Blues Guitar Jam

Blues Guitar Jam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDIVRPhzH6A

Redacted FBI Timeline Contradicts Official 9/11 Fiction

Friday, February 29, 2008

Larisa Alexandrovna has put together a great introduction and companion to a February 14th news summary from Paul Thompson of History Commons (formerly and/or aka Cooperative Research).

Larisa's piece, "FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report", has brought the FBI document (and Paul's analysis of it) to my attention, and stirred up quite a bit of interest among other bloggers (hooray!), You should read the whole thing. Here's a teaser:

Newly-released records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request contradict the 9/11 Commission’s report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and raise fresh questions about the role of Saudi government officials in connection to the hijackers.

They raise fresh questions about the role of American government officials, too; and about the so-called "hijackers".

The nearly 300 pages of a Federal Bureau of Investigation timeline used by the 9/11 Commission as the basis for many of its findings were acquired through a FOIA request filed by Kevin Fenton, a 26 year old translator from the Czech Republic. The FBI released the 298-page “hijacker timeline” Feb. 4.

The FBI timeline reveals that alleged hijacker Hamza Al-Ghamdi, who was aboard the United Airlines flight which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, had booked a future flight to San Francisco. He also had a ticket for a trip from Casablanca to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Suicide bombers with plans for after the attack? How fascinating!!

The timeline is heavily redacted (you can see a page that's been completely obliterated at the top of this post), but there are sill are all sorts of other contradictions, as well as plenty of other evidence of official obfuscation.

As Larisa says,

READ THE DOCUMENTS: PDF pages 1-105, PDF pages 106-210, PDF pages 211-297.

If you're not up to the task of reading 300 pages and figuring out what's new in them, read the rest of Larisa's piece and then read Paul Thompson's: "2/14/2008: Newly Released FBI Timeline Reveals New Information about 9/11 Hijackers that Was Ignored by 9/11 Commission".

Thompson's sub-head reads:

Latest Findings Raise New Questions about Hijackers and Suggest Incomplete Investigation

That's putting it mildly. Just a few excerpts:

New evidence suggests that some of the hijackers were assisted by employees of the Saudi government. It has previously been reported that Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi who was paid by the Saudi government despite not doing any work, assisted hijackers Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi when they first moved to the US. The FBI timeline shows that when these two hijackers moved into their first San Diego apartment, they indicated that they had been living with Bayoumi in the apartment next door for the previous two weeks. In fact, they had been with him in that apartment since January 15, 2000, the very day they first flew into the US, arriving in Los Angeles. The timeline also reveals that hijacker Hani Hanjour was seen in Bayoumi’s apartment.

Here's more on Bayoumi, from the second page of Larisa's piece:

Much has been reported about Omar al-Bayoumi and his alleged relationship with the government of Saudi Arabia. In his recent book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, New York Times reporter Phillip Shenon discusses at length the questions surrounding Bayoumi and his ties to the Saudi government.

“Bayoumi seemed clearly to be working for some part of the Saudi government,” Shenon wrote on page 52. “He entered the United States as a business student and had lived San Diego since 1996. He was on the payroll of an aviation contractor to the Saudi government, paid about $2,800 a month, but apparently did no work for the company.”

In fact, Bayoumi was an employee of the Saudi defense contractor Dallah Avco. According to a 2002 Newsweek article about Bayoumi, Dallah Avco is “an aviation-services company with extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, headed by Prince Sultan, the father of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar.”

Newsweek points to another connection between Bayoumi and Bandar: “About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, NEWSWEEK has learned, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife (and her friend), Manal Ahmed Bagader. The Feds want to know: Was this well-meaning charity gone awry? Or some elaborate money-laundering scheme? A scam? Or just a coincidence?”

And here's Paul Thompson again:

Some credit cards used by the hijackers were still used in the US after 9/11. For instance, a credit card jointly owned by Mohamed Atta and Marwan Alshehhi was used twice on September 15. This helps confirm news reports from late 2001 that hijacker credit cards were used on the East Coast as late as early October 2001. At the time, a government official said that while some of the cards might have been stolen, “We believe there are additional people out there” who helped the hijackers.

When Ahmed Alghamdi arrived in the US from London on May 5, 2001, an immigration inspector apparently noted that Alghamdi commented to him that the media was distorting the facts about Osama bin Laden and that bin Laden was a good Muslim. Alghamdi also indicated that he was travelling with more than $10,000 worth of currency. Shortly after 9/11, the New York Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers reported that by the spring of 2001, US customs was investigating Alghamdi and two other future 9/11 hijackers for their connections to known al-Qaeda operatives. One British newspaper even noted that Alghamdi should have been “instantly ‘red-flagged’ by British intelligence” as he passed through London on his way to the US because of a warning about his links to al-Qaeda. It has not been explained how Alghamdi was able to pass through British and US customs, even as he was openly praising bin Laden.

When hijacker Satam Al Suqami’s passport was recovered on 9/11 on the street near the World Trade Center, it was “soaked in jet fuel.”

It has previously been reported that shortly before 9/11, hijackers Nawaf Alhamzi and Khalid Almihdhar left a bag at a mosque in Laurel, Maryland, with a note attached to it saying, “Gift for the brothers.” The FBI’s timeline identifies this mosque as the Ayah Islamic Center. But the only contents mentioned in the bag were pilot log books, receipts, and other evidence documenting the brief flight training that Alhazmi and Almihdhar underwent in San Diego in early 2000. It is unclear why they would have kept the receipts, some mentioning their names, for over a year and then left them at a mosque to be found. After 9/11, a former high-level intelligence official told journalist Seymour Hersh that “Whatever trail was left [by the hijackers] was left deliberately—for the FBI to chase.”

On March 20, 2000, either Khalid Almihdhar or Nawaf Alhazmi used a phone registered to Alhazmi to make a call from San Diego to an al-Qaeda communications hub in Sana’a, Yemen, run by Almihdhar’s father-in-law. The call lasted 16 minutes. According to the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, the call was intercepted by the NSA, which had been intercepting Alhazmi and Almihdhar’s calls for over a year, but the FBI was not informed of the hijackers’ presence in the US. The call is only briefly mentioned as a family phone call by the 9/11 Commission in a endnote, and it is not mentioned that the call was monitored.

The FBI timeline shows other intriguing hints that the hijackers had associates in the US. For instance, on September 8, 2001, hijackers Majed Moqed and Hani Hanjour went to a bank with an unnamed Middle Eastern male. This man presented a Pennsylvania driver’s license for identification, but none of the 9/11 hijackers have been reported to have a driver’s license from that state. There is also a highly redacted section hinting that a woman in Laurel, Maryland, was helping Middle Eastern men and may have had links to hijackers Mohamed Atta and Ziad Jarrah.

Several months ago, the London Times reported on an al-Qaeda leader imprisoned in Turkey named Luai Sakra. Sakra claims to have trained six of the hijackers in Turkey, including Satam Al Suqami. The FBI’s timeline supports his account, because Al Suqami’s passport record indicates he spent much of his time between late September 2000 and early April 2001 in Turkey. Furthermore, Sakra claimed that Al Suqami was one of the hijacker leaders, and not just another “muscle” hijacker as US investigators have alleged. The FBI’s timeline supports this, because it shows that Al Suqami was frequently on the move from 1998 onwards, flying to Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Iran, Malaysia, as well as Turkey, and he travelled to most of these countries more than once. This is particularly important because contributors to the History Commons have put together evidence suggesting that Sakra was a CIA asset before 9/11, which would suggest that Al Suqami and other hijackers were actually trained by a CIA asset.

It's the biggest scam ever. There's more and more and more. Thompson concludes this way:

Unfortunately, much of the FBI timeline is heavily censored, with entire pages sometimes being completely redacted. But from what we do know, this timeline indicates that many questions remain about the hijackers and the 9/11 attacks. We know that the FBI’s timeline was available to the 9/11 Commission, so why did the commission fail to mention any of the information listed above?

It’s interesting to compare the results of the 9/11 Commission with the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry that proceeded it. For instance, while the 9/11 Commission downplayed any possible ties between the hijackers and the Saudi government, the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry wrote an entire chapter on the topic. Unfortunately, all 28 pages of that chapter were censored. But Sen. Bob Graham, co-chair of the inquiry, later claimed that evidence relating to the two hijackers who lived in San Diego “presented a compelling case that there was Saudi assistance” to the 9/11 plot. He alleged that Omar al-Bayoumi in fact was a Saudi intelligence agent. He also concluded that President Bush directed the FBI “to restrain and obfuscate” investigations into these ties.

Now, we’re finally beginning to see some of what was in those missing 28 pages. One anonymous official who has seen the pages claims: “We’re not talking about rogue elements. We’re talking about a coordinated network that reaches right from the hijackers to multiple places in the Saudi government.”

The 9/11 Commission also downplayed the idea that the hijackers had any assistance in the US. The 9/11 Congressional Inquiry, by contrast, noted that many people who interacted with the hijackers in the US, including Omar al-Bayoumi, were under FBI investigation even before 9/11.

Unfortunately, neither the 9/11 Commission nor the 9/11 Congressional Inquiry was a complete and unbiased investigation. If this timeline reflects just some of what only the FBI knew about the hijackers one month after the attacks, one can only guess at how much more all the US agencies combined know about the hijackers now. Why is that information being kept secret?

Well ... I have a pretty good idea why all that information is being kept secret, and I could tell Paul and Larisa all about it, but they wouldn't believe me. They're not into wacky conspiracy theories. But they don't need to be. Who needs wacky conspiracy theories?

Bandar's wife sends al-Bayoumi's wife money every month through a cutout. al-Bayoumi is a Saudi intelligence agent, who has been helping the "hijackers" since the moment they arrived. Bandar is a "close personal friend" of the "president", who directed the FBI "to restrain and obfuscate" the investigations. And now most of the details are still redacted.

So ... what do you think? Was it all a mistake? Was is just a coincidence? Was it mere incompetence?

I mean, did those checks from Bandar's wife end up in the hands of al-Bayoumi's wife by accident?

Sure, they did!
http://winterpatriot.blogspot.com/

An invention called 'the Jewish people'

by Tom Segev



srael's Declaration of Independence states that the Jewish people arose in the Land of Israel and was exiled from its homeland. Every Israeli schoolchild is taught that this happened during the period of Roman rule, in 70 CE. The nation remained loyal to its land, to which it began to return after two millennia of exile. Wrong, says the historian Shlomo Zand, in one of the most fascinating and challenging books published here in a long time. There never was a Jewish people, only a Jewish religion, and the exile also never happened - hence there was no return. Zand rejects most of the stories of national-identity formation in the Bible, including the exodus from Egypt and, most satisfactorily, the horrors of the conquest under Joshua. It's all fiction and myth that served as an excuse for the establishment of the State of Israel, he asserts.

According to Zand, the Romans did not generally exile whole nations, and most of the Jews were permitted to remain in the country. The number of those exiled was at most tens of thousands. When the country was conquered by the Arabs, many of the Jews converted to Islam and were assimilated among the conquerors. It follows that the progenitors of the Palestinian Arabs were Jews. Zand did not invent this thesis; 30 years before the Declaration of Independence, it was espoused by David Ben-Gurion, Yitzhak Ben-Zvi and others.

If the majority of the Jews were not exiled, how is it that so many of them reached almost every country on earth? Zand says they emigrated of their own volition or, if they were among those exiled to Babylon, remained there because they chose to. Contrary to conventional belief, the Jewish religion tried to induce members of other faiths to become Jews, which explains how there came to be millions of Jews in the world. As the Book of Esther, for example, notes, "And many of the people of the land became Jews; for the fear of the Jews fell upon them."

Zand quotes from many existing studies, some of which were written in Israel but shunted out of the central discourse. He also describes at length the Jewish kingdom of Himyar in the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Jewish Berbers in North Africa. The community of Jews in Spain sprang from Arabs who became Jews and arrived with the forces that captured Spain from the Christians, and from European-born individuals who had also become Jews.

The first Jews of Ashkenaz (Germany) did not come from the Land of Israel and did not reach Eastern Europe from Germany, but became Jews in the Khazar Kingdom in the Caucasus. Zand explains the origins of Yiddish culture: it was not a Jewish import from Germany, but the result of the connection between the offspring of the Kuzari and Germans who traveled to the East, some of them as merchants.

We find, then, that the members of a variety of peoples and races, blond and black, brown and yellow, became Jews in large numbers. According to Zand, the Zionist need to devise for them a shared ethnicity and historical continuity produced a long series of inventions and fictions, along with an invocation of racist theses. Some were concocted in the minds of those who conceived the Zionist movement, while others were offered as the findings of genetic studies conducted in Israel.

Prof. Zand teaches at Tel Aviv University. His book, "When and How Was the Jewish People Invented?" (published by Resling in Hebrew), is intended to promote the idea that Israel should be a "state of all its citizens" - Jews, Arabs and others - in contrast to its declared identity as a "Jewish and democratic" state. Personal stories, a prolonged theoretical discussion and abundant sarcastic quips do not help the book, but its historical chapters are well-written and cite numerous facts and insights that many Israelis will be astonished to read for the first time.
More
http://www.haaretz.com/

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My ancestors (Rivero is a Sephardic name) were among those who split from Judea in 70AD and moved to Spain, became noble, became rich, fought in the crusades, then were forcibly converted to Catholicism in the 1490s.

In contrast, most of the Jewish people living in Israel are Ashkenazi, who have no genetic link to the Biblical Hebrews at all. But they like to claim they do, as part of what Shlomo Zand correctly describes as the justification for the existance of Israel (on land stolen from the Palestinians, who actually ARE the genetic descendants of the Biblical Hebrews.

Israelis know this. They have actively suppressed scientific evidence that shows Palestinians and ARAB Jews are the descendants of Biblical Hebrews.

The irony here is how these converted Khazars, who are not actually descendants of the Semites, call me, an actual genetic descendant of the Biblical Hebrews, "Anti-Semitic"! :)

Mike Rivero http://whatreallyhappened.com/

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Friday, February 29, 2008

Yes, There Is a Guerrilla War Against Zionism in the U.S.

Friday, February 29, 2008

By Philip Weiss

I just looked at the comment section of the youtube speech by Congressman Howard Berman the other night in Sherman Oaks. It's stunning how much rage there is toward Berman:

Portrait of a hypnotized zionist tool. He can't even see how he is speaking out of both sides of his mouth. PeaceThroughJustice above has it bang on: HB says he is an ardent supporter of israel and he firmly stands behind israel's security"; then he is shocked that anyone would suggest that US foreign policy is controlled by zionists.

There is no end of evidence that this kind of rage is bubbling to the surface all over America. My sister-in-law tells me that the almost-censored If Americans Knew speech at the Greenwich Library last week was "a mob scene." I've blogged about the fact that at a Yivo event, neocon Iraq-war-planner Bill Kristol had a hunted look as he spoke of the craziness that had surrounded neocons since the war. Neocon chronicler Jacob Heilbrunn has seemed fearful in his public statements about his book, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, stepping away from his own assertion that neocons formed cabals in the government.

It is as if he is spooked by the snakepit he stepped into. The fact that our Israel policy has hurt us across the Arab world is no longer a revelation to Americans. They know it, and seem to want to do something about it. Jimmy Carter and Walt and Mearsheimer and the Iraq debacle have been an IV-drip into the American bloodstream.

The rage out there is not antisemitism. It may be antiZionism, it may be isolationism. It is a groundswell that needs to be addressed honestly. When Congressman Berman went into fits of denial that there is an Israel lobby, after saying that he joined the Foreign Affairs Committee because he cared about Israel, this was not honest.

What should Jewish institutions do about it?

The answer is obvious, they should have forums. They should express the range of Jewish opinion re Israel (not the narrow range that Yivo gathered in its Martin Peretz-organized forum on Walt and Mearsheimer in November). They should encourage that range.

They should begin an open discussion within the Jewish community of what Zionism has done to Jewish identity and American foreign policy. They should grill the neocons and give a platform to post-Zionist Jews like Joel Koveland David Zellnik, rather than just smearing them.

They should confront the extent to which the adamant refusal by the Jewish establishment to acknowledge Palestinian suffering even as it insists that Israel is a democracy has hurt Judaism and hurt U.S. foreign policy.

They should wake up.

Philip Weiss lives in New York and is an investigative journalist who has been a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, Jewish World Review, The New York Observer and other mainstream publications as well as being as being a contributing editor to Esquire and Harper's Magazine.
Weiss is the author of the 2004 book "American Taboo: A Murder In The Peace Corps." He is now working on a book about Jewish issues. He writes a blog for the New York Observer, Mondoweiss.

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON

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Friday, February 29, 2008

ISRAELI MINISTERS ARGUE OVER BEST WAY OF KILLING PALESTINIANS

Friday, February 29, 2008

Two Israeli ministers are openly debating the best way to kill Palestinian people. It seems that the Israeli Minister for Terrorism Against Palestinians, Ehud Barak, favours an invasion of the Gaza Strip to kill as many Palestinian fighters that they can lay their hands on, while the Israeli Minister for the Interior, Meir Sheetrit, would prefer a massive targeted killing spree. Either way, it is likely that many innocent civilians will die as well as many Palestinian fighters.

Sheetrit says: "We must not let anyone involved in the shooting stay alive. I am opposed to hesitation and in favour of wiping out anyone who is in Hamas; from the military and political echelons, no matter who." Barak on the other hand simply says: "Israel will reach those responsible, hit them in operations, and Hamas will pay the price for its activities."

One has to wonder where the world’s indignation is as ministers of one nation coldly and deliberately plan to murder the leaders of another nation. One can imagine the outcry from the Western mainstream media if Hamas announced to the world that it had found the means by which it could launch silent and deadly accurate missiles at individuals and was about to embark on a campaign of targeted killings of Israeli political and military leaders. Yet when the Israelis do it, we hear absolutely nothing.

There is, of course, a bigger picture to be seen in all this. Israel’s war against Hamas is simply part of a much more complex strategy designed to provoke Hezbollah and Syria into a wider confrontation that ultimately will draw in Iran. Israel will then find some cause to attack Iran and then the US will enter the fray in order to protect Israel. The resultant will be; Israel will have a free hand to deal with the Gaza and the West Bank as it sees fit and Hezbollah without support from Syria or Iran will be beaten. Hamas, the elected government of the Palestinian people, will be annihilated.

The world will just sit by and watch.

posted by Damian Lataan at 9:47 AM

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON

WHOEVER SAYS SPECIESISM SAYS FASCISM

Friday, February 29, 2008

WHOEVER SAYS SPECIESISM SAYS FASCISM

Adventures in the blogosphere while trying to introduce a discomfitting issue

By Patrice Greanville

I recently posted, mostly on impulse, as a result of hearing about yet another execrable crime committed against helpless animals (by the usual suspects)...a plea for "progressives" to consider amplifying their scope of moral consideration to include all sentient beings subject to tyrannization. As a lifelong leftist and animal liberationist I am well acquainted with the temperament and idiosyncrasy prevailing in both tribes, and knew quite well that the "left"—however we may define it, has been less than helpful in the struggles to introduce a modicum of compassion in the brutal interactions between humans and non-humans. I know that it seems inane to ask people who are already horribly busy and overstretched coping with the constant tsunami of crime and idiocies produced by this system by the hour...to take yet another "cause" on their shoulders. I am also quite clear about the fact that the Left has never weaned itself off of the 19th century hangover proclaiming "man" (generically speaking) as the measure of all things and therefore center of the universe. This victory of secularism and democracy with a very small "d" was in fact the result of long centuries of struggles against church and king to give rationality and the "common man" a legitimate place at the table of societal decision making. This impromptu essay, therefore, reflected some of these theses.

I posted the blog, as a trial balloon, on SmirkingChimp and DailyKos , large sites occupying what we might call the centrist-liberaloid part of the spectrum. The vast majority of the folks who visit (and participate in) the site probably see themselves as far more progressive in their politics than they really are, as their commentary reveals a preponderance of mainstream Democrats, ABBrs (Anyone But Bush), a sprinkling of social democrats, and a vociferous contingent of extreme centrists (who naturally never see themselves as extremists). Refreshingly, most of the featured writers seem to be well to the left of the audience (at least at these sites).

I mention these features of SmirkingChimp & DailyKos to give you the context for what happened next. In a nutshell, my post bombed. (It is reproduced in toto below). The article seemed to touch a raw nerve and the response was almost uniformly poor. Frankly, because, as I said earlier, I know the mentality of the traditional left and that of leftoids so well, I didn't expect a massive conversion...still, the fierceness of the rejection, the level of intellectual lazines, ignorance, sarcasm and derision, was not exactly reassuring, in fact it was downright alarming considering that it is these people who will sooner or later have to undertake the transformation of America, for the better one hopes.

Eventually, disgusted with this exhibition of sheer stupidity, disgraceful for the standards of progressivism, my own son posted a rebuttal (which I have the pleasure of reproducing below). I think the sheer quality and eloquence of his words will dissipate any thought of my having fallen victim to nepotism. Well, here's the main post:

He who says speciesism says fascism—

(DailyKos diary at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/2/2/22518/25695)

Fri Feb 02, 2007 at 08:22:40 PM PST

By Patrice Greanville ("Pije")

Forty-eight thousand million animals—yes, 48 billion creatures—are estimated to die each year as a result of human activities ranging from factory farming to hunting, the fur garment trades, commercial exploitation of various kinds, and biomedical research. That's more than 130 million creatures every single day, including birds, cows, and hogs, all of them highly sociable animals.

The way we go about killing animals, wherever they may be found or kept, land, sea or air—murdering and torturing are better words—is astonishing. We do it with abandon and we do it in such institutionalized, "tradition" approved ways that only a minority ever realize the extent of the tragedy. Since the era of modern fishing began 200 years ago we have decimated the oceans, ostensibly infinite reservoirs of life, converting many maritime regions into what Farley Mowat has accurately decried as "seas of slaughter." In the USA alone, every year almost 50 million turkeys are killed just for Thanksgiving Day, to commemorate a date that is of questionable historical merit, and which, despite the fact that the sacrificial victims have grown from a handful to tens of millions, rarely stirs any introspection.

Sadly, such incidents are but a mere drop in an invisible sea of abuse whose actual roots date back to our earliest times as a species with self-righteous "dominionistic" claims over nature. Forty-eight billion animals is a stunning figure, yet this figure, regarded by many experts as scandalously conservative, does not include animals mistreated or dead as a result of habitat destruction, widespread pollution, apparently "harmless" recreational activities such as sport fishing and boating, and the collision of animals with "modernity" (up to 250 million animals die annually as roadkill on the American highways alone). We have become indeed not only the most appalling tyranny over every other sentient creature on this planet, including many segments of our own breed, but also a raging, self-righteous cancer extending itself with impunity to every corner of the earth.

Time to do some rethinking

Today, as a result of a voracious industrialism, ecological deterioration and other related issues, self-defined progressives can't afford to go on pretending that suffering on such egregious scale is just a peripheral issue, or the concern of affluent diettantes with little interest in other social issues. Due to a deeply embedded and largely unexamined 18th Century heritage of philosophical "superhumanism" ("man is the measure of all things," and the rest of all that self-celebratory rubbish, which, we should mention in passing, arose as a response to a greater form of human stupidity, the one granting God and King total control over human agency), the Left continues to endorse or acquiesce in human supremacist attitudes toward animals. This moral blindness is inexcusable for those who rightly see themselves as the moral vanguard of humanity. [Check this article, for example: Rethinking Revolution: Animal Liberation, Human Liberation, and the Future of the Left by STEVEN BEST . It'll probably challenge many of your assumptions.] The bottom line is that speciesism—an underhanded and primitive form of fascism applied to animals and nature in general—is by far the oldest and most pervasive form of brutal tyrannization known on our planet. I don't use the word "fascism" as hyperbole in this context or for dramatic effect. I wish it were hyperbole. Fascism is distinguished for its unilateral proclamations of superiority by a certain race or breed, with such spurious superiority endowing said race with the "right" to dominate, exploit, and annihilate at will any group deemed "inferior." If that pretty much doesn't describe eloquently our despicable behavior toward non-human animals, I don't know what does.

I realize quite well that to raise this topic is to ask for trouble. The fight to expand the realm of moral consideration to animals—to make such inclusion a matter of right—arouses deep animosities, including in the midst of many people who would otherwise define themselves as card-carrying progressives or, as our opponents across the political tracks like to say, "bleeding hearts." Well, I guess the bleeding of the human heart does not encompass in most cases the suffering of other sentient beings—especially those already classified by tradition as "raised for food" (as if such categorization in and of itself erased all trace of what is by any reckoning a truly nightmarish tyrannization).

I mean no offense to anyone on this blog but I've been through this before, so I know the score, and what I'm saying here is that I am resigned, I expect to see sarcasm, derision, flippancy, intellectual laziness, and, why not, even intellectual dishonesty—for such is the likely response elicited by the deep reservoir of human chauvinism that afflicts so many in our species. The more creative [of my inevitable critics] will hide their prejudices by feigning alarm at my conflating the words "fascism" and "speciesism." Well, I have something to say to this easily offended crowd: You abuse a language when you turn it on its head, to accomplish precisely the opposite of what the words originally denoted, or in furtherance of what would be, by fair evaluation, an obviously despicable pursuit. Bush and his contemptible camarilla, as we all know, are a prime example of this: in The First Decider's lips the words freedom, democracy and justice, not to mention a fair shake for the disadvantaged, are but tools of manipulation to buttress the agenda of a deranged and criminal plutocracy driving the world ever closer to total war. But what am I proposing here? Just think about it for a moment. Something that all of you should be for, an extension of compassion, or at least the benefit of the doubt when subjecting mind-boggling numbers of creatures to the finality of death. In other words, I'm pleading for a reduction in the colossal amount of violence that this planet already sustains, the violence that at least our species is directly responsible for... Where is the inversion of meaning there? The outrageous betrayal of the language? Or is it that by saying "fascism" and "speciesism" in one breath I manage to offend the sensibilities of too many purists who happen to land on this forsaken blog?

Words change, expand, become obsolete, drop and add connotations and meanings, and sometimes die, like the things and realities they were initially created for. And besides, just like there are many varieties of capitalism, socialism and communism, so you also have distinct varieties of fascism. In some, all the bells and whistles are found that connote "classical fascism" —the jackboots, the open corporatization of the state, and so on and so forth, as we have come to know it. In others, it's more of an all-encompassing worldview, a system of values, a subterranean ideology that justifies a malignant treatment code. But here's what we need to remember: The boots, the marches, the endless wars, the nauseating violence, the paraphernalia of fascism and the fascination with death—all of that cannot happen in the absence of an ideology that has its own roots in the oppression of others by virtue of a self-serving, unilateral declaration of superiority. Thus, it is undeniable that the core concept fueling speciesism is also found behind racism, classism, and male chauvinism. They all feed at the trough of hatred or profound lack of empathy toward "the other."

Now—as we all have learned—human chauvinism cuts very deep and pervades every nook and cranny of what we optimistically still call civilization, and has done so for millennia. No one is immune to its infection, including many folks who regard themselves as impeccably "progressive". Indeed, it is from their ranks that you often hear some of the worst and most derisive epithets. The usual argument is that progressives, always a thin line against barbarism, have better things to attend to than the fate of "mere" chickens and cows. Compassion, to such individuals, has obviously left the building; it is fungible, divisible, and comfortably apportionable according to inclusion or exclusion in certain categories of privileged sentience. They obviously don't see—refuse to see—the parallels with so many other struggles they may have honored or participated in, nor do they see how the liberation of animals is an integral part of a serious environmentalist agenda. No, here they draw the line, and reason, kindness, and the most elementary fairness fly out the window.

But such narrow-minded and intellectually lazy positions will surely be exposed—sooner rather than later—for the pretentious sham they truly are. For now, in the age of an utterly deranged industrialism, with a global system blatantly proclaiming as its organizing principle the pursuit at any cost of infinite growth in what to any sensible person is a very finite and fragile planet, the tyranny of humans over nature has acquired monstruous proportions. The colossal dimensions of animal exploitation by the industrial method and the death of one species after another grimly attest to that.

In view of these incontestable facts, no one with a scintilla of decency should turn his or her back on such knowledge. It is the duty of all people who haven't yet done so, and especially of progressives, to re-examine their assumptions about animals, about their everyday conduct in choosing food and clothing and transportation modes, and to join the last struggle against the first tyranny. By doing so, they will re-invigorate the environmental movement, rendering it less abstract and more passionate, because while fighting for nature is a noble and urgent call, fighting for nature's oppressed creatures is a matter of long overdue justice.

PATRICE GREANVILLE, editor of Cyrano's Journal [ http://www.cjonline.org ] is an independent leftist and sometime economist who has always supported animal liberation, and who sees no contradiction whatsoever in such praxis.

http://www.bestcyrano.org/animals.htm


Photo: 2-28-08 K

"How To Catch Wild PiGs" ...

Thursday, February 28, 2008

"How To Catch Wild PiGs" ...

Author unknown,

There was a professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the Prof noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.

The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new communist government.

In the midst of his story he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked, ' Do you know how to catch wild pigs?'

The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.

The young man said this was no joke.' You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence.They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd.

Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have forgotten how To forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.

The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening to America. The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income,tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP),welfare, medicine, drugs, free medical, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms - just a little at a time.

One should always remember 'There is no such thing as a free Lunch!
Also, a politician will never provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself. Also, if you see that all of this wonderful government 'help' is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to send this on to your friends. If you think the free ride is essential to your way of life then you will probably delete this, but God help you when the gate slams shut!

'A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to take away everything you have.' -- Thomas Jefferson

"The giant oak is an acorn that held its ground."--Anonymous

"If you worship your enemy, you are defeated.
If you adopt your enemy's religion you are enslaved.
If you breed with your enemy you are destroyed."
-- Polydoros

Thanks Wild Bill Hyde

Posted by curt maynard

http://curtmaynardsblog.blogspot.com/

"War Pigs" and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies

Bear with me on this supposition, but why does it seem, that whenever one looks into who is behind these "Democracy" type groups, one finds an abundance of Israeli's, Zionists and NeoCons?

These are the ones that are more familar with the insides of a "think tank" than a battle tank.

Some of the same people helped lie the US into fighting a war against Iraq are now lying the US into fighting a war against Iran. Worse, they are being listened to.

One of those shadowy "think tanks", the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) has been active lately, promoting not only the war against Iran, but also taking to the airwaves pimping the US Congress to pass Herr Bush's latest draconian invasion of our privacy, the so-called "Protect America Act", which will do anything but.

They use warped reasoning for this act, saying that if it had been in place, we might have prevented 9/11. BS. The Bush/Cheney Junta was spying on Americans long before 9/11, so why didn't they ferret out that info back then, in early 2001? Could it be they were spying on Americans to make sure that 9/11 went down as planned? But, I digress...

Such is the warped reasoning of the FDD. They want to protect our liberty by demolishing the Bill of Rights.

The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is anything but, with a collection of the "usual suspects" whose only interest is to keep the U.S. bogged down in the ME, fighting war after war for Israel, with the next war against Iran being whooped up to a fever pitch.

Some of these suspects you'll instantly recognize, such as Bill Kristol, who recently demonstrated such a poor knowledge of ME history that it got him hired by the New York Times.

If you haven't read this article, showing Billy's basic ignorance about critical Iraq history, do yourself a favor and click here

Frank Gaffney, who lurks about the halls of Congress, peddling more of his brand of Islamaphobia to any and all willing to listen.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., is president, CEO, and founder of the Center for Security Policy -- "a small think tank funded mainly by U.S. defence contractors, far-right foundations, and right-wing Zionists." Gaffney is considered to be a "neo-con" (neo-conservative).

Call Frankie boy a defense contractors dream come true. It's people like this that the heavy metal band "Black Sabbath" had in mind when they composed their excellent antiwar song, "War Pigs." Frank is one of the original signers to the "Project for the New American Century."

The PNAC is road map for waging eternal wars in the ME for Israel. A road map that is more than familiar to the bombed out people of Lebanon. The starving masses in Gaza.
And very familar to the terrorized people of that destroyed nation formerly known as Iraq.

There's Richard Perle. Known in Washington circles as "The Prince of Darkness," Perle is associated with the American Enterprise Institute and the Project for the New American Century, both of which have been prominent behind-the-scenes architects of the Bush administration's foreign policy, in particular its push for war with Iraq.

Has been accused of looting the assets of Hollinger International, the former media empire of Conrad Black.

Perle and Black are now (2004) estranged and have accused each other of wrongdoing in the looting of Hollinger assets. The Breeden Report, which cataloged the accusations against Black by the now-independent Hollinger directors, singled out Perle, among all of the corporate directors, for criticism: "As a faithless fiduciary, Perle should be required to disgorge all compensation received from the company". In October 2004, Hollinger amended its lawsuit against Black to include Perle as a defendant, asking for $22.9 million, including the $5.4 million of his compensation.

Tsk, Tsk, Richard, is it really true?

Perle has been fighting off the impression that he was trying to use his Pentagon influence to profit from the Iraq war that he was doing all he could to implement. Now it's "Deja vu" all over again as the "Prince" is trying mightily to jump start the war against Iran.

Fought by Americans, of course, for the glory of Israel. Maybe we should start draping the Star of David across those coffins, filled with American kids, coming home from the ME.

There's Charles Krauthammer. Anyone who has a stomach strong enough to watch FOX news for more than five minutes will recognize Chuckie's name and recall his dour countenance. Chuck is another War Pig that just loves to see death and destruction sowed thru ought the ME, as long as the death and destruction isn't hitting his beloved Israel.

"When historians look back on the United States war in Iraq, they will almost certainly be struck by how a small group of mainly neo-conservative analysts and activists outside the administration were able to shape the US media debate in ways that made the drive to war so much easier than it might have been… But historians would be negligent if they ignored the day-to-day work of one person who, as much as anyone outside the administration, made their media ubiquity possible. Meet Eleana Benador, the Peruvian-born publicist for Perle, Woolsey, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and a dozen other prominent neo-conservatives whose hawkish opinions proved very hard to avoid for anyone who watched news talk shows or read the op-ed pages of major newspapers over the past 20 months."
— Jim Lobe, The Andean Condor among the Hawks, Asia Times, August 15, 2003.

Guess who's on the Benador list as an available speaker? That's right, our buddy Chuckie. Check out this list for a regular "Who's Who" in the ME war making department.

And, no organization that is currently pimping for another ME would be complete without listing that US Senator representing Tel Aviv, Joe LIeberman of Connecticut.

Damn near anytime one looks into the upcoming war against Iran and who's promoting that war, Joe's name is usually on the list.
Rumored to be John McCain's candidate for either VP or Secretary of Defense.

Do a Google search of Joe boy and see how many articles linked to Lieberman include his fantasies of waging war and more war in the ME.

Joey, like Chuckie, wants US kids stuck fighting ME wars against Israel's "existential" enemies for the next 50 years or so.

If the entire ME gets destroyed like Iraq, that would be fine with these War Pigs, as long as their beloved Israel isn't touched and gets to stay on as ME Overlord.

And Americans get stuck with the bill for this fighting, a bill that comes due with every coffin shipped home from the ME, filled with our kids, killed fighting wars for Israel.

Greg Bacon's blog

http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/5882

Readyville Mill - Cannon County TN

Readyville Mill - Cannon County TN

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdARhXLM0Gc

I lived at the Readyville Mill for a while in 1975 and worked and played there on and off until it's closure in the early 80's and would like to take the opportunity to thank Tomm Brady, the current owner, for his continuing efforts to restore this wonderfully historic place. It holds a lot of memories.
My girls and I spent more than a few hot summer days at the swimming hole behind the dam.
The famous or infamous "Goat Roasts" of the late 70's were held there; hundreds of people, good music, many kegs of beer and barbecued goats.
The mill store was one of the first natural foods businesses in the middle TN area.
A local moonshiner got his corn ground there and paid the bill in trade; "shine" buried in an oak keg for a year, it was the best I ever had.
Hopefully the restoration will continue and the mill returned to it's former glory.
Kenny

more local photos and videos
http://brysonsdozerservice.blogspot.com/

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
``````````````````````````````
The Readyville Mill is the sole vestige of what was once a flourishing industry on the Stones River in Middle Tennessee. Dating from the 1870s, the current Readyville Mill is a three-story building with an open fourth-story attic. In the early 1900s, the mill supplied the area with electricity, making Readyville one of the first rural villages in Tennessee to possess electric lights. Other products included ice, corn meal, refined flour, whole wheat flour, buckwheat flour, and lumber.

Tomm Brady, current owner of the Readyville Mill, is working hard to restore this wonderful place back to working condition.

The mill site consists of 3.9 acres on the East Fork of the Stones River. The mill is 1.5 miles from scenic Highway 70S 12 miles east of Murfreesboro.







Mill History

1766 Uriah Stone explored current Readyville area; Stones River named after him.


1802 Mary & Charles Ready setteled Readyville area.


1811 Ready offered land for Rutherford County seat; post office built.


1812 Ready built GRIST MILL; cut channel from Stones River for water wheel.


1829 Ready built home known as The Corners, which still stands.


SAW MILL added, DAM and RACE built


MILL BURNED-DATE AND CAUSE UNKNOWN


1859 Charles died; daughter Jane & husband Peter Talley continues operation with their son, Frances.


1878 Robert Carter rebuilt building standing now


FLOUR MILL added


1889 W. B. Hayes bought Mill; worked with son, Sam, and Arthur McFerrin. Sam lived in the house across the race; currently a rental house.


SAWMILL added


1900 ICE PLANT built.


1918 ELECTRICITY Readyville had electricity before Murfreesboro (plant bought by TVA in 1937.


TOP FLOOR added to Mill; 4th floor added to provide more height for the gravity-dependent milling operation,


MACHINE SHOP over the millrace south of Highway 70S built.


1930s CORN MEAL, FLOUR, LUMBER, ICE, ELECTRICITY, MACHINE SHOP operated at this site.

1935+ Leslie & George Justice bought 3.75 acre mill site; sawmill sold; TURBINES installed; grinding stones replaced by steel rollers for white flour. 1970 Mary & Gerald Flipse bought Mill; GRINDING STONES from another mill added to provide corn, whole wheat, buckwheat operations; French burr stone form Marne Valley. 1973 Mill placed on National Register of Historic Places Marie & Wilfred Carignan purchased Mill. 1977 Mill sold to George Reel & Wayne Epperly. 1980s Mill stopped running. 2006 Mill bought and in process of being restored. Update and pictures soon to come.

http://parq.org/


PHOTO: 2-28-08

Some hateful, radical ministers -- white evangelicals -- are acceptable

Glenn Greenwald

Thursday February 28, 2008 07:40 EST

Some hateful, radical ministers -- white evangelicals -- are acceptable

(TV Evangelist John Hagee Wants War With Iran, and He Wants It Now!)

(Updated below - Update II - Update III - Update IV - Update V - Update VI)

One of this week's hysterical press scandals was that Minister Louis Farrakhan praised Barack Obama's candidacy even though Obama had previously denounced numerous Farrakhan remarks and the Obama campaign did nothing to seek out the Farrakhan praise. Nonetheless, Tim Russert demanded that Obama jump through multiple hoops to prove that he has no connection to -- and, in fact, "rejects" -- the ideas espoused by Farrakhan deemed to be radical and hateful.

Yesterday, though, the equally fringe, radical and hateful (at least) Rev. John Hagee -- a white evangelical who is the pastor of a sprawling "mega-church" in Texas -- enthusiastically endorsed John McCain. Did McCain have to jump through the same hoops which Russert and others set up for Obama and "denounce" Hagee's extremism and "reject" his support? No; quite the opposite. McCain said he was "very honored" to receive this endorsement and, when asked about some of Hagee's more twisted views, responded: "all I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee's support."

McCain's sainted supporter, Joe Lieberman, last year spoke to Hagee's group and lavished him with such obsequious praise that Lieberman actually compared Hagee, favorably, to Moses. Why is Louis Farrakhan deemed by our political establishment to be so radioactive as to not be fit for good company -- black candidates are required to repudiate his support even when they haven't sought it and denounce his views even when they've never advocated anything close to those views -- but John Hagee is a perfectly acceptable figure whom mainstream GOP politicians are free to court without any consequences or media objections?

Here is just a small sampling of the belief system of this welcomed McCain supporter:

* All Muslims are programmed to kill and we can thus never negotiate with any of them. From an NPR interview Hagee gave to Terry Gross in 2006:

TG: If you use the Bible as the basis for policy, is there any room for compromise? And if you use the bible as the basis for policy, should Muslims use the Koran as the basis for their policy, and then again, what possible basis is there for compromise at that point?

JH: There is really no room for compromise between radical Islam --

TG: I'm not talking about radical Islam. I'm just talking about Islam in general.

JH: Well Islam in general -- those who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.

* God caused Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans because it had a gay pride parade the week before and was filled with sexual sin. From the same interview:

JH: All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.

The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it would was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other gay pride parades.

So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the Day of Judgment, and I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.

* The End Times -- Rapture -- is imminent and the U.S. Government must do what it can to hasten it, which at minimum requires: (a) a war with Iran and (b) undying, absolute support for a unified Israel, including all Occupied Territories (hence, Joe Lieberman's love affair with them). From Christian Palestinian Daoud Kuttab in The New York Times (h/t PZ Meyers):

A small minority of evangelical Christians have entered the Middle East political arena with some of the most un-Christian statements I have ever heard. . . . [Rev.] Hagee, a popular televangelist who leads the 18,000-member Cornerstone Church in San Antonio, ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, "Jerusalem Countdown," in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon (which will mean the death of most Jews, in his eyes) and the Second Coming of Christ. In the best-selling book, Hagee insists that the United States must join Israel in a preemptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God's plan for both Israel and the West.

Hagee believes that "the president's support for Israel fulfills a biblical injunction to protect the Jewish state," which "will play a pivotal role in the second coming." These views are not unrelated to Hagee's support for McCain. Quite the contrary; Hagee cited McCain's so-called "pro-Israel views," his belligerence towards Iran, and his social conservatism as reasons for the endorsement. And in critical contrast to Obama and Farrakhan, McCain actually seems to share some of Hagee's more twisted views, as evidenced by McCain's joyful singing about dropping bombs on Iran.

The GOP has long been given a pass on courting the most warped and twisted religious figures around. George Bush spoke regularly with Pat Robertson -- never once forced to "denounce" or "reject" him. In 2006, Rev. Hagee had a private meeting with uber-White House neocon (and convicted criminal) Elliot Abrams, who just happens to run Middle East policy in the Bush administration, and afterwards, Hagee gushed that he and Abrams (like he and Lieberman) shared similar views towards the Middle East: "we felt we were on the right track."

Watching the media's treatment of Farrakhan and Hagee, is it possible to imagine a more transparent, and grotesque, double standard? In the framework of the Russert-led establishment press, white evangelical Christians are, by definition, entitled to great respect no matter how radical, extreme and hateful their professed views are. These are, after all, religious Christians -- People of Faith -- and, as such, it is wrong, even bigoted, to suggest that they should be repudiated. There is nothing ever radical, hateful or dangerous about the views of white evangelical Christians like Hagee.

Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people. They are still fit for good company, an important and cherished part of our mainstream American political system. The entire GOP establishment is permitted actively to lavish them with praise and court their support without the slightest backlash or controversy. Both George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sent formal greetings to the 2006 gathering of Hagee's group.

By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers.

How come Tim Russert -- in all the times he sits and chats with Lieberman, McCain and various high Bush officials -- never reads all of the inflammatory, disgusting, crazed "Rapture-is-Coming/ All-Jews-will-Burn/ Kill-All-Muslims/ Hurricanes-are-Punishment-against-Gays" pronouncements from John Hagee and James Dobson and Pat Robertson and demand that John McCain and George Bush and Joe Lieberman "denounce" those views and "reject" their support? What's the difference, exactly?

UPDATE: As emaydon recalls in Comments, McCain supporter Rudy Giuliani, just a few months ago, stood on the same stage and gushed with gratitude over the endorsement by Rev. Pat Robertson of Giuliani's presidential bid.

That's the same Rev. Robertson who, among so many great things, said that Ariel Sharon's stroke was God's punishment for giving up Gaza and the 9/11 attack was divine retribution against America -- America's fault -- for tolerating gays, feminists and the ACLU. But Giuliani was the moderate, respectable candidate who was free to accept Robertson's endorsement, and Russert and his friends never demanded that he "reject" it.

UPDATE II: Although cavorting with the likes of Pat Robertson and John Hagee is perfectly acceptable in Russert World, Russert also demanded, back in January, 2006, that Obama opine on various controversial remarks from the highly influential political philosopher Harry Belafonte (h/t JKP1000):

MR. RUSSERT: I want to talk a little bit about the language people are using in the politics now of 2006, and I refer you to some comments that Harry Belafonte made yesterday. He said that Homeland Security had become the new Gestapo. What do you think of that?

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Belafonte went to Venezuela, as you well know, some time ago and met with the Hugo Chavez, leader of that country, and said some things that obviously were noted in this country and around the world. Let’s listen, and come back and talk about it.

(Videotape, January 8, 2006) . . .

MR. RUSSERT: Is it appropriate to call the President of the United States "the greatest terrorist in the world"?

Obama is required to denounce certain people with whom he has no connection while the likes of Bush, McCain, Lieberman and Giuliani are free to associate themselves openly with the most extremist elements around.

UPDATE III: Here is the McCain campaign website proudly promoting a video of Rev. Hagee's reverent introduction of McCain, while McCain and wife Cindy stood proudly by, during the candidate's "No Surrender Tour":


During his remarks, Rev. Hagee denounced those "in Congress who whine about the cost of the war"; said we can't withdraw from Iraq because "Israel will be in greater danger than ever before," pointed out that "Allah [is Ahmadinejad's] God -- not ours"; and raved that McCain "is the leader and the [other candidates] are followers." Rev. Hagee concluded: "Without victory, there is no survival." McCain then went over to him and warmly shook his hand.

UPDATE IV: Over at New Republic, Dayo Olopade collects a couple of additional Hagee quotes, including this one warning about the Harry Potter books:

As millions of people anticipate the release of the latest Harry Potter book and film, we're reminded once again of Satan's ongoing attempt to deceive and destroy. The whole purpose of the Potter books is to desensitize readers and introduce them to the occult.

McCain in 2008! Let's ask Joe Lieberman what he thinks about the Pastor:

I begin by thanking your founder, Pastor John Hagee. I would describe Pastor Hagee with the words the Torah uses to describe Moses, he is an "Eesh Elo Kim," a man of God because those words fit him; and, like Moses he has become the leader of a mighty multitude in pursuit of and defense of Israel.

John McCain and Joe Lieberman -- Hagee reverence and all -- are our nation's Serious, principled, and moderate figures. Just ask Tim Russert, Fred Hiatt, Joe Klein, Gloria Borger, Chris Matthews, et al.

UPDATE V: The Catholic League's Bill Donohue, the media's anointed arbiter for all matters relating to what he claims is "anti-Catholic bigotry," is quite furious about McCain's warm embrace of Pastor Hagee:

McCAIN EMBRACES BIGOT

Catholic League president Bill Donohue addressed this today:

"There are plenty of staunch evangelical leaders who are pro-Israel, but are not anti-Catholic. John Hagee is not one of them. Indeed, for the past few decades, he has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it 'The Great Whore,' an 'apostate church,' the 'anti-Christ,' and a 'false cult system' . . . .

"In Hagee's latest book, Jerusalem Countdown, he calls Hitler a Catholic who murdered Jews while the Catholic Church did nothing. 'The sell-out of Catholicism to Hitler began not with the people but with the Vatican itself,' he writes. . . . "Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee."

Whenever Bill Donohue attacks Democrats as being anti-Catholic -- during, for the instance, the grave matter of the Edwards campaign's hiring of Amanda Marcotte and Melissa McEwan as campaign bloggers -- Donohue was ubiquitous, treated with the utmost respect. Donohue's righteous protests over John McCain's embrace of such a stark, hateful anti-Catholic bigot merit at least as much attention as the Edwards Blogger Scandal, to put it mildly.

UPDATE VI: I interviewed The Catholic League's President, Bill Donohue, regarding the McCain/Hagee connection. The write-up on the interview is here; the podcast can be heard here.

-- Glenn Greenwald

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/02/28/hagee/index.html

The Foreign Policy Follies

February 29, 2008

The Foreign Policy Follies A cavalcade of error, right, left and center

by Justin Raimondo

I must be getting old. This virus, or whatever the heck it is, really knocked me for a loop. It's funny, but I recall thinking, just before I came down with this, that I'd managed to entirely avoid getting sick this winter, and – whammo! Hubris – it's the bane of mankind. At any rate, that's my feeble excuse for not writing the usual 3000-word analysis of one particular aspect of the federal government's overseas shenanigans. Instead, we're going on a whirlwind tour of the current foreign policy follies, at home as well as abroad. Turkey's invasion is escalating pretty quickly, with Ankara declaring their "temporary" incursion could last as long as a year, and Baghdad demanding "Troops Out!" The US is the monkey in the middle, with defense secretary Robert Gates averring that the Turks had better get out in "days," or, at most, "a week or two." The Turks, for their part, maintain their "right" to cross the border with Iraq (really Kurdistan) in hot pursuit of Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) "terrorists," who attack civilian targets in Turkey proper. This is a clarification of the preemptive war doctrine, adopted by the Bush administration as the core canon of our post-9/11 foreign policy theology, which makes it clear that this "principle" is not universally applicable: it applies only to the United States, and selected allies – of which Turkey certainly is not one. And in spite of his much-vaunted "universalism," I'm sure John McCain is willing to make an exception in this case. Speaking of McCainiacs, the McCainiac-in-chief has staked out a unique position on the Iraq war question, one that addresses the history of the dubious intelligence and false premises that led us into that costly conflict in terms of a simple, easy-to-understand slogan: That was then, this is now. Addressing Barack Obama directly as the putative Democratic nominee, McCain again averred that Obama would hand over Iraq to Al Qaeda, and countered the contention that bin Laden's minions would never have gained entry if not for the US invasion; "On the issue of my differences with Senator Obama on Iraq, I want to make it very clear: This is not about decisions that were made in the past. This is about decisions that a president will have to make about the future in Iraq. And a decision to unilaterally withdraw from Iraq will lead to chaos." Ignore the past, and plunge into the future. Irrespective of one's position on the war – or the presidential race – one has to ask: is this really how a self-proclaimed "conservative" formulates policy? Conservatism, as I've been led to understand it, is all about empiricism: a methodology that upholds the superiority of the tried-and-true, and validates a reverence for tradition. However, when the traditionalists – or their leaders – declare, in effect, that history is bunk, we have truly entered Bizarro World. Conservatives are really lost in the wilderness these days, and the death of William F. Buckley, Jr., has proved to be the occasion for a lot of commentary on conservatism, past and future. I did a short piece for Taki's Top Drawer, which you can read here: I would add that some of the commentary which has come out, hailing Buckley for his purging of the "isolatonist" Right from the ranks of the conservative movement, is coming from ostensbly antiwar liberals, like Chris Matthews the other day on MSNBC, who made just this point. Yet if we had more "isolationists" (i.e. pro-peace Ron Paul types) in the GOP, we would never have been in the mess we are today. And then, I guess, Democrats like Señor Matthews wouldn't have the war as a campaign issue. Once a partisan, always a partisan. Now if we're going to have partisanship over at MSNBC, why not give Pat Buchanan his own show – he'd be more than a match for Matthews and Keith Olbermann. The good guys on the right, over at The American Conservative, have a new regular blog written by the estimable Daniel Larison, and I urge you to go over there and check it out if you want to know what's right with the conservative movement of today. Continuing our discussion of the other day: Yes, I understand his point that the Obama phenomenon is not going to cure all our foreign policy ills, and I don't fault him at all for trying to tamp down my apparent Obama-mania. I don't think I've made it clear enough that I'm more interested in Obama's supporters than I am in Obama: that is, the phenomenon is more significant than the man. At any rate, now that I haven't cleared that up, I should note that, as if on cue, the tail-end of the Democratic debate seemsed to confirm Larison's point. Asked by the out-of-control Tim Russert what he would do if Vladimir Putin's successor launched a military attack on Kosovo, Obama endorsed the Clintonian solution to the Yugoslav problem, albeit mildly, and put his imprimatur on Hillary's wild-eyed Russophobia. If you look at the transcript, however, Obama's coolness in the face of Russert's speculative hysterics is encouraging, although I have to say there is a problem with Obama's foreign policy stances, and I can boil it down to two words: George Soros. Señor Soros is a peacenik today, but during the Clinton years he and his global nonprofit empire were the radical caucus of the War Party, clamoring endlessly about the need to intervene militarily on the side of the Albanian ultra-nationalists of the Kosovo "Liberation" Army. Soros money fueled a whole range of interventionist front groups, in support of a war that was the Central European doppelganger of the conflict to come in Iraq. In both cases, insurgent groups with powerful Washington lobbies managed to commandeer the US military in support of their own agendas, which were and are antithetical to American interests. It seems to me that the division of labor between the two wings of the War Party is, to a large degree, geographical. The Republican wing is concerned, for the most part, with the Middle East, an orientation that comes naturally to the party's neoconservative leadership and their evangelical Christian Myrmidons. The Democrats are faced toward Europe: their adversary is Russia,, and Putin is their version of Saddam Hussein. Larison is right about Obama's "dreadful Ostpolitik," but even more dreadful was the way the question was framed by Russert: "He's 42 years old, he's a former law professor. He is Mr. Putin's campaign manager. He is going to be the new president of Russia. And if he says to the Russian troops, you know what, why don't you go help Serbia retake Kosovo, what does President Obama do?" Obama accepted the absurd premise, and answered accordingly: that we would of course defend Kosovo, and that surely NATO would respond, while emphasizing that we would do this in concert with our European allies. And yet, as Hillary would put it: let's get real. In reality, no such scenario is even remotely conceivable. Putin stood by while the NATO-crats bombed one of the oldest cities in Europe. His chosen heir is no more likely to launch an attack on NATO – which is what an attempt to "retake Kosovo" would amount to. In short, Russert's question involves a nonsensical, reality-inverting Bizarro World-like scenario, one less likely than an invasion of Kosovo by Martians. I don't underplay the danger posed by the Soros/left-interventionist wing of the Democratic party: I just don't think it's known to what degree Obama is their willing accomplice. There is a war danger emanating from the Balkans. The victorious ultra-nationalists of the KLA, ensconced in Pristina, are actively aiding and abetting their allies in Macedonia, Montenegro, and Epirus (a northern province of Greece, with a significant Albanian minority). In all these surrounding areas, separatist pan-Albanian movements agitate for union with "Greater Albania," a vision of ethnic solidarity upheld by the KLA to this day. A Democratic President could be expected to exacerbate the problem – the Clintons far more than Obama, in my estimate. The Soros wing of the Democratic party, and its international affiliates, were in the front lines of the first wave of Albanian expansionism, and they'll doubtless be in the vanguard of the next. I'm just not so sure that Obama will necessarily sign on to it, just because Soros was one of his early supporters. In 2004, the crusading billionaire said he supported Obama because he saw him as "an emerging national leader," a bit of speculative analysis that turned out to be right on the money. Which is why Soros has so much money. It may turn out, however, that Soro's investment in Obama will fail to reap the expected returns. I don't think, however, that we know at this point. http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12437

Despite Antiwar Rhetoric, Clinton-Obama Plans Would Keep US Mercenaries, Troops in Iraq for Years to Come

Jeremy Scahill: Despite Antiwar Rhetoric, Clinton-Obama Plans Would Keep US Mercenaries, Troops in Iraq for Years to Come

Jeremy Scahill reports Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama will not “rule out” using private military companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq. Obama also has no plans to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009. Despite their antiwar rhetoric, both Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton have adopted the congressional Democratic position that would leave open the option of keeping tens of thousands of US troops in Iraq for many years. [includes rush transcript]

Guest:

Jeremy Scahill, Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill joins us now in our firehouse studio. Author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His latest article is “Obama’s Mercenary Position.” It appears in the upcoming issue of The Nation magazine.

JUAN GONZALEZ: “A senior foreign policy adviser to leading Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has told The Nation [magazine] that if elected Obama will not ‘rule out’ using private security companies like Blackwater Worldwide in Iraq.” That’s the lead sentence from a new article by independent journalist Jeremy Scahill. The adviser to Obama also said that the Illinois Senator does not plan to sign on to legislation that seeks to ban the use of these forces in US war zones by January 2009, when a new president will be sworn in.

AMY GOODMAN: Democracy Now! correspondent Jeremy Scahill joins us now in the firehouse studio, is author of the bestselling book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. His latest article in The Nation is called “Obama’s Mercenary Position.” It appears in this issue of The Nation.

Welcome to Democracy Now! So, what did you find out, Jeremy?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, I started looking at Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s Iraq plans, and one of the things that I discovered is that both of them intend to keep the Green Zone intact. Both of them intend to keep the current US embassy project, which is slated to be the largest embassy in the history of the world. I mean, I think it’s 500 CIA operatives alone, a thousand personnel. And they’re also going to keep open the Baghdad airport indefinitely. And what that means is that even though the rhetoric of withdrawal is everywhere in the Democratic campaign, we’re talking about a pretty substantial level of US forces and personnel remaining in Iraq indefinitely.

In the case of Barack Obama, I wanted to focus in on what his position is on private military contractors, particularly armed ones like those that work for Blackwater. And the reason I focus on Obama instead of Hillary on this is because Barack Obama has actually been at the forefront of addressing the mercenary issue in the Congress. In February of 2007—this was way before the Nisour Square massacre, where Blackwater forces killed seventeen Iraqis and wounded twenty others—in February of 2007, Barack Obama sponsored legislation in the Senate that sought to expand US law so that—

JUAN GONZALEZ: This is just after he got into the Senate, right?

JEREMY SCAHILL: This was in 2007. This was a year ago. And so, this was a major piece of legislation by Obama, and it was done in concert with Representative David Price from North Carolina in the House, a Democrat. And Obama’s legislation basically said we realize that there are loopholes in the law that allow Blackwater and other contractors to essentially get away with murder, and so what we need to do is make it so that US law applies to not only Defense Department contractors, but State Department contractors like Blackwater. If they murder someone in Iraq, we can prosecute them back in the United States.

Now, that legislation hasn’t passed at this point, and it may never pass. I mean, the fact is that the Bush administration actually issued a statement opposing that legislation, and I want to read to you what Bush said. He said that law would have, quote, “intolerable consequences for crucial and necessary national security activities and operations."

And so, I started to look at this reality. Obama is saying he wants to keep the embassy. Obama is saying he wants to keep the Green Zone. Obama is saying he wants to keep the Baghdad airport. Who’s guarding US diplomats right now at this largest embassy in the history of the world? Well, it’s Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp; it’s these private security companies.

And so, I started talking to some of the Obama campaign people. And it really took days for them to actually get back to me and provide someone to talk to me on the record. I started doing interviews with some of his people, and they said, “We can’t answer these questions.” And so, finally I talked to a senior foreign policy person, who said, yes, the reality is that we can’t rule out, we won’t rule out, using private security forces. And I said, well, Senator Obama has identified them as unaccountable, and the reality is, his law may not pass before he takes office, if he wins, and so Obama could potentially be using forces that he himself has identified as both unaccountable and above the law. Long pause. Right.

And so, the situation right now is that Obama seems to have painted himself into a corner on this issue, because the reality is, Obama’s people are saying, well, we’re going to increase funding to the State Department’s Diplomatic Security division. They say, ideally, the people we want to be guarding US diplomats in Iraq will be fully burdened US government employees who are accountable to US law. But the irony right now is that the war machine is so radically privatized that there are about 1,100 mercenaries doing diplomatic security in Iraq right now. There are only 1,400 diplomatic security agents in the entire world, and only thirty-six of them are in Iraq.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, let me ask you, in terms of this whole issue of mercenaries in general, I mean, are we facing the possibility that a Democratic president would in essence reduce the troops but increase the mercenaries?

JEREMY SCAHILL: Well, Juan, this is a great question, and it was one of the reasons why I started looking at this. I want to read you a quote here. Joseph Schmitz, who’s one of the leading executives in the Blackwater empire, recently said this: “There is a scenario where we could as a government, the United States, could pull back the military footprint, and there would then be more of a need for private contractors to go in.” So apparently these contractors see a silver lining in that scenario. You know, the reality is, right now, that these forces are one of the most significant threats to Iraqis in the country. I mean, we’ve seen scores of incidents where they’ve shot at them, etc.

But as you know, Juan, this is a bipartisan industry. I mean, Bill Clinton really gave rise to this phenomenon of the military contractors. We know that Dick Cheney was running Halliburton in the ’90s. Who was giving Dick Cheney all of those contracts? Well, it was Bill Clinton. And the Democrats have long been good for the war contracting industry. There’s a reason why Hillary Clinton is the number one recipient of campaign contributions from the defense industry. Number two is John McCain. Obama is number four. Chris Dodd is ahead of him. It’s very interesting. It’s a bipartisan phenomenon.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s talk beyond the mercenaries, beyond the military contractors, about their policies in Iraq. I wanted to turn to an excerpt of Tuesday night’s Democratic debate in Cleveland, Ohio. This is NBC News Washington bureau chief and moderator of Meet the Press, Tim Russert.

TIM RUSSERT: You both have pledged a withdrawal of troops from Iraq. You both have said you’d keep a residual force there to protect our embassy, to seek out al-Qaeda, to neutralize Iran. If the Iraqi government said, “President Clinton or President Obama, you’re pulling out your troops this quickly? You’re going to be gone in a year, but you’re going to leave a residual force behind? No. Get out. Get out now. If you don’t want to stay and protect us, we’re a sovereign nation. Go home now,” will you leave?


SEN. BARACK OBAMA: Well, if the Iraqi government says that we should not be there, then we cannot be there. This is a sovereign government, as George Bush continually reminds us.

Now, I think that we can be in a partnership with Iraq to ensure the stability and the safety of the region, to ensure the safety of Iraqis and to meet our national security interests. But in order to do that, we have to send a clear signal to the Iraqi government that we are not going to be there permanently, which is why I have said that as soon as I take office, I will call in the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we will initiate a phased withdrawal, we will be as careful getting out as we were careless getting in. We will give ample time for them to stand up, to negotiate the kinds of agreements that will arrive at the political accommodations that are needed. We will provide them continued support.

But it is important for us not to be held hostage by the Iraqi government in a policy that has not made us more safe, that’s distracting us from Afghanistan, and is costing us dearly, not only and most importantly in the lost lives of our troops, but also the amount of money that we are spending that is unsustainable and will prevent us from engaging in the kinds of investments in America that will make us more competitive and more safe.

TIM RUSSERT: Senator Clinton, if the Iraqis said, “I’m sorry, we’re not happy with this arrangement; if you’re not going to stay in total and defend us, get out completely”—they are a sovereign nation—you would listen?


SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: Absolutely. And I believe that there is no military solution that the Americans, who have been valiant in doing everything that they were asked to do, can really achieve in the absence of full cooperation from the Iraqi government. And—

TIM RUSSERT: Let me ask—let me ask you this, Senator. I want to ask you—

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: And they need to take responsibility for themselves. And—

TIM RUSSERT: I want to ask both of you this question, then. If we—if this scenario plays out and the Americans get out in totality and al-Qaeda resurges and Iraq goes to hell, do you hold the right, in your mind as American president, to re-invade, to go back into Iraq to stabilize it?

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: You know, Tim, you ask a lot of hypotheticals. And I believe that what’s—


TIM RUSSERT: But this is reality.

SEN. HILLARY CLINTON: No—well, it isn’t reality. You’re—you’re making lots of different hypothetical assessments.

I believe that it is in America’s interests and in the interest of the Iraqis for us to have an orderly withdrawal. I’ve been saying for many months that the administration has to do more to plan, and I’ve been pushing them to actually do it. I’ve also said that I would begin to withdraw within sixty days based on a plan that I asked begun to be put together as soon as I became president.

AMY GOODMAN: Senators Clinton and Obama debating in Cleveland on Tuesday. By the way, we invited both foreign policy advisers both from the Obama and from the Clinton camp to talk about their positions on private contractors as well as on Iraq, and they both declined. Jeremy, their positions?

JEREMY SCAHILL: First of all, Russert’s question is sort of a false question. He shouldn’t have asked that—if Iraqi government says you should leave. What Russert should have said to them is, over 80 percent of Iraqis, conservatively, say they want the United States out now; will you respect the will of the Iraqi people? Of course, that question is not going to be asked by Tim Russert or Brian Williams on one of these debates. But the reality is, listening to Obama and Clinton, they’re giving the impression that what they’re going to do is immediately begin a total withdrawal of US forces.

Now, I’ve looked very carefully at both of their Iraq plans, and both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have lifted much of their Iraq plans from two sources. One is the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, and then the other is the 2007 Iraq supplemental, which was portrayed as the Democrats’ withdrawal plan. And both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have a three-pronged approach to what they see as a longer-term presence in Iraq. They say that US personnel are going to remain in the country to protect diplomats and other US officials in the country. And we’ve already talked a bit about that with Obama. Hillary Clinton appears to be taking the same approach on that. Number two is that they want to keep trainers in place that will train the Iraqi military. At present, there’s 10,000 to 20,000 US trainers, all of whom will require security, so that’s a substantial force. And then the third is that they’re saying that they want to keep a force in place to, quote, “strike at al-Qaeda,” in the words of Barack Obama’s Iraq plan.

When the Institute for Policy Studies did an analysis of what this would mean, they said it’s 20,000 to 60,000 troops, not including contractors. And right now we have a one-to-one ratio with contractors and troops in the country. 20,000 to 60,000 troops indefinitely in Iraq, this is something that over the course of ten years the Congressional Budget Office says could cost half-a-trillion dollars. This doesn’t include the fact that you have to have troops bringing supplies in and out of Iraq. It doesn’t include the troops that Obama and Clinton are going to keep in Kuwait, Qatar, Jordan and elsewhere. I mean, this is actually a pretty sustained indefinite occupation that’s going to be on the table if either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama are in office and take power.

And I mean, you know, the reality is that now would be the time for people to raise these issues, and yet no one is talking about this. It’s “Oh, yeah, Barack Obama is going to withdraw troops from Iraq.” Well, not exactly. He’s actually looking at keeping a pretty sizeable deployment. The other thing about them is they’re both calling for an increase in the number of troops in the permanent US military. In the case of Obama—and Juan, you’ve brought this up recently on the show—in the case of Obama, he says 90,000 new troops. Well, that’s going to be a $15 billion increase in military funding just for those troops to be in the United States, not including their deployment.

The other thing is that Obama is saying he wants to increase the US occupation of Afghanistan by 7,000 troops. What’s interesting is that we see Hillary Clinton, in her Iraq rhetoric, trying to move to the left; Obama, I think, now feeling that he’s going to be facing John McCain, is moving to the right. I mean, his rhetoric talking about striking at al-Qaeda in Iraq, yes, he pointed out the irony of McCain criticizing him for that because there was no al-Qaeda in Iraq before Bush invaded, but Obama is sort of adopting their language now. And in his plan, the idea of striking at al-Qaeda in Iraq, I mean, who is al-Qaeda in Iraq? I mean, what—the Iraqi resistance is largely Iraqis who are attacking US troops. And so, Obama is—he’s sort of positioning himself for this debate to make himself seem tough against John McCain.

JUAN GONZALEZ: I wanted to ask you specifically about this whole question of the increase in troops, because when I asked Samantha Power, as his foreign policy adviser, about this issue, she talked about the US military being stretched and the need for even in peacekeeping to have what she called “boots on the ground” and that weren’t sufficient. But the reality is obviously that there are many American troops in other parts of the world, like South Korea, like Japan, like, to some degree, Europe, that are not being—not—doing nothing else except occupying those countries, and they could be redeployed if the Army needed more troops.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Right. I mean, what that indicates, I think, is that Obama is going to have an interventionist, expansionist foreign policy. I mean, that certainly was the policy of the Clinton administration. I mean, in fairness, though, Barack Obama, more than Hillary Clinton and certainly more than John McCain, who’s talking about having troops in Iraq for a hundred years, Obama is talking about trying to increase the UN presence in Iraq. He’s trying to bring in regional countries. I mean, he has a pretty serious diplomatic plan for Iraq. The problem is that it doesn’t cancel out his military plan.

On the case of the increase in troops, what Obama’s people told me is that we need these 90,000 troops desperately, because our troops need a rest. Some of them are serving three, four tours over in Iraq, and so we need to get them in there. But the reality is, you don’t get 90,000 troops and then be able to deploy them overnight. So, clearly, they’re thinking about this for years and years to come. I think the reality is that neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton are actually going to be in the business of permanently ending the US occupation of Iraq. That’s a deadly serious issue, and it needs to be front and center on this campaign.

AMY GOODMAN: Jeremy Scahill, thanks very much for joining us. Jeremy has written the book Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army. It’s just been announced that he’s won a George Polk Award—his second—for this book. Congratulations. You’ll be on Bill Maher this week?
http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/28/jeremy_scahill_despite_anti_war_rhetoric

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“Calibrating” HOPE in the Effort to “Patrol the Commons”: Samantha Power and the Hidden Imperial Reality of Barack Obama *

February 26, 2008 By Paul Street


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Expectation calibration and expectation management is essential at home and internationally.

- Harvard Professor and Barack Obama Foreign Policy Advisor Samantha Power, February 21, 2008

A small part of the dark and hidden imperial reality behind the supposedly peace-oriented Barack Obama phenomenon showed itself to those willing to see when leading Obama foreign policy advisor and celebrated Harvard Professor Samantha Power appeared on the Public Broadcasting System’s “Charlie Rose Show” last Thursday.

“HE CARES ABOUT THE IRAQI PEOPLE”

Dr. Power had curious words of praise for her good friend the junior Senator from Illinois, the likely Democratic presidential nominee after a remarkable string of primary victories over the more openly militaristic Hillary Clinton. During the primary campaign, Power told Charlie Rose, Obama “could have said” that “the best thing..is ...we’re going to get out [of Iraq] on day one” of his presidency.

But that, she said, would have been “irresponsible” pandering to U.S. voters. It would have violated Obama’s supposed overriding concern that “we consider the fate of the Iraqis,” many of whom have “depended on us in this debacle.” Thus, Obama restricted his promises to “sa[ying] I’m going to try to have all the combat brigades out within 16 to 18 months” and is emphasizing that the United States will "have to be more careful getting out of Iraq than it was getting in.” This is because “he cares about the Iraqi people,” seeking to make them a focus of policy intention, not just “a political slogan” (1).

“THERE IS HOPE...IF THE INVADERS LEAVE IRAQ TO IRAQIS”

There are highly flawed reflections. Since most Americans have long supported a rapid and complete U.S. withdrawal from illegally occupied Iraq (as Power certainly knows), Power's comments violate the basic democratic principle that the popular majority is supposed to determine policy inside a “democracy.”

Power deleted the interesting fact that most Iraqis support an immediate removal of U.S. troops and see the end of the arch-criminal U.S. occupation as the key to healing their internal strife. “According to Iraqis,’” Noam Chomsky notes, citing a December 2007 Iraq opinion survey conducted by U.S. occupation authorities, “there is hope of national reconciliation if the invaders, who are responsible for the internal violence, withdraw and leave Iraq to Iraqis.”

“The conclusions are credible,” Chomsky adds, “consistent with other polls, and also with the apparent reduction in violence when the British finally withdrew from Basra a few months ago” (2).

A USEFUL TRANSLATION: BARACK OBAMA WON’T LEAVE IRAQ TO IRAQIS

Power neglected to add other key facts:

· “Combat brigades" make up no more than half of the U.S. force structure in Iraq.

· Iraq’s possession of massive, super—strategic oil resources and an Obama presidency’s certain sensitivity to Republican charges of “defeatism” and “losing Iraq” would guarantee a continuing U.S. occupation of that country – against the wishes of the citizens in both Iraq and the U.S. – throughout the life of an Obama White House.

“I’m going to try to have all the combat brigades out within 16 to 18 months” has a real-life policy translation Power would never provide on air: “I am going to continue the occupation of Iraq like John McCain or Hillary Clinton.”

“EXPECTATIONS MANAGEMENT”

Noting that President Bush was recently swamped by cries of “O-ba-ma” during a recent state visit to Africa, Rose asked Power if she was concerned about the “sky-high expectations” much of the world seems to have for an Obama presidency. There is “some danger” in this, Rose worried.

“Right,” Power said, noting that Obama is “acutely aware of this.” And “that,” Power said, “is why expectation calibration and expectation management is essential at home and internationally.”

Behind this disturbing application of elitist and technocratic language to the “management” of domestic and global opinion and hopes is an obvious (for those willing to detect it) admission: Obama is as attached to the U.S. imperial project as Bush and this will dangerously disappoint hopeful masses at home and abroad in the event of an Obama ascendancy. Unenlightened humanity's naïve faith in “change we can believe in” needs to be downwardly “calibrated” as we cross into the post-Bush era of U.S. global dominance.

“TO PATROL THE COMMONS”

Power’s language got creepier still. “Part of having a credible American leader again who is unimplicated with the war in Iraq who is very attractive to people around the world,” Power told Rose, “is to somehow use that early wind at his back to try to extract commitments to patrol the commons, to actually deal with these broken people and broken places." By this she meant that an Obama presidency, unlike the wildly and dangerously unpopular Bush administration – primarily guilty of fanning “anti-Americanism” abroad in the view of Power and other members of the bipartisan U.S-imperial foreign policy establishment – would be able to rally other leading world capitalist states to take up the burden of intervening in such places Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Iran, Pakistan, Serbia/Kosovo, East Timor, the Sudan, and (the list goes on).

Harvard’s celebrated Dr. Power deleted the fact that Obama is in fact deeply “implicated” in the Iraq “war” (3). And it would be too much to expect her to note that western and primarily U.S. foreign policy – what is generally understood as “imperialism” across most of the morally and politically cognizant world – have played critical roles in the “breaking” of such places as Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, East Timor, and (the list goes on). “As is standard operating procedure for Samantha Power,” the Left U.S. foreign policy critic David Peterson notes, “there isn't the slightest hint that the ‘commons’ needs to be protected against the predatory military power(s) headquartered in places such as Washington, London, Brussels (i.e., NATO), and similar capitals. Much less in New York, Cambridge, MA, and so on”(4).

People with Marxist and other “fringe” radical backgrounds are left to cringe at Power’s use of the phrase “patrol the commons.” A good part of the capitalist-imperialist nightmare being acted out in such imperially “broken places” as Iraq began, Left analysts have long noted, with the breaking [-up], enclosure, and subsequent state-capitalist "patrolling" of the people’s pre-capitalist commons (common land, air, water, and hunting, growing, and recreational grounds) in 14th-16th century England (5).

*Special thanks to David Peterson for bringing to my attention the Samantha Power interview discussed in this essay.

Paul Street (paulstreet99@yahoo.com) is a veteran radical historian and independent author, activist, researcher, and journalist in Iowa City, IA. He is the author of Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Paradigm 2005); Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in the Post-Civil Rights Era (Routledge 2005): and Racial Oppression in the Global Metropolis (Rowman&Littlefied 2007). Street is currently completing a book on U.S. political culture and the Barack Obama phenomenon.

NOTES

1. The Charlie Rose Show, PBS, February 21, 2008. See www.charlierose.com/shows/2008/02/21/2/a-conversation-with-samantha-power.

2. Noam Chomsky, “‘Good News’: Iraq and Beyond,” ZNet (February 16, 2008), read at www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/16522.

3. For some elementary facts, please see Paul Street, “The Audacity of Deception: Reflections on the Manufacture of Progressive Illusion,” ZNet (December 6, 2007) read at http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/15765.

4. David Peterson, e-mail commentary, circulated February 25, 2008. “By this stage in her career (though already evident before the publication her ‘A Problem from Hell’ in 2002),” Peterson adds, “it is clear that Samantha Power's contribution to American Power is her systematic attempt to establish that the ‘commons,’ understood as any theater threatened or attacked by Washington and its allies, either needs to be ‘protected’ or simply deserves to be attacked, with Washington et al.'s moral and legal culpability restricted to the charge that it failed to threaten or to attack early enough or with sufficient violence to do the job as effectively as a protector of the commons should.”

5. See David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford, 2003), p. 145 and passim.
by way of http://www.strike-the-root.com/

Seize the day: The magic and mystery of leap years

It's the Roman Empire's enduring gift to the world – an extra day every four years. A source of mystery, intrigue and controversy, Christopher Hirst explores the most colourful date in the calendar

Thursday, 28 February 2008

For most of us, the arrival of 29 February means one extra day at work, another day on the mortgage and 24 hours' delay in the arrival of the pay cheque. No wonder a leap year is universally regarded as unlucky. This is particularly the case for those unfortunates who can only celebrate their real birthday once every four years. For some reason, musicians tend to be born on 29 February – they include Rossini, the late avant-garde trombonist Paul Rutherford and the rap artist Jah Rule – but the most eminent UK leap-year baby is Joss Ackland, who will be 20 next Friday, though he has been on this Earth for 80 years.

Only in America is any attempt made to redress this gross injustice. Tomorrow, leap-year babies will be "honoured guests" at the Sixth Worldwide Leap Year Festival at Anthony, New Mexico. Celebrations are to include a chuckwagon breakfast, hot-air balloon rides and a huge birthday cake ("These people have been waiting for four years!"). At the Fourth Worldwide Leap Year Festival in 2000, musical entertainment was provided by Graham Nash, whose wife Susan is a leap-year baby, but he has not reappeared. Maybe once every four years is a little too frequent to hear Nash's maudlin hit "Teach Your Children".

But why do we need this calendrical hiccup every four years? What, exactly, is the point of it? "The leap year is basically down to humans trying to make sense of natural rhythms," explains David Rooney, curator of time keeping at the Royal Observatory. "If you're trying to run a calendar by the natural cycles of the Sun and the Moon, it doesn't work and you have to intervene. The technical term for this intervention is 'fudge factor'. The leap year is a fudge."

The ancient Egyptians recognised that the world does not revolve round the Sun every 365 days, but almost a quarter of the day more. The fact that this little bit extra is a smidgeon less than six hours – the Gregorian calendar year is 365 days, five hours, 49 minutes and 12 seconds – has, as we shall see, led to much tinkering over the millennia. Moreover, the natural year is changing in length due to predictable factors, such as changing orbit and gravitational drag, and the unpredictable effect of the Earth's liquid core hitting subterranean mountain ranges and ravines.

"When the National Physical Laboratory at Teddington invented the atomic clock in the Fifties, we discovered that timekeeping based on vibrating atoms was more accurate than the Earth," adds Rooney. "It was slightly embarrassing. When clocks diverge, it isn't good. By the Seventies, we needed another fudge factor. So, the leap second was introduced to push together Earth rotation time and atomic vibration time."

Intended to correct erratic internal friction, the leap second is not added every year. The decision to add or subtract a second (so far, it has always been added) is made by the International Earth Rotation Service in Paris. The last leap second occurred on 1 January 2006 – it caused a bit of a stir, and an extra pip was added to the BBC time signal. The one before that was in 1998.

Recent developments at the National Physical Laboratory mean that human time will become yet more implacably accurate compared with the slightly wonky rotation of the Earth around the Sun. "At Teddington, they're working on an even more accurate optical clock known as the ion-trap clock," says Rooney. "Lasers trap a single charged atom in a force-field and can hold it there for a period of time, months if necessary. The atom is then given a poke by another laser. It gets excited. Who wouldn't? As its excitement diminishes, it gives out a little shudder of energy with a very precise frequency."

"Frequency is just time in a very, very accurate form. The most pessimistic forecast suggests that if that clock were set running now and was still running at the predicted end of the universe, it would possibly be wrong by half a second. At present, the ion-trap clock only runs during the day. They switch it off at night to save energy."

Inevitably, the ordering of time is subject to political manipulation. A couple of years ago, the US suggested that world time should be switched entirely to the atomic clock, which would involve the dropping of leap seconds.

"If accepted, it would be the first time that time was not dependent on the rising and falling of the Sun," said Rooney. "Britain put up a fight against this idea. And, as I understand it, the jury is still out on this."

It isn't the first time that leap years have been at the centre of controversy. Adjustments of the leap year have consistently been entwined with politics. The first attempt to get it right, which laid the foundations for the modern calendar, had actually been by the Egyptian ruler Ptolemy II in 238BC. Since the year had been calculated, with near-as-dammit accuracy, as 365 days, he introduced the familiar cycle of three standard (or common) years with the fourth being a leap year.

The reform was soon abandoned. But two centuries later it provided a template for Julius Caesar, who wanted to sweep away Rome's hopelessly wonky calendar as a symbol of his new-broom administration. Advised by an Egyptian astronomer with the slightly unfortunate name of Sosigenes, he added an extra day to the shortest month of February once every four years.

In a radical move, Caesar added an extra 90 days to 46BC to realign the erratic administrative year with the agricultural seasons. The result was an epic 445-day year, named by Caesar as the "last year of confusion" though, inevitably, everyone else called it "the Year of Confusion". Contracts and shipping schedules were wildly disrupted, but at last people had a reliable guide for planting crops, organising business, planning holidays and booking holidays. The modern world was born.

In fact, Caesar would have been better off getting rid of the Ides (15th) of March. It was on this date in 44BC that he was stabbed 28 times while in the Senate. Among the less dramatic consequences was a misinterpretation of the Julian reforms, and Caesar's good intentions were interred with his bones. After the first leap year in 42BC, bureaucratic bungling led to an extra day being added once every three years, rather than the intended four years.

As a result, the Roman calendar again raced ahead of the seasons for 36 years. In 8BC, Augustus Caesar, Julius's reforming successor, rectified the error by skipping three leap years. Reinstituted in 8AD, the cycle of leap years continued unbroken until the 16th century. Along with this quadrennial adjustment, Julius and Augustus left another indelible mark on our calendar. July and August were named in their honour.

Over the centuries, the slight discrepancy between the Julian year and the actual time that the Earth takes to revolve around the Sun – 10 minutes, 48 seconds per year – began to add up. By the 16th century, the calendar was around 10 days slow. In 1514, Pope Leo X sent a letter to Henry VIII pointing out that "Jews and heretics" were laughing at the errors in the Christian calendar, but this was failed to elicit a response. Three follow-up reminders were also ignored. Since other rulers displayed the same indifference, the matter was dropped for another 60 years, until Gregory XIII assumed the papacy in 1572.

Like Julius Caesar, Pope Gregory XIII was determined to reassert the authority of Rome. Among the reforms of this dour zealot was the issuing of a new breviary, the book containing a service for every day of the year. If these requests for celestial intervention were to take place at the appropriate time, an updated calendar was required. This was drawn up by experts and enacted in a papal bull issued on 24 February 1582, which corrected the error of the Julian calendar by omitting leap years at the start of centuries unless divisible by 400.

As a result, 1900 was not a leap year but 2000 was, and anyone reading this who survives for another 92 years will be spared 29 February in the year 2100. In order to reset the calendar, Gregory ordered the excision of 10 days from October 1582. This was accepted by Roman Catholic countries (though sometimes grudgingly) and even by a few Protestant states. Peasants were annoyed that their weather proverbs no longer made sense and at the shifting of traditionally boozy holidays.

Being ardently Protestant by the 1580s, England regarded the Pope's amendments with suspicion, though Queen Elizabeth was by no means antagonistic. She asked the scientist, astrologer and mystic John Dee to look into the matter. He recognised that Rome's calendar reforms had merit and proposed dropping 10 days from 1583 in gentle stages over four months. Dee sent this proposal to Lord Burghley, head of the Queen's calendar-commission, accompanied by a poem that included the persuasive couplet: "the tyme untrew... Command anew."

There was, however, one hurdle to be overcome. The revisions had to be accepted by the Church of England. The archbishop of Canterbury William Grindal was as independent-minded as the current incumbent, though by no means as liberal. Dead set against Rome-ish time, Grindal reminded the Queen that she had been excommunicated by a papal bull in 1570.

In fact, it was the Spanish Armada of 1588, which was supported by Gregory's successor, that put paid to England accepting the Gregorian calendar for another 170 years. In familiar style, England refused to join in with the rest of western Europe. All other Protestant states, with the exception of Sweden, accepted calendar reform in the course of the 17th century. Voltaire scoffed: "The English mob preferred their calendar to disagree with the Sun than to agree with the Pope."

Eventually, the cause of calendar reform was successfully pursued by the Earl of Chesterfield, the same one whose inadequate patronage aroused the ire of Dr Johnson. In consequence, the dates of 3 to 13 September 1752 were omitted throughout the British Empire.

The extent of objections has been exaggerated. Some say the "calendar riots" were actually unpleasant anti-Jewish demonstrations, though there seems to have been a ruckus about the missing days in Bristol. In the following year, bankers in London refused to pay their tax on the customary date of 25 March and postponed payment by 11 days, which is why our tax year starts on 5 April. The loss of 11 days was, however, happily accepted in the go-ahead American colonies. "What indulgence is here," wrote Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, "for those who love their pillow to lie down on the second of this month and not perhaps wake until the morning of the 14th."

Pope Gregory's reforms have continued to hold sway, but there have been attempts to institute new systems. The most radical was after the French Revolution when – in a move that would have today's Eurosceptics seething – Gallic scientists divided the year into 12 newly named months consisting of three 10-day weeks (the name of one of the summer months survives in lobster thermidor) and the day was transformed into 10 hours, each consisting of 100 minutes, each in turn consisting of 100 seconds.

"Metric time only lasted a year because it was really silly," said Rooney. "But that was not the end of the story. As a quid pro quo for accepting Greenwich Mean Time in 1884, the French insisted that decimal time should be considered for international time-keeping. It came to nothing, though the idea still crops up. The irony is that the French are now running time. Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, chosen as an acronym because it means nothing in any language, is run from Paris."

Another attempt at a new calendar came with communism. Russian revolutionaries suggested the Soviet New Style Calendar based on 12 months of 30 days. It, again, was short lived. Man's attempts to make the heavens work to the precision of a human clock are almost always doomed. So what is to be done? The Oxford Companion to the Year points out that in 10,000 years the calendar will be three days 17 minutes and 33 seconds slow. Seeking a solution, the book proposes dropping the leap year in 3200 and, after the leap year in 4000, substituting 500 for 400 in the Gregorian division rule for centennial leap years, so they would occur in "4500, 5000, 5500, 6000 etc, until further adjustment should be needed". One possible alternative considered by the Companion is the adoption of the Iranian solar cycle, introduced in 1925. Its complex sequence of leap years results in an inaccuracy of just 1 minute 41.952 seconds every 2,830 years.

Despite the accuracy of modern clocks, however, Rooney insists time should always been based on nature. "We need to reconnect with the Sun and stars. If we start getting out of step with natural cycles, we risk getting into trouble. We need to remember that we're animals." Which is something to think about, next time you have to alter your watch.

On 29 February...1504

Christopher Columbus, stranded in Jamaica, needs to secure provisions for his crew from hostile islanders. He attempts to frighten them into submission by correctly predicting a lunar eclipse on 29 February. But, while shocked by Columbus's apparently miraculous powers, the natives fail to submit. Help arrives four months later, allowing Columbus and his men to return to Spain.

On 29 February...1940

Hattie McDaniel becomes the first black actor to win an Oscar for her supporting role as Mammy in Gone with the Wind. Making a memorable acceptance speech, she said: "This is one of the happiest moments of my life... I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race and to the motion picture industry." McDaniel starred in dozens of films, appearing alongside Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, and was also the first black woman to sing on the radio.

On 29 February...1960

Hugh Hefner opens the first Playboy Club. Featuring scantily clad Bunny Girls, the Chicago night-spot quickly becomes a hit, spawning more than 35 clubs, including joints in London, Manchester and, er, Portsmouth. Membership becomes a status symbol – less than 20 per cent of members ever visited a club – and profits soar... for a while. Today, the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas is home to the last remaining Playboy Club.

On 29 February...1960

A devastating earthquake, measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale, kills 12,000 people in Morocco. Striking shortly before midnight, the 10-second quake causes a tidal wave and fires that ravage the city of Agadir. On the day, it is feared the death toll could top 20,000 and offers of assistance flood in from neighbouring states. Modern-day Agadir was rebuilt south of the old town and, boasting a long sandy beach, is now a tourist destination.

On 29 February...1792

The Italian composer Gioacchino Antonio Rossini is born in the town of Pesaro to a trumpeter and a singer. A precocious talent, he quickly immerses himself in opera and performs, as a boy, both in the pit and on stage. He goes on to pen more than 30 operas, most notably The Barber of Seville. The overture to one of his last operas, William Tell, based on Friedrich Schiller's play, Wilhelm Tell, becomes one of the most recognisable tunes in classical music.

On 29 February...1984

Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau announces his retirement, telling the House of Commons "today is the first day of the rest of my life". The notice confirms speculation that had been stoked by the appearance of a new swimming pool at Trudeau's home; he would now have more time to indulge his love of water. One of the most charismatic leaders of modern times, Trudeau's state funeral in 2000 was attended by President Jimmy Carter and Fidel Castro.

On 29 February...1996

The British actress, author, trouper and sex symbol Joan Collins, who played the ex-wife from hell, Alexis Carrington, in Dynasty, is awarded $1.3m from Random House, for breach of contract. The publisher had insisted Collins return the advance on a novel it claimed she never delivered. The jury agreed with Collins's defence that her contract required payment for unpublished manuscripts.

On 29 February...1964

The Queen's cousin Princess Alexandra gives birth to the only leap-year royal, James Ogilvy. Born to the business and charity man Angus Ogilvy, who married Princess Alexandra the year before, James Ogilvy has no title and is 35th in line to the throne. He is married to Julia Ogilvy, a former director at Lloyds TSB, with whom he has two daughters.

Ogilvy is 43, but tomorrow will celebrate only his 11th birthday.

On 29 February...1996

A Faucett Airlines Boeing 737, on a scheduled domestic night flight from Lima to Arequipa, Peru, crashes five miles short of the runway, killing all 117 passengers and six crew members. The crash, the worst in Peru's aviation history, causes the airliner to break into at least three sections, scattering burning bodies and debris across the rock-strewn mountain site. Founded in 1928, Faucett was one of the oldest airlines in Latin America. It went bust in 1999.

On 29 February...2004

Jean-Bertrand Aristide quits as President of Haiti and flees the Caribbean state following a rebel uprising. The former priest, who enjoyed three periods of rule between 1991 and 2004, later insists he had been ousted in a US-planned coup, a claim rubbished by then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell. In 2006, thousands demonstrated for the return of Aristide, but he remains in exile.

Source: The Independent

2051 - A Comprehensive History Of 911

Friday, February 29, 2008

2051 - A Comprehensive History Of 911

Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. -George Santayana

By Douglas Herman
Exclusive to Rense.com

Summary: Since September 11, 2051, with the passing of the 50th anniversary of the 911 destruction, which resulted in the gradual destruction of the USA as both a republic and a democracy, this comprehensive history sought to understand, Just what happened and why.

To summarize: The 911 destruction, portrayed persistently in the immediate aftermath, as a terrorist attack fifty years ago, proved in time to have been a combined black operation by the New Triple Alliance (NTA). The alliance of Israel, Britain and the USA sought to engineer popular antipathy towards weaker oil-bearing, Islamic countries for a multitude of reasons.

Chiefly because the three NTA countries possessed few or fast depleting oil resources by the end of the 20th century, powerbrokers within the CFR and the NTA decided to stage a highly sensational "attack." The planning for this attack required years of careful yet secretive planning in advance and the cooperation of highly placed criminal elements within each of the three governments.

Initially, the attack seemed to be a success. But by 2008 polls indicated many US citizens, disgruntled by endless wars, endless security measures, endless administration deception and, especially, the disaster of the US dollar, began to press for a fuller investigation. Also the widespread use of 911 "truth" (videos, lectures, websites, public speeches, etc) forced an uncomfortable awareness on Americans, followed by predictable anger and rage.

In the election year of 2008, during a period of intensely low ratings for the outgoing president GW Bush, another highly suspicious false flag "attack" nearly occurred. Fortunately the bomb planters were caught, not only on CCTV cameras but on dozens of cell phone cams too. (At the time, widespread Internet use of "You Tube" allowed immediate coverage of an event often censored by the then US media). Critics noted that several federal agencies intended to declare martial law and possibly cancel the national elections. These accusations were never fully investigated.

Soon after the startling arrest of the group of swarthy men, apprehended in a pair of white vans, confessions by the would-be-bombers followed. The motley group of CIA, MI-5 and Mossad agents admitted, under torture by local Texas police officers, that they worked under the covert direction of the three NTA governments. Public denial, shock and heavy media suppression of the story, predictably followed.

The detainees were questioned in secret by the FBI and most of them deported several months later.

Following a number of suicides among retired US officers, many of them formerly with the Pentagon, key generals stepped forward in 2012 and publicly confessed to their involvement in the initial 911 attack. Claiming misguided patriotism (resulting in mass murder), the former high-ranking officers, many connected to Able Danger, testified in great detail to their limited, albeit crucial, involvement. The house of cards, long known simply as 911, collapsed nearly as quickly as the dollar.

Widespread acts of civil disobedience, coupled with intense demands for an unbiased investigation, followed by the flight of several key suspects, among them Paul Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld, Marvin Bush, Phillip Zelikow, et al and the untimely deaths of others, among them Larry Silverstein, Rudi Giuliani, Dick Cheney, et al, lent weight to those demanding a true investigation.

After long ignoring growing public demand, Congress finally authorized a committee with full subpoena powers. Several citizen watchdog groups volunteered to oversee the entire process. Demanding full disclosure, the watchdog groups pointed to the much-discredited, Kean-Hamiliton 911 Commission Report as an example of the sort of brazen government cover up to be avoided.

By 2020, with the US in the tenth year of a lengthy austerity program, precipitated by the sudden crash of the US dollar, a predictable crash and painful depression due to several wasteful foreign wars, and the resultant massive corruption/ inflation they entailed, Congress finally authorized the new 911 Report. After 24 months and thousands of witnesses, all of the testimony open to the public, the investigation concluded.

Called simply the 911 Report, the 911-page document detailed massive criminal intent, perjury, premeditated murder, treason, arson, skyjacking, embezzlement, crimes against humanity and widespread government complicity within the top echelons of the FBI, NORAD, NIST and the NSA.

Under pressure, the US Supreme Court issued indictments toward the end of 2022. Arrests followed, suicides occurred, arraignment and convictions resulted, lengthy prison sentences, lethal injections (for treason & mass murder) and disgrace for hundreds of those involved was the inevitable result. Both the House of Bush and The House of Clinton, twin dynasties linked together in decades-long criminal activities, had now fallen into deserved disrepute, akin to modern-day Medicis or Corleones, but with far fewer scruples.

Conclusion:

Because 911 was never fully investigated immediately after September 11, 2001, the massive crimes committed were allowed to go unpunished. Thus the perpetrators were free to commit far greater crimes and reap huge monetary rewards for themselves and their cronies. The resultant wars with Afghanistan and Iraq, the widespread corruption and waste, the toxic spread of DU, the deaths of thousand of US troops and permanent injury to tens of thousands of others, the consensual murder of more than one million Iraqis and the theft of Iraqi oil for NTA members, followed finally by the ill-chosen attempt to strike Iran by the combined military forces of the NTA, and the collapse of the inflated US dollar, at last awakened the world to the full criminal intents of the globalists behind the scenes. Fully half those subpoenaed and a third of those indicted, under the new 911 investigations, held membership in the CFR.

Still, the fallout from 911 continues to resonant today. The nearly 3,000 murdered on September 11, 2001 led to a further 30,000 early deaths of heroic first responders due to carcinogens in the air of lower Manhattan. The premeditated poisoning of New York, through the pre-planned yet highly profitable destruction of the World Trade Center, then led to wholesale poisoning, plundering and persecution of the Persian Gulf. Nearly three million (and counting) were killed in the NTA wars against oil-rich Islamic nations between the years 2002--2012.

Fifty years later, with the benefit of access to historical documents, the worldview of the master planners of 911 can be clearly seen, recognized and condemned, for what it evidently was: An inside job, perpetrated by a few immoral men, not that far removed from Hitler, bent on worldwide domination and the control and manipulation of world markets.

Edmund Turnabout; " The Lengths & Depth of State Secrecy," WorldviewPress, 2038.

Victoria Orwell; "Four Decades of The CFR, 2001-2041," Constance Books Ltd, 2043.

Thomas Davidson; "Understanding Madmen: Inside The New Triple Alliance," University of Toronto Press, 2049.

Amateur historian, satirist and budding scriptwriter, Douglas Herman is a certified firefighter and fulltime skeptic. Email douglasherman7@yahoo.com

http://factsnotfairies.blogspot.com/

US Prison Nation: 1 in 100 Adults Behind Bars

US Prison Nation: 1 in 100 Adults Behind Bars
by CONSPIRACY PLANET

The New York Times reports that a new study from the Pew Center on the States reveals that "for the first time in the nation’s history, more than one in 100 American adults is behind bars."

"Nationwide, the prison population grew by 25,000 last year, bringing it to almost 1.6 million,"the New York Times continues. "Another 723,000 people are in local jails. The number of American adults is about 230 million, meaning that one in every 99.1 adults is behind bars."

"Incarceration rates are even higher for some groups. One in 36 Hispanic adults is behind bars, based on Justice Department figures for 2006. One in 15 black adults is, too, as is one in nine black men between the ages of 20 and 34.

In addition state budgets are being stretched to the max by draconian federal laws which dictate mandatory sentencing and thus increased costs, a legacy of the twisted Rockefeller laws of the 1970s.

"In 2007, according to the National Association of State Budgeting Officers, states spent $44 billion in tax dollars on corrections," the Times reports.

"That is up from $10.6 billion in 1987, a 127 increase once adjusted for inflation. With money from bond issues and from the federal government included, total state spending on corrections last year was $49 billion. By 2011, the report said, states are on track to spend an additional $25 billion.

The waste in US resources is mind-boggling, though it provides huge revenue streams for corporate-government insiders who have taken advantage of the "privatization" of the prison business, the so-called prison-industrial complex..

"It cost an average of $23,876 to imprison someone in 2005, the most recent year for which data is available. But state spending varies widely, from $45,000 a year for each inmate in Rhode Island to just $13,000 in Louisiana.

"The cost of medical care is growing by 10 percent annually, the report said, a rate that will accelerate as the prison population ages.

"About one in nine state government employees works in corrections, and some states are finding it hard to fill those jobs. California spent more than $500 million on overtime alone in 2006."

In the American Prison Nation, the privatized prison business is a growth industry.
http://conspiracyplanet.com/

A DOCTOR SPEAKS FROM GAZA

A DOCTOR SPEAKS FROM GAZA

February 29, 2008 at 9:11 am (Collective Punishment, Complicity, Ethnic Cleansing, Gaza, Genocide, Occupation, Palestine, War Crimes)

(Ben Heine © Cartoons)

In the following report you can feel the anger and frustration at the situation. Israel is eliminating an entire section of the Palestinian population as the entire world watches SILENTLY….

Reports have been in the press, on the airwaves, still it is allowed to continue and intensify. At this point it is not only Israel that is guilty of these crimes, it is the entire world! Complicity is guilt!!

DO SOMETHING NOW!

SAY SOMETHING NOW!!

SAVE THE PEOPLE OF GAZA!!!

Israel intensifies it’s attacks against Gaza
Dr. Mona El-Farra

My sleep was largely interrupted , last night so was my my daughter’s. The shooting was so heavy against different areas of the city , as well as different parts of the Gaza strip , the jet fighters sound was too loud as well as the helicopters sound.

This morning 28th of February it is disproportional open war , civilians pay the price , 15 people were killed , as an outcome of last night attack , including 3 months old baby !!!!!!!!!(1000 children were killed in the last 5 years alone )

On my way walking to the Red Crescent Society , (I do not have fuel in my car ), it is only 25 minutes , while walking , I can clearly hear successive explosions, from different parts of the city , and the drune on the sky , and also can clearly see the security forces soldiers, outside their headquarters , as it is under threat of bombing by the Israeli military forces , I had to walk very fast , expecting the worse.

Arriving my work to find out that we do not have enough fuel for the ambulance and the other work vehicles. No fuel entered Gaza since 17 days , our storage has been exhausted , oh my god this situation will have its disastrous impact on different health facilities .

Medical workers as always work under great pressure , and while I am trying to arrange for medical shipment entry to Gaza , donated by MECA , I endure living in such dangerous situation , and lack of electricity , we have scarce power 6- 8 hours daily at the moment ,fresh and clean pumped water is big problem for most residents of Gaza.

I feel fed up , exhausted and drained of talking about the same topics again and again , and things get worse and worse , so please understand me when i do not write .

Safety is my big concern at the moment as well as meeting medical facilities medications and medical supplies needs.

Justice and peace is my great goal , please spread the word.

Source

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/

Huxley Warned Us: Part 7

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Huxley Warned Us: Part 7

Aldous Huxley, 1958:

Artwork by Byron Werner

"Mass communication, in a word, is neither good nor bad; it is simply a force and, like any other force, it can be used either well or ill. Used in one way, the press, the radio and the cinema are indispensable to the survival of democracy. Used in another way, they are among the most powerful weapons in the dictator's armory. In the field of mass communications as in almost every other field of enterprise, technological progress has hurt the Little Man and helped the Big Man. As lately as [1910], every democratic country could boast of a great number of small journals and local newspapers. Thousands of country editors expressed thousands of independent opinions. Somewhere or other almost anybody could get almost anything printed.

"Today the press is still legally free; but most of the little papers have disappeared. The cost of wood-pulp, of modern printing machinery and of syndicated news is too high for the Little Man. In the totalitarian East there is political censorship, and the media of mass communication are controlled by the State. In the democratic West there is economic censorship and the media of mass communication are controlled by members of the Power Elite. Censorship by rising costs and concentration of communication-power in the hands of a few big concerns is less objectionable than State ownership and government propaganda; but certainly it is not something of which a Jeffersonian democrat could possibly approve.

"In regard to propaganda, the early advocates of universal literacy and a free press envisaged only two possibilities: the propaganda might be true, or it might be false. They did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies - the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions."


Here we are, half a century on and this situation has, as one might reasonably expect, grown worse still. There was always some element of propaganda in Western media, even pre-Huxley, but it was nothing as remotely unremitting and omnipresent as it is today. Governments and large media organizations (increasingly one and the same entity) could have used their influence to bring about a better society, but they chose, by accident or design, to do the opposite. And the only place where genuine freedom of expression yet survives in on the Internet - and that may not be for very much longer if the powers that be have their way.

The media of today serves - almost without exception - the interests of 'Big Business' with its free trade and globalization agenda; selling out the interests of hard-working people for the VAST self-enrichment of what Huxley calls the 'Power Elite'. Eye-wateringly large sums are made by big business interests (read "Jews") which have asset-stripped this nation and others on an epic scale. The demise of the manufacturing heartlands of the northern midwest attest to this. Ruin, decay, family breakdown, drugs and crime have replaced ordered and prosperous communities. This is all solely due to the Jews' internationalist, borderless world where decent Americans are forced to compete with Chinese peasants and the like who sell their labor for little more than a bowl of rice a day.

The advertising element of the popular media has gotten totally out of control, too. Rather than satisfying consumers' genuine needs and desires as was once the case, it has become a dragon of a business model that festers on our worst fears and anxieties. We no longer buy useful products or services because we NEED them, we buy junk, mass-produced garbage by the shed-load in order to prove to our friends and neighbors that we're 'doing well' and have a 'comfortable lifestyle.' Every advertisement screams out to us that we're missing out on something; if we don't constantly and wantonly consume, there must be something fundamentally wrong in our lives.

Advertising media attempts to make us feel rotten and inadequate and instills in us a a sense of permanent dissatisfaction with every aspect of our existence. The impetus from this form of madness comes from the craven greed of a race of beings who can NEVER have enough and don't care what damage they do in going after it. The American dream was never about having a driveway stuffed full of sports utility vehicles. It was never about having a glamor model for a wife. It was never about taking 4 holidays a year. It was never about having a widescreen TV in every room spewing out its garbage. It was never about so much stuff that the Jews have convinced us, through their stranglehold over the mass media, is what we should be striving for.

If we could only break away from this madness, en-masse, and adopt the kind of lifestyle advocated by the likes of Emerson and Thoreau, the Tribe of Satan would be out of business in a flash. They'd never make a single cent out of us, just as they can't make a penny out of the Amish community. Maybe one day soon when the dollar collapses to Absolute Zero and folks wake up to the reality of the lies, the distortions, the fraud and deceit that's been perpetrated against us for decades, there'll come a realization that all the junk that the Jews told us was so desirable and indispensable wasn't worth jack. Then perhaps we can re-establish this broken, fucked-up society along decent lines. Until that happy day, keep those guns oiled.

Posted by Phaedrus

Why we're winning the war on terrorism: new photo from Abu Ghraib

Synthetic Armageddon, Part 1: The Big Lie

Synthetic Armageddon, Part 1: The Big Lie

February 25, 2008

“. . . the magnitude of a lie always contains a certain factor of credibility, since the great masses of the people in the very bottom of their hearts tend to be corrupted rather than consciously and purposely evil, and that, therefore, in view of the primitive simplicity of their minds they more easily fall a victim to a big lie than to a little one, since they themselves lie in little things, but would be ashamed of lies that were too big.“

Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, Chapter 10

“The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.”

Joseph Goebbels, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel

“People will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”

OSS on Hitler’s psychological profile

“The key-word here is blackwhite. Like so many Newspeak words, this word has two mutually contradictory meanings. Applied to an opponent, it means the habit of impudently claiming that black is white, in contradiction of the plain facts.”

George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty Four

U.S. citizens are a stubborn, patriotic and very attached to their freedoms, with an attitude that annoys elitists, feeder entities, control freaks and dictators to no end. How can they be Emperors over whole realms of peasants who consider themselves sovereign, and worse, act the part? How is it possible for elites to enjoy lives of relative leisure if the “peasants” won’t pay them tribute? It’s such a dilemma, trying to be Emperor in a country of kings.

So the Robber Barons of a few generations ago, the grandparents of today’s corporate elites, gathered in secret and decided that either:

1) a powerful and dangerous enemy, or

2) the threat of a dreadful catastrophe

would be necessary for the public to give up its sovereignty and accept the “efficiencies” of their authoritative rule. Not patient enough to wait for an Act of God they decided to play God by manufacturing a series of crises, hoping one would stick. Their approach to global domination relied heavily upon Georg Hegel’s theories on dialectic and tragedy.

Hegel (1770-1831) was an imperialist and a con artist, and his dialectic has allowed globalists to lead free men and women back into the superstitious, racist and unreasonable age of imperial rule. The Robber Barons and their progeny, all with vast resources at their fingertips, used his dialectic to create false enemies and threats to frighten the people into following their lead.

Modern propaganda is based mainly on Hegelian dialectic: The invention of artificial extremes (”thesis” and “antithesis”) which only superficially conflict with each other, and the synthesis of a solution from the conflict. For instance, it’s a myth that Capitalism and Communism are opposites, as both rest on the same platform: A centralization of wealth which destroys private property, mostly through legislation and the control of the money supply. Central banking is common to both Communism and Capitalism, so pervasive it barely occurs to citizens that there is a better way to create wealth than issuing public debt.

Artificial extremes (evangelical Christianity vs. radical Islam, for another example) are chosen and propagandized in such a way that marginalizes both and turns each side against the other. The goal of the controllers is to “naturally” synthesize a reconciliation in such a way that benefits themselves exclusively. It is essentially a fraud, a strategy of ideological divide-and-conquer. The dialectic ruse scatters the citizens’ energies and coherence, making them willing to grab on to any solution that will return matters to some kind of equilibrium. Unless, of course, they recognize the ruse as such and refuse to be sucked into the lies.

Here’s how the Big Lie is used to bring about change:

1. The elites identify a new enemy or impending crisis that will alter or end life as we know it. Failing that, they make one up. Or even create one.

2. They spend a lot of money, time and attention to hype the problem in the media, and frame proposed restrictive and controlling Policy X around the crisis. Policy X is typically one that We The People would never allow during a time of calm but one that serves the greed of the propagandists, who are generally money-grubbing, egomaniacal, imperialistic control freaks.

3. Our elites allow the public hysteria to reach a crescendo until the citizen victims shout “THE GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!”

4. The corporate and government bandits come to the “rescue” and insist that oppressive and/or expensive Policy X will solve the problem.

5. We the People say “Well okay, just so long as it makes us feel safe and bring things back to normal.”

Thus another nail is pounded into the coffin. The Italian Mafia had it’s own way of expressing the Hegelian dialectic with it’s protection rackets. The method is still used today by our modern Robber Barons, members of the Bilderberg Group in particular, who plan wars revolutions, global initiatives, and even gas prices well in advance and stage them all to look as though they just “happened.” For instance, nearly every war the U.S. ever fought was planned in advance and marketed to a trusting and gullible public well before the first shot was even fired. Todays controlled collapse of the U.S. economy was conceived and developed in a Bilderberg Group meeting:

“During 2006 meeting, Bilderbergers have confirmed that their short range price estimate for oil for the 2007-08 continues to hover around US$105-150/barrel. No wonder Jose Barroso, President of the European Commission, announced several months ago during the unveiling of the new European energy policy that the time has come for a “post-industrial age.” To bring the world into the post industrial age, you first need to destroy the world´s economic base and create another Great Depression. When people are poor, they don´t spend money, they don´t travel, and they don´t consume.”

David Estulin Tracks Bilderberg 2007 and it’s Attendees,

Counterpunch Magazine, May 21, 2007

So, how does it feel knowing your so-called “betters” have decided to relieve you of your life savings and kick your country back into the Dark Ages? I don’t know ’bout y’all but I’m pretty pissed off, because neo-feudalism is NOT my cup of tea. Can we just say NO this time? Just, NO, no no no. Never again. We’re not buying it this time; so stop it. We the People will need to shout it out together, because it will take an awful lot more than the Hedonistic Pleasureseeker stomping her feet and screaming profanities at the New World Order for the corporate elites to give up on their lunatic plan to become Masters of the Universe.

The next few years will see factions within the Global Elite quietly warring with each other over the methods, means and steps toward global dictatorship. Meanwhile they will continue to prep We the People for The End Game, which for a century has been planned to mirror the Book of Revelations in the Biblical New Testament. Hegelian Tragedies include the manufacture of much more than flesh-and-blood enemies with whom we are expected to do battle. Sometimes these tragedies include “Acts of God.” You probably believe only God is able to cause or create an Act of God, but are you sure about this? Boy do I have news for you. Are you sitting down?

(To be continued . . .)

(”Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man.

Communism is the inverse.” - Couloche)

Posted by The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker

Francis A. Boyle's "Protesting Power - War, Resistance and Law

Thursday, February 28, 2008

Francis A. Boyle's "Protesting Power - War, Resistance and Law

by Stephen Lendman


Francis A. Boyle is a distinguished University of Illinois law professor, activist, and internationally recognized expert on international law and human rights. From 1988 to 1992, he was a board member of Amnesty International USA. He was a consultant to the American Friends Service Committee. From 1991 to 1993, he was legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization, and currently he's a leading proponent of an effort to impeach George Bush, Dick Cheney and other key administration figures for their crimes of war, against humanity and other grievous violations of domestic and international law. Boyle also lectures widely, writes extensively and authored many books, including his latest one and subject of this review: "Protesting Power - War, Resistance and Law."

Boyle's book is powerful, noble and compelling, and he states its purpose upfront: Today, a "monumental struggle (is being waged) for the heart and soul of (America) and the future of the world...." It matches peacemakers on one side, war makers on the other, and all humanity hanging in the balance. The book provides hope and ammunition. It's a urgent call to action and demonstrates that "civil resistance (is) solidly grounded in international law, human rights (efforts), and the US Constitution." It "can be used to fight back and defeat the legal, constitutional, and humanitarian nihilism of the Bush administration" neocons and their chilling Hobbesian vision - imperial dominance, homeland police state, and permanent "war that won't end in our lifetimes," according to Dick Cheney.

Boyle has the antidote: "civil resistance, international law, human rights, and the US Constitution - four quintessential principles to counter....militarism run amuk." Our choice is "stark and compelling." We must act in our own self-defense "immediately, before humankind exterminates itself in an act of nuclear omnicide." The threat today is dire and real, it demands action, and civil resistance no longer is an option. With survival at stake, it's an obligation.

The Right to Engage in Civil Resistance to Prevent State Crimes

Post-WW II, US foreign policy adopted the political "realism" and "power politics" principles that Hans Morganthau explained in his seminal work on the subject - "Politics among Nations: the Struggle for Power and Peace (1948)." For decades, it was the leading international politics text from a man eminently qualified to produce it and whose experiences under Nazism influenced him.

His cardinal tenet was darkly Hobbesian - that international law and world organizations are "irrelevant" when it comes to conflicts between nations on matters of national interest. Ignore "reality" and perish, but consider the consequences. They've has been disastrous for America, at home and abroad, in a world of our making where life is "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." No law or justice exists, no sense of right or wrong, no morality, just illusions of what might be, and a "struggle for survival in a state of war" by every nation against all others for one unattainable aim - absolute power and national security at the expense of other states and most people everywhere.

Political "realists" believe that when nations respect international laws and norms and ignore the "iron law" of "power politics," they invite disaster at the hands of aggressors. Boyle believes otherwise and eloquently states it: "Throughout the twentieth century, the promotion of international law, organizations, human rights, and the US Constitution has consistently provided the United States with the best means for reconciling the idealism (and aspirations) of American values....with the realism of world politics and historical conditions."

It can work the way Boyle documented it in his 1999 book, Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations, 1898 - 1922. In it, he offers a comprehensive analysis of US foreign policy achievements through international law and organizations to settle disputes, prevent wars and preserve peace. It included:

-- an obligatory arbitration system for settling disputes between states - the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in 1899 that's still operating at The Hague as the oldest international dispute resolution institution;

-- the Permanent Court of International Justice (World Court) in 1922 that was replaced by the International Court of Justice in 1946 after the UN was established in 1945;

-- the codification of important areas of international law in treaty form;

-- promoting arms reduction after relaxing international tensions by legal techniques and institutions; and

-- convoking periodic peace conferences for all internationally recognized states; the League of Nations was established for this purpose and later the United Nations with its functional agencies like the International Labour Organization, WHO, UNESCO, and IAEA. Other affiliated institutions included the IMF, World Bank, GATT, WTO and regional organizations like the OAS, Arab League, African Union, ASEAN, OSCE and EU. To these add NATO, the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (the Rio Pact), SEATO, ANZUS and various bilateral self-defense treaties under Article 51 of the UN Charter.

These organizations should have worked. In practice they don't, and Boyle explains why: compared to America's early "legalist, humanitarian, and constitutionalist approach to international relations, geopolitical (realpolitik) practioners of the Hobbesian" school prevailed - men like Johnson, Kissinger, McNamara, Nixon, Byzezinski, Carter, Reagan, GHW Bush, GW Bush, his neocon ideologues and countless others. They disdain democracy, constitutional government and their essential principles: commitment to the rule of domestic and international law, human rights, equal justice and peace.

Consider the cost. It's beyond measure and even worse looking back, in spite of all efforts toward conflict resolution. Since the nation's founding, America has been at war with one or more adversaries every year in our history (without exception), and note the consequences:

-- we glorify wars and violence in the name of peace;

-- have the highest domestic homicide rate in the western world by far;

-- our society is called a "rape culture" and three-fourths of all women are victims of some form of violence in their lifetimes, many repeatedly;

-- millions of children are violence or abuse victims and get no help from the state;

-- in a nominal democracy under constitutional law, aggressive wars and domestic violence are normal and commonplace; peace, tranquility and public safety are illusions and so are human rights, civil liberties, the rule of law, and common dignity, and the reason it's so is simple - it benefits the privileged few at the expense of the greater good.

What can be done? Plenty, according to Boyle. "Concerned citizens" and people of conscience are obligated to use our available tools - domestic and international law and human rights as "checks and balances against" government abuses of power in the conduct of domestic and foreign policies. Otherwise, administrations can run amuck and literally get away with murder and other major crimes of war, against humanity, peace and the general welfare.

Consider the alternative and what can be gained. By respecting the law, human rights and other nations' sovereignty, US administrations could defend the nation, conduct its foreign and domestic affairs, and achieve its goals successfully without wars, violence and disdain for the common good. At worst under an anti-Hobbesian construct, short-term objectives might be sacrificed in part for more vital ones in the long run, and isn't that what survival is all about.

At his book's end, Boyle quotes Hans Morgenthau's comments in 1979, just months before his death, and it's appropriate to mention them here. Boyle asked him "what he thought about the future of international relations" at the time Jimmy Carter was President. His response: "Future, what future?....In my opinion the world is moving ineluctably toward a third world war - a strategic nuclear war. I do not believe that anything can be done to prevent it. The international system is simply too unstable to survive for long." Arms reduction treaties are mere stopgaps and will be unable to "stop the momentum."

If Morganthau is right, the choice is stark and clear. Continue our present path and perish or unite at the grassroots to change an ugly, unsustainable system and let humankind survive. There's no middle ground, time may be short, and who knows if enough still remains.

Yet Boyle eschews that notion and dedicates his book to hope through resistance. We must try and use our available tools - the Constitution; UN Charter; Nuremberg Charter, Judgment and Principles; Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide; Universal Declaration of Human Rights; Hague Regulations; Geneva Conventions; Supreme (and lower) Court decisions; US Army Field Manual 27-10; The Law of Land Warfare (1956); and our own profound commitment to resist and prevail whatever the odds and consequences. Apathy isn't an option.

History, moreover, shows these tactics work when enough people commit to them. They ended the Vietnam war, and, in the 1980s, anti-nuclear and anti-war resisters forced the Reagan and GHW Bush administrations to conclude the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 1987 and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) in 1991.

Conditions today are far more grave under neocon rule that disdains the law and all binding peace and international arms reduction treaties. It:

-- claims the right to develop new type nuclear weapons, not eliminate the ones Morganthau believed will destroy us;

-- ignores the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and intends to test new weapons developed;

-- ended Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty protection;

-- rescinded and subverted the Biological and Toxic Weapons Convention;

-- spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined, and it's getting worse; on February 4, the largest ever defense budget since WW II, in inflation-adjusted dollars, was proposed for fiscal 2009 at a time the nation has no adversaries, should be at peace, but chooses wars without end instead;

-- disdains a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty to prevent additional nuclear bombs to be added to present stockpiles already dangerously too high; and

-- claims the right to wage preventive wars under the doctrine of "anticipatory self-defense" using first strike nuclear weapons against any other state. Morganthau would say I warned you.

Boyle says civil resisters like the ones he testifies for represent hope. They're "the archetypical American heros" whose names few people know - Richard Sauder, Jeff Paterson, David Mejia, Ehren Watada, Kathy Kelly, Daniel Berrigan, his late brother Philip and many other courageous, dedicated people for peace and equal justice. They risk their lives and freedom for the greater good, pay hugely for it, and Ramzy Clark once saluted them saying: "Our jails are filling up with saints." We have a constitutional right and personal duty to support them, join them, and resist our government's criminal acts. They must be stopped or the alternative may be WW III and the end of humanity.

Constitutional law supports resistance (not disobedience that violates the law). The First Amendment protects the right to "peaceably....assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances." It doesn't have to be lawful, just peaceable, so it's incumbent to resist when governments act criminally and endanger public safety and welfare, and the law is on our side. Resisters have the same statutory and common-law defenses as criminal defendants - defense of self, others, necessity, choice of evils, prevention of crime, execution of public duty, citizen's arrest, prevention of a public catastrophe, and other defenses. If not us, who then?

Federal courts abdicated their power and defer to presidential lawlessness under doctrines of "political question, state secrets, standing, judicial restraint, (and) national security." Congress as well has power, but won't use it. If it did, imagine how constructively it could exercise its appropriation authority under Article 1, Section 9, Clause 7 of the Constitution saying: "No money shall be drawn from the treasury, but in consequence of appropriations made by law...."

Congress alone is empowered to do it. It controls the federal budget that includes defense and supplementary military spending. Foreign wars will end and new ones not begun if Congress won't fund them. It's how Vietnam ended. Congress stopped funding it under the Church-Case June 1973 amendment that cut off appropriations after August 15. Legislative power is the same today, but post-9/11, Congress abdicated its authority and defers to Bush administration demands on nearly everything, including aggressive foreign wars.

If the courts and Congress won't act, the public must and if charged and prosecuted are protected under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments to the right of trial by a jury of peers. Boyle explains that the "American criminal jury system (ultimately may be) the last bastion of democracy, the rule of law, human rights and the US Constitution" against a criminal administration and whichever one succeeds it if it continues lawless policies.

From his experience, Boyle is hopeful because when American juries understand government crimes, "they usually refused to convict" civil resisters trying to stop them. Two precedent-setting 1985 cases stand out as examples: People v. Jarka and Chicago v. Streeter. In both cases, defendants used a common-law defense called "necessity" and were acquitted. They were absolved of criminal liability because their actions caused less injury than the greater one they hoped to avoid. Winning these cases makes them applicable to more serious ones like crimes of war, and against humanity and peace.

Ahead, achieving victories or hung juries is crucial to preserving our constitutional system under threat. A strong message will be sent that ordinary people can confront government crimes and prevail. As such, we have to try. Surrender or apathy aren't options. The stakes are far too great.

Defending Civil Resisters: Philosophy, Strategy, and Tactics

In an age of lawless government, resisters represent hope. They're the "sheriffs," government officials the "outlaws," and it highlights the importance of seeking counsel and who to choose. The person must believe in the accused and their cause and work cooperatively with an international law expert to introduce these principles into the proceedings as evidence.

Many times, international law is the only defense, there's plenty to draw on, and Boyle believes when a peace-loving, law-abiding jury hears compelling evidence citing it, "there is almost no way the government will be able to convict" resisters on trial. The jury will either acquit, be hung, or charges will be dismissed before or during trial. It's thus clear that a successful defense requires a jury trial because too many judges support state authority and may deny evidence and convict. That's particularly true for federal judges who are nominated by the President, confirmed by the Senate, and over two-thirds on the bench now come from the extremist Federalist Society.

Proper representation and effective courtroom proceedings are crucial and follow from civil resistance acts that at times means spending time in jail. A good lawyer's job and Boyle's book are to prevent it, and he devotes considerable space explaining how. It begins with a good lawyer. After that comes:

-- a proper defense that aims to win or at least get a hung jury;

-- introducing international law as evidence and relating it to traditional common-law, statutory, procedural, and constitutional defenses that usually include one or more of the following: defense of self, others, property, necessity, prevention of a crime or public catastrophe, citizen's arrest, and other legal choices; international law is part of domestic law under Article VI of the Constitution (the supremacy clause);

Article VI also includes treaties as the "supreme law of the land;" so are Supreme Court decisions like The Paquete Habana (1900) that stated "International law is part of our law, and must be ascertained and administered by the courts of justice of appropriate jurisdiction...." In United States v. Belmont (1937) and United States v. Pink (1942), the Court ruled that the supremacy clause applies to international executive agreements that don't receive formal Senate advice and consent (the Senate does not ratify treaties as such);

US presidents take an oath under Article II, Section 1, Clause 7 to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution...." International treaties and agreements are included. In addition, Article II, Section 3 requires the president to "take Care that the Laws be faithfully exercised;"

-- introducing the burden of proof in affirmative defenses to force the prosecution to prove guilt by disproving this type defense; the idea is to create a reasonable doubt about criminal intent;

-- distinguishing "specific intent crimes" (that many resisters are charged with) from general intent ones;

-- defending the crime of unlawful "trespass" by arguing it was done to uphold domestic and international law to prevent the commission of a crime;

-- establishing a pattern of criminal government behavior to justify resistance against it; it may include but not be limited to: Nuremberg crimes against peace, humanity, war crimes, breaches of Geneva, Hague, the UN Charter, genocide, torture and other crimes including inchoate ones, such as planning, preparing or aiding and abetting them;

-- using appropriate international criminal law standards in the US Army Field Manual 27-10 (that incorporates Nuremberg Principles, Judgment and the Charter) and The Law of Land Warfare (1956); the Field Manual paragraph 498 states that any person, military or civilian, who commits a crime under international law is responsible for it and may be punished; paragraph 499 defines a "war crime;" paragraph 500 refers to conspiracy, attempts to commit it and complicity with respect to international crimes; paragraph 509 denies the defense of superior orders in the commission of a crime; and paragraph 510 denies the defense of an "act of state;" and so forth;

-- pro se resisters (representing themselves without counsel) must take special care to prepare a proper defense with one aim - to convince one juror of their innocence; these and other considerations are vital to an effective defense when it's you v. the state and judges may be hostile. Resistance, however, is crucial because in Boyle's words: "Today is our Nuremberg moment!"

Trident on Trial

In this and succeeding chapters, Boyle reviews cases in which he testified pro bono for the defense. In each one, he explains the issue, who was on trial, followed by a summation of the crucial portions of his testimony that are text book examples of a proper and effective defense.

The Trident II strategic nuclear missile submarine is the first example and is described as follows: it's the "most hideous and nefarious weapon of mass destruction (WMD) ever devised" because of its unimaginable destructive power. The US Navy deploys 14 Tridents, the UK four others, and just one of them has enough nuclear kilotonnage to destroy much of planet earth and maybe all of it from nuclear fallout - around 270 or more times the destructive power of the low-yield bombs that incinerated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Further, NAVSTAR satellite communications give Delta V multiple warhead MIRVs on board pinpoint accuracy to make Trident ideal for an offensive near-omnicidal first-strike capability. At patrol depth, the extremely low frequency (ELF) system is the only way to communicate with these submarines. For that reason, Plowshares defendant George Ostensen (in 1987) engaged in civil resistance against the Ashland, Wisconsin ELF facility and was charged with two counts of "sabotage." He faced a possible 40 year prison sentence if found guilty as charged.

Boyle testified for him and used the transcript as a text for other Plowshares resisters to contest similar charges against them. It paid off with two outright acquittals in 1996 and another in a 1999 Scotland case because juries were convinced that ELF/Trident II was as dangerous as described above and thus criminal under well-established international and domestic law principles. These verdicts led to a "stunning" victory when the Navy announced it would shutter its Wisconsin and Michigan ELF systems in September 2004. "Civil resistance had triumphed over the Trident II," but these weapons are still deployed and threaten all humanity by their existence.

Brief excerpts of Boyle's testimony in his Ostensen defense follow. The laws he cites are mentioned above so comments on them are brief and not repeated for succeeding chapters.

In Ostensen and other testimonies, Boyle explains domestic and international laws relevant to the cases:

-- the US Constitution; the supremacy clause under Article VI stating that all forms of international treaties and agreements to which the US is a signatory are binding on "all American citizens, government officials, (the military and) courts of law;"

-- The Paquette Habana (1900) Supreme Court decision affirming that international law is US law;

-- The Law of Naval Warfare (1955) and The Law of Land Warfare (1956) both state that international laws bind all members of the US military, government officials and American citizens; they clearly say that international law limits the threat or use of nuclear weapons because these weapons are so deadly;

-- the Navy, Army and Air Force manuals incorporate the Nuremberg Principles as binding US law; they include crimes of war, against peace and humanity as well as planning, preparing, or waging an aggressive war; also applicable is conspiracy, incitement, and/or aiding and abetting the commission of these crimes; Nuremberg also rejected the defense of superior orders; the UN General Assembly unanimously approved these Principles as recognized international law in Resolution 95(I) in December 1946;

-- the Army, Navy and Air Force field manuals are issued to all members of the military today who are told they are fully accountable for any Nuremberg violations;

-- an outstanding DOD policy states that nuclear weapons are to be developed according to international law requirements;

-- Jimmy Carter's Presidential Directive 59 involves the targeting of nuclear weapons as first-strike options; at the time of the Ostensen case, no such official first-strike policy existed; that changed under the December 2001 Nuclear Policy Review; it affirmed the right to declare and wage future preventive wars using first- strike nuclear weapons; Trident II/Delta V submarines are nuclear first-stike WMDs; so is the ELF communication system;

-- the first-strike option is clearly illegal under Nuremberg Principles as well as the 1907 Hague Regulations that require an ultimatum or formal declaration of war; no nation has the "right" to affirm a policy of "deterrence" to threaten or destroy another one, let alone all humanity by nuclear weapons; that's very clear under Nuremberg.

The Constitutionality of President George HW Bush's War against Iraq on Trial (The Gulf War)

Boyle testified at the trial of Marine Corps Corporal Jeffrey Paterson. Over time, his military obligations increasingly conflicted with his moral beliefs. Things came to a head when he was told he'd likely be sent to the Persian Gulf as part of the military buildup prior to the Gulf War. On grounds of conscientious objection, he applied to be discharged and was refused even though the law states:

"To qualify for discharge from military service as a conscientious objector, an applicant must establish that:

(1) he or she is opposed to war in any form - Gillette v. United States (1971);

(2) his or her objection is founded in deeply held moral, ethical, or religious beliefs - Welsh v. United States (1970); and

(3) his or her convictions are sincere - Witmer v. United States (1955)."

Marine Corps Order 1306.16E requires that reasonable efforts be made to assign minimally-conflicting duties while an application is being processed. Nonetheless, Paterson was ordered to deploy to Saudi Arabia on August 29, 1990. He refused to go, was arrested, incarcerated, then freed pending court-martial.

Paterson has an honored distinction. He was the first military or civil resister to GHW Bush's "unconstitutional and criminal" Gulf War. He was charged under article 86 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) alleging his refusal to muster to deploy to the Gulf. On November 1, his lawyer filed a motion to dismiss three charges on grounds they were illegal. A special hearing was then held on November 19 before a Marine Corps judge. He ruled for Paterson by concluding that the government bore the burden of proof that must be beyond a reasonable doubt.

It was "a great victory for peace, justice, international law, the US Constitution, and civil resistance." On December 5, 1990, Paterson was administratively released from the Marine Corps with an "other than honorable discharge." His case was precedent-setting, "of great historic significance," and it's applicable to all cases of military and civil resistance against government crimes, including waging wars of aggression.

The US is a signatory to the UN Charter, it's the law of the land under the supremacy clause, and its Chapter VII empowers the Security Council alone to "determine the existence of any threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or act of aggression," and, if necessary, take military or other action to "restore international peace and stability." It lets a nation use force only under two conditions:

-- under authorization by the Security Council; or

-- under Article 51 that permits the "right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member....until the Security Council has taken measures to maintain international peace and security."

In addition, both houses of Congress, not the president, have exclusive power to declare war under Article I, Section 8, Clause 11 of the Constitution that's known as the war powers clause. Nonetheless, that procedure was followed only five times in our history, it was last used for WW II in 1941, and Congress addressed the issue in 1973 when it passed the War Powers Resolution.

It requires the president to get congressional authorization for war or a resolution passed within 60 days of initiating hostilities. It also states in Section 4(a)(3): "In the absence of a declaration of war, in any case in which United States Armed Forces are introduced -- (3) in numbers which substantially enlarge the United States Armed Forces equipped for combat already located in a foreign nation; the president shall submit within 48 hours to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and to the President pro tempore of the Senate a report, setting forth" necessitating circumstances, a request for "constitutional and legislative authority," and the "estimated scope and duration of the hostilities or involvement."

Congress gave GHW Bush this authority on January 14, 1991. It did not give it to George W. Bush, yet he went to war anyway in violation of a host of laws, domestic and international. On January 15, 1991, Congressman Henry Gonzales, Ramsey Clark and Francis Boyle launched a national campaign to impeach GHW Bush. Five articles of impeachment were prepared.

They apply as well today to GW Bush's illegal wars against Iraq and Afghanistan, and Boyle states why as follows: "the House can, should, and must impeach President Bush for commencing this war, lying about this war, and threatening more wars. All that is needed is one member of the House of Representatives with courage, integrity, principles, and a safe seat" to do it. If not, the alternative is dire - wars without end, a homeland police state and the end of the republic that's already on life support.

In testifying for Corporal Paterson, Boyle reviewed the relevant laws already covered above. He also cited pertinent Supreme Court decisions going back to Little v. Barreme (1804) and Mitchell v. Harmony (1851) as well as Colonel William Winthrop's Military Law and Precedents (1880, 1886 and revised and enlarged in 1920).

Winthrop specifically states that soldiers are obligated to disobey illegal orders defined as follows: ones unauthorized by law or that are clearly illegal acts. In the Paterson case, there was no authorized law, and he had no duty to obey a clearly unlawful order.

President Clinton's Invasion of Haiti and the Laws of War

Noam Chomsky believes that every US president since WW II could be impeached because "they've all been either outright war criminals or involved in serious war crimes." Bill Clinton was one of them. In November 1993, he sent troops to Somalia, supposedly for humanitarian intervention, got no congressional authorization, and killed about 10,000 Somalis. He was then complicit in the 1994 Rwandan massacres (involving no US troops), and on September 19, 1994 again acted illegally - he invaded Haiti without congressional authority and violated the Constitution's war powers clause.

The 10th US Army Mountain Division from Fort Drum, New York was part of the force sent. Capt. Lawrence P. Rockwood II was a fourth generation soldier and career military officer with 15 years service. Yet he jeopardized his safety, career and personal liberty to aid incarcerated Haitians.

He learned about horrific human rights violations inside Haiti's prisons under its military dictator. They were especially bad at the National Penitentiary in Port-au-Prince, he informed his superiors, and then pressured them to take control and stop the abuses. Nothing was done, so Rockwell acted on his own as the US Army Field Manual 27-10 and international law require.

On September 30, he went to the prison alone, inspected conditions inside, saw firsthand how bad they were, and compiled a list of prisoners' names to deter their deaths or "disappearance." Subsequently, he was court-martialed in May 1995 and faced up to 10 years in prison if found guilty of multiple charges.

In fact, he was convicted of five specifications on three charges under the UCMJ, including:

-- failure to report for duty under article 86;

-- disrespect for a superior officer under article 89;

-- willful disobedience of superior orders under article 90; and

-- conduct unbecoming an officer under article 133.

-- He was acquitted of two specifications of an additional charge of failing to obey an order and dereliction of duties under article 92.

The court abstained from imposing a prison sentence and instead dismissed Rockwood from the army with forfeiture of pay. In so doing, the military jury affirmed his defense that he acted properly under international law to stop grievous abuses inside Haiti's prison. He left the army "an acknowledged and eternal hero to the worldwide human rights movement."

Appearing for the defense at his trial was an expert witness, an authentic human rights hero in his own right - Hugh Thompson. As a Vietnam helicopter pilot, he saved lives at the infamous My Lai massacre by threatening to kill Lt. Calley and his soldiers if they didn't cease slaughtering innocent civilians. Thirty years later, he won a medal for it, and he told the court that Rockwood also deserved one as for his heroic act. He fought for human rights and won, and Boyle relates his testimony for him to laws of war and human rights violations applicable to the Bush administration's Iraq war, its oppressive occupation, and the actions of its puppet government in Baghdad for which Washington is fully accountable under international law.

It began with an illegal March 19, 2003 "decapitation strike" against Saddam Hussein in violation of a 48 hour ultimatum he'd been given to leave the country with his sons. That crime and trying to assassinate a country's leader are also illegal under earlier cited international laws.

Next came "shock and awe," Baghdad was targeted, and Article 6(b) of the Nuremberg Charter was grievously violated. It defines war crimes to include the "wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, or devastation not justified by military necessity." Fallujah and other Iraqi cities were similarly victimized (as were Afghan targets) in spite of a May 8, 2003 joint US-UK pledge to the president of the Security Council: that Coalition states "will strictly abide by their obligations under international law, including those relating to the essential humanitarian needs of the people of Iraq." Instead, laws are ignored and Iraqis continue to suffer grievously under an illegal, brutish occupation.

It includes the widespread use of torture that became de facto US policy after George Bush's September 17, 2001 "finding" authorizing CIA to kill, capture and detain "Al Qaeda" members anywhere in the world and rendition them to secret black site prisons for interrogation, presumed to include torture. Soon after on January 25, 2002, White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales called the Geneva Conventions "quaint and obsolete," and it was all downhill from there to Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Bagram in Afghanistan and countless other torture prison sites. Included also is a newly revealed secret Guantanamo one called "Camp 7" for "high-value" detainees. It's gruesome to imagine the barbarity inside under a president claiming "Unitary Executive" powers to do as he pleases outside the law.

In his testimony, Boyle again explained relevant laws that were covered above. US governments and the Pentagon willfully ignore them, George Bush flaunts them, and accountable civilian and military officials to the highest levels are guilty under domestic and international laws of crimes of war and against humanity and peace.

President George W. Bush's War against Iraq on Trial

US Army Reserve Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia was the first Iraq War veteran to refuse further involvement in the war as a matter of conscience after serving in it from April to October 2003. Following leave on return, he failed to rejoin his National Guard unit and filed for discharge as a conscientious objector on grounds that the invasion and occupation were illegal and immoral. The army, in turn, deliberately overcharged him with desertion to send a strong message to other military personnel that they, too, would be severely punished if they acted similarly.

Mejia's May 2004 court-martial was a kangaroo-court show trial to drive home the point. It was widely broadcast and reported to all military personnel worldwide on internal Pentagon television, radio and newspaper outlets. Acting improperly, the military judge disallowed prepared defense testimony under the army's Field Manual 27-10, the Constitution and established international law.

Mejia was found guilty, a year in prison was imposed, and Amnesty International declared him a prisoner of conscience, its highest honor. Only after the verdict was Boyle allowed to testify during the sentencing phase - but under strict limitations imposed by the (hanging) judge. Again, he cited relevant domestic, international and military law, reviewed crimes of war and against humanity under them, and explained the culpability of commanders and government officials at the highest levels for abusing and torturing prisoners.

Other military resisters came after Mejia. One was First Lt. Ehren Watada in June 2006 when he refused to deploy to Iraq and publicly stated why - "as an officer of honor and integrity, (he could not participate in a war that was) "manifestly illegal....morally wrong (and) a horrible breach of American law." By his courageous act, Watada became the first US military officer to face court-martial for refusing to deploy to Iraq. He was charged with:

-- one specification under UCMJ article 87 - missing movement;

-- two specifications under article 99 - contempt toward officials (for making public comments about George Bush); and

-- three specifications under article 133 - conduct unbecoming an officer.

If convicted on all charges, Watada faced possible dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, and seven years in prison. A military equivalent of a grand jury convened on August 17, 2006 to inquire into charges and decide if they were justified. Watada called three expert witnesses in his defense, and chose them well:

-- former UN Iraq Humanitarian Coordinator (1997 - 1998) Denis Halliday who resigned under protest because he was "instructed to implement a policy that satisfies the definition of genocide (and already) killed well over one million individuals, children and adults;"

-- US Army Colonel Ann Wright who resigned her commission as a foreign service officer in the State Department in March 2003 to protest a "war of aggression (in) violat(ion) of international law;" and

-- distinguished Professor Francis Boyle, international law and human rights expert, activist and author of this and many other books on these topics.

On August 22, the Army reported on the proceding and recommended all charges be referred to a general court-martial. It began in February under very constricted rules - denying a First Amendment defense and disallowing one questioning the legality of the war. However, legality issues were impossible to exclude, they directly related to charges brought, and the prosecution introduced them at trial. In addition, Watada firmly stated before testifying that he refused to deploy because of the war's illegality.

Unable to pressure him not to so testify, the presiding judge declared a mistrial. He'd lost control of the proceeding, knew Watada was on solid ground, and had to prevent his evidence from being introduced to avoid the embarrassing possibility of an acquittal on one or all charges. If it happened, the war's illegality would have been exposed and its continuation jeopardized.

Under the Fifth Amendment "double jeopardy" clause, Watada cannot be retried on the same charges. It states that no person shall be "subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." Watada's triumph by mistrial was a powerful tribute to his convictions and redoubtable spirit. It's also an inspiration to civil resisters and all members of the military to follow in his courageous footsteps.

Boyle explains the urgency in his final paragraph that's a powerful message for everyone: The causes of both world wars "hover like the sword of Damocles over the heads of all humanity." Civil resistance is our only hope "to prevent WW III and an (inevitable) nuclear holocaust....Toward that end this book has been written." Read it and act. Apathy isn't an option.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions on world and national topics with distinguished guests.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8065

posted by Steve Lendman @ 4:03 AM

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com

If anyone deserves a good shot in the nuts it's this guy: Charles Hurwitz

Thursday, February 28, 2008

If anyone deserves a good shot in the nuts it's this guy: Charles Hurwitz

From the Los Angeles Times

If a tree's owner falls ...

Patt Morrison

February 28, 2008


If things had gone according to plan, this year of grace 2008 would have been the year that the last privately owned virgin, old-growth California redwoods -- those older-than-Shakespeare, older-than-Jesus trees -- got axed. That they haven't been turned into decking is thanks to stubborn lawmakers, environmental nags such as Julia "Butterfly" Hill -- the most famous tree-sitter since the Cheshire Cat -- and corporate gluttony that backfired.

That's how we came to today's hearing in a Texas courtroom. That's where Pacific Lumber -- the California timber company that had been run astutely since the Battle of Gettysburg until it was overrun and then run to the edge of ruin by corporate raiders -- will explain how it wants to save itself from bankruptcy.

When John D. Rockefeller visited the redwoods nearly 80 years ago, he saw a natural treasure. He put up $2 million to spare 10,000 acres. Wheeler-dealer Charles Hurwitz saw a different kind of treasure. In a 1986 hostile takeover -- financial-speak for date rape -- his firm, Maxxam, got Pacific Lumber for nearly $900 million, financed by junk bonds. Just to make interest payments, he had to cut down twice as many trees. Redwoods formerly chosen one by one for the chain saw were measured by computer coordinates and felled by the swath.

The thunder of clear-cutting roused enviros and politicians. Twelve years of wrangling ended in 1999 with the Headwaters forest -- 7,500 acres of ancient redwood "cathedrals" in public hands -- new rules on logging the other 210,000 acres and a government check for nearly half a billion bucks in Hurwitz's corporate wallet.

Did he use it to pay down Pacific Lumber's humongous debt? No. He still owes almost as much on it as he did 22 years ago.

Back in 1981, according to David Harris' book, "The Last Stand," Pacific Lumber told shareholders that companies "have a duty to use [their] resources wisely." In 1986, the new owner, Hurwitz, was "joking" with employees that his golden rule is: "He who has the gold, rules."

When the rules don't suit him, he's found ways around them. When Rancho Mirage didn't cotton to his development plan in the area -- Frank Sinatra wrote an ad denouncing it -- Hurwitz's lawyers sued the city, then threatened to sue City Council members personally. Pacific Lumber tried and failed to recall the Humboldt County district attorney for alleging that the company used fake data to get a better deal in the Headwaters negotiations.

The Headwaters deal evidently wasn't good enough. Pacific Lumber went crying to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger that if California didn't lighten up on logging rules -- rules Pacific Lumber had broken so often that its timber license was briefly yanked -- the company would go bust. Sure enough, last year, Pacific Lumber filed for Chapter 11.

John Driscoll writes about Pacific Lumber for Eureka's Times-Standard. Virtually nothing, he told me, "could be more rooted in a community than [Pacific Lumber] is in Humboldt County. It's rooted in the land, rooted in the economy, rooted in the society here, and the outcome of this bankruptcy may determine whether [Pacific Lumber] -- weakened over two decades -- lives or dies."

Today's court date is in the Texas Gulf Coast and not California's North Coast because Pacific Lumber, now calling itself Palco, opened a snug little office in Corpus Christi -- "a phone booth," California officials called it. That planted the flag for jurisdiction in Hurwitz's home state, not the home of the redwoods.

That's how big, bad business plays. Put the loopholes and fine print and asterisks into law. And when you can't make the rules, break them -- or break the rule makers.

In 2001, the feds were trying to get back some of the $1.6 billion that taxpayers paid to bail out Hurwitz and his pals when their S & L went belly-up in 1988. (Put it on Hurwitz's tab; he didn't just clear trees, he raided $55 million from Pacific Lumber's pension fund and replaced it with annuities from a Hurwitz company whose parent is now broke. Who could wind up paying those pensions? Us.)

Three GOP congressmen hammered investigators to lay off Hurwitz. They subpoenaed confidential documents, putting them into the Congressional Record so Hurwitz's attorneys could get them. The upshot? No investigation, no payback from Hurwitz.

What could bankruptcy change? Options run from selling land for McMansions to an environmental buyout. The most plausible plan would save jobs and trees by restoring the careful logging practices of old.

Once upon a time, thrift, responsibility and debt-free profits were sound business. Now it's Las Vegas rules run amok -- and look where that's gotten us: a landscape littered with sub-prime mortgage catastrophes, leveraged debt, securities fraud and imperiled pension funds.

And redwood stumps.

patt.morrison@latimes.com

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON

The Old and New Pearl Harbor

The Old and New Pearl Harbor

Written by Andrew Winkler, The Rebel Media Group

Thursday, 28 February 2008

In his article for the March/April 2008 edition of the CFR organ Foreign Relations, Paul R. Pillar defends the intelligence community against criticism of perceived intelligence failures such as the 'surprise attack' on Pearl Harbor and September 11. Neither assault came as a surprise of course. Pearl Harbor was deliberately provoked by the U.S. government. First, they put a crippling oil embargo on Japan, then they set up the entire Pacific fleet like a sitting duck.[1] As intended the Japanese attacked, giving the U.S. government the excuse to drag its reluctant population into World War II. There was plenty of warnings against an imminent Japanese attack.[2] They were all ignored on order of the U.S. president under the silly excuse that making the fleet leave Pearl Harbor would require too much fuel.[3] September 11 was not much different, only this time the attacks were committed by a bunch of Arab students working for the secret service of a 'friendly' country, Israel's Mossad.[4] Given the fact that the U.S. airspace is heavily defended, U.S. air control and military well trained to deal with 9/11 style attacks, U.S. airplanes equipped with remote control devices for the purpose of taking control of abducted planes[5] and U.S. airports guarded by Israeli owned and trained airport security firms, it is pretty obvious that the attacks couldn't have been performed without help from the inside. Equally obvious it is who the traitors were. We know that the Department of Justice 'lost' the Israeli airport security firm tapes - if they ever existed - showing the attackers entering the airports.[6] We know that New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ordered all evidence of the attack to be 'archived' and later destroyed by a private company[7]. We also know that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield made the evidence at the Pentagon site disappear. And we know that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the U.S. air defense not to shoot down whatever it was that hit the Pentagon[8]. We can safely assume that he also gave order not to take over control remotely of the airliners that were known to be abducted. No different from the warnings of an imminent Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. authorities were well aware of what was going to happen on 9/11.[9] A lot of important people were told by National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice not to fly on that day.[10] Millions of put options of the affected airlines were bought, betting on a strong drop of their shares.[11] Mossad linked Israeli Zim Shipping Company broke its WTC lease just one week before the attack in spite of a 50,000 USD penalty.[12] Netanyahu mate Larry Silverstein purchased the WTC site a few months prior to the attack for 125 million USD and walked away with a handy profit of 4 billion USD in insurance payouts.[13] That's why they call 9/11 the 'New Pearl Harbor' PNAC asked for.[14] Notes: [1] The McCollum Report - The Smoking Gun of Pearl Harbor [2] The Bones of Station H [3] Pearl Harbor - Mother of All Conspiracies [4] Israelis Inadvertently Admit Complicity in 9/11 Attacks [5] How a 'Two-Way Data Pipe' hijacked the 9-11 aircrafts and is used to steal our elections [6] How would the world look like with the CIA tapes intact [7] 9/11's history of tragic events [8] 9/11 Truth for Dummies [9] The Dog That Did Not Bark [10] Condoleeza Rice Warned Willie Brown Not To Fly On 911 [11] Israelis were 9-11 short sale stock buyers, betting on WTC terror strikes [12] The Synagogue of Satan [13] "Lucky Larry" Silverstein [14] 911 and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion Related Articles: 9/11 Disinformation The World Order - A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism: Chapter 5 - The CIA New Evidence that the Official Story about 9/11 is Indefensible How Mossad Deceived the U.S. Military on 9/11 How a 'Two-Way Data Pipe' hijacked the 9-11 aircrafts and is used to steal our elections Christopher Bollyn makes crucial 9/11 discovery ADL: 9/11 Anti-Semitic Conspiracy Theories Still Abound Solving 9-11: The Planes of 9-11 The 'Unbreakable Bond' with Israel of the Zionist Judges Controlling the 9-11 Litigation 9-11 Cover-Up: The Italian Gangsters and Their Jewish Bosses Why do we believe Zionists are the masterminds of the September 11 attack? Thermite and the WTC Collapses The BBC's 'WTC 7 Collapsed at 4:54 p.m.' Videos more... Andrew Winkler is the editor/publisher of Sydney based dissident blog ZioPedia.org. He can be contacted on editor@ziopedia.org.This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it You can find more of his articles in the Editorial Section of the ZioPedia.org site. Source: ZioPedia.org

Government Concedes Vaccine-Autism Case in Federal Court - Now What?

Posted February 25, 2008 | 12:42 PM (EST)

David Kirby

After years of insisting there is no evidence to link vaccines with the onset of autism spectrum disorder (ASD), the US government has quietly conceded a vaccine-autism case in the Court of Federal Claims.

The unprecedented concession was filed on November 9, and sealed to protect the plaintiff's identify. It was obtained through individuals unrelated to the case.

The claim, one of 4,900 autism cases currently pending in Federal "Vaccine Court," was conceded by US Assistant Attorney General Peter Keisler and other Justice Department officials, on behalf of the Department of Health and Human Services, the "defendant" in all Vaccine Court cases.

The child's claim against the government -- that mercury-containing vaccines were the cause of her autism -- was supposed to be one of three "test cases" for the thimerosal-autism theory currently under consideration by a three-member panel of Special Masters, the presiding justices in Federal Claims Court.

Keisler wrote that medical personnel at the HHS Division of Vaccine Injury Compensation (DVIC) had reviewed the case and "concluded that compensation is appropriate."

The doctors conceded that the child was healthy and developing normally until her 18-month well-baby visit, when she received vaccinations against nine different diseases all at once (two contained thimerosal).

Days later, the girl began spiraling downward into a cascade of illnesses and setbacks that, within months, presented as symptoms of autism, including: No response to verbal direction; loss of language skills; no eye contact; loss of "relatedness;" insomnia; incessant screaming; arching; and "watching the florescent lights repeatedly during examination."

Seven months after vaccination, the patient was diagnosed by Dr. Andrew Zimmerman, a leading neurologist at the Kennedy Krieger Children's Hospital Neurology Clinic, with "regressive encephalopathy (brain disease) with features consistent with autistic spectrum disorder, following normal development." The girl also met the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) official criteria for autism.

In its written concession, the government said the child had a pre-existing mitochondrial disorder that was "aggravated" by her shots, and which ultimately resulted in an ASD diagnosis.

"The vaccinations received on July 19, 2000, significantly aggravated an underlying mitochondrial disorder," the concession says, "which predisposed her to deficits in cellular energy metabolism, and manifested as a regressive encephalopathy with features of ASD."

This statement is good news for the girl and her family, who will now be compensated for the lifetime of care she will require. But its implications for the larger vaccine-autism debate, and for public health policy in general, are not as certain.

In fact, the government's concession seems to raise more questions than it answers.

1) Is there a connection between vaccines, mitochondrial disorders and a diagnosis of autism, at least in some cases?

Mitochondria, you may recall from biology class, are the little powerhouses within cells that convert food into electrical energy, partly through a complex process called "oxidative phosphorylation." If this process is impaired, mitochondrial disorder will ensue.

The child in this case had several markers for Mt disease, which was confirmed by muscle biopsy. Mt disease is often marked by lethargy, poor muscle tone, poor food digestion and bowel problems, something found in many children diagnosed with autism.

But mitochondrial disorders are rare in the general population, affecting some 2-per-10,000 people (or just 0.2%). So with 4,900 cases filed in Vaccine Court, this case should be the one and only, extremely rare instance of Mt disease in all the autism proceedings.

But it is not.

Mitochondrial disorders are now thought to be the most common disease associated with ASD. Some journal articles and other analyses have estimated that 10% to 20% of all autism cases may involve mitochondrial disorders, which would make them one thousand times more common among people with ASD than the general population.

Another article, published in the Journal of Child Neurology and co-authored by Dr. Zimmerman, showed that 38% of Kennedy Krieger Institute autism patients studied had one marker for impaired oxidative phosphorylation, and 47% had a second marker.

The authors -- who reported on a case-study of the same autism claim conceded in Vaccine Court -- noted that "children who have (mitochondrial-related) dysfunctional cellular energy metabolism might be more prone to undergo autistic regression between 18 and 30 months of age if they also have infections or immunizations at the same time."

An interesting aspect of Mt disease in autism is that, with ASD, the mitochondrial disease seems to be milder than in "classic" cases of Mt disorder. In fact, classic Mt disease is almost always inherited, either passed down by the mother through mitochondrial DNA, or by both parents through nuclear DNA.

In autism-related Mt disease, however, the disorder is not typically found in other family members, and instead appears to be largely of the sporadic variety, which may now account for 75% of all mitochondrial disorders.

Meanwhile, an informal survey of seven families of children with cases currently pending in Vaccine Court revealed that all seven showed markers for mitochondrial dysfunction, dating back to their earliest medical tests. The facts in all seven claims mirror the case just conceded by the government: Normal development followed by vaccination, immediate illness, and rapid decline culminating in an autism diagnosis.

2) With 4,900 cases pending, and more coming, will the government concede those with underlying Mt disease -- and if it not, will the Court award compensation?

The Court will soon begin processing the 4900 cases pending before it. What if 10% to 20% of them can demonstrate the same Mt disease and same set of facts as those in the conceded case? Would the government be obliged to concede 500, or even 1,000 cases? What impact would that have on public opinion? And is there enough money currently in the vaccine injury fund to cover so many settlements?

When asked for a comment last week about the court settlement, a spokesman for HHS furnished the following written statement:

"DVIC has reviewed the scientific information concerning the allegation that vaccines cause autism and has found no credible evidence to support the claim. Accordingly, in every case under the Vaccine Act, DVIC has maintained the position that vaccines do not cause autism, and has never concluded in any case that autism was caused by vaccination."

3) If the government is claiming that vaccines did not "cause" autism, but instead aggravated a condition to "manifest" as autism, isn't that a very fine distinction?

For most affected families, such linguistic gymnastics is not so important. And even if a vaccine injury "manifested" as autism in only one case, isn't that still a significant development worthy of informing the public?

On the other hand, perhaps what the government is claiming is that vaccination resulted in the symptoms of autism, but not in an actual, factually correct diagnosis of autism itself.

4) If the government is claiming that this child does NOT have autism, then how many other children might also have something else that merely "mimics" autism?

Is it possible that 10%-20% of the cases that we now label as "autism," are not autism at all, but rather some previously undefined "look-alike" syndrome that merely presents as "features" of autism?

This question gets to the heart of what autism actually is. The disorder is defined solely as a collection of features, nothing more. If you have the features (and the diagnosis), you have the disorder. The underlying biology is the great unknown.

But let's say the government does determine that these kids don't have actual "autism" (something I speculated on HuffPost a year ago). Then shouldn't the Feds go back and test all people with ASD for impaired oxidative phosphorylation, perhaps reclassifying many of them?

If so, will we then see "autism" cases drop by tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people? Will there be a corresponding ascension of a newly described disorder, perhaps something like "Vaccine Aggravated Mitochondrial Disease with Features of ASD?"

And if this child was technically "misdiagnosed" with DSM-IV autism by Dr Zimmerman, how does he feel about HHS doctors issuing a second opinion re-diagnosis of his patient, whom they presumably had neither met nor examined? (Zimmerman declined an interview).

And along those lines, aren't Bush administration officials somewhat wary of making long-distance, retroactive diagnoses from Washington, given that the Terry Schiavo incident has not yet faded from national memory?

5) Was this child's Mt disease caused by a genetic mutation, as the government implies, and wouldn't that have manifested as "ASD features" anyway?

In the concession, the government notes that the patient had a "single nucleotide change" in the mitochondrial DNA gene T2387C, implying that this was the underlying cause of her manifested "features" of autism.

While it's true that some inherited forms of Mt disease can manifest as developmental delays, (and even ASD in the form of Rhett Syndrome) these forms are linked to identified genetic mutations, of which T2387C is not involved. In fact little, if anything, is known about the function of this particular gene.

What's more, there is no evidence that this girl, prior to vaccination, suffered from any kind of "disorder" at all- genetic, mitochondrial or otherwise. Some forms of Mt disease are so mild that the person is unaware of being affected. This perfectly developing girl may have had Mt disorder at the time of vaccination, but nobody detected, or even suspected it.

And, there is no evidence to suggest that this girl would have regressed into symptoms consistent with a DSM-IV autism diagnosis without her vaccinations. If there was such evidence, then why on earth would these extremely well-funded government attorneys compensate this alleged injury in Vaccine Court? Why wouldn't they move to dismiss, or at least fight the case at trial?

6) What are the implications for research?

The concession raises at least two critical research questions: What are the causes of Mt dysfunction; and how could vaccines aggravate that dysfunction to the point of "autistic features?"

While some Mt disorders are clearly inherited, the "sporadic" form is thought to account for 75% of all cases, according to the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation. So what causes sporadic Mt disease? "Medicines or other toxins," says the Cleveland Clinic, a leading authority on the subject.

Use of the AIDS drug AZT, for example, can cause Mt disorders by deleting large segments of mitochondrial DNA. If that is the case, might other exposures to drugs or toxins (i.e., thimerosal, mercury in fish, air pollution, pesticides, live viruses) also cause sporadic Mt disease in certain subsets of children, through similar genotoxic mechanisms?

Among the prime cellular targets of mercury are mitochondria, and thimerosal-induced cell death has been associated with the depolarization of mitochondrial membrane, according to the International Journal of Molecular Medicine among several others. (Coincidently, the first case of Mt disease was diagnosed in 1959, just 15 years after the first autism case was named, and two decades after thimerosal's introduction as a vaccine preservative.)

Regardless of its cause, shouldn't HHS sponsor research into Mt disease and the biological mechanisms by which vaccines could aggravate the disorder? We still do not know what it was, exactly, about this girl's vaccines that aggravated her condition. Was it the thimerosal? The three live viruses? The two attenuated viruses? Other ingredients like aluminum? A combination of the above?

And of course, if vaccine injuries can aggravate Mt disease to the point of manifesting as autism features, then what other underlying disorders or conditions (genetic, autoimmune, allergic, etc.) might also be aggravated to the same extent?

7) What are the implications for medicine and public health?

Should the government develop and approve new treatments for "aggravated mitochondrial disease with ASD features?" Interestingly, many of the treatments currently deployed in Mt disease (i.e., coenzyme Q10, vitamin B-12, lipoic acid, biotin, dietary changes, etc.) are part of the alternative treatment regimen that many parents use on their children with ASD.

And, if a significant minority of autism cases can be linked to Mt disease and vaccines, shouldn't these products one day carry an FDA Black Box warning label, and shouldn't children with Mt disorders be exempt from mandatory immunization?

8) What are the implications for the vaccine-autism debate?

It's too early to tell. But this concession could conceivably make it more difficult for some officials to continue insisting there is "absolutely no link" between vaccines and autism.

It also puts the Federal Government's Vaccine Court defense strategy somewhat into jeopardy. DOJ lawyers and witnesses have argued that autism is genetic, with no evidence to support an environmental component. And, they insist, it's simply impossible to construct a chain of events linking immunizations to the disorder.

Government officials may need to rethink their legal strategy, as well as their public relations campaigns, given their own slightly contradictory concession in this case.

9) What is the bottom line here?

The public, (including world leaders) will demand to know what is going on inside the US Federal health establishment. Yes, as of now, n=1, a solitary vaccine-autism concession. But what if n=10% or 20%? Who will pay to clean up that mess?

The significance of this concession will unfortunately be fought over in the usual, vitriolic way -- and I fully expect to be slammed for even raising these questions. Despite that, the language of this concession cannot be changed, or swept away.

Its key words are "aggravated" and "manifested." Without the aggravation of the vaccines, it is uncertain that the manifestation would have occurred at all.

When a kid with peanut allergy eats a peanut and dies, we don't say "his underlying metabolic condition was significantly aggravated to the extent of manifesting as an anaphylactic shock with features of death."

No, we say the peanut killed the poor boy. Remove the peanut from the equation, and he would still be with us today.

Many people look forward to hearing more from HHS officials about why they are settling this claim. But whatever their explanation, they cannot change the fundamental facts of this extraordinary case:

The United State government is compensating at least one child for vaccine injuries that resulted in a diagnosis of autism.

And that is big news, no matter how you want to say it.

NOTE: Full text of the government's statement is posted here.

David Kirby is the author of "Evidence of Harm - Mercury in Vaccines and the Autism Epidemic, A Medical Controversy" (St. Martins Press 2005.

Source: Huffington Press

FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report

FBI documents contradict 9/11 Commission report
Larisa Alexandrovna
Published: Thursday February 28, 2008

Hijacker had post-9/11 flights scheduled, files say

Newly-released records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request contradict the 9/11 Commission’s report on the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and raise fresh questions about the role of Saudi government officials in connection to the hijackers.

The nearly 300 pages of a Federal Bureau of Investigation timeline used by the 9/11 Commission as the basis for many of its findings were acquired through a FOIA
equest filed by Kevin Fenton, a 26 year old translator from the Czech Republic. The FBI released the 298-page “hijacker timeline” Feb. 4.

The FBI timeline reveals that alleged hijacker Hamza Al-Ghamdi, who was aboard the United Airlines flight which crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center, had booked a future flight to San Francisco. He also had a ticket for a trip from Casablanca to Riyadh, the capital of Saudi Arabia.

Though referenced repeatedly in the footnotes of the final 9/11 Commission report, the timeline has not previously been made available to the public.

The FBI timeline is dated Nov. 14, 2003 but appears to have been put together earlier (since the last date mentioned in the document is Oct. 22, 2001) and was provided to the 9/11 Commission during its 2003 investigation. The final Commission report cites the FBI timeline 52 times.

Post Sept. 11, 2001 flights

The FBI timeline reveals that Al-Ghamdi, the alleged United hijacker, was booked onto several flights scheduled for after the 9/11 attacks, a piece of information not documented in the Commission’s final report. According to the FBI timeline, Al-Ghamdi was booked on another United Airlines flight on the very day of the attack.

On page 288 under an entry pertaining to “H AlGhamdi,” the FBI timeline reads: "Future flight. Scheduled to depart Los Angeles International Airport for San Francisco International Airport on UA 7950."

The sourcing reads simply: “UA passenger information.”

The timeline similarly documents Al-Ghamdi’s bookings for several other post 9/11 flights, including one on Sept. 20, 2001 from Casablanca, Morocco to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and another on Sept. 29, 2001 from Riyadh to Damman, Saudi Arabia. (FBI Timeline 2, p. 296 under “H Alghamdi”)

No additional information or explanation is offered in the FBI timeline itself.

The Saudi connection

In January 2000, then-FBI Director Louis Freeh and CIA Director George Tenet attended regular briefings as Malaysian intelligence conducted surveillance of a “terrorist summit meeting” in Kuala Lumpur. Among the attendees were Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, two men who would later allegedly hijack American Airlines Flight 77 and crash it into the Pentagon.

A week after the Malaysian summit, al-Mihdar and al-Hazmi traveled to the United States. According to the 9/11 Commission report, they arrived in Los Angeles on Jan. 15 and “spent about two weeks there before moving to San Diego.” (9/11 Commission report, p. 215, chapter 7). The footnote for this item shows that the Commission relied on a different FBI report, “‘Summary of Pentbom Investigation,’ Feb.29, 2004 (classified version), p.16.”

But the FBI timeline contradicts this claim, placing the alleged hijackers in San Diego with specific details. According to the timeline, the two men resided in Apartment 152 at Parkwood Apartments, San Diego, from Jan. 15 through Feb. 2, 2000.

“A rental application shows that before renting Apartment 150 Parkwood Apartments on 02/05/2000, AL-MlHDHAR and Nawaf Alhazmi alleged that they resided with [REDACTED] from 01/15/2000 to 02/02/2000 at Apartment 152 of the same apartment complex,” page 52 of the FBI timeline reads.

Two pages later, the same apartment complex is noted again, this time with its full address: “AL-MIHDHAR and Nawaf Alhazmi resided at Parkwood Apartments, located at 6401 Mount Ada Road, Apartment 150, San Diego, CA. [REDACTED] was the co-signor and guarantor on the lease agreement for this apparement. The rental application shows that before renting Apartment 150, AL-MIHDHAR and Nawaf Alhazmi resided with [REDACTED]." (A photograph of apartment 152 appears atop this article. An image of apartment 150 appears on page 2.)

In other words, according to the only public account, both Al-Mihdhar and Hazmi were in San Diego, not Los Angeles, contrary to the Commission’s report.

Why did the Commission use an alternate source for the whereabouts of the two men, when the FBI’s own timeline said they were in San Diego by Jan. 15, the same day as their arrival in the US?

Paul Thompson, author of the The Terror Timeline: Year by Year, Day by Day, Minute by Minute: A Comprehensive Chronicle of the Road to 9/11--and America's Response, has been wading through the FBI timeline since its release. His preliminary analysis can be found at the website of the History Commons (formerly known as the Center for Cooperative Research).

Thompson believes that the possible motive for the Commission to alter the dates is to obscure official Saudi ties to the hijackers.

He points to the redaction of the name of a person who is a known employee of a Saudi defense contractor, Omar al-Bayoumi, who lived at the same location.

“We know it’s Bayoumi,” said Thompson, “because after 9/11, the Finnish Government mistakenly released a classified FBI list of suspects that showed Bayoumi living in apartment #152 of Parkwood Apartments.” That information is available here.

“But also important is that it strongly suggests that the hijackers already had a support network in Southern California before they arrived,” Thompson continued.

“In the official version of the story now, the hijackers drift around L.A. listlessly for two weeks before chancing to come across Bayoumi in a restaurant [according to Bayoumi’s account],” Thompson added. “Whereupon he's an incredible good Samaritan and takes them down to San Diego, pays their rent, etc.”

”But from the FBI's timeline, we now know the hijackers started staying at Bayoumi's place on Jan. 15 – the very same day they arrived,” Thompson says. “So obviously they must have been met at the airport and taken care of from their very first hours in the US. That's huge because the FBI maintains to this day that the hijackers never had any accomplices in the US.”

Robert Baer, a former CIA case officer in the Middle East whose See No Evil: The True Story of a Ground Soldier in the CIA's War on Terrorism became the inspiration for the award winning film Syriana, concurs with Thompson’s view.

“There are enough discrepancies and unanswered questions in the 9/11 Commission report that under a friendly administration, the 9/11 investigation should be re-opened,” Baer wrote in an email message Tuesday night.

“Bayoumi clearly offered material assistance to [the 9/11 hijackers].”

READ THE DOCUMENTS: PDF pages 1-105, PDF pages 106-210, PDF pages 211-297.

Who is Bayoumi?

Much has been reported about Omar al-Bayoumi and his alleged relationship with the government of Saudi Arabia. In his recent book, The Commission: The Uncensored History of the 9/11 Investigation, New York Times reporter Phillip Shenon discusses at length the questions surrounding Bayoumi and his ties to the Saudi government.

“Bayoumi seemed clearly to be working for some part of the Saudi overnment,” Shenon wrote on page 52. “He entered the United States as a business student and had lived San Diego since 1996. He was on the payroll of an aviation contractor to the Saudi government, paid about $2,800 a month, but apparently did no work for the company.”

In fact, Bayoumi was an employee of the Saudi defense contractor Dallah Avco. According to a 2002 Newsweek article about Bayoumi, Dallah Avco is “an aviation-services company with extensive contracts with the Saudi Ministry of Defense and Aviation, headed by Prince Sultan, the father of the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar.”

Newsweek points to another connection between Bayoumi and Bandar: “About two months after al-Bayoumi began aiding Alhazmi and Almihdhar, NEWSWEEK has learned, al-Bayoumi's wife began receiving regular stipends, often monthly and usually around $2,000, totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The money came in the form of cashier's checks, purchased from Washington's Riggs Bank by Princess Haifa bint Faisal, the daughter of the late King Faisal and wife of Prince Bandar, the Saudi envoy who is a prominent Washington figure and personal friend of the Bush family. The checks were sent to a woman named Majeda Ibrahin Dweikat, who in turn signed over many of them to al-Bayoumi's wife (and her friend), Manal Ahmed Bagader. The Feds want to know: Was this well-meaning charity gone awry? Or some elaborate money-laundering scheme? A scam? Or just a coincidence?”

According to then-Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL), who served as a co-chair of the 9/11 Congressional inquiry that preceded the 9/11 Commission, during the period of Alhazmi and Almihdhar’s arrival in the US, Bayoumi had an “unusually large number of telephone calls with Saudi government officials in both Los Angeles and Washington.” (Graham and Nussbaum, 2004, pp. 168-169)

Bayoumi moved to London in 2001 and lived there until his arrest immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks. Following his release, Bayoumi returned to Saudi Arabia, where he was interviewed in October 2003 by the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, and Senior Counsel Dieter Snell.

Snell did not respond to requests for comment; Zeilkow could not be reached.

According to Shenon, several staff members working under Snell, “felt strongly that they had demonstrated a close Saudi government connection,” based on “explosive material” on al-Bayoumi and Fahad al-Thumairy, a “shadowy Saudi diplomat in Los Angeles.”

Shenon recounts how Snell, in preparing his team’s account of the plot, purged almost all of the most serious allegations against the Saudi government and moved the “explosive” supporting evidence to the small print of the report’s footnotes. (The Commission, pp. 398-399)

Two commission investigators who were working on documenting the 9/11 plot, Michael Jacobsen and Raj De, argued that it was “crazy” to insist on 100 percent proof when it came to al-Qaeda or the Saudi regime. In the end, however, and with a publishing deadline looming, Snell’s caution and Zelikow’s direction buried apparently promising leads.

In similar fashion, 28 pages of the Joint Inquiry Report produced by Congress -- an entire chapter outlining evidence of Saudi and other state sponsorship -- were redacted.

Baer has additional questions.

“Considering that the main body of evidence came from tortured confessions, it's still not entirely clear to me what happened on 9/11,” Baer said. “Among other questions [I have]: Why did [Prince] Bandar's wife sent money to Bayoumi? What are Bayoumi’s links to the Sultan? How were the 15 Saudis [among the 19 hijackers] selected to carry out the attack? Who fed the credit card used by Abu Zubayda? What happened to Abu Zubayda's telephone bills? Who was he calling in the U.S? None of these questions are unreasonable nor would answering them violate intelligence sources and methods."

In a recent review of Shenon’s book, former Democratic senator and 9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey called on Congress to investigate alleged Saudi ties.

“Congress should demand direct access to those who organized the attacks; our indirect interviews were at best inadequate,” Kerrey wrote. “And Congress should pursue [the] question of whether the Saudi government aided the conspiracy.”

Kerrey declined to comment for this article. Other Commission members did not respond to requests for comment.

Larisa Alexandrovna is managing editor of investigative news for Raw Story and regularly reports on intelligence and national security stories. Contact: larisa@rawstory.com.

Source: The Raw Story

AnnieCanada - The New Old Bones

AnnieCanada
The New Old Bones

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6oCvayXInoc

GAZA IS GOING DEAF FROM THE SILENCE

GAZA IS GOING DEAF FROM THE SILENCE

February 28, 2008 at 9:15 am

Photo credit: Aljazeera.net

The population of Gaza was about 1.5 million as of yesterday morning… there are 13 less this morning. Last night Israel murdered 13 Palestinians, mostly civilians, including the gorgeous baby in the photograph above. The child had a name, it was Muhammed Al-Bura’i. He was six months old. Israel felt the need to kill him as he might have been responsible for a Qassam rocket that was fired into Sderot killing an Israeli civilian.

Moments after the Qassam attack Israel filed a complaint with the United Nations … a report of that can be read HERE.

Whether that complaint was filed before or after Israel’s attack is not known.

Thirteen Palestinians massacred, mostly civilians… on this, the eve of the Nakba…a catastrophe of 60 years ago… a catastrophe that continues to this day.

The thirteen can be added to the following count of this month’s dead…

taken from THIS Legal Report.

GAZA, (PIC)– The IOF troops killed 51 Palestinians including seven children and two women mostly in the Gaza Strip since the beginning of February, according to a report issued by the Nafha society for the defense of human and prisoners’ rights.

The report said that 46 victims were only killed in Gaza most of them during Israeli air strikes

In another context, the IOF troops acknowledged that three Israeli settlers at least were injured during rocket attacks at noon Monday carried out by the Palestinian resistance on the Israeli Sderot settlement in the Palestinian lands occupied in 1948.

For its part, the Salahuddin Brigades, the armed wing of the popular resistance committees, announced its responsibility for firing two homemade rockets on Sderot, adding that this operation came in retaliation to the ongoing Israeli crimes committed against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.

Israel is complaining.

Israel is protesting to the UNited Nations.

ISRAEL IS MURDERING PALESTINIAN CIVILIANS NON STOP AND NO ONE IS COMPLAINING ABOUT IT….

WHY?

THE SILENCE OF THE WORLD IS DEAFENING!!

http://desertpeace.wordpress.com/

Support Our Troops – or Judge Them?

February 28, 2008

Support Our Troops – or Judge Them?

David R. Henderson

KING HENRY V [disguised as a fellow soldier] I dare say you love him not so ill, to wish him here alone, howsoever you speak this to feel other men's minds: methinks I could not die any where so contented as in the king's company; his cause being just and his quarrel honourable. WILLIAMS That's more than we know. BATES Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the king's subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us. (From Henry V by William Shakespeare, Act IV, Scene I) Many people on both sides of the Iraq war debate claim that they "support our troops." Few people specify what they mean by that. There's an obvious sense in which we all support our troops – we are taxed quite heavily to pay, house, clothe, feed, and arm them. But that's not what most people mean. What do they mean? The pro-war side seems to mean that they applaud our troops as long as the troops are doing what President Bush wants them to do. Many of the anti-war side seem to mean that they support our troops by wanting them to come home safely. And there's something to the anti-war side's meaning. Wanting someone to live instead of being killed surely counts as support, doesn't it? While I also want our troops to come home safely, "Support our Troops" is too vague and too much of a blank check. I think it can be honed, and here's my suggested edit: Judge our troops, and support them, or not, on the basis of your judgment. In any large group, some people will do good things and some will do bad things. Even within the group doing bad things, some will do it with relish and others will do it reluctantly. Wal-Mart workers make up a large group, but no one says, "Support Our Wal-Mart Workers." Most of them probably are good, while some are bad and some are in between. But any reasonable person, if asked to support Wal-Mart workers, would choose to judge their actions as individuals and would not buy into supporting the entire group without reservation. Similarly, the military is a large group of people. It has many good people, some evil people, and a fair number in between. How can it make sense to support them all? I remember when I first showed up to teach at the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS) in August 1984. I had a mildly anti-military bias and I wondered how I would get along. I soon figured out that the military is a lot like any other organization. I learned quickly that there were many people in the military whom I liked intensely – some of them I came to love and still love. There were a few to whom I was indifferent and a very few whom I disliked. So the idea of opposing a whole group of people just based on the publicized bad actions of a few, which I had been doing implicitly before arriving at NPS, made no sense to me. But the opposite idea – judging a whole group well because some people in the group have outstanding moral character – makes no sense either. We need to judge people individually. My main criterion for judging someone is that person's degree of integrity. Does he take responsibility for his actions? Does he lie, cheat, or steal? Thus the above quote from William Shakespeare's Henry V. After Williams says that he doesn't know enough to judge whether Henry V's cause is just or his quarrel is honorable, Bates says that Williams, Bates, and other soldiers don't need to know. Bates argues that simply obeying the king is good enough; even if his cause is unjust and his quarrel is dishonorable, believes Bates, the fact of the soldiers' obedience to the king makes them blameless. In other words, Bates thinks he is not accountable for his actions. But I disagree. He and other soldiers are accountable. There may be situations in which they feel the need to follow what they regard as immoral orders. Even there, that does not absolve them of responsibility. There are degrees here: there are many conceivable situations where I could disapprove of the action but think relatively well of the soldier because he does something wrong due to extreme pressure – such as a threat of a court-martial. But there are also clear-cut situations where the soldier or sailor can speak up against an immoral act or order without risking a court-martial, where the main risk is that of not being promoted. In such a case, I would judge him negatively if he didn't speak out. One of the lines you often hear from people is, "You've got to pick your battles." This is true. But, as one of my more-outspoken military students once put it, "The problem with some people who say you must pick your battles is that they are unwilling to pick any battles." Which brings me to a military man who did pick his battle and, because of his heroism in picking it, deserves our support. That man is Morris Davis, who retired as a Colonel in the Air Force in October 2007 over the use of torture to extract information to be used at trial. Davis was the chief prosecutor at the U.S. detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. In an impassioned op-ed in the New York Times (February 17), former Colonel Davis wrote: "My policy as the chief prosecutor for the military commissions at Guantánamo was that evidence derived through waterboarding was off-limits. That should still be our policy. To do otherwise is not only an affront to American justice, it will potentially put prosecutors at risk for using illegally obtained evidence. "Unfortunately, I was overruled on the question, and I resigned my position to call attention to the issue – efforts that were hampered by my being placed under a gag rule and ordered not to testify at a Senate hearing. While some high-level military and civilian officials have rightly expressed indignation on the issue, the current state can be described generally as indifference and inaction." Former Colonel Davis has said that he will testify as a defense witness in the trial of Osama bin Laden's driver, who has been detained at Guantánamo since 2002. Davis alleges that Pentagon general counsel William Haynes said in August 2005 that any acquittals of terrorism suspects at Guantánamo would make the U.S. look bad by making the proceedings look unfair. And what was Haynes's response? According to Davis, Haynes said, "We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions." Colonel Davis is not alone in his campaign against injustice. In 2006, three high-level officers from Guantánamo Bay came to the Naval Postgraduate School to give a talk on the need for Guantánamo. I went there prepared to ask some tough questions. I didn't need to. U.S. military officers did the job quite nicely. They were respectful and polite, as they are trained to be. But they challenged the legitimacy of Gitmo all the same. Their concerns were about the legal legitimacy of having prisoners of war who were not treated as prisoners of war. Had they known then about the waterboarding going on at Gitmo, they would probably have been even more outspoken. Officers like that deserve our support on those issues also. So judge the troops and, on that basis, support those who deserve our support. Copyright © 2008 by David R. Henderson. Requests for permission to reprint should be directed to the author or Antiwar.com. http://www.antiwar.com/henderson/?articleid=12429 art by © Ralph Sirianni

Stop Fed Intervention by Ron Paul

Stop Fed Intervention

by Ron Paul

A Statement to the House Banking Committee, February 26, 2008

Mr. Chairman,

Price controls are almost universally reviled by economists. The negative economic consequences of price floors or price ceilings are numerous and well-documented. Our current series of hearings have been called to discuss the most important, but least understood, price manipulation in the world today: the manipulation of the interest rate.

By setting the federal funds rate, the rate at which banks in the Federal Reserve System loan funds to each other, the Federal Reserve inhibits the actions of market participants coming together to determine a market interest rate. The Federal Reserve and the federal government do not deign to interfere in setting the price of houses, the interest rate on mortgages, or the prices of wood and steel. The Fed’s actions in setting the federal funds rate however, because it reflects the price of money to a borrower and thus affects demand for money, affects prices throughout the economy in a manner less pervasive but just as damaging as direct price controls.

The example of the Soviet Union should have taught us that no one person, no group of people, no matter how scientifically trained, can arbitrarily set prices and not expect economic havoc. Only the spontaneous interaction of market participants can lead to the development of a functioning price system that allows the needs and wants of all participants to be met. The sense I get from reading much of the punditry is that the federal funds rate is set often by the whims of the Federal Reserve governors. Even mechanistic explanations such as the Taylor Rule rely on inputs that are often left up to the discretion of the Fed policymakers: what is the potential GDP, do we use CPI or PCE, overall CPI versus CPI less energy and food, etc.

The setting of the interest rate strikes me as quite similar to the way FDR used to set gold prices in the 1930’s, at his whim, resulting in economic havoc and uncertainty. When market actors have to devote much of their time to discerning the mindset of government price-setters, to parsing FOMC statements and minutes, they are necessarily diverted from productive economic activity. They cease to become purely economic actors and are forced to become political forecasters. This is not a problem isolated to this particular case, as businesses are forced to reckon with tax increases, expiring tax credits, import tariffs, subsidies to competitors, etc. However, because the interest rate determines the cost of borrowing and therefore determines whether or not marginal long-term business investments are undertaken, this politicized interest rate manipulation has far more impact than other government policies.

This setting of the interest rate introduces the business cycle into the economy. Until we understand the results these Federal Reserve actions have, we will be doomed to repeat these periods of boom and bust. I urge my colleagues to study this matter, and to resist the urge for greater Federal Reserve intervention in the market.

See the Ron Paul File

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul435.html

************************************************************

February 27, 2008

More bad news on inflation, and yet Bernanke signals faster money growth

As Bloomberg.com reports:

Consumer prices last year surged 4.1 percent, the most in 17 years, spurred by higher fuel and food costs. A government report yesterday showed the 12-month increase in wholesale costs accelerated to 7.4 percent in January, the biggest jump since 1981.

And yet,

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke signaled the U.S. central bank is prepared to lower interest rates again even as inflation accelerates. ... Traders anticipate the central bank will lower the benchmark rate by at least half a point by the end of the next meeting, on March 18, futures prices show. Officials have lowered the rate by 2.25 percentage points since September, to 3 percent.

Note that, using the year-over-year CPI as a measure of current inflation, the Fed funds rate is currently negative in real terms: 3.0 - 4.1 = -1.1. Not surprisingly foreign investors are dumping short-term dollar assets with the result that, as Forbes headlined, "Dollar slumps to new all-time euro low as Bernanke hints at rate cuts".

So if part of Bernanke's objective is to help revive house sales by lowering long-term interest rates, how's that going? Not well, the AP reports:

The 30-year [Treasury] bond fell 6/32 to 95 16/32 with a 4.68 percent yield, up from 4.67 percent.

Guess what? Cutting the Fed Funds rate -- even threatening to do so -- raises inflation expectations, which raises long-term interest rates. 10-year Treasury bond yields have also risen since mid-January.

Posted by Lawrence H. White at 09:05 PM in Economics
http://divisionoflabour.com/archives/004482.php

President Obama's Inaugural Address - Smoking Mirrors

Thursday, February 28

President Obama's Inaugural Address.

art by P. Nathan Smith

Something unusual has happened. A black man has been elected president against all odds. He won the nomination of his party largely through the efforts of a media that was disposed to his candidacy. It was believed that the Republicans would have a much easier time defeating him and so the spin cycle was set on full to make the percentages appear that Candidate Obama would have an easier time defeating Candidate McCain. No effort or expense was spared.

Candidate Clinton was made to appear vile and duplicitous. Candidate Clinton was discussed and photographed in bad light. In the years preceding the primaries, Candidate Clinton was advised to vote in favor of the Iraq War. She was advised to support fascist legislation. She was convinced that she must take a hard line and show a hawkish persona. All of these efforts became immense liabilities in the runoff against Candidate Obama.

Candidate Clinton had long been owned by the elite forces that had ruled the country for so many years. She was never more than a pawn in the process, just as her husband had been before her. Candidate Obama was perfect for the intentions of the shadow government. His name rhymed with that of histories most legendary terrorist. He had connections to a Black Muslim leader. He had levers that could be used and wheels that could be turned. In the end Candidate McCain would win.

Candidate McCain was unimportant. It was McCain’s vice presidential running mate who was to be the front man for the final stage of the New World Order. President McCain was to die shortly after taking office. Years of elaborate planning; of double blinds and never ending Chinese Boxes made in the USA and The City in London all assured that there was no possibility of mistake. Somehow, for reasons unknown to anyone who should have known; against all odds, America was watching the swearing in of her first black president. America was watching the people’s choice, which had been set up to lose, come down the stretch a winner. Time stopped.

We are watching Barack Obama being sworn in by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. There is an air of awe and expectancy over the land. Everyone is watching, or listening and wondering. Is this the new Camelot? Does America finally turn the corner? Is hope real? Is change a possibility? Do dreams come true? Here in another moment of great national trial, with enormous challenges at home and abroad… do dreams come true? Is change a possibility? Is hope real?

Do not concern yourself with why McCain lost. Use your imagination. This is the least important feature of this portrait. Assume that it is so. We will now join the new President Obama as he steps toward the microphone to deliver his inaugural address. This is what President Obama should say. If President Obama sincerely dreams of a better world and possesses the integrity to attempt such a thing, this is how it should go.

We see him now. He looks far too young for the weight of this new office. He is as impossibly young as our hopes and dreams. There is a force in his eyes as the camera catches him placing his hands upon the lectern. There is a pause like captured breath, held tight against a sea of emotions, which cannot be recalled once they are loosed. President Obama draws a sheaf of papers from his suit coat. He opens them and studies the first page. He looks up at the crowd and exhales. He shakes his head and returns the papers to his pocket. He looks up. He looks down. He looks out upon the sea of faces and he says…

“My fellow citizens and citizens of every country in the world, I had a speech prepared for me today. It was filled with all of the rhetoric that I have been compelled to utter in these many months until this moment. I did not know until I looked at it in my hands that I could not in good conscience deliver it. Change and the presence of realized hope cannot depend on words for their accomplishment. Change and hope that are not real will never come to pass. We achieve instead… only some new variation on a theme. We merely paint the existing structure with a different face and nothing changes but the appearance.

We cannot find unity. We cannot bring healing. We can accomplish nothing transformative until we have seen and named and touched the evil in our midst. In these last eight years many terrible events have occurred and we are left with the same tired excuses and explanations that are always attached to terrible things interpreted by the reasonable men who made them happen. They say, that we had no choice. It was our duty. It is complicated. Yes… it is always this way.

Those who caused the events and led us astray into the wilderness of painful and unnecessary destiny are now all patriots again as they have ever been. They are elder statesmen now and they will be called upon for charitable endeavor and on to corporate convention floors and university auditoriums and television screens and history will be reworked before our eyes as it has always been. It is not enough for me to continue in this charade. It is certainly not enough for you; you the people.

On September 11th of 2001 this country was attacked and everything changed in that moment. That event became a blank check for oppression at home and reckless adventurism abroad. As time passed it has become increasingly clear that so much of what we have been told is untrue. A commission to investigate this event was created against the wishes of the previous administration and it proved to be a corrupt engine in which the truth was abused and left bleeding. Many Americans bled and died as well. Many more citizens of foreign lands were killed and tormented. Millions now reside in dangerous camps with no recourse in sight.

Until this country addresses what actually happened; what really happened on September 11th, 2001 we can never move on. We can never be healed. We can never expect real change and we shall see no fulfillment of that hope that has brought me before you today. In my first act as your new president I have empowered a select commission to powerfully and impartially investigate what occurred on that day. This is the first business of my term of office.

We live in fear. We are burdened with a struggling economy. We are viewed with suspicion and outright hatred around the globe. With a campaign born of hope and the promise of change, I have been advised to fill your ears with the words you want to hear and to assure you that everything is now OK. Our nation, our people, our reputation will never be OK until we know finally and conclusively what happened on that day.

I realize that there is great danger for me in this action that I take. However, the danger to this nation, which I have been elected to serve and protect, is far, far greater if I disregard my duty to the truth. Whatever the truth may be we shall all be improved with a greater possession of it. We have had too little truth for far too long. Let the chips fall where they may. We as a nation are gifted and capable enough to pick up those pieces in the aftermath and weave together a finer land than we have ever known before. You have trusted me with your votes. Let me now trust in your support.

There will be a hue and cry concerning this venture from various sources. There will be outrage and indignation. There will difficulty in the process but I promise you. I swear to you. We shall know the truth and the truth will make us free as it has always intended to do. My beloved brothers and sisters of this, the greatest nation on Earth, let us become that. Let us join together and set our house in order that our house may no longer be divided but joined in a common understanding that never again shall truth and the common good become a casualty of darker agendas. I ask you to step into the light with me. Let us live in that light and let us be that light which we have always promised to be; a beacon of light and freedom for all nations and peoples of the Earth.

Thank you for your belief and your support. Now let us make our hope and our dreams become real. Now let us seek the new horizon of a nation reborn. God Bless and guide us all.”

Till We Walk Across the Bridge

Posted by Visible at 11:22 AM

http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/

Freedom Blues with AnnieCanada & Freesouljah - Ralph Buckley

Freedom Blues with AnnieCanada & Freesouljah

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NV9ycLJUZwI

freedom blues...
yes indeed...welcome to the next act in "The blues explosion of Freedom"...H0ly shit have we got a show 4 u this time...yep we've got some company here in the house of Conkling...! I can't begin to tell U how good it is 2 b sharing a groove with such cool folk...! AnnieCanada & Freesouljah, they be makin' this thing happen....4 REAL...! and what better reason to bring people & song together...then 'FREEDOM'!!
More then ever I believe that we are beginning to witness a real change in consciousness. I mean lets face it...we better get it together real quick man. If the current trend continues on...then we're doomed. You know it...& I know it, but it seems like it's such an impossibility to fight against the system. The status quo of the 'have's' and the 'have nots' is firmly imprinted upon our society. But if we open our minds and hearts, just a little bit...help could be coming to us from a celestial source. Mother Earth is very much alive...she is a 'living being'... & we are all about to go through some heavy changes. We are all made up of the same stardust man...why should you & I be any different from the moon, stars & the sun? __________
There are many levels of 'freedom' just has there are many levels of 'slavery'....it all ties together in the higher consciousness or so I believe. (I mean I suppose if you don't believe that there's some kind of 'higher consciousness' then you'll be moving on off this video anyways). It could be said that the ultimate 'freedom' is the freedom of the mind or consciousness. To break through the constraints of the physical. To become like spirit. To no longer adhere to the laws of gravity. To no longer be ruled by the ego.
When are thoughts become 'enslaved' eventually are bodies or physical self becomes slaves to those thoughts...and the desires that come with those of the physical world. Are we moving towards a 'higher consciousness'...? I hope so....
___________________________
Yes indeed...there is nothing more vital then Freedom.....
Those who are against freedom are against life...
"Freedom Blues" (mp3 download)
http://ia341042.us.archive.org/0/item...
I encourage u 2 download this mp3...
Play it LOUD...!!!
Email it 2 your friends...!!!
WAVE YOUR FREEDOM FLAG HIGH...
All around the globe...!!!

AnnieCanada
http://www.youtube.com/user/AnnieCanada
freesouljah
http://www.youtube.com/user/freesouljah
conkling
http://www.youtube.com/user/conkling

Ralph Buckley
http://www.ralphbuckley.com

Added: February 27, 2008

Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield

"Stop" Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield (Super Session)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CdMf-86Evro

Mike Bloomfield: Drinking Wine Live!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smRXnyUWktg

Season Of The Witch Al Kooper Steven Stills Mike Bloomfield

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RKbrix8S6xU

David Horowitz and The Mechanics of the Zionist Exploitation of Blacks

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

David Horowitz and The Mechanics of the Zionist Exploitation of Blacks

Huey Newton and his Jewish Lawyer Faye Stender at a press conference following his release from Alameda County Courthouse jail for the murder of a police officer.

By Curt Maynard

I recently read David Horowitz’s autobiography Radical Son. Horowitz was a well- known Marxist journalist in the 1970s supposedly transformed into a less well-known modern day neo-conservative converso. He once wrote for the Ramparts, a liberal Marxist rag that touted every single degenerate cause in the late sixties and early seventies, actively supported the Black Panther Party, and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Huey Newton, Elaine Brown, Angela Davis, Jerry Rubin, Tom Hayden, Jane Fonda and Abby Hoffman. Horowitz’s Radical Son is really nothing more than the author’s weak attempt to explain how it is that he so easily converted to neo-conservatism from a radical 1970s Jewish liberal. The book is little more than liberal propaganda of the crudest nature from beginning to end. According to Horowitz he finally “saw the light,” he came to see that Marxist groups like the Black Panthers weren’t ideologically motivated at all, that they were instead composed of “thugs,” and that they used the cause to forward their own agendas, mostly of a self absorbed criminal nature. For most people the idea that the Panther’s were a criminal organization isn’t anything new, but Horowitz wants the reader to sympathize with him, so he reinvents the Panther’s just as he did in the seventies in an effort to confuse the simpleminded reader. This is an interesting process and extremely difficult to identify unless one is familiar with kosher revisionism.

First off Horowitz wants the reader to believe that the he, David Horowitz was never motivated by anything except the most altruistic and benevolent of causes – Marxism – true Marxism, brotherhood, equality and tolerance and all that rhetoric. Unfortunately, according to Horowitz, he was stymied at every opportunity by less ideologically motivated sell-outs who took advantage of Horowitz’s devotion to the cause and naivety. Horowitz is tricky though – he does this in such a way as not to expose himself for what he really was, a fanatical anti-Gentile Jew that exploited the Black Panther’s to advance Jewish interests – Zionist interests for those still not inclined to see that Zionism is nothing more than Jewry’s latest “ism.” He wants the reader to believe that he admired Huey Newton, the one time leader of the Black Panthers, who was gunned down on an Oakland street corner in the late eighties; the result of a bad drug deal. Horowitz wants the reader to believe that Newton guided and/or mentored Horowitz rather than the other way around. He does this by constantly inserting insinuations in the text that suggest he felt ecstatic every time Newton treated him as an equal and/or accepted some of his advice. He gives himself away though by telling the reader that it was he that raised considerable sums of money for the Panthers from his wealthy Jewish friends. In fact, Radical Son names so many Jews within its pages that it reads like the guest list at a New York City Bar Mitzvah. Horowitz exposes other interesting facts about Huey Newton that suggest Newton was “bought and paid for,” in a sense, by divulging the fact that another extremely wealthy and well connected Jew by the name of Burt Schneider financed Newton’s lavish lifestyle, which included paying for Newton’s drug habit, which was quite considerable if Horowitz is to be believed, as well as a house in an upper scale neighborhood.

In one exchange between Newton and Horowitz, the author suggests that he felt morally obligated to correct an erroneous belief that had developed in the Panther party; yep, you guessed it, anti-Semitism. According to Horowitz, some Panther’s had come to accept this racist idea because of Stokely Carmichael and his less than revolutionary belief that Jews within the movement were acting as a Fifth Column and weren’t particularly interested in the black cause; sound familiar? Of course Horowitz carefully sets up his narrative in such a way that the naïve reader will reject the possibility that what Carmichael believed might have had some basis in reality; Horowitz does this by admission and denial – a common tactic employed in kosher revisionism. According to Horowitz, after a time he felt honored to be thought of as an equal by Newton and for that reason he was “emboldened,” to speak his mind:

"Talking to Huey as a kind of equal…. emboldened me to raise yet another difficult issue. A strain of anti-Semitism had developed in the Party during the years he [Newton] was in prison. Of course, the Panthers were not alone among black radicals in their attacks on Jews. In 1966, Stokely Carmichael and the leaders of the SNCC had expelled whites from the civil rights organization, accusing them of being a fifth column inside the movement. Since Jews were a near majority of the whites in these organizations, and had played a strategic role in organizing and funding the struggle, it was clear to everyone that they were the primary target of the assault. This was underscored by the support that Carmichael and the black left gave to the Arab states during their 1967 attack on Israel.[1]"

In the above paragraph Horowitz absolutely reveals himself to be the liar he is, but it goes unnoticed by the vast majority of readers because most people aren’t aware of the fact that Israel preemptively attacked the Arab states on June 5, 1967, not the other way around. This is what I would refer to as “kosher revisionism,” and it is quite common in the world today, as a matter a fact, it’s the norm. Historical revisionism has developed a bad name primarily because kosher revisionism rules the airwaves, radio and television; ethnic Jews have a near monopoly on the media in all its forms, and for that reason, lies like Horowitz’s go unnoticed by most people. Horowitz predictably sets up his “admission,” i.e. that Jews were disproportionately represented in the black civil rights movement by first prostrating himself in such a way as to fool the reader into believing that he, Horowitz, was only able to influence Newton, because Newton, the black man in the relationship, felt that Horowitz was an equal. Many people will laugh at the very idea that a Jew would consider any black to be an equal – as a rule, Jews loathe blacks more than they do whites, but they find that exploiting blacks is advantageous to the advancement of their agenda, and it is for this reason, and no other, that they associate with blacks. Many blacks know this; perhaps that is why the unapologetic and openly pro-white Larry Darby polled as many black votes as he did in the recent June 5, 2006 democratic primary election for Alabama Attorney General; because he is vociferously critical of organized Jewry. An excellent book on the reality of the Jewish/Black relationship is The Secret Relationship Between Blacks and Jews, put out by the Nation of Islam, a group Horowitz absolutely despises as shown by the fact that he allegedly considered the Nation to be more violent than the Black Panther’s, a total joke really, and one that no knowledgeable person could possibly accept. Horowitz again “creates,” this impossibility by revealing that he promised a property owner that a building the owner was to sell to the Black Panther’s wouldn’t be used by any violent black groups like the “Nation of Islam.”[2] In this case, Horowitz kosher revisionism borders on the absurd, yet most readers won’t pick it up, again because the predominantly Jewish media has so effectively smeared the Nation of Islam, that most Americans know very little about them, other than they are supposedly anti-Semitic and violent. The truth is that the Nation understands the nature of the Zionist and hasn’t shied away from talking about them, or documenting factual stories that relate the actual relationship that Jews have with blacks; which is now and has always been exploitative. In this vein, Horowitz again attempts to create a sympathetic response from the reader by alluding to the idea that he, and Jews in general, were actually the ones that had been exploited by the Panthers. He again divulges important admissions in respect to Jews and the civil rights movement, and then denies that these Jews were motivated by anything but altruism – and again he endeavors to reinforce his earlier lie at the expense of the Arabs:

"I began to review events of the past to which I had paid little attention before, like the expulsion of the Jews from the civil rights movement in 1966. Jews had funded the movement, devised its legal strategies, and provided support for its efforts in the media and in the universities – and wherever else they had power. More than half the freedom riders who had gone to the southern states were Jews, although Jews constituted only 3% of the population. It was an unprecedented show of solidarity from one people to another. Jews had put their resources and lives on the line to support the black struggle for civil rights, and indeed two of their sons – Schwerner and Goodman – had been murdered for their efforts. But even while these tragic events were still fresh, the black leaders of the movement had unceremoniously expelled the Jews from their ranks. When Israel was attacked in 1967 by a coalition of Arab states calling for its annihilation, the same black leaders threw their support to the Arab aggressors, denouncing Zionism as racism.[3]"

Here again Horowitz reveals what a propagandist he is, as mentioned previously the Israeli’s preemptively attacked the Arab states in 1967, not the other way around, thus in no sense could the Arabs be considered “aggressors.” Once again Horowitz admits to the fact that Jews were disproportionately represented in the black civil rights movement, a fact that many liberal college professors are still afraid to acknowledge to this day. Earlier Horowitz attempted to convince the reader that he felt honored to be thought of as an equal by Huey Newton, but in the above paragraph he reveals something he had carefully hidden up to this point in his biography and that is the fact that Jews single handedly funded the black civil rights movement, that they essentially developed all its strategies and that they utilized their media to advance its causes, ideas that organized Jewry has collectively denied for more than forty years. Now I ask the reader - does this sound like a relationship founded on the concept of equality?

The truth is Horowitz was never a Marxist, a socialist or otherwise, except in name, and only where it might have been beneficial to Jewish Supremacism, Horowitz clearly reveals this when he classifies Natan Sharansky as a persecuted Russian dissident,[4] rather than what Sharansky really is, a fanatical Zionist, hater of Gentiles, purveyor of holocaust lies, and Israeli Cultural Minister. No doubt Horowitz’s attempts to delude certain Panther’s in the 1970s wasn’t entirely successful, that is why he focused on the corrupt drug addict Huey Newton, who he knew was weak and would be willing to compromise in all the necessary ways.

One last telling example of Horowitz’s Zionist, rather than socialist leanings, is his insistence that Huey allow him to write a “position paper,” for the Black Panther party on the Arab/Israeli relationship, which only reinforces the fact that Horowitz, even in the early 1970s, was focused on issues that were good for Jews, rather than what would advance the allegedly revolutionary plans of the Black Panthers and the so called Black civil-rights movement. Horowitz wasn’t stupid however, he knew he had to dress up his propaganda in such a way as not to give away what his intentions really were, so he employed his considerable writing skills and inserted the following rhetoric in the paper:

"Though the ultimate survival of Jews and Palestinians, as of all peoples, depends on the revolutionary overthrow world imperialism and Capitalism…[5]"

Although in the 1970s this wasn’t a strange position for a supposed liberal and revolutionary to take, it is ironic that today Horowitz is a vociferous defender of both, at least when it concerns the racist state of Israel and its imperialist expansionism. In the end, Horowitz’s relationship with Huey Newton was based upon mutual need, Newton was never ideologically motivated, he was a violent pimp that bathed in the persona of a revolutionary and Horowitz was a Zionist propagandist that played the role of a concerned Jewish liberal, and who required a front man and found it in Huey Newton.


[1] Pg. 227.
[2] Pg. 231.
[3] Pg. 275-276.
[4] Pg. 277.
[5] Pg. 228.

Posted by curt maynard
http://curtmaynardsblog.blogspot.com/2008/02/david-horowitz-and-mechanics-of-zionist.html

Factory Farms and Beef Slaughterhouse Cruelty (video)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hakAfNWxneg

This exclusive clip from the movie All Jacked Up reveals the shocking truth about factory farming and beef slaughterhouses. Concerned about mad cow disease and "downer" cows? You should be. Cows are tortured and murdered to get their meat, and diseased cows who potentially have mad cow disease are routinely used in the human food supply.

Learn more by buying the DVD of the full film "All Jacked Up" at http://www.AllJackedUpMovie.com/nt

More important videos here: http://www.youtube.com/TheHealthRanger

great site: http://www.naturalnews.com/

VIDEOS: 911 Rescue Workers Need Health Care

VIDEOS: 911 Rescue Workers Need Health Care

by David Swanson

Yesterday in the rain in front of the U.S. Capitol hundreds of 911 rescue workers who risked their lives in a toxic mess they were told was safe piled off buses from New York. They held a rally with a handful of Congress Members and asked Congress to get them health care so that they can stop suffering every day while we slaughter people abroad in their names and in the name of those who died that day.

I shot a video and have broken it into six pieces and posted them on Youtube. The first features Rep. Tim Bishop, the second Rep. Carolyn Maloney, the third Rep. Dennis Kucinich, the fourth a young woman singing "God Bless America," the fifth Rep. Jerrold Nader, and the sixth some of the rescue workers speaking.

911 Rescue Workers Need Health Care - 6


More videos here: http://www.youtube.com/afterdowningstreet

also see: FEALGOOD FOUNDATION
and Let's Try Democracy
as well as http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/

************************************************************

Mark Roberts, an Apologist for Government Lies

by Justin A. Martell

The following is a paper I wrote several months ago. I have updated it with a new afterward that responds to the criticisms that the paper received from both Roberts and the rest of his cronies in the "debunking movement."

Here's a claim made by the man that his fellow "debunkers" call the "scourge" of the "Debunking Movement." Roberts posted the statement below on 11/5/07, in response to a fellow JREF poster mentioning the fact that New Yorkers and 9/11 Rescue Workers were told by the EPA that the air in lower Manhattan was safe to breathe:

"Well, it's also completely false. No one said the air at Ground Zero was safe to breathe." - Mark Roberts, in post 11,088 as Gravy on the JREF Forum, 11/05/07.

Lets us examine the validity of this rather audacious statement. First, on September 12th, EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman released an internal memo which said that all EPA statements to the media needed to "be cleared with the Nation Security Council." With that established, a 2006 article written by the Union of Concerned Scientists chronicles the first of many deceitful statements made by the EPA:

"The EPA wasted little time in assuring New York residents and rescue workers that the area surrounding ground zero was safe. On September 13, 2001, just two days after the attacks, the agency issued a press release in which it explained "sampling of bulk materials and dust found generally low levels of asbestos. The levels of lead, asbestos and volatile organic compounds in air samples taken Tuesday in Brooklyn, downwind from the World Trade Center site, were not detectable or not of concern." [1]

There it is. The EPA told New Yorkers and rescue workers just two days after the Twin Towers were literally pulverized, that the dust which contained asbestos, concrete, Freon, lead and other heavy metals from computers, mercury from fluorescent lights, dioxins from nylon carpets and insulation, radioactive material from smoke detectors, human beings, and everything else that was in those buildings, was safe to breathe! One could argue that perhaps they were reporting the best information they had at the time. The EPA then released a second statement on September 18th. This five day period would surely have given the EPA enough time to properly analyze their data and retract any false information that they may have released. However, in this September 18th press release, EPA Administrator Christie Todd Whitman was quoted as saying:

"We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air quality and drinking water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances." [2]

It can still be argued that the EPA's data was actually showing that the dust from the collapsed buildings was not harmful. That appears not to be true, the EPA's Inspector General made a rather disturbing statement in a report titled "EPA's Response to the World Trade Center Collapses: Challenges, Successes, and Areas for Improvement:"

"EPA's early public statements following the collapse of the WTC towers reassured the public regarding the safety of the air outside the Ground Zero area. However, when EPA made a September 18 announcement that the air was "safe" to breathe, it did not have sufficient data and analyses to make such a blanket statement. At that time, air monitoring data was lacking for several pollutants of concern, including particulate matter and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Furthermore, the White House Council on Environmental Quality influenced, through the collaboration process, the information that EPA communicated to the public through its early press releases when it convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones." [3]

In case there is any confusion as to whether or not the EPA's statements were misleading, this excerpt from EPA Whistle Blower Dr. Cate Jenkins' commentary on the report quoted above should settle it:

9/14/01...EPA administrator Christine Todd Whitman is quoted by Newsweek saying that the smoke plume at the World Trade Center disaster site is “not a health problem.”[4]

But why would they lie? Here's another excerpt from the EPA's performance report:

"Competing considerations, such as national security concerns and the desire to reopen Wall Street, also played a role in EPA's air quality statements." [5]

One would think that the EPA would put the concerns of people and the environment over the political concerns of the White House. However, that turns out not to be true. The EPA allowed the White House to alter their statements to the public, these alterations made the EPA's statements misleading and false. An examination of the EPA's statements that were censored by the White House also prove to be very alarming:

9/13/01 EPA DRAFT RELEASE STATEMENT:

EPA "Testing terrorized sites for environmental hazards."

9/13/01 EPA DRAFT WHITE HOUSE CHANGE:

EPA "Reassures public about environmental hazards."

9/16/01 EPA DRAFT RELEASE STATEMENT:

"Recent samples of dust on Water Street show higher levels of asbestos."

9/16/01 EPA DRAFT WHITE HOUSE CHANGE:

"New samples confirm...ambient air quality meets OSHA [Government] standards...not a cause for public concern"

In addition to that change, the White House completely omitted the following statement from the 9/16 EPA Draft Release:

"Air samples raise concerns for cleanup workers and office workers near Water Street."
As a result of these manipulations, by the year 2006, 70% of those who assisted in the clean-up at Ground Zero had developed respiratory problems.[5] More people will die post 9/11 from illnesses related to the air quality than on 9/11 itself. The White House manipulated the EPA's statements so that they assured people that the air was safe to breathe, which was known not to be true. Just in case you don't see where I'm going with this I will provide for you the definition of the word "lie:"

1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression. [6]

Essentially the White House ordered the EPA to lie and the EPA caved in. It is stunning that a man like Mark Roberts, who claims to be on the side of evidence and research, could proclaim that no one lied about the air quality at Ground Zero. Why would he do this? Shouldn't this be an aspect of 9/11 that both "Truthers" and "Debunkers" could confront? Apparently not for Mark Roberts, who claims that the 9/11 Truth Movement has an agenda, while ignoring the fact that he has an agenda of his own which is proving that no American government officials participated in any deceitful or unscrupulous behavior in regard to 9/11. No one lied about the air quality at Ground Zero, Mark? Interesting...I thought I was the "fantasist."

[1]http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity...-pollution.html
[2]http://yosemite.epa.gov/opa/admpress.nsf/b...c8?OpenDocument
[3], [5]http://www.epa.gov/oig/reports/2003/WTC_report_20030821.pdf
[4]http://www.nycosh.org/environment_wtc/Jenkins-7-4-03-documentary-d.pdf
[6]http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14681710/

[7]http://www.thefreedictionary.com/lie

Afterward:

In the aftermath of the release of this article, Roberts tried to make himself look better by telling me I was wrong because no one released a statement saying that the air at Ground Zero, specifically, was "safe to breathe." For a man who prides himself on his critical thinking skills, it would appear as though he has a serious problem comprehending point logic. Here is an excerpt from a conversation I had with 9/11 First Responder and founder of the FealGood Foundation, John Feal, who was severely injured after working clean-up at Ground Zero for just five days and now leads an organization dedicated to helping the ailing first responders. For more information on him and his efforts visit http://www.fealgoodfoundation.com/ or http://visibility911.com/jongold/?p=296:

Martell: So after the EPA made these statements, was the general attitude just, "Well, they said the air was safe so we don't need to worry about wearing anything?"

Feal: Absolutely.

The EPA made blanketed statements about Lower Manhattan as a whole, which includes Ground Zero. The rescue workers working at the site looked to the EPA press releases for information about the dust that they were breathing in. Those EPA press releases contained false and misleading information that downplayed the danger of the toxic dust. As a result, the rescue workers did not proceed with the caution that they should have. There's also evidence that had they even wanted to wear the proper protective gear, they would not have been able to because it wasn't even made available to them. Because of their misleading press releases, the EPA did not have to deal with concerned rescue workers, thus making the clean up process and the re-opening of Wall Street go much faster than it would had their statements been truthful.

I'd also like to post a question that I sent to Mark Roberts via email (nyctours@gmail.com) on 1/31/2008:

The 9/11 Truth Movement was originally started by several courageous 9/11 victims family members who had real questions about what happened to their loved ones on 9/11. I'm sure you're aware that these family members, who were responsible for the creation and oversight of the 9/11 Commission, have released statements in which they called the report "utterly hollow" and questioned the "entire veracity" of the report. Ultimately, the 9/11 Commission's Family Steering Committee said that 70% of their questions were not answered, as I'm sure you know.

Mark, do you think the families of 9/11 deserve to have their questions answered about the 9/11 attacks? If you think they had their questions answered, then why are they still asking questions, and why is their a list of unanswered questions on the 9/11 Family Steering Committee website, and what is this report on those unanswered questions by the families? Several of your fellow "debunkers" have suggested that the number of family members who question the 9/11 Commission Report is small. That's true, they number 4, but they are the 4 that got the other families motivated to ask for an investigation the Bush Administration clearly didn't want. They are the 4 who monitored the commission, that, along with the 9/11 family steering committee, gave the 9/11 commission 100's of well-researched questions, who worked alongside the staffers of the 9/11 Commission, etc... etc... They know what it is they're talking about, Mark, no matter how many of them there are.

You have made it your mission to suppress efforts to have their questions answered. In your words, "People who stand up for the truth don't do that."

As of today, 2/10/08, Roberts has not answered whether he thinks the family members deserve to have their questions answered. Does this, coupled with trying to make excuses for the lies of the EPA, sound like the actions of someone who is actually committed to the "truth" about 9/11?

STUDENT SCHOLARS FOR 9/11 TRUTH
http://www.sst911.org/

Posted by Justin A. Martell
http://jamartell.blogspot.com/2008/02/mark-roberts-apologist-for-government.html

also see: 9/11 Victims' Lawyers Blast Ground Zero Toxic Air Lies In Court

Straight To Hell: William F. Buckley Is Dead

Straight To Hell: William F. Buckley Is Dead

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The evil sons of bitches have lost one of their leaders. William F. Buckley is dead at 82.

As the New York Times eulogizes:

Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.

If nothing else, Bill Buckley's death gives us one more reason to live a righteous life.

Because now, if you go to hell, you'll have to listen to this pompous asshole for all eternity.

http://winterpatriot.blogspot.com/

McCain, Militarism, and the Legacy of Teddy Roosevelt

February 27, 2008

McCain, Militarism, and the Legacy of Teddy Roosevelt Will Americans embrace "the strenuous life"?

by Justin Raimondo Art by a RAIL comrade

American advocates of imperialism have been few and far between, and we have to go all the way back to the latter years of the 19th century and the early years of the 20th to unearth the most explicit. Theodore Roosevelt is perhaps the best known, but there were others: notably, Capt. Alfred T. Mahan, who advocated a big American Navy with island possessions to serve as bases, and Commodore Matthew C. Perry, who forced Japan to submit to Western intrusion, a turn of events that both sides would later have good reason to regret. Other champions of Empire included Henry Adams, Brooks Adams, Massachusetts Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Charles A. Conant, and Jeremiah W. Jenks. These influential men, some associated with or directly employed by the Morgan financial interests, argued that American capitalism could not sustain itself without forcibly opening up foreign markets. They argued that America must become, like the monarchies of Europe, an imperial power on a world scale: it was either that or economic ruination. This, of course, is the Leninist theory of imperialism: since capitalist markets must either expand or collapse completely, the system requires an imperialistic foreign policy. The ruling class, having commandeered the state, uses its armed fist to smash overseas competition, bust open foreign markets, and loot conquered lands. Instead of condemning this policy, however, as predatory and immoral, the "right-wing Leninists," as Joe Stromberg dubbed them in a perceptive piece on this site, advocated it as the only right and proper course. Yet the "right-wing Leninists" turned out to be wrong. The costs of imperialism, as the war in the Philippines made clear, far outweighed the benefits – which were narrowly distributed, at any rate. The major American critics of Rooseveltian imperialism, who advocated an international division of labor and free trade between nations – the doctrine of economic liberalism – were disdained equally by the House of Morgan and the Leninists. Yet their analysis of the probable course of empire – that it would end in bankruptcy, tyranny, and the end of the old republic – has been confirmed by events. If our leaders should ever trade in their republican cloth coats for the imperial purple, the leaders of the Anti-Imperialist League such as Edward Atkinson averred, it would signal the decline and fall of our civilization. If bankruptcy is the first symptom of that decline, then the looming prospect of economic catastrophe that seems to hang over us these days augurs ill: they're already calling it the "Iraq recession," and, indeed, MoveOn.org and allied groups are mounting a campaign around this theme. They might as well call it the Imperial Depression, because it's all about the tremendous drain on otherwise productive resources down the rat-hole of "nation-building." The Bush administration is boasting about how many schools they've built – in Iraq! Yet our own schools are overcrowded, under-funded, and downright dangerous. America's road to empire has taken quite a different turn than that imagined by the early advocates of American imperialism. It turns out that imperialism benefits the imperialists (i.e., the citizens of the aggressor state) not at all: it is the undeveloped nations, competing with the "dominant" West, that now have the advantage. Without Chinese investors buying into our debt, the U.S. economy would sink like a stone. Chinese workers are increasingly the source of a wide range of products we no longer have the capacity to make: as the industrial core of the U.S. is hollowed out, China grows fat with massive capital investments. In this context, it is instructive to recall the words of Roosevelt before an audience in Chicago, in praise of what he called "the strenuous life": "We cannot, if we would, play the part of China, and be content to rot by inches in ignoble ease within our borders, taking no interest in what goes on beyond them, sunk in a scrambling commercialism; heedless of the higher life, the life of aspiration, of toil and risk, busying ourselves only with the wants of our bodies for the day, until suddenly we should find, beyond a shadow of question, what China has already found, that in this world the nation that has trained itself to a career of unwarlike and isolated ease is bound, in the end, to go down before other nations which have not lost the manly and adventurous qualities." If ever a stance has been discredited by history, then surely it is the Rooseveltian disdain for China's alleged "scrambling commercialism." If Beijing decided to cut our purse-strings tomorrow, the mighty American Empire would fall quicker than its Soviet counterpart, albeit with a much louder crash. The strenuous life leads to exhaustion. In the life of a nation, this means economic exhaustion, otherwise known as bankruptcy. Yet "the strenuous life" has its contemporary advocates in the "national greatness" school of neoconservatism, and specifically in the person of John McCain, Teddy Roosevelt's modern incarnation. In a 2002 speech at the University of Southern California, McCain specifically invoked Roosevelt's strenuous imperialism as his political credo: "Theodore Roosevelt is one of my greatest political heroes. The 'strenuous life' was T.R.'s definition of Americanism, a celebration of America's pioneer ethos, the virtues that had won the West and inspired our belief in ourselves as the New Jerusalem, bound by sacred duty to suffer hardship and risk danger to protect the values of our civilization and impart them to humanity. 'We cannot sit huddled within our borders,' he warned, 'and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond.'" Putting the phrases McCain cites in context, let us see what else T.R. brayed that day: "We cannot sit huddled within our own borders and avow ourselves merely an assemblage of well-to-do hucksters who care nothing for what happens beyond. Such a policy would defeat even its own end; for as the nations grow to have ever wider and wider interests, and are brought into closer and closer contact, if we are to hold our own in the struggle for naval and commercial supremacy, we must build up our power without our own borders. We must build the isthmian canal, and we must grasp the points of vantage which will enable us to have our say in deciding the destiny of the oceans of the East and the West. "So much for the commercial side. From the standpoint of international honor the argument is even stronger…." The ideology of T.R. and his academic and political acolytes was crude mercantilism: "grasp" those markets, boys! This "grasp and grab" foreign policy was carried out by the U.S. military, from Panama to Nicaragua and outward to Cuba, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, and even the distant Philippines – where the dream of empire expired, albeit only temporarily, in a paroxysm of bloody resistance. The policy of imperialism, far from being the cause of riches descending on the nation, was an expensive and divisive "solution" to the alleged crisis of American capitalism, one that could not be sustained then any more than it cannot be sustained now. As underscored by the costs involved in setting up and defending our newly conquered Iraqi province, our empire is not a gain, economically, but a drain – although a new, rising class of war profiteers, colonial administrators, and investment bankers underwriting the whole imperial project directly benefits from our policies. McCain is their voice and their champion. Republican critics of McCain's immigration stance will see in his 2002 speech the origins of his peculiar indifference to the concept of American sovereignty – peculiar, that is, in an apparent American nationalist. Yet McCain's nationalism is not the inward-looking sort but an aggressively extroverted variety that seeks to impose itself and its will as far as the eye can see. As McCain puts it in his 2002 paean to Roosevelt: "His Americanism was not fidelity to a tribal identity. Nor was it limited to a sentimental attachment to our 'amber waves of grain' or 'purple mountains majesty.' Roosevelt's Americanism exalted the political values of a nation where the people were sovereign, recognizing not only the inherent justice of self-determination, not only that freedom empowered individuals to decide their destiny for themselves, but that it empowered them to choose a common destiny. And for Roosevelt that common destiny surpassed material gain and self-interest. Our freedom and our industry must aspire to more than acquisition and luxury. We must live out the true meaning of freedom, and accept 'that we have duties to others and duties to ourselves; and we can shirk neither.'" Those who would shirk their "duty" to uplift the world – the enemies of the strenuous life – were excoriated by Roosevelt in thunderous tones, a heavy fusillade of self-righteous fury that only McCain, in our own day, could match: "The timid man, the lazy man, the man who distrusts his country, the over-civilized man, who has lost the great fighting, masterful virtues, the ignorant man, and the man of dull mind, whose soul is incapable of feeling the mighty lift that thrills 'stern men with empires in their brains' – all these, of course, shrink from seeing the nation undertake its new duties; shrink from seeing us build a navy and an army adequate to our needs; shrink from seeing us do our share of the world's work, by bringing order out of chaos in the great, fair tropic islands from which the valor of our soldiers and sailors has driven the Spanish flag. These are the men who fear the strenuous life." The bluster, the boasting, the volcanic anger barely suppressed, the stern admonition to "bring order out of chaos" – as if he were a god, or God Himself! The megalomania, the posturing, the call to empire – it all sounds like McCain. As The Atlantic's Matthew Yglesias put it in his commentary on McCain channeling Roosevelt, the putative GOP presidential nominee "is, among practical politicians, perhaps the single most committed advocate of an imperial vision of American foreign policy out there." Yglesias very smartly points out that "To McCain, a commitment to universalism requires American expansionism. Indeed, to McCain it is precisely commitment to this imperial vision that makes American patriotism superior to other brands of nationalism. Our own patriotism would become compromised by stinginess and selfishness were we to show more restraint in world affairs." The economic argument for expansionism having been long ago discredited, McCain must lean on what T.R. deemed "the standpoint of international honor": "Some critics, in his day and ours, saw in Roosevelt's patriotism only flag-waving chauvinism, not all that dissimilar to Old World ancestral allegiances that incited one people to subjugate another and plunged whole continents into war. But they did not see the universality of the ideals that formed his creed." Republicans are not rallying around McCain's ascetic militarism, as they were expected to, and conservatives distrust him on a wide range of issues. This distrust is rooted in the very universalism so beloved by McCain: it accounts for his de facto open borders position, as well as his foreign policy. After all, if America is to be the center of a world empire, then we can hardly deny entry to our foreign subjects, who will be linked to us in myriad legal, social, political, and administrative networks – all this, in addition to the normal commercial ties. The policy of imperialism, carried to its end, means the de facto abolition of borders. This same militant universalism means the creation of a warrior caste as its priesthood, and McCain is the living symbol of this type. The differences with the traditional bourgeois Republican were underscored by McCain during the Republican debates, where the candidate's disdain for Mitt Romney's career as a successful entrepreneur was all too plain. This made a large part of the Republican base distinctly uncomfortable: after all, what's wrong with being a businessman, anyway? Romney's career trajectory is held in contempt by McCain because it violates the precepts of the warrior ethic he brings to public life. It is selfish, self-serving, and has nothing to do with "national greatness," that concept so beloved by T.R. and his current imitator. Tax cuts? Why, the very idea is wedded to – as Teddy put it – "that base spirit of gain and greed which recognizes in commercialism the be-all and end-all of national life, instead of realizing that, though an indispensable element, it is, after all, but one of the many elements that go to make up true national greatness." This is going to be a very interesting presidential election year. For the first time, a presidential candidate is going to campaign on a platform of open, out-of-the-closet imperialism. A war-weary nation will be hectored endlessly by McCain, and exhorted to "sacrifice" – when their homes are being foreclosed. The Republicans' only hope, it seems to me, is copying the Clintons' smear campaign against Barack Obama and hoping that America will never elect a black man with a middle name like "Hussein" and a last name that rhymes with "Osama." That photo of Obama in what one Clintonite referred to as "his native garb" will come in handy, I'm sure. http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12426 art by Christopher A. Klein

Several Reasons Why it isn't about Oil

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Several Reasons Why it isn't about Oil

By Curt Maynard

The war in Iraq, and America’s so-called Imperialistic ventures in the Mid East have nothing to do with oil.

How do you know that you might be asking?

Without delving into some very credible “conspiracy theories,” which tend to cause the eyes of “enlightened” Americans to glaze over in their own unique self-righteous stupor, let me relate some facts below, that should, assuming the reader has the ability to think properly as my friend in Rome Alfio Faro, likes to say, convince even the skeptic that Bush’s recent forays into the Middle East have nothing to do with the monopolization of oil reserves. I won’t leave the reader hanging, after relating these facts I’ll spell out in one word exactly why Bush is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and why he intends to attack Iran and Syria as well.[1]

The Third World nation of South Africa produces a barrel of oil from coal for under $35.00 a barrel.[2] The United States of America has some of the largest coal reserves in the world.[3] These coal reserves are of a far higher quality than that used by South Africa, the sulfur content is much less, and thus, American coal can be converted to oil cheaper than can South African coal.

You may have heard about Canada’s Oil Sands, but what you may not have heard is that within these sands Canada harbors nearly as much oil as Saudi Arabia.[4] Granted, it costs much more money to extract this oil from the sand than it does for Saudi Arabia to open its spigots, but at current oil prices, $76.00 a barrel, it is both feasible and profitable to begin mass production.[5]

What the reader, especially the American reader, is almost certainly unaware of is that the United States of America has even more oil than Saudi Arabia or Canada locked away in strata of shale under the Rocky Mountains.[6] Costs to extract this oil are considerably higher than extracting it from sand, but bear in mind, at current prices, it too can be extracted profitably with technology that already exists. Not to mention the fact that its extraction, assuming that illegal aliens aren’t invited en masse to fill openings, will create hundreds of thousands of jobs for Americans, not service related jobs, but real employment with real salaries and benefits.

Methane Hydrate – methane hydrate is essentially frozen methane gas. Methane gas burns cleaner than any other energy source known, if combustion is complete; there is no appreciable pollutant created from its use. In any case, methane hydrate exists in reserves so large that they dwarf all of the oil and coal reserves combined, the world over, from the dawn of time; it lies under the oceans and has already been extracted by the industrious Japanese. Its extraction at present is too costly to be profitable, but like anything else, costs decline over time and/or as the result of new technology.[7]

If the United States government were truly interested in marshaling oil sources around the world, would it not be doing everything within its power to mollify relations with the countries that possess the oil? Instead Bush is doing everything he can to alienate the populations of oil producing nations, and doesn’t seem to be in the least bit concerned about the consequences of such foreign policy folly.


Above I promised that after relating some facts I’d spell out in one word exactly why Bush is occupying Iraq and Afghanistan and why he intends to attack Iran and Syria as well. Dear reader, the reason in one word is “Israel.” Why Bush pursues his insane adventures in the Mid East for the Zionist state is not exactly known, some think he is a Christian fundamentalist, with a “dual covenant” eschatological outlook, this writer seriously doubts this premise, Bush’s words may exemplify Christian value and virtue, but his actual behavior demonstrably prove that his words are empty and are meant only to maintain a relatively powerful base, that of the Christian voting block.[8]

There are others that believe Bush may be compromised in some way and may be under the influence of those blackmailing him; those who would and could reveal to the world some dark secret hiding in the closet of the Commander and Chief. I suppose it’s possible, I personally don’t believe that former President Clinton just happened to meet up with a young Jewess named Monica Lewinsky, who just happened to save a sample of the President’s sperm discharged on her dress after administering fellatio. Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, but I’ll bet it wasn’t a happy accident.


[1] Syria itself has no appreciable oil reserves and thus its demonization by Israel and the media should act as a wake up call for those that are convinced that Bush’s Mid East policies exclude everything but the acquisition of additional oil reserves.
[2] http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=1157843
[3] http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/northamerica/engsupp.htm
[4] http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/89.asp
[5] Don’t fool yourself, the price of oil will never again fall below $50.00 a barrel – once consumers have accepted paying $3.00 a gallon for gas, oil companies and governments will maintain it there.
[6] 1.2 trillion barrels http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale
[7] http://www.llnl.gov/str/Durham.html
[8] Many of these so-called Christian fundamentalists however are anything but supportive of Israel; the predominantly Jewish media in the United States exploits its media monopoly to keep this idea before the American viewing public, this idea that all Christian fundamentalists are pro-Zionist/pro-Israel. They do this to rein in the hesitant, after all if “all,” Christian fundamentalists support Israel, it must be an order ordained by Jesus himself, thus many blindly fall into this category, but maintain privately, their healthy skepticism of the Jewish state. Many contemporary Christians have forgotten that for 2000 years Christian doctrine embraced the view that Jews and Christians could not, nor should live together, that Jews were determined to subvert and defile Christianity and that they would do so forever. In effect by turning their back on 2000 years of Christian doctrine, these folks believe that they are somehow more enlightened than their predecessors. They embrace this view despite the emergence of our modern secular society, despite the millions of abortions in the United States annually, despite the fact that “gay marriage,” is almost certainly to become a reality in this country, despite the fact that “hate crimes,” legislation, if the Jewish ADL gets its way, would make it unlawful for a Christian to condemn homosexuality and the goals of aberrant feminism, despite the fact that non-Christian Jews dominate our modern culture via the power of the media in all its forms, despite the fact that Jesus has become nothing more than a piece of “art,” to be urinated on, amidst the applause of our enlightened and “reformed,” secular elite, who appear in droves to demand that the American taxpayer [Christians included] continue to be forced to pay for the display of such garbage under the illusion that somehow it qualifies as “art.” No, our society is not as enlightened as we’d like to think, we are fools determined to live with our delusional thoughts and ideas – most of which have been carefully instilled in us by way of the media.

Posted by curt maynard
http://curtmaynardsblog.blogspot.com/

Thinking about Hillary for President? just hold these thoughts in your mind.

Before you start thinking about Hillary for President, just hold these thoughts in your mind.

1. Crooked Cattle Futures Trades.

2. The murder of Vince Foster and the looting of his office.

3. Jorge Cabreras

4. Whitewater

5. Flowerwood

6. Castle Grande

7. Iran-Contra/Mena

8. The looting of Social Security to create a phony budget surplus.

9. Watch this space.

Hillary proclaimed herself the "Co-President" when Bill was chasing skirts in the Oval Office. Let us hold her to that.

http://whatreallyhappened.com/

You think you are free?

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

You think you are free?

By Linda S. Heard, Special to Gulf News

Published: February 25, 2008

Watching old movies makes me sad. I'm inevitably reminded of a kindlier, gentler world without cameras that spy on populations, where overseas travelling was pleasurable and privacy was an individual's right.

Nowadays, states are usurping responsibilities that are rightfully those of their citizens. Western so-called democracies, in particular, are supposed to have governments that are servants of the people, whereas, in fact, the opposite is true. Under the guise of doing what's best for us or ensuring our security, governments are exercising more and more control over our lives. And, tragically, we are facilitating this erosion of our own freedoms, mostly because we're not even aware it's happening.

The US and Britain are leading the pack in this encroaching Orwellian nightmare. "War is peace; Freedom is slavery; Ignorance is strength," wrote George Orwell in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four. In recent years, they have waged wars in the name of peace, put entire populations under their thumb in the name of freedom while government spin and a compliant media serve to keep people ignorant about their leaders' true motives.

If we only knew it we are being indoctrinated to offer up our personal freedoms to save ourselves from a horrible fate at the hands of nicotine, calories and Al Qaida. We are being taught to fear asylum seekers, climate change, crazed terrorists and even each other. Western governments are perfecting the politics of fear because fearful populaces will do their bidding without question and willingly subject themselves to control.

Britain has become a master of this technique. It currently holds a data base containing the DNA of 4.5 million people, arrested for both serious crimes and minor infractions. The police have found this tool so useful they are pushing to expand it to cover everyone in the country although the Home Office has rejected the idea for the moment.

By 2012 Britons over 16 will be required to hold biometric ID cards checkable by police, immigration and customs officials as well as public and private bodies such as travel agencies, airlines, banks and even retailers.

By 2010, Britain is also expected to incorporate Radio Frequency Identification memory chip in passports designed to carry a wealth of personal data on travellers.

Embedded

Further, there is a plan to embed RFID chips in vehicle number plates allowing authorities the capability of identifying any vehicle anywhere in all weathers. RFID chips have been embedded on every packet of cigarettes manufactured in the UK since October last year, while others have been fitted to trash cans officially to boost the rate of garbage recycling. Pets entering Britain from abroad are also chipped.

Apparently, the government is also considering injecting prisoners with RFID tags. If that goes ahead it's surely the slippery slope to babies being chipped at birth.

US has forced European airlines to hand over 19 pieces of information on travellers prior to their departure and wants to extend this one-way data flow to passengers over-flying the US en route to Central America and the Caribbean. UK wants the system to be used throughout Europe and domestically.

Not only do authorities want to control Britons' movements, they are also after their thoughts. Remember the Orwellian Thought Police, who used surveillance methods and psychological profiles to interpret the future goals of potential dissenters and deviants? This is already happening in the UK where people can expect to be caught on camera up to 300 times per day and where their phone calls and internet browsing is routinely monitored.

Earlier this month, three British Appeal judges had the good sense to quash the convictions of five young Muslims, prosecuted for simply downloading "extremist propaganda" from the internet. There was no other evidence against them and no proof they intended to act on any message contained in such material. In other words, their initial conviction was purely based on thought crime. The judgment read: "Literature may be stored in a book or on a bookshelf, or on a computer drive, without any intention on the part of the possessor to make any future use of it all."

Big Brother Britain isn't working. Indeed, the prisons are full to over-flowing and violent crime is on the up-and-up, much of it fuelled by drugs and alcohol. You've surely heard the expression "give a dog a bad name ..." Could it be that when law-abiding citizens are pre-judged as criminals some of them might conclude "What the heck"?

But Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four isn't exactly where Britain is headed. The reality is a combination of Orwell's theories and those set-out in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

As the American author Neil Postman wrote in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death whereas "Orwell feared the truth would be concealed from us, Huxley feared the truth would be droned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture" consumed by "an almost infinite appetite for distractions".

In a way they were both right. Unless we tear ourselves away from our pretty toys and distractions just long enough to remove our rose-coloured specs, freedom will be obsolete except as a slogan above the gate of the Ministry of Truth.

Linda S. Heard is a specialist writer on Middle East affairs. She can be contacted at lheard@gulfnews.com.

Posted by CRIMES AND CORRUPTION OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER NEWS mparent7777 Marc Parent CCNWON

art by Craig LaRotonda

A Little Snow in Middle Tennessee 2-27-08

The Israeli Agenda And The Scorecard Of The Zionist Power Configuration For 2008

The Israeli Agenda And
The Scorecard Of The Zionist
Power Configuration For 2008
By James Petras
2-26-8

The Israeli Agenda openly defended, publically practiced and aggressively pursued by the Zionist power configuration (ZPC) has greatly influenced the US Presidential elections and the likely future course of Washington's Middle East policy. The strategy of the Jewish state is the complete Zionization of Palestine, the takeover of land, water, offshore gas (estimated to be worth $4 billion dollars) and other economic resources and the total dispossession of the Palestinian people. Tel Aviv's tactics have included daily military assaults, giant walls ghettoizing entire Palestinian towns, military outposts and controls undermining commerce and production to force bankruptcy, poverty, severe deprivation and population flight. The second priority of the Israeli colonial state is to bolster the Jewish state's political and military supremacy in the Middle East, using preposterous arguments of 'survival' and 'existential threats'. The key postulate of Israeli Middle East policy is to destroy or intimidate the principle adversaries of its Zionization of Palestine and its expansionist Middle East policy. In pursuit of that policy, it invaded southern Lebanon to destroy Hezbollah, bombing neighborhoods and critical infrastructure in Beirut and other cities, bombed Syria as a provocation. Earlier the Israeli state played a major role in directing the ZPC in formulating US war policy toward destroying Iraq as a viable nation. Recently Israel, through the ZPC in the US, has engaged in a comprehensive, intense and highly charged political, diplomatic, economic and military campaign to isolate and ultimately destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran as a political counterweight to its ambitions in the Middle East ("Israel: Iran building Nuclear Arms", Aljazeera February 12, 2008). The principal propaganda tool of the ZPC and its Israeli patrons is to claim Iran represents a 'military threat' to Israel, Iraq, the Gulf oil producers and the US. This outlandish charge is repeatedly made by ZPC ideologues. According to the 2008 edition of the International Institute of Strategic Studies Military Balance, Iran's total defense spending for 2006 was nearly 55% less than Israel despite having ten times the population of the Jewish state and facing hundreds of US- supported terrorist incursions across its borders. Per capita, Israeli military expenditures were 17 times more than Iran ($1,737 per Israeli ­ not counting US direct military assistance ­ versus $110 for each Iranian citizen). It is widely acknowledged that Israel has over 200 nuclear weapons capable of striking Iranian population centers while Iran has none. Israel receives over $3 billion US dollars a year in direct US military aid, including the most advanced offensive military technology ­ while Iran receives no foreign military aid and has little defensive technology. According to US Budgetary Hearings, from 2009 to 2018 Israel will receive a $30 billion dollar package of direct foreign military financing from the US, while Iran will receive nothing from any foreign state. Contrary to Israeli and ZPC propaganda, the Gulf States, Iraq and many US military commanders do not consider Iran a military threat, but rather a factor in stabilizing the volatile situation. The Gulf States invited Iran to their annual meetings; Iraqi government leaders meet with Iranian officials on trade and security and Saudi Arabia is following a similar course by inviting Iranian leaders to Mecca for the Hadj. After the destruction of the secular republic of Iraq, the job of the ZPC has been to push for greater US military aggressin against Israel's perceived adversaries ­ Iran being the prime target ­ by massive falsification of the actual correlation of military forces between Israel and Iran. Israeli and ZPC Intervention in the US Presidential Elections and Economic Policy The second task of the ZPC in pursuit of Israel's agenda is to ensure no major political candidate debates or questions Israeli genocidal policies toward the Palestinians and its military ambitions in the Middle East. In the US Presidential election of 2008, the ZPC's role is to ensure that all major candidates endorse, support and promote the Israeli political agenda, despite its genocidal policies (see Gideon Levy, "The Lights have been turned off", Haaretz February 4, 2008) and repudiation of international law. The ZPC has imposed on all Presidential candidates Israel's bellicose posture toward Iran, and its explicit policy of liquidating Hamas political leaders. According to Israeli Minister of Housing and construction, Zeev Boim, "all members of Hamas political leadership are involved in terrorist acts against Israelso they must be liquidated." (Israeli Army Radio- Galei Tzahal, February 9, 2008 cited in Haaretz). The third task of the ZPC is to use their strategic positions in the White House, Treasury, Pentagon and State Department to undermine Iran's economy, politically isolate it and provoke internal and external confrontations. Israel 2008: The Theory and Practice of Genocide Israel has totally shredded any and all verbal commitments made at the Bush-organized Annapolis Middle East Conference in November 2007. The Jewish state is building 1000 new housing units in "Palestinian" East Jerusalem. It allows 100 new settler posts to occupy Palestinian land. It has attacked and killed Palestinian civilians, police and supporters of its 'negotiating partner' Abbas throughout the West Bank. Israel retains its 300 checkpoints throughout the West Bank, undermining travel, transport, trade and medical treatment. Jewish colonial settlements expand, further encroaching on Palestinian land, under the flimsy pretext that the peace process only precludes whatever the Jewish officials designate as 'new settlements', in effect isolating and reducing Palestinian East Jerusalem into a walle