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.
"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little." ~ Sydney Smith
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2009-12-27
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.
2009-10-30
Pentagon officials won’t confirm Bush propaganda program ended
By Brad Jacobson
Last May, the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General issued a memorandum rescinding a Bush administration investigative report on the retired military analyst program because it “did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product.” The now-retracted report had exonerated officials of using propaganda and referred to the program as just "one of many outreach groups."
...
Internal Pentagon documents show that the military analyst program was stepped up in 2005, when US public support for the war in Iraq began to sour. Today, as recent polls show American support for the war in Afghanistan plummeting, the Pentagon and the Obama White House are facing a similar problem.
If the military analyst program, in some form or another, is still being run from the Pentagon, then the two most senior players in the Bush administration propaganda project remaining at the Defense Department, Bryan Whitman and Roxie Merritt, would be poised to step up activities once again.
Last May, the Pentagon’s Office of Inspector General issued a memorandum rescinding a Bush administration investigative report on the retired military analyst program because it “did not meet accepted quality standards for an Inspector General work product.” The now-retracted report had exonerated officials of using propaganda and referred to the program as just "one of many outreach groups."
...
Internal Pentagon documents show that the military analyst program was stepped up in 2005, when US public support for the war in Iraq began to sour. Today, as recent polls show American support for the war in Afghanistan plummeting, the Pentagon and the Obama White House are facing a similar problem.
If the military analyst program, in some form or another, is still being run from the Pentagon, then the two most senior players in the Bush administration propaganda project remaining at the Defense Department, Bryan Whitman and Roxie Merritt, would be poised to step up activities once again.
2009-10-15
E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress
By James Risen and Eric Lichtblau
The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.
...
Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.
The National Security Agency is facing renewed scrutiny over the extent of its domestic surveillance program, with critics in Congress saying its recent intercepts of the private telephone calls and e-mail messages of Americans are broader than previously acknowledged, current and former officials said.
...
Since April, when it was disclosed that the intercepts of some private communications of Americans went beyond legal limits in late 2008 and early 2009, several Congressional committees have been investigating. Those inquiries have led to concerns in Congress about the agency’s ability to collect and read domestic e-mail messages of Americans on a widespread basis, officials said. Supporting that conclusion is the account of a former N.S.A. analyst who, in a series of interviews, described being trained in 2005 for a program in which the agency routinely examined large volumes of Americans’ e-mail messages without court warrants. Two intelligence officials confirmed that the program was still in operation.
2009-09-23
While You are Minding Your Own Business, The U.S. is Constantly Making War Around the Globe
By Tom Engelhardt
Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it's hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment. Similarly, we've become used to the idea that, when various forms of force (or threats of force) don't work, our response, as in Afghanistan, is to recalibrate and apply some alternate version of the same under a new or rebranded name -- the hot one now being "counterinsurgency" or COIN -- in a marginally different manner. When it comes to war, as well as preparations for war, more is now generally the order of the day.
This wasn't always the case. The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns, and mercenary corporations, as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it, with genuine horror.
The question is: What kind of country do we actually live in when the so-called U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) lists 16 intelligence services ranging from Air Force Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency to the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency? What could "intelligence" mean once spread over 16 sizeable, bureaucratic, often competing outfits with a cumulative 2009 budget estimated at more than $55 billion (a startling percentage of which is controlled by the Pentagon)? What exactly is so intelligent about all that? And why does no one think it even mildly strange or in any way out of the ordinary?
What does it mean when the most military-obsessed administration in our history, which, year after year, submitted ever more bloated Pentagon budgets to Congress, is succeeded by one headed by a president who ran, at least partially, on an antiwar platform, and who has now submitted an even larger Pentagon budget? What does this tell you about Washington and about the viability of non-militarized alternatives to the path George W. Bush took? What does it mean when the new administration, surveying nearly eight years and two wars' worth of disasters, decides to expand the U.S. Armed Forces rather than shrink the U.S. global mission?
...
What kind of American world are we living in when a plan to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq involves the removal of more than 1.5 million pieces of equipment? Or in which the possibility of withdrawal leads the Pentagon to issue nearly billion-dollar contracts (new ones!) to increase the number of private security contractors in that country?
What do you make of a world in which the U.S. has robot assassins in the skies over its war zones, 24/7, and the "pilots" who control them from thousands of miles away are ready on a moment's notice to launch missiles -- "Hellfire" missiles at that -- into Pashtun peasant villages in the wild, mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan? What does it mean when American pilots can be at war "in" Afghanistan, 9 to 5, by remote control, while their bodies remain at a base outside Las Vegas and then can head home past a sign that warns them to drive carefully because this is "the most dangerous part of your day"?
What does it mean when, for our security and future safety, the Pentagon funds the wildest ideas imaginable for developing high-tech weapons systems, many of which sound as if they came straight out of the pages of sci-fi novels?
Because the United States does not look like a militarized country, it's hard for Americans to grasp that Washington is a war capital, that the United States is a war state, that it garrisons much of the planet, and that the norm for us is to be at war somewhere at any moment. Similarly, we've become used to the idea that, when various forms of force (or threats of force) don't work, our response, as in Afghanistan, is to recalibrate and apply some alternate version of the same under a new or rebranded name -- the hot one now being "counterinsurgency" or COIN -- in a marginally different manner. When it comes to war, as well as preparations for war, more is now generally the order of the day.
This wasn't always the case. The early Republic that the most hawkish conservatives love to cite was a land whose leaders looked with suspicion on the very idea of a standing army. They would have viewed our hundreds of global garrisons, our vast network of spies, agents, Special Forces teams, surveillance operatives, interrogators, rent-a-guns, and mercenary corporations, as well as our staggering Pentagon budget and the constant future-war gaming and planning that accompanies it, with genuine horror.
The question is: What kind of country do we actually live in when the so-called U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) lists 16 intelligence services ranging from Air Force Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the Defense Intelligence Agency to the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Security Agency? What could "intelligence" mean once spread over 16 sizeable, bureaucratic, often competing outfits with a cumulative 2009 budget estimated at more than $55 billion (a startling percentage of which is controlled by the Pentagon)? What exactly is so intelligent about all that? And why does no one think it even mildly strange or in any way out of the ordinary?
What does it mean when the most military-obsessed administration in our history, which, year after year, submitted ever more bloated Pentagon budgets to Congress, is succeeded by one headed by a president who ran, at least partially, on an antiwar platform, and who has now submitted an even larger Pentagon budget? What does this tell you about Washington and about the viability of non-militarized alternatives to the path George W. Bush took? What does it mean when the new administration, surveying nearly eight years and two wars' worth of disasters, decides to expand the U.S. Armed Forces rather than shrink the U.S. global mission?
...
What kind of American world are we living in when a plan to withdraw most U.S. troops from Iraq involves the removal of more than 1.5 million pieces of equipment? Or in which the possibility of withdrawal leads the Pentagon to issue nearly billion-dollar contracts (new ones!) to increase the number of private security contractors in that country?
What do you make of a world in which the U.S. has robot assassins in the skies over its war zones, 24/7, and the "pilots" who control them from thousands of miles away are ready on a moment's notice to launch missiles -- "Hellfire" missiles at that -- into Pashtun peasant villages in the wild, mountainous borderlands of Pakistan and Afghanistan? What does it mean when American pilots can be at war "in" Afghanistan, 9 to 5, by remote control, while their bodies remain at a base outside Las Vegas and then can head home past a sign that warns them to drive carefully because this is "the most dangerous part of your day"?
What does it mean when, for our security and future safety, the Pentagon funds the wildest ideas imaginable for developing high-tech weapons systems, many of which sound as if they came straight out of the pages of sci-fi novels?
2009-09-17
Why Propaganda Trumps Truth
By Paul Craig Roberts
What the sociologists and Hitler are telling us is that by the time facts become clear, people are emotionally wedded to the beliefs planted by the propaganda and find it a wrenching experience to free themselves. It is more comfortable, instead, to denounce the truth-tellers than the liars whom the truth-tellers expose.
...
The staying power of the Big Lie is the barrier through which the 9/11 Truth Movement is finding it difficult to break. The assertion that the 9/11 Truth Movement consists of conspiracy theorists and crackpots is obviously untrue. The leaders of the movement are highly qualified professionals, such as demolition experts, physicists, structural architects, engineers, pilots, and former high officials in the government. Unlike their critics parroting the government’s line, they know what they are talking about.
...
What I find puzzling is the people I know who do not believe a word the government says about anything except 9/11. For reasons that escape me, they believe that the government that lies to them about everything else tells them the truth about 9/11. How can this be, I ask them. Did the government slip up once and tell the truth? My question does not cause them to rethink their belief in the government’s 9/11 story. Instead, they get angry with me for doubting their intelligence or their integrity or some such hallowed trait.
The problem faced by truth is the emotional needs of people. With 9/11 many Americans feel that they must believe their government so that they don’t feel like they are being unsupportive or unpatriotic, and they are very fearful of being called “terrorist sympathizers.”
...
Naive people think that if the US government’s explanation of 9/11 was wrong, physicists and engineers would all speak up. Some have (see above). However, for most physicists and engineers this would be an act of suicide. Physicists owe their careers to government grants, and their departments are critically dependent on government funding. A physicist who speaks up essentially ends his university career. If he is a tenured professor, to appease Washington the university would buy out his tenure as BYU did in the case of the outspoken Steven Jones.
An engineering firm that spoke out would never again be awarded a government contract. In addition, its patriotic, flag-waving customers would regard the firm as a terrorist apologist and cease to do business with it.
What the sociologists and Hitler are telling us is that by the time facts become clear, people are emotionally wedded to the beliefs planted by the propaganda and find it a wrenching experience to free themselves. It is more comfortable, instead, to denounce the truth-tellers than the liars whom the truth-tellers expose.
...
The staying power of the Big Lie is the barrier through which the 9/11 Truth Movement is finding it difficult to break. The assertion that the 9/11 Truth Movement consists of conspiracy theorists and crackpots is obviously untrue. The leaders of the movement are highly qualified professionals, such as demolition experts, physicists, structural architects, engineers, pilots, and former high officials in the government. Unlike their critics parroting the government’s line, they know what they are talking about.
...
What I find puzzling is the people I know who do not believe a word the government says about anything except 9/11. For reasons that escape me, they believe that the government that lies to them about everything else tells them the truth about 9/11. How can this be, I ask them. Did the government slip up once and tell the truth? My question does not cause them to rethink their belief in the government’s 9/11 story. Instead, they get angry with me for doubting their intelligence or their integrity or some such hallowed trait.
The problem faced by truth is the emotional needs of people. With 9/11 many Americans feel that they must believe their government so that they don’t feel like they are being unsupportive or unpatriotic, and they are very fearful of being called “terrorist sympathizers.”
...
Naive people think that if the US government’s explanation of 9/11 was wrong, physicists and engineers would all speak up. Some have (see above). However, for most physicists and engineers this would be an act of suicide. Physicists owe their careers to government grants, and their departments are critically dependent on government funding. A physicist who speaks up essentially ends his university career. If he is a tenured professor, to appease Washington the university would buy out his tenure as BYU did in the case of the outspoken Steven Jones.
An engineering firm that spoke out would never again be awarded a government contract. In addition, its patriotic, flag-waving customers would regard the firm as a terrorist apologist and cease to do business with it.
2009-08-10
Inconvenient 911truth goes back to GHWBush
By Maxwell C. Bridges
Here's the most comprehensive report I've seen yet to justify 9/11 as an inside job, and thankfully ties in the criminality of former CIA Director G. H. W. Bush as both Vice President (to clueless Reagan) and President.
- Collateral Damage of 9/11 (PDF)
"[N]ot only were the buildings targets, but ... specific offices within each building were the designated targets. ... [T]he attacks of September 11th were intended to cover-up the clearing of $240 billion dollars in securities covertly created in September 1991 to fund a covert economic war against the Soviet Union, during which 'unknown' western investors bought up much of the Soviet industry, with a focus on oil and gas. The attacks of September 11th also served to derail multiple Federal investigations away from crimes associated with the 1991 covert operation.
~ E. P. Heidner
- Collateral Damage of 9/11 Part II(PDF)
"The U.S. Subprime and global financial crises of 2008 was the direct result of a covert monetary policy implemented by the U.S. financial institutional caretakers of the World War II Black Eagle Gold Fund."
~ E. P. Heidner
The above explains motives. Below, we have evidence of the perpetrator's means.
The ramifications of freefall in any stage of collapse in any of the WTC buildings is additional energy sources (like explosives) has to be planted and therefore the circle of 9/11 conspirators was much larger than 19 hijackers sitting in airplanes and included insiders.
The lack of an explanation for the breaking the laws of physics is admittedly but one piece of evidence of a crime, but it is a glaring one and one that can't be easily covered up by political appointees and discussion thread instigators.
This single freefall feature brings awareness to the lies, cracks open the door in our nation's collective disbelief, and shuts down the coincidence theorists, who with the eagerness of those cashing government paychecks all too vocally & viciously lump everything about 9/11 -- including the advertising, the lead-up, the execution, the cover-up, and the distasteful follow-up -- as just "unfortunate coincidences."
For further information into this high school physics, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
"Perhaps the greatest fantasy of the present moment is that there is a choice here. We can look forward or backward, turn the page on history or not. Don't believe it. History matters.
~ Tom Engelhardt
"Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. Truth causes sin to betray itself... Even the disposition to excuse guilt or to conceal it is punished. The avoidance of justice and the denial of truth tend to perpetuate sin, invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock divine mercy."
~ Mary Baker Eddy (ca. 1865)
Here's the most comprehensive report I've seen yet to justify 9/11 as an inside job, and thankfully ties in the criminality of former CIA Director G. H. W. Bush as both Vice President (to clueless Reagan) and President.
- Collateral Damage of 9/11 (PDF)
"[N]ot only were the buildings targets, but ... specific offices within each building were the designated targets. ... [T]he attacks of September 11th were intended to cover-up the clearing of $240 billion dollars in securities covertly created in September 1991 to fund a covert economic war against the Soviet Union, during which 'unknown' western investors bought up much of the Soviet industry, with a focus on oil and gas. The attacks of September 11th also served to derail multiple Federal investigations away from crimes associated with the 1991 covert operation.
~ E. P. Heidner
- Collateral Damage of 9/11 Part II(PDF)
"The U.S. Subprime and global financial crises of 2008 was the direct result of a covert monetary policy implemented by the U.S. financial institutional caretakers of the World War II Black Eagle Gold Fund."
~ E. P. Heidner
The above explains motives. Below, we have evidence of the perpetrator's means.
The ramifications of freefall in any stage of collapse in any of the WTC buildings is additional energy sources (like explosives) has to be planted and therefore the circle of 9/11 conspirators was much larger than 19 hijackers sitting in airplanes and included insiders.
The lack of an explanation for the breaking the laws of physics is admittedly but one piece of evidence of a crime, but it is a glaring one and one that can't be easily covered up by political appointees and discussion thread instigators.
This single freefall feature brings awareness to the lies, cracks open the door in our nation's collective disbelief, and shuts down the coincidence theorists, who with the eagerness of those cashing government paychecks all too vocally & viciously lump everything about 9/11 -- including the advertising, the lead-up, the execution, the cover-up, and the distasteful follow-up -- as just "unfortunate coincidences."
For further information into this high school physics, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
"Perhaps the greatest fantasy of the present moment is that there is a choice here. We can look forward or backward, turn the page on history or not. Don't believe it. History matters.
~ Tom Engelhardt
"Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. Truth causes sin to betray itself... Even the disposition to excuse guilt or to conceal it is punished. The avoidance of justice and the denial of truth tend to perpetuate sin, invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock divine mercy."
~ Mary Baker Eddy (ca. 1865)
2009-07-31
Collateral Damage (Part 2): The Subprime Crisis and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001
By E. P. Heidner
The U.S. Subprime and global financial crises of 2008 was the direct result of a covert monetary policy implemented by the U.S. financial institutional caretakers of the World War II Black Eagle Gold Fund. Major growth in this fund occurred in 1986 when the Reagan/Bush administration ousted Ferdinand Marcos and confiscated the Philippines holdings of Japanese pre-WWII treasury, buried in the Philippines due to the U.S. Naval blockade of Japanese ports.
Not being able to publicly acknowledge the illegal confiscation of multiple national treasuries, U.S. officials and their banker-agents have released major portions of this fund to the money market in excess of monetary demand, expanding the money supply by $3.5 to $7 trillion.
The individuals responsible for releasing this gold were also responsible for deliberately opening the subprime mortgage market to national banks, thus creating inflationary demand in the high risk, subprime housing market. In addition to the ‘coincidence’ that virtually all of the troubled mortgages which are at the source of the 2008 economic crisis seem to come from a timeframe and monetary growth spurt linked to the ‘9/11 bond dump’ this report will document that the primary source of funds for the liar’s loans and troubled subprime loans comes from banks that are in lock-step with the covert funding operations.
Given that these same individuals covertly financed the collapse of the ruble in 1991 using these same funds, and then orchestrated the buy-out of key Russian industries for pennies on the dollar, this analysis provides evidence that a similar gambit is being made for the takeover of key U.S. industries.
The U.S. Subprime and global financial crises of 2008 was the direct result of a covert monetary policy implemented by the U.S. financial institutional caretakers of the World War II Black Eagle Gold Fund. Major growth in this fund occurred in 1986 when the Reagan/Bush administration ousted Ferdinand Marcos and confiscated the Philippines holdings of Japanese pre-WWII treasury, buried in the Philippines due to the U.S. Naval blockade of Japanese ports.
Not being able to publicly acknowledge the illegal confiscation of multiple national treasuries, U.S. officials and their banker-agents have released major portions of this fund to the money market in excess of monetary demand, expanding the money supply by $3.5 to $7 trillion.
The individuals responsible for releasing this gold were also responsible for deliberately opening the subprime mortgage market to national banks, thus creating inflationary demand in the high risk, subprime housing market. In addition to the ‘coincidence’ that virtually all of the troubled mortgages which are at the source of the 2008 economic crisis seem to come from a timeframe and monetary growth spurt linked to the ‘9/11 bond dump’ this report will document that the primary source of funds for the liar’s loans and troubled subprime loans comes from banks that are in lock-step with the covert funding operations.
Given that these same individuals covertly financed the collapse of the ruble in 1991 using these same funds, and then orchestrated the buy-out of key Russian industries for pennies on the dollar, this analysis provides evidence that a similar gambit is being made for the takeover of key U.S. industries.
Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001
By E. P. Heidner
On September 11, 2001 the definition of National Security changed for most U.S. citizens. For an entire postwar generation, "National Security" meant protection from nuclear attack. On that day, Americans redefined that threat. On September 11, 2001 three hijacked airliners hit three separate buildings with such precision and skill that many observers believe those flights were controlled by something other than the poorly trained hijackers in the cockpits. This report contends that not only were the buildings targets, but that specific offices within each building were the designated targets. These offices unknowingly held information which if exposed, subsequently would expose a national security secret of unimaginable magnitude. Protecting that secret was the motivation for the September 11th attacks. This report is about that national security secret: its origins and impact. The intent of the report is to provide a context for understanding the events of September 11th rather than to define exactly what happened that day.
Initially, it is difficult to see a pattern to the destruction of September 11th other than the total destruction of the World Trade Center, a segment of the Pentagon, four commercial aircraft and the loss of 2,993 lives. However, if the perceived objective of the attack is re-defined from its commonly suggested 'symbolic' designation as either 'a terrorist attack' or a 'new Pearl Harbor,' and one begins by looking at it as purely a crime with specific objectives (as opposed to a political action), there is a compelling logic to the pattern of destruction. ... [M]any of the anomalies – or inconvenient facts surrounding this event - take on a meaning that is consistent with the claims of Eastman et al. The hypothesis of this report is: the attacks of September 11th were intended to cover-up the clearing of $240 billion dollars in securities covertly created in September 1991 to fund a covert economic war against the Soviet Union, during which 'unknown' western investors bought up much of the Soviet industry, with a focus on oil and gas. The attacks of September 11th also served to derail multiple Federal investigations away from crimes associated with the 1991 covert operation. In doing so, the attacks were justified under the cardinal rule of intelligence: "protect your resources" and consistent with a modus operandi of sacrificing lives for a greater cause.
The case for detailed targeting of the attacks begins with analysis of the attack on the Pentagon. After one concludes that the targeting of the ONI office in the Pentagon was not random, one then must ask: is it possible that the planes that hit the World Trade Center, and the bombs reported by various witnesses to have been set off inside the buildings 1, 6 and 7 and the basement of the Towers, were deliberately located to support the execution of a crime of mind-boggling proportions? In considering that question, a pattern emerges. For the crimes alleged by Eastman, Flocco, Durham and Schwarz to be successful, the vault in the basement of the World Trade Center, and its contents - less than a billion in gold, but hundreds of billions of dollars of government securities - had to be destroyed. A critical mass of brokers from the major government security brokerages in the Twin Towers had to be eliminated to create chaos in the government securities market. A situation needed to be created wherein $240 billion dollars of covert securities could be electronically "cleared" without anyone asking questions- which happened when the Federal Reserve declared an emergency and invoked its "emergency powers" that very afternoon. The ongoing Federal investigations into the crimes funded by those securities needed to be ended or disrupted by destroying evidence in Buildings 6, 7 and 1. Finally, one has to understand and demonstrate the inconceivable: that $240 billion in covert, and possibly illegal government funding could have been and were created in September of 1991. Filling in the last piece of the puzzle requires understanding 50 years of history of key financial organizations in the United States, understanding how U.S. Intelligence became a key source of their off-balance sheet accounts, and why this was sanctioned by every President since Truman. With that, a pattern of motivation is defined which allows government leaders and intelligence operatives to 'rationalize' a decision to cause the death 3,000 citizens.
On September 11, 2001 the definition of National Security changed for most U.S. citizens. For an entire postwar generation, "National Security" meant protection from nuclear attack. On that day, Americans redefined that threat. On September 11, 2001 three hijacked airliners hit three separate buildings with such precision and skill that many observers believe those flights were controlled by something other than the poorly trained hijackers in the cockpits. This report contends that not only were the buildings targets, but that specific offices within each building were the designated targets. These offices unknowingly held information which if exposed, subsequently would expose a national security secret of unimaginable magnitude. Protecting that secret was the motivation for the September 11th attacks. This report is about that national security secret: its origins and impact. The intent of the report is to provide a context for understanding the events of September 11th rather than to define exactly what happened that day.
Initially, it is difficult to see a pattern to the destruction of September 11th other than the total destruction of the World Trade Center, a segment of the Pentagon, four commercial aircraft and the loss of 2,993 lives. However, if the perceived objective of the attack is re-defined from its commonly suggested 'symbolic' designation as either 'a terrorist attack' or a 'new Pearl Harbor,' and one begins by looking at it as purely a crime with specific objectives (as opposed to a political action), there is a compelling logic to the pattern of destruction. ... [M]any of the anomalies – or inconvenient facts surrounding this event - take on a meaning that is consistent with the claims of Eastman et al. The hypothesis of this report is: the attacks of September 11th were intended to cover-up the clearing of $240 billion dollars in securities covertly created in September 1991 to fund a covert economic war against the Soviet Union, during which 'unknown' western investors bought up much of the Soviet industry, with a focus on oil and gas. The attacks of September 11th also served to derail multiple Federal investigations away from crimes associated with the 1991 covert operation. In doing so, the attacks were justified under the cardinal rule of intelligence: "protect your resources" and consistent with a modus operandi of sacrificing lives for a greater cause.
The case for detailed targeting of the attacks begins with analysis of the attack on the Pentagon. After one concludes that the targeting of the ONI office in the Pentagon was not random, one then must ask: is it possible that the planes that hit the World Trade Center, and the bombs reported by various witnesses to have been set off inside the buildings 1, 6 and 7 and the basement of the Towers, were deliberately located to support the execution of a crime of mind-boggling proportions? In considering that question, a pattern emerges. For the crimes alleged by Eastman, Flocco, Durham and Schwarz to be successful, the vault in the basement of the World Trade Center, and its contents - less than a billion in gold, but hundreds of billions of dollars of government securities - had to be destroyed. A critical mass of brokers from the major government security brokerages in the Twin Towers had to be eliminated to create chaos in the government securities market. A situation needed to be created wherein $240 billion dollars of covert securities could be electronically "cleared" without anyone asking questions- which happened when the Federal Reserve declared an emergency and invoked its "emergency powers" that very afternoon. The ongoing Federal investigations into the crimes funded by those securities needed to be ended or disrupted by destroying evidence in Buildings 6, 7 and 1. Finally, one has to understand and demonstrate the inconceivable: that $240 billion in covert, and possibly illegal government funding could have been and were created in September of 1991. Filling in the last piece of the puzzle requires understanding 50 years of history of key financial organizations in the United States, understanding how U.S. Intelligence became a key source of their off-balance sheet accounts, and why this was sanctioned by every President since Truman. With that, a pattern of motivation is defined which allows government leaders and intelligence operatives to 'rationalize' a decision to cause the death 3,000 citizens.
2009-07-27
Bush Era Horrors Will Haunt Us Until We Truly Face Them
By Tom Engelhardt
After all, during the eight years this CIA assassination program was supposedly in formation, U.S. military special ops death squads were, as far as we can tell, freely roaming the planet conducting (or botching) assassination missions, and the CIA's own robot assassins, airborne death squads, were also launching operations - sometimes wiping out innocent civilians - from Yemen and Somalia to Pakistan. They continue to run such operations in the skies over the Pakistani tribal borderlands near Afghanistan. So we still await an explanation of just why the CIA spent close to eight years, under Vice Presidential oversight, getting its death squads almost operational, but never - we're told - off the ground.
...
Though we all know that terrible things happened in recent years, the fact is that, these days, they are seldom to be found in a single place, no less the same paragraph. Connecting the dots, or even simply putting everything in the same vicinity, just hasn't been part of the definitional role of the media in our era. So let me give it a little shot.
As a start, remind me: What didn't we do? Let's review for a moment.
In the name of everything reasonable, and in the face of acts of evil by terrible people, we tortured wantonly and profligately, and some of these torture techniques - known to the previous administration and most of the media as "enhanced interrogation techniques" - were actually demonstrated to an array of top officials, including the national security adviser, the attorney general, and the secretary of state, within the White House. We imprisoned secretly at "black sites" offshore and beyond the reach of the American legal system, holding prisoners without hope of trial or, often, release; we disappeared people; we murdered prisoners; we committed strange acts of extreme abuse and humiliation; we kidnapped terror suspects off the global streets and turned some of them over to some of the worst people who ran the worst dungeons and torture chambers on the planet. Unknown, but not insignificant numbers of those kidnapped, abused, tortured, imprisoned, and/or murdered were actually innocent of any crimes against us. We invaded without pretext, based on a series of lies and the manipulation of Congress and the public. We occupied two countries with no clear intent to depart and built major networks of military bases in both. Our soldiers gunned down unknown numbers of civilians at checkpoints and, in each country, arrested thousands of people, some again innocent of any acts against us, imprisoning them often without trial or sometimes hope of release. Our Air Force repeatedly wiped out wedding parties and funerals in its global war on terror. It killed civilians in significant numbers. In the process of prosecuting two major invasions, wars, and occupations, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans have died. In Iraq, we touched off a sectarian struggle of epic proportions that involved the "cleansing" of whole communities and major parts of cities, while unleashing a humanitarian crisis of remarkable size, involving the uprooting of more than four million people who fled into exile or became internal refugees. In these same years, our Special Forces operatives and our drone aircraft carried out - and still carry out - assassinations globally, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, sometimes of innocent civilians. We spied on, and electronically eavesdropped on, our own citizenry and much of the rest of the world, on a massive scale whose dimensions we may not yet faintly know. We pretzled the English language, creating an Orwellian terminology that, among other things, essentially defined "torture" out of existence (or, at the very least, left its definitional status to the torturer).
...
Perhaps the greatest fantasy of the present moment is that there is a choice here. We can look forward or backward, turn the page on history or not. Don't believe it. History matters.
Whatever the Obama administration may want to do, or think should be done, if we don't face the record we created, if we only look forward, if we only round up the usual suspects, if we try to turn that page in history and put a paperweight atop it, we will be haunted by the Bush years until hell freezes over. This was, of course, the lesson
the only one no one ever bothers to call a lesson - of the Vietnam years. Because we were so unwilling to confront what we actually did in Vietnam - and Laos and Cambodia - because we turned the page on it so quickly and never dared take a real look back, we never, in the phrase of George H.W. Bush, "kicked the Vietnam syndrome." It still haunts us.
However busy we may be, whatever tasks await us here in this country - and they remain monstrously large - we do need to make an honest, clear-headed assessment of what we did (and, in some cases, continue to do), of the horrors we committed in the name of... well, of us and our "safety." We need to face who we've been and just how badly we've acted, if we care to become something better.
After all, during the eight years this CIA assassination program was supposedly in formation, U.S. military special ops death squads were, as far as we can tell, freely roaming the planet conducting (or botching) assassination missions, and the CIA's own robot assassins, airborne death squads, were also launching operations - sometimes wiping out innocent civilians - from Yemen and Somalia to Pakistan. They continue to run such operations in the skies over the Pakistani tribal borderlands near Afghanistan. So we still await an explanation of just why the CIA spent close to eight years, under Vice Presidential oversight, getting its death squads almost operational, but never - we're told - off the ground.
...
Though we all know that terrible things happened in recent years, the fact is that, these days, they are seldom to be found in a single place, no less the same paragraph. Connecting the dots, or even simply putting everything in the same vicinity, just hasn't been part of the definitional role of the media in our era. So let me give it a little shot.
As a start, remind me: What didn't we do? Let's review for a moment.
In the name of everything reasonable, and in the face of acts of evil by terrible people, we tortured wantonly and profligately, and some of these torture techniques - known to the previous administration and most of the media as "enhanced interrogation techniques" - were actually demonstrated to an array of top officials, including the national security adviser, the attorney general, and the secretary of state, within the White House. We imprisoned secretly at "black sites" offshore and beyond the reach of the American legal system, holding prisoners without hope of trial or, often, release; we disappeared people; we murdered prisoners; we committed strange acts of extreme abuse and humiliation; we kidnapped terror suspects off the global streets and turned some of them over to some of the worst people who ran the worst dungeons and torture chambers on the planet. Unknown, but not insignificant numbers of those kidnapped, abused, tortured, imprisoned, and/or murdered were actually innocent of any crimes against us. We invaded without pretext, based on a series of lies and the manipulation of Congress and the public. We occupied two countries with no clear intent to depart and built major networks of military bases in both. Our soldiers gunned down unknown numbers of civilians at checkpoints and, in each country, arrested thousands of people, some again innocent of any acts against us, imprisoning them often without trial or sometimes hope of release. Our Air Force repeatedly wiped out wedding parties and funerals in its global war on terror. It killed civilians in significant numbers. In the process of prosecuting two major invasions, wars, and occupations, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and Afghans have died. In Iraq, we touched off a sectarian struggle of epic proportions that involved the "cleansing" of whole communities and major parts of cities, while unleashing a humanitarian crisis of remarkable size, involving the uprooting of more than four million people who fled into exile or became internal refugees. In these same years, our Special Forces operatives and our drone aircraft carried out - and still carry out - assassinations globally, acting as judge, jury, and executioner, sometimes of innocent civilians. We spied on, and electronically eavesdropped on, our own citizenry and much of the rest of the world, on a massive scale whose dimensions we may not yet faintly know. We pretzled the English language, creating an Orwellian terminology that, among other things, essentially defined "torture" out of existence (or, at the very least, left its definitional status to the torturer).
...
Perhaps the greatest fantasy of the present moment is that there is a choice here. We can look forward or backward, turn the page on history or not. Don't believe it. History matters.
Whatever the Obama administration may want to do, or think should be done, if we don't face the record we created, if we only look forward, if we only round up the usual suspects, if we try to turn that page in history and put a paperweight atop it, we will be haunted by the Bush years until hell freezes over. This was, of course, the lesson
the only one no one ever bothers to call a lesson - of the Vietnam years. Because we were so unwilling to confront what we actually did in Vietnam - and Laos and Cambodia - because we turned the page on it so quickly and never dared take a real look back, we never, in the phrase of George H.W. Bush, "kicked the Vietnam syndrome." It still haunts us.
However busy we may be, whatever tasks await us here in this country - and they remain monstrously large - we do need to make an honest, clear-headed assessment of what we did (and, in some cases, continue to do), of the horrors we committed in the name of... well, of us and our "safety." We need to face who we've been and just how badly we've acted, if we care to become something better.
2009-07-24
Why 9/11 dscussion is valid
By Maxwell C. Bridges
Why does 9/11 keep coming back as a topic in all sorts of discussion threads on all sorts of forums, despite the efforts of others to derail and bury it by any means possible?
Legions of individual 9/11 conspiracy theories can be thrown out without disproving the validity of the case that 9/11 was an inside job. All it takes is one. Evidence is what turns theory into probability.
The laws of mathematics are divine truths that impartially reveal God. Examples from Architects & Engineers for 9//11 Truth, using simple high school physics, are particularly enlightening. The mathematics and Newtonian physics of the collapses of the ~THREE~ buildings on 9/11 are the smoking gun, the DNA, the eternal Truth, the still small voice. Listen.
NIST officially reports - begrudgingly and half-buried - that WTC-7 had a significant period of time in its collapse that was freefall, which is what the 9/11 Truth Movement has been saying all along. Therefore, we don't need to argue about this truth or its mathematical calculation.
IMPORTANT
What are the ramifications of building freefall both in the observed event and the larger political context?
"Belief produces the results of belief, and the penalties it affixes last so long as the belief and are inseparable from it. The remedy consists in probing the trouble to the bottom."
~ Mary Baker Eddy (discoverer and founder of Christian Science)
This is the reason the 9/11 topic keeps coming back. The (erroneous) belief that 9/11 was perpetrated soley by 19 hijackers has affixed us with penalties: wars, war profiteering, war crimes, deaths, maimings, injuries, Constitution shredding, rendition, torture, ... 9/11 was even participant in the looting of global wealth with stock bubbles, housing bubbles, banking bailouts, etc.
As long as we believe the lie of 9/11, we can be sucked into continual war and bad public policy. Probing the trouble to the bottom requires seeing the 9/11 dot in the clear pattern of lies, deception, and crimes foisted on us by the US Government and the Bush Administration in particular.
To ignore 9/11 truth is to shred everything we individually and collectively stand for as Americans, as patriots, and adherents of some religious faith (like Christianity, Islam).
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
~ Edmund Burke
"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little."
~ Sydney Smith
"The greatest obstacle to seeing the truth - that 9/11 was an inside job - is not the lack of evidence but what can be called "nationalist faith" - the belief that America is the "exceptional nation," whose leaders never deliberately do anything truly evil, at least to their own citizens."
~ David Ray Griffin
There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"Though error hides behind a lie and excuses guilt, error cannot forever be concealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. Truth causes sin to betray itself, and sets upon error the mark of the beast. Even the disposition to excuse guilt or to conceal it is punished. The avoidance of justice and the denial of truth tend to perpetuate sin, invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock divine mercy."
~ Mary Baker Eddy
Why does 9/11 keep coming back as a topic in all sorts of discussion threads on all sorts of forums, despite the efforts of others to derail and bury it by any means possible?
Legions of individual 9/11 conspiracy theories can be thrown out without disproving the validity of the case that 9/11 was an inside job. All it takes is one. Evidence is what turns theory into probability.
The laws of mathematics are divine truths that impartially reveal God. Examples from Architects & Engineers for 9//11 Truth, using simple high school physics, are particularly enlightening. The mathematics and Newtonian physics of the collapses of the ~THREE~ buildings on 9/11 are the smoking gun, the DNA, the eternal Truth, the still small voice. Listen.
NIST officially reports - begrudgingly and half-buried - that WTC-7 had a significant period of time in its collapse that was freefall, which is what the 9/11 Truth Movement has been saying all along. Therefore, we don't need to argue about this truth or its mathematical calculation.
IMPORTANT
What are the ramifications of building freefall both in the observed event and the larger political context?
"Belief produces the results of belief, and the penalties it affixes last so long as the belief and are inseparable from it. The remedy consists in probing the trouble to the bottom."
~ Mary Baker Eddy (discoverer and founder of Christian Science)
This is the reason the 9/11 topic keeps coming back. The (erroneous) belief that 9/11 was perpetrated soley by 19 hijackers has affixed us with penalties: wars, war profiteering, war crimes, deaths, maimings, injuries, Constitution shredding, rendition, torture, ... 9/11 was even participant in the looting of global wealth with stock bubbles, housing bubbles, banking bailouts, etc.
As long as we believe the lie of 9/11, we can be sucked into continual war and bad public policy. Probing the trouble to the bottom requires seeing the 9/11 dot in the clear pattern of lies, deception, and crimes foisted on us by the US Government and the Bush Administration in particular.
To ignore 9/11 truth is to shred everything we individually and collectively stand for as Americans, as patriots, and adherents of some religious faith (like Christianity, Islam).
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
~ Edmund Burke
"It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little."
~ Sydney Smith
"The greatest obstacle to seeing the truth - that 9/11 was an inside job - is not the lack of evidence but what can be called "nationalist faith" - the belief that America is the "exceptional nation," whose leaders never deliberately do anything truly evil, at least to their own citizens."
~ David Ray Griffin
There is only one force in the nation that can be depended upon to keep the government pure and the governors honest, and that is the people themselves. They alone, if well informed, are capable of preventing the corruption of power, and of restoring the nation to its rightful course if it should go astray."
~ Thomas Jefferson
"Though error hides behind a lie and excuses guilt, error cannot forever be concealed. Truth, through her eternal laws, unveils error. Truth causes sin to betray itself, and sets upon error the mark of the beast. Even the disposition to excuse guilt or to conceal it is punished. The avoidance of justice and the denial of truth tend to perpetuate sin, invoke crime, jeopardize self-control, and mock divine mercy."
~ Mary Baker Eddy
2009-07-20
Eight Traits of the Disinformationalist
By H. Michael Sweeney
1) Avoidance. They never actually discuss issues head-on or provide constructive input, generally avoiding citation of references or credentials. Rather, they merely imply this, that, and the other.
2) Selectivity. They tend to pick and choose opponents carefully, either applying the hit-and-run approach against mere commentators supportive of opponents, or focusing heavier attacks on key opponents who are known to directly address issues.
3) Coincidental. They tend to surface suddenly and somewhat coincidentally with a new controversial topic with no clear prior record of participation in general discussions in the particular public arena involved. They likewise tend to vanish once the topic is no longer of general concern. They were likely directed or elected to be there for a reason, and vanish with the reason.
4) Teamwork. They tend to operate in self-congratulatory and complementary packs or teams.
5) Anti-conspiratorial. They almost always have disdain for 'conspiracy theorists'.... Ask yourself why, if they hold such disdain for conspiracy theorists, do they focus on defending a single topic ... on conspiracies?
6) Artificial Emotions. An odd kind of 'artificial' emotionalism and an unusually thick skin
an ability to persevere and persist even in the face of overwhelming criticism and unacceptance. ... Disinfo types usually have trouble maintaining the 'image' and are hot and cold with respect to pretended emotions... With respect to being thick-skinned, no amount of criticism will deter them from doing their job, and they will generally continue their old disinfo patterns without any adjustments to criticisms of how obvious it is that they play that game
where a more rational individual who truly cares what others think might seek to improve their communications style, substance, and so forth, or simply give up.
7) Inconsistent. There is also a tendency to make mistakes which betray their true self/motives. This may stem from not really knowing their topic, or it may be somewhat 'freudian', so to speak, in that perhaps they really root for the side of truth deep within.
8) Time Constant. Recently discovered, with respect to News Groups, is the response time factor. There are three ways this can be seen to work, especially when the government or other empowered player is involved in a cover up operation:
* Any posting by a targeted proponent for truth can result in an IMMEDIATE response. The government and other empowered players can afford to pay people to sit there and watch for an opportunity to do some damage. SINCE DISINFO ONLY WORKS IF THE READER SEES IT - FAST RESPONSE IS CALLED FOR, or the visitor may be swayed towards truth.
* When dealing in more direct ways with a disinformationalist, such as email, DELAY IS CALLED FOR - there will usually be a minimum of a 48-72 hour delay. This allows a sit-down team discussion on response strategy for best effect, and even enough time to 'get permission' or instruction from a formal chain of command.
* Bigger guns are drawn and fired after the same 48-72 hours delay - the team approach in play.
1) Avoidance. They never actually discuss issues head-on or provide constructive input, generally avoiding citation of references or credentials. Rather, they merely imply this, that, and the other.
2) Selectivity. They tend to pick and choose opponents carefully, either applying the hit-and-run approach against mere commentators supportive of opponents, or focusing heavier attacks on key opponents who are known to directly address issues.
3) Coincidental. They tend to surface suddenly and somewhat coincidentally with a new controversial topic with no clear prior record of participation in general discussions in the particular public arena involved. They likewise tend to vanish once the topic is no longer of general concern. They were likely directed or elected to be there for a reason, and vanish with the reason.
4) Teamwork. They tend to operate in self-congratulatory and complementary packs or teams.
5) Anti-conspiratorial. They almost always have disdain for 'conspiracy theorists'.... Ask yourself why, if they hold such disdain for conspiracy theorists, do they focus on defending a single topic ... on conspiracies?
6) Artificial Emotions. An odd kind of 'artificial' emotionalism and an unusually thick skin
an ability to persevere and persist even in the face of overwhelming criticism and unacceptance. ... Disinfo types usually have trouble maintaining the 'image' and are hot and cold with respect to pretended emotions... With respect to being thick-skinned, no amount of criticism will deter them from doing their job, and they will generally continue their old disinfo patterns without any adjustments to criticisms of how obvious it is that they play that game
where a more rational individual who truly cares what others think might seek to improve their communications style, substance, and so forth, or simply give up.
7) Inconsistent. There is also a tendency to make mistakes which betray their true self/motives. This may stem from not really knowing their topic, or it may be somewhat 'freudian', so to speak, in that perhaps they really root for the side of truth deep within.
8) Time Constant. Recently discovered, with respect to News Groups, is the response time factor. There are three ways this can be seen to work, especially when the government or other empowered player is involved in a cover up operation:
* Any posting by a targeted proponent for truth can result in an IMMEDIATE response. The government and other empowered players can afford to pay people to sit there and watch for an opportunity to do some damage. SINCE DISINFO ONLY WORKS IF THE READER SEES IT - FAST RESPONSE IS CALLED FOR, or the visitor may be swayed towards truth.
* When dealing in more direct ways with a disinformationalist, such as email, DELAY IS CALLED FOR - there will usually be a minimum of a 48-72 hour delay. This allows a sit-down team discussion on response strategy for best effect, and even enough time to 'get permission' or instruction from a formal chain of command.
* Bigger guns are drawn and fired after the same 48-72 hours delay - the team approach in play.
Obama and the Bush Years
By Doyle McManus
Despite Obama's reluctance to confront possible misconduct in the Bush administration's war on terror, the outrage just won't go away.
Whenever he's asked about the scandals of America's war on terror -- the torture, the wrongful detentions, the legal corners cut -- President Obama has responded with some version of this statement: "We have to focus on getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past."
But that approach can't work. The unanswered questions are too many, the lawsuits too numerous, the fundamental questions of accountability too nagging. We need a public reckoning -- and, much as they might like to avoid the distraction, Obama and his people must know it.
...
Obama may prefer to soar above painful questions about what his predecessor's CIA did, but he is unlikely to have that luxury, even if Holder backs off. A series of looming disclosures are likely to keep the debate over accountability alive.
The inspector general's 2004 report is due to be released (with secrets blacked out) by Aug. 31 in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Justice Department's own ethics office is about to release a report judging the department lawyers who drew up the so-called torture memos that offered legal justification for detainee abuse. A federal prosecutor is investigating the CIA's decision in 2005 to destroy 92 videotapes of detainee interrogations, including the repeated waterboarding of Al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah. And Feinstein's Senate Intelligence Committee staff is grinding away at a comprehensive report on interrogations that may not be complete before the end of the year.
Despite Obama's reluctance to confront possible misconduct in the Bush administration's war on terror, the outrage just won't go away.
Whenever he's asked about the scandals of America's war on terror -- the torture, the wrongful detentions, the legal corners cut -- President Obama has responded with some version of this statement: "We have to focus on getting things right in the future as opposed to looking at what we got wrong in the past."
But that approach can't work. The unanswered questions are too many, the lawsuits too numerous, the fundamental questions of accountability too nagging. We need a public reckoning -- and, much as they might like to avoid the distraction, Obama and his people must know it.
...
Obama may prefer to soar above painful questions about what his predecessor's CIA did, but he is unlikely to have that luxury, even if Holder backs off. A series of looming disclosures are likely to keep the debate over accountability alive.
The inspector general's 2004 report is due to be released (with secrets blacked out) by Aug. 31 in response to a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union. The Justice Department's own ethics office is about to release a report judging the department lawyers who drew up the so-called torture memos that offered legal justification for detainee abuse. A federal prosecutor is investigating the CIA's decision in 2005 to destroy 92 videotapes of detainee interrogations, including the repeated waterboarding of Al Qaeda figure Abu Zubaydah. And Feinstein's Senate Intelligence Committee staff is grinding away at a comprehensive report on interrogations that may not be complete before the end of the year.
2009-07-13
Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project
By Scott Shane
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
...
Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.
In the tense months after Sept. 11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment, intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures. It was in that atmosphere that the unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress, officials said.
The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday.
The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.
...
Intelligence and Congressional officials have said the unidentified program did not involve the C.I.A. interrogation program and did not involve domestic intelligence activities. They have said the program was started by the counterterrorism center at the C.I.A. shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, but never became fully operational, involving planning and some training that took place off and on from 2001 until this year.
In the tense months after Sept. 11, when Bush administration officials believed new Qaeda attacks could occur at any moment, intelligence officials brainstormed about radical countermeasures. It was in that atmosphere that the unidentified program was devised and deliberately concealed from Congress, officials said.
2009-07-07
The Great American Bubble Machine
By Matt Taibbi
What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy.
They achieve this using the same playbook over and over again. The formula is relatively simple: Goldman positions itself in the middle of a speculative bubble, selling investments they know are crap. Then they hoover up vast sums from the middle and lower floors of society with the aid of a crippled and corrupt state that allows it to rewrite the rules in exchange for the relative pennies the bank throws at political patronage. Finally, when it all goes bust, leaving millions of ordinary citizens broke and starving, they begin the entire process over again, riding in to rescue us all by lending us back our own money at interest, selling themselves as men above greed, just a bunch of really smart guys keeping the wheels greased. They've been pulling this same stunt over and over since the 1920s — and now they're preparing to do it again, creating what may be the biggest and most audacious bubble yet.
Declares Goldman Sachs Behind Every Market Crash Since 1920s
By Matt Taibbi
Goldman Sachs has played a crucial role in creating every market bubble since the 1920s and has profited from not only the bubbles, but from the crash that followed as well, says a new expose in Rolling Stone magazine.
...
Taibbi writes that Goldman Sachs has traditionally been a late arrival to market bubbles, getting in once others have started the trend, but, once in, the company quickly ramps up the bubble, predicts its bursting, and then hedges its bets so as to make money from the bubble crash.
2009-07-02
The truth of 9/11-Achilles heel of corporate deception
By Maxwell C. Bridges
[Tweaked from the original for emphasis...]
"The real power to persuade and dominate a public remains with corporations and the government through control of the airwaves and domination of most publications by corporate advertisings, while news is restricted to reporting facts, to "objectivity and balance." The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel."
This indeed has been an issue with 9/11.
Every time a government spokesman or agency wanted to speak to 9/11, they could pretty much present their full argument in the corporate media with nary a dissenting or questioning commentator to offer a comprehensive opposing point of view. On the rare occasions when someone from 9/11 Truth was given air time, observe how they were treated:
- They were often marginalized by the "objective" host as early as their introduction, and certainly in loaded adjectives used in the questions and descriptions (e.g., nutty, loony, kooky).
- They rarely appeared alone, but always with someone representing the government's view. Because the host in many cases was not impartial, they were outnumbered.
- The discussions were steered into truly fringe areas of the movement, and the attention-deficit host jumped from one topic to another.
- After the small talk, commercial breaks (lead-out, lead-in), other side rebuttals, fast topic-hops, and detours away from the most solid arguments, the total airtime to present a case dissenting with the official 9/11 view was tiny.
Treatment of the 9/11 Truth Movement in the printed media may have been worst of all. Has Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times ever devoted a special issue to this topic from the 9/11 Truth Movement's point-of-view? Have they even ever published an in-depth article (or series of articles) presenting faithfully the 9/11 Truth Movement's case without undermining it in the very same article, not to mention accompanying ones?
Whereas hometown newspapers retained their names, consolidation turned them into mini-McGannetts always drawing on the same pool of articles. The first hurdle is whether local editors would even run the story. The second hurdle is how much hacking they'd do prior to publication. The third hurdle is where they'd run it (e.g., bury it) and split it to make it more difficult for a reader to find and follow.
"The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel."
Government spokespeople (and its agencies) wanted the public to "charge forward" into Afghanistan and Iraq [and into neo-con policies provided by PNAC] on the basis of how the United States was attacked 9/11. You were un-patriotic, un-American, and even treasonous if you didn't want pre-emptive war to protect the homeland... and if you didn't want fewer taxes on the wealthy, privatized social security, bail-outs...
Yet whenever someone said, "Okay, let's look at 9/11 in detail" so that we can be sure we're hunting the right witches, those same government spokespeople and agencies said, "Move along, sheople. Nothing to see here."
Whenever 9/11 is discussed in this forum, the unofficial (?) government spokespeople are talented at kicking sand into our eyes with pseudo-science, quasi-definitive official reports, rehashed debunked claims, straw man discussions, and outright lies, and at distracting us into flame wars with their insults.
We have many examples of cover-ups in how government commissions and (scientific) agencies were manipulated to limit the scope and conclusions of their investigations. Adequate and overwhelming evidence has been provided to caste doubt on the government's 9/11 version, such as these three, which are solidly based on the laws of physics:
* WTC7 in Freefall
No Longer Controversial
* Downward Acceleration of the North Tower
* WTC7: Nist Finally Admits Freefall (Part III)
The above should really shut-up all defenders and trolls of the governments 9/11 version and turn them into true believers of 9/11 Truth. But it won't. Why?
Fear.
They are afraid of what it will mean to our republic. They're afraid that it will mean massive civil unrest, total chaos, and the attempt at destructive overthrow of all institutions of power. Because those in power will use all in their power to remain in power, they fear the loss of power and stature, if not the oppressive response of government on its people.
I believe that this argument is just more fear-mongering and Kool-Aid for the weak-minded to manipulate patriots and Christians.
The real unspoken fear is the massive reduction in power of the federal government transferred, if not to the states, than to the regional countries that banded together to succeed from the old union in the hopes of forming a more perfect (smaller) union.
States Rights and gaining some autonomy from the (proven misguided) Federal Government and corrupt corporate influence can't be achieved today. So we are left with flag-waving in support of illegal wars, failed drug wars, and other draconically federal policies.
Just like mammoth corporations often require divisions to be spun off into their own businesses, lest the aims of the corporation and of the division become at odds with one another, the United States of America as we know it is also in need of having various regions (one or more neighboring states) with shared cultural values spun off into their own nations.
Thomas "Tip" O'Neill once declared, "All Politics is local." Politics needs to be brought more local. Although such spin-off regional nations sound radical, it would really be pretty much business as usual for you and I and for the governments of our community, town, county, and state.
[Tweaked from the original for emphasis...]
"The real power to persuade and dominate a public remains with corporations and the government through control of the airwaves and domination of most publications by corporate advertisings, while news is restricted to reporting facts, to "objectivity and balance." The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel."
This indeed has been an issue with 9/11.
Every time a government spokesman or agency wanted to speak to 9/11, they could pretty much present their full argument in the corporate media with nary a dissenting or questioning commentator to offer a comprehensive opposing point of view. On the rare occasions when someone from 9/11 Truth was given air time, observe how they were treated:
- They were often marginalized by the "objective" host as early as their introduction, and certainly in loaded adjectives used in the questions and descriptions (e.g., nutty, loony, kooky).
- They rarely appeared alone, but always with someone representing the government's view. Because the host in many cases was not impartial, they were outnumbered.
- The discussions were steered into truly fringe areas of the movement, and the attention-deficit host jumped from one topic to another.
- After the small talk, commercial breaks (lead-out, lead-in), other side rebuttals, fast topic-hops, and detours away from the most solid arguments, the total airtime to present a case dissenting with the official 9/11 view was tiny.
Treatment of the 9/11 Truth Movement in the printed media may have been worst of all. Has Time Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, or the New York Times ever devoted a special issue to this topic from the 9/11 Truth Movement's point-of-view? Have they even ever published an in-depth article (or series of articles) presenting faithfully the 9/11 Truth Movement's case without undermining it in the very same article, not to mention accompanying ones?
Whereas hometown newspapers retained their names, consolidation turned them into mini-McGannetts always drawing on the same pool of articles. The first hurdle is whether local editors would even run the story. The second hurdle is how much hacking they'd do prior to publication. The third hurdle is where they'd run it (e.g., bury it) and split it to make it more difficult for a reader to find and follow.
"The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel."
Government spokespeople (and its agencies) wanted the public to "charge forward" into Afghanistan and Iraq [and into neo-con policies provided by PNAC] on the basis of how the United States was attacked 9/11. You were un-patriotic, un-American, and even treasonous if you didn't want pre-emptive war to protect the homeland... and if you didn't want fewer taxes on the wealthy, privatized social security, bail-outs...
Yet whenever someone said, "Okay, let's look at 9/11 in detail" so that we can be sure we're hunting the right witches, those same government spokespeople and agencies said, "Move along, sheople. Nothing to see here."
Whenever 9/11 is discussed in this forum, the unofficial (?) government spokespeople are talented at kicking sand into our eyes with pseudo-science, quasi-definitive official reports, rehashed debunked claims, straw man discussions, and outright lies, and at distracting us into flame wars with their insults.
We have many examples of cover-ups in how government commissions and (scientific) agencies were manipulated to limit the scope and conclusions of their investigations. Adequate and overwhelming evidence has been provided to caste doubt on the government's 9/11 version, such as these three, which are solidly based on the laws of physics:
* WTC7 in Freefall
No Longer Controversial
* Downward Acceleration of the North Tower
* WTC7: Nist Finally Admits Freefall (Part III)
The above should really shut-up all defenders and trolls of the governments 9/11 version and turn them into true believers of 9/11 Truth. But it won't. Why?
Fear.
They are afraid of what it will mean to our republic. They're afraid that it will mean massive civil unrest, total chaos, and the attempt at destructive overthrow of all institutions of power. Because those in power will use all in their power to remain in power, they fear the loss of power and stature, if not the oppressive response of government on its people.
I believe that this argument is just more fear-mongering and Kool-Aid for the weak-minded to manipulate patriots and Christians.
The real unspoken fear is the massive reduction in power of the federal government transferred, if not to the states, than to the regional countries that banded together to succeed from the old union in the hopes of forming a more perfect (smaller) union.
States Rights and gaining some autonomy from the (proven misguided) Federal Government and corrupt corporate influence can't be achieved today. So we are left with flag-waving in support of illegal wars, failed drug wars, and other draconically federal policies.
Just like mammoth corporations often require divisions to be spun off into their own businesses, lest the aims of the corporation and of the division become at odds with one another, the United States of America as we know it is also in need of having various regions (one or more neighboring states) with shared cultural values spun off into their own nations.
Thomas "Tip" O'Neill once declared, "All Politics is local." Politics needs to be brought more local. Although such spin-off regional nations sound radical, it would really be pretty much business as usual for you and I and for the governments of our community, town, county, and state.
2009-06-30
The Corporate Media State Has Deformed American Culture; Time to Fight Back
By Chris Hedges
The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham.
...
American culture - or cultures, for we once had distinct regional cultures - was systematically destroyed in the 20th century by corporations. These corporations used mass communication, as well as an understanding of the human subconscious, to turn consumption into an inner compulsion. Old values of thrift, regional identity that had its own iconography, aesthetic expression and history, diverse immigrant traditions, self-sufficiency, a press that was decentralized to provide citizens with a voice in their communities were all destroyed to create mass, corporate culture. New desires and habits were implanted by corporate advertisers to replace the old. Individual frustrations and discontents could be solved, corporate culture assured us, through the wonders of consumerism and cultural homogenization. American culture, or cultures, was replaced with junk culture and junk politics. And now, standing on the ash heap, we survey the ruins. The very slogans of advertising and mass culture have become the idiom of common expression, robbing us of the language to make sense of the destruction. We confuse the manufactured commodity culture with American culture.
How do we recover what was lost? How do we reclaim the culture that was destroyed by corporations? How do we fight back now that the consumer culture has fallen into a state of decay? What can we do to reverse the cannibalization of government and the national economy by the corporations?
...
The corporate domination of the airwaves, of most print publications and an increasing number of Internet sites means we will have to search, and search quickly, for alternative forms of communication to thwart the rise of totalitarian capitalism.
Stuart Ewen, whose books "Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture" and "PR: A Social History of Spin" chronicle how corporate propaganda deformed American culture and pushed populism to the margins of American society, argues that we have a fleeting chance to save the country. ... He attacks the ideology of "objectivity and balance" that has corrupted news, saying that it falsely evokes the scales of justice. He describes the curriculum at most journalism schools as "poison."
"'Balance and objectivity' creates an idea where both sides are balanced. ... In certain ways it mirrors the two-party system, the notion that if you are going to have a Democrat speak you need to have a Republican speak. It offers the phantom of objectivity. It creates the notion that the universe of discourse is limited to two positions. Issues become black or white. They are not seen as complex with a multitude of factors."
Ewen argues that the forces for social change -- look at any lengthy and turgid human rights report -- have forgotten that rhetoric is as important as fact. Corporate and government propaganda, aimed to sway emotions, rarely uses facts to sell its positions. And because progressives have lost the gift of rhetoric, which was once a staple of a university education, because they naively believe in the Enlightenment ideal that facts alone can move people toward justice, they are largely helpless.
"Effective communication requires not simply an understanding of the facts, but how those facts will take place in the public mind," Ewen said. "When Gustave Le Bon says it is not the facts in and of themselves which make a point but the way in which the facts take place, the way in which they come to attention, he is right."
...
The control of the airwaves and domination through corporate advertising of most publications restricted news to reporting facts, to "objectivity and balance," while the real power to persuade and dominate a public remained under corporate and governmental control.
...
The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel. Human rights and labor groups, investigative journalists, consumer watchdog organizations and advocacy agencies have, in the face of this manipulation, inundated the public sphere with reports and facts. But facts alone, Ewen says, make little difference. And as we search for alternative ways to communicate in a time of crisis we must also communicate in new forms.
...
The battle ahead will be fought outside the journalistic mainstream. The old forms of journalism are dying or have sold their soul to corporate manipulation and celebrity culture. We must now wed fact to rhetoric. We must appeal to reason and emotion. We must not be afraid to openly take sides, to speak, photograph or write on behalf of the disempowered. And, Ewen believes, we have a chance in the coming crisis to succeed.
"Pessimism is never useful," he said. "Realism is useful, understanding the forces that are at play. To quote Antonio Gramsci, 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.' "
The ability of the corporate state to pacify the country by extending credit and providing cheap manufactured goods to the masses is gone. The pernicious idea that democracy lies in the choice between competing brands and the freedom to accumulate vast sums of personal wealth at the expense of others has collapsed. The conflation of freedom with the free market has been exposed as a sham.
...
American culture - or cultures, for we once had distinct regional cultures - was systematically destroyed in the 20th century by corporations. These corporations used mass communication, as well as an understanding of the human subconscious, to turn consumption into an inner compulsion. Old values of thrift, regional identity that had its own iconography, aesthetic expression and history, diverse immigrant traditions, self-sufficiency, a press that was decentralized to provide citizens with a voice in their communities were all destroyed to create mass, corporate culture. New desires and habits were implanted by corporate advertisers to replace the old. Individual frustrations and discontents could be solved, corporate culture assured us, through the wonders of consumerism and cultural homogenization. American culture, or cultures, was replaced with junk culture and junk politics. And now, standing on the ash heap, we survey the ruins. The very slogans of advertising and mass culture have become the idiom of common expression, robbing us of the language to make sense of the destruction. We confuse the manufactured commodity culture with American culture.
How do we recover what was lost? How do we reclaim the culture that was destroyed by corporations? How do we fight back now that the consumer culture has fallen into a state of decay? What can we do to reverse the cannibalization of government and the national economy by the corporations?
...
The corporate domination of the airwaves, of most print publications and an increasing number of Internet sites means we will have to search, and search quickly, for alternative forms of communication to thwart the rise of totalitarian capitalism.
Stuart Ewen, whose books "Captains of Consciousness: Advertising and the Social Roots of the Consumer Culture" and "PR: A Social History of Spin" chronicle how corporate propaganda deformed American culture and pushed populism to the margins of American society, argues that we have a fleeting chance to save the country. ... He attacks the ideology of "objectivity and balance" that has corrupted news, saying that it falsely evokes the scales of justice. He describes the curriculum at most journalism schools as "poison."
"'Balance and objectivity' creates an idea where both sides are balanced. ... In certain ways it mirrors the two-party system, the notion that if you are going to have a Democrat speak you need to have a Republican speak. It offers the phantom of objectivity. It creates the notion that the universe of discourse is limited to two positions. Issues become black or white. They are not seen as complex with a multitude of factors."
Ewen argues that the forces for social change -- look at any lengthy and turgid human rights report -- have forgotten that rhetoric is as important as fact. Corporate and government propaganda, aimed to sway emotions, rarely uses facts to sell its positions. And because progressives have lost the gift of rhetoric, which was once a staple of a university education, because they naively believe in the Enlightenment ideal that facts alone can move people toward justice, they are largely helpless.
"Effective communication requires not simply an understanding of the facts, but how those facts will take place in the public mind," Ewen said. "When Gustave Le Bon says it is not the facts in and of themselves which make a point but the way in which the facts take place, the way in which they come to attention, he is right."
...
The control of the airwaves and domination through corporate advertising of most publications restricted news to reporting facts, to "objectivity and balance," while the real power to persuade and dominate a public remained under corporate and governmental control.
...
The public is bombarded with carefully crafted images meant to confuse propaganda with ideology and knowledge with how we feel. Human rights and labor groups, investigative journalists, consumer watchdog organizations and advocacy agencies have, in the face of this manipulation, inundated the public sphere with reports and facts. But facts alone, Ewen says, make little difference. And as we search for alternative ways to communicate in a time of crisis we must also communicate in new forms.
...
The battle ahead will be fought outside the journalistic mainstream. The old forms of journalism are dying or have sold their soul to corporate manipulation and celebrity culture. We must now wed fact to rhetoric. We must appeal to reason and emotion. We must not be afraid to openly take sides, to speak, photograph or write on behalf of the disempowered. And, Ewen believes, we have a chance in the coming crisis to succeed.
"Pessimism is never useful," he said. "Realism is useful, understanding the forces that are at play. To quote Antonio Gramsci, 'pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.' "
2009-06-25
Simplifying the case against Dick Cheney
By Michael Kane
There are 3 major points ... that are crucial to proving Cheney's guilt.
1. Means - Dick Cheney and the Secret Service: Dick Cheney was running a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11. (Summary of these points)
2. Motive - Peak Oil: At some point between 2000 and 2007, world oil production reaches its peak; from that point on, every barrel of oil is going to be harder to find, more expensive to recover, and more valuable to those who recover and control it. Dick Cheney was well aware of the coming Peak Oil crisis at least as early as 1999, and 9/11 provided the pretext for the series of energy wars that Cheney stated, "will not end in our lifetime." (Summary of these points)
3. Opportunity - 9/11 War Games: The Air Force was running multiple war games on the morning of 9/11 simulating hijackings over the continental United States that included (at least) one "live-fly" exercise as well as simulations that placed "false blips" on FAA radar screens. These war games eerily mirrored the real events of 9/11 to the point of the Air Force running drills involving hijacked aircraft as the 9/11 plot actually unfolded. The war games & terror drills played a critical role in ensuring no Air Force fighter jocks - who had trained their entire lives for this moment - would be able to prevent the attacks from succeeding. These exercises were under Dick Cheney's management. (Summary of these points)
There are 3 major points ... that are crucial to proving Cheney's guilt.
1. Means - Dick Cheney and the Secret Service: Dick Cheney was running a completely separate chain of Command & Control via the Secret Service, assuring the paralysis of Air Force response on 9/11. The Secret Service has the technology to see the same radar screens the FAA sees in real time. They also have the legal authority and technological capability to take supreme command in cases of national emergency. Dick Cheney was the acting Commander in Chief on 9/11. (Summary of these points)
2. Motive - Peak Oil: At some point between 2000 and 2007, world oil production reaches its peak; from that point on, every barrel of oil is going to be harder to find, more expensive to recover, and more valuable to those who recover and control it. Dick Cheney was well aware of the coming Peak Oil crisis at least as early as 1999, and 9/11 provided the pretext for the series of energy wars that Cheney stated, "will not end in our lifetime." (Summary of these points)
3. Opportunity - 9/11 War Games: The Air Force was running multiple war games on the morning of 9/11 simulating hijackings over the continental United States that included (at least) one "live-fly" exercise as well as simulations that placed "false blips" on FAA radar screens. These war games eerily mirrored the real events of 9/11 to the point of the Air Force running drills involving hijacked aircraft as the 9/11 plot actually unfolded. The war games & terror drills played a critical role in ensuring no Air Force fighter jocks - who had trained their entire lives for this moment - would be able to prevent the attacks from succeeding. These exercises were under Dick Cheney's management. (Summary of these points)
2009-01-29
Official US policy: kill American citizens when President/Fuhrer declares them "terrorists"
January 29, 5:49 AMLA County Nonpartisan ExaminerCarl Herman
We hold these Truths as self-evident...I had previously reported that US citizens are being tortured by our own government when the executive branch says the magic word: "terrorist." Under the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA), such Americans can be detained forever without legal right of habeas corpus.
If those Americans are brought to trial rather than detained and tortured at the whim of the tyrants, the US government has created an unconstitutional system of judgment and execution: the President/dictator slurring the American as “terrorist” also says who the judges are to determine guilt with available penalty of execution.
These three military tribunal judges are allowed to accept “secret evidence” from the government that is unavailable for the defendant to view or challenge if two other words are said: “national security.”
We know MCA was intended for American citizens because the US government has applied it to American citizens and argued for its use rather than the US Constitution's provisions through the first two levels of federal court. The current legal standing through federal court decision is that MCA is applicable to US citizens upon the dictate of the executive branch.
What does this mean? It means you could be detained tomorrow without charges because the government claims evidence of your terrorism. It means you can be tortured. It means that if the government ever wants to bring you to trial, they can say they have video of you executing American soldiers that they can submit as evidence in the form of a written description of what’s on the video.
You cannot challenge the evidence; the judges are free to accept it as valid. Literally, when the same executive head who accused you has also picked your judges, this is a dictionary definition of dictatorship. The US is under the dictate of the executive branch based solely from what is said from the Fuhrer (German for “leader”).
This is exactly what the Founding Fathers warned us would happen without citizen vigilance. This is fascism, not a constitutional republic. The US is an Orwellian shadow of its Constitution.
But this analysis is incomplete under the news that the Obama Administration is taking alleged “permission” from President Bush to continue extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens.
Best-selling author Glenn Greenwald reports the story in professional elegance of one US target for assassination: Anwar al-Awlaki, an American whose parents emigrated from Yemen. Chris Floyd also adds his perspective to this confirmed US policy.
Anwar’s father has pleaded with the US government tyrants to allow him contact with his son to negotiate his surrender and then follow the US Constitution for the public disclosure of any evidence of his son’s criminal acts.
His father says such evidence does not exist. The US government has responded with further attacks to murder Anwar in complete contempt of the Constitution all men and women in our military and government have sworn an oath to support and defend.
When US forces are breaking into school children’s homes, handcuffing them, and then executing them, I invite your consideration that Anwar is a likely “patsy” to further encroach on our rights by taking an American with a Muslim-sounding name and setting precedent for the execution of Americans upon the dictate of our Fuhrer.
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.
– Pastor Martin Niemöller
The above famous quote first appeared published in a 1955 book by Milton Mayer, appropriately titled about the German people under their form of fascism, They Thought They Were Free.
Concluding this article is a powerful 6-minute video from PuppetGov, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Please share this article with all who can benefit.
Our status in early 21st Century human history is that we suffer from a long history in government and money of human interrelationship well-described as vicious antagonism. Governments frequently use war as a foreign policy, despite its illegality and dependent upon public ignorance, with horrific consequences.
Economic policy is still created within a “Robber Baron” paradigm to concentrate money to an elite few families. Two examples:
National taxes effect you dearly, especially the tax to pay interest on the national debt. This costs the American public over $400 billion every year. This is $4,000 per year for every $50,000 of income.
Do the math to understand your household’s tax burden for a monetary policy invented by banks for banks to create our money supply as debt. Your competence in this area contributes to our collective voice to simply shift monetary policy to easily pay the national debt, enjoy full employment, collectively save us over a trillion dollars every year, and finally realize what our brightest American minds have been advocating for centuries beginning with Benjamin Franklin.
This would have unprecedented local benefits, and requires collective power to accomplish. Ending poverty everywhere on our planet would cost just 0.7% of our income and save a million children’s lives every month. This human accomplishment will cause unimaginable joy at our local level.
To consider:
"The day that hunger is eradicated from the earth, there will be the greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever known. Humanity cannot imagine the joy that will burst into the world on the day of that great revolution." -- poet Federico García Lorca
These are recommendations from the author of the article that I have included here in this blog with a few eliminated that I believe would actually contribute in the future to further wrongdoing which is what always happens when you violate the intent of the rule of law. Instead I recommend protection for whistleblowers and immunity for those who were minor coconspirators.
Policy response: Gandhi and Martin Luther King advocated public understanding of the facts and non-cooperation with evil.
Understand the laws of war. These were legislated after WW2 and are crystal-clear that only self-defense, in a narrow legal meaning, can justify war.
The current US wars are Orwellian opposite to being lawful, with growing professional legal opinions affirming this obvious "emperor has no clothes" fact.
Those involved with US military, government, and law enforcement have an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution, not “always place the mission first.” To fulfill their oath they must immediately refuse and end all orders associated with unlawful wars and military-related constant violation of treaties.
End the transfer of trillions of American taxpayer money to banksters and admitted as “lost” by our military. End poverty through global cooperation to achieve the UN Millennium Goals by developed countries investing 0.7% of their income. Support global security through cooperation, dignity, justice, and freedom. Create a US Department of Peace to help.
Communicate. Trust your unique, beautiful, and powerful self-expression to share as you feel appropriate. Understand that while many people are ready to embrace difficult facts, many are not.
Anticipate that you will be attacked and prepare your virtuous response in the spirit of competition, just as you do in other fields.
Prosecute the war leaders for obvious violation of the letter and spirit of US war laws.
We hold these Truths as self-evident...I had previously reported that US citizens are being tortured by our own government when the executive branch says the magic word: "terrorist." Under the 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA), such Americans can be detained forever without legal right of habeas corpus.
If those Americans are brought to trial rather than detained and tortured at the whim of the tyrants, the US government has created an unconstitutional system of judgment and execution: the President/dictator slurring the American as “terrorist” also says who the judges are to determine guilt with available penalty of execution.
These three military tribunal judges are allowed to accept “secret evidence” from the government that is unavailable for the defendant to view or challenge if two other words are said: “national security.”
We know MCA was intended for American citizens because the US government has applied it to American citizens and argued for its use rather than the US Constitution's provisions through the first two levels of federal court. The current legal standing through federal court decision is that MCA is applicable to US citizens upon the dictate of the executive branch.
What does this mean? It means you could be detained tomorrow without charges because the government claims evidence of your terrorism. It means you can be tortured. It means that if the government ever wants to bring you to trial, they can say they have video of you executing American soldiers that they can submit as evidence in the form of a written description of what’s on the video.
You cannot challenge the evidence; the judges are free to accept it as valid. Literally, when the same executive head who accused you has also picked your judges, this is a dictionary definition of dictatorship. The US is under the dictate of the executive branch based solely from what is said from the Fuhrer (German for “leader”).
This is exactly what the Founding Fathers warned us would happen without citizen vigilance. This is fascism, not a constitutional republic. The US is an Orwellian shadow of its Constitution.
But this analysis is incomplete under the news that the Obama Administration is taking alleged “permission” from President Bush to continue extrajudicial assassinations of American citizens.
Best-selling author Glenn Greenwald reports the story in professional elegance of one US target for assassination: Anwar al-Awlaki, an American whose parents emigrated from Yemen. Chris Floyd also adds his perspective to this confirmed US policy.
Anwar’s father has pleaded with the US government tyrants to allow him contact with his son to negotiate his surrender and then follow the US Constitution for the public disclosure of any evidence of his son’s criminal acts.
His father says such evidence does not exist. The US government has responded with further attacks to murder Anwar in complete contempt of the Constitution all men and women in our military and government have sworn an oath to support and defend.
When US forces are breaking into school children’s homes, handcuffing them, and then executing them, I invite your consideration that Anwar is a likely “patsy” to further encroach on our rights by taking an American with a Muslim-sounding name and setting precedent for the execution of Americans upon the dictate of our Fuhrer.
First they came for the communists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a communist;
Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist;
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew;
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak out for me.
– Pastor Martin Niemöller
The above famous quote first appeared published in a 1955 book by Milton Mayer, appropriately titled about the German people under their form of fascism, They Thought They Were Free.
Concluding this article is a powerful 6-minute video from PuppetGov, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
Please share this article with all who can benefit.
Our status in early 21st Century human history is that we suffer from a long history in government and money of human interrelationship well-described as vicious antagonism. Governments frequently use war as a foreign policy, despite its illegality and dependent upon public ignorance, with horrific consequences.
Economic policy is still created within a “Robber Baron” paradigm to concentrate money to an elite few families. Two examples:
National taxes effect you dearly, especially the tax to pay interest on the national debt. This costs the American public over $400 billion every year. This is $4,000 per year for every $50,000 of income.
Do the math to understand your household’s tax burden for a monetary policy invented by banks for banks to create our money supply as debt. Your competence in this area contributes to our collective voice to simply shift monetary policy to easily pay the national debt, enjoy full employment, collectively save us over a trillion dollars every year, and finally realize what our brightest American minds have been advocating for centuries beginning with Benjamin Franklin.
This would have unprecedented local benefits, and requires collective power to accomplish. Ending poverty everywhere on our planet would cost just 0.7% of our income and save a million children’s lives every month. This human accomplishment will cause unimaginable joy at our local level.
To consider:
"The day that hunger is eradicated from the earth, there will be the greatest spiritual explosion the world has ever known. Humanity cannot imagine the joy that will burst into the world on the day of that great revolution." -- poet Federico García Lorca
These are recommendations from the author of the article that I have included here in this blog with a few eliminated that I believe would actually contribute in the future to further wrongdoing which is what always happens when you violate the intent of the rule of law. Instead I recommend protection for whistleblowers and immunity for those who were minor coconspirators.
Policy response: Gandhi and Martin Luther King advocated public understanding of the facts and non-cooperation with evil.
Understand the laws of war. These were legislated after WW2 and are crystal-clear that only self-defense, in a narrow legal meaning, can justify war.
The current US wars are Orwellian opposite to being lawful, with growing professional legal opinions affirming this obvious "emperor has no clothes" fact.
Those involved with US military, government, and law enforcement have an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution, not “always place the mission first.” To fulfill their oath they must immediately refuse and end all orders associated with unlawful wars and military-related constant violation of treaties.
End the transfer of trillions of American taxpayer money to banksters and admitted as “lost” by our military. End poverty through global cooperation to achieve the UN Millennium Goals by developed countries investing 0.7% of their income. Support global security through cooperation, dignity, justice, and freedom. Create a US Department of Peace to help.
Communicate. Trust your unique, beautiful, and powerful self-expression to share as you feel appropriate. Understand that while many people are ready to embrace difficult facts, many are not.
Anticipate that you will be attacked and prepare your virtuous response in the spirit of competition, just as you do in other fields.
Prosecute the war leaders for obvious violation of the letter and spirit of US war laws.