Realm Wave Rider

Media Responsibility

2007-02-15T07:30:00.000-06:00

The other day, a public radio station in New Mexico took an exemplary position on the role of media and how credible news should be presented.

News director Bill Dupuy of KSFR in Santa Fe, New Mexico instructed his staff to "ignore national stories quoting unnamed sources." Thank goodness Mr. Dupuy realizes how easily a single misleading, false flag story can create the momentum to direct public opinion in a particular direction normally considered unacceptable. We've been down that dead-end road before.

The message to his staff:

Effectively immediately and until further notice, it is the policy of KSFR's news department to ignore and not repeat any wire service or nationally published story about Iran, China, North Korea, Pakistan, Russia or any other foreign power that quotes an "unnamed" U.S. official.

What we have suspected and talked about at length before is now becoming clear. "High administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity," "Usually reliable Washington sources," and others of the like were behind the publicity that added credibility to the need to go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq.

Our news department covers local news. But, like local newspapers and others, we occassionally are taken in by national stories that we have no way to verify.

This is a small news department with a small reach. We cannot research these stories ourselves. But we can take steps not to compromise our integrity. We should not dutifully parrot whatever comes out of Washington, on the
wire or by whatever means, no matter how intriguing and urgent it sounds, when the source is unnamed.

I am also calling on our colleagues in other local news departments -- broadcast and print -- to take the same professional approach.

Thank you Mr. Dupuy.

Source: Radio Station Cries 'Enough' -- Won't Quote From Certain News Stories Relying on Unnamed Officials By Greg Mitchell

Tagged: Censorship, Current Affairs, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

On the Turning Away

2007-02-08T14:45:00.000-06:00

A couple of important video collages from the Signs of the Times web site - an objective, global news site with a conscience...

Tagged: Current Affairs, Democracy, Humanity, Israel, Middle East, Military Industrial Complex, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Palestine, Politics, Terrorism War.

Children Killed by Israel

2006-09-29T12:48:00.000-05:00

In case you haven't noticed, 37 children have been killed by Israeli forces since July. Of course you wouldn't know this fact since the American media will not report anything which sheds a negative light on the state of Israel. Only in alternative news sites such as this will you find such information.

Here are the names and ages of the children killed:

Bara Nasser Habib, 3 (hit by shrapnel to the head and body, Gaza City, 26 July)

Shahed Saleh Al-Sheikh Eid, 3 days old (bled to death after airstrike, Al-Shouka, 4 August)

Rajaa Salam Abu Shaban, 3 (died of fractured skull in air raid, Gaza City, 9 August)

Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by a shell, Al-Shoukha, 10 september)

Khaled Nidal Wahba, 15 months (died of wounds from an airstrike, 10 July)

Rawan Farid Hajjaj, 6 (killed with his mother and sister in an airstrike, Gaza City, 8 July)

Anwar Ismail Abdul Ghani Atallah, 12 (shot in the head, Erez, 5 July)

Shadi Yousef Omar 16 (shot in the chest by IDF, Beit Lahya, 7 July)

Mahfouth Farid Nuseir, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)

Ahmad Ghalib Abu Amsha, 16, (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)

Ahmad Fathi Shabat, 16 (killed by missile while playing football, Beit Hanoun, 11 July)

Walid Mahmoud El-Zeinati, 12 (died of shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 11 July)

Basma Salmeya, 16 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)

Somaya Salmeya, 17 (killed in Israeli airstrike, 12 July, Jabalia)

Aya Salmeya, 9 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Yehya Salmeya, 10 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Nasr Salmeya, 7 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Huda Salmeya, 13 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Eman Salmeya, 12 (killed in Israeli airstrike, Jabalia, 12 July)

Raji Omar Jaber Daifallah, 16 (died of shrapnel wounds from missile, Gaza City, 13 July)

Ali Kamel Al-Najjar, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)

Ahmed Ali Al-Na'ami, 16 (killed by Israeli tank shell, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 19 July)

Ahmed Rawhi Abu Abdu, 14 (killed by drone missile, Al Nusairat refugee camp, 19 July)

Mohammed 'awad Muhra, 14 (killed by Israeli bullet to the chest, Al-Maghazi refugee camp, 20 July)

Fadwa Faisal Al-'arrouqi, 13 (died from shrapnel wounds, Gaza City, 20 July)

Saleh Ibrahim Nasser, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)

Khitam Mohammed Rebhi Tayeh, 11 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 24 July)

Ashraf 'abdullah 'awad Abu Zaher, 14 (shot in the back, Khan Younis, 25 July)

Nahid Mohammed Fawzi Al-Shanbari, 16 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 31 July)

Aaref Ahmed Abu Qaida, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Beit Hanoun, 1 August)

Anis Salem Abu Awad, 12 (killed by airstike, Al-Shouka, 2 August)

Ammar Rajaa Al-Natour, 17 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)

Kifah Rajaa Al-Natour, 15 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)

Ibrahim Suleiman Al-Rumailat, 13 (killed by drone missile, Al Shouka, 5 August)

Ahmed Yousef 'abed 'aashour, 13 (killed by missile fire, Beit Hanoun, 14 August)

Mohammed 'abdullah Al-Ziq, 14 (killed by drone missile, Gaza City, 29 August)

Nidal 'abdul 'aziz Al-Dahdouh, 14 (killed by rifle fire, Gaza City, 30 August)

Jihad Selmi Abu Snaima, 14 (killed by artillery fire, Rafah, 10 September)

Link to the article.

While you're at it, read this article and watch the disturbing video of the violence wrought upon an innocent family on a Gaza beach. Man's inhumanity to man captured on video.

Tagged: Current Affairs, Israel, Middle East, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Palestine, Politics, Terrorism.

Weapons Testing on American Citizens

2006-09-13T07:49:00.000-05:00

For years, Americans have been used unwittingly as guinea pigs for military and pharmaceutical experimenation. The tests were kept secret and, when revealed, efforts made to expose the tests were ridiculed or attacked.

Well, we live in a different world now where the experimentation can be made public and defended as measures used to "protect our freedoms".

On Tuesday, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne presented his position on why the use of high-power microwave devices on American citizens
is okay. Here's a section from the CNN article ( http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/12/usaf.weapons.ap/index.html ):

Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

So, what do you think? Do you feel comfortable knowing you are being used as a lab experiment? How about being viewed and used as an object without feeling or conscience, by some whose primary concern is the advancement and application of their power while maintaining a positive image?

Objective news here.

(Humming Steve Miller Band's "Living in the USA")

Tagged: Current Affairs, Freedom, Military, News, News and Politics, Opinion, People, Psychology.

Almost Human

2006-08-07T12:44:00.000-05:00

With all the technological advances and precision capabilities in modern military weapons systems, doesn't it make one wonder why it is that so many civilians continue to get caught in the fighting? On the surface, it is made to appear accidental, "collateral damage" is the terminology-of-choice. Upon deeper inspection, it becomes obvious civilians are being targetted, some say to frighten them out of the area, but more than likely to exterminate those whose lives are thought to be of lesser "value" than the attacking forces.

While on the topic of targetting civilians, I recommend you take a minute to watch a flash movie showing exactly how, over the span of decades, one goes about dehumanizing an entire population. The makers of the Pentagon Strike flash movie, a movie played over millions of times on the Internet, have recently released another incredibly powerful flash movie, Pathocracy: Disease.

So, is it all really about killing civilians, or exterminating a population because of their religious affiliation, ethnic or cultural environment, the land they possess? I believe it is more than that. It is about control. Control over those who allow themselves to be controlled and over-powered.

Apparently, many individuals have no issue doing whatever needs to be done to obtain or maintain power. Is what drives them of a psychological, spiritual, emotional, or physical source? There is lots of discussion pointing in the direction of genetics.

One of the most interesting perspectives came from the following article, Hope by Henry See of Signs of the Times, of which I will excerpt a few sections:

All the evidence points to the fact that war, violence, and the killing of innocents is part of who we are as a species.

But what if the initial assumptions are wrong?

How many of you reading these words would be able to do such a thing as kill a baby or small child? How many of you could put a bullet, or several, into the head of a ten-year-old on her way to school, or empty your pistol's clip into the body of a child wounded at your feet? How many of you could order the bombing of an appartment block knowing that the dead will be civilians, families, people who have never raised a gun against an enemy in their lives?

We ask again. What if our initial assumptions are wrong? What if this violence we see all around us does not come from within us, from within people of conscience, but comes from another source?

What if the evil we see around us in the world is not born from human nature?

Our studies on psychopathy, and the work of Polish psychologist Andrew Lobaczewski on the dynamics of psychopathic political systems, suggests very strongly that everything we "know" about the dark side of human nature is wrong, that the primary source of the violence and active harming of other beings on our planet comes not from mankind, but from an almost human species in our midst, a species that looks human, but that is missing that which we would say is the defining characteristic of humanity: conscience.

Two types of human species? You know, it really doesn't sound so far fetched considering how much the scientific community still doesn't understand about mankind's genetic composition and how many personal experiences can be recounted regarding interactions with others who seemed to have no conscience whatsoever.

Food for serious thought..

Tagged: Current Affairs, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Psychology, Terrorism, War.

9/11 in the News

2006-08-01T07:22:00.000-05:00

Oliver Stone is about to release his World Trade Center movie on August 9. A story of two Port Authority police officers who rush in to help in the evacuation of the World Trade Towers, become trapped after the collapse, and are ultimately rescued. The movies focuses on the emotions behind the events, primarily centered on the impact to these two individuals' lives, with no attempt to challenge any of several tough questions... whether the collapse was the result of jet fuel melting the support beams or a pre-planned demolition, the reason for the abysmally poor response of several groups assigned to manage and protect airspace, etc.

Via the releases of movies such as Flight 93 and World Trade Center, American's emotions will be served a healthy helping of optimism in the human spirit. All the while, the tough questions continue to go unanswered.

Then, we also have the American Scholars Symposium with Alex Jones and a group of prominent 9/11 skeptics talking about the events and vested players, from their perspective, surrounding 9/11. The event will air tonight at 7:10 PM (EST) on C-SPAN, which amazingly, the fact that such a discussion would gain access to a wider audience via C-SPAN is very interesting since the opinions expressed by the symposium panel would be highly critical of certain groups and agencies at the highest levels of government.

So, what is going on? I see efforts to achieve some sort of emotional closure to events surrounding 9/11, while at the same time increased visibility of 9/11 movements questioning the "conventional wisdom". Both are being allowed to happen in what appears to be a drawing of the line. A separation between those who follow the party line and those who do not.

An interesting blog, "Alex Jones and 911 Scholars: The Parable of the Good Shepherd", provides a different take on why this is being allowed to happen:

The first rule of warfare is: KNOW your enemy and the whole 911 crowd is so focused on their theories, blinded by their egos, and unaware of the larger context in which 911 must be placed that they are little more than sheep being led to the slaughter by the Pied Pipers of the "Third Rank Alternative Press" and 911 Truth organizations - people like Alex Jones, Jeff Rense, Gerard Holmgren, Rosalee Grable, Alex Constantine, and their associates and fans.

Tagged: 911, Current Affairs, Entertainment, Movies, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Terrorism.

Taking Aim at Civilians

2006-07-26T07:38:00.000-05:00

It has become agonizingly obvious Israel is targetting civilians and anyone helping the Lebanese. More disturbing news of death and painful injuries is coming out of Lebanon.

On Monday, the Washington Post reported on a family hit by an Israeli missile as it drove to get out of the area. Not an uncommon scenario, as many attempt to flee, their activity draws attention from the Israeli forces resulting in a scramble for safety before the lock-on-target is engaged.

"Where's my father? Where's my father?" asked Mahmoud Srour, an 8-year-old whose face was burned beyond recognition after an Israeli missile struck the family's car Sunday. His mother, Nouhad, lurched toward his hospital bed, her eyes welling with tears.

"Is he coming?" he asked her.

"Don't worry about your father," she said, her words broken by sobs.

Barely conscious, bewildered, he lay with his eyes almost swollen shut. His head lolled toward her. A whisper followed.

"Don't cry, mother," he told her.

Mahmoud's father, Mohammed, was dead. An Israeli missile had struck their green Mercedes as they fled the southern town of Mansuri, where the family had been vacationing. The boy's uncle, Darwish Mudaihli, was dead, too. The bodies were left in the burning car. Mahmoud's sister Mariam, 8 months old, lay next to him, staring at the ceiling with a Donald Duck pacifier in her mouth. Her eyes were open but lifeless, a stare that suggested having seen too much. Her hair was singed, her face slightly burned. Blisters swelled the tiny fingers on her left hand to twice their size. In other beds of Najm Hospital were their other brothers, 13-year-old Ali and 15-year-old Ahmed.

Israeli forces repeatedly struck cars on southern Lebanon's already perilous roads in attacks that victims said were indiscriminate. Seven people were killed, three of them when an Israeli helicopter fired a missile at a white minibus carrying 19 people fleeing the village of Tairi, which Israeli forces had ordered residents to evacuate.

There were also reports and video of phosporous weapons being used on civilians. What is the justification of such a weapon being used in response to the actions against a small number of soldiers? One of certainly many egregious acts by the Israeli military which will likely continue to persist without an authoritative response from the international community.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported six Red Cross volunteers were injured. These volunteers risk their lives to transport civilians injured by Israeli bombs to hospitals for medical care. I can already hear the likely excuse for targetting the ambulances... they are a cover for the transport of terrorists. Yeah, right.

Six Red Cross volunteers were wounded in the Sunday attack, and the injured family they were ferrying to safety suffered fresh agonies. A middle-age man lost his leg from the knee down. His mother was partially paralyzed. A little boy's head was hammered by shrapnel.

Today, CNN reports of the death of four UN observers. An apparently intentional strike since the UN personnel had been in constant contact with the Israeli military officers throughout the day informing them of their location.

The U.N. observers were killed when an Israeli bomb made a direct hit on their bunker in southern Lebanon on Tuesday. They had called an Israeli military liaison about 10 times in the six hours before they died to warn that the aerial attacks were getting close to their position, according to a U.N. officer.

"This coordinated artillery and aerial attack on a long-established and clearly marked U.N. post at Khiyam occurred despite personal assurances given to me by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that U.N. positions would be spared Israeli fire," he [U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan] said in a statement.

"Furthermore, General Alain Pelligrini, the U.N. force commander in south Lebanon, had been in repeated contact with Israeli officers throughout the day on Tuesday, stressing the need to protect that particular U.N. position from attack."

Consider this from an opinion piece in Dar Al-Hayat.

Israel has always relied on brute force to ensure its security. Since its creation in 1948, it has sought to dominate the region by military means. This doctrine rests on the belief that the Arabs will never be strong enough, or capable enough, to challenge it. This is a fundamentally racist attitude.

But beneath the bluster and the muscle-flexing lies a deep-seated paranoia and insecurity, reflected in the conviction, shared by many of Israel's citizens, that the Arabs want to kill them and that they face a permanent existential threat. The choice, they seem to believe, is between killing or being killed. This dark view of their environment - something of a self-fulfilling prophecy -- goes some way to explaining the extravagantly disproportionate nature of Israel's attacks and its blatant disregard for international legality and any semblance of morality.

Israel is able to behave in this way because it has been given extraordinary immunity by the United States. A striking aspect of the crisis is, indeed, America's total political, diplomatic and strategic support for Israel -- even to the point of rushing to give it $300 million of aviation fuel with which to continue smashing Lebanon!

America's gross bias has paralysed the Security Council, the G8 and the European Union. So great is American pressure that none of these bodies has been able to insist on an immediate end to the Israeli onslaught. Britain dutifully followed its American Big Brother in repeating the mantra that 'Israel has the right to defend itself', while even France, Lebanon's traditional protector, has tended to put the blame on Hizballah, rather than Israel, for the massive destruction and loss of life.

Terrorism is usually defined as the indiscriminate killing of civilians in pursuit of political goals. Is this not what Israel is doing in both Lebanon and Gaza? It is killing large numbers of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians in pursuit of its political aim of annihilating Hizballah and Hamas. By any objective standard, Israel is guilty of state terrorism.

But killing Arabs in this wanton manner and smashing their countries must inevitably have negative consequences for Israel's own security. Israel's terrorist behaviour legitimizes the terrorism of its enemies. And America's uncritical support for Israel legitimises terrorism against the United States itself. That is what 9/11 was all about, although to this day the United States has not faced up to why it was attacked. The United States and Israel are sowing the wind and will reap the whirlwind.

The evidence continues to mount, weighing heavily against Israel, that the military actions being taken by Israel are nothing short of ethnic cleansing of the area. Whether it be by use of banned weapons, the blatant targetting of civilians, or destruction of the country's infrastructure, one thing is certain, Lebanon as a country will be weaker and many Lebanese will die, if not immediately over time, as the world sits idly while Israel continues to crush anyone in her path toward domination in the Middle East.

Tagged: Current Affairs, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Terrorism, War.

Voices

2006-07-21T07:33:00.000-05:00

Civilian deaths in Tyre, Lebanon

Sydney Morning Herald

Parked outside the small general hospital in Tyre is a badly refrigerated lorry container in which are stacked the bodies of 91 Lebanese civilians, 55 of them children.

Since Israel began bombing and shelling south Lebanon last Wednesday, about 380 patients have passed through this 65-bed hospital, plus the 91 dead.

Not one of the victims, he says, has been a member of Hezbollah, the militia group that triggered Israel's onslaught with a border raid last week.

"The army and Hezbollah - I don't care if they kill all of them," he said. "But the civilians - it's very hard. Everyone who has come in here has been a civilian."

Robert Fisk

How soon must we use the words "war crime"? How many children must be scattered in the rubble of Israeli air attacks before we reject the obscene phrase "collateral damage" and start talking about prosecution for crimes against humanity?

The child whose dead body lies like a rag doll beside the cars which were supposedly taking her and her family to safety is a symbol of the latest Lebanon war; she was hurled from the vehicle in which she and her family were traveling in southern Lebanon as they fled their village - on Israel's own instructions. Because her parents were apparently killed in the same Israeli air attack, her name is still unknown. Not an unknown warrior, but an unknown child.

The Israelis constantly boast of their "pin-point" or "surgical" precision in air attacks. If this is true, then there are far too many civilians being killed in the Lebanese bloodbath to make every one of them an accident. And since Israel's target list now includes obviously civilian targets - deliberately bombed to punish the civilian population - the evidence is mounting that these air raids are intended to kill the innocent as well as the Hizbollah guerrillas whom Israel claims to be fighting.

True, the Hizbollah are killing civilians in Israel, but their missiles are inaccurate and the West, which has done no more than mildly disapprove of Israel's retaliatory onslaught, must surely expect higher standards of the Israeli armed forces than of the men whom both Israel and President George Bush describe as "terrorists".

Why, for example, did the Israelis attack and destroy the headquarters of the Liban-Lait company in the Bekaa Valley, the largest milk factory in Lebanon? Why did they bomb out the factory of the main importer for Proctor and Gamble products in Lebanon, based in Bchmoun? Why did they destroy a paper box factory outside Beirut? And why did Israeli planes attack a convoy of new ambulances being brought into Lebanon from Syria yesterday, vehicles which were the gift of the medical authorities of the United Arab Emirates? The ambulances were clearly marked as a relief aid convoy, according to an Emirates official. Were all these "terrorist" targets? Was the little girl in the field at Tel Harfa a "terrorist" target?

Jefferson Morley (Washington Post)

Are Americans being given a very different view of the Israel-Hezbollah conflict than their counterparts in Europe and elsewhere?

Yes, according to commentators in Muslim and European media.

In European media, the civilian toll in Lebanon is often seen as trumping all other considerations.

Is the U.S. media just providing reports that conform to its consumers' world view? After all, Americans are the most sympathetic towards Israel of 15 nations surveyed by the Pew Global Attitude survey conducted earlier this year. That survey found that 48 percent of Americans sympathized with Israel as compared with 13 percent who sympathized with Palestinians.

Americans are also more likely than the people of any other country to regard U.S. policy in the Middle East as "fair," according to Pew pollsters. In one 2003 survey, 47 percent thought U.S. policy in the Middle East favored neither the Israelis or the Palestinians. Only five percent of Lebanese shared that view.

The disparate reaction to Lebanon's civilian casualties may simply reflect the larger beliefs of the societies in which journalists work.

Paul Craig Roberts

Many Muslims believe that Bush and Israel see them as animals to be slain. On July 17, neocon John Bolton, Bush’s unconfirmed ambassador to the UN, gave credence to this Muslim belief when he announced that Israelis killed by terrorists were more important than the Lebanese civilians killed by Israel. Bolton said that there is no "moral equivalence" between Lebanese civilians killed by Israel and Israeli civilians killed by Muslim terrorists: "It’s simply not the same thing to say that it’s the same act to deliberately target innocent civilians, to desire their deaths, to fire rockets and use explosive devices or kidnapping versus the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense."

In Bolton’s sick mind, Lebanese civilians are not experiencing terrorism when Israel deliberately targets them and drops high explosives on their apartment buildings, streets, bridges, power plants, and bombs the Beirut International Airport. This, says Bolton, is Israel acting in self-defense.

If Israel grabs Palestinian or Lebanese land and murders civilians, that is "self-defense," but if someone responds to Israeli aggression with a rocket, that is "Muslim terrorism."

Isolated in their evil, the neoconservatives are frantically and shrilly demanding that Bush join Israel in military attacks on Syria and Iran in order to “build democracy” and to clear the Middle East of any opposition to Israel’s unbridled self-interest. The crazed David Horowitz writes that "Israel is doing the work of the rest of the civilized world."

Neoconservatives believe that the US and Israel can extirpate Islam with fire and sword and that the present opportunity to escalate the current conflict into generalized war in the Middle East must not be missed.

Are Americans too inattentive and too brainwashed to prevent their moronic president and his neocon government from initiating a dangerous war?

Manuel Valenzuela

The labeling as anti-Semitic of anyone critical of the state of Israel's policies in the continued destruction of Palestinian identity, and now Lebanese society and infrastructure, and the increasing domination into American foreign policy no longer has the sting of threat or intimidation it once mastered. For too long this masquerade has been used to silence those opposing anything Israel, shouted at anyone disseminating truth and seeking justice. Like the boy who cried wolf, this charade has lost its power or hypnotic control, and today only serves to breed more anger and resentment against the apologists and smear mongers protecting the cancerous tentacles of Zionism and the crimes against humanity it spawns.

The time has come to stop bending over to the dictates of intimidation and scare tactics used by Israel's protectors, defenders and apologists. The time has come to say "Never Again" to such fictional libel and slander whose only purpose is the continued subjugation of truth and awakening. The labeling of "anti-Semite" does not bother us, nor does it stop us from writing truth to justice and reality to intimidation because we refuse to be frightened into submission and silenced into acquiescence by a mechanism we know to be false.

Our convictions, search for truth and want for justice supercedes the trash invented to protect the malfeasance ruining humanity and the crimes perpetrated against our fellow human beings. The time has come to stand up and be heard, refusing to believe the smears and the labels, instead living life in truth, devoid of veiled threats and intimidation tactics whose power over us continues to erode thanks to its incessant overuse and abuse. So smear if you must, defenders, appeasers and apologists of human wickedness, continue to blindly believe in the majesty of a fiction you know to be false, ensuring your daily complicity in the crimes against humanity being committed by those you protect and defend.

We are above your labels, above your intimidation and smear tactics, following the path of truth in the voice of our writings and in the convictions of humanity. If pursuing truth, fighting criminality and awakening justice makes us anti-Semites, then guilty we are. If seeing the dehumanization, exploitation and utter destruction of the Palestinian people makes the voices of reason anti-Semitic, then guilty we stand. To defend the humanity of other Semitic people is to defend humanity itself. To speak out against injustice and dehumanization makes us human, to defend it makes you complicit.

Tagged: Current Affairs, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Syria, Terrorism, War.

Unconscionable

2006-07-20T07:13:00.000-05:00

How can the US government condone Israel's behavior? How can the US media not present the gruesome images of the attacks on the civilian population of a soveriegn country by an aggressor?

The US government has lost its conscience, assuming it existed in the first place.

The US media has lost its bearing. Perhaps a new compass with an emphasis on the presentation of well-researched, unbiased, and objective reporting is required.

Nevertheless, what is happenning, and is allowed to continue, in Lebanon is unconscionable. The Washington Post reports on Congress' vote of confidence to Israel. The support reflects the obvious power of the Israeli/Jewish lobby.

Democratic and Republican congressional leaders are rushing to offer unalloyed support for Israel's offensive against Hezbollah fighters, reflecting a bipartisan desire to not only defend a key U.S. ally but also solidify long-term backing of Jewish voters and political donors in the United States, according to officials and strategists in both parties.

And, not to lose an opportunity to further Israel's agenda for the region, President Bush implicates Syria and Iran as part of the problem. Again, from the Washington Post:

Bush, in remarks at the White House after he briefed members of Congress about the recent Group of Eight summit of industrialized nations, said the "root cause" of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon "is terrorism and terrorist attacks on a democratic country."

"And part of those terrorist attacks are inspired by nation states, like Syria and Iran. And in order to be able to deal with this crisis, the world must deal with Hezbollah, with Syria and to continue to work to isolate Iran," Bush said.

Someone needs to educate Mr Bush on the history of the region. The "root cause" of the conflict is not terrorism, it is Israel's continued land-grab and displacement of the indigenous people. As said many times before, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. It all depends on one's objectivity.

Today, there is talk of a full-scale Israeli invasion, as if that's not already the case.

Slate's Jacob Weisberg writes "Don't Blame Bush". Really? You can't blame Bush for starting the conflict, but you can blame him for allowing it continue with such ferocity. His continued support of Israel, regardless of Israel's exagerated response to the initial Hezbollah capture of the soldiers, has resulted in many innocent deaths and destruction of the Lebanese infrastructure.

Robert Fisk writes...

I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.

They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis - in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside - tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties - 240 in all of Lebanon by last night - with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.

And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah.

For graphic images of the destruction of life and property in Lebanon at the hands of Israeli munitions, follow this link and this one.

Tagged: Current Affairs, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Middle East, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Syria, Terrorism, War.

Control of the Media

2006-06-21T07:38:00.000-05:00

Dan Rather's parting words upon the announcement of his departure from CBS.

"Too much is made of anchors and their personalities, their ups and downs. The larger issues -- the role of a free press and of honest, real news in a democracy, the role of technology in supporting a free press, the "corporatization" of news and its effects on news content -- all deserve more attention, more discussion and more passionate debate.

Dan Rather
Source: CNN

Control of the media is here. It is all around us. There is a machine feeding only that information which is consistent with maintaining control over and molding the general public's understanding of the world around them.

Originally, news outlets served as sources of information and events, based on facts, investigative in their nature. Now, it is more entertainment and spin than news.

Dissemination of misinformation as fact, to conceal the reality that would otherwise stir the populace into questioning the credibility and capability of their leaders, is the modus operandi of the major media outlets today. Relegating important topics to 15-30 second snippets, instead of the comprehensive analysis deserved, does not serve the public interest. On the contrary, the interests being served are those of the corporations, leaders, and financial stakeholders who would benefit from keeping the real news hidden and any mention of it minimized and lumped in with all the other 15-30 second snippets.

We are all running out of time. As it stands, the only place where real news, researched and presented in all its detail by first-hand accounts, can be found is the internet, specifically on independent, alternative news sites. It is only a matter of time before those outlets are either compromised or shut down.

Those in positions to reach an audience and have any sense of responbility to their profession, families, and communities, to let the truth be known, must speak out before it is too late.

Those who find the courage to act based on conscience, knowing what they are being told is not the truth and is resulting in the deaths of many innocent men, women, and children by the continued utterance of the lies, must act out before it is too late.

Speak out, act out, reach out...

Tagged: Censorship, Current Affairs, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Killers

2006-06-13T12:46:00.000-05:00

Killers...

There is no other word to describe the Israeli military and their leadership.

As if Friday's killing of a family during a beach outing isn't enough. Five members of the family gone in the blink of an eye. Today, eight innocent civilians are slaughtered in an attempt to kill one "militant".

And people wonder why the Palestinians are so God-damned pissed!

One alternative news site puts it out there very plainly:

There is only one word for the actions of the Israeli government and military towards the Palestinian people - slow and steady Genocide.

Ordinary Jews are not to blame for this. The responsibility lies with the small number of psychopathic Israeli right-wing "Zionist" leaders who, we can only assume, actually enjoy the sight of dismembered Palestinian children.
Signs of the Times

Where is the outrage? Condemnations of Israel's actions are nowhere to be found. Today's Washington Post article, "Israeli Airstrike Kills 10 Palestinians", attempts to present a balanced set of positions, but falls pathetically short of taking on the elephant sitting in the room which is the continued Israeli abuse of Palestinian human rights.

A Cabinet minister from Hamas, Yousef Rizka, condemned what he called "the continuous series of Israeli massacres of our Palestinian people."

"I call on the international community to immediately intervene to protect the Palestinian people from the increasing aggression of the Israeli occupation army, which will definitely provoke a response that will engage the entire region," Rizka said.
Washington Post

Israel's reprehensible actions will continue to go unpunished. All the while, innocent men, women, and children continue to die.

Israel is a terrorist state. The only reason no one has gone after her... the United States' unwavering support. Unfortunately for all of us hoping to see America returned to her glorious image of a land of freedom and defender of the innocent, we will likely see her fall to the same abyss as has Israel and join her as another terrorist state.

Tagged: Current Affairs, Israel, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Terrorism, Zionists.

Voices of Reason

2006-05-24T07:46:00.000-05:00

Voices of reason speak out.

On leadership...

Never before in our country's history have both the president and Congress been so out of touch with most Americans. Never before have so few of our elected officials and corporate leaders been less willing to commit to the national interest. And never before has our nation's largest constituent group -- some 200 million middle-class Americans -- been without representation in our nation's capital.
Lou Dobbs, CNN

On Iraq...

The [Iraq] war, and the failure to establish order that led to the barbarism that's driving Iraqis away, can't be laid solely on the neocons' doorstep, of course. These second-generation neos needed a trio of arrogant, onetime CEOs -- Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld -- to actualize their vision. But actualize it they did, and the ideologues whose forebears once argued that the drugged-out Bronx was a monument to liberal folly have now made blood-drenched and depopulating Baghdad the monument to their own neocon obsessions.
Harold Meyerson, Washington Post

On the media...

More important than profit is the mainstream media ownership's interest in preserving the dominance of the corporation over the individual. Starting in the 1950's, post World War II America entered into a period of mass consumption and consumerism that has moved us into a dark period of unparallelled avarice and obsession with materialism. The corporate owners of mass media utilize both mainstream news, and its accompanying advertising, to entice Americans to buy things they do not need and to create an image of who a person "should be" if they want to attain success (i.e. thin, straight, tough, beautiful, young, wealthy). Through the medium of television, corporations have a captive audience to mass market their goods and services to people who neither want or need them, but buy them because they are psychologically manipulated into doing so (think Saturday morning cartoons and toy commercials). Reaching millions of receptive minds at once, the corporate puppeteers have learned to perpetuate the paradigm of white male patriarchy and blind patriotism. The power of television, print and advertising enables the wealthy elite to perpetually employ a variety of propaganda tactics to maintain their hold on most of the wealth and power in our society.
Jason Miller, ZNet

An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only on partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical. That kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy — or worse.
Bill Moyers, Free Press

On energy...

If we want to do something about gas prices, we should demand greatly reduced welfare and military spending, a balanced budget, and fewer regulations that interfere with the market development of alternative fuels. All subsidies and special benefits to energy companies should be ended. We also should demand a return to a sound commodity monetary system.
Ron Paul, Congressman, US Representative

On CIA war crimes...

European Parliament investigator Giovanni Fava and his committee come to Washington this month. He has some additional questions for Bush administration officials, members of Congress, and human rights groups here about the renditions around Europe. Also among those inquiries are other possible CIA crimes, including torture, in the CIA's secret prisons.

My suggestion to Tim Russert of Meet the Press and others who preside over Sunday morning programs that profess to get inside the news is that they invite Giovanni Fava—either in person or from wherever he is in Europe—to present his documented evidence on CIA renditions in a debate with obstructionist senator Pat Roberts, chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, who keeps blocking any investigations of those who have been tortured with the complicity of the CIA and, at the top of the command, the president.
Nat Hentoff, Village Voice

On Zionism and the danger to Israel...

The ugly reality is that 'Jewish lobby groups' are much more accurately described as 'Zionist lobby groups', and Zionism today poses the biggest existential threat to Jews since Nazi Germany.
...
The really alarming aspect all of this is that these 'Zionists' seem to realize, but not care, that needlessly igniting a war with 80 million Iranians and hundreds of millions more sympathetic Arabs in the Middle East is very obviously the real existential threat to Jews in Israel. All of which leads us inexorably to the conclusion that Zionist collaboration with the Nazis during WW II was the first phase of a decades-long two-part plan to shepherd the Jewish people into a position where Hitler's final solution could finally be accomplished. If Zionist entities masquerading as Jewish groups are permitted to continue to spread lies and propaganda that seem destined to turn the Middle East into a glass parking lot, while at the same time urging the world's Jews to migrate to Israel, the day of the "final solution to the Jewish problem" will continue to draw ominously every closer.
Joe Quinn, Sign of the Times

Tagged: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Missing Pentagon Video

2006-05-19T07:15:00.000-05:00

Found at last!

This is what the missing Pentagon video footage should have looked like...

Tagged: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Pentagon Video Silence

2006-05-18T12:43:00.000-05:00

The request from Judicial Watch for release of additional footage of Flight 77's crash into the Pentagon was finally fulfilled. And, much to my dismay, was met with ... silence.

Does anyone else think it odd the revelation of this long-withheld video segment would be met with no media attention? There is nothing to be found on any of the major news web sites: CNN, Fox News, Washington Post, New York Times, MSNBC, or Wall Street Journal.

One would think the smoking gun would be blatantly obvious since the video has been kept out of public reach for over four years. But, neither a smoking gun nor obvious it is.

What has become obvious is the lack of proof that what hit the Pentagon was a commercial airliner!

There is nothing resembling a large, commercial airplane anywhere in the few frames of significance. Although, a huge clue surfaces when one freezes the frame where the white object begins to come into view....

Whatever the object is, it is coming in very low and fast. So low, in fact, that if it were a Boeing 757, one would expect such a large, unmaneuverable plane to smash into the ground before hitting the Pentagon.

Perhaps this is the video they are looking for????

One of the Signs of the Times editors, Joe Quinn, sums it up ...

At this stage, absent any new future video from the DOD, the U.S. government's "evidence" that Flight 77 hit the Pentagon consists of:

the "nose cone" frame

the white smoke trail or "blob" frame

the explosion at the Pentagon frames.

Convincing stuff, eh? This evidence is all the more suspect given the fact that the FBI confiscated tapes from at least two other video cameras in the area that would surely provide a more complete picture, but they refuse to release them.

The release of the DOD video footage comes at a very interesting time. Some readers may be aware that the pre-eminent Cannes film festival is just starting. Fewer however will be aware that the "Pentagon Strike" Flash animation is being shown at this year's festival. While we are not paranoid per se, we couldn't help but feel it was a little strange that the DOD would release their videos on the very day that our team set off to Cannes to promote the Pentagon strike flash. If we were "paranoid", we might say that the release of these videos is an attempt at pre-emptive damage control over potential exposure at Cannes. Of course, it will also simply help to raise the profile of all things 'Pentagonian', which can only help our team in Cannes.

Too bad anyone questioning the veracity of the Flight77-hitting-the-Pentagon theory, since that is what it is pending conclusive proof, will likely be labeled a conspiracy theorist. Another attempt to sweep under the rug the demands from those with very valid doubt of what is offered as proof, similarly to how those disputing the lone gunman theory of the John F Kennedy assassination were/are treated.

Today's conspiracies will become tomorrow's (hopefully) revelations.

Tagged: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Lob the Lobbying Bill Out the Window

2006-05-03T12:25:00.000-05:00

Today's Washington Post editorial is dead on. The lobbying reform bill about to be brought before the House today is nothing but a joke. It is a feeble attempt to disguise inaction and, thanks to parenthood, I have my share of experiences with feeble attempts at deception from which to draw my conclusion.

House members should reject the diluted snake oil that Mr. Dreier and the GOP leadership are peddling as bold reform. Their bill, which is expected to come before the House for a vote today, is an insult to voters who the GOP apparently believes are dumb enough to be snookered by this feint. The procedures under which it is to be debated, allowing only meaningless amendments to be considered, are an insult also -- to the democratic process.
Source: Washington Post

Here's a catch to the above, to be insulted one has to be aware of the what is happening, to be paying attention. Unfortunately, the majority of Americans are not paying attention due to decades of dumbing down.

Democrats tempted to vote for this sham because they're scared of 30-second ads that accuse them of opposing lobbying reform ought to ask themselves whether they really think so little of their constituents. As for Republicans willing to settle for this legislative fig leaf, they ought to listen to Rep. Christopher Shays (R-Conn.). "I happen to believe we are losing our moral authority to lead this place," Mr. Shays said on the House floor last week. He was generous not to have put that in the past tense.
Source: Washington Post

Generous indeed. If there is any moral authority remaining in Congress, it is well-concealed. Very few members of Congress speak openly of the sad state of our country and, when they do, know well the high political price they will pay. These same individuals who speak at their own political peril should be concerned about the successful abuse of their position on these 30-second negative ads. Americans nowadays can't handle more than a few seconds of information, the ads making the most appearances will likely be the ones whose messages will be taken as fact.

Yesterday, the CNN Politics page carried a piece by Molly Ivins which made me chuckle. I like Molly. She is down-to-earth and smart. Here's the opening...

Either the so-called "lobby reform bill" is the contemptible, cheesy, shoddy piece of hypocrisy it appears to be ... or the Republicans have a sense of humor.

The "lobby reform" bill does show, one could argue, a sort of cheerful, defiant, flipping-the-bird-at-the-public attitude that could pass for humor. You have to admit that calling this an "ethics bill' requires brass bravura.
Molly Ivins

and here's getting to the heart of the matter...

Come on, people, get mad. You deserve to be treated with contempt if you let them get away with this.

I'm sorry that all these procedural votes seem so picayune, and I know the cost of gas and health insurance are more immediate worries. But it is precisely the corruption of Congress by big money that allows the oil and insurance industries to get away with these fantastic rip-offs.

And therein lies the problem. Nobody seems to give a flip.

Why is no one screaming to get all these other issues under control. The same issues costing the average American additional hard-earned dollars.

Alright, so someone wants to focus on lobby reform as a start. Ladies and gentlemen of the United States Congress, you want to tackle lobby reform? Start with a committee to investigate the Israel lobby.

Tagged: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Throwing the Lap Dog a Bone

2006-04-28T07:31:00.000-05:00

We have a problem.

I'm not talking about the obvious problem of government's refusal to get the oil and gasoline prices under control. Notice I chose to use the word 'refusal' instead of something a little more negotiable like 'hesitation'. Word selection is intentional. Our government is refusing to take real action on this issue. But, that's not what I want to talk about.

I'm not talking about the insane profits being reported. Not Chevron's announcement of a 49% increase in quarterly earnings (source: CNN Money), nor Exxon's announced record 1st quarter net earnings of $8.4 BILLION (source: Washington Post), nor British Petroleum's or Shell's record profits of $19.3 BILLION and $22.94 BILLION, respectively (source: BBC News).

I'm not talking about the proposed changes being debated in Congress. According to a Wall Street analyst, the profit tax on oil company profits won't impact gasoline prices:

Wall Street analysts discounted the likelihood of congressional action against oil companies. "As someone in the industry for more than 25 years, I've seen it before," said Fadel Gheit, an oil company analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. "Penalizing oil companies does not lower prices at the pump. If we have a windfall profits tax, it will just create another moneybag for the government. It will not increase oil production by one barrel. It will not lower gasoline prices by one cent or alter our dependence on OPEC countries."
Source: Washington Post

I'm not talking of President Bush's disengenuous request for renewal of the effort to raise the mileage standards for vehicles. If the past is proof of the executive and legislative branches' commitment to reducing the dependency on oil by making vehicles more economical, forget about it.

But neither Congress nor the administration has shown much interest in raising passenger car standards, which were set in the 1970s and haven't changed since 1985. In March, the Bush administration said it would raise average fuel economy standards by 1.9 miles a gallon for sport-utility vehicles, pickups and vans for models in 2008 through 2011, a long-awaited move that environmentalists said was too modest.
Source: Washington Post

I'm talking about the $100 bone thrown to the lap dog which is the average American. Apparently, the Senate GOP leaders believe the average American is so naive as to take a deal where $100 in cash today is more important than the long-term reduction in the price of gasoline. This attempt at what in nothing less than a bribe reveals the mindset which is prevalent in Washington. Display to the citizenry the appearance of action, perhaps even provide a little something with which to entertain themselves, and the citizenry will feel as if their interests have been served.

Nothing could be farther from the truth. The American public is not being served, it is being played.

I'd like to say this really jerks my chain, but then I don't have one. Do you?

Tagged: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Changing Face on Media Relations

2006-04-26T07:19:00.000-05:00

With today's announcement of Fox News commentator Tony Snow as the replacement for White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, it is evident the Bush administration feels it necessary to have a spokesman with a stage presence. Snow's experience with the camera, his previous stint within the White House with the senior Bush's presidency, and journalist skills will serve him well.

Selecting a familiar face to deliver the administration's messages is a calculated and wise move. Not only is Tony Snow a familiar face in one of the most widely watched news channels, he is capable of managing the relationship with the audience, which is what ultimately counts. He also understands there is a gap which must be bridged between the Bush administration and journalist.

"President Bush hates responding to the press, hates responding to political enemies -- he thinks it's beneath him," Snow said on Fox News in March. "He's got a stubborn streak." What the president needed, he said, was "a series of vigorous defenses" of his position.
Washington Post

In order to kick-off the relationship building process with the media, he may need to start with restating his previous positions and framing them within the context of where he stands today.

Dee Dee Myers, a press secretary in the Clinton White House, said that if Bush wants smoother relations with journalists, "Tony has stature. He understands how the press works from both sides. He has a big personality, and that can be helpful." But she noted that Snow has "a long paper trail" and would have to defend policies he has criticized.Washington Post

Speaking of media presence...

Over at this blogger's site, I found an interesting analysis of the factors at play in the effort to corrupt the messages of serious researchers into areas which some very powerful groups would prefer not be critically analyzed. The article, The Destruction of the 911 Truth Movement, presents information on how major alternative news sites, the likes of Jeff Rense, and discussion forums, the likes of Above Top Secret, are used to assimilate, or disparage those which can't be assimilated, researchers with either a significant following or serious message which must be "handled".

Control of the media will determine which messages actually get delivered and what is contained therein.

Tagged: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Megalomania and Ponerology

2006-04-20T07:16:00.000-05:00

megalomania n.

1. A psychopathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth, power, or omnipotence.

ponerology n.

1. A division of theology dealing with evil; theological doctrine of wickedness or evil; from the Greek: poneros -> evil'.

Earlier this week President Bush declared himself "The Decider". As I read those words, the above two words immediately came to mind. I have provided the definitions above, and a few thoughts below...

Positions of power are full of individuals of the above types.

Study the types well.

Educate yourself in their ways.

Understand their purpose and aim.

They do not act in our best interest.

Protect yourself with knowledge.

And, remember these from Musashi Miyamoto's The Book of Five Rings...

Think of what is right and true.
Understand the harm and benefit in everything.
Learn to see everything accurately.
Become aware of what is not obvious.
Be careful even in small matters.
Do not do anything useless.

Tagged: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

FBI: Federal Bureau of Intimidation

2006-04-19T07:21:00.000-05:00

Not long after columnist Jack Anderson's funeral, FBI agents called his widow to say they wanted to search his papers. They were looking for confidential government information he might have acquired in a half-century of investigative reporting. USA Today

Yesterday, we read about how the FBI is attempting to obtain the personal files of investigative reporter Jack Anderson under the pretext it will help the government's case against two former lobbyists for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). The lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman, have been charged with disclosing classified information.

Interestingly, the FBI is expanding the scope to remove any documents discovered during the search which may be stamped "secret", "confidential", or may be otherwise classified. Smells to me very much like a fishing expedition to attempt to identify individuals, sources or contacts, who may have helped Anderson obtain access to information revealing unethical, illegal, or less than flattering activities of certain powerful figures.

Mark Feldstein, a George Washington University journalism professor and Anderson biographer. Feldstein said he was visited by two agents at his Washington-area home in March.

Feldstein, who is writing a book about Anderson's relationship with Nixon, said the attempt is part of the "greatest assault on the news media since the Nixon administration."

"On the one hand, I think it's really disturbing to have the FBI come knocking at your door, demanding to look at things you've been reading. It smacks of a Gestapo state. On the other hand, it's so heavy handed to be almost ludicrous," Feldstein said. Washington Post

Today, another Washington Post article more accurately reports, albeit via the comments from Kevin Anderson, Jack Anderson's son, the more troubling aspect of this demand from the FBI:

Kevin Anderson said agents were "duplicitous" about their "true objective . . . to whitewash Jack Anderson's papers and attempt to remove from history embarrassing documents."

Here we see firsthand attempts at rewriting history, erasing all evidence of the truths, facts, and events as they occurred. Under the cover of the search for security leaks compromising national security, the true objective of silencing patriots and honest citizens who would reveal corruption, unconstitutional, and criminal behavior, will now be sought.

Any document can be classified and excluded from revelation under the guise of protection of national security, at the discretion of anyone with the power to apply the classification, and thus sweep under the rug any act or decision they choose.

Criminal acts and abuses of power would never be revealed. Everyone would continue to believe what a clean house the intelligence, military, executive, and legislative communities maintain.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Rockers Speak Out

2006-04-18T07:27:00.000-05:00

Today, Neil Young joins the ranks of rockers speaking out against the policies and actions of the Bush administration. Seems that interviews aren't making out to the public, so might as well let the lyrics do the talking for you...

"I raise my hand in peace ... I never bow to the laws of the thought police ... I take a holy vow ... to never kill again ...

"In the big hotels ... in the mosques and the doors of the old museum ... I take a holy vow ... to never kill again."
from Living With War

Other artists who have spoken out include Steve Earle, Willie Nelson and the Rolling Stones.

According to CNN:

Veteran rocker Neil Young has recorded a protest album featuring an anti-Iraq war track with "a holy vow to never kill again" and a song titled "Let's Impeach the President," the singer said on Monday.

The New York Times reports on Neils' renewed activism:

Neil Young, who has periodically touched on political themes during a four-decade career, plans to release a hastily recorded new album ruminating on the war in Iraq and directly calling for the impeachment of President Bush.

The 10-song album, "Living With War," will probably represent Mr. Young's most overtly partisan work since the song "Ohio," recorded and quickly released by the group Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young as a response to the Kent State shootings in 1970.

I am finding more songs on the radio, specificaly the alternative radio stations, taking a stand against either the Bush administration or the Iraq war. System of a Down and Pearl Jam have songs critical of the war. Again, from the NY Times article:

The album comes at a time when major record companies and radio stations appear to have developed a degree of comfort with bluntly political material. The latest song from the band Pearl Jam, "World Wide Suicide," which accuses the president of taking soldiers' sacrifices for granted, recently logged three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard modern-rock airplay chart. And Green Day's 2004 album "American Idiot" which addresses themes of alienation but also includes lyrics like "Sieg Heil to the president gasman," has emerged as a blockbuster, selling more than 5.4 million copies so far, according to Nielsen SoundScan data.

Green Day's web site is www.greenday.com.

Neil Young's web site is www.neilyoung.com.

Pearl Jam's web site is www.pearljam.com.

Rolling Stones' web site is www.rollingstones.com.

Steve Earle's web site is www.steveearle.com.

Willie Nelson's web site is www.willienelson.com.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Spring Cleaning in Washington

2006-04-14T07:36:00.000-05:00

With Spring comes change. New life where only death or deep slumber existed.

Let the change start with the removal of Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State.

An Opinon piece in the Washington Post today reports on the high level of dissatisfaction with Rumsfeld within the ranks and the risk associated with allowing him to stay in his position. Yet, Bush's continued support for Rumsfeld, despite Rumsfeld's poor performance and continued criticism, is raising serious doubts about the president's ability to make sound decisions based on facts. The steadfast support Bush exhibits is not viewed as commitment, it is a realization of his stubbornness. A captain must know when to change course or risk crashing his ship.

Rumsfeld has lost the support of the uniformed military officers who work for him. Make no mistake: The retired generals who are speaking out against Rumsfeld in interviews and op-ed pieces express the views of hundreds of other officers on active duty. When I recently asked an Army officer with extensive Iraq combat experience how many of his colleagues wanted Rumsfeld out, he guessed 75 percent. Based on my own conversations with senior officers over the past three years, I suspect that figure may be low.
...
Rumsfeld is a stubborn man, and I suspect the parade of retired generals calling for his head has only made him more determined to hold on. But by staying in his job, Rumsfeld is hurting the cause he presumably cares most about. The president, even more stubborn than his Pentagon chief, is said to have rejected his offer to resign.
David Ignatius, Washington Post

The New York Times reports :

"Are the floodgates opening?" asked one retired Army general, who drew a connection between the complaints and the fact that President Bush's second term ends in less than three years. "The tide is changing, and folks are seeing the end of this administration."
David Cloud and Eric Schmitt, New York Times

The public no longer buys the lies used to support the invasion of Iraq. And, to continue to believe the players which got us into this mess, makes fools of us all.

One who cannot see the reality of the situation, one who believes the lie because the truth is too painful or embarassing, lives a life dissociated from reality. The wife who fails to believe her husband is cheating on her, even though coming home late from work she can smell the perfume on his clothes. The proud parents who fail to believe their son or daughter may have a drug problem, even though the grades have slipped, the appearance has changed, and a different personality has replaced the one they loved. The citizen who once thought their country could do no wrong, only to find out they've been continually lied to and manipulated.

Spring is here and the time to clean house has come.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Flight 93 and the Making of a Patsy

2006-04-13T07:34:00.000-05:00

The case to try and sentence Zacarias Moussaoui for his involvement in the 9/11 attacks has taken a long time to bring to court. Enough time for just about anything to happen. Even the unlikely, but not impossible, following scenarios:

Apply interrogation techniques to "convince" Moussaoui of his involvement and role in the attacks.

Silence, by pay-off or intimidation, those who witnessed Flight 93 being shot down.

Re-create or alter the flight cockpit and data recorder data.

Anything is possible.

The truly sad and unforgivable side to this trial is the pain the families have to continue to endure reliving the day they lost their loved ones. And for what? To send some guy to his death who may or may not have been involved?

From today's Washington Post article:

The trial seemed an afterthought yesterday amid the drama of the recording. Prosecutors rested their case for the execution of Moussaoui, the only person convicted in the United States in connection with the attacks on the trade center and the Pentagon. The defense will now begin its case, and Moussaoui is expected to take the stand again as early as today.

In the trial's first phase, Moussaoui testified that he had planned to hijack a fifth plane and crash it into the White House on Sept. 11 with a crew that included shoe bomber Richard Reid. The jury found Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty and will decide whether he should be executed or spend his life in prison.

When the jury found Moussaoui eligible for the death penalty, it became evidently clear to me that emotions would overtake logic and reason in this trial. Now, after publishing the recordings, and reading the reactions in the courtroom, there is no doubt justice will not be served by dispensing the utlimate form of punishment on this man.

The government is throwing the public a bone! The real perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks have not been caught and will likely not be caught. Killing Moussaoui will appease many people, making them feel like at least one person was held accountable for the actions which forever changed this country. Although temporarily gratifying, the feeling will fade as more people begin to notice the disinformation campaigns.

Moussaoui is not the only patsy, there are 29 other patsies in Spain for the Madrid bombings.

Justice will truly be served when the real perpetrators are found and proven guilty in a court of law. Governments are replacing the real actors with stand-ins and hoping the audience doesn't catch on.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Latest Poll Results Reflect Disgust with Bush

2006-03-14T07:14:00.000-06:00

The latest CNN / USA Today / Gallup poll results are out today and they reflect a growing dissatisfaction with George W. Bush and his administration. It is becoming evidently clearer there exists a very real lack of confidence in the administration's ability to handle the situation in Iraq and, more troubling, a growing sentiment of distrust. Result highlights are as follows:

57% believe going to war in Iraq was a mistake.

60% believe things are going badly in Iraq.

67% believe George W. Bush does not have a clear plan for Iraq.

51% believe the Bush administration deliberately misled the public about Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction.

It's no wonder Bush's ratings are at an all-time low of 36%. The evidence lies in the lack of substance behind the talk. Spin intensity is at an all-time high.

Everyone should be very concerned. It is not out of the realm of possibilities and, as the Bush administration is so fond of saying, all options are on the table for a significant event, either allowed to occur or planned and executed, to force the American public to rally around the president and thus provide the opportunity to increase his approval rating.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Once Upon a Time, there was Freedom of Speech

2006-02-01T07:14:00.000-06:00

How fitting that prior to last night's State of the Union address by the president, Cindy Sheehan should be detained and arrested. According to CNN:

Peace activist Cindy Sheehan was arrested Tuesday in the House gallery after refusing to cover up a T-shirt bearing an anti-war slogan before President Bush's State of the Union address.

And what exactly was on this "anti-war" t-shirt that resulted in her arrest? Well, brace yourself... nothing more than the number of American deaths since the beginning of the war with a simple question, "How many more?".

Outrageous! How this simple fact and question can be construed as offensive and in violation of any local ordinance is beyond me. The Washington Post reports that demonstrations within the Capitol are prohibited and that Capitol Police removed Sheehan after refusing to "close her jacket and quiet down". Anyone who has the courage to fight back and not submit to those who enforce conformity better watch out.

From the Washington Post article:

Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq, opened her jacket to reveal a T-shirt that, according to a supporter, gave the number of U.S. war dead and asked, "How many more?"

She was also vocal, said U.S. Capitol Police Chief Terrance W. Gainer, and after she ignored instructions to close her jacket and quiet down, she was led out and arrested. Demonstrating in the House gallery is prohibited.

Again, from CNN:

"She was asked to cover it up. She did not," said Sgt. Kimberly Schneider, U.S. Capitol Police spokeswoman.

Schneider said Sheehan was arrested around 8:30 p.m. on charges of unlawful conduct, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum penalty of a year in jail.

The incident is an apropos metaphor for the deteriorating conditions in America. Arresting an individual for peacefully expressing disagreement with the government. Am I wrong to believe, despite what I have been taught my entire life, that what this great country, America, stands for is no longer true? Can we, the American people, no longer peacefully disgree with the government without being hauled off and arrested? Apparently not.

Last night, not only did freedom of speech take a hit, but also the right to privacy as President Bush announced his commitment to continue domestic surveillance without oversight. Despite internal efforts to reign in the run-away administration, the president is convinced he has the authority to continue his domestic illegal spying program.

For a alternative view of last night's speech, something you will certainly not read or hear on mainstream media outlets, take a look at Paul Craig Robert's article on the Counter Punch website.

Mr Robert's article starts with the gloves off...

The state of the union is disastrous. By its naked aggression, bullying, illegal spying on Americans, and illegal torture and detentions, the Bush administration has demonstrated American contempt for the Geneva Convention, for human life and dignity, and for the civil liberties of its own citizens. Increasingly, the US is isolated in the world, having to resort to bribery and threats to impose its diktats. No country any longer looks to America for moral leadership. The US has become a rogue nation.

Least of all did President Bush tell any truth about the economy. He talked about economic growth rates without acknowledging that they result from eating the seed corn and do not produce jobs with a living wage for Americans. He touted a low rate of unemployment and did not admit that the figure is false because it does not count millions of discouraged workers who have dropped out of the work force.

and finishes with the knock-out punch:

The state of the nation has never been worse. The Great Depression was an accident caused by the incompetence of the Federal Reserve, which was still new at its job. The new American job depression is the result of free trade ideology. The new job depression is creating a reserve army of the unemployed to serve as desperate recruits for neoconservative military adventures. Perhaps that explains the Bush administration's enthusiasm for globalization.

Who is Paul Roberts? Is he some yahoo, conspiracy-believing, liberal? Far from it...

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review.

Go on and do yourself a favor. If you haven't done so already, read more of the alternative news and opinion sites. Visit the following and read information assembled by individuals seeking to reveal the truth of our current situation:

American Free Press

Counter Punch

Information Clearing House

Signs of the Times

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Speak Out While You Can

2006-01-24T17:15:00.000-06:00

Today, the Republican-led Senate Judiciary Committee approved Alito's nomination to the Supreme Court. Although the full Senate will get a chance to vote on the recommendation, it is merely a formality. It is a done deal. Political ponerology in action.

With this Republican decision, the country moves one step closer to having the Supreme Court be nothing more than a rubber stamp for executive branch policies and decisions. It will not be long before the ideological line separating the presidency and a dictatorship fades, leaving the difference to mere semantics.

But, lest we lose all hope, there are some who are taking it upon themselves to express their right to privacy. Exercise your free speach NOW, while it still exists. In the not too distant future, the price of free speech will be the entry of all personal information into government databases. Breaches of privacy which would cause our fore-fathers, if they were alive today, to call for another revolution against a tyrannical government.

Photo courtesy of CNN

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Death of Democracy

2006-01-17T07:02:00.000-06:00

We live in scary times.

Our form of government, which has served us well with checks and balances in place between Executive, Legislative, and Judicial branches, may very well move one step closer to death on January 24 when the Senate Judiciary Committee votes on the Supreme Court nomination of Samuel Alito. The potential for our democracy to morph into a dictatorship has never been higher, nor closer to realization.

Alito is Bush's choice to replace Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who was the deciding vote in several individual rights decisions:

O'Connor has cast the decisive fifth vote on cases upholding the right to an abortion, affirming affirmative action and limiting the application of the death penalty.

Her position as the key swing vote heightened the political stakes for Alito's nomination, with conservatives hoping he will swing the court to the right, and liberals fearful of the same thing.

So far, none of the Senate's 55 Republicans has announced opposition to Alito's nomination, meaning he can be confirmed with GOP votes alone, barring an increasingly unlikely Democratic filibuster.
USA Today

During his confirmation hearing, Alito dodged any direct answer on his position on abortion. It is clear he considers the Roe v. Wade decision open for re-evaluation. Newsweek's Eleanor Clift makes an interesting observation:

Now that the GOP is within striking distance of overturning Roe, they're having second thoughts. The public is not ready to abandon the landmark case legalizing abortion, and neither is the Republican Party. They used abortion as a wedge issue because the politics worked; they really didn't think abortion would ever be banned.

Would it be a good thing for the GOP to have the Roe decision overturned? Such a decision would unite the pro-choice supporters, which I truly believe to be the majority of Americans (not necessarily the most vocal), to rally around Democratic candidates who would support bringing the right of a woman to make decisions affecting her body back into her hands. Republicans' support for Alito would thus lead to their own demise.

It has become obvious from last week's hearings that Samuel Alito is more interested in upholding executive powers over individual rights. Answers to questions during his nomination hearings have proven to be quite revealing.

From a New York Times editorial:

In three days of testimony, he has given the American people reasons to be worried - and senators reasons to oppose his nomination. Among those reasons are the following:

EVIDENCE OF EXTREMISM Judge Alito's extraordinary praise of Judge Bork is unsettling, given that Judge Bork's radical legal views included rejecting the Supreme Court's entire line of privacy cases, even its 1965 ruling striking down a state law banning sales of contraceptives. Judge Alito's membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton - a group whose offensive views about women, minorities and AIDS victims were discussed in greater detail at yesterday's hearing - is also deeply troubling, as is his unconvincing claim not to remember joining it.

OPPOSITION TO ROE V. WADE In 1985, Judge Alito made it clear that he believed the Constitution does not protect abortion rights. He had many chances this week to say he had changed his mind, but he refused. When offered the chance to say that Roe is a "super-precedent," entitled to special deference because it has been upheld so often, he refused that, too. As Charles Schumer, Democrat of New York, noted in particularly pointed questioning, since Judge Alito was willing to say that other doctrines, like one person one vote, are settled law, his unwillingness to say the same about Roe strongly suggests that he still believes what he believed in 1985.

SUPPORT FOR AN IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY Judge Alito has backed a controversial theory known as the "unitary executive," and argued that the attorney general should be immune from lawsuits when he installs illegal wiretaps. Judge Alito backed away from one of his most extreme statements in this area - his assertion, in a 1985 job application, that he believed "very strongly" in "the supremacy of the elected branches of government." But he left a disturbing impression that as a justice, he would undermine the Supreme Court's critical role in putting a check on presidential excesses.

INSENSITIVITY TO ORDINARY AMERICANS' RIGHTS Time and again, as a lawyer and a judge, the nominee has taken the side of big corporations against the "little guy," supported employers against employees, and routinely rejected the claims of women, racial minorities and the disabled. The hearing shed new light on his especially troubling dissent from a ruling by two Reagan-appointed judges, who said that workers at a coal-processing site were covered by Mine Safety and Health Act protections.

DOUBTS ABOUT THE NOMINEE'S HONESTY Judge Alito's explanation of his involvement with Concerned Alumni of Princeton is hard to believe. In a 1985 job application, he proudly pointed to his membership in the organization. Now he says he remembers nothing of it - except why he joined, which he insists had nothing to do with the group's core concerns. His explanation for why he broke his promise to Congress to recuse himself in any case involving Vanguard companies is also unpersuasive. As for his repeated claims that his past statements on subjects like abortion and Judge Bork never represented his personal views or were intended to impress prospective employers - all that did was make us wonder why we should give any credence to what he says now.
January 12, 2006

How could it be possible that with all these doubts, such an individual would still be confirmed? Obviously, there exists a culture of political self-servitude and indebtedness repaid by placement based on past favors or relationships instead of qualifications.

This requires more study.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Remember John Lennon

2005-12-08T12:08:00.000-06:00

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

John Lennon (October 9, 1940 – December 8, 1980)

Member of the British rock group The Beatles.

Half of the Lennon-McCartney songwriting team.

Vietnam War protester.

Returned the MBE (Member of the Order of the British Empire) he received from Queen Elizabeth II "in protest against Britain's involvement in the Nigeria-Biafra thing and support of America in Vietnam".

Husband of Yoko Ono.

Peace supporter.

Songs: "Strawberry Fields Forever", "Give Peace a Chance", "Imagine"

8th place in the 100 Greatest Britons of All Time vote conducted by the BBC in 2002.

Assassinated by a deranged fan.

We miss you and God knows we need your voice in protest to the egregious actions of this American Administration.

Technorati Categories: Activists, Anniversary, Freedom, Heroes, News, News and Politics, Opinions, Protestors, Random Thoughts, War, Weblog

Pearl Harbor - 65 Years Later

2005-12-07T14:10:00.000-06:00

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, leading to America's entry into World War II occurred at 7:55 AM (local time) on this day, December 7, in 1941.

The Washington Post reports:

The Dec. 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor and other military bases on Oahu lasted two hours, leaving 21 U.S. ships heavily damaged and 323 aircraft damaged or destroyed.

It killed 2,390 people and wounded 1,178.

Why does nobody mention the fact that the attack could have been prevented?! I guess someone believed it would be a better opportunity if it were allowed to happen.

From a September 2004 Common Dreams web site article:

In his 1982 book 'Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath', Pulitzer-prize winner John Toland reveals that almost everything the Japanese were planning to do "was known to the United States" on the morning of the attack, via intercepted messages never communicated to commanders at Pearl Harbor. He cites the case of US counterintelligence translator Dorothy Edgers who uncovered critical Japanese messages days before the assault, including "a scheme of signals regarding the movement and exact position of warships and carriers in Pearl Harbor." But Edgers' boss, Alwin Kramer, seemed "more annoyed than electrified" at the discovery and ordered her to "run along home." Unbeknownst to Edgers, Kramer was part of the subterfuge.

Please join me in a sincere moment of silence for all who were allowed to die senselessly due to the President Franklin Roosevelt's administration's decision not to warn the base of the incoming Imperial Japanese Navy.

Other books and articles:

Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor
by Robert Stinnett

Pearl Harbor: Official Lies in an American War Tragedy?
from a special program at The Independent Institute

What We Need to Know About Pearl Harbor and Why
by Charlotte Thompson Iserbyt, Times Record Contributor

The McCollum Memo: The Smoking Gun of Pearl Harbor
What Really Happened web site

Technorati Categories: Conspiracy, Military, News, News and Politics, Opinions, Random, War, Weblog

A Killer Goes Free

2005-11-16T12:35:00.000-06:00

An Israeli army officer who fired the entire magazine of his automatic rifle into a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then said he would have done the same even if she had been three years old was acquitted on all charges by a military court yesterday.

Source: Guardian Unlimited

Another day, another Palestinian child's killer goes unpunished. This is nothing new. It has happened over and over for years.

The manner of Iman's [the young girl] killing, and the revelation of a tape recording in which the captain is warned that she was just a child who was "scared to death", made the shooting one of the most controversial since the Palestinian intifada erupted five years ago even though hundreds of other children have also died.

An innocent girl whose cold-blooded murder will never receive the attention due the barbaric and needless act. Her only crime was to walk within a security zone on her way to school. A warning would have been appropriate. None was given.

A recording of radio exchanges between Capt R and his troops obtained by Israeli television revealed that from the beginning soldiers identified Iman as a child.

In the recording, a soldier in a watchtower radioed a colleague in the army post's operations room and describes Iman as "a little girl" who was "scared to death". After soldiers first opened fire, she dropped her schoolbag which was then hit by several bullets establishing that it did not contain explosive. At that point she was no longer carrying the bag and, the tape revealed, was heading away from the army post when she was shot.

Palestinian witnesses said they saw the captain shoot Iman twice in the head, walk away, turn back and fire a stream of bullets into her body.

On the tape, Capt R then "clarifies" to the soldiers under his command why he killed Iman: "This is commander. Anything that's mobile, that moves in the [security] zone, even if it's a three-year-old, needs to be killed."

At no point did the Israeli troops come under attack.

Capt R claimed that he had not fired the shots at the girl but near her. However, Dr Mohammed al-Hams, who inspected the child's body at Rafah hospital, counted numerous wounds. "She has at least 17 bullets in several parts of the body, all along the chest, hands, arms, legs," he told the Guardian shortly afterwards. "The bullets were large and shot from a close distance. The most serious injuries were to her head. She had three bullets in the head. One bullet was shot from the right side of the face beside the ear. It had a big impact on the whole face."

The Washington Post reports on the case in a very interesting manner, completely understating the callousness of the action. As a matter of fact, the tone of the entire article is very low-key compared to the Guardian article.

The article states the Israeli officer was acquited by a military court because "she [the girl] was already dead when he shot her". The defendant claimed "he did not identify the figure on the ground as a child" and "I'm happy and satisfied that the truth has come to light, I hope the army will understand its failure, the failure was not on my part."

Alright, so there are a few items making the readers feel he might very well be innocent, but let's see how the Post presents the position of the child:

Soldiers shot 13-year-old Iyman Hams as she approached a military observation post near the Rafah refugee camp in southern Gaza on Oct. 5, 2004. The soldiers said they thought she was planting a bomb. The girl's family said she was on her way to school.

Then, according to an army indictment, the officer approached the girl's body and fired two more shots _ an illegal practice called "verifying the kill." Palestinian doctors said that at least 15 bullets hit the girl.

Where's the stuff about the child getting up and trying to walk away before being gunned down? How about the bag being shot and not exploding thus proving there was no bomb in the bag? How about the part where witnesses saw the officer turn around and empty his magazine into the child's body after having shot her twice in the head?

I wonder why it is the Post article leaves out quite a bit of the damning evidence lending credibility to the case against the Israeli officer. Why are the facts not more prominently presented? Does the Post not want to foster anti-Israeli sentiment? Well, chew on that for a while, but now, back to this poor girl.

She was no match for young men with rifles and a life's worth of anti-Palestinian programming. Young Israelis are taught Palestinians lives are meaningless. Actions taken against Palestinians will not be punished.

It is sad to see how ethnic and religious differences are used to instill hate, to view others of different groups or beliefs as less than human. When children grow up in environments where this type of brainwashing is promulgated as "normal" behavior, the result is an inhuman being with no empathy toward others. Even though they may function "normally" within their society, they are truly abnormal within humanity.

Comments from an alternative news site:

The girl was clearly no threat. She had been identified by the Israelis as a scared, little girl. The article suggests that the only danger for the Israelis was if she had been sent out to lure them into a trap, which means the way for the Israelis to remain out of danger would have been to stay put. Instead, they go out, are not fired upon, which shows that it was not a trap, and then the accused empties his weapon into her body. However, this hypothesis implies that the Palestinians are such savages that they would risk the life of a small child in such a ploy. Such are the unstated assumptions in much mainstream news reporting on the conflict.

Source: Signs of the Times

Technorati Categories: Israel,
Media,
News, News and Politics, Opinions, Palestine,Politics,
Random Thoughts, Zionist

Veterans Day Speech a Disgrace

2005-11-11T12:33:00.000-06:00

On this Veteran's Day, where America honors those who have gone to war in her name, President George W. Bush finds a way to disgrace the meaning of the day by making political statements in defense of the incompetence of his administration. The politicizing of the day detracts from the significance of the sacrifices made by America's men and women of the military.

"While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began."

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war. They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein."

"They believe that America can be made to run again [like in Vietnam], only this time on a larger scale, with greater consequences."

"The terrorists regard Iraq as the central front in their war against humanity."

"We must recognize the Iraq war as our central front against the terrorist."

President George W. Bush
11/11/2005 Veterans Day Speech
Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pennsylvania

So the facts are irrelevant! What?! No need to re-write history to more accurately reflect the truth!

Perhaps the times have changed, perhaps not, but when I was growing up, I was taught to always tell the truth. No matter how painful. Withholding the truth, or creating a lie to cover the truth, could prove more costly in the long run.

Now, here is OUR president saying it is "irresponsible" to update the history to accurately report what happened. You see, the problem is that it does not look good for the whole crew who pushed for the war. Not only that, thousands have died as a result of the rush to war, and we have a bunch of boys stuck in Iraq, for who knows how long, witnessing and being asked to do things which they will never forget.

I guess it matters not that facts have been found which point out the deception used to lead the nation to war.

In January and February 2003, President Bush and then-Secretary of State Colin Powell made dramatic assertions that Iraq had ties to al Qaeda and argued for military action to prevent Baghdad from providing its suspected stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.

Powell repeated the claim before the United Nations in making the case for the invasion of Iraq.

No such stockpiles turned up after the U.S.-led invasion, and the independent commission investigating al Qaeda's 2001 attacks on New York and Washington found no evidence of a collaborative relationship between the two entities.

Source: CNN

In a statement, Kerry retorted, "I wish President Bush knew better than to dishonor America's veterans by playing the politics of fear and smear on Veterans Day. Instead of trying to salvage his slumping political fortunes, the commander in chief should honor our men and women in uniform with a clear strategy for success in Iraq."

Kerry charged, "This administration misled a nation into war by cherry-picking intelligence and stretching the truth beyond recognition. . . . Today they continue the same games hoping Americans forget the mess they made in Iraq that's cost over 2,000 Americans their lives and their failure to find Osama bin Laden."

Source: Washington Post

So to distract the attention from the source of this entire mess, the administration's rush to war was based on lies and should thus be held accountable for their actions, the topics are manipulated to work on peoples' emotions. Bring up Vietnam, 9/11, how the terrosits are waging a "war against humanity", etc.

But, you know, everything is relative, depending on which side of the issue one supports. One man's terrorist, is another man's freedom-fighter. Here's a quote which could very well be the mantra for Iraqis fighting to rid their land of the invading American forces:

"No act of ours invited the rage of killers and no concession, bribe or act of appeasement would change or limit their plans for murder. Against such an enemy, there is only one effective response: We will never back down, we will never give in, we will never accept anything less than complete victory."

I am so sick of hearing the same old lines used to prey on peoples' emotions. Let emotions overrule the reason one would apply to the arguments and proof of this entire charade. We are all being played under cover of patriotism and religion. God help America. We, as Americans, will get what we deserve if we don't get wise to these ploys.
One final quote with which I whole-heartedly agree:

"Evil men obsessed with ambition and unburdened by conscience must be taken very seriously and we must stop them before their crimes can multiply."

Alrighty then, let's start with Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Rove.

UPDATE
As of 12:00 EST, CNN poll results:

Created: Friday, November 11, 2005, at 12:08:26 EDT

Do you think the Bush administration manipulated the prewar intelligence on Iraq?

Yes 74% 93691 votes
No 26% 32407 votes

Total: 126098 votes

Technorati Categories: Ethics, Holidays, Military, News, News and Politics, Opinions, Random, Truth, Veterans, War, Weblog.

Non-Lethal Weapons Proliferation

2005-11-10T12:00:00.000-06:00

In my earlier post, where I expressed my concern about the potential future common uses of "non-lethal" weapons systems against ordinary civilians, I mentioned the relationship between the military and academia. Well, today, I come across a New Scientist article which reveals yet another academic institution with a project related to non-lethal weapons. So, how many are involved in this type of research? Here are a few results from a quick search:

Bradford Non-Lethal Weapons Research Project (University of Bradford)

Institute for NonLethal Defense Technologies (Pennsylvania State University)
Non Lethal Technology Innovation Center (University of New Hampshire)

For a compilation of Internet resources, books, documents, and periodicals, go to this page located at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base web site, "Home of Air University and the 42nd Air Base Wing". There are links to all sorts of useful information:

Active Denial Technology (Air Force Research Laboratory)

Active Denial System (Sandia National Laboratories)

Directed Energy Weapons (Defense Update Online Magazine)

From the amount of work and interest which has existed in the non-lethal weapons technologies, coupled with the fact we are beginning to see news of their use in non-military activities, leads me to believe that not only will the use of these technologies against civilian populations become more prevalent, but, also, that there exist more advanced weaponry which has yet to make it to the public media.

Electromagnetic Pulse weapons are old news:

Earlier this month, the widely respected magazine Aviation Week & Space Technology printed an article stating that "an attack on Iraq is expected to see the first use of high-power microwave weapons..."

The New York Post, citing unnamed U.S. military officials, reported yesterday that a preliminary Iraq battle plan "outlined for President Bush last week calls for the most extensive use of electronic and psychological warfare in history -- including secret new electromagnetic pulse weapons to disable Saddam (Hussein)'s entire command and control structure."

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

So what IS new???

How about Ethnic-Specific weapons? How about a genetically-engineered version of the Spanish Flu?

Nothing surprises me anymore...

Technorati Categories: Health, Military, News, News and Politics, Opinions, Random, Technology, Weapons, Weblog

Sonic Weapons Ward off Pirate Attack

2005-11-08T07:22:00.000-06:00

A couple of days ago there was an attack on a cruise ship, the Seabourn Spirit, by a group of "pirates" (I'm surprised they were not labeled terrorists). At first, I thought it interesting a group would be so bold as to attack a ship from such a small boat. Then, the more I thought about it, the more it didn't make sense.

What could the pirates have hoped to accomplished? Force the crew to stop the ship by threat of gunfire, then take control of the entire ship and either rob everyone or hold everyone hostage? Perhaps attempt to gain some publicity by conducting some sort of execution in front of the attracted media to serve some cause? Who knows.

Travelers on the ship reported gunfire and at least one explosion from a grenade fired from a grnade launcher. CNN reports:

The Seabourn Spirit had been bound for Kenya when it was attacked by pirates armed with grenade launchers and machine guns on Saturday about 100 miles (160 km) off Somalia's lawless coast.

Bob Meagher of Sydney, Australia, said he climbed out of bed and went to the door of his cabin shortly before 6 a.m. after hearing a commotion outside.

"I saw a white-hulled boat with men in it waving various things and shooting at the ship -- at that stage it appeared to be rifle fire," he told Australian radio.

"My wife said, 'Look, they're loading a bazooka,' which we later discovered was called an RPG (rocket-propelled grenade) launcher."

"There was a flash of flame and then a huge boom -- a terrible boom sound," he said, adding the grenade hit about 10 feet from where they were.

Other than the obvious questions of why the attack was attempted, a more disturbing question came to mind. What is a cruise ship doing with a sonic weapon? Again, from the CNN article:

The crew of a cruise ship attacked by pirates off the coast of Somalia used a sonic weapon to help ward off the attackers, the Miami-based Seabourn Cruise Line said Monday.

The sonic device, known as a Long Range Acoustic Device, or LRAD, is a so-called "non-lethal weapon" developed for the military after the 2000 attack on the USS Cole in Yemen as a way to keep operators of small boats from approaching U.S. warships.

So, here we have a practical application of a military device, although "non-lethal", which is also very likely in the hands of many other private and public places. Seems like an ideal crowd control device for police as well.

I guess my concern is how non-chalantly this is mentioned in the article as if it were a common item. A toaster it is not!

Perhaps more readers may want to find out what the Pentagon has been developing under the "non-lethal" weapons category. The military has developed microwave "non-lethal" weapons for crowd control.

Non-lethal weapons development is not relegated to the corporations having relationships with military projects, academia has long been used by the military as a source for basic R&D work. For example, there is the Non-lethal Technology Innovation Center, funded by the Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate (JNLWD), with the following mission:

The Non-lethal Technology Innovation Center was created by a grant from the Joint Non-lethal Weapons Directorate to effect the next generation of NL capabilities by identifying and promoting the development of innovative concepts, materials and technologies within the academic community.

There even exist ethnic-specific weapons.

None of this is science fiction. It exists today!

The development of these weapons has been underway for quite some time and is now available for agencies outside the military.

What else is labeled as "non-lethal" and coming to a town near you? Keep your eyes open and ears perked for news of how those offering resistance are being treated. These may be the canaries in the coal mine. You will begin to see how non-lethal weapons may become as common-place, and who's use may become as "acceptible", as the stun guns used today.

Technorati Categories: Military, News, News and Politics, Opinions, Random, Technology, Weapons, Weblog

Judicial Preference

2005-11-04T12:56:00.000-06:00

Average Americans, when going to court, don't get to select their judge.

Average Joe can't.

Celebrities like Martha Stewart, OJ Simpson, and Michael Jackson can't.

Not even corporate executives.

Unless, you're a politician.

In Travis County Texas, we have a perfect example of what it takes to make it happen. A powerful politican which has built a network of relationships based on money and political favors. Now, it's time to leverage those relationships.

As DeLay tries to find the "right" judge for his trial, more and more links between the politicans and judges are being revealed.

The first judge of DeLay's campaign finance trial, District Judge Bob Perkins, was removed Tuesday at DeLay's lawyer's request because of his contributions to Democrats.

The second judge, Senior Judge Pat Priest, was selected by state Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson. But, only after Chief Justice Jefferson had been asked to do so after Republican Administrative Judge B.B. Schraub, who was initially named to select a new judge, withdrew his name at the request of District Attorney Ronnie Earle. There was concern over Judge Schraub's political contributions to Republican candidates.

Now there's an issue about Justice Jefferson's links to DeLay which may result in the appointment of yet another judge.
CNN reports:

Jefferson's 2002 campaign treasurer, Bill Ceverha, was treasurer of DeLay's Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, according to state documents examined by The Associated Press.

The PAC is a co-defendant in DeLay's case and Ceverha was a defendant this spring in a civil trial brought by Democrats who lost state legislative races to Republicans in 2002.

Jefferson also was elected to his seat with the help of a $25,000 donation from the Republican National State Elections Committee, a group at the heart of the money laundering charge against DeLay.

He also received $2,000 from a DeLay-run PAC whose executive director is a co-defendant.

So what's wrong with a judge wanting to make contributions to his favorite policital party or candidate? Nothing, as long as there is no quid-pro-quo for the contribution and no appearance of impropriety.

The tough part is who makes the determination of what, if any, favors are being received as payback for the contributions? One can only make the best judgement with the information at hand. Information withheld is information not considered.

A University of Texas professor summed it up best:

The judicial wrangling is "a great shame," said Charles Silver, a legal ethics professor at the University of Texas Law School.

"It says that the judges who we elect can't be trusted to apply the law neutrally in cases that in some way, shape or form bear on their political beliefs," Silver said. "If that's true, we really need to revamp the whole system."

O what a tangled web we weave, When first we practise to deceive!

Sir Walter Scott, Marmion, Canto vi. Stanza 17.
Scottish author & novelist (1771 - 1832)

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Secrecy and National Security

2005-11-03T06:57:00.000-06:00

The Washington Post reported yesterday that the CIA has been using secret facilities throughout Eastern Europe and Asia to hide and interrogate captives on the Bush Administration's "War on Terror". Who is being kept and what interrogation techniques are being used? No one seems to know. Answers to questions and requests are readily declined on the grounds of potentially compromising national security.

As I have mentioned previously, "national security" is a fairly common and convenient excuse used by various intelligence and governmental groups to deny allegations and access to information, material, or resources. The reasons somethings are kept secret may be completely unrelated to security. It may very well be due to the legal or ethical ramifications.

From the WP article:

The hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the cooperation of foreign intelligence services, and on keeping even basic information about the system secret from the public, foreign officials and nearly all members of Congress charged with overseeing the CIA's covert actions.

The existence and locations of the facilities -- referred to as "black sites" in classified White House, CIA, Justice Department and congressional documents -- are known to only a handful of officials in the United States and, usually, only to the president and a few top intelligence officers in each host country.

The CIA and the White House, citing national security concerns and the value of the program, have dissuaded Congress from demanding that the agency answer questions in open testimony about the conditions under which captives are held. Virtually nothing is known about who is kept in the facilities, what interrogation methods are employed with them, or how decisions are made about whether they should be detained or for how long.

This appears to be nothing new. The decision to use the secret detention facilities arose from the knee-jerk responses to the September 11th attacks.

"We never sat down, as far as I know, and came up with a grand strategy," said one former senior intelligence officer who is familiar with the program but not the location of the prisons. "Everything was very reactive. That's how you get to a situation where you pick people up, send them into a netherworld and don't say, 'What are we going to do with them afterwards?' "

The article continues:

The idea of holding terrorists outside the U.S. legal system was not under consideration before Sept. 11, 2001, not even for Osama bin Laden, according to former government officials. The plan was to bring bin Laden and his top associates into the U.S. justice system for trial or to send them to foreign countries where they would be tried.

"The issue of detaining and interrogating people was never, ever discussed," said a former senior intelligence officer who worked in the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, or CTC, during that period. "It was against the culture and they believed information was best gleaned by other means."

So, did the president know or not? Back to the article:

The agency set up prisons under its covert action authority. Under U.S. law, only the president can authorize a covert action, by signing a document called a presidential finding. Findings must not break U.S. law and are reviewed and approved by CIA, Justice Department and White House legal advisers.

Six days after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush signed a sweeping finding that gave the CIA broad authorization to disrupt terrorist activity, including permission to kill, capture and detain members of al Qaeda anywhere in the world.

It could not be determined whether Bush approved a separate finding for the black-sites program, but the consensus among current and former intelligence and other government officials interviewed for this article is that he did not have to.

Rather, they believe that the CIA general counsel's office acted within the parameters of the Sept. 17 finding. The black-site program was approved by a small circle of White House and Justice Department lawyers and officials, according to several former and current U.S. government and intelligence officials.

There appears to be legal wiggle room, as always, for those at the highest levels while the Lewis Libbys of the world take the heat. That's not to say those taking the heat are innocent, most likely they were the implementors of the unwritten, verbal signals from on high.

What are others saying about this latest revelation (which is not really a surprise based on all the documentation of illegal renditions having occurred over the last several years)?

From the Scotsman article "Terror suspects held in secret CIA prisons":

The CIA is already known to use Glasgow and Prestwick airports to stop off en route to other destinations when transporting prisoners who have been snatched under its programme of "extraordinary rendition". The US is understood to use the programme to transport prisoners to countries which are prepared to use unconventional methods, including torture, to extract information.

US planes have landed at a number of UK airports, including Heathrow and Gatwick, but Prestwick - with 75 recorded flights - and Glasgow - with 74 - are among the most popular stopping-off points.

From the ABC News article "EU Probing Report of Secret CIA Prisons":

The governments of the EU's 25 members nations will be questioned informally about the allegations, EU spokesman Friso Roscam Abbing said.

"We have to find out what is exactly happening," Roscam Abbing said. "We have all heard about this."

He said such prisons could violate EU human rights laws and other European human rights conventions. The commission is responsible for ensuring that EU rules are followed.

"As far as the treatment of prisoners is concerned … it is clear that all 25 member states having signed up to European Convention on Human Rights, and to the International Convention Against Torture, are due to respect and fully implement the obligations deriving from those treaties," Roscam Abbing told reporters.

He cautioned, however, that the EU head office could not take action against member states if they violated human rights codes.

From an AFP article "US on the defensive over reported secret CIA prisons":

The White House refused to confirm or deny that the CIA operates secret prisons, known as "black sites," for al-Qaeda captives in eastern Europe and other countries around the world.

"I am not going to discuss any specific intelligence activities," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "I would say that the president's most important responsibility is to protect the American people."

The refusal to discuss the matter was echoed by US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and the Central Intelligence Agency.

And these are not actions which occurred in the past. Note the following from the above article, this is still going on!

Czech Interior Minister Frantisek Bublan was quoted by the on-line news outlet Aktualne.cz as saying that the Czech Republic recently turned down a US request to set up a detention center on its territory.

"The negotiations took place around a month ago," he was quoted as saying. The Americans "made an effort to install some of the sort here, but they did not succeed."

It appears as if this is the case. The CIA does have secret detention facilities and continue to actively use them, yet it may prove to be a challenge to get the governments to take any action against the agency to cease the activity, never mind to be held accountable for any humanitarian violations which most likely occurred during the period since September 11th.

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, CIA, Current Affairs, Human Rights, Intelligence, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Tortune, War.

Taxes and Iraq

2005-11-02T07:00:00.000-06:00

Recommendations were published yesterday by a presidential commission to "simplify" the federal income tax system. The process, from recommendation to approval to implementation, would normally take quite some time, usually several months to years, to finalize. Although, my instincts tell me the changes are not so much about simplicity or fairness, they are more about funding for the continued presence in the Middle East and other future preemptive military actions, therefore, we will likely see this move along on the fast-track.

There are two proposals: a simplified version of the existing income tax and the beginnings of a consumption-based system. Read the following Business Week article, "The Nuts and Bolts of Tax Reform", for more detail.

In either case, the result will likely be higher taxes for the average Joe, bigger breaks for those with bucks. The New York Times reports in the article "Higher Tax Rates for Most, Breaks for Some":

The biggest new tax breaks in the main proposal would go to stock market investors. They would collect most dividends free of tax, as opposed to the 15 percent tax rate that now applies to most dividends.

In addition, 75 percent of profits from the sale of stocks held for more than a year would be tax-free. The effect would be to nearly halve the rate for the highest-income taxpayers, to 8.25 percent from 15 percent.

The commission emphasized that its rationale for such changes was to get Americans to save more and borrow less. Such policies could prompt a one-time rise in share prices to adjust for the tax benefits.

So, companies get a boost from new investors. Monies which should be going into savings are being used to raise the stock price of companies whose major shareholders will then make profits, while the average Joe bets on the future of his "savings" (now in the stock market) assuming all the risk.

Investors who put their money into assets other than stocks would not fare so well. Gains from the sale of all other assets, including businesses, farmland and paintings, would be taxed at the same rate as wages.

Thus, a taxpayer in the top bracket who sold stocks for a $1 million profit would pay no more than $82,500 in taxes, while someone who made the same profit from selling a business, a farm or a Monet would pay four times as much. Under current law, most investors would pay $150,000.

Scott A. Hodge, president of the Tax Foundation, a nonprofit group that seeks lower taxes, called the proposal "an incentive to buy stocks and a disincentive to be an entrepreneur."

And, what about the tax rate implications for Average Joe?

The panel would also raise to 15 percent from 10 percent the tax rate on the first $7,300 of taxable income this year for individuals and $14,600 for married couples. Taxpayers with incomes higher than this would also be affected by this higher rate.

The panel would also raise to 30 percent, from 28 percent, the rate that this year applies to individuals making as little as $70,000 and couples making as much as $178,000.

The 35 percent tax rate, which applies only to the top 1 percent of taxpayers (incomes above $326,450 now), would be cut to 33 percent.

However, for individuals, the 33 percent rate would begin at a much lower level of income, $100,001 instead of $150,150. Therefore, people in this income range would be paying a higher rate on their last dollars of income. In short, there would be higher marginal rates for most people making less than $326,450.

I guess the alternative to raising taxes, which is cutting spending, is not an option.

Today's Washington Post article, "Commission Recommends Overhaul of Federal Income Tax", warns of the impact to the housing market:

Still, the National Association of Realtors said "the value of the nation's residential property could decline 15 percent or more" if the panel's mortgage proposals become law. Gerald M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders, criticized the measures as "the biggest tax hike for homeowners ever considered."

Also, a warning of the impact to retirement and pension plans:

Life insurance companies and agents were also upset, fearing that the savings proposals could supplant or compete with their products. A coalition of life insurance associations called the plans "a retreat from America's historic commitment to helping Americans achieve financial and retirement security." The American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries said the plans would be "devastating to the retirement security of millions of American workers."

And, just to entice companies to expand their revenues outside the domestic US:

Both plans would assess companies only on their domestic profits, ending the United States' long-held policy of taxing income wherever it originates.

Onto Iraq...

The Senate went into a closed-door session yesterday as the Democrats pressed the Republican majority for an investigation into the intelligence the White House used to justify going to war with Iraq.

From a CNN report:

Democrats demanded that Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts move forward on a promised investigation into how Bush administration officials handled prewar intelligence about Iraq's suspected weapons programs.

The Democrats appear to be taking advantage of the series of events which have destabilized the White House. Will anything come of it?

Here are some comments from Republican Senator Bill Frist who, along with a whole lot of other politicians, should be nominated for an acting award:

Frist said Democrats had "hijacked" the Senate...

"This is an affront to me personally," said Frist, a Tennessee Republican. "This is an affront to our leadership. It is an affront to the United States of America, and it is wrong."

Let me correct Senator Frist, if I may. Being led into war with Iraq by an administration who knowingly lied to the American people and the world is an affront to the United States of America. What you are doing, Mr Frist, is an affront to the people of the United States and all the things for which the United States of America stand for.

Get out of the way, Mr Frist and fellow deceivers ...

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Iraq, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Taxes, War.

Halloween Story: American Blindness and the Road to Hell

2005-10-31T17:04:00.000-06:00

For Halloween, I will merely provide one snippet and a link to begin or continue your search into the current human condition in America, today, and potentially for the world, in the near future:

Q: What was that again?
A: You pay attention.
Q: (L) What else is going to happen?
A: Seattle buried; Japan buckles; Missouri shakes; California crumbles; Arizona burns.
Q: [Unknown question.]
A: Go to Denver airports.
Q: (L) When is all this going to happen?
A: Scandal - Scandal - Denver Airport.
Q: (L) What about the Denver airport?
A: Scandal.
Q: I don't understand.
A: New Denver airport.
Q: I don't understand.
A: Pay attention.
Q: Okay, we are paying attention. What are you trying to tell us?
A: Denver new airport big big big big scandal.
Q: (L) What kind of scandal?
A: Government.
Q: (L) Specifically what?
A: You will see Dallas airport is secret base Orlando too Miami too.
Q: (L) What about Denver airport and how does it relate to prophecies?
A: Denver reveals the government Look for it Pay attention.
Q: (L) What else do you have to tell us?
A: Montana: Experiment with human reproduction All people there - rays - radon gas.
Q: (L) How are they doing this?
A: Compelled - Don't trust Don't ignore too strong urges sinister plots.
Q: (L) What do you mean? I don't understand?
A: Strong urge is directed by sinister plot.
Q: Plot by whom?
A: Consortium.
Q: (L) Who are the members of the consortium? Aliens? The government?
A: All.
Q: (L) All who?
A: Government and other.
Q: (L) Who is the other?
A: Unknown.
Q: (L) Why can't you tell us who is the other?
A: You know who.

Signs of the Times - Halloween 2005 Edition.

Mars, Halloween, and the Fall of Atlantis

2005-10-28T07:00:00.000-05:00

The planet Mars, named after the Roman god of war, is known astrologically as "The Bringer Of War" . Many stories have been written about Mars by authors like Edgar Rice Burroughs, Ray Bradbury, and H.G. Wells, to name a few.

On Sunday, October 30, Mars' path will be the closest to Earth in years as it comes within 69 million km. About two years ago, on August 27, 2003, Mars was 56 million km from Earth, the closest it's been in recorded history. Next time Mars will come this close will be in 2018.

Others have written about the significance of Mars' proximity to Earth and current events. Interestingly, this time it is occurring very close to Halloween, which serves as an astronomical holiday of sorts. Halloween is a cross-quarter date which sits between an equinox and a solstice:

Long ago, "the Celts of the British Isles used cross-quarter days to mark the beginnings of seasons," says John Mosley of the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles. "Winter began with Halloween, [or as they called it, 'Samhain']. Halloween marked the transition between summer and winter, light and dark -- and life and death."

Source: NASA

Recently, I have noticed excitability in my children and other children. Increased stress in the parents, actions trigerring responses which seem to be ignored, merely adding fuel to the fire. Events in the world are also showing similar signs. A macro representation of our microcosm.

There has been increased tension between Iran and Israel as Iran's president talks of wiping Israel off the map and anti-Israel demonstrations take the streets. Reports of initial movement for military action in Syria. In addition, there exists tension in Washington, specifically the White House, over Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's imminent indictments.

There has also been talk about the influence of Mars during the historical Noah's flood, also having occurred around the time of our modern Halloween. Discussions of the fall of Atlantis around the same time.

Q: (L) Was the story of Noah's flood the story of the breaking up of Atlantis?
A: Yes. But symbolic.
Q: (L) How many people were on the planet at that time?
A: 6 billion.
Q: (L) Out of this six billion people, how many survived?
A: 119 million.
Q: (L) Was Noah's flood caused by the close passage of another celestial body?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) Which body was that?
A: Martek.
Q: (L) Do we know this body in our solar system now?
A: Yes.
Q: (L) What name?
A: Mars.

Click here for more...

What does all this mean?

Well, I'll leave you with just a few snippets of a scary Halloween tale ...

During the final days of the Great Battle Between Good and Evil, the receding armies of the Mad Magician, Supreme Leader of the Dark Side, left behind agents in the formerly occupied lands. The liberating armies enclosed the Evil Doers from two sides, the East and the West. Although these two groups were Allies against the Darkness that was now surrendering, having been temporarily thrown together to fight a common enemy, they had themselves longstanding differences, differences that would soon come to the fore as the common threat was vanquished.

Those of the West, known by the name of Atlantis, decided it would be strategically advantageous to make an alliance with the former members of the Evil Empire against the new "Threat from the East." Thus, after the war, rather than arresting and bringing to trial the former Evil Doers who remained in the West, the Leaders of Atlantis made peace with them and integrated them into their intelligence system.

These men and woman were known as the "Stay-Behinds."

Click here for the rest of the story.

Technorati Categories: Astrology, Astronomy, Halloween, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Random Thoughts, Space

The Fight for What is Right

2005-10-25T06:57:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, Rosa Parks died at the age of 92. It was through her courageous refusal to succumb to the order of a public bus driver to move to the back of the bus, to give her seat to a white person, that the wheels of segregation began to lose their grip on the road to contiued black submission to whites.

Local community black leaders met to decide how to respond to her arrest. The decision was made to peacefully respond to her arrest by boycotting the use of public buses. The entire black community boycotted public buses for 381 days until the law legalizing segregation in public buses was lifted.

The Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., one of the leaders involved in the movement, wrote in his book "Stride Toward Freedom":

"Mrs. Parks’ arrest was the precipitating factor rather than the cause of the protest. The cause lay deep in the record of similar injustices...Actually no one can understand the action of Mrs. Parks unless he realizes that eventually the cup of endurance runs over, and the human personality cries out, 'I can take it no longer.'"

Thanks to Rosa Park's courage to stand for what is right, battles against segregation were won and huge progress was made in achieving equality for blacks. Todays African-Americans have benefitted from the brave efforts of individuals like Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr.

Related to the fight for what is right, federal prosecutor and Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald continues his investigation into the Plame scandal, putting all the pieces together in his fight for justice. A news item published today reveals Vice President Dick Cheney has been identified as the top level leak of the identity of a CIA asset, Valerie Plame, to his cheif of staff I. Lewis Libby. The latest news comes on the heels of continued pressure on the Bush Administration as Karl Rove, Senior Advisor to President Bush, has been called back for additional grand jury testimony. According to the AP article, both Rove and Libby "face the possibility of indictment".

Unbelievably, there may be a way out of criminal charges for Cheney. Again, from the AP article:

Disclosing the identify of a covert CIA agent can be a crime, but only if the person who discloses it knows the agent is classified as working undercover.

The Times quoted lawyers involved in the case as saying they had no indication Fitzgerald was considering charging Cheney with a crime.

We will have to wait and see whether Cheney has the political clout and relationships to get him out of this one.

Additional pressure on the Bush Administration is coming in the form of criticism to the policies leading to the war in Iraq. Brent Snowcroft, former National Security Advisor, expressed his disagreements in interviews with The New Yorker. Quotes below from Washington Post article "CIA Leak Linked to Dispute Over Iraq Policy":

"The case that I saw for four-plus years was a case I have never seen in my studies of aberrations, bastardizations, perturbations, changes to the national security decision-making process,"

"What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made."

Lawrence B. Wilkerson, former Chief of Staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell.

(Note: Humor below.)
Perhaps what is happening in Washington is due to the latest CDC Report on a new STD pandemic:

THE CENTER FOR DISEASE CONTROL has issued a no-nonsense, albeit delayed warning about a new, highly virulent strain of socially transmitted disease. This disease is contracted through dangerous and high risk behavior.

The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim (pronounced "Gonna Re-elect him"). Many victims have contracted it after having been screwed for the past 4 years, in spite of having taken measures to protect themselves from this especially troublesome disease.

Cognitive sequellae of individuals infected with Gonorrhea Lectim include, but are not limited to, anti-social personality disorder traits; delusions of grandeur with a distinct messianic flavor; chronic mangling of the English language; extreme cognitive dissonance; inability to incorporate new information; pronounced xenophobia and homophobia; inability to accept responsibility for actions; exceptional cowardice masked by acts of misplaced bravado; uncontrolled facial smirking; total ignorance of geography and history; tendencies toward creating evangelical theocracies; and a strong propensity for categorical, all-or-nothing behavior.

The disease is sweeping Washington. Naturalists and epidemiologists are amazed and baffled that this malignant disease originated only a few years ago in a Texas bush. Please inform any of your friends and associates who have been acting unusual lately.

Technorati Categories: America, Courage, Dissent, Humanity, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Racism

Courage to Speak

2005-10-19T07:06:00.000-05:00

During these trying times for what was once the "Great American Dream", with increasing energy prices, weakening dollar, and widening trade and budget deficits, it is disheartening to continue to witness the attacks on those who have the courage to speak the truth. Whether the truth be about the current economic woes, corporate greed, inept government leadership, or lack of accountability for failed policies and crimes against humanity, those individuals who speak the truth risk public attacks, personal and on their character, humiliation of being treated as an outcast within your own country, and even detention without charge or access to legal counsel.

This is not the America in which we grew up. Ideals of fair play, respect for human life, protection of individual liberties, land of opportunity, protector of those unable to defend themselves against the bellicose and belligerent acts of bully governments or leaders, these are now gone after the events of nine-eleven, the Iraq War, and proof that our government has been involved in continued torture of individuals. A country we onced loved, believed in, and defended against criticisms no longer exists. And you can thank your fellow Americans for allowing this to happen.

I present excerpts from an article by Doug Soderstrom, a psychologist, who writes in "The Mindless American: A Tragedy in the Making" about the sad and pathetic condition of the American mind.

As a result of nine-eleven’s jarring impact upon our nation, journalists have discovered a near paranoid rise in retaliation against individuals attempting to expose governmental malfeasance. Increasingly government officials have begun punishing individuals for nothing more than reasoned attempts to inform the American public concerning: How the military has systematically abused (tortured) foreign detainees; How the government intentionally withheld evidence suggesting that an attack upon the United States by Al Qaeda had been eminent; How the military has begun to wage war upon soldiers who, in good conscience, have come to believe that it is wrong for them to kill in a war that, according to international law, is illegal, one that, the reasons for going to war, were fabricated by the President of the United States; How the United States has a sixty-year history (1945- 2005) of assassinating foreign leaders who have chosen not to support the government’s foreign policy goals, initiating the overthrow of duly-elected foreign democracies, while simultaneously supporting brutal authoritarian dictatorships all in order to fill the coffers of America’s military-industrial complex, an egregious imperialistic force with but one goal: To take command of the world economy.

As a result, many of these individuals have been incarcerated, accused of being a traitor, of having sided with the enemy, told that their career will be destroyed, and threatened with extended imprisonment. Accordingly, on September 21, 2005, U.S. immigration officials banned Robert Fisk, an internationally renowned British journalist, on his way to deliver a speech in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from entering the United States of America due to incisive criticism of the Bush administration’s handling of the Iraq war. No doubt such a scenario has, and is, being repeated many times over in our country. A rather sad fact for a president who has chosen to make such a big deal about the oft-quoted ideals of “freedom and democracy!”

But even more shameful is the fact that there are people who seem not to care that such things are taking place in our country; a rather ignorant crowd of jingoes more comfortable choosing to sit back pretending that everything will be just fine, a people with apparently little regard for the facts. As a behavioral scientist, I am grieved at what appears to be a near pandemic of disinterest in what is happening to our country.
...
However, now that I am well into my seventh decade of life and very near retirement, I have come to the conclusion that the world basically sucks, that there are few who seem to have the investigative courage to take a good hard look at things that, if discovered, would no doubt destroy one’s image of a land that can do no wrong, one that they believe has somehow received the eternal blessing of God. So I must ask: How is it that we have become such a mindless nation, a society populated by deadheads, folks who seem to have little desire to look beyond the thinly-veneered surface of life?

As a behavioral scientist, it appears that a vast share of folks in our nation have chosen to relinquish a quality no doubt essential to authentic human life….. an existential responsibility to think for themselves, an ontological need to discount the petty concerns that drive the minds of those directed by triviality. It seems that such individuals have become so fantastically preoccupied with, essentially enamored by, the norm of what others think, they have effectively relinquished, through a process of cognitive foreclosure, the capacity to think for themselves. Having become so extremely alienated from the core of their own being, they have little choice but to follow the crowd’s madding need to forge a symbiotic attachment to, in essence relationship with, a society, that for all practical purposes has become the basis of their own identity, the bedrock of their very being. Having done so, the image they have forged for themselves (who they believe themselves to be) has become every bit as fabricated, every bit as disconnected from reality, as their image of society. So in wanting to have at their disposal a more a positive image of themselves, they have been left with little choice but to construct a glorified image of society; an image of what they wish society would have been rather than what it has, in fact, turned out to be. Something like having chosen to have built an ego-incased frame constructed upon the shifting sands of inane social rumor and outright public lies…… truly a flight of fancy bordering on the absurd!

Very few would disagree with the proposition that in Hitler’s Germany there was a determined effort to brainwash the people so they might support Mein Fuhrer’s efforts to conquer the world. However, what if one were to suggest that much the same is occurring in the United States of America, that there has been a determined effort through the socializing influence of our schools, the government, the mass media, the churches we attend, even that of our own parents, to pressure us into believing (just as Hitler) that our country has received the blessing of God, and because of this, we therefore have not only the right, but more importantly, through the use of military weapons, a divine responsibility to see that the world acquiesces to our needs and expectations. Just as Hitler in the 1930’s prepared his countrymen to accept the authoritarian control of the Nazi government, much the same may well be occurring in the United States. Just as Hitler indoctrinated his people to believe that Germany had the right to conquer the world, George Walker Bush “in the name of freedom and democracy” may well be doing the same (preparing the American people to support his administration’s imperialistic drive to dominate the world).

Behaviorally, it is clear that citizens, from cradle to grave, are primed to conform to the dictates of those in power, instructed never to question the validity of what those who would like to take control of our lives have to say. Most Americans have no idea; that what we are fed by the news media (televised and paper-print news) is nothing more than a portrayal of what powerful corporations (those who pay the salaries of those who run mass media) want us to believe, that what happens to pass as education is as often as not mere propaganda (e.g. that Americans are the good guys and their enemies are, without exception, always the bad guys), that what we learn in church may have very little or nothing to do with the truth, that what our parents teach us may be nothing more than an accumulation of their own personal biases…… no doubt a rather subtle modification of what they were taught by their parents. And through such a process, governments and nations around the world wield control as to what their citizens, believe, value, and do.

And, of course, in our own society, the primary way most of us are controlled, the way the vast majority of us are forced “to tow the line,” is through the ominous threat of being fired. Something like this: If you are interested in keeping your career on track, that you would like to keep your job, then you ought to consider the following in order to assure your employer that you deserve the right to keep your job; get married and have a couple of kids, become a member of a social club (such as the Lions Club, the Kiwanis Club, or the Rotarians), be a good capitalist, be a patriotic citizen who loves his country, and make sure that you attend a local church so that everybody will know that you believe in God almighty. However, if, for whatever reason, you decide that you would like to become a rebel, that you would like to begin thinking for yourself, then you’d better brace yourself for trouble, because there is a reasonable likelihood that you will be fired! You see, in America, there is a rule of thumb concerning the working world which basically says that those who do what they are told to do are likely to keep their jobs, whereas those who tend to think for themselves, tend to buck the system, (tend not to do what they have been told to do) end up jobless, powerless, and left to fend for themselves on the mean streets of society.

But why? Why does such a thing occur? Why would America the beautiful, land of the free, do such a horrible thing to its own citizens? The answer is quite simple: Knowing that knowledge is power; the secret is control, controlling the out flow of information, making sure that citizens know no more than they “are supposed to know,” making sure that they remain relatively uninformed, making sure that they are given “just enough” that they will go along with, peacefully accept, the premise that they are well informed, that they have a good idea of what is going on. It is necessary then that the government keep the people from learning the truth. Keep them from even wanting to know the truth. Put the fear of God into them to the extent that they will never question what they have been told to believe. You see, those in power may say that they want their citizens to be educated, to be well informed as to what is going on, however, such is simply not the case. Ask yourself this question: What happens to those of us (teachers, preachers, philosophers, writers, journalists) who do not “tow the line,” those intent upon proposing alternate ways of looking at the world? Look at what happened to Jesus Christ, Martin Luther King, Mohandas Gandhi, even Socrates. I mean, really now, who among us wants to be crucified, assassinated, forced to drink hemlock……. wants to risk the possibility of losing one’s job, the ability to put food on the table for one’s family? However, just in case you do not believe me, try this on for size…… the next time you go to work tell the boss that you are an infidel (that you have grown up and no longer believe in God), that you have decided to become a socialist (that capitalism essentially sucks), that you no longer give a shit about your country (that you have decided to become a rebel, an actively-participating antiwar protestor), and then see what happens. Do you get the point?

There are many (Robert Fisk, Cindy Sheehan, Sybil Edmunds, Bunnatine Greenhouse, Coleen Rowley, Captain Ian Fishback, Col. Anthony Shaffer, Kevin Benderman, Jeremy Hinzman, Brandon Hughey, Camilo Mejia, among others) who have illustrated the courage to risk their jobs, their careers, their reputations, their marriages, their wealth, imprisonment, and, in some cases, even that of their own sanity. But the sad fact is that for every hero out there, there are literally thousands of citizens (each who no doubt consider themselves to be conscientious, hard-working individuals who have a sincere belief in God and a loyal commitment to their country) who yet, for whatever reason, detest men and woman such as these who have shown the moral gumption to put their lives on the line for no other reason than to make a stand for that which is right, a willingness to tell anyone, everyone who is willing to listen, that it is a far better thing for one to have sacrificed his own life so that others might see, than to have chosen to remain silent ensuring the blind pretense that all is well, that there is nothing to worry about, that Big Brother will no doubt take good care of us as long as we simply keep our mouths shut and do exactly as we are told.

Technorati Categories: America, Courage, Dissent, Humanity, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics

Perspectives Shape our Landscape

2005-10-11T07:20:00.000-05:00

In an earlier post (Small Revolutionaries: Environmental and Political), I commented on a column written by Joe Mozdzen in the bimonthly Making Waves publication from the Surfrider Foundation*.

Well, Joe once again does an excellent job in communicating how significant each of us is to the overall well-being of our planet and quality of life of our fellow inhabitants.

Joe refers to lessons learned while reading a large book of microscopic photography, France Bourely's "Hidden Beauty: Microworlds Revealed" (2002).

Here are some extracts from Joe's editorial titled ""Perspectives Outside the Comfort Zone"":

It is a good thing to regularly renew the limits of our perceptions and our senses.

Bourely reminds us of our many self-imposed obstacles to vision. The prejudices inherent in having fixed perspectives, fixed beliefs, and rock-solid insistance that we are right. These things that seem so solid now can change drastically with a shift in scale and perception.

Oh how, as a youth, I knew it all! The naivete of youth, the confidence to take on the world, yet lacking the wisdom to know how to appropriately proceed. Some outgrow this belief as they encounter life experiences where it becomes obvious there is much to learn, and ultimately understand we live in a school where there are many lessons to learn.

Ours is not always the winning perspective, nor does our perspective often include that which is not visible to the naked eye.

Our passion for protecting what we love must not be weakened by limiting our perspective to dogma, nostalgia or narrow perspective. If we make other perspectives -- the tinier view, or the bigger view -- irrelevent, we have lost.

We, all of humanity, lose whenever our perspective is limited by bias of any sort, whether religious, political, socio-economic, or intellectual.

There is no us and them, there is only us. Everything else is scale and viewpoint.

The mindset of "You're either with us or with the enemy" or "You're either with us or against us" is divisive. A problem or condition must be evaluated objectively from ALL sides. Anything less serves only those who wish to divide and rule.

* Surfrider Foundation is a non-profit environmental organization dedicated to the protection and enjoyment of the world's waves, oceans and beaches for all people, through conservation, activism, research and education.

Technorati Categories: Humanity, Opinions, Photography, Science, Thoughts

Mother Nature Reflects the Human Condition

2005-10-10T12:14:00.000-05:00

How possible is it that our planet may possess the ability to "sense" the stress currently weighing heavily on humanity? And, could this planetary "sensing" ultimately lead to a reflexive action to expunge the planetary body of the stress via some form of natural event?

Last week held several such significant events.

The torrential rains brought upon Guatemala from Hurricane Stan last week led to landslides and mudslides which resulted in the deaths of hundreds, possibly over 1,000 people. Mass graves are what's left where communities once existed.

Also last week, a massive 7.6 magnitude earthquake in Pakistan has resulted in the deaths of over 30,000 people. The earthquake, so strong that it was felt across South Asia, from central Afghanistan to western Bangladesh, was the worst earthquake on record for Pakistan.

International links to articles about the Pakistan earthquake:
AFP: Pakistan says 40,000 feared dead amid anger over slow aid
Aljazeera: Pakistan: Quake toll reaches 30,000
BBC: Aid begins arriving in quake zone
CNN: Quake toll soars above 30,000

Coming after the tragic Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the culturally-rich city of New Orleans and many Gulf cities in Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and Hurricane Rita, which devastated the natural gas production and oil refining capabilities of the United States. One has to ask if this is the beginning of a period where Mother Earth begins to assert herself in her rejection of the current state of the human condition.

Are we entering a cleansing period where we will see more of these types of large-scale events?

Would these events be naturally-occurring without any external influence?

Could man's impact on the environment influence the frequency and/or intensity of these events?

Could man's treatment of one's fellow man and the dire condition in which a large percentage of the world's population lives have a cummulative effect causing an imbalance in the natural frequency within which both man and nature coexist?

Is there a possibility there may exist some external force(s) influencing our planet?

Q: (A) Now, about the relation between the phenomenon of physical disasters that are going to happen and psychic changes related to the realm border. What is cause and what is effect?
A: One precedes the other.
Q: (L) Okay, so disasters happen and then the reality changes in psychic terms?
A: Yes.
Q: (T) Is the approach of the realm border, is the change in the magnetic field... does the reversal of the poles and the broadening of the magnetic field, is that going to be before the realm border crossing?
A: Intersection.
Q: (L) So, in practical terms, it may be that, what we observe will be a series of cataclysms, disasters, the 'cleansing' of the Earth...
A: This has already begun.
Q: (L) So, it is already happening. It will accelerate and intensify. And what we will observe is all of these things happening. And, as a result of the intersecting of these various energies, this realm border, this reality change, this change in the magnetics because of the interaction with the comet cluster, the sun's companion, the realm border, and so forth, it will then have an effect upon the people left on the planet who will then change in some way as a result of this, is that correct?
A: Your Bible says that there will be many wonders on the Earth and in the Heavens in the last days.
Q: (L) Okay, this period of time after this realm border, is this period a preliminary to the total end of the Earth and all life on it?
A: No.
Q: (L) After all of this change, those people who continue to be on the Earth will be in a new environment, and it will be almost like having to grow gills to live in water, and some people will have the ability and some will not. Is that it? It will be more gradual in terms of individual physical structures and psychic structures?
A: No.
Q: (L) It will be a sudden, total change? Like flipping a switch and everything is going to be different?
A: The key is awareness.

Source: Cometary Showers, Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

I guess we will find out ...

Technorati Categories: Disasters, Earthquakes, Humanity, Media, News, Opinion, Theology

Voices in his Head

2005-10-07T12:15:00.000-05:00

"Voices Inside My Head" by The Police
Album: Zenyatta Mondatta

Voices inside my head
Echoes of things that you said
(Repeat over and over)

Aren't people who hear voices considered in need of psychiatric help or evaluation? At least, that's what I always thought was the proper course of action for anyone having those experiences. Hearing voices has been regarded by psychiatry as 'auditory hallucinations', and in many cases a symptom of schizophrenia.

Well, maybe so for most people, unless you are the President of the United States with a die-hard, faith-based support infrastructure. Anyone else would be considered a candidate for a psychiatric consultation.

How about others who have heard voices? Others like Jennifer Cisowski, Teresa Ann Archie, and Henry Glen West whom God has spoken to and resulted in the deaths of others? Why is it any less disturbing? Is it merely because he is WHO he is?

A young mother maintained that voices in her head told her to test her faith in God, causing her to repeatedly slam her infant son to the ground and down a flight of stairs. Jennifer Cisowski, 21, of Connecticut, killed her 8-month-old son Gideon Fusscas in his grandmother's upscale Florida home on Aug. 21, later saying she believed he would rise from the dead if her faith were strong enough.
Source: Tampa Tribune, Aug. 22, 2001

A Talladega County jury in August found Teresa Ann Archie, 40, guilty of the 1996 murder of her daughter Shavon Jackson. Archie, a paranoid schizophrenic, chased her daughter through their home, shooting her twice in the back after becoming convinced her 16-year-old was possessed by Satan, and that God wanted her to cleanse her home of all Satanic influence. She told police Shavon's last words were: "Mama, don't shoot me, I love you." She replied, "I know, Baby, but I have to do the Lord's will."
Source: The Daily Home, Aug. 15, 2001

God made him commit a crime spree was the defense of bible-toting Henry Glen West, sentenced by an Okahoma County judge in April to two life terms. During West's 5-hour crime spree in January 1998, he severely beat his brother, raped his brother's girlfriend, broke into a house, robbed a convenience store clerk and then tried to run her over twice. At a second convenience store, he repeatedly shot the husband-and-wife owners.
Source: Daily Oklahoman, April 21, 2001

Is it really God speaking in George Bush's head, a symptom of schizophrenia, or something more sinister? I guess in order to explain away what could be generally considered a psychiatric condition, one could attribute the voice to God or some higher being. It is better to believe one has been chosen by God as "special" and worthy of His communication, then to accept there may be some sort of psychological problem. Also, one man's God-speaking-in-his-head could very well be another man's, or intelligence agency's, implantation of subliminal thoughts or transference of mental control.

According to today's Guardian Unlimited Special Report, George Bush: 'God told me to end the tyranny in Iraq', President Bush told a Palestinian foreign minister, Nabil Shaath, that not only was he on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, but that it is his "moral and religious obligation" to create a Palestine state and ensure Israel's security.

Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."

Mr Bush, who became a born-again Christian at 40, is one of the most overtly religious leaders to occupy the White House, a fact which brings him much support in middle America.

Let's hope we are not actually witnessing a modern-day religious crusade. If so, the bloodbath has just begun.

Community Service Message
If you are hearing voices you can go to one of the following websites:

Hearing Voices Network

American Psychological Association

American Pshychiatric Association

Technorati Categories: Bush, Christian, Christianity, Extremism, Media, Opinion, Politics, Psychiatry, Psycho, Religion, Theology

Road to Martial Law

2005-10-05T07:27:00.000-05:00

Yesterday's announcement by the Bush Administration regarding the use of the military to quarantine areas affected by a flu pandemic has come under criticism and rightly so.

From academia:

Dr. Irwin Redlener, associate dean of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health and director of its National Center for Disaster Preparedness, called the president's suggestion an "extraordinarily draconian measure" that would be unnecessary if the nation had built the capability for rapid vaccine production, ensured a large supply of anti-virals like Tamiflu, and not allowed the degradation of the public health system.

"The translation of this is martial law in the United States," Redlener said.
Source

From think tanks:

And Gene Healy, a senior editor at the conservative Cato Institute, said Bush would risk undermining "a fundamental principle of American law" by tinkering with the act, which does not hinder the military's ability to respond to a crisis.

"What it does is set a high bar for the use of federal troops in a policing role," he wrote in a commentary on the group's Web site. "That reflects America's traditional distrust of using standing armies to enforce order at home, a distrust that's well-justified."

Healy said soldiers are not trained as police officers, and putting them in a civilian law enforcement role "can result in serious collateral damage to American life and liberty."
Source

The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 bans the military from participating in police-type activity on U.S. soil. The role of the military does not include domestic applications, yet we have witnessed the introduction of the military in domestic actions recently with the involvement in New Orleans to deal with the aftermath of the disaster preparedness and response mishandling by FEMA.

We are witnessing an attempt to make use of the military more acceptable as a means to respond to domestic emergencies, when in reality a more responsible action would be to improve the local officials' ability to plan and respond to those emergencies.

White House spokesman Trent Duffy says the military involvement would occur only "in the most extreme circumstances" and when state and local resources are overwhelmed. But, what if the state is ill-prepared to handle the emergency due to National Guard troops being in Iraq instead of at home where they should be, or if there is no funding for emergency equipment and personnel due to budget cutbacks? Perhaps the dire condition of the state and local resources have been deviously planned to be at dangerously low levels in order to welcome a military involvement?

What if, all along, the plan has been to set the stage to allow the corralling of the American population when needed. Why would it be necessary to use the military to "control" a domestic emergency in the first place?

Is there some information which those at the highest levels are privy to that scares them to the point of having to establish measures to control the American populace should some "event" occur? What could said "event" be?

Something wicked this way comes...

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Current Affairs, Neocons, News, Opinion, Other, Politics, Random Thoughts.

Will Indictments Stick?

2005-10-04T07:15:00.000-05:00

From today's Washington Post:

One count of the new indictment accuses DeLay of conspiracy to commit money laundering. It says he agreed with one or more associates to launder $190,000 in corporate contributions through an arm of the Republican National Committee in Washington, allowing the funds to be passed illegally into the election campaigns of Republican candidates in Texas. Texas law prohibits the use of corporate money in political campaigns.
Link to Washington Post article

Politicians are very good at leveraging relationships. They make deals to benefit those who support them. It is a symbiotic relationship.

Sometimes the shady side of these relationships receive the light of publicity. Even less frequently, the illegitimacy of the actions results in punishment. More often, either the event slips back into the darkness or those with higher relationships step in to find a loop hole to get the guilty party off the hook.

Tom DeLay's indictments, one last week for conspiracy and a second today for money laundering, are the first steps in the process of an attempt to put this unethical individual in jail at best, or out of his position and fined at least.

We will see if his relationship with other Texans with more influence than he will get the dis-honorable Rep Tom DeLay out of this mess.

In his mind, he has done nothing wrong.

DeLay: "This is an abomination of justice."

So, I assume he also did nothing wrong to receive his previous admonishments by a Congressional Ethics Committee.

From CNN:

Nicknamed "The Hammer" during his tenure as GOP whip, DeLay was admonished by the House ethics committee three times in 2004 over separate issues.
Link to CNN article

On a side note related to accountability, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) release on Friday, September 30, their findings on an investigation requested by Senators Edward Kennedy and Frank Lautenberg earlier this year.

From Yahoo!News:

The administration of President George W. Bush broke the law as it resorted to illegal "covert propaganda" in trying to sell its key education initiative to the public, US congressional investigators have found.
Link to article

The scope of the corruption in the current administration and its relations are becoming increasingly evident. Will attempts be made to indict and prosecute? And, will they stick?

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Current Affairs, Neocons, News, Opinion, Other, Politics, Random Thoughts.

Bush Responsible for Lack of Federal Response to Katrina

2005-09-13T00:02:00.000-05:00

Today, Bush finally admits it is his fault for the abysmal handling of the Katrina emergency response and humanitarian relief effort. It's about f*&@ing time! How long should it take for one to take responsibility for ones actions? If you're Bush or a member of his administration, take as long as you want until you start to lose political ground.

Bush Takes Responsibility for Blunders
By LARA JAKES JORDAN, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - President Bush said Tuesday that "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina and said the disaster raised broader questions about the government's ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.

"Katrina exposed serious problems in our response capability at all levels of government," Bush said at joint White House news conference with the president of Iraq.

"To the extent the federal government didn't fully do its job right, I take responsibility," Bush said.

The president was asked whether people should be worried about the government's ability to handle another terrorist attack given failures in responding to Katrina.

"Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond," Bush replied.

He said he wanted to know both what went wrong and what went right.

As for blunders in the federal response, "I'm not going to defend the process going in," Bush said. "I am going to defend the people saving lives."

He praised relief workers at all levels. "I want people in America to understand how hard people worked to save lives down there," he said.

Bush spoke after R. David Paulison, the new acting director of the
Federal Emergency Management Agency, pledged to intensify efforts to find more permanent housing for the tens of thousands of Hurricane Katrina survivors now in shelters.

It was the closest Bush has come to publicly finding fault with any federal officials involved in the hurricane response, which has been widely criticized as disjointed and slow. Some federal officials have sought to fault state and local officials for being unprepared to cope with the disaster.

Bush planned to address the nation Thursday evening from Louisiana, where he will be monitoring recovery efforts, the White House announced earlier Tuesday.

Paulison, in his first public comments since taking the job on Monday, told reporters: "We're going to get those people out of the shelters, and we're going to move and get them the help they need."

Homeland Security Secretary
Michael Chertoff introduced Paulison as the Bush administration tried to deflect criticism for the sluggish initial federal response to the hurricane and its disastrous aftermath.

Chertoff said that while cleanup, relief and reconstruction from Katrina is now the government's top priority, the administration would not let down its guard on other potential dangers.

"The world is not going to stop moving because we are very focused on Katrina," Chertoff said.

Paulison, named to the post on Monday, said he was busy "getting brought up to speed."

He replaced Michael Brown, who resigned on Monday, three days after being removed from being the top onsite federal official in charge of the government's response.

Paulison said Bush called him Monday night and "thanked me for coming on board."

Bush promised that he would have "the full support of the federal government," Paulison said.

Chertoff said the relief operation had entered a new phase.

Initially, he said, the most important priority was evacuating people, getting them to safety, providing food, water and medical care.

" And then ultimately at the end of the day, we have to reconstitute the communities that have been devastated," Chertoff added.

He said the federal government would look increasingly to state and local officials for guidance on rebuilding the devastated communities along the Gulf Coast.

"The federal government can't drive permanent solutions down the throats of state and local officials," Chertoff said. "I don't think anyone should envision a situation in which they're going to take a back seat. They're going to take a front seat," he said.

Chertoff said that teams of federal auditors were being dispatched to the stricken areas to make sure that billions of dollars worth of government contracts were being properly spent. "We want to get aid to people who need it quickly, but we also don't want to lose sight of the importance of preserving the integrity of the process and our responsibility as stewards of the public money," Chertoff said.

"We're going to cut through red tape," he said, "but we're not going to cut through laws and rules that govern ethics."

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said that some military aircraft and other equipment may be able to move out of the Gulf Coast soon.

"We've got to the point where most if not all of the search and rescue is completed," said Rumsfeld, who is attending a
NATO meeting in Berlin. "Some helicopters can undoubtedly be moved out over the period ahead."

He also said there is a very large surplus of hospital beds in the region, so those could also be decreased. The USS Comfort hospital ship arrived near the Mississippi coast late last week. Rumsfeld added that nothing will be moved out of the area without the authorization of the two states' governors, the military leaders there and the president.

Elsewhere, workers with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention aren't finding many sick people, even though the specter of diseases has alarmed relief and rescue figures. Instead, between 40 and 50 percent of patients seeking emergency care have injuries. The
CDC has counted 148 injuries in just the last two days, Carol Rubin, an agency hurricane relief specialist, said by telephone from the government's new public health headquarters in New Orleans' Kindred Hospital.

While she couldn't provide a breakdown, Rubin said chain saw injuries and carbon monoxide exposure from generators are among them. Those are particularly worrisome because they're likely to become more common as additional hurricane survivors re-enter the city in coming days, she said.

The message: Those injuries are preventable, if people take proper precautions, Rubin stressed.
Source: Yahoo News

The lack of backbone to stand up and admit the failures of the government is an embarrassment to the entire American people. This man has neither the moral character, nor the intellectual capacity to understand when to admit his flaws.

The wiser man understand his intellectual limitations and does not pretend to be more than he is. Knowledge grows from an acceptance of the universe as a school from which we all continue to learn.

The compassionate man understands the unfortunate condition of another is not to be for his advantage but created as an opportunity to give of himself.

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Current Affairs, Humanity, Neocons, News, Opinion, Other, Politics, Random Thoughts.

The Last Blunder

2005-09-09T12:20:00.000-05:00

For the last time, this administration has got to go!

First, they make a mockery of the 9/11 victims by conducting and accepting a flawed investigation into the September 11 attacks. The Bush administration withholding information and ultimately provided that which they consider will not compromise national security, instead of letting those on the investigation committee decide for themselves. The hamstrung committee for not pushing harder to get the information, nor included testimony from witnesses contradicting the party line.

Second, they led America into an unjustified and illegal war resulting in the deaths of thousands and the destruction of the livelihood of hundreds of thousands of innocent men, women, and children. A war waged on illegal grounds, against the United Nations and the entire international community common opinion.

Third, they allowed the indefinite incarceration of innocent civilians under the convenient "enemy combatant" label. Fathers, brothers, uncles, and sons detained indefinitely.

Fourth, they allowed the use of torture against detainees. Enemy combatants, insurgents, etc. either through direct detainment in prisons in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay, or through rendition.

Fifth, and worst of all since it is against innocent Americans on domestic soil, the failure to help those American citizens in need in New Orleans, and the rest of the cities in the Gulf states destroyed by hurricane Katrina. This human catastrophe could have been prevented had immediate action and leadership been taken.

Bush and company have got to go!

Here's an article echoing my sentiments from the Baltimore Sun:

After Katrina fiasco, time for Bush to go

WASHINGTON - The disastrous federal response to Katrina exposes a record of incompetence, misjudgment and ideological blinders that should lead to serious doubts that the Bush administration should be allowed to continue in office.

When taxpayers have raised, borrowed and spent $40 billion to $50 billion a year for the past four years for homeland security but the officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency cannot find their own hands in broad daylight for four days while New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast swelter, drown and die, it is time for them to go.

When funding for water works and levees in the gulf region is repeatedly cut by an administration that seems determined to undermine the public responsibility for infrastructure in America, despite clear warnings that the infrastructure could not survive a major storm, it seems clear someone is playing politics with the public trust.

When rescue and medical squads are sitting in Manassas and elsewhere in northern Virginia and foreign assistance waits at airports because the government can't figure out how to insure the workers, how to use the assistance or which jurisdiction should be in charge, it is time for the administration to leave town.

When President Bush stays on vacation and attends social functions for two days in the face of disaster before finally understanding that people are starving, crying out and dying, it is time for him to go.

When FEMA officials cannot figure out that there are thousands stranded at the New Orleans convention center - where people died and were starving - and fussed ineffectively about the same problems in the Superdome, they should be fired, not praised, as the president praised FEMA Director Michael Brown in New Orleans last week.

When Mr. Bush states publicly that "nobody could anticipate a breach of the levee" while New Orleans journalists, Scientific American, National Geographic, academic researchers and Louisiana politicians had been doing precisely that for decades, right up through last year and even as Hurricane Katrina passed over, he should be laughed out of town as an impostor.

When repeated studies of New Orleans make it clear that tens of thousands of people would be unable to evacuate the city in case of a flood, lacking both money and transportation, but FEMA makes no effort before the storm to commandeer buses and move them to safety, it is time for someone to be given his walking papers.

When the president makes Sen. Trent Lott's house in Pascagoula, Miss., the poster child for rebuilding while hundreds of thousands are bereft of housing, jobs, electricity and security, he betrays a careless insensitivity that should banish him from office.

When the president of the United States points the finger away from the lame response of his administration to Katrina and tries to finger local officials in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., as the culprits, he betrays the unwillingness of this administration to speak truth and hold itself accountable. As in the case of the miserable execution of policy in Iraq, Mr. Bush and Karl Rove always have some excuse for failure other than their own misjudgments.

We have a president who is apparently ill-informed, lackadaisical and narrow-minded, surrounded by oil baron cronies, religious fundamentalist crazies and right-wing extremists and ideologues. He has appointed officials who give incompetence new meaning, who replace the positive role of government with expensive baloney.

They rode into office in a highly contested election, spouting a message of bipartisanship but determined to undermine the federal government in every way but defense (and, after 9/11, one presumed, homeland security). One with Grover Norquist, they were determined to shrink Washington until it was "small enough to drown in a bathtub." Katrina has stripped the veil from this mean-spirited strategy, exposing the greed, mindlessness and sheer profiteering behind it.

It is time to hold them accountable - this ugly, troglodyte crowd of Capital Beltway insiders, rich lawyers, ideologues, incompetents and their strap-hangers should be tarred, feathered and ridden gracefully and mindfully out of Washington and returned to their caves, clubs in hand.

Gordon Adams, director of security policy studies at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, was senior White House budget official for national security in the Clinton administration.

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Current Affairs, Humanity, Neocons, News, Opinion, Other, Politics, Random Thoughts.

Katrina's Wake

2005-08-30T07:01:00.000-05:00

As one of the most powerful hurricanes in recent history to hit the Gulf states, Katrina has left a significant impact in her wake. Not only because of the force of the hurricane winds, but the result of the massive amounts of rain and storm surge which has inundated the area resulting in massive flooding.

New Orleans is 80% under water. Some areas are under as much as 20 feet of water. It could have been much worse if the eye of the hurricane would have passed west of the city instead of east.

One of the worst fears, a breach of the levee system surrounding the city, was realized when a two-block-long breach opened in a section of a levee that protects the city from Lake Pontchartrain.

Another fear, contamination of the city's drinkable water supply, was realized when a 50-inch water main was severed during the storm.

New Orleans was not the only city devastated by the storm. Biloxi and Gulf Port, Mississippi bore the brunt of the storm.

Mobile, Alabama had water from Mobile Bay surge into the city's downtown, submerging large sections of the city. An oil drilling platform broke away from its moorings and lodged under a bridge.

Estimates are in the months for the areas to resume basic functions.

I feel for the families and hope help arrives quickly for all these people. May the true light of man's humanity shine through this overcast period.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Humanity, News, Other, Random Thoughts.

Has Pat Robertson Lost His Mind?

2005-08-23T06:55:00.000-05:00

Conservative Christian broadcaster Pat Robertson has called for the United States to assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him "a terrific danger" bent on exporting Communism and Islamic extremism across the Americas.
Courtesy of CNN

What is Pat Robertson thinking?

This one-time presidential candidate and host of the evangelical "The 700 Club" is calling for the assassination of another country's elected leader.

This Christian, founder of the Christian Coalition, is calling for the taking of a life for no reason other than the individual being "a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us badly."

Robertson accused Chavez, a left-wing populist with close ties to Cuban President Fidel Castro, of trying to make Venezuela "a launching pad for Communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent."

"This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen," he said.
Courtesy of CNN

Great! Just what America needs... another "Christian" who feels it his moral obligation to fight Muslim extremism and protect our freedoms!

Technorati Categories: Christian, Christianity, Extremism,
Islam,
Media,
Muslim, Opinion, Politics, Religion, Theology

Gaza Withdrawal

2005-08-19T12:15:00.000-05:00

History: Gaza Strip (from Wikipedia)

The Strip's borders were originally defined by the armistice lines between Egypt and Israel after the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which followed the dissolution of the British mandate of Palestine. It was occupied by Egypt until it was captured by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War.

Around 1.37 million Palestinians and about 8,000 Israelis live in the Gaza Strip. The majority of the Palestinians are direct descendants of refugees who fled or were expelled from Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War.

Egypt was there from 1948 until 1967 when Israel took over the territory. So, to be clear, the settlers came in and took land from the existing Palestinian residents.

Alright, that's the background.

While reading the latest world news on the Internet, I come across a very good comment, one which verbalizes quite effectively the exact same questions and concerns I have felt while observing the medias' presentation of the current situation in Gaza over the last few days.

Here it is:

The past week, the media has been full of close-ups of grieving Israeli settlers mourning the loss of their government-built illegal homes. The coverage is almost exclusively from the point of view of the settlers, even though they have stolen the land their houses were built upon, even though the settlements are illegal under international law, even though their Palestinian neighbours live in shacks that can be bulldozed at a moment's notice by the IDF, even though they are being well-paid to "give up" the houses, even though they will be resettled in new illegal homes on the West Bank, and even though the whole thing is being orchestrated to portray Ariel Sharon as a man of peace.

Which has to make you wonder why the Israelis are always being favoured in the press and why the Israelis are always being supported by the US.
Courtesy: Signs of the Times

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Israel,
Media, Palestine,Politics, Zionist

Anniversary of Shame

2005-08-06T09:14:00.000-05:00

Today is the 60th anniversary of the first atomic bomb application against human beings on a grand scale. Previous applications had been on much smaller scales and more insidiously used against an unknowing American military.

120,000 died instantly when the two atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.

If we are not reminded of the horrors and tremendous magnitude of the senseless loss of life by a single nuclear event, caused by the decision of a few, we are surely doomed to repeat it. But, having said this, I realize it is beyond us, unless we demand...

The dismantling of all nuclear weapons.
Expulsion of those in power who would even consider the use of these weapons as an option.
Redirection of military spending for purposes of improving the human condition, toward environmentally-friendly fuels, access to education and health care for all, to mention a few.
Accountability for actions taken against humanity.

I will continue to voice my support for the individual over the state, respect for life over power, financial gain, or religious dogma.

Life is about giving, not taking.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Random Thoughts.

Patriot Act Renewal Distraction

2005-07-22T17:30:00.000-05:00

******* 23 July 2005 UPDATE *******
Prison Planet's analysis reveals some very interesting observations. Below are a few of the more intriguing:

Today is the last day of parliament before an 80 day break. So if the governmen wanted to get those anti-terror measures through which were proposed after the 7/7 bombing, then this status of high alert is the perfect climate to get them rammed through without dissent.

Sky News reported that members of parliament could be recalled tonight in a special session for the express purpose of passing that legislation.

In the early confusion about what is actually happening in London, several things are already clear.

- This immediately stalls questions about the first bombing. The mainstream media were finally beginning to highlight the fact that the government's official story did not fit together. This takes those issues off the front pages.

- This further promulgates the fearmongering and creates a pliable public that is willing to accept draconian anti-terror laws. They are trying to turn us into Israel, with an alert or a bombing every fortnight.

- On the very day that the Patriot Act is due to be renewed, Bush can use the alert level to grease the skids and bully Congress into re-authorizing the bill.
Read the rest of the article here

******* Original Post*******
Coincidence or not?

Yesterday's London bombings occurs on the same day the US House of Representatives permanently renews 14 out of 16 expiring Patriot Act provisions. The two which were not permanently renewed will come up for renewal in 10 years.

The original Patriot Act was in response to the 9/11 attacks and supposed to be a temporary measure to provide intelligence agencies with the capabilities to catch the terrorists. It has sinced turned into a permanent fixture in the American intelligence apparatuses.

Passage came with the specter of terrorism fresh in lawmakers' minds after another round of bombing incidents in London earlier in the day.
Source: CNN

Interestingly, on the day the vote was to take place, the failed London bombings provided a timely, vivid "reminder" of the necessity for intelligence agencies to have the freedom to go after anyone them deem to be a terrorist or terrorist suspect.

Although the Senate still has to authorize the changes, the fact this news-worthy item is being overshadowed by the London bombings is very interesting.

And, bombings which appear to have been made to look like the July 7th bombings, but were actually quite amateur in comparison, failed to explode -- ALL FOUR! What are the odds of that happenning?

Unlike the devastation of a fortnight before, when 56 people died and more than 700 were injured, Thursday's repeat attacks caused no casualties as the rucksack-borne bombs seemingly failed to detonate fully.

Witnesses reported hearing loud pops like guns or corks as smoke poured from the rucksacks, testimony which experts said indicated that the bombs' detonators went off but failed to ignite the main charges.
Source: AFP

Today, a suspected terrorist was shot in a London subway.

Scotland Yard said the man shot dead at about 1000 BST on Friday in Stockwell had still to be formally identified.

He was being under police observation because he had emerged from a house that was being watched following Thursday's attacks, a spokesman said.

The man was followed by surveillance officers to Stockwell station, where his clothing and behaviour added to their suspicions, he added.

Stockwell passenger Mark Whitby told BBC News he had seen a man of Asian appearance shot five times by "plain-clothes police officers".

"One of them was carrying a black handgun - it looked like an automatic - they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him," he said.
Source: BBC

So, he's a suspected terrorist because he walked out of a suspected terrorist house. Even though they aren't sure who he is, he is tackled because his attire and behavior is a bit suspicious, then they unload five shots into the unknown individual.

Let's hope, for the Scotland Yard's sake, this individual is found to have explosive material on him and, by their actions, the police prevented enother potentially devastating attack. If not, let's hope there's a public outcry for police restraint until there is absolute certainty of guilt of an individual before someone is allowed to kill them in cold blood.

All of this, food for thought yet again...

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Random Thoughts, War on Terror.

Move Over Rove and Let Joe Take Over

2005-07-16T07:36:00.000-05:00

Move over Rover and let Jimi take over
Jimi Hendrix - Fire

Joseph Wilson speaks out in a Washington Post article:

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson called on President Bush Thursday to fire deputy chief of staff Karl Rove, saying Bush's top-level aide engaged in an "abuse of power" by discussing Wilson's wife's job with a reporter.

Wilson, in an interview broadcast Thursday on NBC's "Today" show, said he thinks the White House's posture in this controversy represents a continuing "cover-up of the web of lies that underpin the justification for going to war in Iraq."

"The president has said repeatedly, "I am a man of my word,' " Wilson added. "He should stand up and prove that his word is his bond and fire Karl Rove."

Wilson has said the leak of his wife's name was an attempt by the administration to discredit him after he challenged its assertion that Iraq's Saddam Hussein was seeking to obtain from Niger material to make nuclear weapons.
Source - Washintgon Post

The heat is on Bush to do something about Rove. Bush's credibility is on the line.

It would be interesting to see if some BIG event coincidentally strikes to take the focus away from ...

Rove's illegal act of revealing the identity of an intelligence operative.

Bush's refusal to take action on the source of the Plame leak.

Downing Street memos confirming the Bush administrations' "fixing" the facts to support the policy of going after Sadam.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Iraq, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, War, Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Rove's Scandalous Links

2005-07-15T12:59:00.000-05:00

Karl Rove has acts as if, and I'm sure considers himself, beyond reproach. Nothing can touch him. Noone can stop him from getting his way.

Those were the old days.

Although he still is connected and influencial, the revelations of participation in what are becoming more obvious as scandalous activities are beginning to show the cracks in the armor. Several still vocally stand in his defense, most likely to gain future favors. A growing number of others are distancing themselves carefully so as not to draw attention to themselves when the hammer falls. And, another number of others are fence sitting to weather Rove's political storm should he win or lose.

Daniel Schorr, National Public Radio's senior news analyst and Christian Science Monitor's contributing columnist, writes in the article Rove Leak is Just Part of Larger Scandal:

Let me remind you that the underlying issue in the Karl Rove controversy is not a leak, but a war and how America was misled into that war.

In 2002 President Bush, having decided to invade Iraq, was casting about for a casus belli. The weapons of mass destruction theme was not yielding very much until a dubious Italian intelligence report, based partly on forged documents (it later turned out), provided reason to speculate that Iraq might be trying to buy so-called yellowcake uranium from the African country of Niger. It did not seem to matter that the CIA advised that the Italian information was "fragmentary and lacked detail."

Prodded by Vice President Dick Cheney and in the hope of getting more conclusive information, the CIA sent Joseph Wilson, an old Africa hand, to Niger to investigate. Mr. Wilson spent eight days talking to everyone in Niger possibly involved and came back to report no sign of an Iraqi bid for uranium and, anyway, Niger's uranium was committed to other countries for many years to come.

No news is bad news for an administration gearing up for war. Ignoring Wilson's report, Cheney talked on TV about Iraq's nuclear potential. And the president himself, in his 2003 State of the Union address no less, pronounced: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Wilson declined to maintain a discreet silence. He told various people that the president was at least mistaken, at most telling an untruth. Finally Wilson directly challenged the administration with a July 6, 2003 New York Times op-ed headlined, "What I didn't find in Africa," and making clear his belief that the president deliberately manipulated intelligence in order to justify an invasion.

One can imagine the fury in the White House. We now know from the e-mail traffic of Time's correspondent Matt Cooper that five days after the op-ed appeared, he advised his bureau chief of a super-secret conversation with Karl Rove who alerted him to the fact that Wilson's wife worked for the CIA and may have recommended him for the Niger assignment. Three days later, Bob Novak's column appeared giving Wilson's wife's name, Valerie Plame, and the fact she was an undercover CIA officer. Mr. Novak has yet to say, in public, whether Mr. Rove was his source. Enough is known to surmise that the leaks of Rove, or others deputized by him, amounted to retaliation against someone who had the temerity to challenge the president of the United States when he was striving to find some plausible reason for invading Iraq.

The role of Rove and associates added up to a small incident in a very large scandal - the effort to delude America into thinking it faced a threat dire enough to justify a war.
Source: Christian Science Monitor

This from someone with a career of more than six decades who knows how to conduct his research and developed a keen sense for putting all the pieces together.

Now, for the other scandal brewing...

As most of you who have followed this blog know, the actions of another Texas politician, not too disimilar from Rove in his character, Tom DeLay, have been in and out of the media for quite some time. Specifically, the issue of ethical misconduct.

Well, lo and behold, here we find Karl Rove involved as well.

In a press release from the Campaign for a Cleaner Congress, manager Peter L. Kelley reveals Rove's close connection with Jack Abramoff, who is at the center of DeLay's lobbying scandal. From the article Rove Tied to Tom DeLay Lobbying Scandal:

Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the name of a CIA operative for political advantage during wartime could be just the tip of the iceberg as far as unethical behavior, since his web of influence extends to the most notorious figure of the House Lobbying Scandal.

"It's widely known that Karl Rove has been pulling strings all over Washington for years, obviously not just in the case of the Plame leak," said Peter L. Kelley, manager of the Campaign for a Cleaner Congress.

"What is not widely known, however, is his close connection with Jack Abramoff, who is at the center of the lobbying scandal in which Washington is now embroiled. Rove let archconservative operatives like Grover Norquist call shots at the White House. And just this week, a Texas judge ruled that a former Rove lieutenant must face felony charges of money laundering for Tom DeLay's political operation.

"Without further ethics reforms, the public has virtually no ability to find out what is really going on in Washington these days," Kelley said. "But what we do know is starting to smell, and it offers a starting point for further investigation."

The collapse of Rove's dynasty has begun. Let's see whether his influence will save him from these continuous revelations of unethical and, potentially, criminal activities.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Media Sharks Smell Blood in White House CIA Leak Involvement

2005-07-13T12:18:00.000-05:00

Interesting week to say the least!

Since my last post on Friday, where I expressed my concern over the undeniably restrained coverage by the press community for such a HOT news item (specifically, last week's revelation that Karl Rove, Bush's deputy chief of staff, was the source of the leak which resulted in the exposure of a CIA operative) which should have had them all drooling to break the news. Well, this week, the press has been all over White House press secretary Scott McClellan and Bush, who was initially defending Rove, has taken a more non-commital tone.

There is definitly blood in the water. The press sharks smells it and have decided to jump all over the news of Rove's involvement. Like dogs who have been beaten for so long, sensing a time to bite the abuser in a moment of weakness.

Democrats are calling for Rove's dismissal while the Republican faithful see nothing wrong, or relevant to the leak, in Rove's discussion of Joe Wilson's wife being a CIA operative.

Republicans mounted an aggressive and coordinated defense of Karl Rove yesterday, contending that the White House's top political adviser did nothing improper or illegal when he discussed a covert CIA official with a reporter.
Source: Washington Post

The Republican National Committee and congressional Republicans are vocal in blaming the Democrats for "partisan politics", yet the White House has been taking a more subdued approach, in contrast to earlier unwavering support for Rove.

President Bush said Wednesday he will withhold judgment about top aide Karl Rove's involvement in the leaking the identity of a CIA operative until a federal criminal investigation is complete.

The lack of an endorsement surprised some Bush advisers who had expected the president to voice his support.

"This is a serious investigation," Bush said at the end of a meeting with his Cabinet, with Rove sitting just behind him. "I will be more than happy to comment on this matter once this investigation is complete.

"I also will not prejudge the investigation based on media reports," he said, when asked whether Rove acted improperly in discussing CIA officer Valerie Plame with a reporter.

Bush is "withholding judgement". Sounds like political CYA.

Media Quiet on Karl Rove Involvement in Plame Leak

2005-07-08T12:39:00.000-05:00

Why haven't we been hearing more about Karl Rove's alleged involvement in leaking Valerie Plame's (identified as a CIA operative) name to the media? One of the most potentially damaging stories of the year for the current administation and it is obviously being played down.

Isn't it odd that one of the most treacherous acts against the country is going under-reported? Revealing the name of an intelligence operative and compromising, more likely resulting in the death of, other assets and intelligence channels which have taken years to develop. According to the law, the 1982 Intelligence Identities Protection Act, the act by itself warrants imprisonment.

Ariana Huffington's opinion, appearing July 6th on her site, is the obvious fear of what Karl Rove and the White House are capable of doing, to even the biggest of media moguls and their empires, to those who cross them.

According to the players, the key to whether this story has real legs -- and whether it will spell the end of Rove -- is determining intent. And a key to that is whether there was a meeting at the White House where Rove and Scooter Libby discussed what to do with the information they had gotten from the State Department about Valerie Plame being Joe Wilson’s wife, and her involvement in his being sent on the Niger/yellowcake mission. If it can be proven that such a meeting occurred, then Rove will be in deep trouble -- especially if it is established that Rove made three phone calls leaking the info about Plame and her CIA gig… one to Matt Cooper, one to Walter Pincus, and one to Robert Novak.

So, it's a given Karl Rove is involved, the questions is to what degree he willingly, and with premeditated intent to cause harm, released the information. Did he encourage, demand, or suggest (wink, wink) the name be made public as pay-back for Ambassador Joe Wilson's (Valerie Plame's husband) public denial of the Nigerian yellowcake uranium memo used by the Bush administration as proof of Sadam's weapons program.

Other than intent, the other big legal question raised was: will Rove be able to get away with claiming that he did not know Plame was an undercover agent?

We all know what happened after Rove placed those calls. The question is, what will happen now?

Yes, what will happen now? Good question, indeed.

Last week, New York Times reporter Judith Miller was sentenced to jail, being held in contempt of court for refusing to reveal a confidential source to the grand jury investigating the disclosure of Plame's identity. We can only hope this ultimately results in the revelation of the identity of the leak.

One thing is for certain, the media will wish this go away or some other news rise to the surface. You see, this will be the only way to avoid being held to the public scrutiny of having failed in their responsibility to report this egregeous action and bring to light this obvious violation of public trust by our leaders.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Media, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics.

Blasts in Britain: Police had Advance Warning

2005-07-07T11:30:00.000-05:00

Truly a sad day today in England. A series of explosions were reported to have occurred in the subway and on a bus resulting in a large number of deaths.

I am saddened by the meaningless loss of life. It makes no sense that this should happen to innocent civilians which are not responsible for the politicians' actions. In addition, I'm disturbed by the timing of the event and disappearance of some initial reports.

Below is an objective analysis from Signs of the Times of why actions such as these definitely DO NOT serve the terrorists' objectives, whatever they may be:

We would like to appeal to all our readers to think about these attacks rationally. First of all, ask yourself, what does "al-qaeda" or any other "previously unknown" Islamic group have to gain from carrying out these attacks at this particular time in London. Coming on the very day that the "G8" leaders meet in Scotland, the only tangible results of the attacks have been to vector British and world public attention TOWARDS the "reality" of "Arab terrorism" and AWAY from the crimes of people like Bush and Blair as regards the pillaging of the resources (both human and natural) of third world countries. On the very day that G8 leaders were expected to deliver on the demands of the World public to alleviate "third world" debt, "al-qaeda" steps in and saves them the trouble by bringing "terrorism" center stage.

One of the most troubling aspects of "Arab terror" attacks in Europe and the US is that the victims are almost always ordinary civilians. By now, any Arab terrorist strategist should surely have realised that their issue is not with the civilian population of Western nations but rather with the politicians that make the decisions, many of which run contrary to the will of the people. The massive anti-Iraq war demonstrations around Europe and the US made this point quite clear. In this case, what does "al-qaeda" have to gain from attacking London trains and buses filled with civilian workers when it is patently obvious that civilian deaths at the hands of "terrorists" will do nothing to sway the average Western government from their political and military designs on the Middle East, quite the opposite in fact.

It really is a no brainer that "al-qaeda" terrorism very definitely serves the agenda of Bush and Blair.

Something very strange happened during the early reporting of the events. Several articles released early during the breaking news of the explosions stated that British police had notified the Israeli embassy of the potential terrorist acts began disappearing from web sites. The original release being replaced by denials.

One such report had the title "Israeli Official: Scotland Yard had warning" with the brief content:

JERUSALEM — British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before today's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

The report was replaced with on titled "Israel denies receiving warning before blasts".

Links to sites where the article was replaced:

Fox News - "Israeli
Official: Scotland Yard Had Warning"

Houston Chronicle - "Britain passed on warning to Israeli Embassy just before blast"

Canoe - "Israel got warning of terror attack minutes before"

Here is one example where the original AP release exists:

Scotland Yard had warned Israel of possible terror attacks

Jerusalem, July 7 (AP): British police told the Israeli Embassy in London minutes before today's explosions that they had received warnings of possible terror attacks in the city, a senior Israeli official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the nature of his position.

Israel was holding an economic conference near the scene of one of the explosions. Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was supposed to attend, but the attacks occurred before he arrived.

Just before the blasts, Scotland Yard called the security officer at the Israeli Embassy and said warnings of possible attacks had been received, the official said. He did not say whether British police made any link to the economic conference.

Link to article on Hindu News
Link to article on Rediff.com
Link to article on NY Newsday

I'm troubled by the parallels to the reports of warnings to the Israeli instant messaging service company in the World Trade Center, Odigo, prior to the September 11th attack. Why is it that Israeli interests seem to have been warned PRIOR to the attacks?

Food for thought.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Israel, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Random Thoughts, War on Terror.

You Lied!

2005-07-06T12:22:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, I listened to a song I was unable to get out of my head. 'You Lied' (listen here) possesses a pleasant-sounding musical accompaniment and melodic flow to a definitely disturbing, yet starkly accurate, lyrical foundation.

Here are the lyrics for your benefit:

You Lied
copyright 2005 Signs of the Times

You told the world Saddam had chemical bombs
To kill us all in our homes, on our farms
You said he sent his men into the heavens
big planes crashing down, September 11

You lied, You lied,
People died, When Bush lied

I've got some questions, wipe that smirk off your face
Betraying your people, that's a real disgrace
See I'm having a hard time finding that plane
you said hit the Pentagon, bursting into flames
Vapourising the aircraft, didn't leave no remains
But the bodies appear not to burn quite the same

More lies Yeah, yeah, more lies
America died, When Bush lied

And talk about mir'cles, did you see how they fell,
the three towers in New York, those charges worked well
Flattened out in a straight line, just like it was planned
Did you think we were so stupid that we wouldn't understand
And it's a pity about the folks there on Flight 93,
Just as they took back control, you blew them to smithereens

You lied, You lied
Heroes died, when Bush lied

You say Osama is living in a place you have traced
But you don't go and get him, it seems such a waste
Could it be it's because he's still one of your men
A C-I-A asset just like he was then
He endorsed your campaign in a last minute pitch
Is he just one more man who has gotten quite rich

From your lies, Your lies
Freedom died, from your lies

How about those Israelis dancing to their success,
On the rooftops of Jersey, they created a mess
So you sent them back home with a slap on the wrist
Told the cops not to bother, 'cause they don't exist

It's a lie, You lied
Justice died, when you lied

Now people are dying through your crimes in Iraq
You've killed more than Saddam, though you don't care to keep track
Cause they're only some Arabs in a faraway land
That Yahweh has promised to his chosen band
While Sharon and his cronies pull on your strings
When he opens his mouth your whole government sings

His lies, His lies
Palestinians die, With Bush lies

Next time you talk to your God, I've got a question for him
What side is he on or does it change on a whim'
There's a whole lot of people, suff'rin here in his name
What kind of pyscho is he that he's playing this game
It sounds more like the devil is guiding your hand
Destruction and death are the plagues of the land

of your lies, your lies
Children die, When Bush lies

You see, Mr President, there's something amiss
Two elections you lost, but you overcame this
By rigging the vote, not counting the blacks
You've ensured two full terms, the dry drunk is back
And now they're changing the laws to get you a third
The brown shirts are charging at the front of the herd

of your lies, your lies
Democracy dies, When Bush lies

The question remains what can we do about this
Most people refuse to consider this list
They're lost in illusion, can't recognise proof
so we offer this song to all who stand for the truth

No more lies, No more lies
Must we all die, Because of your lies

No more lies, No more lies
Must we all die, Because of your lies

Your lies...

Here's another you might have heard before which is just as significant:

Imagine
Written by: John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

Think about the it for a moment... no more lies, no more wars.

How much longer do we accept the world which has been set up for us? Get up and DO something to change the status quo. Take the world back from those who wish to control and enslave every single one of us.

For us, for our children, for mankind's future.

Technorati Categories: Bush, Current Affairs, Entertainment, Music, News, News and Politics, Opinion, Politics, Random Thoughts.

Listen to Molly

2005-07-01T07:29:00.000-05:00

Molly Ivins has been around quite a while (30 years in journalism) commenting and writing about a variety of things. She has a no-nonsense, down-to-earth, yet piercing style of getting right to the heart of the matter. I've enjoyed reading her columns and would like to share a few with you...

On the recent Supreme Court decision to allow local governments to sieze private property for economic development:

Eminent development - Supreme Court sides with rich vs. poor
"Jobs, jobs, jobs," is the eternal cry of the economic development lobby, which always stands to profit from whatever abomination is about to be foisted on the public. I'm not arguing that bigger is better or worse, I'm arguing that local governments are likely to seize on any chance to increase their tax base. We've got places in Texas that beg for prisons, chemical complexes, even nuclear waste dumps.

What it doesn't mean is a better place to live, which I gather is what the Supreme Court majority had in mind with this decision. Those who naively trust local governments to make wise decisions clearly haven't been paying attention. The main difference between the feds and the locals is that it costs more to buy the feds. And I don't like cynics.

People have the most remarkable ability to convince themselves that what they are doing is for the greater good if they are also making a great deal of money out of it. Or, as Upton Sinclair put it, "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

People excuse this kind of thing by saying, "You can't stop progress." "Progress" of this sort doesn't happen through some inexorable law, it usually happens because the law and the political system have been bought by huge economic interests. Corporations can file lawsuits and defend lawsuits longer than a normal human can live, and they can make more generous campaign contributions than any seven homeowners will ever be able to come up with.

On the Downing Street memo:

Dismissing Downing Street - Just because everyone knew it was a setup doesn't mean it's not news
The New York Times, The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times have all gone way out of their way to deny that the Downing Street Memos (it's now plural) are news. Like many of you, during the entire lead-up to the war with Iraq, I thought the whole thing was a set-up.

I raise this point not to prove how smart we are, but to emphasize that I followed the debate closely and probably unconsciously searched for evidence that reinforced what I already thought. Most people do that. I read some of the European press and most of the liberal publications in this country. I read the Times, the Post, the Wall Street Journal and several Texas papers every day. It's my job.

But when I read the first Downing Street Memo, my eyes bugged out and my jaw fell open. I could not believe what I was reading. It was news to me, and as I have tried to indicate, I'm no slouch at keeping up. Yes, it has long seemed to me the administration had been planning the war for months before it began its pubic relations campaign to scare a skeptical public.

That was no easy task. Public opinion was still evenly divided at the time we invaded. The administration actually said it could invade another country without even consulting Congress or the United Nations. Pretty much everything that followed was a charade.

It was always weird that the White House kept saying it knew Saddam Hussein had WMD, but it would never tell the U.N. inspectors where.

The very prestigious papers [New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times] that are now dismissing the Downing Street Memos have already themselves admitted that their pre-war coverage was -- I don't know, you pick the adjective. Slack? Inadequate? Less than rigorous? Wrong? And now they're saying, oh hell, this isn't news, we knew it all along.

Michael Kinsley out at the Los Angeles Times, which has certainly done some commendable reporting on this war and taken the heat for it, too, also dismisses the memos. I don't get it. You suddenly get evidence -- I don't know if it proves or just strongly suggests -- that this administration lied to all of us about war, and your reaction is not to go after the administration, but to dismiss the evidence? And to put down the people who are calling you screaming about why you haven't bothered to mention it? What is wrong with this picture?

Also aggravating, the Republicans in Congress refuse to allow hearings. Rep. John Conyers of Michigan held "Democratic hearings," without the R's, in a room described as a large closet, because they were not allowed to use an actual hearing room. Under these difficult circumstances, 30 Democratic representatives persisted in asking the important question, "Were Americans deliberately misled in the lead-up to this war?" When did we come to the point where the minority has no place?

I don't know if these memos represent an impeachable offense -- although I must say, I don't want to bring up the Clinton comparison again. But they strike me as a hell of lot worse than anything Richard Nixon ever contemplated.

On the Bush administration:

The definition of insanity - Bush appointments and comments clearly indicate he's not learning from his mistakes
Sometimes you look at the people Bush appoints to high public office and the only possible response is, "What were they thinking?"

Zalmay Khalilzad for U.S. ambassador to Iraq? Why not just send Richard Perle? Khalilzad is a second-rank neo-con with all the same credentials as the rest of those bozos -- pre-emptive war, world hegemony, Project for a New American Century... the whole stinking lot of it. Plus, he's been a big booster for Iran's ayatollahs, the Afghani Mujahideen and the Taliban, not to mention an oil company consultant. Isn't that just jim-dandy?

What this tells us is that the administration has learned exactly nothing from the past three years of insurgency in Iraq. The 1,700-dead, $1 billion-a-week mistake will continue to be run in exactly the same way we have already proved doesn't work.

It's like Ben Franklin's definition of insanity -- doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.

As one who has long argued that George W. Bush is not stupid, I must admit that not learning from your mistakes is a prime signal of stupidity. But of course, in order to learn from your mistakes, you have to recognize you made them.

On business clout and influence in politics:

Turning up the sleaze - Welcome to the age of government by transaction
A jaw-dropping article in The Texas Observer shows that two lobbying clients of Jack Abramoff paid $25,000 to Grover Norquist's group for a lunch date and meeting with President George W. Bush in May 2001. Abramoff brought the Indian chiefs to the White house at the request of Norquist, a leading "movement conservative" in Washington. In addition, Abramoff obtained $2.5 million in contributions from the Indians for a nonprofit foundation run by his wife and himself.

The White House guests were the chiefs of two of the six casino-rich Indian tribes represented by Abramoff and his partner Michael Scanlon, former top aide to House Majority Whip Tom DeLay. The $25,000 check from the Coushatta tribe of Louisiana is made out to Americans for Tax Reform, an anti-tax group founded and directed by Norquist.

Norquist, Abramoff and Karl Rove have worked together for 30 years, since they were national leaders of the College Republicans. Norquist, DeLay and Abramoff are all key players in the "the K Street Project" to turn the Washington lobby corps into an arm of the Republican Party.

For an overview of the entire Abramoff scandal and its relation to Tom DeLay and the K Street Project -- and what all this means in terms of Washington sleaze -- see an article by Elizabeth Drew, "Selling Washington," in the June 23 issue of The New York Review of Books. Drew and other students of Washington corruption conclude what we have here is not so much a difference in kind as in degree of corruption -- but of a degree that's making a difference in everything.

Drew writes, "The effects of the new, higher level of corruption on the way the country is governed are profound. Not only is legislation increasingly skewed to benefit the richest interests, but Congress itself has been changed. The head of a public policy strategy group told me: 'It's not about governing any more. The Congress is now a transactional institution. ...' The theory that ours is a system of one-person, one-vote, or even that it's a representative democracy, is challenged by the reality of power and who really wields it. (Massachusetts Rep.) Barney Frank argues that 'the political system was supposed to overcome the financial advantage of the capitalists, but as money becomes more and more influential, it doesn't work that way.'"

Molly has lots of material which you should go give it a look. Go here for a list of her opinion columns.

Technorati Categories: Opinion, Politics, Random Thoughts.

On Being Small and Powerful

2005-06-30T12:24:00.000-05:00

Earlier this week I received my Surfrider Foundation monthly Making Waves issue and was struck by the simplicity and timeliness of the editorial.

For those of you unfamiliar with the Surfrider Foundation, I will just provide some excerpts from their Mission Statement and Foundation Principles page:

SURFRIDER recognizes the biodiversity and ecological integrity of the planet's coasts are necessary and irreplaceable. SURFRIDER is committed to preserving natural living and non-living diversity and ecological integrity of the coastal environment.

SURFRIDER believes environmental education is essential to the future health and well- being of the planet. SURFRIDER seeks to develop and utilize educational materials that are informative, factual, proactive, synergistic and fun.

SURFRIDER strives to be accurate and nonpartisan in its communications with its members and the general public. In addition, SURFRIDER will express the unique values inherent in wave-riding — individualism, camaraderie, non materialism, and an appreciation for human kind's historic relations with the Ocean.

SURFRIDER is a grassroots organization, effective through the participation of its members. SURFRIDER activities emphasize the value of an involved membership.

SURFRIDER will not permit sponsors to divert the Foundation from its mission or projects undertaken.

Anyone who has a love for the ocean or an appreciation for the preservation and protection of our natural resources, I encourage you visit the Surfrider website and assess whether their efforts to protect the world's oceans is worthy of your support.

Now, back to the editorial...

People have to come to terms with one fact of life. If one is unhappy / dissatisfied / uncomfortable / etc. with ones situation, is it ultimately up to the individual to analysze the situation and make a choice as to whether there should be any action taken to change the situation or accept it as what it is.

There are those who like to complain. Either they see a futility in the situation, because they feel there are no options for changing the situation, or it is a preferred method of getting attention from others.

There are those who expect others to take care of the situation for them. You know, taking care of something takes work! Some don't want to work. Maybe it's not about the work but about the responsibility they will assume. Taking action means taking responsibility.

There are those who refuse to acknowledge the situation in the first place. Either they are afraid of confirming the reality behind their situation or concerned about the ramifications of having acknowledged the situation at all.

There are many more reasons for not DOing anything about a situation which one knows is just not right. And many will live a life less than what it could POTENTIALLY BE.

Then, there are those who see this life as something meaningful. Life is made up of each individual moment, each decision, each action or inaction of every one of us on this planet.

From the editorial, for those who see life as an opportunity to grow individually and collectively:

Ever feel like you're not getting anywhere no matter how hard you try, or that everything is going wrong in the world? Well do not fret, for everything you do affects the whole, and it doesn't work proportionately. Just as a butterfly flapping its wings in one hemisphere can effect a hurricane in another, one sincere gesture on your end can have positive consequences of geometrical proportions. So don't ever give up.

So yes, as one individual changes, the entire system changes. You never know when you are going to be the tipping point.

I'm small and I know it and it's great news. Every time I stand at the water's edge and a wave races up and embraces my feet, it's a trip. I think one of the most tragic things of all is how we cheat ourselves of the present moment, of the small moment.

Make the small moments count.

Technorati Categories: Feeling, Health and Wellness, Life, My Life, Other, Random Thoughts.

9/11 and the Holocaust: Emotional Ties that Obfuscate

2005-06-29T07:11:00.000-05:00

Last night President Bush made references to the 9/11 terrorists five times during his 28-minute speech. The focus of the speech was Iraq. So, why the need to mention 9/11?

"The president's frequent references to the terrorist attacks of September 11 show the weakness of his arguments," House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi said. "He is willing to exploit the sacred ground of 9/11, knowing that there is no connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq."
AP

The obvious answer is to remind the American people why it is necessary for America to continue its "defense of freedom" by fighting terrorism. But, this speech was about Iraq, not about terrorism.

Ever more obvious are the attempts by the Bush administration to link everything to terrorism. Last night's references to 9/11 were blatant emotional triggers meant to "remind" the American public of why the Bush administration goes after countries like Iraq.

In a similar vein, pro-Israeli policy advocates whip out the Holocaust, either directly or indirectly via cries of anti-semitism, to tug on the emotional strings, to remind the world why Israel must "protect" herself. Same song, different verse.

The Bush administration has taken a page right out of the book used in Israel's handling of the Palestinian people. Label your opponent a terrorist or associate your opponent with terrorist acts, whether factual or fabricated doesn't matter, so you can gain the emotional support of your citizens. There will be no peace in the Middle East.

Bottom line is that these are attempts to manipulate the logical analysis of the situation at hand by inserting references to emotionally-charged events clearly meant to obfuscate the issue under discussion. Unfortunately, the strategy appears to work quite well as most people can't seem to get past the emotion to see what is actually unfolding right in front of their eyes.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Government, Iraq, Israel, Middle East, Palestine, Politics, Terrorism, War on Terror.

Iraq War's Illegality and Immorality will not be Heard Tonight

2005-06-28T12:02:00.000-05:00

Tonight, President Bush will address the American people from Fort Bragg, North Carolina (interesting selection of locale). The live speech will speak to the current Iraq situation, of course spun to minimize political damage. There will likely be mention of Iran and Syria to keep the public from forgetting why at some future date the US will most likely attack or support an attack by Israel. And, there will certainly be no mention of controversial, yet factual, news items.

Several "hot" items have come up in the world press although have received limited air time, if at all, by American media. I'm sure those who have been following the news from more objective news services and aggregators (American Free Press, AntiWar.com, Centre for Research on Globalization, Counter Punch, Information Clearing House, Signs of the Times, Truthout) will be listening closely to see how he dodges the key revelations and accusations.

Take a look at the most significant news items which have disappeared from the American media:

News of no WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction) in Iraq.
Downing Street memo showing a US administration committed to regime change (i.e. war) in Iraq.
Support for Bush and the Iraq War at an all-time low.
Additional memos and testimony indicating the bombing of Iraq started even before congressional approval for the war.
Use of napalm in Iraq.
US acknowledges torture at Guantanamo and Iraq, Afghanistan.
US stalling on requests to allow visits to terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay.
CIA caught in the "extraordinary rendition" of an Egyptian.
Non-participation by the US in the World Tribunal on Iraq.

Mr. Bush will try to convince the American public of the moral basis and responsibility of America to "spread freedom and democracy", "defeat evil", "win the battle against terror", etc. Yet, for all the righteous spinning of the reasons, one fact will be indisputable: there has been more death and destruction in this war than all the terrorist acts combined.

The American public should instead spend their Tuesday night listening to the proceedings of the World Tribunal on Iraq (compilation of reports available here) or reading the Statement of Principles.

About WTI:

The World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI) is a worldwide undertaking to reclaim justice. It aims to record the severe wrongs, crimes and violations that were committed in the process leading up to the aggression against Iraq, during the war and throughout the ensuing occupation, that continue to be widespread to this day. It is our intention to also record the social, political, environmental and cultural devastation. In the end, the evidence gathered and presented will serve as a historical record that breaks the web of lies promulgated by the war coalition and its embedded press.

WTI is a horizontal network of local groups and individuals worldwide that work together in a non- hierarchical system. The project consists of commissions of inquiry and sessions held around the world investigating various issues related to the war on Iraq, such as the legality of the war, the role of the United Nations, war crimes and the role of the media.

On June 23rd to the 27th 2005, at the start of the third year of the occupation of Iraq, the culminating session will take place in Istanbul. This session will reach a decision following an examination of the results of the previous sessions as well as new reports and testimonies, while evaluating the implications of the aggression against Iraq for the world at large.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Government, Iraq, News, Politics.

China Viewed More Favorably than US

2005-06-24T06:34:00.000-05:00

For most Americans, the belief that, to the rest of the world, the US has always been the model to which all other countries aspire has been ingrained since youth.

America... the land of the free, the home of the brave, where all is possible and achievable if you work hard. The image to the rest of the world exuded the commitment to fairness and equality, the fostering of the entrepreneural spirit, and reserved strength. The quiet, protective kid, possessive of an aura of respect, whom the bully on the block would not even mess with.

That was then. This is now.

What a shock it must be to learn that the America which used to be the envy of the rest of the world, the culture and success to which others would aspire to duplicate, is no longer the America in which we live.

We live in an America despised by a large part of the world for the military actions undertaken by the Bush administrations. An America viewed by the rest of the world as a staunch supporter, financial and political, of Israel and Israeli policy. This unwavering support of Israeli policy, regardless of the facts, may very well be the lit fuse to the powder keg which, when it explodes, will affect millions of people.

The proof of how the world views the US is in the result of a poll where China, even with well documented violations of human rights, is viewed more favorably than the US.

How can this be? Perhaps, the rest of the world, not so easily influenced and manipulated by American media (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post, etc.) is forming a much more accurate opinion of today's America.

The poll was conducted by an American organization, the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, and surveyed public opinion in 16 countries, including the United States.

The United States' image is so tattered overseas two years after the Iraq invasion that communist China is viewed more favorably than the U.S. in many long-time Western European allies, an international poll has found.

The overseas image of the United States slipped sharply after the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Pew polling found, and it has not rebounded in Western European countries like Britain, France, Germany and Spain.CNN

Most people around the world can form an objective opinion of what has happenned to the America which was once highly-regarded. It all boils down to American policy.

The Iraq war remains the leading source of anti-American attitudes despite diplomatic efforts to counter that image.
Kyodo News

The poll, which was released Thursday, found suspicion and wariness of the United States in many countries where people question the war in Iraq and are growing wary of the U.S.-led war on terror.ABC News

Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Global Attitudes Project, said that 16,766 people in 16 nations were interviewed for the project's fourth international survey since 2002. He said America's image has slipped primarily because of the war in Iraq and has shown little sign of improving since it began, either in Europe or in Muslim nations.Toledo Blade

People in other countries who had unfavorable views of the United States were most likely to cite Bush as the reason rather than a general problem with America.

Madeleine Albright, the secretary of state when Bill Clinton was president, said big majorities of the public in these countries are discontented with Bush "and say Bush’s re-election has made them view the United States less favorably."MSNBC

People in most countries were more inclined to say the war in Iraq has made the world a more dangerous place. Non-U.S. residents who had unfavorable views of the United States were most likely to cite Bush as the reason rather than a general problem with America.CNN

Most can tell the difference between Americans and American policy. One crucial detail though which must be pointed out. If Americans allow the continuation of the policies which have collapsed the house of respect and admiration for America, the blame should lay solely on our shoulders. To not stand up and speak out in opposition to these belligerent policies is to accept the subsequent consequences.

Don't act surprised when the house that is America collapses. Many have tried to warn all occupants of the dangers, it is now up to the occupants to take whatever steps are necessary to salvage our house or prepare for its demise.

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Government, News, Politics.

Who Really Owns Your Property?

2005-06-23T07:31:00.000-05:00

In a landmark decision today, the Supreme Court ruled local governments could seize private property "for private economic development". That is, take an individual's home or business if the local government deems there is the potential for improvement to the local community by replacing your property with one that would provide an increase to the revenue base.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this type of action, seizure of an individual's property, primarily restricted to eminent domain decisions which focused on the public use of the area? Now, it appears the focus is on the increase of revenue, not on the direct benefit to the community.

At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for "public use."

Never mind the price the affected individual will pay by losing a home, a business, a livelihood. Never mind the property may be the result of years of hard work, perhaps even land passed down from generation to generation.

Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Connecticut, filed suit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.

New London officials countered that the private development plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.

So, in effect, the high court has supported, although in a split decision, the right of a developer over the right of a tax-paying, land-owner legally in possession of the affected property.

Justice O'Connor sums it up nicely:

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," she wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

Once again, individual rights take a back seat to business interests and power brokers. Get used to it or do someting about it.

"It's a little shocking to believe you can lose your home in this country," said resident Bill Von Winkle, who said he would refuse to leave his home, even if bulldozers showed up. "I won't be going anywhere. Not my house. This is definitely not the last word."

Go Bill!

Technorati Categories: Current Affairs, Freedom, Government, Life, News, Politics.

Papers, please...

2005-05-11T07:04:00.000-05:00

We are getting closer to modern version of Nazi Germany.

The privacy afforded to American citizens prior to the events of 9/11, leading up to the "War on Terror", is all but gone. One layer of privacy taken away at a time, all the while the media and the majority of Americans sit idly.

Patriot Act, Total Information Awareness, No-Fly Lists, Patriot Act II, and now a National ID.

Yesterday, the US Senate approved an "emergency" military spending package containing an unpublicized line item called the Real ID Act. The Real ID Act will require a federally approved ID card for travel, opening a bank account, any activity involving the federal government, to name a few.

Primarily pushed by the Bush administration as a means to prevent illegal immigrants from obtaining drivers licenses, it actually affects ALL Americans.

Here's the reasoning behind the Act, directly from the mouth of it's sponsor, Republican James Sensenbrenner:

Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner, a Wisconsin Republican and Real ID Act sponsor, applauded the Senate vote on Tuesday. "The Real ID is vital to preventing foreign terrorists from hiding in plain sight while conducting their operations and planning attacks," Sensenbrenner said. "By targeting terrorist travel, the Real ID will assist in our war-on-terror efforts to disrupt terrorist operations and help secure our borders."

There are those damn terrorists again! Am I one of the few who realizes how this entire blame-the-terrorists-in-order-to-apply-further-controls-on-American-citizens game is being played out? I sure hope not.

Notice that Representative Sensenbrenner's reason for the Act contradicts what that of the Bush administration which states the Act was primarly to address illegal immigration. I guess it doesn't matter, illegal immigrants, terrorists, take your pick... just don't point out that the target of the investigations should be the Israeli infiltration of the American political system and the compromise of national security at the hands of Israeli spy rings.

You can find answers to FAQs about the Real ID Act here. Here are a few of the highlights (or, more appropriately, lowlights):

Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service.

At a minimum: name, birth date, sex, ID number, a digital photograph, address, and a "common machine-readable technology" that Homeland Security will decide on [will be stored on the ID card].

The card must also sport "physical security features designed to prevent tampering, counterfeiting, or duplication of the document for fraudulent purposes."

Homeland Security is permitted to add additional requirements--such as a fingerprint or retinal scan--on top of those.

In exchange for federal cash, states must agree to link up their databases.

Below are some comments from Representative Ron Paul from Texas, one of the more vocal opponents to not only this legislation, but other pieces of legislation that have resulted in an erosion of civil liberties and individual rights:

Terrorism is the excuse given for virtually every new power grab by the federal government, and the national ID is no exception. But federal agencies have tried to create a national ID for years, long before the 9-11 attacks. In fact, a 1996 bill sought to do exactly what the REAL ID Act does: transform state drivers’ licenses into de facto national ID cards. At the time, Congress was flooded with calls by angry constituents and the bill ultimately died.

Proponents of the REAL ID Act continue to make the preposterous claim that the bill does not establish a national ID card. This is dangerous and insulting nonsense. Let’s get the facts straight: The REAL ID Act transforms state motor vehicle departments into agents of the federal government. Nationalizing standards for driver's licenses and birth certificates in a federal bill creates a national ID system, pure and simple. Having the name of your particular state on the ID is meaningless window dressing.

Federally imposed standards for drivers' license and birth certificates make a mockery of federalism and the 10th amendment. While states technically are not forced to accept the federal standards, any refusal to comply would mean their residents could not get a job, receive Social Security, or travel by plane. So rather than imposing a direct mandate on the states, the federal government is blackmailing them into complying with federal dictates.

One overriding point has been forgotten: Criminals don’t obey laws! As with gun control, national ID cards will only affect law-abiding citizens. Do we really believe a terrorist bent on murder is going to dutifully obtain a federal ID card? Do we believe that people who openly flout our immigration laws will nonetheless respect our ID requirements? Any ID card can be forged; any federal agency or state DMV is susceptible to corruption. Criminals can and will obtain national ID cards, or operate without them. National ID cards will be used to track the law-abiding masses, not criminals.

Everyone should be paying close attention to this! Yet, I find no mention of this Act anywhere in mainstream media!

Here are some pieces out of Representative Ron Paul's speech before the House of Representatives in February 2005:

I rise in strong opposition to HR 418, the REAL ID Act. This bill purports to make us safer from terrorists who may sneak into the United States, and from other illegal immigrants. While I agree that these issues are of vital importance, this bill will do very little to make us more secure. It will not address our real vulnerabilities. It will, however, make us much less free. In reality, this bill is a Trojan horse. It pretends to offer desperately needed border control in order to stampede Americans into sacrificing what is uniquely American: our constitutionally protected liberty.

The REAL ID Act establishes a national ID card by mandating that states include certain minimum identification standards on driver’s licenses. It contains no limits on the government’s power to impose additional standards. Indeed, it gives authority to the Secretary of Homeland Security to unilaterally add requirements as he sees fit.

Supporters claim it is not a national ID because it is voluntary. However, any state that opts out will automatically make non-persons out of its citizens. The citizens of that state will be unable to have any dealings with the federal government because their ID will not be accepted. They will not be able to fly or to take a train. In essence, in the eyes of the federal government they will cease to exist. It is absurd to call this voluntary.

This bill could have a chilling effect on the exercise of our constitutionally guaranteed rights. It re-defines "terrorism" in broad new terms that could well include members of firearms rights and anti-abortion groups, or other such groups as determined by whoever is in power at the time. There are no prohibitions against including such information in the database as information about a person’s exercise of First Amendment rights or about a person’s appearance on a registry of firearms owners.

What will all of this mean for us? When this new program is implemented, every time we are required to show our driver’s license we will, in fact, be showing a national identification card. We will be handing over a card that includes our personal and likely biometric information, information which is connected to a national and international database.

H.R. 418 does nothing to solve the growing threat to national security posed by people who are already in the U.S. illegally. Instead, H.R. 418 states what we already know: that certain people here illegally are "deportable." But it does nothing to mandate deportation.

Although Congress funded an additional 2,000 border guards last year, the administration has announced that it will only ask for an additional 210 guards. Why are we not pursuing these avenues as a way of safeguarding our country? Why are we punishing Americans by taking away their freedoms instead of making life more difficult for those who would enter our country illegally?

H.R. 418 does what legislation restricting firearm ownership does. It punishes law-abiding citizens. Criminals will ignore it. H.R. 418 offers us a false sense of greater security at the cost of taking a gigantic step toward making America a police state.

Read it and weep. America, in the not too distant future, will no longer be the land of the free. In order to be truly free, one will have to leave or become an outcast, not living by the rules imposed upon the masses.

I'll finish with a couple of comments from an opinion article I read a while back on the Cassiopaea web site. The title of the article is "America - Who is Responsible?".

Each of us finds ourselves in the position we are in, not as a result of some cruel twist of fate or the "hand of god" but rather as a result of who we are and what we see.

There seems to exist a strong desire (natural or otherwise) within human beings in general to avoid taking responsibility for their actions and their resulting life situation. It could be said that if people were to apply the same, (often considerable) skill for finding something else to point the finger at for their own troubled life situation, to accepting responsibility for and resolving their issues, the world and the people that inhabit it would likely be much happier.

Today, with the wealth of facts and evidence available, many Americans must surely be feeling extreme discomfort as they are forced to resort to increasingly illogical and irrational explanations to allow them to hold on to the idea that they are living in a democracy or that their "elected leaders" are working in their best interests. At some point it becomes too much, and as the mind weighs up the enormous size of that square peg and the pinprick size of the round hole the realisation dawns that it can simply no longer be done.

With all the proof that those in power are making decisions which are definitely NOT in our best interest, why is it that no one is doing anything to prevent the downward slide from continuing?

For a long time we have been able to convince ourselves that our view of the world and our place in it was viable, basically because to some extent, up to now, things were more "open", the future was perhaps more "open" and we could allow ourselves the luxury of "maybe".

No longer it seems.

Denial of the objective reality of this will get us nowhere, leading only to either depression as we, in vain, attempt to shut out the truth staring us in the face; or anger as we subconsciously realise that our sacred cows are ultimately bound for the slaughterhouse anyway. Indeed, it seems that depression and/or anger is the overriding emotion pervading many America cities these days.

The truth, it seems, is that "lock down" is in operation, things are being steered in a very definite direction, and those at the wheel are not really trying very hard anymore to hide the destination.

There exists, however, an opportunity for us all to do something about this decidedly negative situation in which we find ourselves. It has only been by our acceptance of, and support for, this illusory worldview our leaders have presented to us, that they have been able to bring the world to the brink of disaster upon which it now sits.

All of life serves knowledge. Simply by being alive we are learning. It is our choice to seek to learn either Truth, that which IS, or to attempt to force the "truth" to conform to the limited simplistic, beliefs foisted upon us by those men that would have all of reality reflect their own twisted imaginings.

The time will come to decide for those who "see"... serve truth or serve another.

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Constitution, Freedom, Liberty, Police State, Politics

Odigo 9/11 Announcement and Israeli Spy Ring Investigation Coincidence?

2005-05-06T12:17:00.000-05:00

In an article from today's Haaretz, "Odigo says workers were warned of attack", comes the admission from the company's CEO that two employees received messages warning of an attack at the World Trade Center.

This same information was reported by the Washington Post and discounted as conspiracy theorist material at the time. Yet, here we are, almost 4 years later and NOW the admission is made.

Micha Macover, CEO of the company, said the two workers received the messages and immediately after the terror attack informed the company's management, which immediately contacted the Israeli security services, which brought in the FBI.

So the FBI is notified. Then, Obido provides information after the event which could be used to identify the source of the messages, but what ever came of the investigation?

Odigo usually zealously protects the privacy of its registered users, said Macover, but in this case the company took the initiative to provide the law enforcement services with the originating Internet Presence address of the message, so the FBI could track down the Internet Service Provider, and the actual sender of the original message.

What gives?

Why is it that such an admission comes so late after the event?

Why is it getting publicity now?

Could it be to create some headlines to distract from the brewing scandal of Israeli Spy Rings embedded and working within the US for decades?

1947. Information collected by the ADL in its spy operations on US citizens is used by the House Select Committee on Unamerican Activities. Subcommittee Chair Clare Hoffman dismisses the ADL’s reports on suspected communists as “hearsay."

1950 John Davitt, former chief of the Justice Department's internal security section notes that the Israeli intelligence service is the second most active in the United States after the Soviets.

1954 A hidden microphone planted by the Israelis is discovered in the Office of the US Ambassador in Tel Aviv.

1956 Telephone taps are found connected to two telephones in the residence of the US military attaché in Tel Aviv.

1954 "The Lavon Affair". Israeli agents recruit Egyptian citizens of Jewish descent to bomb Western targets in Egypt, and plant evidence to frame Arabs, in an apparent attempt to upset US-Egyptian relations. Israeli defense minister Pinchas Lavon is eventually removed from office, though many think real responsibility lay with David Ben-Gurion.

1965 Israel apparently illegally obtains enriched uranium from NUMEC Corporation. (Washington Post, 6/5/86, Charles R. Babcock, "US an Intelligence Target of the Israelis, Officials Say.")

1967 Israel attacks the USS Liberty, an intelligence gathering vessel flying a US flag, killing 34 crew members. See "Assault on the Liberty," by James M. Ennes, Jr. (Random House). In 2004, Captain Ward Boston, Senior Legal Counsel for the Navy’s Court of Inquiry into the attack swears under oath that President Lyndon Johnson ordered the investigation to conclude accident, even though the evidence indicates the attack was deliberate. Given the use by Israel of unmarked boats and planes, and the machine-gunning of USS Liberty’s lifeboats, the most likely explanation is that USS Liberty was to be sunk with all hands, with evidence left to frame Egypt for the sinking. This would have dragged the US into the war on Israel’s side.

1970 While working for Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Richard Perle is caught by the FBI giving classified information to Israel. Nothing is done.

1978, Stephen Bryen, then a Senate Foreign Relations Committee staffer, is overheard in a DC hotel offering confidential documents to top Israeli military officials. Bryen obtains a lawyer, Nathan Lewin, and the case heads for the grand jury, but is mysteriously dropped. Bryen later goes to work for Richard Perle.

1979 Shin Beth [the Israeli internal security agency] tries to penetrate the US Consulate General in Jerusalem through a “Honey Trap”, using a clerical employee who was having an affair with a Jerusalem girl.

1985 The New York Times reports the FBI is aware of at least a dozen incidents in which American officials transferred classified information to the Israelis, quoting [former Assistant Director of the F.B.I.] Mr. [Raymond] Wannal. The Justice Department does not prosecute.

1985 Richard Smyth, the owner of MILCO, is indicted on charges of smuggling nuclear timing devices to Israel (Washington Post, 10/31/86).

1987 April 24 Wall Street Journal headline: "Role of Israel in Iran-Contra Scandal Won't be Explored in Detail by Panels"

1992 The Wall Street Journal reports that Israeli agents apparently tried to steal Recon Optical Inc's top-secret airborne spy-camera system.

1992 Stephen Bryen, caught offering confidential documents to Israel in 1978, is serving on board of the pro-Israeli Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs while continuing as a paid consultant -- with security clearance -- on exports of sensitive US technology.

1992 "The Samson Option," by Seymour M. Hersh reports, “Illicitly obtained intelligence was flying so voluminously from LAKAM into Israeli intelligence that a special code name, JUMBO, was added to the security markings already on the documents. There were strict orders, Ari Ben-Menashe recalled: "Anything marked JUMBO was not supposed to be discussed with your American counterparts."

1993. The ADL is caught operating a massive spying operation on critics of Israel, Arab-Americans, the San Francisco Labor Council, ILWU Local 10, Oakland Educational Association, NAACP, Irish Northern Aid, International Indian Treaty Council, the Asian Law Caucus and the San Francisco police. Data collected was sent to Israel and in some cases to South Africa. Pressure from Jewish organizations forces the city to drop the criminal case, but the ADL settles a civil lawsuit for an undisclosed sum of cash.

1995 The Defense Investigative Service circulates a memo warning US military contractors that "Israel aggressively collects [US] military and industrial technology." The report stated that Israel obtains information using "ethnic targeting, financial aggrandizement, and identification and exploitation of individual frailties" of US citizens.

1996 A General Accounting Office report "Defense Industrial Security: Weaknesses in US Security Arrangements With Foreign-Owned Defense Contractors" found that according to intelligence sources "Country A" (identified by intelligence sources as Israel, Washington Times, 2/22/96) "conducts the most aggressive espionage operation against the United States of any US ally." The Jerusalem Post (8/30/96) quoted the report, "Classified military information and sensitive military technologies are high-priority targets for the intelligence agencies of this country." The report described "An espionage operation run by the intelligence organization responsible for collecting scientific and technologic information for [Israel] paid a US government employee to obtain US classified military intelligence documents." The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs (Shawn L. Twing, April 1996) noted that this was "a reference to the 1985 arrest of Jonathan Pollard, a civilian US naval intelligence analyst who provided Israel's LAKAM [Office of Special Tasks] espionage agency an estimated 800,000 pages of classified US intelligence information."

The GAO report also noted that "Several citizens of [Israel] were caught in the United States stealing sensitive technology used in manufacturing artillery gun tubes."

1996 An Office of Naval Intelligence document, "Worldwide Challenges to Naval Strike Warfare" reported that "US technology has been acquired [by China] through Israel in the form of the Lavi fighter and possibly SAM [surface-to-air] missile technology." Jane's Defense Weekly (2/28/96) noted that "until now, the intelligence community has not openly confirmed the transfer of US technology [via Israel] to China." The report noted that this "represents a dramatic step forward for Chinese military aviation." (Flight International, 3/13/96)

1997 An Army mechanical engineer, David A. Tenenbaum, "inadvertently" gives classified military information on missile systems and armored vehicles to Israeli officials (New York Times, 2/20/97).

1997 The Washington Post reports US intelligence has intercepted a conversation in which two Israeli officials had discussed the possibility of getting a confidential letter that then-Secretary of State Warren Christopher had written to Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat. One of the Israelis, identified only as “Dov”, had commented that they may get the letter from "Mega”, the code name for Israel’s top agent inside the United States.

1997 US ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, complains privately to the Israeli government about heavy-handed surveillance by Israeli intelligence agents.

1997 Israeli agents place a tap on Monica Lewinsky’s phone at the Watergate and record phone sex sessions between her and President Bill Clinton. The Ken Starr report confirms that Clinton warned Lewinsky their conversations were being taped and ended the affair. At the same time, the FBI’s hunt for “Mega” is called off.

2001 It is discovered that US drug agents’ communications have been penetrated. Suspicion falls on two companies, AMDOCS and Comverse Infosys, both owned by Israelis. AMDOCS generates billing data for most US phone companies and is able to provide detailed logs of who is talking to whom. Comverse Infosys builds the tapping equipment used by law enforcement to eavesdrop on all American telephone calls, but suspicion forms that Comverse, which gets half of its research and development budget from the Israeli government, has built a back door into the system that is being exploited by Israeli intelligence and that the information gleaned on US drug interdiction efforts is finding its way to drug smugglers. The investigation by the FBI leads to the exposure of the largest foreign spy ring ever uncovered inside the United States, operated by Israel. Half of the suspected spies have been arrested when 9-11 happens. On 9-11, 5 Israelis are arrested for dancing and cheering while the World Trade Towers collapse. Supposedly employed by Urban Moving Systems, the Israelis are caught with multiple passports and a lot of cash. Two of them are later revealed to be Mossad. As witness reports track the activity of the Israelis, it emerges that they were seen at Liberty Park at the time of the first impact, suggesting a foreknowledge of what was to come. The Israelis are interrogated, and then eventually sent back to Israel. The owner of the moving company used as a cover by the Mossad agents abandons his business and flees to Israel. The United States Government then classifies all of the evidence related to the Israeli agents and their connections to 9-11. All of this is reported to the public via a four part story on Fox News by Carl Cameron. Pressure from Jewish groups, primarily AIPAC, forces Fox News to remove the story from their website. Two hours prior to the 9-11 attacks, Odigo, an Israeli company with offices just a few blocks from the World Trade Towers, receives an advance warning via the internet. The manager of the New York Office provides the FBI with the IP address of the sender of the message, but the FBI does not follow up.

2001 The FBI is investigating 5 Israeli moving companies as possible fronts for Israeli intelligence.

2001 JDL’s Irv Rubin arrested for planning to bomb a US Congressman. He dies before he can be brought to trial.

2002 The DEA issues a report that Israeli spies, posing as art students, have been trying to penetrate US Government offices.

2002 police near the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in southern Washington State stop a suspicious truck and detain two Israelis, one of whom is illegally in the United States. The two men were driving at high speed in a Ryder rental truck, which they claimed had been used to "deliver furniture." The next day, police discovered traces of TNT and RDX military-grade plastic explosives inside the passenger cabin and on the steering wheel of the vehicle. The FBI then announces that the tests that showed explosives were “false positived” by cigarette smoke, a claim test experts say is ridiculous. Based on an alibi provided by a woman, the case is closed and the Israelis are handed over to INS to be sent back to Israel. One week later, the woman who provided the alibi vanishes.

2003 The Police Chief of Cloudcroft stops a truck speeding through a school zone. The drivers turn out to be Israelis with expired passports. Claiming to be movers, the truck contains junk furniture and several boxes. The Israelis are handed over to immigration. The contents of the boxers are not revealed to the public.

2003 Israel deploys assassination squads into other countries, including the United States. The US Government does not protest.

2004 Police near the Nuclear Fuel Services plant in Tennessee stop a truck after a three mile chase, during which the driver throws a bottle containing a strange liquid from the cab. The drivers turn out to be Israelis using fake Ids. The FBI refuses to investigate and the Israelis are released.

2004 Two Israelis try to enter Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base, home to eight Trident submarines. The truck tests positive for explosives.
(Read entire article here)

Could it be to preempt some pending announcements to mitigate the impact on certain Israeli organizations somehow involved, directly or indirectly, with fore-knowledge of the WTC attacks?

Once again, I have to refer you to another great analysis of putting all the pieces together by the folks at Signs of the Times. Go here to read the assembly of articles and commentary.

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Espionage, Israel, Neocons, Politics, Zionist

Control the Media, Part II

2005-05-05T07:41:00.000-05:00

As if it's not enough that the media is directed on what to say/print and what not to, when an item is reported, the information goes unchallenged and is presented as reliable and factual.

Here's an example of how damaging information, in this case compromising the credibility of the Bush administration's Iraq message, gets coverage outside the US, yet no coverage in major news outlets within the US.

The Pentagon publishes a report on the findings of the "accidental" killing of Italian secret agent Nicola Calipari and wounding of kidnapped journalist Giuliana Sgrena in Baghdad. Several areas are blacked-out electronically. Then someone finds that by selecting the entire text of the document, copying, and pasting into another document one can actually read the blacked-out portions.

Contained withtin the document is some disturbing information about the number of attacks on US forces in Iraq. And, so far today, none of this has made the main media outlets. There is still news about the Italian dispute with the results of the findings, but nothing about how the stability and progress in Iraq is not as positive as has been reported by the administration or the media.

From an article in Asia Times Online:

The uncensored Pentagon report at least allows the international public to know that there were no less than 15,527 attacks on the occupation forces from July 2004 to March 2005. In Baghdad alone, from November to March 12, there were 2,404 attacks. These numbers confirm that when US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his minions spin that the situation in Iraq is under control they are essentially lying. In the three months since the Iraqi elections there may have been fewer American casualties, but there were countless more assassination attempts against the so-called Iraqi security forces, all of them based on precise intelligence. Every day, there are at least 20 bomb attacks in Baghdad alone, and at least 60 throughout Iraq.

I guess if the American public never sees it in the major US outlets (e.g. CNN, Fox, USA Today, MSNBC, etc.), it must not be happening. If Americans continue to stick their collective heads in the sand, by not looking beyond the selective and biased "news" reported on American outlets, they will only have themselves to blame when the rest of the world responds.

Turn to objective, independent sources for news:

American Free Press

CounterPunch

Independent Media Center

Information Clearing House

Signs of the Times

t r u t h o u t

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Censorship, Iraq, Media, Politics, War on Terror

Proof: Control of the Media

2005-05-04T07:17:00.000-05:00

The media is being controlled. Here's proof...

RE: Iraq
Request for inquiry into a planned attack on Iraq before the WMD announcement gets back seat to "missing" bride. Major media does nothing.

"Unfortunately, the mainstream media in the United States was too busy with wall-to-wall coverage of a "runaway bride" to cover a bombshell report out of the British newspapers," Conyers [Congressman John Conyers (D-MI)] writes. "The London Times reports that the British government and the United States government had secretly agreed to attack Iraq in 2002, before authorization was sought for such an attack in Congress, and had discussed creating pretextual justifications for doing so."

"The Times reports, based on a newly discovered document, that in 2002 British Prime Minister Tony Blair chaired a meeting in which he expressed his support for "regime change" through the use of force in Iraq and was warned by the nation's top lawyer that such an action would be illegal," he adds. "Blair also discussed the need for America to "create" conditions to justify the war."
(more ...)

RE: "War on Terror"
So why are comments like this not picked-up by the larger media outlets?
Brigadier shocks and awes: There is no war on terror

The so-called global war on terrorism does not exist, a high-ranking Australian Army officer has declared in a challenging speech.

Brigadier Justin Kelly dismissed several central tenets of the Iraq war and the war on terrorism, saying the "war" part was about politics and terrorism was merely a tactic.

Though such wars were fuelled by global issues, they were essentially counter-insurgent operations fought on a local level, he said.

RE: Media Choice of Words
Editor's Note from t r u t h o u t:

The Republican Party has directed journalists to drop the word "nuclear" in describing the GOP plan to revise long-standing Senate rules and eliminate any possibility of Democrats filibustering Mr. Bush's most right-wing judicial nominees. The GOP prefers to speak of "the Constitutional option," and now accuses anyone who uses "the nuclear option" of showing "liberal bias."

Molly Ivins: Christian Right Goes Nuclear and The nuclear option and judicial activists

I was all set to write a column about the nuclear option -- the proposal to change the rules of the Senate in order to get President Bush's most questionable judicial appointments through -- when, lo, word came that there is no nuclear option anymore. It is now called "the constitutional option."

Who changed it? Why, the Republican Party, of course. Having found that "nuclear option" does not poll well, the Republicans simply decreed the rules change can no longer be described by that name. Further, the Republican Party sent media operatives around to major news organizations to inform them that anyone who fails to obey the new diktat on usage will be demonstrating the dread "liberal bias."

RE: 9/11
Hijackers on the FBI list found to be alive and the media does not confront the FBI.
Hijack 'suspects' alive and well

Another of the men named by the FBI as a hijacker in the suicide attacks on Washington and New York has turned up alive and well.

The identities of four of the 19 suspects accused of having carried out the attacks are now in doubt.

FBI Director Robert Mueller acknowledged on Thursday that the identity of several of the suicide hijackers is in doubt.

Why doesn't any of this make the main outlets? If it does make it out, why doesn't someone run with it? Why is its lifespan so short?

Because it is not being allowed!

Some small voices are trying to get the news out, although not without paying a price. The concern of "when" they will be shut down, shut up, or put down.

One example, Deer in the Headlights by John Kaminski.

Never have I heard so much talk as over the past few years about people wanting to escape from warmongering America. I get postcards from Costa Rica, cryptic e-mails from Thailand, letters about how nice it is in Denmark or Portugal or Brazil, all from people who have shucked that furtive sense of panic that still grips many people with actually functioning souls who remain uneasily in their decaying United States.

Once I wrote that we shouldn’t run off to foreign places, that the best of us should stay and fight for what is truly ours. But who can blame those of us who are intimidated by the widespread lack of support for values and actions that are truly humane. What’s the score now? About six people in the entire Congress who are apt to tell the unvarnished truth about anything? And not a single newspaper.

To not be afraid is to be stupid.

What keeps one going? What keeps one from giving up and throwing ones hands up in the air out of frustration?

People (them again) always ask me, "How can you read all those horrible stories day after day and not be affected by them; how can you keep from slitting your wrists?" or something along those lines. It's a question I don't usually answer.

But when I try to, I think of that series of photos taken at a checkpoint in Iraq in which triggerhappy U.S. troops shot first and asked questions later, later to find six terrified and bleeding children in the car that rolled to a stop. I think of that little bleeding girl screaming over her butchered parents, and U.S. soldiers wearing masks to hide their identities from the photographer. That little girl is my boss. And the rage I feel at the people who put her in that position, I'm telling you, is simply more than you want to hear. Why do I do what I do, and how can I stand what I have to look at? I work for that little girl, and if you don't too, then you have a problem with me.

Because if you don't work for her, that means you're an accomplice to mass murder...

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Censorship, Iraq, Media, Politics, War on Terror

Israeli Spies in the US

2005-05-03T06:34:00.000-05:00

Today, another arrest and one more piece of damning evidence against Israel.

A Pentagon analyst (Larry Franklin) was arrested and charged with delivering classified information to an Israeli intelligence cover, AIPAC (American Israeli Public Affairs Committee). The information was related to potential attacks on US troops in Iraq.

From the CNN article:

Franklin has been at the center of a lengthy FBI and Justice Department investigation into possible spying involving Israel and several officials of AIPAC.

Israel's spying on the US is nothing new. Recall Jonathan Pollard and, more recently, Golen Cipel.

How about a Trojan Horse scenario...

What if the current US administration consisted of individuals who conducted business and made decisions in a manner consistent with the best interests of Israel? Perhaps, even hiding behind false flag operations to fulfill a religious ideology.

Try reading this ...

Some skeptics, noting the neo-cons' past academic and professional associations, writings and public utterances, have suggested that their underlying agenda is the alignment of U.S. foreign and security policies with those of Ariel Sharon and the Israeli right wing. The administration's new hard line on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict certainly suggests that, as perhaps does the destruction, with U.S. soldiers and funds, of the military capacity of Iraq, and the current belligerent neo-con campaign against the other two countries which constitute a remaining counterforce to Israeli military hegemony in the region--Iran and Syria.

Have the neo-conservatives--many of whom are senior officials in the Defense Department, National Security Council and Office of the Vice President--had dual agendas, while professing to work for the internal security of the United States against its terrorist enemies?

and this ...

The neocon advocacy of dramatically altering the Middle Eastern status quo stood in stark contrast to the traditional American position of maintaining stability in the area — though it did, of course, mesh perfectly with Israel's long-established goal of destabilizing its enemies.

...the vision of "regime change" in the Middle East through external, militant action originated in Israel, and its sole purpose was to advance the strategic interests of Israel. It had nothing to do with bringing "democracy" to Muslims. It had nothing to do with any terrorist threat to the United States.

The United States has tarnished its international reputation through its militarily aggressive actions in contravention of prevailing international norms. It has also had to pay significant costs in blood and money: rather, the American people have had to pay those costs. And the United States has made itself, and the American people, a major target of international terrorism. In short, the benefits derived by the United States from its Middle East military adventure are highly questionable; but that is easily understood if one recognizes that the policy the Bush II administration has pursued did not originate as one to benefit the interests of the United States but rather to benefit those of Israel, as those interests have been perceived by the Israeli Right.

Then, put it all together HERE.

Technorati Categories: Bush Administration, Espionage, Israel, Neocons, Politics, Zionist

Military Might Makes Right

2005-04-26T07:01:00.000-05:00

Just as history is written by the victors, military actions against civilians usually go unpunished until the military power is brought down. At that time, there exists the potential for accountability for actions at some level.

Those were my thoughts as yet in another military action against civilians, in this case during the escort of the Italian journalist Giuliana Sgrena out of Iraq, US forces were found "not culpable".

In a BBC World News article, Italian hostage blasts US report, Ms Sgrena described the US investigators' findings as a "slap in the face".

The incident involves the shooting of the vehicle transporting Ms Sgrena and her escort, Italian agent Nicola Calipari who helped secure her release, as they approached a checkpoint even though Italy had made advance contacts with the US for safe passage. Mr Calipari was shot dead as he threw himself over Ms Sgrena to protect her when the shooting started.

Ms Sgrena disputes the details of the report (Differing accounts).

We'll see how much political clout Italy has to reverse the findings of the US military. Don't plan on expecting any changes to the findings any time soon.

Interesting comment from the Signs of the Times site:

The information that Sgrena and Calipari were not traveling on the main highway to the airport, but on a road reserved for traffic that had been secured by American authorities tends to belie the American version of events. It is not a fact that has been widely reported in the US where many pundits discredit Sgrena's testimony because she is a journalist for a communist newspaper.

It is clear from the start that the US authorities would exonerate the troops. It might lead to the unearthing of unpleasant facts about the shooting, such as that it was planned in advance. Sgrena had been working on an article about the war crimes at Fallujah.

Technorati Categories: Human Rights, Military, War

Verbalizing Truth Against Israel Abuses Makes One an Anti-Semite

2005-04-25T07:11:00.000-05:00

Every time I read an article where someone is accused of anti-semitism, my ears perk up.

Why? Because in the majority of the cases I have read, the articles are factual and not complimentary to Israeli politics.

Say anything which condemns Israel and you are a racist, an anti-semite, a holocaust denier. Take your pick.

Do this often enough and people should begin to pick up on the tactic. But, why is it that we don't hear about this in the media? Think deeply about that questsion and it becomes self-evident.

Here's an article from the Jerusalem Post, BBC Reporter's Award Stuns Israel, where it becomes quite evident how it all works.

Israeli officials have expressed dismay that BBC reporter Orla Guerin, who has come under sharp attack for what some perceive as an anti-Israeli bias in her coverage, will receive an MBE [Member of the British Empire] honor from the British government for "outstanding service to broadcasting."

Diaspora Affairs Minister Natan Sharansky, who last year wrote a formal letter of complaint to the BBC over Guerin's coverage, said it is a pity that the absence of anti-Semitism was not a criterion for the award.

If it were, he said, Guerin would not be receiving the honor.

I wonder what tye of reporting led to such a comment from Mr. Sharansky?

Last year, in response to one of Guerin's dispatches about Israel's capture of a mentally challenged 16-year-old would-be suicide bomber, Sharansky wrote the BBC that it employs a "gross double standard to the Jewish state" that smacks of anti-Semitism.

Sharansky protested that Guerin, in her report, portrayed the event as "Israel's cynical manipulation of a Palestinian youngster for propaganda purposes." He said this "reveals a deep-seated bias against Israel. Only a total identification with the goals and methods of the Palestinian terror groups would drive a reporter to paint Israel in such an unflattering light instead of placing the focus on the bomber and the organization that recruited him."

The report, he said, "has not only set a new standard for biased journalism, it has also raised concerns that it was tainted by anti-Semitism."

In his letter, Sharansky quoted Guerin as describing to viewers how the IDF "paraded the child in front of the international media," then "produced" the child for reporters, "posed" him a second time for the cameras, and then "rushed him back into a jeep."

Is this true?

I found an interesting analysis of the use of the "anti-semitic" label and the events surrounding the example provide by Mr. Sharansky at this site. Here is an example:

Unsurprisingly, the main thrust of the Israeli government's objection to the award being given to Guerin is that her reporting from Israel has been biased because she is clearly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. Most right-wing Israeli politicians never miss an opportunity to link anti-Semitism to a bias against Israel, yet to do so is clearly a manipulation and a distortion of the truth.

Anti-Semitism is defined as a hatred of Jews simply because they are Jews. Over the past number of years Israeli politicians have been at pains to associate anti-Israel bias with anti-Semitism and/or a bias against the existence of the state of Israel. The truth however, is that most people that are labeled, "anti-Semitic" and "anti-Israel" by Israeli politicans and lobby groups bear no grudge against the existence of Israel as a nation and certainly do not hate Jews simply because they are Jews! Rather, they deplore the policies of the current Israeli government and its army and oppose the victimisation and brutalisation of innocent civilians, regardless of ethnic or religious background or geographic location. In fact, members of the Israeli government would be well advised to avoid insisting on associating anti-Semitism and "anti-Israelism" with each other and with the actions of the Israeli government and army. The entire world can see that the Israeli government and army sanction the murder of innocent Palestinian children. Does Sharon really want the Jewish people and the Jewish state to become synonymous with such wanton acts of murder? On second thoughts...

Objective journalism is allegedly achieved through simply reporting the facts of any given event without undue input or opinion of the reporter. It is not reasonable, however, to expect a reporter in all circumstances to remain completely detached from the events they are witnessing and reporting. In order to really bring home the reality of any given event, the reporter may find it necessary to employ particular language that best conveys the reality on the ground. For example, a reporter might use strong and somewhat emotional language when reporting on a murder scene. A "biased" word like "brutal" might be used instead of the more objective "violent", or the murder might be described as a "slaying" instead of a "killing", yet these words may be much more appropriate and accurate in conveying a real taste of the actual events to the viewer/reader. Equally, when referring to people, it is not unreasonable that a reporter would use strong "biased" language to describe a murderer for example, particularly if his or her crime were marked by a particular callousness.

It follows then that, due to the brutality and viciousness with which the Israeli government and military treat the Palestinian people, emotionally charged reports are not only to be expected but often required if the true horror of the the atrocities that are regularly visited upon the Palestinian people are to be conveyed to viewers and readers. Orla Guerin's reports from Israel and Palestine won her a prestigious honor from the British government for "outstanding service to broadcasting" because she was dedicated to bringing the truth of Palestinian people's plight to public attention.

As we have seen time and time again, the Israeli government is desperate to ensure that the crimes it permits in Palestine remain largely hidden from view. On a number of occasions the IDF has resorted to murdering specific journalists who were attempting to report the truth about Israeli state-sponsored murder of innocent Palestinian civilians. Naturally, the guilty soldiers are never punished. In the case of Orla Guerin and those other journalists that they are unable to silence in this way, the Israeli government is forced to resort to defamation and ridiculous accusations of anti-Semitism.

Every time there is a report that is in any way critical of Israel, Israeli politicians decry the "one-sided" nature of media reporting on Israeli actions in Palestine. The simple fact however is that, given the extreme bias in the US mainstream press TOWARDS Israel (which is a direct product of Israeli influence within the US government), the public is exposed to only a tiny portion of Israeli crimes in Palestine. The Israeli government desires 100% control on the reporting of events in the occupied territories, when they can only manage 90% they accuse the 10% of bias and anti-Semitism.
(more)

I strongly urge the reader to visit the link to read the entire commentary.

Technorati Categories: Anti-Semitism, Human Rights, Israel, Palestine, Zionist

Latest BS: Top Military Brass Cleared on Abu Ghraib

2005-04-23T07:56:00.000-05:00

Just when you think things can't get any more blatantly obvious... here's another.

The Army's Inspector General, Lt. Gen. Stanley E. Green, has determined the "allegations are unsubstantiated" and cleared four commanders of allegations of wrongdoing in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.

What a bunch of BS!

From the BBC article Top Brass Cleared Over Iraq Abuse:

The US Army inspector general's report says only Brig Gen Janis Karpinski, commander at the jail, has been found guilty and reprimanded over the abuse.

She told the BBC last year that had been made a "convenient scapegoat" for abuse ordered by others at the top, including Gen Sanchez.

Click here for more Iraq abuse photos from BBC News

I find it difficult to believe knowledge of the activities and intimidation techniques used at the Abu Ghraib prison stopped at the commander of the jail. In such a hierarchical structure as the military, it is inconcievable Karpinski approved of the activities without approval from her superiors or at least receiving a nod or a wink of approval.

There's no doubt approval came from the top... ALL the way from the top. Now, I'll bet it was handled via indirect references with understood intentions so that, if questioned later, one could say "I never approved the torture of prisoners" when the likely instruction was something like "Do whatever you have to in order to get results."

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is being sued by two civil liberties group for allegedly authorising torture and then failing to stop it.

Will anyone at the top, Rummy or Bush, ever pay? Doubtful.

"What this decision unfortunately continues is a pattern of exoneration and indeed promotion for many of the individuals at the heart of the torture scandal," said Amnesty International spokesman Alistair Hodgett.

"It only serves to underscore the desperate need for an independent investigation that will scrutinize the policy decisions and the individuals who made and implemented them in a manner that will expose the truth," Mr Hodgett told Reuters news agency.

At the beginning of today's entry, I said that things couln't be more obvious. What's so obvious you ask?

The current attitude within both the military and political structure of the US where all actions are justified and their objectives will not be denied. It is obvious there will be no accountability for any actions. Nothing will happen from within the US.

Unfortunately, any effort from the international community will be discounted as meddling in affairs the US can handle on its own. No country, group of countries, or organization seems to be able to hold the US accountable for anything.

Since no action will be taken by the people of the US to put an end to this attitude, it will ultimately lead to only one scenario: other countries will unite to work against the US. First, economically, then, if necessary, militarily.

For some interesting comments and compilation of articles on the prison abuse and accusations of torture, go to this issue at the Signs of the Times site.

Technorati Categories: Human Rights, Military, Prisoner Abuse, War