Aldous Huxley Narrates 'Brave New World'

I came across this Bernard Herrmann album download from the 1956 CBS Radio Workshop production of Aldous Huxley's 'Brave New World' with the actual radio production as narrated by Huxley himself.

It makes a nice audio CD that can be listened to on the road.

Huxley continues to be a prophetic voice that everyone should be familiar with.

Download here-.mp3: Side 1 and Side 2

From: http://recordbrother.typepad.com/

You're American

(Official Election Video)



From: meewsic
http://www.chemtrailrecords.com

Follow the constitution; read the declaration of independence. Make our founding fathers proud!

A Place for War Criminals

art: Robert Morris

Or how to put an end to the criminals that kill for profit.

A deterrent to make the next rulers think twice.

The Bush-Obama-McCain Administration

art: Wojciech Voytek Nowakowski

Morton Skorodin
World Prout Assembly

The period we're living in now is the Bush-Obama-McCain Administration.

Bush obligingly initiated Obama's bombing campaign on Pakistan. The three of them colluded on the recent wealth transfer (about $840 billion) from the American people to Wall St.

The 24 hr/7 days/wk media Wurlitzer distracts us from looking at these white elephants too closely. The circus is so loud and visually entraining that it hides the deeper structure of society. The U.S. is a military dictatorship with scientific public relations. Part of this scientific PR is the careful cultivation of and trumpeting of America's democratic trappings. The important thing to remember is that McCain and Obama were carefully vetted by the moneyed rulers and this is not particularly a secret. It's called "campaign contributions". After that, we the people get to choose from two approved candidates.

The fix is in. McCain's a patsy. Obama's repeatedly been anointed sovereign on the cover of Time (That's of Time-Warner, the media conglomerate he won't break up.)

There's no left to speak of in the US. There are material reasons for this- weak unions, few strikes. (The reasons why unions are weak are beyond the scope of this discussion.) So left-wing stars like Ralph Nader and Amy Goodman are tethered to nothing, like bloated Macy parade balloons that have floated up and become more bloated. So their efforts, however well-intentioned, don't have force behind them and are sometimes completely ineffective.

The Society of the Spectacle meets the neo-totalitarian total information awareness society. The state has technology for and has commandeered the resources to spy upon everyone with 16 or 18 "intelligence" agencies and control us as much as possible with the media of five corporations that are pretty well unified as to how and how much the populace is "informed". On the other hand, the populace is atomized (deprived of meaningful ties to others); the only major non corporate-government) institutions are the cooptable churches.

The handsome prince and his foil, the wicked, but comely, queen. They're comic book superheroes- perfect for TV, the key instrument of oppression and ignorance. (Notice the immense effort to make sure everybody has digital TV by next Feb. I wish they cared that much to give water to our brethren in New Orleans.)

Barack Obama and Sarah Palin are too good to be true:

Barack Obama- that name is foreign beyond foreign, mother a hippy who had a black's child, an actual African (gasp). This sounds as scary to many whites as the orchestrated excesses of the police state such as the Daarth Vader outfitted police with their North Korea style truncheons at the Republican convention seem to anxious liberals and righteous activists.

Sarah Palin - superhero mom, she'll serve milk and cookies for you while on the way to running and ruining the world. She's not regular pro-gun, church, etc. She is the cartoon version- actually shoots wolves from helicopters; associates with, to put it a little too politely, "white nationalists".

This dichotomy serves only the rulers. What the vast majority on both sides need are exactly the same things: peace, economic relief, and freedom from the intrusive state.

Divide and conquer. The rulers have been promoting race war as a counter to class struggle since the 1600s. They are very good at it.

After the election the economy may get still worse and there will be further military adventures. As things unravel the game will be: blame the Black guy. This process has already started.

As far as U.S. military planners go, the election cycle and the public's feelings are only a factor in determining the timing and announcement of aggressive actions, kind of like taking into account the weather for an optimal time for the Normandy landing in WW2.

It's a military dictatorship with Handsome Presidents. The election is a joke, but more importantly, a waste of the people's time (except, perhaps some local races). Get over it. Think and find effective ways to rebel.

Morton Skorodin, M.D. October 30, 2008

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Last Updated October 31, 2008 12:05 AM
Source: http://www.worldproutassembly.org/archives/2008/10/the_bush-obama-.html

Nightmare on Main Street

Art by David Dees - Deesillustration.com,,,,,,Dees Archive

http://rense.com/

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

Article II, Section I of the U.S. Constitution:

"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

*******

I'm not sure when the last time a US president actually upheld his solemn oath and stayed true to the constitution. Maybe never in all aspects. Little by little they have all taken steps to enhance the power of the presidency at the expense of our rights.

No matter who 'wins' this election "the nightmare will continue".

Happy Halloween America.

Sweet dreams.

Making Excuses for Obama

October 31, 2008

antiwar.com The mythology of good intentions

by Justin Raimondo

Every time I write about Barack Obama I get a lot of letters, and the most typical goes something like this: Dear Justin, I read your column regularly, and generally agree with what you have to say, but I think you've got Barack Obama all wrong. Yes, I know, he went before AIPAC and kowtowed; he pledged to do "anything – and I mean anything" to stop Iran's nuclear program. He acts "tough" and says he's going to invade Pakistan; he gets in Russia's face. But that's all a show: you see, he has to do this stuff or else he won't get elected. Once he's safely in office, he'll do the right thing. Sincerely, John Q. Reader This is an amalgam, but true to the spirit of the many pro-Obama missives I've received. They express a sentiment that is very widespread, so much so that it doesn't seem to matter, much, what Obama says he's going to do, because, in any case, his fans and supporters will simply insist on projecting their own hopes, desires, and views onto him. This, by the way, is a feature of most all successful populist insurgent candidates: they are blank slates merely waiting to be written on by anxious voters, who know only that they are sick of what is, and pine for what ought to be. As much as I hate to be the bearer of bad news, in this instance – because we've certainly been through the mill these past eight years, and deserve some relief – I have to say that this attitude is profoundly irrational. After all, why shouldn't we take Obama at his word? If he says he's going to "curb Russian aggression" – you know, like one might curb one's rather-too-aggressive dog – and get up in Putin's face, is he lying? When he solemnly pledges to go after the Iranians if they insist on deterring Israel's nukes with an arsenal of their own, is he speaking in Pig-Latin? The common assumption of these letter-writers is that Obama is just trying to "pass," so to speak, as a warmonger. Once he's in office, peace will break out all over. What evidence do we have for this? None whatsoever. Now, it's true that the Obama campaign didn't really take off until he made known his antiwar views on the Iraq question, and a lot of his street cred is due to this early stance. He was against the war from the beginning – and made sure the voters of Iowa knew it. His chief rival, Hillary Clinton, took a rather more equivocal stance, and he beat her over the head with this relentlessly. This was encouraging, but hardly definitive. At the time, I warned that Obama's refusal to take war with Iran "off the table" – as the Important People invariably put it – did not bode well, and, given his development over the course of the campaign it turned out I was – unfortunately – right. It isn't just a pedantic intellectual desire for consistency, or just to give me something to write about, that motivates me to criticize the inconsistencies of ostensibly "antiwar" politicians. Ideas have consequences, as the conservatives used to say, and if Obama makes it to the White House we're sure to experience some conceptual "blowback." Obama lied – people died! How long before we see that slogan emblazoned on a placard at a rather sparsely-attended antiwar rally? But of course he didn't lie, and isn't lying now. He's telling us he wants to confront Russia and Iran. He's telling us he wants to increase a military budget already larger than the total military expenditures of all other nations combined. He says he won't hesitate to invade Pakistan – and, presumably, any nation anywhere – if we have some reason to believe Osama bin Laden and his cohorts are in the vicinity. I think he's telling the truth – and I challenge the Obamaoids, especially the ones who claim to be sick of eight years of constant warfare, to prove otherwise. If Obama is indeed giving us the real story, and if he actually implements his foreign policy proposals, we are in a world of trouble. Joe Biden rightly said that, within six months of his election, Obama would be "tested." This was generally taken to mean tested by America's enemies – al-Qaeda, the Iranians, possibly the Russkies – but I took it in quite a different way. Yes, he will be tested, and has been repeatedly tested – by the War Party. So far, he's passed with flying colors. For evidence of this, just look at all that money he's raised from some of the biggest players in the game of Empire. The high-rollers aren't placing their bets on Obama for nothing. You don't spend $45 million on a single infomercial if you're financing your campaign with small contributions. I've written about Obama's bigtime Wall Street backers at length, here. In any case, I hardly think Obama is going to abolish the very Empire that polices the world on behalf of his Wall Street backers. Nor did I ever expect him to, even when I was more favorably inclined to his candidacy. Back in those halcyon days, afflicted as I was by an irrational exuberance due to rising antiwar sentiment, I did expect he wouldn't get us into any fresh wars, even if he didn't quite wind up the ones we're already fighting. I'm afraid, however, I was quite wrong, In this regard, an interesting bit of reporting appeared in last week's [Oct. 22] New York Times, where we learn: "Mr. Obama, the candidate who has expressed far more willingness to sit down and negotiate with the Iranians, said in an e-mail message passed on by an aide that in any final deal he would not allow Iran to produce uranium on Iranian soil, the same hard-line view enunciated by the Bush administration." The writer, David Sanger, goes on to point out that the stereotypes of warmonger and peacenik in this race are not only off, they are way off: "Consider the delicate issue of Pakistan, where it is Mr. Obama who has been far more willing than Mr. McCain to threaten sending in American troops on ground raids. Mr. McCain, by contrast, argues that Pakistan must control its territory. ‘I don't think the American people today are ready to commit troops to Waziristan,' he said, months before Mr. Bush signed secret orders this summer authorizing ground raids in Pakistan, including the violent sanctuaries of North and South Waziristan." Interesting – not that it means McCain is the real peacenik, just that Obama is, potentially, even more reckless than Mad John. Don't let that calm demeanor fool you. President Obama is no hyperventilating arm-waving interventionist, for sure, but that's just a question of style. He'll no doubt cultivate his own signature brand: Zen interventionism, if you will. What's unnerving, however, is that Obama's foreign policy views have gone largely unarticulated, except in the most general terms. He's a man of mystery, a characteristic that lets his supporters project their own views onto him, and yet this failure to be more forthcoming is what I find particularly ominous. As Sanger reports: "Mr. McCain, now the Republican nominee, agreed to an interview during the primary campaign. Obama aides answered questions at length, but Mr. Obama, the Democratic nominee, citing the pressures of time in the campaign, declined requests dating to June to be interviewed in detail on how he would handle potential confrontations beyond Iraq that could face the next president." During that interminable infomercial, a total of less than two minutes was devoted to the issue of war and peace. And those two minutes were filled with renewed vows to increase the military budget – with the added fillip of "curbing Russian aggression." This should comfort all those "Obama-cons," alleged conservatives who are jumping on the bandwagon now that his election seems imminent – because we seem to be going back in time, back to the "good old days" of the cold war. In Obama World, the Russians are coming -- again! Soon we'll be hearing dire warnings that if we don't stop them in South Ossetia, before you know it they'll be in South Carolina. Hollywood – a bastion of Obama-mania – will do a remake of Red Dawn. Schoolchildren will be subjected to "duck and cover" sessions, and Fox News will do an updated revival of "I Led Three Lives." Okay, enough with Obama, because it's not really about him, personally, or even politically. People need hope: they need to know that they aren't, ultimately, powerless, that they can make an impact on what we do as a nation -- that is, what the government does in our name. They not only like to believe it, they have to believe it, because to not believe it is to fall victim to despair. It is the democratic faith, which one devoutly hopes is not a pretty fiction. Yet the electoral process is rigged, in this country: the system permits only two political parties. All others must overcome enormous obstacles to achieve ballot status. This give the War Party maximum elbow room to manipulate the political process behind the scenes, and allows them to exercise their dictatorship in a "democratic" fashion. The two-party monopoly gives the War Party a strategic advantage: it merely has to split itself in two, amoeba-like, so that both officially-recognized "major" parties" simply become the "right" and "left" wings of a single party – the War Party. This limits the political options of the peace movement, and makes it harder to have an impact even at the primary level: the gigantism of the system, with its two monolithic party organizations, is biased against insurgents. It is also more amenable to the advantages of money, large sums of it, which Obama has had access to throughout this campaign. Political action is fine, and necessary, but there are other, more important tasks for those who want to bring about a real change in American foreign policy – by which I mean a complete turnaround. Such ambition requires a longer view. America has been an emerging empire for the past half century or so, and now that we're the semi-official world's policeman – the "hyperpower," as the French put it – a good many Americans are beginning to question the value and the morality of playing such a role. The Iraq war, however popular it appeared to be at first, is today as unpopular than the President who started it, he whose polls have hit historic lows. The next President will have to contend with a war-weary public, with very little patience for new interventions. But – and I hate to tell you this, but somebody has to -- the politics of fear and deception have not been patented by the Republicans. Look for the Democrats to add their own ingredient to this bipartisan recipe for overseas disasters: the politics of guilt. White liberal guilt, to be sure. We'll be smack dab in the middle of Africa's feuding tribes faster than you can say "Samantha Power." And that's the best case scenario. In the worst case, the Dennis Ross faction of Obama's emerging foreign policy movers and shakers will maneuver us into a confrontation with Iran, and relations with Russia will deteriorate to a new low as NATO escalates its eastward expansion. In any case, those who are working to effect a fundamental change in American foreign policy have a duty to take Obama at his word -- hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. Source: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13698

AmeriKan Kids Zonked Out on Zoloft

Friday, October 31, 2008

Rock the Truth - MSM Lie Monitor

I don't think our children should be on ANY psychotropic drugs, folks.

How 'bout you?

"Zoloft, therapy help anxious children

CHICAGO - A popular antidepressant plus three months of psychotherapy dramatically helped children with anxiety disorders, the most common psychiatric illnesses in the young, the biggest study of its kind found.

Them and their fucking "anxiety" disorders! Makes you wonder how humanity has survived so long, huh?

The research also offers comfort to parents worried about putting their children on powerful drugs - therapy alone did a lot of good, too. Combining the drug sertraline, available as a generic and under the brand name Zoloft, with therapy worked best.

Sertraline is among antidepressants that have been linked with suicidal thoughts and behavior in children with depression. In this study, only a handful of the more than 200 children using it had suicide-related thoughts and there were no suicide attempts, said Dr. John Walkup, lead author of the government-funded research."

They just lost me right there!! I think ONE THOUGHT of suicide from a kid is one TOO MANY!!

This isn't about the health of our kids; this is about DRUG INDUSTRY PROFITS!!!

See: The Poor Purveyors of Poison

Posted by Rocker
Source: http://rockthetruth2.blogspot.com/2008/10/amerikan-kids-zonked-out-on-zoloft.html

Critique of the Obama infomercial

Crimes Of The State

art by Grant

Obama opens with a gas pump filling up an oversized SUV. This is the image he chooses to start the discussion. No hint that gas-guzzling behemoths (and those who buy them) are part of the problem, just that the "middle class" is struggling.

Obama's obsession with the "middle class" is pure Clintonian "triangulation."

In his pandering to the "middle class" voters he is nearly shameless. No mention of the poor. And he goes one further, he literally says that:

"Ten years ago, she bought a house outside the city so that she could send her children to good schools."

What about inside the city, Barack? The bad schools? Not even an acknowledgement. * Shameless pandering it is.

Moving to "the economy," it's "eight years of failed policies" which allegedly caused the recent collapse in the financial industry. But, Barack, what about going back another couple of years to how Clinton changed the regulation of the industry by repealing Glass-Steagall?

Another glossed over, cheesy political point replaces a true understanding of the problem: the bi-partisan nature of the beast.

Regarding foreclosures, Obama promises the "help" of "freezing foreclosures" for those trying to pay, "for 90 days."

What about 91 days, Barack? What about restructuring the loans so they can pay them? This band-aid solution will not have much effect on real foreclosed upon families, but it sounds like he cares, I suppose.

In a more outrageous bonding session with the working man, an elderly gentleman describes how $19 Million of his company's pension fund was stolen by the company on their way to bankruptcy, Enron style.

Obama's response, time and time, companies are: "shedding those obligations."

No, Barack: They stole it. This was a crime. This is a crime that should be investigated, punished, and the money recovered on behalf of the injured parties.

Finishing up, Obama says: "Those (pensions) aren't idle promises, they are promises that should have the force of law."

They don't? There's no regulation or oversight of pension money? These pension funds were robbed. Why isn't it a crime, the same as robbing a convenience store? Why isn't there some legitimate outrage on Obama's part, no call for investigations, nothing, just another photo op.

In the medical segment that follows, it sounds a lot like the woman is taking 12 different drugs for "arthritis," and going broke as a result. I've got to say that the problem might be the doctor(s). This counts as a pretty poor example, fitting in mostly because of their "middle class" economic situation, rather than as an indictment of the ridiculously dysfunctional medical establishment (which Obama has no plan to substantially alter).

Obama should have taken a hint from Michael Moore's Sicko -- or perhaps that's all he took, a hint.

"Clean coal" and the "domestic production of oil" get plugs in the energy plan. That's expected.

Then the big subject of Iraq is brought center stage. How does Barack tackle this massive war crime with over one million murdered Iraqis, countless injured and maimed, including a substantial number of American troops, all who were sold a bill of goods by the lies of the Bush gang (and Obama VP pick Joe Biden, too).

I felt a bit nauseous, for here is "Iraq" as per Obama:

"We're currently spending $10 Billion dollars a month in Iraq when they have a $79 billion surplus."

It's all about the money. No morality enters the equation.

Does "they" refer to the Iraqis, who have wanted our invading armies out for the last 5 years (excepting the puppet regime we installed)?

What is the implication? Is this the neocon argument about making the Iraqis pay for their own imperial subjugation?

Obama does, to his credit, say that the "war" should "close." That's a step, but does it mean removing the invading armies, air force, navy and mercenaries from their country completely? Hmmm. If this is a position change, he hasn't spelled it out as clearly as he claimed he would at the beginning.

Obama highlights some faux populism next, but he does it in such an obviously subservient manner:

"So, I'm not worried about CEOs, I'm not worried about corporate lobbyists, I'm not worried about the drug companies or the oil companies or the insurance companies. They'll be fine, they can look out for themselves."

Oh, better than fine, Barack. As a corporate stooge you fully understand how they're doing, and how you ought not disturb the business as usual. "Corporate lobbyists?" Not a word about changing the culture where "corporate lobbyists" create corrupt legislation to ram down our collective throats. The "insurance companies?" Your health plan evidently wants to enroll more uninsured on the corporate, privatised medical insurance rolls, with US government graft. "CEO's?" The fraudsters of wall street won't need your attention, send them another $700 billion of our money if they complain. The "drug companies" which use public research and development funds to create private patents on new drugs? Why bother looking into that, Barack?

The dismissiveness is smooth and fluent now. And the coded triangulation is clearly in play. Is this the best America could hope for? Willful deception?

And now the shocker:

Barack Obama is seductive, is clearly not on the level of John McCain or Sarah Palin in terms of psychotic malevolence.

You can almost believe his naive attitude about the wars in the Middle East.

Perhaps Obama truly does not know the backstory about Al Qaeda, those intelligence assets created by our "allies" such as Saudi Arabia, and Musharaf's Pakistan. He may be completely ignorant as to what the CIA and Mossad and MI6 have been playing at for the last few decades. He may have good intentions, as he presents, and on day one of Obama's presidency, he may find out there is no Santa Claus.

What then?

More to the point, should I reconsider my vote, and throw it Obama's way despite a long list of reasons to withold it? What if my state really is in danger of flipping for McCain?

What if my vote actually does matter this time?

These are weighty questions.

Seeing how the third parties have no chance of winning the 2008 presidency, whatsoever, is the risk worth it? Could the McCain/Palin wrecking crew start a nuclear holocaust?

* Obama's later school proposals, vaguely mentioned, did include "all" schools, and were not solely directed at the middle class areas. Several key issues were just vague and without substance, contrary to his introductory claim.

---

For a balanced perspective on Obama's ties to the Washington establishment, and his shoddy record to date, see:

Twelve Reasons to Reject Obama and Support Nader/McKinney
- by Prof. James Petras
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10749

What Do They Have to Do to Lose Your Vote?
The Trail of Broken Promises
By MATT GONZALEZ
http://counterpunch.org/gonzalez10292008.html

posted by John Doraemi
Source: http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/2008/10/critique-of-obama-infomercial.html

A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing:

Friday, October 31, 2008

The Fabian Society, Communitarianism and the New World Order

By Matthew D. Jarvie
October 31, 2008
SovereignSentience.blogspot.com


A Wolf in Sheep's Clothing

The Fabian Society, Communitarianism and the New World Order

This video is a very brief, six-minute introduction to the British Fabian Society, which was established on orders from the Crown in 1884, with the purpose of creating a movement to usher in by stealth a one world government.

The ideology promoted by Fabians and Fabian thinkers is called communitarianism, which is also sometimes referred to (by people like Tony Blair) as the 'Third Way'. The Third Way refers to the synthesis of capitalism and socialism in the dialectic scheme.

This dialectical synthesis, or outcome, is to be a collectivist form of government where all individualism is forcibly relinquished in the name of "unity" and complete and unwavering allegiance to the state under a scientific, socialistic dictatorship run by "experts."

This is to be a system run on complete and total efficiency, where the only purpose of the individual is to serve the state. The so-called "useless eaters," as people like Kissinger refer to, are seen as only a burden to this efficiency, and therefore will be incarcerated or killed if this system is allowed to be fully implemented. This is precisely why the "Elite" want an 80-90% reduction of the world's population, with just enough peasants to serve their utopia, described in writings by people such as Huxley and Fabian H.G. Wells, and promoted still today in well-funded works of propaganda such as Zeitgeist, which are designed to promote the New World Order religion.

Posted by Matthew D. Jarvie
Source: http://sovereignsentience.blogspot.com/2008/10/wolf-in-sheeps-clothing-fabian-society.html

“Keep Friends Close & Enemies Closer”

October 30, 2008

by Jim Kirwan

When people finally begin to look back on this, they will discover some amazing facts that many have totally ignored, so far. The first thing is that the various populations, around the world, have been under microscopes for decades. Every aspect of our habits and our lives have been studied to the nth degree; to take full advantage of our inclinations and our faults, to enable the owners to take full advantage of us – when that will count the most. That time has arrived, and we have all been primed for the slaughter, as surely as a flock of sheep waiting in the pens at the railhead. The second most-important-thing has to do with maintaining absolute control over all forms of information dispersal. The owners own every facet of these unfolding events, except possibly the internet: and they’re working on that every minute of every hour to turn that too into a minefield filled with disinformation, rumors and junk-mail that will only further confuse unwary users. How did we miss these facts? As the owners so clearly discovered, our collective memories have the retention capacity of a gnat, when it comes to anything that has happened in the past: And our concentration levels have been truncated to absorbing no more than a bunch of one-liners and that we are now physically incapable of making sense out of compound thoughts or stories that exceed one page. The Owners did their homework: We did not! The third most important thing is that we still seem to have no clue whatever as to what is about to happen to this country. The “nation” is already gone, along with the Constitution and our democratically run Republic. But if you listen to the public, they are actually unaware that this has already taken place. The “battle” has been fought and the ‘Good Guys’ lost. Just look at what has happened with *our money* that was so recently doled out without conditions to the same people that caused the global meltdown. From Democracy Now this morning: “Half of Bank Bailout Money Going to Shareholders Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports major US banks are on pace to spend more than half their bailout money on rewarding their shareholders. The thirty-three banks are set to receive some $163 billion in government bailouts. Half of that sum would go toward paying off shareholders over the next three years. The Bush administration touted the bank bailout as necessary to resume lending. But Treasury officials say the banks would never accepted loans if they weren’t allowed to redistribute dividends to shareholders. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer of New York is calling for the suspension of dividend payments at bailed-out banks. AIG Spends $90B in Taxpayer Money Amidst Secrecy This comes as the New York Times reports the insurance company American International Group has rapidly used most of its $123 billion government loan with little account for where the money has gone. AIG has drawn some $90 billion in government money so far.” And this: “Goldman Sachs is on course to pay its top City bankers multimillion-pound bonuses - despite asking the U.S. government for an emergency bail-out. The struggling Wall Street bank has set aside £7billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses, it emerged yesterday. Each of the firm's 443 partners is on course to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million. The size of the pay pool comfortably dwarfs the £6.1billion lifeline which the U.S. government is throwing to Goldman as part of its £430billion bail-out. As Washington pours money into the bank, the cash will immediately be channeled to Goldman's already well-heeled employees. News of the firm's largesse will revive the anger over the 'rewards for failure' culture endemic in the world of high finance. (1) Meanwhile: little attention has been paid to the reality of what home foreclosures actually look like. “For the past few years, the Inland Empire in Riverside County has been one of the fastest growing counties in the state - home to a major housing boom. But now the Inland Empire is pretty much the poster child for the foreclosure crisis. In the newer developments, house after house sits vacant - either up for auction, for sale by a bank or going for what’s called a “short sale” which is when the owner owes more than the house is worth. SoCal Connected tracked down some surreal sights associated with the crisis - a company that specializes in removing whatever people leave behind in their foreclosed homes. The process is called a “trashout” - a term the company came up with because it perfectly describes what happens. Everything that’s left is dumped in a trailer and taken to the landfill.” (2) The above is only the latest tip-of-the-spear that continually enters us to seek out our vital organs, in their on-going effort to destroy us. With the arrival of that political dead-zone that will follow the selections on November fourth – we will enter a real Twilight Zone, that will be a shadow world with no clear choices and huge dangers to us all. This phase of this War-upon-the-USA will be the “last chance” for these Road-Warriors to steal, to trash and to capture whatever they feel they still need: in order to complete their takeover of this country. “We” are not expected to resist. However if we do, then they have the troops ready to quell whatever might come up – so that their takeover will proceed without a hitch. Thanks to our inattention our finances are under a full-scale attack, our ‘services’ are in retreat at warp-speed, and our defenses against any of these invasions are almost nil. Congress, the Department of Justice, the Courts and the entire super-structure of the government is what is aligned against us, with the full force of all that they have stolen to date now arrayed to finish us off. All of this was planned down to the last dollar, and at every step in this chain of blood & fire, we elected to say virtually nothing; preferring instead to place our faith in some very rigged elections that will only bring us more massive losses no matter who “wins.” The time has long since passed for real action or for organized opposition; what must happen now is spontaneous-responses that could stop what they envision. First among these would be a general strike against everything that is taking place. They still need us to bring this off: And they still need us far more than we need them (that’s the really huge secret that they don’t want you to know). A General Nationwide Strike would bring an end to all their current bag-of-tricks regarding the money NOT being loaned out, the tyrannies not being owned up to regarding the pending lock-down of the country, not to mention the devaluation of the currency, the loss of all political freedoms, as well as possible detention under The Homegrown Terrorism Act (that they have already used in Michigan) but which as yet is not on the books as “law.” If the public continues to do nothing or if (as usual) they choose to “give the new government another chance,” then it is over: because the people they will bring with them into office are the same people that got us into this mess in the first place. Change can never occur if the people holding the power are the same people that oversaw this meltdown and did nothing so many hundreds of times before. Don't buy anything & just stay home! People must be fired and charged where sufficient evidence is present; and blame must be determined as well as punishment for those crimes – because while fashions might change with time: there cannot be alterations in what is needed to alter our remaining ways of both law and life. Good Luck America on your pending trip into the Twilight Zone! Jim Kirwan NOTES:
1) Goldman Sachs ready to hand out £7BILLION salary and bonus	Back to text
2) Foreclosure Alley – video Source: http://www.kirwanesque.com/politics/articles/2008/art110.htm

THE NEXT CIVIL WAR FOR HISTORIC AMERICA:

ARE YOU MY ENEMY?

By Greg Evensen

October 31, 2008

NewsWithViews.com

After the last week of market disasters and scenes of mobs clamoring for just a glimpse of Barack Hussein Obama, I had all of these thoughts fresh in my mind as I ended my radio show and finally fell asleep last Saturday. My last conscious thoughts were of the dark clouds coming ashore in America and what our response to martial law, shortages, imprisoned patriots, and riots would be......

I seemed to be present as military leaders exclaimed during heated campaigns, over the great map of America, “the battle lines are becoming clear.” I saw riflemen on the field of combat as they whispered to each other at four a.m., “I can smell ‘em coming.” The meaning was the same. All hell was about to break out. Indeed my fellow patriots, constitutionalists, and true citizens of the failing Republic, HELL IS staring you in the eyeballs.

As much as it has truly pained me to the core, I have come to the irreconcilable fact that on Election Day, the line will be drawn. We will no longer argue amicably about politics or the latest imbecilic actions occurring in Washington, our statehouses, or in court rooms. We are considering for the first time in our lives, the unthinkable. That is, my neighbor, my associates in the office, my cousin, or my fellow citizen has become my potential enemy. They have betrayed me and what is left of my grandfather’s country.

I am faced with the certain realization that no matter how I may try to sugar coat it, this time -- those who voted or supported the socialist left, the democrats, the liberals, the “elitists” in the universities and business, the apostate “liberation theology” or do nothing church, and politics everywhere--are my enemy. It can be stated in no other terms. That’s a fact, Jack.

To all those who have supported the constant killing of the unborn, entitlements for those who don’t deserve them, for assisting undocumented illegals, to corrupted politicians, sanctuary cities, to USDA agents forcing the implantation of chips into the livestock herds of America, to those pushing social security numbers and locator chips on newborns, to thieves who forced an unconstitutional income tax on “sovereign” American workers, for the loss of privacy, the restraint of second amendment natural rights, to BATFE master search and arrest warrants, to SWAT teams and Taser Thugs in every hamlet in the land, to all of the homosexual rights fanatics and bullies who use their perverted lifestyles to intimidate my grandchildren in school and in the parks, to drug dealers who employ minority kids in Obama’s south Chicago neighborhoods, and the young men and women in our military who are now mercenaries trained to rove our streets when the first shots are fired and produce body counts similar to the ones in Iraq, you have become my potential enemy.

The despicable power mad scurrilous maggots who have created this mess deserve a hole in hell deeper than the rest. They have already destroyed my family’s national ideals, my community’s cohesion, and our collective futures. They have aided and abetted the national calamity that has unfolded during the past seven weeks. The banks and investment houses, the stock market and derivatives, have all waltzed us off the pier into a thousand feet of cold dark water from which there is no return. The bankers, still standing safely on the wharf, have begged us in the water to throw them our lifejackets so that we can drown while they offer to sell us back the life vests we already had. In the meantime they ordered lobster while we dined on saltwater. Is this absurd picture, clear and painful enough?

In no small measure this IS the America we inhabit at this moment. While I do not know at this time who will be elected, I suspect it may well be Barack Hussein Obama. If that is the case, then my opening premise is correct. Those of you who have anointed this socialist, Muslim sympathizing, gun rights hating, Mexican illegals embracing, abortion loving charmer as POTUS, you are not only the most stupid generation of Americans who have ever lived, you are the most dangerous. You have single-handedly embraced your own destruction. For including me in that, I detest your actions and see you as my enemy. What else can I think?

Am I picking a fight? Pretty much. Might as well, one’s coming down the street anyway. You have been warned. You have been told of the consequences of your actions. McCain is not the answer, no matter how “appealing” Sarah Palin might appear. Chuck Baldwin is the only candidate that deserves my vote. Chuck can and will do the job and we can thank God Almighty that he is in the running. Vote what is right, not what you think is your only choice. Baldwin’s Constitutional Party is the only truly American party that is left. All the others are wasted losers and nut jobs.

American patriots you need to decide what your battle plans are. You can not wait any longer. Are you stored up? Are you prayed up? Have you stayed up figuring it all out? Have you decided that the time has come for you to take that same principled stand that your founders took to establish this FREE nation in the first place? Have you decided who your true enemies are? Are you tired of the bankers running it, ruining it and then demanding we pay up for their greed? Are you sick over this nation finalizing its socialistic stance nationalizing the infrastructure of the county and Obama as an open socialist/communist/radical presidential candidate? Will you resist the “state’s” efforts to take you in and deprive you of your freedoms? Will you try to work with patriotic police officers and American armed forces that will fight with you? Will you stand firm when they shut off your supplies? Will you resist in the cold and in the dark? Will you go all the way to a constitutional victory? Can you dress your own wounds? Can you jog a half mile? Will you be able to live without commonplace things you have grown accustomed to having any time you wanted them?

Minutemen and the militia were responsible for their own arms, ammunition and supplies. Can you muster with others and provide the essentials? Can you carry all that you need for two to three days at a time? Can you sleep with your back to a tree on cold, wet ground? Can you be still for an hour or two just watching and listening? How will you communicate with your fellow patriots—safely? When the bad guys start shooting, what will you do? Will you give away your position by firing randomly to “scare” them off? Will you remain defensive and not set yourself up for being killed? Will you learn how to move with stealth? Can you disarm someone and take them as a prisoner? What then? Have you organized with others to defend what is yours and theirs? Can you shoot and then seek good cover so you can survive another shot? Do you have a back-up retreat line and then another so that you can get out when you have to? Do you take your wounded with you? How? It’s not like the movies. When martial law is declared, can you and will you do these things or will you be rounded up by the hundreds of thousands each day? Many will resist for about as long as it took you to eat lunch. This is the new reality, friends. It may soon be your own personal reality as well.

Ultimately, the bad guys are counting on you being weak, uncommitted, and afraid. They want you to believe that their superiority in initial numbers, training and equipment will take you out in minutes. Let me tell you something confidential. American police officers are used to overwhelming criminal groups of one, two, three, or four. Not twenty, thirty, fifty or one hundred determined well armed citizens who are otherwise first class community stand-outs. A whole department of twenty-five officers would not stand a chance against one hundred solid minutemen.

I do not want it to come to that, but those are real scenarios. Muster five hundred or a thousand and an entire state police department is going to need regular army troops with air assault assets to have a chance. AND THEY KNOW IT! Multiply patriot numbers 1000 times that and the good guys win! Then we rebuild………at least that is where I saw it going.

Foreign troops? So what? They understand determined resistance and the costs involved for their side as well. You’ll have Green Berets fighting with you if that happens. Where the good guys lose, is when they don’t organize, think, and carry out precision guided strategies. Guerilla warfare is well planned and executed.

About the time I imagined a real rout of these traitorous snakes, I realized my twilight sleep was bringing me back to the real world. I had a strange mix of apprehension, relief, excitement and dread all in the same moment. The worst feeling though, was of the great loss of potential that this nation held for so many decades. I realized what we had done to the efforts of so many Americans who fought and died believing they were doing it for an America that was true to its heritage. I looked out my window to see peace and solitude---for the moment. My day long prayer was that it will remain peaceful, but I fear that we are--in the words of those seasoned command officers--seeing the battle lines being drawn very clearly, now. And like that entrenched rifleman I, too, “can smell ‘em coming.”

Sure am glad it was all---------------------------just a dream.

© 2008 Greg Evensen - All Rights Reserved

Source: http://www.newswithviews.com/Evensen/greg133.htm

AN INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD C. COOK:

THE CHALLENGER DISASTER, FINANCIAL COLLAPSE–AND VIABLE SOLUTIONS

Thomas Paine's Corner

By Gary Corseri

10/30/08

(excerpt)

RC: I can’t see the system being rescued. Because it’s spread globally. The credit system has collapsed because people cannot pay their loans any more. I mean, if we have a winter where the grocery stores can’t put food on their shelves, people will be starving in this country. There’s already 35 million who are “nutritionally deprived”—the term they use nowadays. Food stamps applications are growing tremendously. Surplus food has declined. Something’s gotta give. This could become tragically serious in one to two years. Unless something is done to revitalize the local, producing economies.

GC: I think we’re especially vulnerable in the winter months.

RC: We could see real starvation coming in the next one to two years. The current level of population in the US exists because of our industrial economy. If that economy collapses, so will our population.

GC: Which has more than doubled in our lifetime.

RC: Yeah. The people who run our government understand the dangers, but they don’t know how to fix it because they’ve been taken over by this cancer which is the financial system.

GC: Maybe they understand, but they’re so vested in it, they’re like the people at NASA—they don’t want to stop it.

RC: I think that’s fair.

Read the entire article: http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=1155#more-1155

A Letter to Obama

From Crimes of the State
art: Greg Halbert

My Letter to Obama

by John Doraemi

(New Book to publish hundreds of letters to "president" Obama)

Mr. Obama,

I did not vote for you, or for McCain. I do not trust you, the Democratic Party nor the Republican Party. These institutions have long records of immoral behavior, war crimes and corruption that could shame the Caesars.

That said, you now have the chance to "change" things, as your hollow slogan did imply during the election fanfare.

So change this:

1) A global network of military bases in other people's countries must be closed down (more than 760 bases). No American would tolerate foreign troops running bases here in the USA. Why is this double standard acceptable to Washington DC?

2) Illegal wars of aggression must cease immediately. Failure to do so means that you, President Obama, become a war criminal too, the same as Bush, the same as Saddam, the same as many a despot who came before.

3) Restore the rule of law, and prosecute all government misconduct -- including that of the Central Intelligence Agency and any other "black" agency operating outside of the law. Massive narco-trafficking is ongoing and rampant, and no one is even attempting to stop it.

4) Fully disclose the facts of the 9/11 attacks, including the role of the "foreign governments" which provided assistance and financing to alleged hijackers. Prosecute the former administration for the cover up of this reality and for "treason" in giving "aid and comfort" to the facilitators of the 9/11 attacks on America.

5) Fully disclose other treasonous US govermnent activity, including: Oklahoma City bombing, 1993 World Trade Center attacks, Iran/Contra, BCCI, the global illicit drug trade, covert support for terrorist networks, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, among others.

6) Purge the government of lunatics, foreign assets, spies, and anyone who places the interests of a foreign power above the interests of the People of the United States.

7) Reform the election system completely, guaranteeing every American the right and opportunity to vote, and securing the counting of votes in a transparent, open-sourced publicly controlled system of the highest integrity.

8) Reform the campaign finance system so that the biggest money-raiser does not buy the election. Use public funds to finance third parties and mandate substantial free prime time public airwaves to political candidates and parties during the election periods.

9) Create a permanent independent prosecutor to monitor executive branch felonies and violations of the Constitution with subpoena power, and the mission to enforce the laws of the land without regard to the individuals occupying the offices.

10) Create a public health system that operates more efficiently and effectively than the current dismal failure. If a tiny island nation like Cuba can educate enough doctors to export them to numerous other nations, then certainly the United States can do similarly. The problem is there is no priority to do so. Health care should be a right, not a privilege, as should some minimal access to food, clothing and shelter. A basic minimum floor for our citizens should be acknowledged as a hallmark of a civilization that is worthy of the name.

Mr. Obama, much has been made about the label of "Muslim" or "Christian," even when describing you as a candidate. As a self-identified "Christian" you should be well acquainted with the following passage:

(Matthew 5:43) "You have heard that it was said, 'Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.' (44) But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, (45) that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. "

And similarly, this passage:

(Luke 6:27) "But I say to you who hear, love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, (28) bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. (29) "Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. (30) "Give to everyone who asks of you, and whoever takes away what is yours, do not demand it back. (31) "Treat others the same way you want them to treat you."

America has never behaved this way, despite the empty rhetoric from the right wing about a "Christian nation." Our nation's blood stained history is one of an aggressor, involved in numerous conflicts in all corners of the world. Our taxes have gone to illegal wars of aggression (Crimes Against the Peace), to the undermining and overthrowing of legitimate, duly elected leaders of other lands (violations of the UN Charter), to outright terrorism and the sponsoring of "death squads," giving arms and money to "dictators" and numerous other shameful practices, which they call "statecraft."

Will America ever behave in a moral fashion in the future?

Are the "Christians" of America capable of understanding the words of Jesus?

Let's start with the office of the President, Mr. Obama, and clarify matters of morality and the rule of law, matters of right and wrong.

Source: http://crimesofthestate.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-letter-to-obama.html

Do not watch this video

Drug War Rant

The Drug Czar goes to Michigan to speak out against medical marijuana.
Watch at your own risk.



The United States Drug Czar and Michigan native John Walters held a press conference on Oct. 15, 2008 with local law enforcement officials to voice his opposition to Proposal 1, which would allow the use of medical marijuana in Michigan.

**********************************************
Dr. Wagoner speaks from the heart: Yes on Prop 1

From: YesOnProp1
Added: October 27, 2008

Federal Reserve Exposed, Corrupt Banking Families

There is only one way to end the economic slavery in our country.
Abolish the Federal Reserve and its criminal enforcement arm-the IRS.
Obama and McCain have never once mentioned doing this.
They serve their masters well.
******************************************
Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRkPxf5f-rk

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=euiUWp4iaQo

***********************************************
End the Fed

End the Fed Nationwide Rally - Newsletter - Upload a Document to Scribd

http://www.scribd.com/doc/6400129/End-the-Fed-Nationwide-Rally-Newsletter

Incentivizing Murder: Plan Colombia and the Bitter Fruits of Empire

art: VOYTEK NOWAKOWSKI

Written by Chris Floyd

The War on Drugs meets the War on Terror, and the result, inevitably, is stone-cold murder: Colombia Killings Cast Doubt on War Against Insurgents (NYT):

Colombia’s government, the Bush administration’s top ally in Latin America, has been buffeted by the disappearance of ...dozens of young, impoverished men and women whose cases have come to light in recent weeks. Some were vagrants, others street vendors and manual laborers. But their fates were often the same: being catalogued as insurgents or criminal gang members and killed by the armed forces.

Prosecutors and human rights researchers are investigating hundreds of such deaths and disappearances, contending that Colombia’s security forces are increasingly murdering civilians and making it look as if they were killed in combat, often by planting weapons by the bodies or dressing the corpses in guerrilla fatigues.

With soldiers under intense pressure in recent years to register combat kills to earn promotions and benefits like time off and extra pay, reports of civilian killings are climbing, prosecutors and researchers say, pointing to a grisly facet of Colombia’s long internal war against leftist insurgencies.

The wave of recent killings has also heightened focus on the American Embassy here, which is responsible for vetting Colombian military units for human rights abuses before they can receive aid. A study of civilian killings by Amnesty International and Fellowship of Reconciliation, two human rights groups, found that 47 percent of the reported cases in 2007 involved Colombian units financed by the United States.

....Even before the most recent disappearances and killings, prosecutors and human rights groups were examining a steady increase in the reports of civilian killings since 2002, when commanders intensified a counterinsurgency financed in no small part by more than $500 million a year in American security aid.

But more than 100 claims of civilian deaths at the hands of security forces have emerged in recent weeks alone, from nine different parts of Colombia. Cases have included the killing of a homeless man, a young man who suffered epileptic seizures and a veteran who had left the army after his left arm was amputated.

This is the imposthume of much greed and graft, and of the geopolitical power games played by the bipartisan elite in Washington. Any half-sentient person has known for years that the Clinton-Bush policy of lavishing endless cash and weaponry on the right-wing death squads in Colombia -- those in uniform and out -- has incentivized the murder of countless innocent civilians. Anyone who has opposed the Colombian elite, or stood up for the poor and the working people -- even if they have nothing to do with FARC or the narco freebooters, even if, indeed, they have also opposed their depredations also -- has long been at risk of sudden "disappearance" or gruesome death; the serial execution of union organizers, going back for many years, is just one example.

“We are witnessing a method of social cleansing in which rogue military units operate beyond the law,” said Monica Sánchez, a lawyer at the Judicial Freedom Corporation, a human rights group in Medellín. The group says it has documented more than 60 “false positives” — the chilling term for cases of civilians who are killed and then presented as guerrillas, with weapons or fatigues — in the department, or province, of Antioquia...

The civilian killings have increasingly opened the United States to criticism because it is required to make sure Colombian military units have not engaged in human rights violations before supplying them with aid.

“If we are receiving aid and vetting from a government in Washington that validates torture, then what kind of results can one expect?” asked Liliana Uribe, a human rights lawyer in Medellín who represents victims’ families.

"A government in Washington that validates torture" -- this is the crux of the matter. A government -- or rather, an entire political elite -- that validates torture, wars of aggression, cross-border "incursions," "black ops," a military empire of more than 700 bases all over the planet, and the slaughter of more than one million innocent lives on just one front of the "Terror War" alone, will indeed produce results like the ones we see in Colombia. It is inevitable, unavoidable -- it is precisely what the system is designed to do: put the power of life and death into the hands of brutal elites, who will in turn kowtow to Washington's political, financial, military, and ideological agendas.

The Republicans do this without the slightest qualm, proudly (as we noted here earlier), frankly, without any finesse and very little pretense. The Democrats wring their hands a bit over the "excesses" and "aberrations" of the system, and employ more nuanced justifications, more rhetorical gilding. But both parties are in full agreement on the need to maintain -- and expand -- this massive militarist empire.

II.
And yes, it will continue under Obama. And no, the American empire is not about to collapse any time soon, despite the economic catastrophe and the murderous botching of the Iraq and Afghanistan operations. As Princeton historian Arno Mayer notes this week in CounterPunch:

The United States may emerge from the Iraq fiasco almost unscathed. Though momentarily disconcerted, the American empire will continue on its way, under bipartisan direction and mega-corporate pressure, and with evangelical blessings. It is a defining characteristic of mature imperial states that they can afford costly blunders, paid for not by the elites but the lower orders. Predictions of the American empire's imminent decline are exaggerated: without a real military rival, it will continue for some time as the world's sole hyperpower.

But though they endure, overextended empires suffer injuries to their power and prestige. In such moments they tend to lash out, to avoid being taken for paper tigers. Given Washington's predicament in Iraq, will the US escalate its intervention in Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Sudan, Somalia or Venezuela? The US has the strongest army the world has ever known. Preponderant on sea, in the air and in space (including cyberspace), the US has an awesome capacity to project its power over enormous distances with speed, a self-appointed sheriff rushing to master or exploit real and putative crises anywhere on earth.

The US spends more than 20% of its annual budget on defense, nearly half of the spending of the rest of the world put together. It's good for the big US corporate arms manufacturers and their export sales. The Gulf states, led by Saudi Arabia, purchase billions of dollars of state-of-the-art ordnance.

Underscoring that point, Jeff Huber notes at Military.com:

Iran's defense budget is less than one percent the size of ours. North Korea's entire gross domestic product is less than ten percent of our defense budget... Russia and China each spend ten percent or less on defense than we do. The Russians already lost the part they sit with trying to run with us in an arms race. The Chinese had sufficient ancient wisdom to learn from Russia's mistake rather than make it themselves. They're both so far behind now they'd never catch up, and they know it. They won't bleed themselves white economically trying to do the impossible.

We spend more money on defense than the rest of the world combined. We don't need a larger military. We don't need the one we have now. We don't need half of it.

But both McCain and Obama have pledged themselves to a massive enlargement of the American war machine. And they will still have vast resources to draw upon as they advance the cause of empire, as Arno notes:

The US economy, syncretic culture and Big Science are unequalled. Despite huge fiscal and trade deficits, and the Wall Street banking and insurance meltdown, which have unhinged its financial system and rippled across the global economy, overall the US economy remains robust and pacesetting in creative destruction. Never mind the social costs at home and abroad. But its shrinking industrial and manufacturing sectors may be the weakest link.

The US still holds a substantial lead in research, development and patents in cybernetics, molecular biology and neuroscience. This is facilitated by publicly, privately and corporately funded research universities and laboratories that establish outposts overseas as they draw in brains from around the globe...

The empire has extraordinary reserves of hard and soft power for persisting in its interventionism. The US has the wherewithal and will to stay a face-saving course in Iraq. There is a deficit of combat troops for large conventional ground operations and a strategic incoherence in the face of irregular warfare against insurgent, guerrilla and terrorist forces. But the deficit of soldiers will be remedied. Private contractors will raise armed and civilian mercenaries, preferably at cut-rate wages from third world dependencies.

Again, the point is not whether ordinary American citizens will thrive under such a system. For the most part, they will not. But their prosperity and security do not figure into the imperial power equations. They are irrelevant. (Although that's not to say that unruly temper in the herd must not be allayed from time to time, occasionally by genuine reforms that head off popular discontent, or, very often, by promises, feints, fine rhetoric and symbolic gestures evoking hope for change.)

And the sad fact is, once a nation gets a taste for empire, many of its people become emotionally invested in it (not to mention financially invested). As Arno puts it:

This American empire has significant family resemblances with past empires in its grab for critical natural resources, mass markets and strategic outposts. Americans know they have a considerable stake in the persistence of their imperium. Some social strata benefit more from its spoils than others. Still, it is profitable socially, culturally and psychologically, especially for its intelligentsia, liberal professions and media.

III.
The murder-for-bonuses scheme carried out by many American-trained and American-funded units in Colombia is just one more bitter fruit of the imperial tree. It was spawned by both the "War on Terror" and its twin in corruption, militarism, lawlessness and vast, needless suffering, the "War on Drugs," launched almost 40 years ago, and still going strong -- albeit without the slightest discernible effect on the level of drug use. As I noted in a column in the Moscow Times -- back in December 2001:

After all, as [the Bush Administration] tells us, the "war on terrorism" is just like "the war on drugs" – that is to say, a never-ending fount of profitable corruption for the ruthless, the murderous and the well-connected.

Certainly, the "war on drugs" makes little sense otherwise. We all know that if the ingestion of various arbitrarily chosen substances were no longer prosecuted, the level of violence, crime and repression in society would be reduced immeasurably. "Substance abuse" would then become what it is now for drugs like alcohol and nicotine: a matter of personal character and private consequence.

Crack addicts, for example, could have their nightly pipe in the safety of their own home, for the same price as a six-pack of beer, a carton of cigarettes or the latest Disney video. They wouldn't need to resort to crime to feed an expensive criminalized habit. And their resulting stupefaction would be no more harmful to the public good than that of millions of their fellow citizens sitting slack-jawed in front of the tube.

But decriminalization will never happen. Illegal drugs are simply too profitable for the various powerful criminal elements known as "mafias," "warlords" – and "intelligence agencies." For drug-running is the perfect way to fund your black ops – no budget restraints, no legal niceties, no pesky legislators looking over your shoulder....

Let's connect the dots. Drugs help stoke war. Defense firms sell the weapons of war – to governments, warlords, terrorists, whoever will pay. The investors and owners of defense firms – like, say, the Bush family and the bin Ladens [at that time recent partners in the Carlyle Group] – are directly enriched by war. And so the wars go on.

And they will keep going on, even if the bright sun of "pragmatic progressivism" rises on Inauguration Day 2009. Obama has rightly cited the murder of Colombian union activists as a cause for concern, even bringing it before a national television audience in the last debate. But again, this is a matter of nuance, of technocratic tinkering within the framework of the bipartisan consensus for empire. Obama has also supported the Colombian government in its Bush-style cross-border military incursions to "fight terrorism," and back the expansion of the "Merida Initiative," a Bush-created scheme that would essentially expand "Plan Colombia" -- with the "results" detailed in the New York Times story -- throughout Latin America, as the Council on Hemispheric Affairs reports:

Obama supports the extension of the Merida Initiative to create a more comprehensive regional security bloc within the Western Hemisphere. The Merida Initiative was proposed by President Bush as the keystone of his U.S.-Central America security plan, and is focused on the provision of military and police aid to Mexico (with much smaller amounts to Central American countries) to fight organized crime and drug cartels. It is a complete truism that the military and legal structures in Mexico and Central America have suffered from a history of corruption and human rights abuses, and critics of current U.S. policy argue that increasing military aid to the region only increases the capacity of local authorities to abuse power of an already deeply flawed law enforcement system. The Merida Initiative is in many ways similar to Plan Colombia, which provides military and police aid to fight narcotrafficking and organized crime there...

The Council goes on to note:

While the complete nature of Obama’s Latin American platform remains to be seen, there is no doubt that Obama’s stance on hemispheric affairs will differ from that of the Bush White House, but not so much from Clinton’s regional policy which was barely discernable from Reagan-era area policy.

That is a chilling conclusion indeed from this very mainstream, centrist organization, when one considers the murderous abomination that was "Reagan-era area policy" in Latin America. As I noted in the Moscow Times in June 2004:

Reagan willingly abetted the murder of countless thousands of innocent people throughout Central America, killed at the hands of U.S.-trained death squads and military units -- more than 200,000 civilians murdered in Guatemala alone, Consortiumnews.com reports. Many more were tortured and raped by U.S. proxies -- all this with the connivance of Reagan officials, who lied to Congress about the atrocities. One of these liars, Elliot Abrams, was convicted of perjury; but pardoned by George Bush I, he now directs Middle East policy for George Bush II. (For more, see Robert Parry's "Reagan and Guatemala's Death Files" and his "Reagan's Bogus Legacy.")

I don't believe this is the kind of "change" that most Americans are hoping for from an Obama administration. To be sure, Obama has talked about building his Latin American policies around the strengthening of civic structures, protection of human rights and nurturing the rule of law. These are good words; but then again, what American president has not claimed that his policies were designed to advance these noble pursuits? At the moment, Obama seems poised to take away with his right hand what he proffers with his left: bold words on human rights, but at the same time an extension of the murder-producing, elite-coddling "Plan Colombia" throughout the region.

We've said this many times before: within the American militarist empire as it now stands, there are spaces where factional differences among the elite can produce mitigations of the system's malign effects in various ways for a substantial number of people. This is not nothing, especially if you are one of those people. I don't believe in begrudging anyone's desire for relief, however partial and imperfect that relief might be. At the same time, it is clear that Obama fully accepts the logic, the structure and the overall agenda of the imperial system -- a system which inevitably, irresistibly generates atrocities on a mass scale.

Once you accept that -- and not only accept it, but even fight hard to take control of it, to make it yours -- then what won't you do? And how quickly and easily will you cast aside your mitigations if the needs of the system demand it? If you pick up a scepter still dripping with fresh blood, and wield it, will your hand not "incarnadine the multitudinous seas, making the green one red?"

Source: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1638-incentivizing-murder-plan-colombia-and-the-bitter-fruits-of-empire.html

Free Your Mind: Step #1

The Hedonistic Pleasureseeker

“Everybody’s got values . . . The thing that frightens me is the way that an eroding public school system . . . and television on all over the place is leading to a steady dumbing down of the American public and a corrosion of basic critical thinking in the population.”

— Jamie Raskin, American University law professor, November 2004 on the Democracy Now! radio program

The Establishment will try to co-opt “The Revolution” (TM) so for God’s sake don’t let the mainstream media pundits lead it for you, or we’re toast! Step 1 of freeing your mind is turning off the TV and supporting REAL investigative journalism with your money and your precious attention.

(Natalie Dee)

Television pundits are extremely adept at using informal logic and logical fallacies to produce arguments which sound good, but FAIL the logic test. Informal logic, like conventional wisdom, is constructing an argument with language and inference without actually using any real information. It is basically an “argument only” with no analysis. Pundits are also adept at making banal and meaningless tabloid quality crap sound ZOMG911BBQ!!!!11! BREAKING!

“I wasn’t worried about freedom. I was worried about people being turned into morons by TV.”

– Ray Bradbury in 2001 talking about his book Fahrenheit 451

I finally cracked while watching CNN today: I called Comcast canceled my cable. All of it, even basic reception! I’d finally HAD it with the diversions, omissions and outright lies. I’d had it with watching “debates” between cartoonish strawfolk or worse, point-counterpoint pseudo arguments between people who are on the same side. Worst of all, however, is all that has remained UNSPOKEN by the mainstream media during our descent into Hell. I’d been kicking around the “Kill Your Television” idea for awhile but was attached to the Daily Show. Then one day I thought, I’m paying $50-$60 bucks a month for . . . the Daily Show? And I say I’m trying to save money? Sweet Jeebus on a cracker!

Source: http://hedonisticpleasureseeker.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/free-your-mind-101-the-first-step/

Joe Bageant discusses the election and poor whites

Joe Bageant

The American News Project traveled to Winchester, Virginia to get Joe Bageant on video, talking about his book Deer Hunting with Jesus, the upcoming election, corporate control of damn near everything, and why poor people without medical insurance are opposed to expanded access to health care. On its web site introduction, the American News Project described Joe's book as "one of the most prescient pieces of analysis about American politics and culture in this election year."

The seven-minute video closes with 20 seconds of Joe picking his mandolin and singing.

-- Ken Smith

EDITORS’ NOTE: JOE BAGEANT was one of the earliest contributing writers to join and support Cyrano’s Journal Online, and since that day he has become not only a valued colleague and comrade in our work toward a better educated citizenry, but a personal friend in the truest sense of the word. His piercing intellect, unwavering loyalty to the idea of authentic democracy, genuine modesty, and intimate knowledge of a hard to understand (and often maligned) sector of American society makes him a person to listen to for anyone seriously devoted to the notion of real change in America. His success and increasing recognition in many venues thanks to the masterful Deer Hunting is something more than well deserved. It’s one of those rare cases of justice delayed but not denied. —PG

Source: http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2008/10/joe-discusses-the-election-and-poor-whites.html

Culture and Humanity: Learned Behavior the Basis of Human Conflict

Amongst the Others by Jake Adams

Culture and Humanity: Learned Behavior the Basis of Human Conflict

By Fahim A. Knight-EL

What is culture? And does culture ultimately fuel divisiveness as opposed to cohesiveness and unity, which is transmitted via a systematic structure—involving folklore, mores, values, customs, rituals, etc., and from this, society adopts learned behavior. Most sociologists simply define culture as being learned behavior. This means for the most part that predetermined genetic coding is being cast aside and our environment perhaps is being taunted and viewed as having the greatest influence on human development, as far as determining psychological and sociological orientation. Sociologist defines culture as, “consisting of all the shared products of human society. These products are of two basic kinds, material and non-material. Material culture consists of all the artifacts or physical objects, human beings create and give meaning to—wheels, clothing, schools, factories, cities, books, spacecraft, totem poles. Nonmaterial culture consists of more abstract creations—language, ideas, beliefs, rules, customs, myths, skills, family patterns, political systems. (Reference: Ian Robertson; “Sociology” pg. 53).

However, prejudices originate from learned behavior, which is the basic definition of culture, coming from Auguste Comte, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, C. Wright Mills , etc., and even before these sociologist Ibn Khaldun of Northwest Africa, the father of sociology in 13th Century had devised many of the social theories that the above theoreticians would later use. Learned behavior is the foundation of culture in which if correlated with our socialization process, ordinarily this is how our worldview is shaped (good, bad and/or indifferent).

The word "prejudice" comes from the root word to prejudge which means: "to judge a person, issue, or case before sufficient evidence is available" I do think this word is often used a lot out of context. For example, the two words Racism and Prejudice are used interchangeably but there are some distinct differences between the two. For one to be prejudice toward something or someone, as far as making a determination without factual proof is reckless and outright wrong. Racism, by its simplest definition, is the belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race. People with racist beliefs might hate certain groups of people according to their racial groups. Now! If someone commits a racist act towards me and I view it as racism, them I am not prejudging that person, but I am probably calling a spade, a spade.

Does culture unconsciously and unintentionally create bias and we as human beings rely on and adopt predisposed attitudes and prejudices which have been passed on; this train of thought eventually affects, shape and alter our worldview and ability to accept others unconditionally without referencing what we have learned about individuals, groups, society, cultures, etc? Our stored mental stimuli seems to always be the driving force relative to our ability to recall what we have been taught—good, bad or indifferent are forever guiding our assessment and evaluation of others. May be our social programming is the root cause of man’s inhumanity to man—our ability to commit all types of atrocities against humanity ranging from acts of genocide, ethnic cleansing, violence, institutionalize racism, hate crimes, and our capability to carryout all forms of oppression and repression against other human beings; which may differ from us in racial and/or ethnic make up, having different religious beliefs, different sexual orientation and express life from a different cultural persuasion. Moreover, in some instances there is intra-culture conflict and it is no less genuine. (Reference: James Redfield; “The Celestine Prophecy”).

Tolerance is often applied in a subjective manner based on our own cultural bias. Culture is necessary, but its not sufficient and do we truly possess the ability to unlearn those negative mental stimuli that has darken our lens and clouded our judgment to appreciate unlike civilizations and recognize the value of other cultures from their vanish point—in the areas of refinement, cultivation, and valor free of judgmental and dominant cultural bias. We all are guilty at times of unfair generalizations and cultural bias and these sentiments serves as artificial barriers which keeps human beings divided.

This writer is of the opinion, after many years of practical work experience in the field of education and studying the intellectual, social and psychological development of infants, toddlers, pre-school and children in general; that children’s educational development takes place in stages (influenced by both social and psychological stimuli). The educational theorist Jean Piaget characterizes this developmental stage as sensorimotor stage (0-2 years of age) during which children learn through the senses and motor activities. This theory is based in innate learning which means that children perhaps are already genetically and DNA coded to make certain social and psychological adjustment upon exiting the womb, specifically in this stage to their environment without coaching.

The author Joseph Campbell in his book titled, “Myths to Live By” stated, “And so, it seems to me, there is a critical problem indicated here, which parents and families have to face squarely: that, namely, of insuring that the signals which they are imprinting on their young are such as will attune them to, and not alienate them from, the world in which they are going to have to live; unless, of course, one is dead set on bequeathing to one's heirs one's own paranoia. More normally, rational parents will wish to have produced socially as well as phys­ically healthy offspring, well enough attuned to the system of sentiments of the culture into which they are growing to be able to appraise its values rationally and align themselves constructively with its progressive, decent, life-fostering, and fructifying elements.” (Reference: Joseph Campbell; “Myths to Live By” pg. 220).

However, at this stage of children’s development like other mammals it is instinctive learning that drives development and is the cement that joins us together with other species, but later on it is our Homo Sapiens-Sapiens (thinking individuals) status that separates us from other species. This writer agrees with much of Piaget theories about physical environment and cognitive development and its correlation to children educational learning.

Lev Vygotsky educational theories differed from Piaget in that Vygotsky maintains that “Learning is not developmental; however, properly organized learning is a results in mental development and sets in motion a variety of developmental processes that would be impossible apart from learning. Thus, learning is a necessary part and universal aspect of the process of developing culturally organized, specifically human, psychological functions.” This simply translates to mean that a quality learning environment impacts and can increase development. Vygotsky refers to this concept as the zone of proximal development.

The theorist Abraham Maslow advocated the self-actualization theory, it was based on what Maslow defines as the hierarchy of needs in which he essentially maintain that unless human beings satisfy certain basic needs their full potential can not be actualized. For example, 1). Food and water. 2). Safety and security. 3). Belonging and love. 4). Achievement and prestige. 5). Aesthetic needs. Then in Western culture; it later evolved along side Charles Darwin theories and the philosophy of “survival of the fittest”

I am somewhat in agreement with the theoretician Maslow that advocated his theory of hierarchy needs relative to the essentials of food and water, safety and security, belonging and love, achievement and prestige, and aesthetic needs must met in order foster the potential of self-actualization. Thus, once the hierarchical needs are met as a primary necessity, it is easy for learning to evolve as secondary in the scheme of what is considered important. Children learn better when hunger and safety is not an issue and there exist a positive social structure that addresses those essential hierarchy needs. But, what are they learning? and are these social-culture imprints preparing us with culture bias and do our cultural socialization predisposition coding triggers what ever lessons we have acquired from the experiences of our various cultures—good or bad and we then often seek to impose our cultural relevance on others, either directly or indirectly.

Can we trace our cultural decadence back to 1492 when Christopher Columbus left Europe under the flag of Spain and was on a sailing expedition to travel to India and the far East in lieu of exploiting the spice trade market and in search of gold and silver in order expand the financial coffers of Ferdinand and Isabella, the King and Queen of Spain, but got lost and mistakenly landed on the island of Hispaniola (which is modern day Haiti and Dominican Republic) in the Caribbean. An island of social harmony and tranquility—occupied by the Arawak and Carib people (misnomer named the “Indians”); these were the Native Americans who lived in this region sixteen thousand years before the Europeans. (Reference: Michael Bradley: “The Columbus Conspiracy: An Investigation into the Secret History of Christopher Columbus”).

Wa Thiong'o stated, "But its most important area of domination was the mental universe of the colonized, the control, through culture, of how people perceived themselves and their relationship to the world. Economic and political control can never be complete or effective without mental control. To control a people's culture is to control their tools of self-definition in relationship to others. "For colonialism this involved two aspects of the same process: the destruction or the deliberate undervaluing of a people's culture, their art, dances, religions, history, geography, education, orature and literature, and the conscious elevation of the language of the colonizer. The domination of a people's language by the languages of the colonizing nations was crucial to the domination of the mental universe of the colonized." (Reference: Asa G. Hilliard; “The Reawakening of the African Mind” pg 159; quoting from source wa Thiong'o, N. (1986). “Decolonization the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature”. Portsmouth N.H.: Heinemann pg. 16.).

These so-called Native Americans had a very sophisticated and complex culture, in which to the European Conquistadors immediately demoted and deemed it as a heathen civilization and viewed the indigenous people as being sub-human and inferior because they differed (by race, ethnicity, dress, customs, dietary practices, worship practices, etc.) within the context of cultural dynamics and do we even in 2008 only pay lip service to the concept of multiculturalism and the chants of us living in a pluralistic society and in reality, it is an illusion. The United States, in particular and the global society in general, promotes itself as being diverse and tolerable of different cultures; and do our societies functions off these premises or has our learned behaviors imprisoned and rendered us forever confined to prejudices and stereotypes due to ignorance and a lack of exposure that doesn’t extends beyond the superficial. (Reference: John Henrik Clarke: “Christopher Columbus & the African Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism).

Wa Thiong'o continues, “But the biggest weapon wielded and actually daily unleashed by imperialism against that collective defiance is the cultural bomb. The effect of a cultural bomb is to annihilate a people's belief in their names, in their languages, in their environment, in their heritage of struggle, in their unity, in their capacities and ultimately in themselves. It makes them see their past as one wasteland of non-achievement and it makes them want to distance themselves from that wasteland. It makes them want to identify with that which is furthest removed from themselves; for instance, with other peoples' languages rather than their own. It makes them identify with that which is decadent and reactionary, all those forces which would stop their own springs of life. It even plants serious doubts about the moral rightness of struggle. Possibilities of triumph or victory are seen as remote, ridiculous dreams. The intended results are despair, despondency and a collective death-wish. Amidst this wasteland which it has created, imperialism presents itself as the cure and demands the dependant sing hymns of praise with the constant refrain: 'Theft is holy'.” (Reference: Asa G. Hilliard; “The Reawakening of the African Mind” pg 159-160; quoting from a source authored by wa Thiong'o, N. (1986). “Decolonization the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature”. Portsmouth N.H.: Heinemann pg. 16.).

This is the root cause of human division and has caused historical and present day massive collateral damage and human suffering; or is it something innately in us that drives the human psyche to view anything different as being not equally worthy for consideration and more prone to be ridiculed and subjugated by the dominant culture? For example, directly after September 11, 2001 hoax and bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City and it was declared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the U.S. Department of Defense that Osama bin Laden and his Jihadist inspired movement of Al-Qaeda committed one of worst military tragedies and allege criminal acts on the continental United States—he was considered to be Muslim and Arab; it did not help that the Bush administration had espoused propaganda which they intentionally induced and created a climate of fear within the United States that reverberated around the world. (Reference: Noam Chomsky; “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance”).

The United States media depicted Arab Muslims as having a political and religious philosophy bent on destroying the West and had declared America their number one enemy. The Powers-that-be understood that in order to maximize their manipulation and deceitful ploys; they first had to create a culture of fear by blaming 9/11 on Arabs and Muslims in their scheme this was a perfect diversionary tactic—they picked a people who were different from the American dominant cultural with a minority representation inside the country and was essentially powerless. The American people pre 9/11 knew very little about the religion of Al-Islam and the diversity of these ancient people, the religious politics, the various Islamic cultures, the various Islamic sects and schisms, etc.

Although Muslims from West Africa had arrived to the Americas as captives and hostages of Transatlantic Slave Trade as early as the 1500s and some historians maintained that the Moors during the 8th Century had voyages to the Americas long before Christopher Columbus, Amerigo Vespucci, Ponce De Leon, Vaso Da Gama, Hernando de Soto, Ferdinand Magellan, etc., and had established diplomatic treaties with the Native Americans in the Western Hemisphere before the coming of the European explorers. But in the late 1800s Muslims and early 1900s Islam formalized itself and took root as a sub-culture and counter culture in the United States; with the exception of the Nation of Islam, Islam up until September 11, 2001 had remained in obscurity, but 9/11 for better or worst changed that dynamic. (Reference: Ivan Van Sertima; “They Came Before Columbus: The African Presence in Ancient America”).

Thus, Islam, Arabs and Muslims appeared front and center, as the number one topic of discussion within a nation that had become so ethnocentric and so culturally arrogant—no one outside our sovereign boarders mattered. However, 9/11 created a hostile, insensitive and intolerable environment mainly aimed at Arabs, in particular but all Muslims in general, they were being viewed with suspicion and Muslim discrimination was going unabated. The American people perhaps already had some preconceived prejudices against foreign Muslims; perhaps for no other reason than they were not Christians and some had followed the lopsided reporting of the Middle East conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians—and had accepted the propaganda that the Arab Muslims were bad people because they practiced a “strange” culture and prayed to a God other than Jesus Christ. (Reference: Obadiah Shoher; “Samson Blinded: A Machiavellian Perspective on the Middle East Conflict”).

These prejudices after 9/11 led to Muslim Masjids and Mosques being attacked and desecrated because there were so many cultural misunderstandings that existed between Muslim societies in East and Christian societies in the West; these misconceptions were shrouded in ignorance and fear base, which was enough ammunition to incite the uninformed and dominant culture zealots who were motivated by racial and religious hatred to inflict vigilante style justice on Muslims and made unfair generalizations against all Arabs and Muslims. Thus, blaming an entire Muslim religious world community for committing a crime that killed over 3,000 Americans—constituting a loss of human life and property.

These vigilante groups immediately began to show their ignorance by attacking and even killing Sikhs and Hindus in the United States ignorantly assuming because these people had brown skin, dressed Eastern in attire appearance, spoke with an accent and wore turbans they had to be Middle Eastern Arab Muslims and better yet terrorist. So Sikhs and Hindus were mistakenly being classified as Muslims and after 9/11 became targets of religious and racial discrimination that was being fueled by the dominant culture. Many of the attackers were not even aware of the historical religious antagonism that existed between the Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, but their racism and cultural ignorance led to indiscriminately acts of violence against innocent people who became the victims of bigotry and culture insensitivity.

The dominant culture was fully aware that cultural ignorance would incite and infuriate a segment of our society that would be willing and capable of inflicting violence and creating social discord against a people that looked different and worshipped dissimilar. Many of these people already had negative convictions of Islam and Muslims, but perhaps had never personally met a Muslim, which to make an intelligent and rational decision about their religious culture, race and ethnicity that may have assist them in debunking generalizations and unfair stereotypes that were being spewed by politically inspired entities. Many Americans had formulated their negative opinions of Muslims from Western media sources and made the ignorant assumption that all Muslims were “terrorist” and had a political vendetta against the West.

Our lack of spiritual development toward accepting and embracing the whole of humanity in all of its cultures expressions; renders us inheritably flawed in the spirit of human compassion and tolerance for all. The failure and unwillingness to make an attempt to comprehend and appreciate the beauty and the differences in people—language, race, religious belief, nationality, etc., have placed humanity on a reckless, as well as dangerous social path.

The majority of Americans had formulated a negative perception of Islam based on sensationalizing of Salman Rushdie 1988 book titled, “Satanic Verses” in which the majority of the Islamic world viewed this book as heresy and blasphemous of Islam, Muslims and Prophet Muhammad (PBUH). Ayatollah Rullah Khomeini, the former president and religious leader of Iran declared Rushdie’s book “Satanic Verses” and Rushdie as enemies of Islam in which he placed a one million dollar bounty on the head of Rushdie, which sent Rushdie in permanent exile until the death of Imam Khomeini. Imam Khomeini also called America the “Great Satan” and it was these antagonistic media stratagem that America came to identify with Islam.

If culture is based on learned behavior then American propaganda machines had become the biggest influence and the determining factor on how people around the world, as well as those domestically are being perceived; in particular those deemed as America’s enemies and are their difference being exploited to accomplish a political end. These tactics were implemented to foster distrust and suspicion and to simultaneously falsely create a need and urgency for American patriotism and nationalism based on these perceived prejudices that were concocted within the culture fear. The ultimate political objective was the old divide and conquer scheme—the wickedly wise could always play on the sensitive charged emotions that go along with culture ignorance and manipulate these misunderstandings to their advantages. This was the case in America with the Muslim community right after 9/11. These types of political fallacies have an even far more ranging implications—these cultural bias eventually would help shape America’s foreign and public policy.

Thus in the modern context of culture; is our learned behavior predisposing us early on bigotry, racism, violence and anti-social behavior—can we blame pop culture, music, irresponsible mediums or has our society reached a level of internal and external decadence that is beyond reconciliation and revamping; can we blame societal transitions moving from an agrarian based economy to a knowledge based economy as contributing. Perhaps theses various political, economic and social transitions have made us more sterile and on the other hand static culture is a form of isolation and true culture is forever evolving based societal interactions, which creates motion and allows adaptation, but may still be the breeding ground for anti-social behavior, which lead to a culture of divisiveness and disharmony. Some may argue that this analysis is more applicable toward Western Culture and does not take fully into or account how Eastern Culture differentiate and distinguish itself in application and in scope.

Claud Anderson in “PowerNomics” stated, “Since human rely on culture for survival, culture is an essential empowerment tool. . .Culture usually refers to the norms or systems of behavior and shared values that are passed on from one generation to another. Essentially, culture is a script that is never neutral in its purposes. It either empowers or de-empowers a group. What it does to a group depends in large measure upon the position the group holds in the societal pecking order of acceptability and whether they are in an in-group or an out-group. Culture’s most important function is to promote cohesiveness and trust that bind members together through values such as group loyalty, pride and respect. It is through culture that members of a group know who and what they are, and how to behave.” (Reference: Claud Anderson; “PowerNomics” pg 35).

The institution of family use to be a place where moral and ethical values were taught which reinforced the rules that we had established in the greater society. This writer grew up with his formative years taking place in an urban environment, unlike my parents and grandparents who were products of a southern culture and life. But prior to my parents migrating north, I could remember how personable and friendly everyone was in our little southern town in Georgia; strangers spoke to strangers and there was a sense of community, although it was segregated and there was assigned places based on the politics of race. But people genuinely cared about each other as neighbors and would extend themselves to any length to be of helpful service to another human being.

My family migrated to northern New Jersey this culture was a lot more aggressive, less sociable and people were a lot more territorial, which neighborhoods and communities evolved around race and ethnicity—the Jewish community, Italian community, Puerto Rican community, Asian community, the African American community, Portuguese community, etc. All these ethnic groups in New Jersey had distinct cultures—it was evident by the cuisines served at their restaurants and food markets, their centers of worship, music and festive celebrations, etc., were different from my African American culture.

People have this instinctive tribal motivation, which means I can only associate with you, if we belong to the same race, ethnic origin, religion, same country club, same geographical location, speak the same language, etc., this was more overtly evident in Northern New Jersey than in Georgia. Thus, these "natural" instincts that unites and draws us to one another as a culture; are often some of the artificial barriers that serves to divide us—sub-cultures evolve out of the dominant culture lack of ability to meet the inclusive and pluralistic aspirations of a so-called subordinate group. Yet, humanity is entrapped by our self-serving instincts—TRIBALISM, which defines human relations on the small and grand scale.

This was new for me as a young southern boy first coming in contact with so many divergent cultures and ethnic people. But this writer immediately notice that the majority of these ethnic cultures were suspicious and distrusting of each other and there appeared to be a sense of hostility and often time for no other reason than cultural ignorance and widely held stereotypes. This bred divisiveness, which often led to community conflicts. The enculturation and culture infusion process developed slowly—my three sons who are part of the Hip-Hop culture generation and seem they less concerned about cultural, racial and ethnic differences than the generation that proceeded them.

Perhaps their socialization orientation and upbringing have made them more human by being less concerned about how people differ and more concerned about finding a common denominator in which for the most part, none of the old variables that played so heavily in my culture would be insignificant to them. There is a lot as a father that I admire in my three sons and sometime I think they are too damn free willing; listening to that Rap music—their culture evolves around a culture of technology X-Box, Ipod, Blackberry phones, text messaging, FaceBook, MySpace and global social networking. Some of this is bothersome to me and my wife, but perhaps these young people could be teaching us something relative of overcoming cultural difference—are we willing to learn?

Fahim A. Knight can be reached at fahimknight@yahoo.com.

STAY AWAKE UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN,
Fahim A. Knight-EL
Source: http://fahimknightsworld.blogspot.com/2008/10/culture-and-humanity-learned-behavior.html

Xymphora on the US Syria Attack

Thursday, October 30, 2008: xymphora

1. A possible explanation for the American attack on Syria is that it had nothing to do with the particular target, but was the last chance for the neocons to extend the 'Bush Doctrine' to include the concept that the Americans don't have to recognize national sovereignty if they are in 'hot pursuit'.
   
2. The idea that Syria secretly agreed to the attack is still kicking around. Of course, this could be Zionist propaganda. On the other hand, Syria and the U. S. are much closer than either will admit since the neocons have been largely deposed in Washington, and I find it hard to believe that the new order of adult rule in the United States would risk losing Syrian cooperation for some lowly smuggler. We also have to remember that the Israelis proved, last September, that the Syrians have working air defense (that's the only reason why Israel hasn't attacked Syria), and it wouldn't have looked very good for the Americans if they lost a couple helicopters. Maybe Syria agreed to turn off the radar for a few hours.

Source: http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2008/10/thursday-october-30-2008.html

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Analysts Question Timing of Syria Raid

Ali Gharib

WASHINGTON, Oct 28, 2008 (IPS) - A cross-border raid into Syria by U.S. forces in Iraq, and a subsequent stonewalling by U.S. officials unwilling to divulge details, has led to rampant speculation among U.S. analysts about the origins and meaning of the attack.

"So the question is: Why?" wrote geo-strategic analyst and journalist Helena Cobban on her blog, wondering if the raid could have been pulled off without explicit permission from the highest levels of the President George W. Bush administration.

"So why now at the end of the Bush administration, with Washington trying to play nice with Damascus and tensions easing throughout the region, would U.S. forces stage such a gambit?" echoed Borzou Daragahi on the Babylon and Beyond blog at the Los Angeles Times website.

The questions started to swirl late Sunday afternoon when U.S. helicopters allegedly crossed five miles over the desert border between Syria and Iraq. According to reports, eight U.S. soldiers alighted when a helicopter landed, attacking the al-Sukkari farm in the Syrian Abu Kamal border area.

The cross-border raid -- the first of its kind involving a helicopter attack and U.S. boots on the ground that far into Syrian territory -- left eight dead, according to Syrian press reports.

The attack is especially curious since, according to a report this weekend in the New York Times, Bush appears to have rolled back his initiative to lead troop-driven cross-border attacks -- initially approved this summer -- by Afghan-based U.S. forces into Pakistani territory.

The raid also comes as Syria is negotiating with Israel, through Turkish mediation, presumably in a calculated effort to alleviate tensions with the West and the U.S. The Bush administration's take on the Israel-Syria talks has been lukewarm at best.

More immediately for the U.S., the raid could complicate negotiations on a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) with Iraqi authorities to allow U.S. forces to keep operating in Iraq after the U.N. mandate expires at the end of this year.

The talks on the SOFA have been bogged down, and a persistent Iraqi demand has been that Iraqi soil not be used as a launch pad for attacks on other countries.

"The Iraqi government rejects U.S. aircraft bombarding posts inside Syria," a government spokesperson, Ali al-Dabbagh, said Tuesday. "The constitution does not allow Iraq to be used as a staging ground to attack neighbouring countries."

The U.S. Department of Defence has repeatedly declined to comment on the Syrian incident, including to a direct request by IPS, but several press reports have quoted unnamed U.S. officials confirming the attack, and saying that it was ordered by the CIA.

Read the rest: http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48349&hd=&size=1&l=e

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Syrian riot police encircle U.S. embassy as thousands protest raid

Last update - 15:17 30/10/2008

By The Associated Press Hundreds of Syrian riot police ringed the shuttered and closed U.S. Embassy in Damascus on Thursday, as tens of thousands of Syrians converged on a central square for a government-orchestrated protest to denounce a deadly U.S. raid near the Iraqi border. The troops, wearing helmets and armed with batons and shields, took up positions around the embassy and the adjacent U.S. residence building. Two fire engines were parked nearby although the massive anti-American rally was to take place at a square about 1.6 kilometers away. The Syrian government has demanded that Washington apologize for Sunday's cross-border helicopter strike by American special forces that killed eight people. The embassy was closed because of security concerns related to the protest, and the American school was also shut for the day. The Syrian government has ordered the closure of the school, expected within a week, and the immediate closing of the American cultural center linked to the embassy. As the protesters filled the Youssef al-Azmi square and surrounding streets in the upscale al-Maliki neighborhood, some Syrians formed circles and danced traditional dances while women and students joined the peaceful crowds. America the sponsor of destruction and wars, read one of the banners carried by the protesters, who waved national flags and totted pictures of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Read the rest at Haaretz

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SYRIA: Did Damascus green-light U.S. attack?

Everyone's still scratching their heads about Sunday's dramatic U.S. attack on a Syrian village five miles from the Iraqi border.

Plenty of unanswered questions remain, like why didn't the Syrians do anything to thwart the Americans, such as launching anti-aircraft batteries deployed along their border?

Ronen Bergman, an Israeli intelligence expert and author of the recent "The Secret War with Iran," speculates that Syria green-lighted the U.S. operation.

Read the rest: LA Times

Schoolteacher Fired for Recommending Students Eat Plant-Based Diet

Free speech and alternative viewpoints are not allowed in the classroom if it goes against the lobbyists. Big money trumps the 1st amemdment and a well rounded education once again.

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Wednesday, October 29, 2008 by: David Gutierrez

(NaturalNews) A middle schoolteacher in Fox River Grove, Ill., was fired in April after encouraging his students to eat a vegan diet.

Dave Warwak, an art teacher at Fox River Grove Middle School, got in trouble while guiding his students through an administrator-approved program that sought to teach students to be kind to animals by having them take care of marshmallow "Peeps" as pets. According to administrators, Warwak attempted to educate students about animal rights by placing the Peeps in cages, pots or pans, or between slices of bread. Accusing Warwak of abandoning his curriculum and "turning his classroom into a forum on veganism," Principal Tim Mahaffey fired him.

"The problem was when it turned into a PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] advertisement and it was against the school lunch program," Mahaffy told the Illinois Board of Education during a hearing into Warwak's dismissal.

Like all public elementary, middle and high schools, Fox River Grove only eligible for National School Lunch Program reimbursements if it promotes consumption of dairy products, including by putting up life-sized celebrity milk endorsement posters. These posters are sent unsolicited to schools by the National Dairy Council.

During Warwak's hearing, former Cornell University professor of nutritional biochemistry T. Colin Campbell testified that schools are harming their students by pushing dairy.

"The consumption of dairy, especially at the younger ages, is a problem," Campbell said, and has been linked to substantially higher risks of osteoporosis and a wide variety of cancers.

Along with his son Thomas M. Campbell II, Campbell is the author of "The China Study," a book on the connection between disease and diet that the New York Times called the "Grand Prix of epidemiology."

Campbell noted that the dairy health claims on school posters were written by USDA dietary committee replete with conflicts of interest.

"Six of the 11 members of the committee, including the chair, had an association with the dairy industry," Campbell said. "And the chair himself had taken more money without telling the public about it than he was allowed under the law."

Sources for this story include: www.commondreams.org.

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/024636.html

US defense secretary expands pre-emptive war doctrine to include nuclear strikes

Gates art by John Cox

"It is widely rumored that, in the likely event that Democrat Barack Obama wins next week's US presidential election, Obama will keep Gates as defense secretary."

Why would Obama keep Gates in such an important position except to merge and consolidate the neocon policies with his own? If this turns out to be true it just solidifies the perception of a one party system with two false opposing factions.

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By Alex Lantier
30 October 2008 wsws.org

In a remarkable speech on nuclear policy delivered October 28 at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), US Defense Secretary Robert Gates painted a dire portrait of international affairs and argued that Washington should expand the doctrine of pre-emptive war formulated by the Bush administration to include possible nuclear strikes.

It is widely rumored that, in the likely event that Democrat Barack Obama wins next week's US presidential election, Obama will keep Gates as defense secretary. Gates' speech, given in the waning days of the Bush presidency, has the character of a policy declaration of the next US administration.

Gates began by making extended and ominous parallels between the world situation today and that which prevailed at the founding of the Carnegie Institute in 1910, four years before the outbreak of World War I. At the time, he noted, Wall Street was passing through the panic of 1910-1911 and facing a credit crisis, the US had recently put down an insurgency in the Philippines at a cost of 4,200 American lives, comparable to today's US death toll in Iraq, and "Europe was arming itself to the teeth and forming a series of alliances whose implications were obvious to anyone who cared to look."

Gates argued that the pacifist illusions promoted by CEIP founder Andrew Carnegie—a US steel magnate at the turn of the 20th century, most famous in the working class movement for the brutal suppression of the 1892 Homestead strike against his company—— should not deter Washington from planning broader war.

He noted, "In August of 1913, Carnegie said that ‘the only measure required today for the maintenance of world peace is an agreement between three or four of the leading civilized powers... pledged to cooperate against disturbers of world peace.'" Gates pointed out that, writing four years later to President Woodrow Wilson, who had been elected in 1916 on a platform of keeping the US out of the world war, "the same Andrew Carnegie encouraged the president in the strongest terms to declare war, because, he wrote, ‘There is only one straight way of settlement.'"

Turning to US nuclear policy, Gates said, "As long as others have nuclear weapons, we must maintain some level of these weapons ourselves: to deter potential adversaries, and to reassure over two dozen allies and partners who rely on our nuclear umbrella for their security—making it unnecessary for them to develop their own."

This comment gives a sense of the highly tense and unstable character of international relations, and the paranoia of US officials. Gates' fears about the spread of nuclear weapons are not limited to existing programs of "potential adversaries," among which Gates included "rogue states such as North Korea and Iran, or Russian or Chinese strategic modernization programs." His fears extend to the nuclear policy of all states, including current US allies.

Gates later repeated this point: "We simply cannot predict the future. [...] our adversaries and other nations will always seek whatever advantages they can find. Knowing that, we have to be prepared for contingencies we haven't even considered."

Gates' list of US-friendly states that have chosen not to develop nuclear weapons was significant: South Korea, Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, and Libya. Two of the most obvious such countries—ex-World War II enemies Japan and Germany—were not included. Gates did not explain what political factors induced him to omit them.

Gates then issued a remarkable threat: "As long as other states have or seek nuclear weapons—and can potentially threaten us, our allies and friends—then we must have a deterrent capacity that makes it clear that challenging the US in the nuclear arena—or with other weapons of mass destruction—could result in an overwhelming, catastrophic response.

"According to Gates, the US must be able to credibly threaten a nuclear holocaust against any state that "challenges" the US in the nuclear arena or with other "weapons of mass destruction." By his own words, such a challenge does not require a nation to threaten to attack the US. It does not even require that a nation possess nuclear weapons or other WMD. It is enough for a nation merely to "seek" such weapons for it to become a potential target for a preemptive "overwhelming, catastrophic response" from the United States.

Such a doctrine has immense implications not only for US nuclear weapons programs, but for the totality of US foreign policy. It stipulates that every foreign power in the world must believe that attempting to develop nuclear weapons invites US nuclear attack. Thus, the US would arguably be obliged to attack with nuclear weapons countries which it accused of developing nuclear weapons—such as Iran and North Korea—lest the rest of the world conclude that the US will not carry out its threats.

Gates is filling out the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war—announced in advance of the unprovoked invasion of Iraq based on lies about supposed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction—with the proviso that a US first-strike can involve the large-scale use of nuclear weapons.

In his speech, he called for a substantial increase in nuclear weapons spending, including the possible resumption of nuclear weapons testing. "There is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program," he declared.

Citing a "bleak" prognosis for overcoming technical and staffing problems of US strategic nuclear weapons programs, Gates explained that his policies involved the largest and most powerful US weapons: "The program we propose is not about new capabilities—suitcase bombs or bunker-busters or tactical nukes. [...] It is about the future credibility of our strategic deterrent."

Gates also addressed concerns about the command structure of the US Air Force's nuclear forces, sparked by his June 5 sackings of several top Air Force officials after it was discovered that US nuclear missile parts had been shipped to Taiwan. At the time, the World Socialist Web Site raised the question of whether the shipment to Taiwan had been part of an unofficial foreign policy carried out by rogue sections of the US military. However, the bourgeois press accepted official explanations that this had been a simple technical oversight.

But Gates' proposals centered not on fixing technical problems with Air Force shipping protocols, but rather on controlling Air Force policy. He announced measures to centralize "nuclear policy and oversight," including a new headquarters office at the Air Staff and a Nuclear Weapons Center at Kirtland Air Force Base, which is to be tasked with "clearing up ambiguous chains of command that have created problems in the past."

Gates closed by listing several types of attack that the US might use "deterrence," nuclear or otherwise, to prevent. He spoke of developing "appropriate" responses to cyber-attacks on US computer systems, to deterring attacks on US communications satellites (which could be carried out only by countries with technologically advanced militaries) and of developing "new technologies to identify the forensic signature" of nuclear material, which would allow the US to "hold any state, terrorist group, or other non-state actor or individual fully accountable for supporting or enabling terrorist efforts to obtain or use weapons of mass destruction."

It is unclear what state or group would be suicidal enough to embark on such attacks. However, it should be pointed out that several of these types of attack—especially cyber-attack and terrorist attacks with weapons of mass destruction—are by their nature difficult to track, and leave open the possibility of manipulation by Washington. This is perhaps best shown by the 2001 anthrax attacks, which were carried out using spores from a US Army lab at Fort Detrick and ultimately blamed on a US civilian scientist working at Fort Detrick, but which the media long blamed on Muslim terrorists.

In assessing the significance of Gates' remarkably bellicose comments, it should be noted that Gates' justification of pre-emptive nuclear war is not isolated. In April, then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said that if Iran attacked Israel, the US would respond by "obliterating" Iran. These comments are further evidence that the US ruling class will pursue an even more aggressive foreign policy after the 2008 elections than before.

Source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/gate-o30.shtml

Obama Rumors of a Process to Peace?

Obama has a tendency to pander to the crowd he's with. Just look at how he has groveled to AIPAC and Israel in the past. The rumor of what "the O" said to Rashid Khalidi, "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" plus there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis." may just have been telling him what he wants to hear. That kind of thing gets the votes and support.

On the other hand, this gives a great number of people a pause....... hope.......for change.

How else can there be peace, in not only the middle east but the world, if there is not a start and a process to ending the Israel/Palestine issue and the zionist influence and power throughout the world. Obama, in a rumor, gives a hint that he may initiate that process.

The LA Times won't release the video. If this video rumor is for real, who benefits by not showing it?

'Joe the Plumber' comes in and gets media attention for saying that an Obama victory would be the "death of Israel". This seems like a blatant move to get the jewish and "christian zionist" voters 'aroused'.

This Obama "Israel genocide against Palestinian people" rumor and the "Plumber" "end of Israel" media coverage seems like some strange psychological/propaganda maneuvers that grab at the 'fringe' sides of the zionist/anti-zionist population.

Obama for a solution to the Middle East problem?

If the rumor of what he said is true, he's lying to someone.

I'm leaning towards Israel and their allies in 'high places' geting the nod.

"The O" knows he can't do otherwise and survive politically and/or physically.

Bush, Cheney, Greenspan and All Wall Street Executives Should Stand Trial for Crimes Against Humanity.

anxious -Artist: t0mt0m

Jefferson Corner

Perhaps it is time for national and international criminal and legal experts to revisit the definition of “crimes against humanity” and include among those crimes, economic crimes that had more lasting impact on its victims than those who are murdered.

True, George Bush and Dick Cheney are criminals and murderers and should be held for trial for the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis killed and murdered in Iraq in addition to those thousands of American soldiers killed and or injured in their war on Iraq. However the financial meltdown here in the US is the world as direct result of the incompetent, reckless and criminal economic and financial policies of the Bush and his Republican Party should rise and meet the standards of “Crimes Against Humanity”.

The victims of Bush-Cheney economic policies of “Robbery Capitalism” and their hand off policies of allowing the greedy criminal executives of Wall Street to run free without the thought of being responsible to any one, not shareholders, not partners, not the board, not the nation and certainly not citizens and consumers are all over the world.

Bush and Wall Street are solely responsible for the economic and financial meltdown around the world. Hundreds of millions of people lost every thing due to and as a consequence of such reckless and criminal policies. Governments around the world had to intervene using hundreds of billions of dollars to shore up their financial systems. Country like Iceland is on the verge of bankruptcy as a direct result of what happened on Wall Street. The Brazilian Bourse lost over $500 Billions in one day.

Hundreds of millions of people around the world are on the verge of starvations as a direct result of the criminal and incompetent policies of George Bush. I am sure that what Bush/Cheney team was and is most interested in is their own personal interest, interested in promoting “Robbery Capitalism” so that they and their friend can directly benefits from such policies. Their Neo-Cons ideologies are directly responsible for this financial and economic meltdown.

They simply sat on their brains (they have none) and decided to allow Wall Street to take care of its own and entrusted these crooks without self regulations. Republicans wanted the government to have NO role in supervision or regulating the financial sectors. Of course they got more than one billions of donations to political Washington. Of course the greedy crooks took home more than $ 5 billions in annual bonuses and compensation.

Bush, Cheney, Greenspan and all key executives of Wall Street should be arrested and put on trial for crimes against humanity. What they did far exceeds the crimes of all of the criminal dictators that stood before international tribunals for crimes against humanity. They and they alone are responsible for the misery, the unemployment, for the loss of all of the saving, the hunger and for the depression around the world.

Source: http://www.jeffersoncorner.com/bush-cheney-greenspan-and-all-wall-street-executives-should-stand-trial-for-crimes-against-humanity/

Exalting Atrocity: The GOP's Torturer-American Candidate

Written by Chris Floyd
Oct. 29, 2008

Here's a story that seems to be getting little play in the American media: a candidate for the U.S. Congress who is proudly running on his record as a torturer of innocent civilians in Iraq. Pressing time constraints today prevent me from writing fully on this, but read Johan Hari's report in The Independent. (Yes, once again, you have to cross the ocean to find out what's going on in America):

So what will be left of the Republican Party after next week's US election? The answer lies in the sands of Florida, where the sunshine-state Republicans have nominated an unrepentant torturer as their candidate for Congress. They view his readiness to torture an innocent Iraqi not as a source of shame, but as his prime qualification for office. This is American conservatism in the dying days of Bush – and it points out the direction that Sarah Palin would like to take it in 2012.

In August 2003, Colonel Allen West – commanding a US unit in Baghdad – heard a rumour that one of the Iraqi policeman he was working with was a secret insurgent. He ordered his officers to go and seize Yehiya Hamoodi, a thin, bespectacled 31-year-old, from his home. They dragged him into a Humvee, beat him, and then handcuffed, shackled and blindfolded him. In a dank interrogation room, they told him he had better start talking.

Perplexed and terrified, Yehiya explained he didn't know what they were talking about: why was he here? So West was called in. He told Yehiya he was going to be killed. While his men beat him again, he explained he had one last chance to save his life – by talking.

Yehiya protested: I am innocent! What are you talking about? So West took him outside, had him pinned down, and began to shoot. First he fired into the air. Then he ordered his men to ram Yehiya's head into a barrel used for cleaning weapons – and fired right next to his head. Then he began to count down from five. Finally Yehiya began to scream out names – any name he could think of, just to make it stop.

The men he named were seized and roughed up in turn. No evidence was found of any plot, and after another 45 days of terror, Yehiya was released. Today, he is severely traumatised, and collapses when he sees a Humvee approaching. The story only came to light after one of West's soldiers began to protest against these practices, and the Pentagon launched an investigation. At a pre-trial hearing, West was fined $5,000, and now concedes grudgingly: "It's possible I was wrong about Mr Hamoodi." But he says he would do it again, and again, and again.

West has even taken to joking about it, gaining applause for telling Republican audiences: "It wasn't torture. Seeing Rosie O'Donnell naked would be torture." But the 1994 Convention Against Torture, to which the US is a signatory, is explicit: "Threat of imminent death" is the third form of torture it outlaws. There are reams of studies showing it can traumatise a person for life.

Yet the Republican Party has rallied to the defence of this torturer, and of torture in general. The Bush administration has ordered the simulated drowning of "high-value" suspects, and set up secret black ops sites across the world where it is practiced. After Afghan detainees were hanged from the ceiling and beaten to death, the officers responsible were merely given a "letter of reprimand".

West's "toughness" is fawned over; one leading conservative magazine has even named him its Man of the Year. And Sarah Palin, the Party's darling, mocks Barack Obama's opposition to torture. She complains: "Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America [and] he's worried that someone won't read them their rights." Palin is fond of saying that she "won't blink when it comes to terror", but if you don't blink, your corneas dry out, and you go blind.

Read the whole piece. I have some disagreement with Hari's conclusion, when he says: "The gap between the Republican and Democratic Parties is too narrow, but on this issue it is hefty." I have not seen any calls whatsoever from the Democratic leadership to prosecute all those involved in the vast apparatus of torture spawned by the "War on Terror." The Democrats have condemned "torture," of course, but what of that? Bush does the same, even as he orders it up. And of course, a few small fry can be served up; again, Bush has done the same. But there is no indication whatsoever that an Obama administration or an even larger-majority Democratic congress will ever pursue justice against the officers, the agency chiefs and department heads, the atrocity-abetting lawyers -- and, of course, the very highest officials of the state -- who created and maintained this evil system.

Source: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1637-exalting-atrocity-the-gops-torturer-american-candidate.html

An Open Letter To The Founding Fathers

From: darkwatson1

Video by way of Living With War Today

We probably will get fooled again

by J.D. Tuccille

Legend has it that comic Lenny Bruce started his downward slide at least partially because many of the hipsters who had boosted his brief career into the stratosphere turned against him. They did so when Bruce kept focusing his acid wit on the powers-that-be, even after Eisenhower made way for Kennedy. It was all well and good to mock conservatism and conformity, but to go after Camelot was too much. And then Bruce dared to suggest that Jackie was less courageous during JFK's assassination than instant mythology insisted.

"Bullshit!" said Bruce, suggesting instead that she "hauled ass to save her ass"!

Of course, there's more to Bruce's downfall than that, including a huge dose of self-destruction. But that's a good place to start in describing the occasional fate of people who critique power rather than party. I make this point because we're very clearly about to have a changing of the guard, and in the months and years to come, I'm almost certainly going to be tough on the new president and his "change you can believe in," along with the inevitably increased congressional majority that president's party will enjoy.

And some of you, my loyal readers, even those who have enjoyed swipes at the current administration, will be upset with me as a result.

That's going to happen even though I've been writing about civil liberties for over a decade, took the Bush administration to-task for its due-process-busting military tribunal schemes as early as 2001, and haven't exactly let up in recent years.

Yes, yes, I understand that President Bush is a right-wing baddie and that we'll all get to ride unicorns under President Obama. But what happens if that's not the case?

Or, rather, what happens when that's not the case?

As I've written before, "it's not so much the president as the presidency." I'll add that it's not so much about the party in power as the power itself.

And the government under which we suffer wields an awful lot of power.

Some looming issues that already set off my virtual canary in a civil libertarian coal mine are: the potential reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine and the stifling of political speech that would result; the threatened passage of the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act or a similar bill, which has the potential to criminalize political advocacy rather than violent action; and renewed assaults on the right to bear arms before the full protections that should be accorded by the Supreme Court's Heller decision are formalized and become established law.

Which is to say, the personal freedom concerns raised by the new boss will probably be different than those raised by the old boss, but I'm still going to have plenty to write about.

As much as some people think that salvation arrives when their team wins at the ballot box, the sad fact is that elections generally result in little more than the turning out of a tired set of control freaks with a worn-out agenda and their replacement by a fresh set of control freaks with an all-new list of things to be done. Honestly, do you think people with a restrained sense of their right to mold the world to fit their views are attracted to a career in political office? From any party? What normal person gives up privacy, proximity to family and peaceful relations with their neighbors for life in the spotlight, largely spent far from home, in a state of eternal combat with people who hold opposing views?

With few exceptions, normal people don't do that. The folks who do find that an attractive career choice are those who can't resist the siren call of access to power to, by proxy, hold guns to people's heads and make them do things they wouldn't do on their own, or to stop them from doing things they want to do.

And all too often, they're cheered on by tribal loyalists who think that a temporary victory at the polls is a swell opportunity to sock it to the evil folks who dare to favor the other tribe, or just think and live differently.

We'll go through this regularly scheduled charade for as long as government retains the power to seriously intrude into and disrupt our lives in so many ways. When government ceases to be such a handy bludgeon for whoever is in power, it will stop being abused. So long as it remains so powerful, it will continue to wreak havoc on life, liberty and property no matter what political tribe currently holds the reins.

Hey, despite the abuse I expect to get from people who loved what I wrote just a few months ago, I look on the bright side: so long as I can retain an audience, there's always job security in writing about government excesses.

posted by J.D. Tuccille
Source: http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2008/10/we-probaby-will-get-fooled-again.html

Dershowitz repeats accusations, lies, and distortions

Thomas Paine's Corner

Greens respond to a slanderous attack by lawyer Alan Dershowitz against the Green Party and its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

GREEN PARTY OF THE UNITED STATES Print This Post
http://www.gp.org

Monday, October 27, 2008

WASHINGTON, DC — The co-chairs of the Green Party’s International Committee (http://www.gp.org/committees/intl) have responded to an attack by Alan Dershowitz against the Green Party and its position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The text of the response follows below:

On October 12, Mr. Dershowitz, a prominent attorney, published an op-ed column in The Daily News (New York) titled “Both Barack Obama and John McCain are true friends of Israel …” ( http://tinyurl.com/4b42hv ).

In his column, Mr. Dershowitz accused the Green Party and Green presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney of anti-Semitism and endorsed elections limited to two political parties.

Greens noted that Mr. Dershowitz has promoted ‘torture warrants’ to permit torture of individuals when a threat to US is detected, a position he shares with the Israeli government. The use of torture has been categorically rejected by numerous military, intelligence, and legal experts because of humane concerns, international laws and treaties, unreliability as a method for obtaining information, and because torture would place US military personnel and other Americans at risk of similar treatment in retaliation.

Justine McCabe and Julia Willebrand submitted the Green response to the Daily News’ editorial department, which declined to publish it. The response was embargoed until last week to give the Daily News first right of publication.

It Isn’t Easy Being Green

By Justine McCabe and Julia Willebrand

Co-Chairs, International Committee, Green Party of the United States

http://www.gp.org/committees/intl/

http://www.gp.org

Presidential election years aren’t easy for those of us in parties outside the Democratic and Republican mainstream. Shut out of the national debates and most media coverage, our ideas seldom get a fair hearing, even though most Americans agree with us. But worse than no coverage is when our policies are dismissed, not on their merit or the facts, but by slander.

Case in point: a recent Daily News column by Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz. Known for his unwavering support of Israel, Dershowitz isn’t merely content to ban Palestinians from the public discussion on the Middle East conflict. He uses name-calling to drown out any voices in this election except those of the established parties — the two parties whose foreign policies have led to international animosity against the US.

Dershowitz epitomizes those who believe that any criticism of the state of Israel or its actions constitutes anti-Semitism. What they call anti-Semitism in the Green Party’s national platform is actually adherence to international law, observance of human rights for all Palestinians and Israelis, and support for a nonviolent negotiated resolution to the conflict (www.gp.org/platform/2004/democracy.html#310677)

The Green Party takes no campaign contributions from AIPAC, its rightwing allies, or the oil industry. Unlike Democrats and Republicans, who accept such money, Greens condemn all violence against unarmed civilians, whether by Palestinians or Israelis, whether through the use of American-made F-16’s or Caterpillar bulldozers. We oppose military aid to Israel and Arab countries. Unlike Barack Obama and John McCain, Greens have deplored Israel’s violation of over 60 UN Security Council resolutions against collective punishment, confiscation of Palestinian land and illegal settlement by 400,000 Israeli colonists, and demolition of over 10,000 Palestinian homes. We continue to oppose Israel’s violations of human rights that are recognized as universal by the international community: the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and the right of self-determination.

Ironically, unlike the Israeli press, the US media have tolerated little discussion on the issue. Otherwise, Americans would know that the Green position is shared by people like South Africa’s Nobel laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Congress of South African Trade Unions, the Irish public sector union IMPACT, the British National Union of Journalists–all of whom recognize the apartheid-like conditions in Israel and the Occupied Territories and have endorsed a boycott to insist that Israel dismantle them (http://www.gp.org/press/pr_2005_11_28.shtml).

Dershowitz repeats accusations, lies, and distortions that have been leveled against former Democratic congresswoman and now Green Party presidential nominee Cynthia McKinney because of her principled positions and her refusal to take orders from AIPAC — a lobby for a foreign government — and its allies. However, he gets one thing correct: Obama and McCain have expressed the same uncritical support for the government of Israel and its actions, which guarantees no hope of peaceful resolution in the next administration, regardless of which candidate wins the White House. Why not just toss a coin instead of holding an election?

In the end, so eager are apologists like Dershowitz to shut down real debate about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other vital topics that they would limit the political field and banish “extremist” alternative parties. In fact, alternative parties have introduced such extremist ideas as abolition of slavery, women’s right to vote, the 8-hour workday, and Social Security. The Green Party is here to remind Americans that unequivocal support for Israel’s actions is a corruption of American values like justice and equality before the law — values that most Americans still hold dear.

MORE INFORMATION

Green Party of the United States http://www.gp.org

Source: http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=1149#more-1149

ADL turned in the would-be 'tuxedo assassins'

See the Nashville local report on the Obama would be assassins here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

RowanBerkeley's blog

The ADL assisted in the investigation into white supremacists arrested in an alleged plot to assassinate Barack Obama, by providing BATF with information on Daniel Cowart, 21, of Jackson, Tenn., and Paul Schlesselman, 18, of West Helena, Ark. A joint BATF and Crocket County, Tenn., Sheriff’s Office investigation culminated Oct. 22 in the arrests of the two men, who were charged with “possessing an unregistered firearm, conspiring to steal firearms from a federally licensed gun dealer, and threats against a major candidate for the office of president,” according to an ADL release. News reports said the men planned to murder 88 blacks, possibly at a local high school, and also discussed assassinating Obama, the Democratic presidential candidate. ADL had information on the pair partly because of Cowart’s involvement in Supreme White Alliance, a racist skinhead group monitored by the Jewish civil rights body. "The arrests of these dangerous white supremacists prevented what could have been the most serious act of domestic terrorism in recent years," said Abraham Foxman. "This case shows how extreme ideologies easily lead to extreme actions."

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/110911.html

~~~~~~~

Both Schlesselman and Cowart are names that appear in these databases of jewish names:

J. JewishGen Family Finder (97,391 surnames). Surnames being researched by some 60,000 Jewish genealogists worldwide. An on-going project--continuously updated. Online database

K. Family Tree of the Jewish People (184,237 surnames). 2,000,000 persons who appear on family trees being researched by Jewish genealogists. An on-going project--continuously updated. Online database

Of course you'll never hear that two jewish terrorists plotted to murder 99 blacks and decapitate 14 before attempting to assassinate Obama in tux and top hats.

This stinks like Columbine.

Claymoremind | Wed, 2008-10-29 02:39

Source: http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/8906

How to Stop and Prevent GOP Election Theft Forever

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Len Hart

Even prominent Republicans now concede that George W. Bush presided over the destruction of America, the subversion of the Constitution, defiance of the rule of law. Bush did this by way of two stolen elections. This article reveals how they did it and proposes a 'fool proof' method by which elections can be made theft proof! Princeton University has demonstrated how easily the GOP may 'hack' voting machines in key precincts, how simple it is to upload malicious code that turns votes for Democrats into votes for the GOP! It not enough to simply make this conduct punishable as 'high treason'. It can be prevented --thus sparing a guilty gopper hard time in a GOP 'corporate' prison guarded by Blackwater.

A team from Princeton University set out to prove once and for all the Diebold voting machines could be hacked easily. Not only did they prove this to be a fact, they created a Diebold specific virus that spreads from voting machine to voting machine.

You can find out more information about the work they did and download a full PDF report on the security vulnerability at this link http://itpolicy.princeton.edu/voting/ This video just reinforces exactly how vulnerable these machines are, and once you take into consideration the fact that these machines are effectively controlling the American Election, it looks even more scary! As always, for the latest news from the world of technology, gadgets, electronics and hacking visit: HACK
With eight days to go before the presidential election, a report has been released by Princeton University and other groups that sharply criticizes the e-voting machines used in New Jersey and elsewhere as unreliable and potentially prone to hacking.The 158-page report, which was ordered by a New Jersey judge as part of an ongoing four-year legal fight over the machines, says the e-voting machines can be "easily hacked" in about seven minutes by anyone with basic computer knowledge. Such hacking activity could enable fraudulent firmware to steal votes from one candidate and give them to another, the report said.The controversy involves the Sequoia AVC Advantage 9.00H direct-recording electronic (DRE) touch-screen voting machines made by Oakland, Calif.-based Sequoia Voting Systems.The report comes amid news stories in at least three states -- West Virginia, Texas and Tennessee -- where voters have told local election officials that they believe the e-voting machines they used tried to "flip" their votes to other candidates.The AVC machines can be hacked by installing fraudulent software contained in a replacement chip that can be installed on the main circuit board, according to the report. Such a part replacement is very difficult to detect, it noted.Andrew Appel, a Princeton University computer science professor who is one of the authors of the report, said that such security vulnerabilities cause doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the machines.

--Princeton Report Rips N.J. E-voting Machines as Easily Hackable

Princeton University Diebold Machine Hacking

A permanent fix must be written into US Federal law. Such a law would not merely establish penalties for the guilty GOPPERS who have indulged this practice to the utter destruction of Democracy itself. Federal law should prescribe a 'hack' proof system with checks and balances. In other words, we must run 'hack proof' elections. Here's how it works:

• When a citizen records a vote, the machine spits out TWO identical paper receipts indicating how the citizen voted.


• The citizen looks over the receipt while STILL in the booth; if everything is OK, he presses the final SUBMIT key/button on the voting machine itself! If everything is NOT ok, he protests the result and threatens to call the 'election cops' if nothing is done.
  


• The voter now has TWO IDENTICAL RECEIPTS! He/she leaves one behind in a big 'lock box' designed to receive all paper ballots, i.e, one of the two identical receipts.


• The VOTER retains the second receipt against the eventuality that the election is challenged.


• If the election is contested, a hand count is conducted of all deposited 'receipts' left behind in the big lock box.

It is unlikely, that the voter would be required to supply the final receipt. Any discrepancy between the paper ballots and the machine means one thing and one thing only: the machine was 'hacked'.

It is conceivable that the 'receipt' be machine readable. In that case, a hand count of all receipts would be mandatory if the results of the machine do not match the count of deposited receipts left in a 'lock box'.

A final point: a new federal law should prescribe the above remedy as a standard in all federal elections. US Codes should create the crime of 'election fraud' to be defined in numerous clauses and specifically mandating the above procedure. The 'hacking' of any machine utilized in a national election should be addressed in the law which would make such 'hacking' a federal offense with severe mandatory hard jail time!

In the meantime, John McCain is predicting he will win the election by winning Pennsylvania! This tells me that McCain is planning to steal the election just as Bush stole Ohio.

Did Tom Brokaw accidentally spill the beans about the vote-rigging in 2004 in Ohio?

On Meet the Press, Brokaw interviewed McCain, and shared this rather suspicious memory:

Brokaw: "Four years ago, I interviewed President Bush at a time when it looked like he may be in trouble against John Kerry — the final weekend of the campaign. I showed him a map. He said, 'Oh, I just don't do that. Karl Rove does that.' As soon as the interview was over, he said, 'I'll win here,' and pointed to southeastern Ohio. Where will you win, if you win?

Why was Bush so convinced he was going to win Ohio? Even though he was down in all the polls, and was way down in all the exit polling on Election Day?And, more to the point, why is McCain still pouring so many resources and so much time into Pennsylvania? --Daily Kos

With any luck, McCain will be sorely disappointed. It may no longer be possible to win the White House by winning --or stealing --a couple of the so-called 'battleground' states --Ohio, Pennsylvania or Florida. Because Obama has many more ways than Kerry to get to 270, the outright theft of the election also becomes increasingly problematic for the GOP.

We can only hope that Obama will have his 'detectives' out in force. Support efforts to round up and imprison GOP vote cheats, frauds and other criminals! Take back America!

How John Kerry 'LOST' the Vote Count!

Source: http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-stop-and-prevent-gop-election.html

Neverending Terror

Art by David Dees - Deesillustration.com,,,,,,Dees Archive

http://rense.com/

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Tuesday, October 28, 2008

U.S. TERRORISTS STRIKE AT SYRIA AND PAKISTAN KILLING MORE INNOCENT CIVILIANS.

Damian Lataan

US terrorists are increasing their attacks on Pakistani villages and have now extended their range of murderous operations to include terrorist strikes against civilian targets in Syria as well.

As usual, US propaganda has attempted to justify the attacks that have killed children and innocent civilians by saying they were targeting ‘al Qaeda’ both in Pakistan and Syria. In the latest attacks by US terrorists in Syria, eight innocent civilians were reported to have been killed and Syria has said that future incursions into their country by US terrorists will result in retaliation. The US government have not produced any evidence to support their claims that they were after ‘foreign fighters’ entering Iraq from Syria. Clearly the irony of such remarks regarding ‘foreign fighters in Iraq’ has been missed as it seems the only foreign fighters that are in Iraq are the US terrorists themselves.

For some time the US government has been in the habit of referring to fighters that attempt to defend themselves and their respective countries against US terrorism as ‘al Qaeda’ after the organisation of the same name that the American CIA organisation set up in the last century to combat a Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and led by the late Osama bin Laden. The US had also accused bin Laden of being responsible for the attacks against the American people on 9/11, an act of terror that much of the world now know was actually perpetrated with the connivance of extremist elements within the US government itself.

While the latest US terrorist acts have been nowhere near as deadly as the initial attacks US terrorists made on the Afghani and Iraqi people in 2001 and 2003 respectively in which well over a million people died and millions more driven from their homes and country, the latest attacks indicate that they are still willing to kill innocent people in order to perpetuate the myth in the West that those that fight to defend their lands against US terrorism are some kind of evil enemy that must be eliminated in order to maintain the equally mythical perception of ‘American exceptionalism’.

The word ‘terrorist’ is bandied about in the West without any thought or consideration to the real meaning of the word. It is hoped that my use of the word in the context that I have used above will provide a new and different perspective about who the real ‘terrorists’ are in the world.

posted by Damian Lataan
Source: http://lataan.blogspot.com/2008/10/us-terrorists-strike-at-syria-and.html

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US carries out fresh air strike in Pakistan

By Keith Jones
28 October 2008 WSWS

US forces mounted a Predator drone missile attack Monday on a house in Mandata Raghzai, a village in Pakistan's South Waziristan region, killing as many as 20 people.

The Pentagon has refused to confirm the attack. But Pakistani officials have claimed most of those killed were militants from the Pakistani Taliban—the armed opposition that has developed in Pakistan's Pashtun-speaking tribal belt to the US occupation of Afghanistan and the associated attempt of Pakistan's central government to exert greater authority over the country's historically autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

The US military is now routinely violating Pakistani sovereignty, extending the Afghan War to its southern neighbor, and realizing, thereby, the strategic "vision" of Admiral Mike Mullen, the head of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has called for Afghanistan and Pakistan's border regions to be perceived as a single war-theater.

Four days before the strike on Mandata Raghzai, a US drone fired four missiles into a seminary in a village near Miramshah, North Waziristan, killing at least 10 people.

According to an article published on the New York Times' website Sunday evening and based on unattributed discussions with US and Pakistani officials, the US has mounted a minimum of 18 Predator missile strikes in FATA since August. Monday's attack would make the tally at least 19.

Many have slaughtered civilians. "The increasing attacks by US drones have caused anger and frustration among tribesmen," reported the Dawn October 24. The Dawn report cited a leaflet that quoted a tribal leader as saying jirga or tribal council members are "disappointed over intermittent drone attacks, resulting in the killing of innocent tribesmen."

US forces have also carried out at least one ground-assault within Pakistan. On September 3, helicopter-borne US commandos mounted a raid on Angoori Ada in South Waziristan, killing more than 20 people. The White House subsequently let it be known that in July US President George W. Bush had secretly authorized US Special Forces to carry out operations inside Pakistan without Islamabad's approval—an act that under international law is tantamount to a declaration of war.

The New York Times report claims that because of the "furious complaints" of Pakistani authorities over last month's military incursion, the Bush administration has "backed away" from ordering further ground raids. It has instead chosen to rely "on an intensifying campaign of airstrikes by the Central Intelligence Agency" to eliminate opponents of the US occupation of Afghanistan.

Further light on the Bush administration's apparent decision to forego, at least for present, ground-operations in Pakistan is shed by an article that recently appeared in one of the US military's publications. The September 29 Air Force Times cites an unnamed US government official as saying:

"[The September 3 raid was] an opportunity to see how the new Pakistani government reacted. If they didn't do anything, [and] they were just kind of fairly passive, like [the longtime, US-supported dictator General Pervez] Musharraf was ... then we felt like, okay, we can slowly up the ante, we can do maybe some more of these ops. But the backlash that happened, and especially the backlash in the diplomatic channels, was pretty severe...

"Once the Pakistanis started talking about closing down our supply routes [to Afghanistan], and actually demonstrated they could do it, once they started talking about shooting American helicopters, we obviously had to take seriously that maybe this [strategy] was not going to be good enough. We can't sustain ourselves in Afghanistan without the Pakistani supply routes. At the end of the day, we had to not let our tactics get in the way of our strategy."

The Pakistani military was more strident in its opposition to the US's arrogation of the right to wage war in Pakistan than the country's new Pakistan People's Party-led coalition government, and this for several reasons. The US intrusion flagrantly contradicted the Pakistani military's claim "to be the defender of the nation," a claim it has used to legitimize its huge budget and immense political power. Second, the Pakistani military, which has recruited heavily from the Pashtun, is itself divided over the aims and tactics of the counter-insurgency war it is waging in FATA. And the military top brass, which has effectively controlled Pakistan's geo-political strategy for decades, is acutely concerned about the ever-growing Indo-US strategic partnership, including in Afghanistan.

That said, Islamabad's condemnation of the September 3 raid and the call of Pakistan's parliament for any future incursion to be repelled by force, reflected, albeit in a distorted form, popular sentiment. The US government is reviled by ordinary Pakistanis for its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, its decades-long' bankrolling and arming of Musharraf and previous Pakistani dictators, and its callous use of Pakistan as a pawn in its world strategy.

Three further points need to be made about the New York Times article.

First, it strongly suggests that the Pakistani government and military, despite their condemnations of the US drone attacks, have an understanding with Washington. So as to forestall even more obtrusive US military intervention, Pakistani authorities will tacitly accept US missile attacks on the country's territory and the inevitable ensuing civilian casualties

Within Pakistan this understanding is an open secret.

Significantly the Times article and others that have appeared in the US's "newspaper of record' in recent months have made no reference to a Times article published at the beginning of the year that claimed that the CIA has a secret military base within Pakistan from which it is staging Predator attacks. Needless to say, if such a base exists it is with the sanction of the Pakistani military, which for decades has had a close partnership with Washington and been viewed by the US political and military establishment as the crux of the US-Pakistani relationship and the chief bulwark of the Pakistani state.

Also of note is the claim of the recent Times article that many within the Bush administration are continuing to press for the US to send troops into Pakistan. Reports the Times, "Within the government, advocates of the ground raids have argued that only by sending Special Operations forces into Pakistan can the United States successfully capture suspected operatives and interrogate them for information about top [al] Qaeda leaders."

In other words, the possibility of further ground raids and a new crisis in US-Pakistani relations remains live.

Both the Republican and Democratic Presidential candidates have made clear they would be ready to order US military action inside Pakistan. Democratic nominee Barack Obama has been especially bellicose in regards to Pakistan. In a bid to demonstrate that he has nothing to learn from John McCain about ruthlessly pursuing US imperialism's interests, Obama has repeatedly vowed that he would be ready to order, in flagrant violation of international law, unilateral military action in Pakistan.

Obama's strident rhetoric on Pakistan is a corollary to his promotion of the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan as the "good war." In reality the US military involvement in Afghanistan, which began in the late 1970s, is driven by Washington's and Wall Street's predatory interests, no less today than thirty years ago.

While Washington once armed Islamic fundamentalists with the aim of weakening the Soviet Union, today it invokes the fight against the Taliban and al-Qaeda to justify a drive to secure a US military-strategic beachhead in oil-rich Central Asia.

The third further point of note in the Times report is its claim that "privately, some American officials are wincing at" the brutality and indiscriminate character of the war the Pakistani military is waging to root out Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and other "foreign fighters" from the Bajaur Tribal Agency.

Launched three months ago under heavy US pressure, the Pakistani military offensive in Bajuar (one of FATA's seven component parts) has caused widespread civilian casualties. This is hardly surprising given that the military has routinely bombed and strafed villages from the air. According to an earlier Times report, the military has also threatened reprisals against tribes that do not form lashkars or militias to help fight the anti-US forces. "We were pressured by the government to take action," the Times cited a tribal leader as saying in an article published October 24. "They warned, ‘If you don't take action you will be bombed'."

As many as 300,000 people have fled the area due to the fighting, but Pakistani authorities have done little to provide them with food and shelter.

The Times cites a senior US military officer as saying of the Pakistani military, "They don't have a concept of counter-insurgency operation. It's generally a heavy punch and then they leave."

If US military officers, who have waged an illegal war in Iraq that has resulted in the death of a million people, are "wincing" at what the Pakistani military is doing in Bajaur, one can only imagine the horrific and arbitrary character of the violence being inflicted, at the US's instigation, by Washington's decades' old partner—the Pakistani officers corp.

Source: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2008/oct2008/paki-o28.shtml

Advocating Piracy

Detain This

The Role of Big Media in the Plunder

If Congress surrendered all its legislative powers to the Bush administration, corporate news media would not question it. In fact, whenever the state forces the people to give up the few liberties not yet violently ripped from them, corporate news media promote it.

The Innocuous Tyrant

For every major U.S. government enterprise, ”coverage” is a win-win narrative.

In Associated Press coverage of the U.S. occupation of Iraq, for instance, the reader is put into the shoes of ”U.S. officials.” The prime urgency is what’s best for the vaguely- or never-defined success of U.S. foreign policy. Deadlines and benchmarks being imposed on the occupied Iraqis by the imperial occupiers are the sine qua non of ”democracy.” For every U.S. policy failure, the Iraqi government, al-Qaeda in Iraq, or Iranian meddling can be held to account without an editorial doubt. Or, it’s simply that the policy goals are “taking longer than U.S. officials had originally planned,” usually due to “sectarian rifts” or some other alleged fault of the Iraqi people.

Meanwhile, it’s out of sight, out of mind for the casual observer.

Omitted is even the possibility that the U.S. government never had any business being there in the first place; that Iraqis, even those in government, are right to oppose foreign aggression and imperial domination; or, that it is immoral, illegal, and impossible to make people live the way you want them to live. Never considered is that the U.S. occupation is the prime cause of destruction and misery not only for Iraqis, but for Americans and others subjected to the empire. Never questioned is the culprit; his ever-malignant role is never brought into light. If it is, it arrives via an “anti-U.S.” or ”radical Islamist” or “dovish” point of view, and is thereby easily marginalized.

It all adds up to the suggestion that the U.S. occupation of Iraq is a noble nation-building project born of compassion, and not an imperial binge spurred by mercantilism.

‘Bailouts’

Oligarchy is safe long as any political struggle can be fashioned into the age-old false choice: What must the central government ”do” to save the people (who have no clue how to run their own affairs) from themselves? This indispensible foundation for effective pro-state propaganda is at least as devastating when applied to coverage of domestic federal interventions.

In the days leading up to the initial, September 29 House vote on the “Bailout of Abominations,” the Monopoly-State Media (MSM) carried testimonials from members of Congress on the flood of phone calls, emails, and visits received from their constituents. We learned that nearly all petitions expressed strong opposition to the proposal to ”rescue” failing financial institutions with U.S. taxpayer “money.”

Like other anti-empire truths, this natural rejection of tyranny by the people was reported out of utter inability to hide it.

Outright omission was not an option, so AP et al. resorted to the next easiest way of dismissing it: reason it away from what it was and into a description friendlier to the sensibilities of U.S. policy. (What else?) The defeated bailout plan was simply portrayed as the wrong government action, i.e., the wrong kind of institutionalized violence against every individual, as if any unconstitutional federal action — much less the same destructive means that facilitated the current situation — can be sanely considered a potential solution.

Again: out of sight, out of mind. The state’s justification for existing is that its existence never comes into question. And even if it does, it will not be an encroachment; nor will the state’s actions amount to aggression. Win-win.

To those who understand the most fundamental political struggle as being between the state (central tyranny) and the people (individual liberty), every action taken by the federal (central) government that does not promote individual liberty is an expansion of the state and thus an encroachment on the people. But, to a properly conditioned public, [1] the Great Central Authority is unquestionably innocuous, infallible, or even salvation.

The condition fostered in the false choice provides the reader a perspective absent of critical (esp. anti-state) thought; comfort is taken in the absence of a people v. state struggle. To suggest no action, or negative (self-diminishing) action, by the Almighty Gubment would be to defy conventional wisdom and deny the corporate state its enrichment, ultimately threatening an effective death for the state. That principled stance is portrayed as fringe or omitted altogether because, furthermore, by not suggesting the state as being part of the solution, it naturally sets the state in opposition to the individual. The resulting moral contrast inevitably casts the state (e.g., the central government, its cronies, and their “ways and means”) as, in fact, the problem.

And when the people see the problem as being the state itself, the people, unlike the state, do not (necessarily) throw money at it.

As an unofficial but nevertheless approved PR agent for the state, a corporate news medium’s unofficial role here is to subtly divert the people’s crosshairs away from the state and toward just about everything else: borrowers, lenders, business owners, the market, Dems, Reps, libs, cons, de-regulation, capitalism, taxpayers, corporations (some of whose practices, though ill-advised and at times criminal, are subsidized and encouraged by the state), and so on.

Following are recent examples.

Fallacy: The 2008 bailouts and nationalizations of financial institutions are unprecedented in the history of U.S. government intervention.
Omission: FDR-era New Deal programs; Lincoln-era economic and military wars against the people; the Wilson-era Federal Reserve Act, the Sixteenth Amendment (Income Tax), WWI, and conscription; the long and slow death of the gold standard and now the dollar (!); Truman’s Korea, LBJ’s Vietnam, and Bush’s Iraq; and so on.

Particularly pertinent to current events is the ”Great Gold Robbery of 1933.”

In March 1933, the federal government declared the existence of a banking emergency that required a swift and sweeping response. It would not be the last time that American leaders used the pretext of emergency to consolidate their power. But the federal government’s actions in this instance—confiscating American citizens’ gold—amounted to an especially egregious power grab. Americans were forced to hand over all their gold, assuming that it would be returned after the economic crisis had passed. The federal government, however, hid its intentions every step of the way, never returned the gold, and began its career of inflation that has harmed Americans ever since. And the average high school student has no idea any of this even happened. [2]

If constantly told by the supposedly most-authoritative sources that the current looting of taxpayers is an historic “banking emergency,” will the reader not be encouraged to feel that the situation perhaps does require government violence, or, that the tyranny is in fact only temporary, as President Bush has ridiculously asserted and as the MSM never doubt, or, that their money (or their real money, in 1933) “would be returned after the economic crisis had passed”?

Why not? After all, no historical context is provided to challenge the suggested urgency or the assertion of uniqueness; so, as far as the average MSM reader knows, the federal government has never systematically extracted life, liberty, or property from law-abiding U.S. citizens on a mass scale. If they did, they didn’t lie or cartelize to get away with it.

They certainly wouldn’t do that. If they did, well, it was for our own good, right?

Tsk tsk tsk…

And why does an “average high school student” have “no idea that any of this happened”?

As a supplement to the indomitable flood of MSM state-worship, the unconstitutional U.S. Department of Education’s primary function (besides looting taxpayers for services not rendered) is to contract and oversee the production of authorized biographies of the state — a.k.a., textbooks — which naturally (predictably) conceal facts that contradict the phony image of the infallible central government, permeating minds with tall tales of heroism and “patriotism” from ”our great leaders.”

For the remainder of each weekday, corporate news media take over, reinforcing what was ”learned” in the “classroom.”

Fallacy: Politicians who both oppose the bailouts and face an election challenge this year are all hoarding their seats. (Therefore, it is safe to suggest that they are not really voting on any moral or legal principle.)
Omission: Corporatist cronyism, federal malfeasance, and actually-principled opposition.

Dozens of those voting for the bailout have also received thousands or even millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the same financial institutions being bailed out. This whoredom of state is not critically highlighted anywhere in corporate media news reports.

And then there’s the cartel. Even the New York Times (member, AP cartel) had to ponder the obvious web of fascist power being weaved into the U.S. Treasury Department by Secretary Paulson. [3]

The lengthy article on the front page of the business section names the cronies, quotes their antagonists, and even implies corporatism. But — and this is the key — it never questions the very role of the government and constitutionality of policy. Furthermore, those who would make anything of the obvious malfeasance are “conspiracy theorists” (pp. 3–4). And oh, btw, who are the defenders and promoters of the Paulson-Goldman corporatism? Fellow Goldman-Sachs “alumni” and others from “a very small, close-knit world,” (p. 4) of course. (How rich is it, then, that when a government agency is supposedly compiling evidence against someone — like, say, itself! — it is unquestionably an ”investigation”?)

The MSM are hardly beyond playing the motive-impugning blame game.

On the same day the bailout bill was voted down in the House, AP intensified its bidding for the state, pointing to statistics showing that most members of Congress in danger of losing their seats next month voted nay on the inconceivable act.

Two-thirds of Congress’ most vulnerable members . . . chose to protect their seats on Election Day rather than follow their party leaders and vote for an unpopular economic bailout plan. . . . The pressures those lawmakers faced was [sic] summed up by Rep. Don Young of Alaska . . . Currently under an ethics cloud, Young voted no mostly because an overwhelming majority of the constituents who called his office were against the bailout. . . . Like Young, lawmakers who had the most to lose risked the least on Monday. [4]

While the data may be true and pertinent on a political level, it can not account for AP’s suspect refusal to quote people like Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), whose seat is not challenged, yet who still voted against the measure on moral and legal (i.e., not political) grounds. (Perhaps Dr. Paul’s career-long principled stand against tyranny provides very little entertainment value.)

Always quoted are those whose explanations for their votes give the MSM a chance to reinforce popular thinking about the role of the federal government. The words of perceivable scoundrels are taken without regard to their party or which way they voted, as long as their actions and words do not cast the pro-intervention position in an indefensibly bad light (i.e., the truth). The accounts of those whose actions reveal fallacies and hypocrisy in the system are politically marginalized (Young) or omitted altogether (Paul).

Take, too, the case of Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who opened his bailout speech saying it is “tremendously ironic” that the Senate was where it was, doing what it was doing (voting on such a thing). He then requested that Article I, Section 8 of the United States Constitution, as well as the Tenth Amendment, be entered into the record, pointing out that such federal interventions are unconstitutional and violate states’ rights, respectively. Nearing the end of his speech, he declared, “we’re committing malpractice.”

The “practicing physician” then voted aye.

Still, you won’t find Coburn’s ironically aye-ronic actions analyzed in any AP news report — perhaps because AP might then have to concede that the bailout is immoral and supremely illegal, and that the act of voting for the bailout, therefore, is grossly unethical. All of which would have clashed with the rest of AP’s narration.

Fallacy: The government must ”do something” to “save the market.” Look at the erratic stock exchange!
Omission: Interventionism by the federal government and the federal reserve is the cause.

With every bell at the stock exchange, the hucksters have another lever between the people and the truth. Oh, and, another win-win.

On the day of the failed bailout vote, the stock market dropped 778 points. In came the hucksters to tell us that the drop confirmed that taxpayers will be worse off in the long run if Congress doesn’t “do something” now. A few days later, bolstered by the media-spun hysteria and bound by corporatist cronyism, the Senate voted on a bailout measure similar to the House version, only with an extra few-hundred pages of legal jargon (power grabs) and added “sweeteners” (bribes). It passed by an unconstitutional 74–25.

The stock market dropped another 350 points the next day, prompting corporate media to play PR agent in full damage-control effect, pointing to the drop as another sign that the House of Representatives must act quickly.

“133 House Republicans . . . joined 95 Democrats in rejecting the measure Monday, sending the stock market plummeting. . . . Fears about an economic downturn sent the Dow Jones industrials down nearly 350 points Thursday, three days after Monday’s historic 778-point drop. [5]

Vote nay and stocks fall? Do something. (The state wins.) Vote aye and stocks fall? Do more of the same. (The state wins.) Hmm. You’d think there might be a better way of ”saving the market.”

How could the bill’s House defeat be responsible for ”sending the stock market plummeting,” when in fact the probable outcome was known for over a week via the people’s unanimous petitioning and subsequent commitments by members of Congress to act accordingly?

A forecast of defeat for the House bill certainly had a more calming effect than did Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s fear-laden connivance (blackmail) a week earlier in front of Congressional committees. What do you expect when the banking cartel has threatened bad things to happen to the people if the people, through the federal government, do not bail them out of their racketeering debts?

It’s easy to criticize the market when the stock market is so erratic: simply omit the cause and divert. But the powerful influence that Bernanke and his “employer” have over the business cycle can not be overstated. Add to that not only Paulson’s crony-corporatism, but also his newly pirated powers over the economy. The mere suggestion of ground-shaking (or “unprecedented”) intervention by this monopoly on the financial markets can be enough to spur on a small recession on its own.

It matters little whether the necessity for the plunder is real or a fraud (which it is), even if Congress rises ethically against the tyranny. In fear, people will ”hoard” (i.e., pull, hold, exercise ownership of) their assets or sell them for fear that theirs, too, will turn illiquid (worthless, destroyed) tomorrow. They know (or, they should be able to estimate, according to the risk) that, either way, some violence will be leveled against them or their property.

When townsfolk find out that their town’s businesses are being extorted by the mafia, they will do things for their own welfare and safety: shoppers will avoid local businesses or sell their property and move out of town; vendors will pull their products and cancel, sell, or buy out of contracts; and so on.

But let’s say that the mafia told all the business owners they only had to voluntarily pay the mafia for “security,” or better yet, if the mafia left town? What would happen to the local economy then?

Never mind! Move along! You’re not capable of understanding these things; that’s why the mafia is around, to tell you that too much economic freedom will bring only doom and gloom in the long run!

‘Regulators’

The systems by which mafiosi run things is bad enough for a local economy.

But it surely is a boon for the mafia! Oh, and, the government, whose most influential members are fellow mafiosi (a.k.a., regulators) anyway.

Some Sheriff!

The soundest advice for a truly free and prosperous economy — indeed, the advice proved correct, time, time, and again — is for the federal government to stay out of the way.

Voluntary association (e.g., the voluntary contract) is a vital requisite for the health of any free entry, free enterprise economy. This principle is antithetical to the statist agenda and therefore has been dying ever since the Republic was born. The latest accomplices to the death of the free market are the recent ”bailouts” and “buy-ups.” Alas, Hamilton’s Curse is stronger than ever.

But under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government is only allowed to enforce private contracts — not to restructure or void them, or mandate their terms. All government interventions not explicitly granted in the Constitution are tyrannical and cancerous to a free society. The mere existence of a centralized, economy-management force is an affront to economic liberty and free market capitalism.

“Not so,” says the conventional wisdom of the snake oil variety.

It’s the “murkiness of the market for credit swaps,” says AP. “The swaps are completely unregulated, prone to sloppy documentation and traded without a central clearinghouse.” [6]

And what sources inform AP’s opinion? Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (regulator); The Wall Street Journal (statist rag); Eric Dinallo, superintendent of the New York State Insurance Department (lobbyist, regulator); Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (regulator); Delora Jee, “a top regulator at the Office for the Comptroller of the Currency” (regulator); and last but not least, “Financial commentator Ben Stein” (pro-regulation statist tool).

Curiously, we are not graced by AP’s advisory opinion of what is the systemic cause of the so-called murkiness. We are just supposed to jump into the arms of the state and its regulators. Why? Because the regulators and their lapdog media told us it is scary out there.

Boo!

Meanwhile, the real culprits (you guessed it: regulators and tools) retain the lectern as authoritative sources:

The Federal Reserve reported record emergency lending to banks and investment firms, fresh evidence of the credit troubles squeezing the country. . . .

If the [billionaire bailout] plan works, advocates say, that would allow frozen credit to begin flowing again and prevent a serious recession. [7]

It’s mind-boggling that anyone — much less, the “world’s largest and most trusted source of news and information” — would mention the Federal Reserve, stock plummet, and credit troubles in the same report, yet make nothing of their cause-symptom-symptom relationship.

That AP even includes the words of those whose pet government interventions got us into this mess — while ignoring the few economists and members of Congress who have been correctly warning against these federal interventions all along — should cause readers to wonder whether AP is an arm of the state.

It is from the perspective of the corporate state which comes the implication that those who opposed the national-socialism and fascism are simply either “angry Republicans” (AP) or stray liberals; all of whom need to be reeled in.

Vote-counters in both parties planned to huddle first thing Friday morning to compare notes on coming up with the dozen or so supporters needed to reverse the stunning defeat. . . . Congressional leaders worked over wayward colleagues wherever they could find them. [8]

Yes. Unfortunately, in this day and age it is ”stunning” when representatives actually obey the Constitution and defend the people with their votes. In that sense, those who voted against the unconstitutional bailout are indeed “wayward.”

“But this is what the American people really want,” suggest corporate news media and other lobbyists who naturally fail to account for their own propagandistic influence over the same American people.

Is there a more nefarious connivance?

To further advocate the plundering of Average Jane and Joe, AP released a report full of testimonials from members of Congress who are switching their vote to aye — supposedly with heart-wrenching reluctance. We’re told that “lawmakers responded to an awakening among voters to the pain ahead of them if stability isn’t restored to the tottering economy.” [9]

Untruth-to-Reality Translation: A massive majority of U.S. citizens are opposed to the immoral and illegal scam; but the moneyed interests who would benefit from the bailouts are the same ones that have ultimately kept the politicians in power with campaign contributions and the like. Their lobbyists can, and do, vote. So in that sense, yes, there was an “awakening among voters.”

Selective wording is rarely effective as it is with the word voters. The richest and the most criminal are voters. At one point, Charles Manson was an eligible voter. Paulson’s cartel is comprised of voters. CEOs of bailed-out, failed institutions are voters. Poor suckers who buy the MSM’s spoon-fed state-worshiping are voters. U.S. citizens who promote a transformation of the United States into a national-socialist shadow of itself are still voters.

By quoting and narrating only the pro-bailout arguments, and by omitting the inhuman ravaging each state action represents, corporate news media assume a position in favor of immoral and illegal federal interventions at the taxpayers’ expense, against the supreme rule of law and the near-unanimous will of the people. AP is Advocating Piracy.

Why?

Throughout U.S. history, government has played the role of reluctant tyrant, acting on allegedly good intentions, only to contribute “unforeseeably” to the demise of the very people they intended to save (and then some). In a sick perversion of justice and reason, each of these so-called blunders is fashioned into the losing end of a false choice, which is then offered as reason for the government to intervene further.

In the bailouts, as with the War on Iraq, the American (and Iraqi) people are told their pillaging is for their own good. In both cases, their livelihoods and liberties are sacrificed for the sake of glittering generalities: “security,” “prosperity,” and “freedom.” Yet, every result sees the people suffering and moving closer to serfdom under oligarchy. In any case, tyranny is easily spun into salvation via the propaganda mechanisms touched on herein.

The state must maintain a veneer of harmlessness if it is to go on enslaving its subjects (i.e., existing) and enriching itself. When the MSM can keep the people unwittingly fighting each other and inhibiting themselves with trivia, it becomes that much easier. But ultimately, the unspoken working relationship between media and government is a matter of self-preservation.

Corporate news media, whose parent and sister corporations are profiting from any government intervention you can name, come and go with the political and economic systems off which they exist and thrive. AP, especially, relies on advertising revenue to stay in the black. A great bulk of that ad revenue comes from the very financial institutions that benefit from these criminal government interventions. So naturally, for their financial lives, AP & Co. would be wise to set the fulcrum where government policy enjoys the most — indeed, indomitable — leverage over its antitheses.

What, you expected them to report honestly, or even critically of the state?

They are the state.

_ _ _ _ _

1. For example, people who sincerely believe that the reason Abraham Lincoln invaded his own country was to abolish slavery or to defend the Constitution, or, that an all-powerful national government is a founding ideal of the Republic. The word majority understates this demographic, thanks to corporately- and federally-funded think tanks [sic] and, more insidiously, the U.S. Department of Education.
2. Thomas E. Woods, Jr. & Kevin R. C. Gutzman, Who Killed the Constitution? (New York: Crown Forum, 2008), p. 83.
3. Julie Creswell & Ben White, “The Guys From ‘Government Sachs,’” New York Times, 10/17/2008
4. thefreelibrary.com/Many+vulnerable+lawmakers+said+’no’+to+bailout-a01611175661
5. ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ioHc80xKMiATnqCpK0cDKJzk_nPQD93IS8IG0
6. ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5iC0SLcGgSi9dd3lGGQeIXOjvH8fwD93UFR380
7. cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/02/national/main4493601.shtml
8. ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5ioHc80xKMiATnqCpK0cDKJzk_nPQD93IS8IG0
9. Ibid.

Source: http://detainthis.wordpress.com/2008/10/27/advocating-piracy/

How can You be in Ten Places at Once when you are Nowhere at All?

Tuesday, October 28

Les Visible

Three Card Monte is a simple game that’s based on deception and greed. No one comes down the sidewalk and wins at Three Card Monte unless they work for the people running the game. The point of that is to give the impression that winning is possible. This game has been going on for a long, long time and still, people are routinely sucked into it. This game is a simple street version of much more complex games that are run on the public every day. There’s the ‘disinfo game’. This is where you give people a certain amount of information and leave out other information which completely changes the meaning of the information they were given. Another is to rework the information or manufacture it. Another is to give the information a headline which is not reflected by the information in the text.

Information is key to understanding conditions and one’s place in the midst of them. People are made rich or ruined, live or die, each day according to possessing or not possessing the right information or for believing things that aren’t true. It’s like faulty highway signs… or missing highway signs. One of the key ingredients in this is whether the public, with any percentage of real or fabricated information is out to gain a personal profit from it, as in, “There’s one born every minute.” I’m not talking about survival here, that’s an acceptable motive… most of the time.

Let’s look at some big examples of this over the last decade. We’re told that Bin Laden planned and carried out the 9/11 attacks and then we’re given an exceedingly brief and mostly false resume on Bin Laden. We see where the one group of people who profited least from the event was the group Bin Laden represented. Then we see who it is, if we’re looking, that did profit from the event. These are the people dealing the cards. The shills that draw the suckers into the game are members of the press and those speaking for the people who are dealing the cards.

We’re told that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and model airplanes that could carry chemical weapons over the American landscape. An assault is launched on a sovereign nation without provocation and no weapons are found. Then we see, if we’re looking, that private companies connected to the administration, along with arms merchants, mercenaries and bankers are the people who profited. The game is exposed even by those shilling for the dealers; it’s that blatant and then… they move the table down the street and set up the same game about Iran and the same fools are lining up to put their money down.

We can apply this to the recent elections; the financial crisis, the Katrina affair and to just about anything that has happened for the last decade and beyond and it becomes glaringly apparent that criminals are in control of America and most of the governments of the world who operate with impunity because the public wants to be where they are or believes that the queen is wherever it looks like it is supposed to be or the pea is under the obvious shell.

How the public was groomed like a ten year old girl by a neighborhood pedophile is easily seen in the daily operations of the way information is presented and in the image of the culture as it is presented in the entertainment venues, the fashion industry and the advertising media to shape the general view about what is right and wrong; about what is desirable and beneficial. What happens is that the parents of the ten year old girl become willing assistants in the prostitution of their daughter and the next thing you know the whole family has a reality TV show.

The existence of a so-called Al Qaeda has been roundly debunked and discredited by the people who created it. High ranking members of the CIA have flat out stated that there is no actual Al Qaeda. It was created for the purpose of launching wars for corporate profit and for creating a climate for corporate rule which is known as fascism. This is why Bin Laden, who has been dead for years, can suddenly appear all over the map and how “high ranking members” of Al Qaeda can be killed on a weekly basis.

It’s all part of a plan but the full scope of that plan is not apparent to most people. Meanwhile something unexpected has been happening. I won’t go into what that is because it enters into the realm of metaphysics; an area as real as physics but not as readily available to the senses. One could learn a great deal by studying the nature of bandwidths, waves/rays… radio waves, x-rays, gamma rays. Once could learn a great deal looking into something like that. I’m going to give you a link as an example of things that may or may not be going on behind the scenes. I also want to point out that the attack on Syria is much more monumental than the people standing around the Three Card Monte table may imagine.

The point of the Syrian attack is to set the stage for a reaction by false flag operatives posing as Syrians or Iranians. This is to be accomplished by the actual bad guys who are the Israelis, the Americans and The British. A lot of people know about this and according to this article, that “may or may not be” completely accurate or comprehensive, there’s a lot going on behind the boarded up storefront behind the Three Card Monte game. It is a certainty that all kinds of shit is going to hit the fan shortly. There’s a power struggle going on now between two forces that want control of the table. Neither of these forces may have the general public’s best interests in mind but one of them is a great deal more evil than the other.

This Syrian incursion that killed mostly children didn’t have anything to do with stopping militants from crossing the border. It’s about hiding the missing queen who may not even be on the table. Another thing is that Israel is seriously pissed about the good things going on between Lebanon and Syria. You have to remember that it was the Mossad who killed Hariri according to French Intelligence and many other sources and you can find detailed follow-ups that lay it all out… if you want to look. The Syrians had to leave Lebanon and then Israel committed mass murder on Lebanon.

Now you’re going to get one of the prime architects of the 9/11 attack back in charge of Israel, Bennie Netan-yahoo. That can’t be good. But as I said… something’s going rogue in the mix. There’s no telling what’s likely to happen or who’s watching now. There’s no telling who’s going to cooperate or not in the chilling operations presently underway. It’s half, “Seven Days in May” and half “Dr. Strangelove”. The thing about ‘evil’ is that it doesn’t only contend with ‘good’; whatever that may be. It contends with itself as well.

I’m going to leave this as it is right now. I don’t want to say any more except to wish each and every one of you the best of fortune and safe location. When you see what isn’t real popping up all over the place when it was never there to begin with, just remember the nature of the game itself.

For those of you who missed my recent radio broadcast you can now hear it along with the others by clicking on this link. There’s a new link in the side menu as well, called “Visible’s Radio Shows.”

Watch closely and remember… at no time does the hand leave the arm.

Rocket Ship

Posted by Visible
Source: http://smokingmirrors.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-can-you-be-in-ten-places-at-once.html

Gun, ammo sales increase as election nears

Las Vegas

Several gun stores in the valley have seen an increase in firearm and ammunition sales lately. News 3's Dan Ball explains why the election and the economic crisis have people pulling the trigger.

Jeffrey Bergman and his sister came to the Gun Store on Tropicana to practice their aim.

"We've had things like break-ins in the neighborhood," says Jeffrey. "We're concerned about the increase in crime in the area and protecting ourselves."

Gun Store employees like Randy Formanek say they are seeing more and more folks like Jeff come into the store.

"They see a necessity to arm themselves so that they can defend themselves," explains Randy. "You're going to see more and more people without jobs, more and more economic desperation. When people get desperate, they do stupid things, and you need to prepare yourself for the eventuality of that."

Besides self-protection, gun experts and gun users at the Gun Store say they are also concerned about what the next President may do about gun control.

"Some people are coming in due to the election coming up - kind of to hedge their bets, or get what they want before it may be banned," says Randy. "The concern is that the price of guns and ammo are going to skyrocket with any kind of ban in the future."

Predicting a crime is impossible, and whether or not stricter gun regulations are on the way is still unknown.

But Jeffrey says for now, he plans to continue to exercise his right to keep and bear arms.

"I'd rather be prepared and not have it happen, than not be prepared and have it happen."

The experts at the Gun Store recommend that anyone purchasing a gun take a safety course before using it.

KVBC Las Vegas

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

The War on Guns

When did self defense become morally wrong?

October 27

by David Codrea,
Read the article: Cleveland Gun Rights Examiner

Remind me again – Who won the Cold War?

The Greanville Journal

October 27th, 2008

Despite his obsession with prosecuting the Vietnam War to a victorious conclusion, Lyndon B. Johnson passed legislation that the Right could denounce today as flaming communism.

By David Michael Green

10/26/08

Okay, you’re gonna need to fasten your seatbelt for this one.

Here’s a quiz for you: Who was the third most ‘socialist’ president in American history?

Hmmm… Hard to say, eh? I think we can all agree that Franklin Roosevelt, who brought the first incarnation of the welfare state to America in the form of the New Deal, qualifies as the most socialist of American presidents. He was angrily decried as such by the rabid right (of course) when he gave Americans jobs and labor organizing protection and pension benefits. They were accurate to call his programs socialist, though it was a laugh then, as it is now, to label the country by that term. All modern industrial democracies are mixed economies, with elements of both private sector (market) and public sector (government) activity. The question is never whether they’re mixed - they all are - the question is what is the mix. And America, of any country on this list, has always had the least socialist mix of all.

Anyhow, I think we can all also pretty much agree that number two on our list of presidents who most moved the American system of political economy to the left would be Lyndon Johnson. LBJ declared war on poverty in his Great Society program, and he also had some major goodies for the middle class as well, like Medicare. By the time Johnson was done, the American welfare state had been expanded considerably, though it still paled beside those of other comparable countries in the West. All of these, for starters, had national healthcare systems, and of course America has never quite gotten there.

After the 1960s, the liberal project stalled and ran into a wall of regressivism which has continued until this day. In fact, just about literally until this very day, as we are now watching that ideological experiment crumble before our eyes, and not a moment too soon.

So who, then, has been the third most socialist president in American history? Before solving that mystery, let’s take a moment to define terms. What do we mean by ‘socialism’? For me, that system of political economy revolves around four key concepts. First, there is a big welfare state. That means that there are government programs - not provided to some people by charity, or the workplace, or individual purchase, but provided by the government for all - covering so-called cradle-to-grave benefits: healthcare, paid maternity leave, pension, unemployment insurance, education, etc., all down the line. Second, there are relatively high levels of taxation, built into a rather steeply progressive taxation system. This accomplishes at least two things. First, it produces the revenue necessary to pay for the first plank, the generous benefits for all. And, second, it levels the distribution of wealth in society to an acceptable degree, so that you don’t wind up looking like a banana republic, with ninety-eight percent of the national wealth concentrated in the hands of two percent of the population.

The third major component of socialism, as I see it, is regulation of the private sector. Yes, there is a market economy, and it is even likely to be bigger than the public sector portion of the economy. But that does not mean that private actors may do whatever they want. They may not make a profit while externalizing their costs in the form of air, water, chemical or other forms of pollution. They may not employ underage children. They may not pay slave wages. They may not prevent workers from organizing. They may not deny them vacation time or sick leave or maternity time off. They may not provide dangerous working conditions in order to maximize profits. What we know from human psychology and from historical experience is that corporations will do all these things and more, left to their own devices. Maybe you’ve noticed lately? The regulatory function of the state is to represent the people’s interests, and to make sure they always trump the more narrow special interests.

Again, America is different from the rest of the West in this regard only in scale, not in kind. We don’t mandate six week annual vacations or a fair union organizing environment, to be sure. But the principle of regulation in the public interest is widely subscribed to everywhere but among the nutty right (or should I just say the right, and avoid redundant adjectives?). Just ask airplane passengers whether they want an FAA inspecting for safety, or if they prefer to let airlines struggling to cut costs in order to remain profitable to handle that however they see fit, perhaps even subcontracting it out to the lowest bidder. Ask them if they want an FDA to inspect the food and medicines they imbibe, or should we all just do it on the honor system. Not only do Americans want regulation, but I’m pretty sure they’d be rather horrified to see how little of it actually remains in place today, and the degree to which what’s left is working on behalf of industries supposedly being regulated instead of the public interest - including at the FAA and FDA.

Finally, socialism - especially classic socialism of the mid-twentieth century - involves the actual ownership of major industries by the government, particularly big, important ones. These so-called ‘commanding heights of the economy’ - transportation, communications, mining, housing, etc. - were deemed too crucial to the welfare of society to be left in the hands of private actors, and thus were often owned and run by the government.

It’s probably fair to say that - at least as of a decade ago - no Western democracy is today as socialist as it used to be. The definite trend of the hated Thatcher-Reagan era has been emphatically toward the other direction on all four of these indices.

George W. Bush: the “improbable socialist.” Although he intended the expansion of Medicare as a gift to his “base” of plutocrats, mainly Big Pharma interests and private insurers, and crippled the government’s ability to negotiate better drug prices for volume purchases, the net effect of the drug assistance program to seniors was an expansion of benefits for many.

But at least now we can finally answer our pregnant question: Which American president has been the most socialist of all, apart from FDR and LBJ? The (really, really) surprising answer is: George W. Bush. What makes this surprising is not only his rhetoric, but also many of his programs, which are completely antithetical to socialism. This is a guy straight out of the eighteenth century, on a good day. More often it’s the thirteenth. Tax law revisions provide one example, representing a massive transfer of wealth from the middle class and the next generations to the already wealthy. These are hardly socialist in nature. Nor is slashing regulation of industry or undermining union organizing efforts at every turn right out of Trotsky’s playbook.

But Bush has actually expanded the welfare state in America far more than anyone since LBJ in the 1960s. In one sense - comparatively speaking - this was hardly difficult to do, since the theme of the ensuing decades has been retrenchment at every turn. For Ronald Reagan that meant counting ketchup as a vegetable in his administration’s efforts to scale back student lunch programs, even while Nancy was simultaneously splurging on the finest new china for the White House. Even (alleged) Democrats got into the act, as Bill Clinton wiped away American welfare programs wholesale, in order to win himself an election he already had in the bag. Meanwhile, he spent loads of his political capital on trade agreements like NAFTA and WTO, which undermined organized (and even disorganized) labor in America. In both cases, Clinton said ‘We’ll come back to it later and fix the flaws in the original legislation’. But he never did, presumably because he was too busy being diddled by Newt for having diddled Monica.

All that said, however, Bush’s prescription drug legislation for seniors was the biggest addition to the American welfare state since the Great Society. And not just by default either, because nobody else was doing anything in the intervening years. This was a gigantic program, to the tune of about $800 billion in cost. So, what in the world was a regressive monster like Bush doing supporting a wholesale socialist expansion of the American welfare state? Well, in large part he was pandering to seniors, who tend to vote in disproportionately high numbers, especially in Florida, which - no one needs reminding - is a swing state that the GOP needs to win in order to capture the presidency. But an even better answer is that this was socialism of a different kind - corporate socialism - massively benefitting pharmaceutical and insurance corporations.

In an incredibly brazen act of legislative transfer of wealth, Bush and his congressional allies inserted two provisions into the bill which ran absolutely and completely counter to the national interest, and to everything they claim about how capitalism works, instead privileging these industries at taxpayer expense, and without the slightest hint of subtlety about any of it. One of those provisions actually prevented the federal government from using its wholesale buying clout in order to negotiate lower prices for pharmaceuticals they purchase. Thus Medicare (which handles this program) pays more than double on average than is paid by the Veterans Administration - another arm of the very same government which is not similarly restricted - for the exact same drugs. The other lovely provision prohibited the acquisition of drugs from Canada, where they are considerably cheaper in cost. If Bush had written into the bill a requirement that all Americans must fall seriously ill at least twice per year, he could hardly have been more obvious about his game. Oh, and did I mention that Republican Congressman Billy Tauzin, who shepherded the bill through Congress, retired immediately afterward to accept his prize of a two million dollar a year job leading the main lobbying group for Big Pharma?

So, how come right-wing kooks in Congress and on the radio didn’t object to this very socialist program? One reason was because they were pandering to seniors as well. And another was because they tend to fall in lock-step behind the fuhrer, like good Republicans are wont to do. Meanwhile, of course, corporate welfare is not exactly a foreign concept to these goons, either. But there’s another explanation as well, which is that some of them actually did kick and holler, and so this most dishonest of presidents lied to members of his own party in Congress, guaranteeing to them that the total price tag for the program would not exceed $400 billion. Why that should be acceptable, in principle, to the supposed free market purists of the right escapes me, but it was nevertheless enough to convince several otherwise recalcitrant Republicans to put the legislation over the top. Truth be told, however (and what a concept that is, eh?), the lies ran even deeper than that. Richard Foster, the Medicare Chief Actuary within the administration who had run the numbers, knew full well what the real cost of the Boy King’s program would be - almost double what Bush was telling anybody, including his GOP pals in Congress. So he got a warning from the White House via his boss, Thomas Scully (who was also negotiating his new job as a lobbyist for drug companies, just as this bill was being considered by Congress): If you talk to any member of Congress about this, you will lose your job. Like the legions of pathetic and self-interested functionnaires whom bullies like Bush and Cheney depend on for success (yes, Colin Powell, I’m talking about you), Foster put his paycheck ahead of the national interest and kept his mouth shut.

And so this massive expansion of the American welfare state - the biggest in four decades - became law under this most regressive of presidents, at his insistence. But the prescription drug bill was just a warm-up act for Karl Marx Bush, one of America’s all time most socialist of presidents. Now that his ‘free market’ (read corporate-servicing) schemes have all blown up in all of our faces, he has not hesitated to turn to - wait for it, now - the government, to bail out the fast imploding private sector. Yes, that evil monster that Ronald Reagan induced many of our more cognitively-challenged comrades to believe was “the problem, not the solution”, turns out to be a pretty handy little life boat to have in your back pocket when Adam Smith’s ‘invisible hand’ was most recently seen, not efficiently allocating resources in the market, but rather reaching over and flushing the toilet on the global economy. All of a sudden we see our perennial exponents of the virtues of capitalism now giving government hand-outs to taxpayers in hopes of stimulating the economy, bailing-out failed corporations and entire industries, and now effectively nationalizing banks. This would be a pretty breathtaking sight, indeed, had not the last eight years more or less already taken away whatever breath we had left.

Of course, it’s really only astonishing if you ever bought into the rhetoric in the first place. It’s kinda like Iraq. If you think that Bush invaded that hapless country to get rid of a WMD threat to American security, or to bring democracy to 25 million Iraqis - oops, sorry, make that now 24 million - then you’re likely to also think that regressives actually believe in a free market, and actually do so because of some theoretical proof or empirical evidence that it is a superior system to the alternatives. The reality is that it is instead simply the rationale du jour for kleptocracy. These guys are masterful at starting with a conclusion (which invariably involves their personal greed), and then inventing some pack of lies or another to sell it. Apart, perhaps, from the decidedly un-free market provisions of the prescription drug bill, nothing proves this quite so well as the massive government intrusions into the economy of the last several weeks.

Everybody all of a sudden got real quiet about ideology. That’s because the true ideology is simply greed, and government is there to facilitate that in whatever way works best. In this case, it was capitalism on the way up, and socialism on the way down. The privatization of profit, and the socialization of risk. The right hand grabs a fistful on the good days, and the left hand grabs another on the bad.

All that good old-fashioned rhetoric about the joys of the free market was about as sincerely believed as the notion that Sarah Palin is eminently qualified to be president. It was just there to keep the hoi polloi bought into a myth, and thus to prevent them from ever demanding their fair share of the pie.

In some ways of course, these slogans lauding the virtues of laissez faire capitalism are no more ridiculous now than they ever were. Consider this. You’re sitting in a sixth grade history course sometime in the 26th century (of course the ‘humans’ then will all be machine hybrids with memory modules, and thus no need for education - but let’s leave that aside for now). So, little Jimmy Jetpack raises his hand to ask the teacher a question:

.

JIMMY: “Um, Ms. Saturnalia, I don’t really understand this whole Cold War period we’ve been discussing. You said that the two superpowers were on a hair-trigger, with giant arsenals of nuclear weapons aimed at each other, and that all life on the entire planet would have been extinguished if those rockets were fired, right?”

MS. SATURNALIA: “That’s right, Jimmy. What is it that you don’t understand?”

JIMMY: “Well, um, just exactly what were they fighting over that was so important that they were willing to put at risk an entire planet?”

MS. SATURNALIA: “Oh well, that’s easy, Jimmy. You see, back then, before humans finally learned that socialism is the best economic system, one side wanted the government to have more intervention in the economy, and the other wanted it to have less. And they got so angry with each other over who was right, they almost had a cataclysmic thermonuclear exchange.”

JIMMY: “Oh. I, uh… see. Ms. S, they weren’t very smart in the twentieth century, were they?”

MS. SATURNALIA: “Well, no Jimmy, now that you mention it, they weren’t. Unless, of course, you compare them to the people of the twenty-first century. But that’s next week’s topic.”

.

Some might argue that this is an ungenerous reading of the era just gone by. That what was really at stake in the Cold War was a battle over freedom, not just a clash between the economic ideologies of capitalism and communism. It’s certainly true that the Soviet Union was far more oppressive than the United States was. On the other hand, that didn’t seem to matter so much during World War II, when we were happy to ally with Uncle Joe Stalin himself in order to squash those, er, other totalitarians. And - on the other, other hand - it didn’t seem to matter so much during the Cold War either, when we backed every repressive neocolonialist regime we could find, from Nicaragua to South Africa to Vietnam and back again. Or when we simply installed our own - in Iran, Guatemala or Chile - if the existing government was a little too, um… free and, er… democratic.

.

Well, whatever. In any case, we won the Cold War (whoopee!), so that’s all for the history books now.

Or did we?

.

You have to admit, it’s more than a bit odd to see the United States, that bastion of capitalism, led by George W. Bush, that great champion of free market ideology, now massively plunging itself deeply into good old-fashioned socialism in the form of increased welfare state benefits, bailouts, and the nationalization of major industries. Add that to existing programs and those coming around the corner, plus increased regulation, and pretty soon we won’t be far off from being… France! - the nightmare scenario of those sick things on the right. Somehow, in their addled brains, when George W. Bush massively expands government healthcare coverage for seniors that’s a good thing, but, say, providing it to children or to all of us represents evil socialism, the very thing which will destroy the fiber of this mighty country. Nevermind that ‘mighty’ seems to ring more melodious in a sentence with ‘China’ these days than with ‘America’. Only people twisted enough to think that the democratic socialism practiced by contemporary Europeans is some sort of decadent system produced by Satan himself (”My god, they get paid maternity leave!! There’s healthcare for all!! They work far fewer hours per week and have guaranteed seven-week vacations!! This is just wrong!! This humanity is inhuman!!”) could also applaud Bush for doing exactly the same thing for which they’d certainly excoriate Obama for doing.

.

But make no mistake about it, the American system of political economy has already begun a hard and long overdue tilt to port. As Americans become increasingly exposed to the joys of a globalized market economy, their prior resistance to sensible solutions will melt as fast as their paychecks already have. It won’t be long before there is the rough equivalent of national healthcare here, plus a return to more progressive taxation, fair labor laws and necessary levels of regulation. People can pretend all they want if it makes them happy, but this will nevertheless be a mild form of socialism, not hugely unlike the dreaded European model. And if Americans ever knew the truth about how their system stacks up to France’s or Germany’s or Sweden’s - in terms of leisure time, in terms of lack of stress from worrying about healthcare or education or retirement costs, in terms of health, longevity or infant mortality, and on and on and on - you might see a serious swing to the left on economic questions. All this is possible in an America in which the lies and the crimes of the right have been exposed and repudiated, only to be far more thrashed in the coming years if a President Obama is as smart as I think he is.

.

So who won the Cold War, then? The capitalists? Yeah, maybe. In the same way that Britain won World War II, that is - only simultaneously to lose power, prosperity and a global empire in the bargain. If you call that winning, then okay.

.

The only greater thing about America finally maturing enough to adopt a quasi-socialist system is knowing the degree to which that will drive the freaks on the right to utter distraction. Though they will, of course, still be happy to collect their generous government benefits.

David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers’ reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net [1]), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website,www.regressiveantidote.net [2]

Source: http://www.bestcyrano.org/cyrano/?p=1921#more-1921

Surging Into Syria: American Incursion Opens New Front in Quagmire

Hussein Malla/Associated Press Villagers in Syria gathered Monday near the coffins of people who died during an American Special Operations raid aimed at Iraqi militants on Sunday. Written by Chris Floyd

(UPDATED BELOW) Taking a page from the new bipartisan strategy now being employed in Afghanistan -- waging cross-border military raids into sovereign countries in order to protect a failing military occupation in a neighboring country -- the United States has apparently launched its first known incursion into Syria: the usual assault from on high with the usual tally of children as "collateral damage." The BBC reports that American forces launched a small ground-air attack on the border village of Sukkiraya on Sunday, with military helicopters disgorging a squad of troops who attacked a building and killed "a man, his four children and a married couple." Officially, the Pentagon has neither confirmed nor denied the attack, but the brass leaked word to the Associated Press that the shiv-stab into Syrian territory did indeed take place, and that it was aimed at -- wait for it -- "foreign fighters linked to al-Qaeda." As the leaky Pentagon mouthpiece told AP: "We are taking matters into our own hands." (And isn't it remarkable how every single person killed by American forces in the global War on Terror is somehow "linked to al-Qaeda"? Even the children. I guess American bullets and bombs have some kind of super-secret al-Qaeda sorting software embedded in them, guiding the munitions directly to the evil ones -- including the little evil ones: the doctrine of "pre-emption" in its purest form -- and sparing everyone else.) Why has the Bush Administration raided Syria now, after years of accusing Damascus of aiding and abetting "al Qaeda-linked terrorist" funneling into Iraq? Well, most beserker militarist regimes have myriad reasons behind their various lashings-out, so there are probably a number of different factors invovled. One might be the recent moves that Syria has made toward trying to end its pariah status, as the Guardian notes: The attack comes as Syria takes another step in from the cold today when its foreign minister, Walid al-Mualim, visits London to hear praise for its newly conciliatory policies in Lebanon... In recent months Syria has established diplomatic relations with Lebanon and held several rounds of indirect talks with Israel, with Turkey acting as broker. In July, President Assad was invited to an EU summit in Paris. The BBC report also touches on this theme: [The attack's] timing is curious, coming right at the end of the Bush administration's period of office and at a moment when many of America's European allies - like Britain and France - are trying to broaden their ties with Damascus, our correspondent adds. As we have often seen, whenever one of the American elite's designated demons starts trying to make nice and act moderate, they are generally poked with a sharp stick in hopes of making them snarl again -- thereby continuing their highly useful function as bogey-men to keep scaring the American people into giving trillions of dollars (and the blood of their children) to the Pentagon and its corporate associates in the war profiteering industry. Of course, petty murderous spite can never be overlooked in anything the Bushists do. From the Guardian: Joshua Landis, an American expert on Syria, commented last night: "The Bush administration must assume that an Obama victory will force Syria to behave nicely in order to win favour with the new administration. Thus White House analysts may assume that it can have a "freebee" - taking a bit of personal revenge on Syria without the US paying a price." Some have also offered the idea that Bush is trying to make sure that Barack Obama is thoroughly tied down in the region when he takes office, forced to contend with a newly enraged Syria on the Iraq border, which the Bushists obviously hope will spur more terrorist attacks in Iraq -- on American forces and civilians -- thereby creating the "dangerous conditions" that will "justify" a continuing U.S. presence in the conquered land. (Yes, Virginia, fomenting terrorist attacks has long been a strategy of the American government, as we noted here -- and here -- years ago.) It's unlikely that Obama will need much encouragement to keep a substantial U.S. military force in Iraq; that's been his plan all along. And as he has also advocated "carefully targeted" cross-border strikes into Pakistan, he can hardly object to the same tactic in Iraq. What's more, Joe Biden has already warned us that he and Obama are going to plunge head-first into an unspecified "foreign crisis" sometime next year, adopting highly unpopular policies that the poor, dumb benighted citizenry are just not going to be able to understand at first. A major incursion into Syria would certainly fit that bill -- although, admittedly, the venues and opportunities for Barry and Joe to prove their "toughness" are legion, given the vast and goading scope of America's military empire. II. Of course, one can speculate on motives until the cows come home. (Or rather, until the chickens come home to roost, in the form of revengeful blowback against Americans. But none of the well-wadded, well-protected bipartisan Beltway barons are worried about that. After all, the more blowback, the more "emergency powers" they accrue.) But we should remember that Syria has been in the cross-hairs of several powerful factions in our militarist empire for years. The same gang that brought you the Iraq war -- and would love to bring you the Iran war -- have long been howling to put tanks on the road to Damascus. Below is a piece that I wrote for the Moscow Times back in April 2003. Although a few details have changed since then, the column is still depressingly apt as an example of the imperial mindset that animates both parties in the corridors of Beltway power. Some cynics claim that George W. Bush and his closest advisors -- whom cynics cynically refer to as "bloodthirsty corporate pimps" -- are just a bunch of vicious, shifty liars. But this column takes enormous umbrage at the heaping of such unsupported calumny upon the good names of these great leaders. They have been maligned, slandered, falsely accused. For when it comes to their plans for world conquest, these so-called "pimps" are as honest as the day is long. As we all know, the rape of Iraq (or as future historians will doubtless call it, "The Dawn of the Shiite Empire") was planned openly several years ago by a hard-right agitprop cell led by Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld. Now it turns out that the recent big-monkey chest-beating aimed at Syria -- threats of sanctions, "surgical" strikes, and "regime change" -- was also carefully planned, by many of the same people, long before the Bush Regime seized power. As we've often reported here, in September 2000 the Cheney-Rumsfeld outfit, Project for the New American Century, proudly published their blueprint for the direct imposition of U.S. "forward bases" throughout Central Asia and the Middle East. They even foresaw the need for what they called a "Pearl Harbor-type event" to galvanize the American public into supporting their ambitious program. Their reasons for this program were also stated quite openly: to ensure U.S. political and economic domination of the world, while strangling any potential "rival" or any viable alternative to the rapacious crony capitalism favored by the PNAC extremists. This dominance would be enforced by the ever-present threat -- and frequent application -- of violence. (A tactic known elsewhere as "terrorism.") PNAC was also very honest about the role of Iraq in this crusade for empire, stating plainly that the need for a U.S. military presence in the area "superseded" the "issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein." There was no sanctimonious posturing about "liberation," weapons of mass destruction or terrorist connections. To dominate the oil wealth centered in that region -- and hence the economic/political development of the world in the coming decades -- they needed a military presence in Iraq; it's as simple as that. ....A few months before PNAC's prophetic 2000 report, an allied group with an overlapping membership published a similar document outlining steps to be taken against Syria: first "tightening the screws" with denunciations and economic sanctions, then escalating to military action, as Jim Lobe of Inter-Press Agency reports. The architects of this document included Elliot Abrams, the convicted perjurer now running Bush's Middle East policy; Douglas Feith, one of [Don Rumsfelds'] top aides; Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary to Colin Powell; and influential Pentagon advisors such as David Wurmser, Michael Leeden and everyone's sweetheart, Richard "Influence-Peddler" Perle. The report sprang largely from the loins of the United States Committee for a Free Lebanon, a curious grouping of right-wing American Christians, right-wing American Jews, and a sprinkling of Lebanese exiles. They object -- rightly -- to the fact that Syria has maintained "long-term access to major military bases" in Lebanon, using this minatory presence to exercise undue sway over Lebanon's political and economic life. Of course, some cynics would say this situation is remarkably akin to Israel's own 18-year occupation of, er, Lebanon, or the United States' decades-long -- and still-continuing -- military presence in Japan, Korea, Germany, Italy, Great Britain, Panama, etc. But you know what cynics are like. The USCFL also provides highly insightful and very nearly literate analyses of vital regional issues, such as its seminal paper, "Even Arabs Don't Like Arabs." But the mindset of the group -- whose members now stalk the corridors of power in Imperial Washington -- is perhaps best displayed in its thoughtful 2001 treatise, "A Petition Demanding War Against Governments That Sponsor Terrorism" (Except, of course, for governments who enforce their will by the ever-present threat and use of violence -- i.e. terrorism -- but are run by nice white men educated at Yale and Oxford.) Here, the proto-Bushist group demands that six "rogue nations" -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya and Sudan -- "turn over their governments to the United States" on pain of massive military response. The United States will then "occupy these territories until proper governments" -- ones that allow "long-term access" to major military bases, no doubt -- "can be established." And just how massive should that threatened U.S. military response be? The USCFL is, as always, admirably -- and brutally -- forthright: "America must set a clear example-identical to that of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If you tread on me, I will wipe you off the face of the earth." Is this what the Bushists are really talking about in their fear-mongering diatribes about seeing "terrorism's smoking gun in a mushroom cloud"? UPDATE: The New York Times, rather late to the party on this story, has more details. Source: http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1636-surging-into-syria-american-incursion-opens-new-front-in-quagmire.html

Two dumbasses or patsies charged for making threats against Barack Obama

Making Tennessee look like a redneck state again.

Misguided or guided youth get in the news and perpetuate racism in the south.

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Posted: ("Oct 27, 2008 5:51 PM EST")

Updated: ("Oct 27, 2008 7:21 PM EST")

A Tennessee man and friend from Arkansas have been charged for violating federal firearms laws and making threats against a presidential candidate.

Daniel Cowart, 20 (Bells, TN), and Paul Schlesselman, 18 (West Helena, AR), were charged in a federal complaint Friday with illegal possession of a sawed off shotgun, conspiracy to rob a federal firearms licensee, and making threats against Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"The allegations set forth in this criminal complaint are serious and will be treated as such," said Lawrence J. Laurenzi, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee. "The public can rest assured that federal, state and local law enforcement are diligently working together to investigate and prosecute the alleged activity."

The complaint states that Cowart (pictured) and Schlesselman met via the Internet about one month ago through a mutual friend. Both claim to share strong beliefs in "White Power" and "Skinhead" philosophy.

The complaint goes on to say the two were in the process of carrying out their plan when Cowart allegedly traveled from Tennessee to Arkansas to pick up Schlesselman. The two allegedly planned to conduct a killing spree targeting a predominantly African-American school and eventually target Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama.

"It is critical that the alleged plot was interupted," said James Cavanaugh, Special Agent in Charge of ATF. "We give credit to the Deputies of Crockett and Haywood Counties. All forces of law enforcement have come together to stop this threat."

Cowart and Schlesselman were arrested on Oct. 22 in Crockett County. The two appeared in federal court today and are schedule to be back for a detention hearing in Memphis on October 30.

WKRN

Altering the Food Supply: Reason Enough to Hang Our World Leaders

Written by Jesse Richard

Sunday, 26 October 2008 15:06

According to disclosed documents, minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them. Forget about immoral wars based on lies that result in the murder of hundreds of thousands of people, including the soldiers who "followed orders" and die in those wars. Forget about false flag operations like the Reichstag fire, 9/11, and the London bombings, when world leaders murder their own people in order to frighten them into submission. Forget about the international banking conspiracy to control all of the wealth on earth. Forget about the bio weapon programs run by our government that increased dramatically under the Bush administration, where an accident, an earthquake (or an evil individual like Dick Cheney) could potentially unleash life-ending viruses onto the nation and the world. And forget about the criminal suppression of technologies that would provide enough clean and cheap energy to fulfill all our needs. If there is one reason that serves as an even stronger reason for the people of this planet to unite and storm virtually every government associated with the ruling establishment, it is the secretive, but confirmed, manipulation of the food chain of the entire planet! The people who rule this planet are altering the food chain in a way that is irreversible and in a way that could possibly lead to the extinction of life on earth! As part of a presentation I give on media deception (in which I show people what media deception is and teach them how to spot it), I spend a short time talking about the ridiculous myth that Americans live in some sort of democracy. To illustrate this, I ask people who attend my presentations whether their consent was requested by our government before some scientists, some horrible evil scientists who misused their knowledge to create the world's most destructive weapons, detonated the first hydrogen bomb. You see, when these scientists detonated the first H-Bomb they were not certain as to whether or not the explosion would be contained. Hydrogen bombs detonate in the atmosphere. The scientists in charge raised some concern that testing the bomb might cause the entire planet to explode in a huge nuclear chain reaction. Yet they went ahead despite this calculated risk! Your government risked your life and the lives of everyone who lived on earth that day. And they risked the lives of everyone who will live on this planet in the future. If you ask me...the people who decided that this would be OK, and the people who followed the orders of the decision makers, should have been charge with crimes against humanity and hanged...or worse! Today, this risk is being taken without your consent again! Genetically modified crops and livestock are being infused into our food chain, forever changing the genetic makeup of our plants and animals. We have no idea what problems this may cause. We have no idea how this will affect our own health or the health of the ecosystem. We don't know if or how viruses that infect any GM animals may mutate and kill us all. There is a clear risk that if you break one link in the food chain, the entire chain can collapse. And then what? We recently had a big scare that still has not been resolved. You probably don't know much about it because we don't have a national news media in this nation. We have a perception management industry that is called mainstream media, but their job is to keep your false impression of reality alive and well. While they were reporting around the clock about the activities about two pre-selected presidential candidates, they made sure you did not pay too much attention to the fact that bees all over this planet started to mysteriously die off. Well, something was killing them, and no one knew what that was. There are some indications that GM crops caused them to mysteriously die off. Remember that without bees we have no pollination and as a result, for the most part, no plants. That means there are no trees or flowers to provide the earth with most of its food. And that also means that we significantly reduce the supply of oxygen that green plants give us in exchange for our carbon dioxide. And that's pretty scary. However, the bee issue pales in comparison to the even scarier human (corporate and government) manipulation of the genetic makeup of plants and animals on this planet. Talk about big government! It does not get any bigger than that! It's one thing to tell me whom I can marry or what kind of sex I may enjoy, but it is a far greater crime to tamper with my food supply! Many people have different opinions as to why governments are tampering with our food. Some believe it is conspiracy to control the profits of food sales. Monsanto, for example, has manipulated corn so that the corn does not produce seeds, and assures that farmers consistently have to buy new seeds...from whom?...from Monsanto of course! Not a bad business model...with a little help from legislators. Others believe that eugenics is at play here. It is a well kept secret that the global ruling elite have concluded that in order for the human species to survive we must bring the world population down to about 500,000 people. Well, we are closing in on 7 billion people on this planet. If the population of the world continues to grow at the current rate, we are about 10 years away from having to go to war over access to drinking water! But no matter what the reason...the fact that my food supply is being tampered without any explanation, and without a way to reverse the changes...makes me want to ge out there and hang people. I have never been angrier than I am over this issue. I know that it is a crime to threaten people or to instigate a revolution. But I am going to say what needs to be said...there are people on this planet that have taken over aspects of life on earth and have left us with no way to protect ourselves from them or the ramifications of their actions. These people are at this moment secretively manipulating your life. They are murdering you. They are murdering your children. And I'll tell you this...I would have no problem marching those bastards to the gallows! According to disclosed documents, minutes of a series of private meetings of representatives of 27 governments disclose plans to "speed up" the introduction of the modified crops and foods and to "deal with" public resistance to them. OK, then I say that society should speed up an effort to eliminate these dangerous people...and then "deal with the government resistance!" And to you police officers, FBI agents, CIA agents, Department of Homeland Security thugs and Blackwater hit men, you are all victims as well. You need to think about that before you protect those bastards! I am on your side! Remember that. You know...sometimes I feel like the John McCarthy character at the end of the film, Invasion of the Body Snatchers! I sound crazy telling everyone about the pods...but, my friends...trucks of pods overturn on highways every day...you just have to stop for a moment to ask what they are! Heed the warnings...we really don't have much time left. Think about it. Jesse Richard - Editor, TvNewsLIES.org. References: Europe's secret plan to boost GM crop production Henry Kissinger's Depopulation Agenda: National Security Study Memorandum 200 Professor's "Kill 90% of Population" Comments Echo UN, Elite NGO policies The Population Control Agenda A History Timeline of Population Control The U.N.'s 1994 Global Biodiversity Assessment Report, envisages a 70% reduction in world population to 2 billion people. Video: Monsanto Controlling Our Food Source: http://tvnewslies.org/tvnl/index.php/editorial/jesse-richards-commentary/5267-altering-the-food-supply-reason-enough-to-hang-our-world-leaders.html

Why The Attack In Syria?

Moon of Alabama

What the f--- was yesterdays special operation strike against Syria about?

A reader at Joshua Lanid's blog reports:

I just spoke on the phone with a doctor in ABou Kamal- He confirmed that the attack happened around sunset. The 4 helicopters came from the East of the township, he saw them coming. The soldiers debarked and shot people who were working in a building under construction on the periphery of the township.

9 people were pronounced dead on arrival to the hospital- Two more are severely wounded and are being operated on right now [he does not expect them to survive]- He has not read the papers (there are none to read at this time of the night) nor listened to the news and there is no internet there….His report was completely spontaneous-

I was not able to get the details on the ages of the injured but he described them as poor simple people (Masakeen) from the town. If the matter were otherwise, he would have let me know.

There were no recent reports or accusation from the military against infiltration in Iraq from Syria. So what was the point?

Such an invasion of a foreign country must have been ordered from the highest level of the White House.

The only motive I can think of is that this is supposed to help McCain. Others suspect the same:

What better way to move the American people back to a neoconservative view than by provoking a Syrian/American conflict days before one of the most fateful elections in American history. Most Americans are fed up with foreign wars, unbelievable debt from those wars, and economic failure. Yet if we can provoke Syria into retaliating against the United States somehow, then we can terrify the American people enough right now before the elections. Then they will vote from fear, not from the perspective of pragmatism and realism, and certainly not from a position of vision and hope. It has happened before in history.

But Syria is very unlikely to retaliate. It did not retaliate when the Israelis bombed the box on the Euphrates a year ago. It did not retaliate when Israel in February killed Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh with a car bomb in Damascus. Instead Syria continued with a policy of building better relation with its neighbors and even, for the first time in history, officially acknowledged the borders of Lebanon.

So if this was an attempt to stoke up an additional war, the lack of judgment is astonishing. Then again - the neo-cons have never shown good judgment at all.

Source: http://www.moonofalabama.org/2008/10/why-the-attack.html

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Just Numbers…

Posted by willyloman on October 26, 2008

by Scott Creighton

8 dead in a Syrian village.
20 dead in a village in Pakistan from a US drone attack.
24 Afghan guards killed in US attack by mistake.
1 US soldier died today on foreign soil.
21 Iraqis killed today alone.
50,000 Iraqis protest US occupation of their home.
2,700 Amercians per day from July through Sept. lost their homes due to foreclosure.
159,000 jobs lost in Sept. 2008.

Source: http://willyloman.wordpress.com/2008/10/26/just-numbers/

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Dane_Vetias's blog

Strike On Syria: A Gift from Cheney to McCain

The timing is amazing from a neoconservative point of view, a few days before the American elections. Right now, after years of scrupulously avoiding crossing into Syrian territory, the American military receives instructions to invade a town in Syria and kill 8 people.

A U.S. military official confirmed late Sunday an American helicopter attack in an area along Syria’s border with Iraq, which left 8 people dead and three people wounded.

Syria condemned the attack, which it called “serious aggression.”

We are closer than ever before to serious conversations between Israel and Syria, Syria has recognized an international border with Lebanon for the first time in modern history, and this is horrifying to neoconservatives who ran Washington for the last decade. They need to use force and force only to conquer Iraq, Iran and Syria. And they need to promote a conception of the American presidency that is focused on the use of military force.

It is vital to their conception of American hegemony. It is as opposite from a realist’s interests in exploring common interests internationally, with both allies and adversaries, as one could imagine.

What better way to move the American people back to a neoconservative view than by provoking a Syrian/American conflict days before one of the most fateful elections in American history. Most Americans are fed up with foreign wars, unbelievable debt from those wars, and economic failure. Yet if we can provoke Syria into retaliating against the United States somehow, then we can terrify the American people enough right now before the elections. Then they will vote from fear, not from the perspective of pragmatism and realism, and certainly not from a position of vision and hope. It has happened before in history.

I hope the Syrian regime sees this as bait, that they do not take the bait, that they do not become pawns in an internal American struggle that will only hurt them in the long run. And I hope the American people catch on to those who are attempting to manipulate them with tactics of fear.

The Iraqi/Syrian border: an appropriate place to decide an American election?

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Source

Trickle-Up Economics

by Edgar J. Steele

October 27, 2008

“If a private enterprise is a failure, it is closed down - unless it can get a government subsidy to keep it going; if a government enterprise is a failure, it is expanded. I challenge you to find exceptions.”

--- Milton Friedman, Why Government is the Problem, Wriston Lecture (1991)

"Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself."

--- Milton Friedman, The Relation Between Economic Freedom and Political Freedom, Ch 1, pg 15 (2002)

John McCain's closing campaign mantra: Barack Obama told Joe the Plumber that he wants to "spread the wealth," which proves that Obama is a Socialist. Perhaps.

Barack Obama's home-stretch mantra: John McCain "voted with President Bush over 90% of the time," thus McCain simply is more of the same. Probably.

Recall Ronald Reagan's closing campaign refrain for a moment: "Are you better off than you were four years ago?" Expand that to the full eight years of the Bush Administration and the answer for virtually all of us has to be, "Certainly not."

Trickle-Down Took us Down

How did things go so bad, so quickly? Again, we must look back to the Reagan Administration, during which so many things went wrong, as I believe history will show. First and foremost, Reagan legitimized and institutionalized the concept of "trickle-down economics," in which one confers all economic largesse upon big government, big companies and the fat cats, depending upon them then to spend money in such a way that it "trickles down" to the working man.

The real problem with trickle-down economics is that so much of the money gets side tracked enroute to Reagan's intended recipients. That's why corporate executive pay skyrocketed during the past twenty-five years while that of the common man actually declined, when adjusted for inflation. That's why so many big companies prospered though they were grossly inefficient, as so clearly disclosed by recent economic events. That's why government has ballooned along with its inefficiency and corruption. Implementation of trickle-down economic theory is the main reason why we are so much worse off than previously.

Plunge Protection Caused the Plunge

Furthermore, the secretive Plunge-Protection Team (PPT) was instituted during the Reagan administration. The PPT is empowered to engage in technically illegal stock and commodity market manipulation, all in the name of ensuring economic stability. While Bill Clinton really set the PPT in motion through Fed Chairman "Easy Al" Greenspan, George W. Bush and new Fed Chairman "WhirlyBen" Bernanke have put it on steroids. How do you like the stability of the markets today, with the PPT working overtime?

There's No Such Thing as a Free Trade

Free trade, a la NAFTA, WTO and other similar Globalist organizations, has been an unmitigated disaster for America, just as Ross Perot warned in years past. Free trade, like trickle-down economics and the Plunge-Protection Team, was imposed upon America by Globalist Republicans and Democrats, who continue to be in complete control of America's government and economy. These things haven't worked and we need a change - a serious change. Like it or not, we're going to get it. Eventually, the markets will have their way with us and the day of reckoning is at hand. It will not be pretty.

Trickle-Up Economics

I submit that what we should try is "trickle-up economics." Let's support the common man and depend upon him to spend his money in such a way that it trickles up to the companies, government and less-fat cats. Yes, let's "spread the wealth."

Socialism, as preached by Obama? Perhaps, but I have seen the alternative and it clearly has not worked. Instead, it has produced what I believe that history will dub Depression II, an economic downturn so bad that we begin to number them, as we already number major wars. We need a change.

Mind you, I am voting my conscience and pulling the lever for Chuck Baldwin, Presidential candidate of the Constitution Party. Independent Ralph Nader would be my second choice. But, if you force me to choose between more-of-the-same McCain or pay-your-money-and-take-your-chances Obama, then Obama is my clear choice because of his stance on both economics and the devastating American misadventure in the Middle East.

The United Socialist States of America (USSA)

Socialism? Am I preaching socialism? No. I'm preaching against America's already-existing socialism. If you think that Republicans, particularly George W. Bush, already have not implemented socialism in a big way in America, then you really don't understand the term. Let's examine the top-ten ways in which Bush and his predecessors already have (and McCain wants to continue to) "spread the wealth" of America:

1. Our jobs have been spread to Asia, Indonesia, India and Mexico.

2. Our taxes, along with the blood of our children, have been spread on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan.

3. Our wages have been spread overseas with our jobs, and domestically to millions of illegal immigrants who drag down the prevailing wage by working for peanuts.

4. Our savings and retirement accounts have been decimated and spread to the usual suspects on Wall Street, who shorted the market on the basis of inside information provided by their cohorts on the Plunge-Protection Team.

5. Our taxes continue to be spread to other countries in the form of "Foreign Aid," particularly to that most nettlesome of nations: Israel.

6. Our health care has been priced beyond our ability to pay, spread to millions of the undeserving - primarily illegal immigrants.

7. Our income has been spread to oil companies, who have reported record profits again and again, in the form of higher gasoline prices and the increasingly burdensome cost of heating our homes during the winter.

8. Our children's financial future has been mortgaged and the proceeds spread to the already-fat cats and inefficient organizations through the current incredible corporate and banking bailouts. Note that these bailouts result in the government acquisition of a controlling interest in much of America's formerly privately-held corporations, the very definition of Socialism. Note well that the architect of these bailouts is Treasury Secretary Henry Paulsen, who just a couple of years ago was "earning" $37 million per year as the head of Goldman, Sachs, a prime recipient of all that bailout money.

9. Our money is diluted daily by the massive creation of dollars from nothing by the Federal Reserve Bank, a private organization owned by foreigners, resulting in a spreading of our wealth to the recipients of all the foregoing government largesse and excess.

10. Because new money is created as the result of new debt owed to the foreigners who own the Federal Reserve Bank, our future wealth is spread to those foreign fat cat central bankers in the form of ever-increasing interest payments.

I could go on and on, but you get the idea. America already has become a socialist nation. Like the proverbial frog in the slowly-heated pot, you likely never noticed.

Bail Out People, Not Banks

Arguing for trickle-up economics merely suggests that we change the injection point of all the government-mandated money now being handed over to the guys at the top.

Rather than bail out banks holding bad mortgages, who still foreclose and evict homeowners, why don't we use that money to help out those who lost their jobs and have fallen behind in their payments?

Rather than pay for illegal immigrants' free health care, why don't we use that money to help out those who no longer can afford health insurance premiums, yet have suffered crippling medical bills?

Rather than paying for massive market intervention via the Plunge Protection Team, why not take our hands off and let traditional free-market forces take over?

Why don't we really support our troops in the Middle East by bringing them home and providing proper medical care for all veterans, care which routinely is denied them today?

Why don't we mandate a truly balanced budget, suffer the egregious hard times that already are coming, and put our money on a sound basis?

Why don't we round up all the illegal aliens (just arrest them all at the inevitable rallies and parades that will result from the announcement) and toss them back over the border, then police that border with Mexico with a vengeance?

Why don't we kill the tax breaks for the big boys, particularly the oil companies? You think they won't still drill? You think they won't still sell gasoline at the resulting lower prices?

Why don't we provide tax credits for college tuition and for the cost of winter heating, rather than the massive tax credits given to special interests, particularly corporations?

Why don't we finance a lot of the foregoing by arresting all the fat cats who plundered large business and government organizations, forcing them to disgorge their undeserved gains (starting with Henry Paulsen) and putting them in prison for their criminal mistreatment of their fellow Americans?

Again, I could go on and on. Again, you get the idea. This isn't rocket science and it isn't particularly complicated.

Trickle-up economics. An idea whose time has come.

How to Make a Difference

Make a difference this time. Voting for Democrats or Republicans is the real way to waste your vote. Seemingly, Obama is destined to win, so you might as well derive some satisfaction by voting for someone who actually would make changes that count. The Constitutional Party's Chuck Baldwin, in my opinion. Or Independent Ralph Nader.

Not voting at all is a cop out. Yes, the results often are rigged; but you have no valid complaint unless they first rob you of your vote.

Throw them all out on November 4. Vote against every single incumbent for every single office at all levels: local, county, state and federal. Vote against both Obama and McCain. Make a statement. Make it loud. Make a difference!

We Can Deserve to Succeed

Maybe we won't succeed. Maybe all we will do is substitute new crooks for old crooks, just like the last major Congressional election, wherein we replaced Republicans with Democrats who did an even worse job on our behalf, starting with the execrable Nancy Pelosi.

However, we can deserve to succeed, if nothing else. But, we won't deserve success if we keep on doing the same old thing and reelect the same old crooks. To make a difference, we actually have to do something different.

New America. An idea whose time has come.

-ed

Copyright © 2008 Edgar J. Steele

Source: http://www.conspiracypenpal.com/columns/trickle.htm

WORST CASE SCENARIO FOR THE WORLD

Monday, October 27, 2008

A McCAIN WIN IN THE U.S. AND A NETANYAHU WIN IN ISRAEL.

Damian Lataan

The world is hoping and even praying that nothing happens that will upset an Obama win in the upcoming US election. Yet today McCain is either indulging in some serious wishful thinking or he knows something that we don’t. According to some reports, he has told the world that, despite the polls telling us otherwise, he ‘guarantees a win in next week’s election’. He concedes that it’ll be close but, nonetheless, he thinks he’s going to get the job.

Reports are already coming in about voter fraud where there are computer voting systems in place for early voting. Even Fox News is reporting that most Americans are actually expecting widespread voter fraud to take place. With just over a week to go before the election – and remember; a week is a very long time in politics – the window of opportunity for the GOP and/or other ‘interested’ parties to avert an impending disaster for the Republicans is rapidly closing.

On the other side of the world in Israel, another election outcome that could equally determine the future of the Middle East is being observed with as much anticipation as the outcome of the US presidential elections.

Kadima chair, Tzipi Livni, has failed to bring together a coalition government and will now be taking Israel to the polls when it is widely expected that the ultra right-wing Zionist Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud party in cohorts with other ultra right-wing nationalist and expansionist groups will win government. Already the settlers in the occupied territories sense victory as they confront Israeli authorities over the removal of illegal outposts since they know that with Netanyahu they have a friend who shares their expansionist dreams.

But the most terrifying aspect of a McCain win in the US and a Netanyahu win in Israel is the very much enhanced likelihood of a final confrontation with Iran and the fallout, literally and metaphorically, that such a confrontation will have for the Middle East and the world. Netanyahu has in the past hinted at a ‘nuclear strike on Iran’. And, of course, who can forget McCain’s policy of ‘Bomb, bomb, bombing Iran’.

The American people, not just for themselves but for the entire world, must ensure that McCain doesn’t become President. And with an Obama victory the world should then demand peace for everyone in the Middle East.

The alternatives are too shocking to even contemplate.

posted by Damian Lataan
Source: http://lataan.blogspot.com/2008/10/worst-case-scenario-for-world-mccain.html

How Mossad Controls Our Political Parties

Written by Christopher Bollyn

Saturday, 25 October 2008

The Romans Passing Under the Yoke (1858) by Charles Gleyre (1808-1874) Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains. There are some who may believe themselves masters of others, and are no less enslaved than they. How has this change come about? - Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract ZIONISTS SUBJUGATE OUR NATIONS BY CONTROLLING OUR POLITICAL PARTIES By Christopher Bollyn Politicians in the United States and Britain are made to pass under the yoke of the Zionist masters who control our leading political parties. By forcing our political leaders to accept the Zionist yoke our nations become subjugated and the pro-Israel agenda is forced upon the entire population. Zionist control of Britain's prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is explained in this article, "How Mossad Controls our Political Parties." As the $700 billion bail-out of Zionist fraudsters was being debated in the U.S. Congress a supporter wrote to me saying, "I think we are out of time. If only more good people knew what you know!" I would say that it's not so much what I know, but rather my perspective and the directions I pursue in my investigations that are not found in the media. Because my anti-Zionist perspective is taboo, my views are censored by the Zionist-controlled media. Hence, most people are simply unaware of my research. Having spent several years in Israel and the Middle East and having studied the history of Zionism (i.e. Jewish nationalism), I know something about the many crimes committed by Zionists during the past century. From this perspective I approach the evidence of Israeli and Zionist involvement in the major crimes of our time, such as 9-11. My investigations have uncovered a great deal of evidence of Israeli involvement in the false-flag terror attacks of 9-11 and other crimes. For journalists working in the controlled media pursuing such investigations would be "career suicide" as many learned after 9-11. I have also paid a very high price for my research and writing. I learned that Jewish Zionists control even small so-called nationalist newspapers. Most journalists, lawyers, and politicians are primarily interested in advancing their own careers and learn early on to accept the yoke of their Zionist masters -- or sacrifice their careers. Ambitious people put their self interest first and agree to go along with lies and corruption rather than stand up for the truth. I've seen it many times. I am not like that. During the past 30 years, I have witnessed first-hand the extremely brutal Israeli occupation of Palestine and seen how Zionists operate to subjugate entire nations. My years in Palestine/Israel were my political awakening. Zionist control of the mass media and "Holocaust" propaganda serve to protect and promote their criminal agenda. I have watched how the people of America and Europe are deceived and forced to bear the yoke of the ruthless Zionists who control their political systems and media. Thousands of young Americans and Europeans have been maimed or lost their lives in fraudulent wars for Israel in Middle Eastern nations they know nothing about. Americans have become mercenaries of Zionism. As an American, I can't support either presidential candidate because both are clearly Zionist puppets who espouse positions that I am strongly opposed to. American voters aren't even given a real choice about important things – like the ongoing wars in the Middle East, for example. Both candidates eagerly support the Zionist "War on Terror" and both lobbied hard for the $700 billion "bail-out" to be passed. Senators Obama and McCain are both solidly in the Zionist camp. (Graphic - JewsforJesus.org) I could only support a true anti-war candidate who promised a proper investigation of 9-11 and who supported investing in American infrastructure, such as providing comfortable and efficient passenger trains between our cities. Why are we bailing out investment bankers with taxpayers' money while our cities and infrastructure are crumbling? Unfortunately, both presidential candidates are pro-war and pro-Israel. These are the only candidates we have to choose from because both parties in the United States are political machines financed and run by Zionists. Third parties, such as the erstwhile Reform Party, are likewise controlled -- and run off the tracks. Zionist control of our political parties compels candidates from both parties to support Zionism, an utterly racist and un-American ideology based on a false and dangerous notion of Jewish supremacy. What kind of patriotic American could support that nonsense? NO PARTIAL SOCIETY "It is therefore important, if the general will is to be properly ascertained, that there should be no partial society within the state, and that each citizen should decide according to his own opinion," Rousseau wrote in The Social Contract. "When one of the associations, is big enough to triumph over all the others, the outcome is no longer the sum total of small differences, but a single difference, then there is no longer any general will, and the opinion that prevails is only a particular opinion." The "partial society" that triumphs over all the others in American politics today is Zionism -- no other. In the United States, the pro-Israeli position is the only "opinion that prevails" in academia, the mass media, and the political parties with absolutely no consideration for the expense, injustice, and violence it causes. American support for Zionism has clearly been extremely detrimental for the United States of America, yet the support continues, without question. How does this happen? MOSSAD SPIED ON HAIDER Israel and the international Zionists control the political parties and news outlets in Europe as well, as the recent death of Austria's Jörg Haider reveals. Oddly, Haider, the leader of Austria's Freedom Party, allowed Peter Sichrovsky, a Jew, to serve as "secretary-general" of his supposedly anti-Zionist party. In 2005, the Times (UK) reported that Sichrovsky, the managing director of the party, had served as a spy for Israel's Mossad for five years. Three years later, after his party won parliamentary elections, Haider was suddenly killed in a very suspicious car accident. “I wanted to help Israel and certainly did not do anything wrong,” Sichrovsky said. “It’s true, though, that I co-operated with Mossad until my withdrawal from politics in 2002.” Sichrovsky admitted that he had spied for Mossad, a foreign intelligence agency, because he "wanted to help Israel." At the same time he maintained that he did nothing wrong. This is exactly how many Jews feel about supporting Israel, even when their actions involve breaking the laws of the nations they reside in. Facing a criminal investigation and charges of spying for a foreign power, Sichrovsky quickly fled to the United States where he began a new career as "a businessman concerned with military co-operation between Israel and China." Sichrovsky's career with Mossad evidently continued after he left Austria. If Mossad infiltrates "third party" movements in small nations like Austria, imagine what they do to control the two political parties in the United States. How much control does Israeli intelligence have over the major political parties in Britain and the United States? Let's look at the most obvious connections. MOSSAD CONTROLS BRITAIN The evidence indicates that Israeli intelligence has near complete control of the leading political parties in Britain and the United States. While the Zionist political controllers in London and Washington are well known to the owners of the mass media, discussion of the subject of Zionist or Israeli control of the parties is censored in the media outlets they control. This censorship illustrates how Zionist control of the media serves to deceive the people and cause extreme harm to the nations. Specific examples of the current pro-Israel bias in the mass media would include the media's unquestioning support of the 9-11 cover-up, the costly and disastrous wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the trillion dollar "bail-out." The complete lack of transparency in U.S. elections and discussion of the secretive private companies that run our elections are also censored subjects. The utterly fraudulent Zionist construct called the "War on Terror" and the illegal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have all been designed and forced onto the American and British nations by Zionists who control the political systems of London, New York, and Washington. In Britain, the two political leaders who have promoted and supported the Zionist agenda and wars of aggression are Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. Their Zionist paymasters and handlers are not hard to discern, although they are never discussed in the media in such terms. "LORD CASHPOINT" Michael Abraham Levy, or "Lord Levy," was known as "Lord Cashpoint" (Can it be any more obvious?) when he was the leading fundraiser for the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. Described as "a long-standing friend of Tony Blair," Levy served as Blair's special envoy to the Middle East from 1998 until 2007, when he was replaced by Gordon Brown's appointee, Michael Williams. Tony Blair with his Zionist handler, Michael Levy, a.k.a. "Lord Cashpoint" Levy's son, Daniel, is an Israeli citizen (immigrated 1991) who has held high-level positions in Israeli governments since 1995. While his father was bankrolling and managing Tony Blair, the younger Levy was a member of the Israeli negotiating team to the "Oslo 2" agreement during the summer of 1995 under Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. He was also a member of the Israeli delegation to the Palestinian summit at Taba in January 2001. Israeli Daniel Levy, son of Michael Levy The younger Levy also served as senior policy adviser to former Israeli Minister of Justice, Yossi Beilin, from March 2000 to March 2001. Under Ehud Barak, Levy served as the prime minister's special adviser and head of the Jerusalem Affairs unit. The Levy link was obviously the connection that gave Israeli intelligence control over the head of the British government - Tony Blair. "WE HAVE TO DO IRAQ" Before the Anglo-American occupation of Iraq turned sour, Blair was fond of recalling what he, the first foreign leader to meet George W. Bush, told the newly installed president when they met in early 2001. "We have to do Iraq," is the first thing Blair told Bush, according to his own statements. "We have to do Iraq," is the first thing Tony Blair told Bush when they met in February 2001. Only by understanding that Blair and his New Labour party were financed and controlled by Israeli interests can one understand how Blair was manipulated to support such a reckless and criminal scheme. Similar Zionist forces were at work on Bush. When Tony Blair and his Zionist handler "Lord Cashpoint" fell from power in June 2007, Gordon Brown, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, assumed the office of prime minister, upon the approval of Queen Elizabeth II -- but of course. Prior to becoming prime minister, Brown had served 10 years as Chancellor of the Exchequer, the minister responsible for economic and financial matters in Britain. Prime Minister Brown, in turn, is bankrolled and controlled by Lord Ronald Cohen, who has replaced the beleaguered and disgraced Lord Levy. The Egyptian-born Cohen is described as "Sir Ronald Cohen, the daddy of England’s private equity industry and a bosom buddy of Prime Minister Gordon Brown." Ronald Cohen with Gordon Brown at a Jewish Policy Research (JPR) reception at 11 Downing Street in June 2001. JPR president is Lord Rothschild. In the British press Cohen is portrayed as a wealthy Jewish supporter of Brown and New Labour. Cohen's third wife, the Los Angeles-born Sharon Harel-Cohen, is usually described as a film producer whose father, Yossi Harel, commanded the Jewish refugee ship that became known as Exodus in 1947. Her Israeli nationality is seldom discussed. What the controlled media doesn't tell us about Sharon Harel-Cohen is that she is an Israeli-American whose father was one of the founding chiefs of the Mossad and Israeli military intelligence until his death in April 2008. This means the daughter of one of the founders of Israeli intelligence is part of the team controlling the British prime minister. This is how Mossad has controlled the political leadership of Britain since the 1990s and taken the United States and Britain into two costly and disastrous wars in the Middle East. Sharon Harel-Cohen, daughter of Israeli intelligence chief, Yossi Harel, a.k.a. Joseph Hamburger Sharon Ruth Harel was born in Los Angeles on March 6, 1952. Her mother, a "Julie Berez" married Mossad officer Joseph Hamburger (a.k.a. Yossi Harel) in 1950 while he was stationed in Los Angeles. Harel was, most likely, engaged in the illegal procurement of weapons, ships, planes, and military technology for the Israeli military. The reports that Harel, one of the highest Mossad agents, was studying at UCLA or M.I.T. are neither substantiated nor credible; this was only his cover. Harel also had two sons, whose names are not known to the author. (Whether Boaz and Ezra Harel, the two Israeli brothers who ran ICTS, the Mossad-run Israeli airport "security" company involved in the 9-11 attacks, are related to Yossi Harel is an open question I am investigating.) The Mossad ("agency") actually came into existence in the 1940s as the clandestine agency known as Ha'Mossad Le'Aliya Bet, the secret Zionist agency engaged in bringing Jewish refugees to British-occupied Palestine to swell the Jewish population prior to creating the "Jewish state." In 1946, Joseph Hamburger was sent on a secret mission to provide Mossad agents in Greece with gold to bribe European governments to facilitate the transit of Jews to Palestine, which was then illegal. Some Mossad tactics have not changed at all during the past 60 years -- they still buy politicians with gold. Joe Hamburger (a.k.a. Yossi Harel) commanded four refugee ships and sailed to Israel with an estimated 25,000 immigrants during the period of the British Mandate. U.S. immigration records indicate that Mr. Hamburger used both his real name, Hamburger, and his Israeli name, Harel, during the 1950s, which is typical of Mossad agents. Yossi Harel was a lifelong chief of Israeli intelligence. His 2008 obituaries say that "Yosef" Hamburger was born, with a twin brother, in Jerusalem, British-occupied Palestine, in 1918. At 15, he joined Haganah, the Zionist militia/terrorist group. Five years later he joined the Special Night Squad, an anti-Palestinian terrorist unit. In 1941, Harel joined the Palmach, the "strike force" of the Haganah before transferring to the Palyam, its naval unit. During the 1948 Zionist war to conquer Palestine, Harel served as the liaison officer to the army’s chief of staff, Yaakov Dori, and played an important role in co-ordinating the Zionist campaign. He was also the personal body guard for Israel’s first president, Chaim Weizmann. In 1954, Moshe Dayan, chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, called Harel back to Israel to head Unit 131, a secret group that had agents in Arab countries. Harel's immediate task was to cover up the Lavon Affair, the Israeli false-flag terrorism plot designed to turn Britain and the United States against Egypt. David Ben-Gurion, the first Israeli prime minister, assigned Harel to rebuild military intelligence from the ground up. Ben-Gurion, Dayan, and Shimon Peres were actually part of the group that supported the use of false-flag terrorism, such as the Lavon bombings, to achieve their goals. Given this context, Harel must have seen eye-to-eye with Ben-Gurion about deploying Israeli agents in foreign nations. Shiploads of Israelis were sent on missions to America and Europe in the 1950s, often disguised as students. Joseph Hamburger/Yossi Harel with David Ben Gurion Harel went on to pursue a successful business career, the Telegraph reported, "which served as a cover for his work for Israeli intelligence." Like the Democrat "turncoat" Lewis M. Eisenberg, the current head of finance for the Republican National Committee, Cohen changed political parties in order to bankroll the Labour Party of Tony Blair. Cohen was a candidate in the Liberal party in the 1970s and only converted to Blair's New Labour in 1996. Since then he has reportedly given Labour an estimated $5 million and bankrolled Gordon Brown's career. At their home in London the Cohens "give lavish parties for the likes of the Rothschilds, the Rausing billionaires and Cohen’s old mentor Sir Clive Sinclair." At their home in New York they entertain "their friends the Clintons." And then there is their villa at Mougins, near Cannes. "Cohen moved into Brown’s orbit in 2000, when the chancellor appointed him chairman of a Treasury fund set up to encourage investment in deprived areas of the country. The next year he was rewarded with a knighthood," according to the Times 2005 profile entitled, "Sir Ronald Cohen: Midas with a mission - to make Gordon king." Cohen began to replace Levy as Britain's liaison in the Middle East. In 2004, along with Blair and Brown, Cohen met Ehud Olmert, deputy to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. As Brown replaced Blair, Cohen, the multimillionaire venture capitalist, replaced Levy as chief fundraiser for the ruling Labour party. About his connections to Israel, Cohen told the Times: "If you look at my history: born in Egypt, a refugee, married to the daughter of the commander of the Exodus who's an Israeli, there's an obvious connection between me and the region." Obvious, perhaps, but definitely not discussed in the media. Cohen, who is called the prime minister's 'private banker', "clearly has influence over Gordon Brown," the Jewish Chronicle wrote in their 2007 interview: "So what exactly is his relationship with Brown? There is a seven-second pause. 'I would classify myself as a friend of the Prime Minister, just as I was a friend of Tony Blair,' he says carefully." In 2006, Cohen "started to take over the role of government emissary from Lord Levy by meeting Israeli leaders, including the prime minister, Ehud Olmert," the Guardian reported. Sources: Ashkenazi, Eli, "Commander of legendary Jewish immigrant ship Exodus dies at 90," Ha'aretz and Associated Press Boyes, Roger, "Mossad spied on far-right Austrian," The Times (U.K.), June 2, 2005 Leppard, David and Robert Winnett, "Brown picks tycoon to back power bid," The Sunday Times, January 16, 2005 Martin, Douglas, "Yossi Harel," The New York Times, May 1, 2008 Martinson, Jane, "Sir Ronald Cohen: Financier who is hoping for a peace dividend," The Guardian, July 7, 2006 "Mossad spied on Austria's Haidar," United Press International, June 2, 2005 "Profile: Sir Ronald Cohen: Midas with a mission - to make Gordon king," The Sunday Times, January 23, 2005 Rowan, David, "Interview: Sir Ronald Cohen," Jewish Chronicle, September 22, 2007 Yossi Harel, The Times, April 30, 2008

Last Updated ( Monday, 27 October 2008 ) Source: http://www.bollyn.info/home/articles/euhispol/how-zionists-control-britain/

9-Day Notice

October 26, 2008 by Jim Kirwan
The beginning of the End starts in just nine days. It’s not as if we didn’t have enough time to discuss the issues; because this campaign has broken all records for money spent and time wasted in pursuit of the Oval Office. Two years is an eternity in this quagmire and yet the candidates for president managed to avoid talking about any of the things that are tearing this nation apart. America is a two-tier place with one set of laws for the majority and just a wink and a nod for those that actually run the show—and it is a show for certain rather than an election that deals with anything that matters to most of us. America cannot provide jobs for its people; we cannot feed the hungry; heal the sick; or educate the people that need it the most. Government encourages pollution instead of curtailing it. This government sponsors fraudulent insurance and banking practices instead of prosecuting them. The Department of Criminal-Justice embraces the brand of torture that was the order of the day during and after the Spanish Inquisition, along with denying Habeas Corpus, suspending the right to a trial by a jury of one’s peers and in some cases the right to be represented by an attorney—yet they have failed to investigate 911, just as they routinely fail to investigate and prosecute the criminals in both Congress and the Administration that routinely shatter the laws that they each of these maggots had sworn to uphold. The million-dollar misfits running for office know nothing about hard work, missed meals, or the savage mistreatment that most of us suffer through week-in and week-out at the hands of federal, state and local governments that are supposedly there to attend to the things we care about. The list of failures includes virtually every area of responsibility which this government has the responsibility to pay for, without having to be sued to act. FEMA has established itself as the greatest single agent of governmental failure in memory—and as “NOTHING* DOING” is still its motto—it should be dissolved forthwith. Homeland Security, our homegrown engine for the generation of national fear and paranoia has proven to be a legislative and administrative white elephant in every sense of that term and must be broken back into its original components, if we are ever to obtain anything like responsibility from any of the original-parts of that agency. One might wonder, what the hell have the candidates been talking about for the last two years: “Nothing” that could rock the boat of ‘Business-as-usual,’ and that much is certain! Congress for its part in this, has seen to it that for the last eight years we have not had congressional oversight, of any of the massively criminal-constructs that have bankrupted the nation and that continue to cripple businesses while changes are forcing the loss of millions more US jobs. In many cases these fiscal cuts are so deep that the Christmas season might well be canceled because there is no money available for stores to purchase the stock required, and even with reduced staff levels many stores are being forced out; while the bankers sit on the bailout money that was appropriated (with a gun to the head of the congress), but that money is going into the pockets of the billionaires instead of into the places it was supposed to go—to “kick-start the flagging economy.” (1) I This selection also comes at a time when this country is heavily invested in two illegal and unilaterally declared invasions that we call “The War on Terra,” and these ‘wars’ have involved every one of us in major war-crimes and crimes against humanity—yet this has not been a centerpiece for any of the major campaigns. The one thing that these pitiful talking-manikins did finally have to talk about was the earthquake that shattered Wall Street. But here again they have kept their distance from this massive quadrillion-dollar black-hole, because, like its natural counterpart, this black-hole has the potential of dragging everything and everyone even close to it; into its inescapable nether-regions. (2) Now we are facing new threats on the borders of the states we invaded (to make the world safe for democracy and freedom). This will be a re-run of the bombing of Cambodia back when the War in Vietnam began to go so badly. For all the treasure and blood we have poured into Afghanistan and Iraq, we have been reduced to blaming the bordering nations for our colossal failure to negotiate a political solution to these two wars: Wars that we can no longer win, despite all the bullets bombs and secret no-bid contracts that we have hocked our children’s-children’s futures to provide! Yet none of this seems to be of interest “On the Campaign Trail of 2008.” Even the prospect of bombing Iran, Syria and Lebanon are not enough to provoke any real discussions about why we are at war, and when if ever these criminal endeavors will ever be terminated. The end of these “wars” is our responsibility as it was we who made war upon them, and not the other way around. And before you reach for the DELETE key, ask yourself where the critical-evidence was, that Afghanistan had anything at all to do with the events of 911. For that we only have the word of perhaps the most famous liar in the world, who just happens to be the sitting dictator of this nation. We are almost completely locked into this downward spiral on every front because the bought and paid for Media is wholly owned by the same corporations that have made billions from these wars., and from our national Energy Policies that Cheney put in place, as his first act in office way back in 2001. Clinton’s Communications Acts slammed shut the diversity of voices and opinions in that ‘media’ and reduced this nation to a virtual third world state when it comes to journalism or to that fabled Fourth Estate, that it was suppose to be, under the First Amendment to the US Constitution. The Senate will ratify S1959 right after the elections to comport with the draconian terms of H.R. 1955, (which passed the House 404 to 6), Bush will then sign this into law and America will have its collective throat cut and all its tongues monitored for any sign of oppositional thought, to anything that might disagree with the Powers-that-be, under pain of jail or execution, depending on the severity of the crime or for: “(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term `homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives. (4) IDEOLOGICALLY BASED VIOLENCE- The term ideologically based violence' means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs.” (3) One thing is now very clear: We are all in this together, if the nation falls, then we shall fall with her all the way to the bottom. We must come together or we shall each be picked off one by one. This was once our country, or so we thought. But we left it to the million-dollar pretenders, to the Bankers and the Money-Changers and all we have now is about to turn to ashes within weeks if we fail to come together. Many of us thought we had a stake in this country, as in we were part of it and it would protect us and guide us to a better life: It is now crystal clear that this not happening, in the foreseeable future, unless we find ways to drop the petty stuff and demand the kinds of changes that do not involve bringing back the same old criminals (in the guise of advisors) that both candidates have already picked. Nine Days is not long, but you’ve been warned by thousands of concerned people, millions of times, and it’s better than no-notice at all so do whatever you can! Jim Kirwan NOTES:
1) Down for the Count the whole system is contracting	Back to text
2) The Bet that Blew-up Wall Street - video	Back to text
3) HR 1955 Thought Crime Legislation – video Source: http://www.kirwanesque.com/politics/articles/2008/art109.htm

The Biggest Heist in History

Monday, October 27, 2008

Len Hart

The bailout is the biggest overt theft in history. Only healthy banks get funding --so why do they get a bailout? The 'bailout' is yet another monumental instance in which 'wealth is spread around' to those who do not need it, did not create it, did not earn it, and did not do anything productive to create it! Why doesn't Bush and his 'base' just load up a convoy of armored trucks at Ft. Knox --then drive like hell to the border?

Most big recipients of 'bailout monies' are using the 'bailout' to gobble up smaller, less favored banks. In simpler times, we might have called them the "Savings and Loan". In "It's a Wonderful Life" with Jimmy Stewart, it was called the "Building and Loan". If you've seen this classic film, you will recall that when the Great Depression came, it was the "Building and Loan" that was faced with collapse --not Potter, the richest man in town who sought to own it all.

Several major U.S. banks are leaning toward spending a portion of their federal rescue money on acquiring other financial firms rather than for issuing new loans, the primary purpose of the government's $250 billion initiative to invest in banks.

J.P. Morgan Chase, BB&T, and Zions Bancorporation have all said in recent days that they are considering using some of their federal money to buy other banks.

About 10 financial institutions belonging to the Financial Services Roundtable, which represents 100 of the nation's largest financial services firms, are also considering making acquisitions with the money, said Scott Talbott, the group's senior vice president.

There is a growing consensus among Treasury and other federal officials that allowing healthy banks to use the money to acquire banks in jeopardy of failing could stabilize the economy and bolster confidence in banks. This could also save money for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. confirmed yesterday that some banks may use the capital they receive through the Treasury program to buy weaker banks and that this could benefit the financial system.

--Banks Weighing Other Uses for Bailout Money

Secondly, bailouts are supposed to restore confidence. This 'bailout' has had the opposite effect. Bush responses to the 'crisis' vary from day to day. As a result, the crisis now feeds upon itself, driven primarily by Bush's rhetoric and the market's negative response to it.

Other 'Presidents' in other times sought to restore the nation's confidence. The GOP did the opposite. It subverted 'confidence' and tried to exploit the crisis. The 'healthy' banks and those already among the nation's very richest elite are making out like bandits while most Americans face the real prospect of losing their jobs, their homes and, perhaps, even their lives. The GOP doesn't have a bailout for them. The GOP has a bailout for its base, the richest one percent which owns 90 percent or more of the nation's total wealth. [See: The L-Curve]

One could start with Paulson himself, whose former bank stands to benefit handsomely from the bailout which he has authored. While at Goldman Sachs, Paulson amassed a personal fortune of $700 million.The list continues:

According to Forbes magazine, Ken Lewis last year brought in a salary of $20.13 million, and his holdings of Bank of America stock are worth an estimated $112 million.

Jamie Dimon received a 2007 Christmas bonus of $14.5 million and holds $190 million in JPMorgan stock.

Lloyd Blankfein received a Christmas bonus of $68 million and his holdings of Goldman Sachs stock were worth $414.5 million last year.

Vikram Pandit received a $165 million signing bonus from Citigroup last year, together with a $2.7 million salary for a few months of work and $48 million in stock options.

John Mack received $41.8 million in compensation last year, and his 2007 holdings in Morgan Stanley stock were worth $220 million.

These firms’ stock, and particularly that of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, rose rapidly on news of the meeting with Paulson. Goldman stock rose 25 percent to $111 a share, and Morgan Stanley stock rose 87 percent to $18.10 per share.--Global Research, Banks dictate conditions of US Financial Bailout

The very origins of the crash may be found --not on Wall Street but K-street. K Street is best compared to older portions of LA's Santa Monica boulevard, a less glamorous section of the nation's movie capital where various 'talents' are marketed, bid on and sold. On K-Street, the government whores itself out to major lobbyists by way of its pimps --think tanks, lobbyists, and advocacy groups. The difference is this: on Santa Monica Boulevard, 'John' has to pay his own way if he wishes to 'play'. On K-street, a good time is had by all, but it's you who gets the bill. When the bill is not paid, the crash ensues.

Am I being unfair to the 'exiting' (hopefully) administration? Impossible! It is not possible to express the depths of pure evil this administration has indulged in your name!

First, the $700 billion rescue for the economy was about buying devalued mortgage-backed securities from tottering banks to unclog frozen credit markets.

Then it was about using $250 billion of it to buy stakes in banks. The idea was that banks would use the money to start making loans again.

But reports surfaced that bankers might instead use the money to buy other banks, pay dividends, give employees a raise and executives a bonus, or just sit on it. Insurance companies now want a piece; maybe automakers, too, even though Congress has approved $25 billion in low-interest loans for them.
--Uses for $700 billion bailout money ever shifting

The best evidence that the bailout is a cover for a yet another huge transfer, a 'spreading around of wealth, to Bush's 'base' may be found in the following letter by the CEO of a so-called 'healthy' bank.

There is no panic on Main Street and in sound financial institutions. The problems are in high-risk financial institutions and on Wall Street. ...The primary beneficiaries of the proposed rescue are Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. ... Treasury is totally dominated by Wall St. investment bankers. They do not have knowledge of the commercial banking industry. Therefore they cannot be relied on to objectively assess all the implications of government policy on all financial intermediaries. The decision to protect the money funds is a clear example of a material lack of insight into the risk to the entire financial system. --John A. Allison of BB&T, A healthy bank's CEO rejects the bailout: An open letter to Congress

A financial 911? Perhaps! By any name, the Bush crime family in cooperation with the GOP, the MIC, K-street, and Wall Street have just sold out the future every American but those among the very, very, very, very rich.
Source: http://existentialistcowboy.blogspot.com/2008/10/biggest-heist-in-history.html