the September 11th attacks?
SF: The government would not let me represent him.
TP: Why not?
SF: Well, that’s a good question. The government goes crazy every time the detainees want me to represent them, and the government doesn’t like it.
TP: How does the government prevent you from representing the detainees?
SF: The government wants to control who represents the detainees. The government not only wants to, but it is. The government does this by controlling the judges. The judges are doing exactly what the government wants them to do in these cases. The judges ask what the government wants them to do, and then they do it.
TP: What if Mr. Ali or one of the other defendants asks you to defend them in court?
SF: I would refuse to do it.
TP: Why?
SF: Because I think the international community may one day open up a war crimes investigation into the war on terror, and a lot of these judges and lawyers may be prosecuted themselves.
SF: It’s illegal, what we’re doing with these detainees.
Scott Fenstermaker has represented Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali in various legal proceedings at Guantanamo Bay. Mr. Ali stands accused of conspiracy, murder, destruction of property, hijacking, and terrorism for his part in the September 11th attacks. I could not understand why Mr. Fenstermaker would not defend his client in court, so I began the interview by asking him to clarify this:
TP: Why won’t you represent Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali when he stands trial in New York for the September 11th attacks?
SF: The government would not let me represent him.
TP: Why not?
SF: Well, that’s a good question. The government goes crazy every time the detainees want me to represent them, and the government doesn’t like it.
TP: How does the government prevent you from representing the detainees?
SF: The government wants to control who represents the detainees. The government not only wants to, but it is. The government does this by controlling the judges. The judges are doing exactly what the government wants them to do in these cases. The judges ask what the government wants them to do, and then they do it.
TP: What if Mr. Ali or one of the other defendants asks you to defend them in court?
SF: I would refuse to do it.
TP: Why?
SF: Because I think the international community may one day open up a war crimes investigation into the war on terror, and a lot of these judges and lawyers may be prosecuted themselves.
SF: It’s illegal, what we’re doing with these detainees.
2009-11-06
If You Say the Taliban = 9/11 Often Enough, Maybe Someone Will Believe It?
By Greg Palast
And here we go again. New York Times headline last Friday: "Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11."
Google it and you'll find the Times report repeated and amplified 5,785 times more.
Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.
Your eyelids are getting heavy. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.
It's the latest hit from the same crew that brought you Saddam = 9/11 and its twin chant, Saddam = WMD, Dick Cheney's chimerical tropes which the New York Times' Judith Miller happily channeled to the paper's front page.
And they're at it again.
...
The September 11 attack was neither organized nor directed from Afghanistan by the Taliban. In fact, as our BBC Report found, it was clear that the attack on my friends and co-workers was planned and carried out by al Qaeda operations in Falls Church, Virginia; Paris, France; Sarasota, Florida; Hamburg, Germany;— and, I repeat, funded and manned from Saudi Arabia. Neither the Sunshine State nor the Aryan namesake of the original beef patty sandwich were, nor are they now, convenient targets for a revenge attack by the 101st Airborne.
And revenge was what it was and remains: on September 11 the skunks hit us and we, goddamnit, were going to HIT BACK. ANYONE. SOMEONE. So we hit the odious, and conveniently weak, Taliban, who'd, undeniably, given refuge to killer Osama bin Laden. Though let us not forget that Osama’s safe passage from the Sudan to Afghanistan was initially encouraged by the US government.
And here we go again. New York Times headline last Friday: "Pakistani Army, In Its Campaign In Taliban Stronghold, Finds A Hint Of 9/11."
Google it and you'll find the Times report repeated and amplified 5,785 times more.
Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.
Your eyelids are getting heavy. Taliban = 9/11. Taliban = 9/11.
It's the latest hit from the same crew that brought you Saddam = 9/11 and its twin chant, Saddam = WMD, Dick Cheney's chimerical tropes which the New York Times' Judith Miller happily channeled to the paper's front page.
And they're at it again.
...
The September 11 attack was neither organized nor directed from Afghanistan by the Taliban. In fact, as our BBC Report found, it was clear that the attack on my friends and co-workers was planned and carried out by al Qaeda operations in Falls Church, Virginia; Paris, France; Sarasota, Florida; Hamburg, Germany;— and, I repeat, funded and manned from Saudi Arabia. Neither the Sunshine State nor the Aryan namesake of the original beef patty sandwich were, nor are they now, convenient targets for a revenge attack by the 101st Airborne.
And revenge was what it was and remains: on September 11 the skunks hit us and we, goddamnit, were going to HIT BACK. ANYONE. SOMEONE. So we hit the odious, and conveniently weak, Taliban, who'd, undeniably, given refuge to killer Osama bin Laden. Though let us not forget that Osama’s safe passage from the Sudan to Afghanistan was initially encouraged by the US government.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)