More on what r e a l l y went down in So Cal.
No surprises really, not even that the pimp media has totally ignored this whole story.
And what do we find ?
Greed, racism, brutality, excessive force, class warfare, environmental destruction, FEMA detention camps, and of courrrrrse: media and governmental complicity.
This is a mirror -- not an aberration but a true reflection -- San Diego is Fallujah, is New Orleans, is Kabul, is Pakkoku, is Gaza.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
JUSTIN AKERS CHACÓN: SAN DIEGO DIVIDED BY FIRE
The Great Firestorm of 2007 has revealed deep fissures cutting through a place that calls itself "America's finest city."
http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/651/651_06_Divided.shtml
MIKE DAVIS: THE COLLISION OF CAPITALISM AND NATURE
The author and activist talks about the deeper causes of the California fires--above all, destructive land development driven by profit, and the failure of politicians to do anything about it.
http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/651/651_08_Collision.shtml
SHARON SMITH: A TALE OF TWO STADIUMS
The mainstream media overlooked the real story of the California wildfires. Just as in New Orleans, race and class loomed large in who got help and who didn't.
http://www.socialistworker.org/2007-2/651/651_09_Stadiums.shtml
Read more!!
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
DRANT #269: UPDATE: OURSCHWITZ IN SAN DIEGO
DEMOCRACY NOW covered this story yesterday.
Please check it out now- you can access the show, watch it, listen to it, or read the transcript.
Thanks,
DR
Monday, October 29th, 2007
The Forgotten Victims of the California Wildfires: Undocumented Migrant Workers
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/29/141205
AMY GOODMAN:
Andrea Guerrero of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium says law enforcement deported evacuees and checked identifications of evacuees fleeing fires. [includes rush transcript] Thousands of people are beginning to return home as the wildfires across Southern California slowly die out. But for the thousands of undocumented migrant workers in San Diego's lucrative agriculture industry, the process is fraught with the threat of harassment and deportation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, over 100 Border Patrol agents have been redeployed to evacuation centers and neighborhood checkpoints for returning residents. Rumors of immigration raids only increased when an undocumented family was deported to Mexico Wednesday after local law enforcement arrested them for allegedly stealing food. Immigrant rights groups claim that local law enforcement is racially profiling immigrants. They say there is no need for them to involve Border Patrol agents.
Andrea Guerrero is the Chair of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium. She is also the Field and Policy Director of the ACLU in San Diego. She joins me now from San Diego, California.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The tragic fires in Southern California proved that neither 9-11 nor Katrina was an aberration. Instead they were full dress rehearsals for our future. Most of us cried for the fire victims, knowing full well that as always the poorest and least politically viable would be most harmed.
But for Bush, Schwarzenegger, Federal Troops and Border cops, FEMA, and local police- this was another great chance to kick some brown butt.
Once again, for minorities it was out of the fire, into the frying pan.
Stop me if you've heard this one before:
A vast cataclysm, causing significant injury, death, and widespread destruction, provides a perfect laboratory environment for the imposition of martial law, the suspension of basic rights, and the ongoing obliteration of posse comitatus prohibitions; and -- the immediate widespread disenfranchisement, demonization, imprisonment and deportation of minorities, immigrants, and people of color- citizens and not, with the full and enthusiastic complicity of major media.
Last week, the worst fears of our founding fathers came true when once again, Federal Troops were used to enforce local law- i.e. Martial Law.
In San Diego, the Federal Immigration Cops (I.C.E.) - working ostentatiously with FEMA, The Red Cross, and local police, caused local volunteers to turn away fire victims without "proper" ID, forcing them to abandon the evacuation centers, or sleep outside in the parking lots.
INSIDE Qualcomm Stadium -- the I.C.E. rousted, questioned, arrested, detained, and actually deported victims of the fires.
Inhumane Treatment of Evacuees
by NaNa
Friday Oct 26th, 2007 3:59 PM
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/26/18456262.php
City officials in charge of the evacuation site at Qualcomm invited a Border Patrol information unit to drive in a van and set up a tent next to FEMA and Red Cross inside the stadium. Although the unit is present to provide map information for burn areas, the presence of a BP van and uniformed BP officers has intimidated a number of immigrant families seeking refuge. The presence of BP led a volunteer today who was registering evacuees to turn away undocumented individuals because the volunteer presumed that the evacuees would be in danger of apprehension, especially following an incident yesterday (described below). She did not communicate this to those turned away. She simply turned them away from the only open evacuation center in the county.
POLICE VIOLATION OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICY:
Yesterday (Wednesday), the police initiated an immigration enforcement action that was contrary to their policy of not calling in Border Patrol / ICE unless and until they file a formal criminal charge against a person. Police detained approximately 12 evacuees (at least four were children) who they alleged were "looting" donated blankets, food, and toys for the children. The detained evacuees and witnesses reported to us that volunteers were urging all evacuees, some of whom were preparing to return home after two days, to take as much as they could because the evacuees might find their home damaged and might not be able to access food and other important items due to the evacuation and destruction of stores in the area. Taking this to heart, the evacuees in question who were part of the same family, gathered multiple blankets and as much food as they could carry in preparation of returning home. There have been no shortage of donated goods and in fact, the city has asked the good people of the city to stop donating items.
The evacuees were detained by the police for three hours on site without being charged. The police asked the evacuees for their documents. When they presented none, the police called in an outside unit of Border Patrol to conduct an "immigration inspection". The police never brought any charges against the evacuees. Prior to the arrival of the BP, a Channel 8 cameraman attempted to film the police interaction with the evacuees. One of the officers covered the camera with his hand, pushed it and the cameraman away, and took the microphone from the reporter. When a Spanish-speaking volunteer attempted to intervene to assist the family, one of the officers took her picture with his cell phone to intimidate her. When BP, came they asked the detained evacuees for documents and six of them (plus a 2-year old U.S. citizen child of one of the evacuees) were taken away, held for several hours without food, and deported. They are needless to say devastated.
Please listen to yesterday's devastating full report and eyewitness account from ACLU San Diego attorney and field and policy director Andrea Guerrero - on Dennis Bernstein's great "Flashpoints" show from KPFA FM in Northern CA.
http://flashpoints.net/index.html#2007-10-26
"Immigrants who are undocumented or do not have their ID documentation with them are being rejected and ejected from evacuation centers..."
"...folks who were staying at Qualcomm Stadium were woken up Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning between the hours of 12am and 2am, the San Diego Police went family to family, and asked for identification and proof that families were from zones that were evacuated... and if they could not provide that, they were escorted out of Qualcomm... those who were sleeping outside of the stadium, on the perimeter, and there were a lot of them, were checked for their identity documents and their residency when they came in in the morning to get breakfast or take a shower or use the bathroom, and whether they were rejected or ejected ... homeless people were denied access to resources.. and the undocumented population... were denied access to services, and that people, both legal citizens/residents and undocumented persons were denied access to services if they had identity documents that did not correspond to an evacuation zone"
"on Tuesday afternoon, the San Diego Police alleged that a family was looting - they did not formally charge them -- the family was, in fact, simply taking the donated items back to their home (returning to their home) because they didn't know what they would find. They were encouraged to do this by the volunteers inside, but when they left the facility, they were detained by police for several hours. The police then called Border Patrol, and Border Patrol conducted an immigration inspection, and then took them off and deported them. They deported six members of the family plus a 2 year old US citizen. They are now in Tijuana, devastated - uncertain of whether their home is there or not, and unable to return..."
Later in the show, Bernstein's partner, Miguel Molina, tells us how his brother, guilty of Existing While Brown, was prevented from escaping the fire with his neighbors, and segregated into the "immigrant" area, in a Safeway parking lot, and kept from Qualcomm.
Until late last year, The Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385-June 16, 1878) served to prohibit Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Posse Comitatus Act (and the Insurrection Act) substantially limited the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement.
For those of us who snoozed-- Senator Warner's Defense Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122.ENR), contains a provision, (Section 1076) which allows the President to:
“...employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to... restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States..., where the President determines that,...domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy...”
Now ...... this time... the President did not "determine" that circumstances occurred etc etc. to jeopardize public order.
But- there were the troops, and there were the I.C.E. agents, and the local cops and FEMA-- working hand in glove, constitution be damned.
Once again the privileged got one treatment, and The Rest got abused, and the rights we once took easily for granted were stomped.
And now the pimp media rushes to proclaim that it was all arson, that "Illegal Immigrants" set the fires.
For the likes of Fox News - this was more racist kindling.
It wasn't the severe drought exacerbated by the profound effects of the destruction of the planet, it was some disgruntled wetbacks.
One thing we know for sure- these kinds of disasters are going to proliferate. Atlanta GA. is dying of thirst, and California will have to go on strict water rationing next year.
While in other places, flood warnings will multiply, and inundation is a certainty.
And one other thing we know for sure- what we see as tragedy or catastrophe, the fascists celebrate as operative opportunities.
Not too hard to believe that some of these will not be so entirely "natural" either.
If the miraculous implosion of three huge buildings worked so well, no reason not to try a flood or fire or two, the better to bring in the troops.
Read more!!
Please check it out now- you can access the show, watch it, listen to it, or read the transcript.
Thanks,
DR
Monday, October 29th, 2007
The Forgotten Victims of the California Wildfires: Undocumented Migrant Workers
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/29/141205
AMY GOODMAN:
Andrea Guerrero of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium says law enforcement deported evacuees and checked identifications of evacuees fleeing fires. [includes rush transcript] Thousands of people are beginning to return home as the wildfires across Southern California slowly die out. But for the thousands of undocumented migrant workers in San Diego's lucrative agriculture industry, the process is fraught with the threat of harassment and deportation.
According to the Los Angeles Times, over 100 Border Patrol agents have been redeployed to evacuation centers and neighborhood checkpoints for returning residents. Rumors of immigration raids only increased when an undocumented family was deported to Mexico Wednesday after local law enforcement arrested them for allegedly stealing food. Immigrant rights groups claim that local law enforcement is racially profiling immigrants. They say there is no need for them to involve Border Patrol agents.
Andrea Guerrero is the Chair of the San Diego Immigrant Rights Consortium. She is also the Field and Policy Director of the ACLU in San Diego. She joins me now from San Diego, California.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The tragic fires in Southern California proved that neither 9-11 nor Katrina was an aberration. Instead they were full dress rehearsals for our future. Most of us cried for the fire victims, knowing full well that as always the poorest and least politically viable would be most harmed.
But for Bush, Schwarzenegger, Federal Troops and Border cops, FEMA, and local police- this was another great chance to kick some brown butt.
Once again, for minorities it was out of the fire, into the frying pan.
Stop me if you've heard this one before:
A vast cataclysm, causing significant injury, death, and widespread destruction, provides a perfect laboratory environment for the imposition of martial law, the suspension of basic rights, and the ongoing obliteration of posse comitatus prohibitions; and -- the immediate widespread disenfranchisement, demonization, imprisonment and deportation of minorities, immigrants, and people of color- citizens and not, with the full and enthusiastic complicity of major media.
Last week, the worst fears of our founding fathers came true when once again, Federal Troops were used to enforce local law- i.e. Martial Law.
In San Diego, the Federal Immigration Cops (I.C.E.) - working ostentatiously with FEMA, The Red Cross, and local police, caused local volunteers to turn away fire victims without "proper" ID, forcing them to abandon the evacuation centers, or sleep outside in the parking lots.
INSIDE Qualcomm Stadium -- the I.C.E. rousted, questioned, arrested, detained, and actually deported victims of the fires.
Inhumane Treatment of Evacuees
by NaNa
Friday Oct 26th, 2007 3:59 PM
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2007/10/26/18456262.php
City officials in charge of the evacuation site at Qualcomm invited a Border Patrol information unit to drive in a van and set up a tent next to FEMA and Red Cross inside the stadium. Although the unit is present to provide map information for burn areas, the presence of a BP van and uniformed BP officers has intimidated a number of immigrant families seeking refuge. The presence of BP led a volunteer today who was registering evacuees to turn away undocumented individuals because the volunteer presumed that the evacuees would be in danger of apprehension, especially following an incident yesterday (described below). She did not communicate this to those turned away. She simply turned them away from the only open evacuation center in the county.
POLICE VIOLATION OF IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT POLICY:
Yesterday (Wednesday), the police initiated an immigration enforcement action that was contrary to their policy of not calling in Border Patrol / ICE unless and until they file a formal criminal charge against a person. Police detained approximately 12 evacuees (at least four were children) who they alleged were "looting" donated blankets, food, and toys for the children. The detained evacuees and witnesses reported to us that volunteers were urging all evacuees, some of whom were preparing to return home after two days, to take as much as they could because the evacuees might find their home damaged and might not be able to access food and other important items due to the evacuation and destruction of stores in the area. Taking this to heart, the evacuees in question who were part of the same family, gathered multiple blankets and as much food as they could carry in preparation of returning home. There have been no shortage of donated goods and in fact, the city has asked the good people of the city to stop donating items.
The evacuees were detained by the police for three hours on site without being charged. The police asked the evacuees for their documents. When they presented none, the police called in an outside unit of Border Patrol to conduct an "immigration inspection". The police never brought any charges against the evacuees. Prior to the arrival of the BP, a Channel 8 cameraman attempted to film the police interaction with the evacuees. One of the officers covered the camera with his hand, pushed it and the cameraman away, and took the microphone from the reporter. When a Spanish-speaking volunteer attempted to intervene to assist the family, one of the officers took her picture with his cell phone to intimidate her. When BP, came they asked the detained evacuees for documents and six of them (plus a 2-year old U.S. citizen child of one of the evacuees) were taken away, held for several hours without food, and deported. They are needless to say devastated.
Please listen to yesterday's devastating full report and eyewitness account from ACLU San Diego attorney and field and policy director Andrea Guerrero - on Dennis Bernstein's great "Flashpoints" show from KPFA FM in Northern CA.
http://flashpoints.net/index.html#2007-10-26
"Immigrants who are undocumented or do not have their ID documentation with them are being rejected and ejected from evacuation centers..."
"...folks who were staying at Qualcomm Stadium were woken up Tuesday night/ Wednesday morning between the hours of 12am and 2am, the San Diego Police went family to family, and asked for identification and proof that families were from zones that were evacuated... and if they could not provide that, they were escorted out of Qualcomm... those who were sleeping outside of the stadium, on the perimeter, and there were a lot of them, were checked for their identity documents and their residency when they came in in the morning to get breakfast or take a shower or use the bathroom, and whether they were rejected or ejected ... homeless people were denied access to resources.. and the undocumented population... were denied access to services, and that people, both legal citizens/residents and undocumented persons were denied access to services if they had identity documents that did not correspond to an evacuation zone"
"on Tuesday afternoon, the San Diego Police alleged that a family was looting - they did not formally charge them -- the family was, in fact, simply taking the donated items back to their home (returning to their home) because they didn't know what they would find. They were encouraged to do this by the volunteers inside, but when they left the facility, they were detained by police for several hours. The police then called Border Patrol, and Border Patrol conducted an immigration inspection, and then took them off and deported them. They deported six members of the family plus a 2 year old US citizen. They are now in Tijuana, devastated - uncertain of whether their home is there or not, and unable to return..."
Later in the show, Bernstein's partner, Miguel Molina, tells us how his brother, guilty of Existing While Brown, was prevented from escaping the fire with his neighbors, and segregated into the "immigrant" area, in a Safeway parking lot, and kept from Qualcomm.
Until late last year, The Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385-June 16, 1878) served to prohibit Federal military personnel and units of the United States National Guard under Federal authority from acting in a law enforcement capacity within the United States, except where expressly authorized by the Constitution or Congress. The Posse Comitatus Act (and the Insurrection Act) substantially limited the powers of the Federal government to use the military for law enforcement.
For those of us who snoozed-- Senator Warner's Defense Appropriation Act for Fiscal Year 2007 (H.R. 5122.ENR), contains a provision, (Section 1076) which allows the President to:
“...employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to... restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when, as a result of a natural disaster, epidemic, or other serious public health emergency, terrorist attack or incident, or other condition in any State or possession of the United States..., where the President determines that,...domestic violence has occurred to such an extent that the constituted authorities of the State or possession are incapable of maintaining public order; suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy...”
Now ...... this time... the President did not "determine" that circumstances occurred etc etc. to jeopardize public order.
But- there were the troops, and there were the I.C.E. agents, and the local cops and FEMA-- working hand in glove, constitution be damned.
Once again the privileged got one treatment, and The Rest got abused, and the rights we once took easily for granted were stomped.
And now the pimp media rushes to proclaim that it was all arson, that "Illegal Immigrants" set the fires.
For the likes of Fox News - this was more racist kindling.
It wasn't the severe drought exacerbated by the profound effects of the destruction of the planet, it was some disgruntled wetbacks.
One thing we know for sure- these kinds of disasters are going to proliferate. Atlanta GA. is dying of thirst, and California will have to go on strict water rationing next year.
While in other places, flood warnings will multiply, and inundation is a certainty.
And one other thing we know for sure- what we see as tragedy or catastrophe, the fascists celebrate as operative opportunities.
Not too hard to believe that some of these will not be so entirely "natural" either.
If the miraculous implosion of three huge buildings worked so well, no reason not to try a flood or fire or two, the better to bring in the troops.
Read more!!
Monday, October 29, 2007
DRANT #268: SCAM ALERT PART TWO
Scamola Update:
DARFUR:
THE UNITED STATES' WAR IN DARFUR: SAVE DARFUR MOVEMENT SUPPORTS WAR IN AFRICA
http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=24
"The Darfur conflict remains widely mischaracterized and misunderstood. "Save Darfur" advocates pressing military intervention in Darfur as a "humanitarian" gesture have escalated pressure in the face of mounting failures, including allegations that millions of "Save Darfur" dollars fundraised on a sympathy for victims platform have been misappropriated. There is a growing demand to probe the accounts of "Save Darfur" to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and bribery—rebel leaders provided with five-star hotel accommodations,
prostitutes and sex parties."
DARFURISM, UGANDA, & US WAR IN AFRICA:
The Spectre of Continental Genocide
http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=49
President Bush meets with Uganda's President-for-life Yoweri Museveni
in the White House on October 30, 2007. Meanwhile, a broad swath of
Africa is engulfed in interrelated genocides and covert operations
involving both the U.S. and Uganda, there is a growing demand to probe
the accounts of "Save Darfur" to find out how the tens of millions
collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and
bribery, and the SAVE DARFUR movement has become the false flag action
of the West, supported by most everyone, people who know little or
nothing about what it is they are supporting.
http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-234DARFURISM%20UGANDA%20AND%20US%20WAR%20IN%20AFRICA%20[3].htm
Scam alert !
Remember- the one hunnderd percent ga-run-tee of a scam is when all the Press Prosties start pushing something at once. The best defense against being scammed is information; here is a handy guide to some of the latest and stinkiest and most upchuckable scams going right now.
Scamola 1 -- GORE: I told ya about Gore. The Flummoxathon by Big Biz, the Democratic Bigtimers who are gorging on their largesse, and the pimp media who work for them.
For more Gore:
Nobel Hypocrisy
by Steve Lendman
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/10/nobel-hypocrisy.html
"...throughout his political life, Gore's actions betrayed the public's trust and still do. He and his wife live in two large energy-consuming homes: a 10,000 square foot, eight bedroom one in Nashville and a 4000 square foot one in Arlington, VA. The Gores also own a third home in Carthage, TN. In both Washington and Nashville, utility companies offer a wind energy green alternative to customers for a small per kilowatt hour premium. Gore can easily afford it, but public records show no evidence he's does it in either residence. Alex Cockburn gets the last word on a man who shills for privilege, has plenty for himself, and like George Bush disdains the public interest: "Al Gore distills in his single person the disrepair of liberalism in America today, and almost every unalluring feature of the Democratic Party" that's mostly indistinguishable from the other side of the aisle in a city where the criminal class is bipartisan."
We need to stop the BS, and name the real perps, not lionize the liars.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 2 -- MYANMAR: How about them Burmese monks ? But wait- haven't we seen this one before ? Even the snazzy Orange (I'm just wild about Saffron) outfits ? Let me jog your brain- Otpor in Serbia, Kmara in Georgia, and of course The Orange guys in Ukraine. All of them share some really amazing coincidences-- the profound and pervasive participation of a roster of USA/CIA backed and financed interlopers, "consultants" and NGOs -- who played significant roles in ALL of these "popular uprisings." The list reads like a rogues gallery of the worst groups on the globe: the U.S. State Department and USAID along with the infamous National Endowment for Democracy (previous clients include Noriega, Chomorro, Sumate (Venezuela), for starters, and currently various groups in Iran. Alumni feature some names you may recall -- like Carlucci, Holbrooke, Bill Frist and Wesley Clark. Mama mia what a disgusting crop of thugs) and all of its nefarious progeny, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the NGO Freedom House and George Soros's Open Society Institute . I know parents who wash their kids' mouths out for mentioning any of these filthy words.
Where was the USA in 1988 ? in 1992 ? or when Suu Kyi was deposed and jailed ? Why - in it up to their eyeballs of course. Doing what it does best- creating chaos and civil disorder- so we can march in and make peace, making the world safe for Chevron (Unocal) and Total, and much more difficult for those goddam Chinese.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 3 -- DARFUR: Have you had enough of the "Save Darfur" dupes ? Pleeeeze. There's one way to save Darfur, and its people- get the US and China OUT of there, and not one peep about UN "peacekeepers." Just like Burma, and Iraq, and soooo many other places (see above) the US is supplying all sides with guns and money. Earlier this year, I asked a CIA front man (giving a heartbreaking Save Darfur slide show) how it was possible that people so starving and desperate in the south of Sudan could afford all of them GUNS. No food, no medicine, but plenty money for guns ? He said, I am not kidding, that the guns came from Libya. It was all Khaddafi's fault. The answer to "saving" Darfur, or the Congo, or the Planet for that matter- must begin by totally dismantling the US War/Biz machine, and radically extricating the US and other governments of the world from corporate dominance. Or- you can get your junior high class together, and sell cookies, or have a car wash, and send the pennies to the Save Darfur people, who are part of the problem not part of the solution, and so are we.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 4 -- BLACKWATER: Jeremy Scahill is incredible. Blackwater is abominable. Dahr Jamail and his expose of what really happened in Fallujah are amazing and indispensable. But- the Usual Suspects are shifting the focus to Blackwater, and away from the real villains- the US Troops.
We are being brainwashed- that the abominations in Iraq are aberrative lunacy on the part of a gang of out of control "contractors." The real story is that the US Invading Forces have committed and continue to commit, unrelenting and increasing unspeakable horrors on the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan-- just as they did in Vietnam. We continue to be so very eager to blame the bastards at Blackwater, and not look at the deeper and infinitely more painful truth- we are a nation of murderers, rapists, torturers and thieves--- and though this goes back hundreds of years covering our entire history- the problem is only getting much much worse. Its Blackwater- but Blackwater 'R US.
Anudda scam.
NEXT ISSUE:
Scamolas to include: -- Sub Prime Villains/Stock market/Dollar destruction/ Peak Oil/ Global Warming/FEMA and The Fire
Read more!!
DARFUR:
THE UNITED STATES' WAR IN DARFUR: SAVE DARFUR MOVEMENT SUPPORTS WAR IN AFRICA
http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=24
"The Darfur conflict remains widely mischaracterized and misunderstood. "Save Darfur" advocates pressing military intervention in Darfur as a "humanitarian" gesture have escalated pressure in the face of mounting failures, including allegations that millions of "Save Darfur" dollars fundraised on a sympathy for victims platform have been misappropriated. There is a growing demand to probe the accounts of "Save Darfur" to find out how the tens of millions collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and bribery—rebel leaders provided with five-star hotel accommodations,
prostitutes and sex parties."
DARFURISM, UGANDA, & US WAR IN AFRICA:
The Spectre of Continental Genocide
http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php?catid=49
President Bush meets with Uganda's President-for-life Yoweri Museveni
in the White House on October 30, 2007. Meanwhile, a broad swath of
Africa is engulfed in interrelated genocides and covert operations
involving both the U.S. and Uganda, there is a growing demand to probe
the accounts of "Save Darfur" to find out how the tens of millions
collected are being spent due to allegations of arms-deals and
bribery, and the SAVE DARFUR movement has become the false flag action
of the West, supported by most everyone, people who know little or
nothing about what it is they are supporting.
http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-234DARFURISM%20UGANDA%20AND%20US%20WAR%20IN%20AFRICA%20[3].htm
Scam alert !
Remember- the one hunnderd percent ga-run-tee of a scam is when all the Press Prosties start pushing something at once. The best defense against being scammed is information; here is a handy guide to some of the latest and stinkiest and most upchuckable scams going right now.
Scamola 1 -- GORE: I told ya about Gore. The Flummoxathon by Big Biz, the Democratic Bigtimers who are gorging on their largesse, and the pimp media who work for them.
For more Gore:
Nobel Hypocrisy
by Steve Lendman
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/10/nobel-hypocrisy.html
"...throughout his political life, Gore's actions betrayed the public's trust and still do. He and his wife live in two large energy-consuming homes: a 10,000 square foot, eight bedroom one in Nashville and a 4000 square foot one in Arlington, VA. The Gores also own a third home in Carthage, TN. In both Washington and Nashville, utility companies offer a wind energy green alternative to customers for a small per kilowatt hour premium. Gore can easily afford it, but public records show no evidence he's does it in either residence. Alex Cockburn gets the last word on a man who shills for privilege, has plenty for himself, and like George Bush disdains the public interest: "Al Gore distills in his single person the disrepair of liberalism in America today, and almost every unalluring feature of the Democratic Party" that's mostly indistinguishable from the other side of the aisle in a city where the criminal class is bipartisan."
We need to stop the BS, and name the real perps, not lionize the liars.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 2 -- MYANMAR: How about them Burmese monks ? But wait- haven't we seen this one before ? Even the snazzy Orange (I'm just wild about Saffron) outfits ? Let me jog your brain- Otpor in Serbia, Kmara in Georgia, and of course The Orange guys in Ukraine. All of them share some really amazing coincidences-- the profound and pervasive participation of a roster of USA/CIA backed and financed interlopers, "consultants" and NGOs -- who played significant roles in ALL of these "popular uprisings." The list reads like a rogues gallery of the worst groups on the globe: the U.S. State Department and USAID along with the infamous National Endowment for Democracy (previous clients include Noriega, Chomorro, Sumate (Venezuela), for starters, and currently various groups in Iran. Alumni feature some names you may recall -- like Carlucci, Holbrooke, Bill Frist and Wesley Clark. Mama mia what a disgusting crop of thugs) and all of its nefarious progeny, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the NGO Freedom House and George Soros's Open Society Institute . I know parents who wash their kids' mouths out for mentioning any of these filthy words.
Where was the USA in 1988 ? in 1992 ? or when Suu Kyi was deposed and jailed ? Why - in it up to their eyeballs of course. Doing what it does best- creating chaos and civil disorder- so we can march in and make peace, making the world safe for Chevron (Unocal) and Total, and much more difficult for those goddam Chinese.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 3 -- DARFUR: Have you had enough of the "Save Darfur" dupes ? Pleeeeze. There's one way to save Darfur, and its people- get the US and China OUT of there, and not one peep about UN "peacekeepers." Just like Burma, and Iraq, and soooo many other places (see above) the US is supplying all sides with guns and money. Earlier this year, I asked a CIA front man (giving a heartbreaking Save Darfur slide show) how it was possible that people so starving and desperate in the south of Sudan could afford all of them GUNS. No food, no medicine, but plenty money for guns ? He said, I am not kidding, that the guns came from Libya. It was all Khaddafi's fault. The answer to "saving" Darfur, or the Congo, or the Planet for that matter- must begin by totally dismantling the US War/Biz machine, and radically extricating the US and other governments of the world from corporate dominance. Or- you can get your junior high class together, and sell cookies, or have a car wash, and send the pennies to the Save Darfur people, who are part of the problem not part of the solution, and so are we.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 4 -- BLACKWATER: Jeremy Scahill is incredible. Blackwater is abominable. Dahr Jamail and his expose of what really happened in Fallujah are amazing and indispensable. But- the Usual Suspects are shifting the focus to Blackwater, and away from the real villains- the US Troops.
We are being brainwashed- that the abominations in Iraq are aberrative lunacy on the part of a gang of out of control "contractors." The real story is that the US Invading Forces have committed and continue to commit, unrelenting and increasing unspeakable horrors on the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan-- just as they did in Vietnam. We continue to be so very eager to blame the bastards at Blackwater, and not look at the deeper and infinitely more painful truth- we are a nation of murderers, rapists, torturers and thieves--- and though this goes back hundreds of years covering our entire history- the problem is only getting much much worse. Its Blackwater- but Blackwater 'R US.
Anudda scam.
NEXT ISSUE:
Scamolas to include: -- Sub Prime Villains/Stock market/Dollar destruction/ Peak Oil/ Global Warming/FEMA and The Fire
Read more!!
Thursday, October 25, 2007
DRANT #267: URGENT! STOP WHAT YOU'RE DOING! THOUGHT PREVENTION ACT
STOP what you're doing.
Read this.
Read it ALL.
Of all the draconian totalitarian abusive laws passed by our government, this may be the scariest.
Of course, Nancy Pelosi pushed this through.
Today, it passed the House 404-6.
DEMOCRAT Jane Harman sponsored it, with 14 bi partisan co sponsors.
Barbara Lee voted yes. Maxine Waters voted yes. Henry Waxman and Pete Stark voted yes.
You MUST read it.
And scariest of all- there has not been ONE PEEP about this anywhere-
no NY Times, no CNN.
Not even the leftie blogs, except Rogue Government and Blacklisted News.
Plus today's Counterpunch.
BUT - the Counterpunch article blithely forecasts that this bill would get the usual, constitutional congressional due process- referral to committee, negotiation, floor debate, scrutiny.
It got NONE of these things. It was shoved through and passed with NO debate, no scrutiny-
by Nancy Pelosi and her Republican co-conspirators. Just like all the others-
The terms of this law are horrendous, unthinkable.
But the METHOD used to make it law makes manifest the true degree of the fascism under which we are now living.
And, the complete lack of any opposition, the screaming silence of the press and the People, tells us the worst of the tale.
If we let this happen, and we are, then we deserve everything that's happening to us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
House Passes Thought Crime Prevention Bill
Published on Thursday, October 25, 2007.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=4596
Source: Rogue Government - Lee Rogers
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955 titled the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. This bill is one of the most blatant attacks against the Constitution yet and actually defines thought crimes as homegrown terrorism. If passed into law, it will also establish a commission and a Center of Excellence to study and defeat so called thought criminals. Unlike previous anti-terror legislation, this bill specifically targets the civilian population of the United States and uses vague language to define homegrown terrorism. Amazingly, 404 of our elected representatives from both the Democrat and Republican parties voted in favor of this bill. There is little doubt that this bill is specifically targeting the growing patriot community that is demanding the restoration of the Constitution.
First let’s take a look at the definitions of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism as defined in Section 899A of the bill.
The definition of violent radicalization uses vague language to define this term of promoting any belief system that the government considers to be an extremist agenda. Since the bill doesn’t specifically define what an extremist belief system is, it is entirely up to the interpretation of the government. Considering how much the government has done to destroy the Constitution they could even define Ron Paul supporters as promoting an extremist belief system. Literally, the government according to this definition can define whatever they want as an extremist belief system. Essentially they have defined violent radicalization as thought crime. The definition as defined in the bill is shown below.
`(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.
The definition of homegrown terrorism uses equally vague language to further define thought crime. The bill includes the planned use of force or violence as homegrown terrorism which could be interpreted as thinking about using force or violence. Not only that but the definition is so vaguely defined, that petty crimes could even fall into the category of homegrown terrorism. The definition as defined in the bill is shown below.
`(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term `homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
Section 899B of the bill goes over the findings of Congress as it pertains to homegrown terrorism. Particularly alarming is that the bill mentions the Internet as a main source for terrorist propaganda. The bill even mentions streams in obvious reference to many of the patriot and pro-constitution Internet radio networks that have been formed. It also mentions that homegrown terrorists span all ages and races indicating that the Congress is stating that everyone is a potential terrorist. Even worse is that Congress states in their findings that they should look at draconian police states like Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom as models to defeat homegrown terrorists. Literally, these findings of Congress fall right in line with the growing patriot community.
The biggest joke of all is that this section also says that any measure to prevent violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism should not violate the constitutional rights of citizens. However, the definition of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism as they are defined in section 899A are themselves unconstitutional. The Constitution does not allow the government to arrest people for thought crimes, so any promises not to violate the constitutional rights of citizens is already broken by their own definitions.
`SEC. 899B. FINDINGS.
`The Congress finds the following:
`(1) The development and implementation of methods and processes that can be utilized to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States is critical to combating domestic terrorism.
`(2) The promotion of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence exists in the United States and poses a threat to homeland security.
`(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.
`(4) While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States.
`(5) Understanding the motivational factors that lead to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence is a vital step toward eradicating these threats in the United States.
`(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions.
`(7) Individuals prone to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence span all races, ethnicities, and religious beliefs, and individuals should not be targeted based solely on race, ethnicity, or religion.
`(8) Any measure taken to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism in the United States should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights and civil liberties of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.
`(9) Certain governments, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have significant experience with homegrown terrorism and the United States can benefit from lessons learned by those nations.
Section 899C calls for a commission on the prevention of violent radicalization and ideologically based violence. The commission will consist of ten members appointed by various individuals that hold different positions in government. Essentially, this is a commission that will examine and report on how they are going to deal with violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. So basically, the commission is being formed specifically on how to deal with thought criminals in the United States. The bill requires that the commission submit their final report 18 months following the commission’s first meeting as well as submit interim reports every 6 months leading up to the final report. Below is the bill’s defined purpose of the commission. Amazingly they even define one of the purposes of the commission to determine the causes of lone wolf violent radicalization.
(b) Purpose- The purposes of the Commission are the following:
`(1) Examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States, including United States connections to non-United States persons and networks, violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in prison, individual or `lone wolf' violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence, and other faces of the phenomena of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence that the Commission considers important.
`(2) Build upon and bring together the work of other entities and avoid unnecessary duplication, by reviewing the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of--
`(A) the Center of Excellence established or designated under section 899D, and other academic work, as appropriate;
`(B) Federal, State, local, or tribal studies of, reviews of, and experiences with violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence; and
`(C) foreign government studies of, reviews of, and experiences with violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence.
Section 899D of the bill establishes a Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. Essentially, this will be a Department of Homeland Security affiliated institution that will study and determine how to defeat thought criminals.
Section 899E of the bill discusses how the government is going to defeat violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism through international cooperation. As stated in the findings section earlier in the legislation, they will unquestionably seek the advice of countries with draconian police states like the United Kingdom to determine how to deal with this growing threat of thought crime.
Possibly the most ridiculous section of the bill is Section 899F which states how they plan on protecting civil rights and civil liberties while preventing ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism. Here is what the section says.
`SEC. 899F. PROTECTING CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES WHILE PREVENTING IDEOLOGICALLY-BASED VIOLENCE AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISM.
`(a) In General- The Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prevent ideologically-based violence and homegrown terrorism as described herein shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, and civil liberties of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.
`(b) Commitment to Racial Neutrality- The Secretary shall ensure that the activities and operations of the entities created by this subtitle are in compliance with the Department of Homeland Security's commitment to racial neutrality.
`(c) Auditing Mechanism- The Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer of the Department of Homeland Security will develop and implement an auditing mechanism to ensure that compliance with this subtitle does not result in a disproportionate impact, without a rational basis, on any particular race, ethnicity, or religion and include the results of its audit in its annual report to Congress required under section 705.'.
(b) Clerical Amendment- The table of contents in section 1(b) of such Act is amended by inserting at the end of the items relating to title VIII the following:
It states in the first subsection that in general the efforts to defeat thought crime shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights and civil liberties of the United States citizens and lawful permanent residents. How does this protect constitutional rights if they use vague language such as in general that prefaces the statement? This means that the Department of Homeland Security does not have to abide by the Constitution in their attempts to prevent so called homegrown terrorism.
This bill is completely insane. It literally allows the government to define any and all crimes including thought crime as violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. Obviously, this legislation is unconstitutional on a number of levels and it is clear that all 404 representatives who voted in favor of this bill are traitors and should be removed from office immediately. The treason spans both political parties and it shows us all that there is no difference between them. The bill will go on to the Senate and will likely be passed and signed into the law by George W. Bush. Considering that draconian legislation like the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act have already been passed, there seems little question that this one will get passed as well. This is more proof that our country has been completely sold out by a group of traitors at all levels of government.
Copyright © 2006-2007 BlackListedNews.com
Read more!!
Read this.
Read it ALL.
Of all the draconian totalitarian abusive laws passed by our government, this may be the scariest.
Of course, Nancy Pelosi pushed this through.
Today, it passed the House 404-6.
DEMOCRAT Jane Harman sponsored it, with 14 bi partisan co sponsors.
Barbara Lee voted yes. Maxine Waters voted yes. Henry Waxman and Pete Stark voted yes.
You MUST read it.
And scariest of all- there has not been ONE PEEP about this anywhere-
no NY Times, no CNN.
Not even the leftie blogs, except Rogue Government and Blacklisted News.
Plus today's Counterpunch.
BUT - the Counterpunch article blithely forecasts that this bill would get the usual, constitutional congressional due process- referral to committee, negotiation, floor debate, scrutiny.
It got NONE of these things. It was shoved through and passed with NO debate, no scrutiny-
by Nancy Pelosi and her Republican co-conspirators. Just like all the others-
The terms of this law are horrendous, unthinkable.
But the METHOD used to make it law makes manifest the true degree of the fascism under which we are now living.
And, the complete lack of any opposition, the screaming silence of the press and the People, tells us the worst of the tale.
If we let this happen, and we are, then we deserve everything that's happening to us.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
House Passes Thought Crime Prevention Bill
Published on Thursday, October 25, 2007.
http://www.blacklistednews.com/view.asp?ID=4596
Source: Rogue Government - Lee Rogers
The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed HR 1955 titled the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007. This bill is one of the most blatant attacks against the Constitution yet and actually defines thought crimes as homegrown terrorism. If passed into law, it will also establish a commission and a Center of Excellence to study and defeat so called thought criminals. Unlike previous anti-terror legislation, this bill specifically targets the civilian population of the United States and uses vague language to define homegrown terrorism. Amazingly, 404 of our elected representatives from both the Democrat and Republican parties voted in favor of this bill. There is little doubt that this bill is specifically targeting the growing patriot community that is demanding the restoration of the Constitution.
First let’s take a look at the definitions of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism as defined in Section 899A of the bill.
The definition of violent radicalization uses vague language to define this term of promoting any belief system that the government considers to be an extremist agenda. Since the bill doesn’t specifically define what an extremist belief system is, it is entirely up to the interpretation of the government. Considering how much the government has done to destroy the Constitution they could even define Ron Paul supporters as promoting an extremist belief system. Literally, the government according to this definition can define whatever they want as an extremist belief system. Essentially they have defined violent radicalization as thought crime. The definition as defined in the bill is shown below.
`(2) VIOLENT RADICALIZATION- The term `violent radicalization' means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change.
The definition of homegrown terrorism uses equally vague language to further define thought crime. The bill includes the planned use of force or violence as homegrown terrorism which could be interpreted as thinking about using force or violence. Not only that but the definition is so vaguely defined, that petty crimes could even fall into the category of homegrown terrorism. The definition as defined in the bill is shown below.
`(3) HOMEGROWN TERRORISM- The term `homegrown terrorism' means the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born, raised, or based and operating primarily within the United States or any possession of the United States to intimidate or coerce the United States government, the civilian population of the United States, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.
Section 899B of the bill goes over the findings of Congress as it pertains to homegrown terrorism. Particularly alarming is that the bill mentions the Internet as a main source for terrorist propaganda. The bill even mentions streams in obvious reference to many of the patriot and pro-constitution Internet radio networks that have been formed. It also mentions that homegrown terrorists span all ages and races indicating that the Congress is stating that everyone is a potential terrorist. Even worse is that Congress states in their findings that they should look at draconian police states like Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom as models to defeat homegrown terrorists. Literally, these findings of Congress fall right in line with the growing patriot community.
The biggest joke of all is that this section also says that any measure to prevent violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism should not violate the constitutional rights of citizens. However, the definition of violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism as they are defined in section 899A are themselves unconstitutional. The Constitution does not allow the government to arrest people for thought crimes, so any promises not to violate the constitutional rights of citizens is already broken by their own definitions.
`SEC. 899B. FINDINGS.
`The Congress finds the following:
`(1) The development and implementation of methods and processes that can be utilized to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States is critical to combating domestic terrorism.
`(2) The promotion of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence exists in the United States and poses a threat to homeland security.
`(3) The Internet has aided in facilitating violent radicalization, ideologically based violence, and the homegrown terrorism process in the United States by providing access to broad and constant streams of terrorist-related propaganda to United States citizens.
`(4) While the United States must continue its vigilant efforts to combat international terrorism, it must also strengthen efforts to combat the threat posed by homegrown terrorists based and operating within the United States.
`(5) Understanding the motivational factors that lead to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence is a vital step toward eradicating these threats in the United States.
`(6) The potential rise of self radicalized, unaffiliated terrorists domestically cannot be easily prevented through traditional Federal intelligence or law enforcement efforts, and requires the incorporation of State and local solutions.
`(7) Individuals prone to violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence span all races, ethnicities, and religious beliefs, and individuals should not be targeted based solely on race, ethnicity, or religion.
`(8) Any measure taken to prevent violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism in the United States should not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights and civil liberties of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.
`(9) Certain governments, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia have significant experience with homegrown terrorism and the United States can benefit from lessons learned by those nations.
Section 899C calls for a commission on the prevention of violent radicalization and ideologically based violence. The commission will consist of ten members appointed by various individuals that hold different positions in government. Essentially, this is a commission that will examine and report on how they are going to deal with violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. So basically, the commission is being formed specifically on how to deal with thought criminals in the United States. The bill requires that the commission submit their final report 18 months following the commission’s first meeting as well as submit interim reports every 6 months leading up to the final report. Below is the bill’s defined purpose of the commission. Amazingly they even define one of the purposes of the commission to determine the causes of lone wolf violent radicalization.
(b) Purpose- The purposes of the Commission are the following:
`(1) Examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States, including United States connections to non-United States persons and networks, violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in prison, individual or `lone wolf' violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence, and other faces of the phenomena of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence that the Commission considers important.
`(2) Build upon and bring together the work of other entities and avoid unnecessary duplication, by reviewing the findings, conclusions, and recommendations of--
`(A) the Center of Excellence established or designated under section 899D, and other academic work, as appropriate;
`(B) Federal, State, local, or tribal studies of, reviews of, and experiences with violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence; and
`(C) foreign government studies of, reviews of, and experiences with violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence.
Section 899D of the bill establishes a Center of Excellence for the Study of Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism in the United States. Essentially, this will be a Department of Homeland Security affiliated institution that will study and determine how to defeat thought criminals.
Section 899E of the bill discusses how the government is going to defeat violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism through international cooperation. As stated in the findings section earlier in the legislation, they will unquestionably seek the advice of countries with draconian police states like the United Kingdom to determine how to deal with this growing threat of thought crime.
Possibly the most ridiculous section of the bill is Section 899F which states how they plan on protecting civil rights and civil liberties while preventing ideologically based violence and homegrown terrorism. Here is what the section says.
`SEC. 899F. PROTECTING CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL LIBERTIES WHILE PREVENTING IDEOLOGICALLY-BASED VIOLENCE AND HOMEGROWN TERRORISM.
`(a) In General- The Department of Homeland Security's efforts to prevent ideologically-based violence and homegrown terrorism as described herein shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights, and civil liberties of United States citizens and lawful permanent residents.
`(b) Commitment to Racial Neutrality- The Secretary shall ensure that the activities and operations of the entities created by this subtitle are in compliance with the Department of Homeland Security's commitment to racial neutrality.
`(c) Auditing Mechanism- The Civil Rights and Civil Liberties Officer of the Department of Homeland Security will develop and implement an auditing mechanism to ensure that compliance with this subtitle does not result in a disproportionate impact, without a rational basis, on any particular race, ethnicity, or religion and include the results of its audit in its annual report to Congress required under section 705.'.
(b) Clerical Amendment- The table of contents in section 1(b) of such Act is amended by inserting at the end of the items relating to title VIII the following:
It states in the first subsection that in general the efforts to defeat thought crime shall not violate the constitutional rights, civil rights and civil liberties of the United States citizens and lawful permanent residents. How does this protect constitutional rights if they use vague language such as in general that prefaces the statement? This means that the Department of Homeland Security does not have to abide by the Constitution in their attempts to prevent so called homegrown terrorism.
This bill is completely insane. It literally allows the government to define any and all crimes including thought crime as violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism. Obviously, this legislation is unconstitutional on a number of levels and it is clear that all 404 representatives who voted in favor of this bill are traitors and should be removed from office immediately. The treason spans both political parties and it shows us all that there is no difference between them. The bill will go on to the Senate and will likely be passed and signed into the law by George W. Bush. Considering that draconian legislation like the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act have already been passed, there seems little question that this one will get passed as well. This is more proof that our country has been completely sold out by a group of traitors at all levels of government.
Copyright © 2006-2007 BlackListedNews.com
Read more!!
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
DRANT #266: SCAM ALERT!
Scam alert !
Remember- the one hunnderd percent ga-run-tee of a scam is when all the Press Prosties start pushing something at once. The best defense against being scammed is information; here is a handy guide to some of the latest and stinkiest and most upchuckable scams going right now.
Scamola 1 -- GORE: I told ya about Gore. The Flummoxathon by Big Biz, the Democratic Bigtimers who are gorging on their largesse, and the pimp media who work for them.
For more Gore:
Nobel Hypocrisy
by Steve Lendman
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/10/nobel-hypocrisy.html
"...throughout his political life, Gore's actions betrayed the public's trust and still do. He and his wife live in two large energy-consuming homes: a 10,000 square foot, eight bedroom one in Nashville and a 4000 square foot one in Arlington, VA. The Gores also own a third home in Carthage, TN. In both Washington and Nashville, utility companies offer a wind energy green alternative to customers for a small per kilowatt hour premium. Gore can easily afford it, but public records show no evidence he's does it in either residence. Alex Cockburn gets the last word on a man who shills for privilege, has plenty for himself, and like George Bush disdains the public interest: "Al Gore distills in his single person the disrepair of liberalism in America today, and almost every unalluring feature of the Democratic Party" that's mostly indistinguishable from the other side of the aisle in a city where the criminal class is bipartisan."
We need to stop the BS, and name the real perps, not lionize the liars.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 2 -- MYANMAR: How about them Burmese monks ? But wait- haven't we seen this one before ? Even the snazzy Orange (I'm just wild about Saffron) outfits ? Let me jog your brain- Otpor in Serbia, Kmara in Georgia, and of course The Orange guys in Ukraine. All of them share some really amazing coincidences-- the profound and pervasive participation of a roster of USA/CIA backed and financed interlopers, "consultants" and NGOs -- who played significant roles in ALL of these "popular uprisings." The list reads like a rogues gallery of the worst groups on the globe: the U.S. State Department and USAID along with the infamous National Endowment for Democracy (previous clients include Noriega, Chomorro, Sumate (Venezuela), for starters, and currently various groups in Iran. Alumni feature some names you may recall -- like Carlucci, Holbrooke, Bill Frist and Wesley Clark. Mama mia what a disgusting crop of thugs) and all of its nefarious progeny, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the NGO Freedom House and George Soros's Open Society Institute . I know parents who wash their kids' mouths out for mentioning any of these filthy words.
Where was the USA in 1988 ? in 1992 ? or when Suu Kyi was deposed and jailed ? Why - in it up to their eyeballs of course. Doing what it does best- creating chaos and civil disorder- so we can march in and make peace, making the world safe for Chevron (Unocal) and Total, and much more difficult for those goddam Chinese.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 3 -- DARFUR: Have you had enough of the "Save Darfur" dupes ? Pleeeeze. There's one way to save Darfur, and its people - get the US and China OUT of there, and not one peep about UN "peacekeepers." Just like Burma, and Iraq, and soooo many other places (see above) the US is supplying all sides with guns and money. Earlier this year, I asked a CIA front man (giving a heartbreaking Save Darfur slide show) how it was possible that people so starving and desperate in the south of Sudan could afford all of them GUNS. No food, no medicine, but plenty money for guns ? He said, I am not kidding, that the guns came from Libya. It was all Khaddafi's fault. The answer to "saving" Darfur, or the Congo, or the Planet for that matter- must begin by totally dismantling the US War/Biz machine, and radically extricating the US and other governments of the world from corporate dominance. Or- you can get your junior high class together, and sell cookies, or have a car wash, and send the pennies to the Save Darfur people, who are part of the problem not part of the solution, and so are we.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 4 -- BLACKWATER: Jeremy Scahill is incredible. Blackwater is abominable. Dahr Jamail and his expose of what really happened in Fallujah are amazing and indispensable. But- the Usual Suspects are shifting the focus to Blackwater, and away from the real villains- the US Troops.
We are being brainwashed- that the abominations in Iraq are aberrative lunacy on the part of a gang of out of control "contractors." The real story is that the US Invading Forces have committed and continue to commit, unrelenting and increasing unspeakable horrors on the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan-- just as they did in Vietnam. We continue to be so very eager to blame the bastards at Blackwater, and not look at the deeper and infinitely more painful truth- we are a nation of murderers, rapists, torturers and thieves--- and though this goes back hundreds of years covering our entire history- the problem is only getting much much worse. Its Blackwater- but Blackwater 'R US.
Anudda scam.
NEXT ISSUE:
Scamolas to include: -- Sub Prime Villains/Stock market/Dollar destruction/ Peak Oil/ Global Warming/FEMA and The Fire
Read more!!
Remember- the one hunnderd percent ga-run-tee of a scam is when all the Press Prosties start pushing something at once. The best defense against being scammed is information; here is a handy guide to some of the latest and stinkiest and most upchuckable scams going right now.
Scamola 1 -- GORE: I told ya about Gore. The Flummoxathon by Big Biz, the Democratic Bigtimers who are gorging on their largesse, and the pimp media who work for them.
For more Gore:
Nobel Hypocrisy
by Steve Lendman
http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/10/nobel-hypocrisy.html
"...throughout his political life, Gore's actions betrayed the public's trust and still do. He and his wife live in two large energy-consuming homes: a 10,000 square foot, eight bedroom one in Nashville and a 4000 square foot one in Arlington, VA. The Gores also own a third home in Carthage, TN. In both Washington and Nashville, utility companies offer a wind energy green alternative to customers for a small per kilowatt hour premium. Gore can easily afford it, but public records show no evidence he's does it in either residence. Alex Cockburn gets the last word on a man who shills for privilege, has plenty for himself, and like George Bush disdains the public interest: "Al Gore distills in his single person the disrepair of liberalism in America today, and almost every unalluring feature of the Democratic Party" that's mostly indistinguishable from the other side of the aisle in a city where the criminal class is bipartisan."
We need to stop the BS, and name the real perps, not lionize the liars.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 2 -- MYANMAR: How about them Burmese monks ? But wait- haven't we seen this one before ? Even the snazzy Orange (I'm just wild about Saffron) outfits ? Let me jog your brain- Otpor in Serbia, Kmara in Georgia, and of course The Orange guys in Ukraine. All of them share some really amazing coincidences-- the profound and pervasive participation of a roster of USA/CIA backed and financed interlopers, "consultants" and NGOs -- who played significant roles in ALL of these "popular uprisings." The list reads like a rogues gallery of the worst groups on the globe: the U.S. State Department and USAID along with the infamous National Endowment for Democracy (previous clients include Noriega, Chomorro, Sumate (Venezuela), for starters, and currently various groups in Iran. Alumni feature some names you may recall -- like Carlucci, Holbrooke, Bill Frist and Wesley Clark. Mama mia what a disgusting crop of thugs) and all of its nefarious progeny, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, the International Republican Institute, the NGO Freedom House and George Soros's Open Society Institute . I know parents who wash their kids' mouths out for mentioning any of these filthy words.
Where was the USA in 1988 ? in 1992 ? or when Suu Kyi was deposed and jailed ? Why - in it up to their eyeballs of course. Doing what it does best- creating chaos and civil disorder- so we can march in and make peace, making the world safe for Chevron (Unocal) and Total, and much more difficult for those goddam Chinese.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 3 -- DARFUR: Have you had enough of the "Save Darfur" dupes ? Pleeeeze. There's one way to save Darfur, and its people - get the US and China OUT of there, and not one peep about UN "peacekeepers." Just like Burma, and Iraq, and soooo many other places (see above) the US is supplying all sides with guns and money. Earlier this year, I asked a CIA front man (giving a heartbreaking Save Darfur slide show) how it was possible that people so starving and desperate in the south of Sudan could afford all of them GUNS. No food, no medicine, but plenty money for guns ? He said, I am not kidding, that the guns came from Libya. It was all Khaddafi's fault. The answer to "saving" Darfur, or the Congo, or the Planet for that matter- must begin by totally dismantling the US War/Biz machine, and radically extricating the US and other governments of the world from corporate dominance. Or- you can get your junior high class together, and sell cookies, or have a car wash, and send the pennies to the Save Darfur people, who are part of the problem not part of the solution, and so are we.
Whatta scam.
Scamola 4 -- BLACKWATER: Jeremy Scahill is incredible. Blackwater is abominable. Dahr Jamail and his expose of what really happened in Fallujah are amazing and indispensable. But- the Usual Suspects are shifting the focus to Blackwater, and away from the real villains- the US Troops.
We are being brainwashed- that the abominations in Iraq are aberrative lunacy on the part of a gang of out of control "contractors." The real story is that the US Invading Forces have committed and continue to commit, unrelenting and increasing unspeakable horrors on the people of Iraq, and Afghanistan-- just as they did in Vietnam. We continue to be so very eager to blame the bastards at Blackwater, and not look at the deeper and infinitely more painful truth- we are a nation of murderers, rapists, torturers and thieves--- and though this goes back hundreds of years covering our entire history- the problem is only getting much much worse. Its Blackwater- but Blackwater 'R US.
Anudda scam.
NEXT ISSUE:
Scamolas to include: -- Sub Prime Villains/Stock market/Dollar destruction/ Peak Oil/ Global Warming/FEMA and The Fire
Read more!!
Monday, October 22, 2007
DRANT #265: BUSHEVIK VICTORY: MISSION REALLY ACCOMPLISHED
"... if there is anyone out there who still believes that ANY of this was stupidity, bungling, or idiocy, or that the people who run The Idiot Bush are dummies, or that Bush himself is even one nanoputz in control of any of this - clap your hands.
The longer we demonize Bush, or patronize him, or invest in his supposed idiocy, the deeper we are burying ourselves in servitude and irrelevance.
Plus, They get one more big ole whopper of a benefit from our complicity in making it all George's fault.
They get to present us with a McCain or Giuliani-- a real Macho Man, a supernaturally competent brave forthright testituditious Hombre, who knows not only how to make a war, but gosh darn it, how to WIN one. Who can face down the Enemies of Freedom, and won't screw it up.
Or even worse, we can get a Hilary or Obama or Edwards- who will do ALL of the above, but be really sincerely nice about it."
DRANT #203
People are finally realizing that The Dummy is not stupid.
That Bush and company have WON -
Some of us have been bleating this for years-
(below, my DRANT #203 ("Idiocy by Design") Dec. 2006)
And- in today's
EMPIRE BURLESQUE -- (see below) Cliff Floyd puts it out there as well, as he has been doing for good while.
Plus a great essay by David Montoute about the Bushevik victory.
It's all there folks. No incompetence here. Idiocy by design-- and so far- they win.
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DRANT DAILY
Number 203
December 18, 2006
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The more ya call Bush an idiot, the more They win.
It means They gotya. You bought their Jive.
U have been outFoxed into thinking that everything that's gone down is a series of dunderheaded blunders by a grippe of fools, lead by the biggest schmuck ever to sleep with a president's wife.
Look pal, its all going EXACKLY the way They planned it. Millions of runs, lots of hits, and damn few errors. And never ever forget - They knew George was a putz when they picked him. No surprises there- ya got it ? One thing about George- he is totally disposable. He is the perfect fall guy. A putz for all seasons.
And such a delectably easy scapegoat for all of Us Good Americans who were liedtoliedtoliedto, and just got fooled and are really good people down deep ..... sooo delectably easy for US to say- Its all HIS fault. He's an idiot.
It serves everybody to blame the idiot George. Them and Us. But it wasn't him what did it, it was Us. And for Them, none of it was a mistake.
They wanted chaos, they got chaos.
Ya say that there's chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan ?
Ya say that savage ragheads with moustaches are running around killing each other, and a buncha muslim/islamic/ fanatics keep blowing somebody's wives and kids to slivers of mutton Tikka every night, and ya can't even go to the grocery store or school, or to see grandma, or even to the local Mosque any more- cause somebody wants to tie your hands behind ya, and chop your head and fingers off, and drill a hole in your skull ? Chaos is a half million INTERNAL refugees inside Iraq, and 2 million miraculously unkilled people having fled the country. Yah man. Thass right. But- not In Kurdland. Not where the OIL is.
You say Iraqi kids by the thousands are being born deformed by birth defects caused by our D.U. and radioactive cluster bombs ? And that's just over there- cause there are hundreds of kids being born with the same birth defects and worse, to wives and husbands of OUR soldiers when they get back here to the USA ?
You say you're buying the 1000% unadulterated crapola that the real problem is Them, the Iraqis, not the hundreds of thousands of American occupiers, torturers, "contractors" and their stooge "security forces" --- that this is all about so-called "Sectarian Violence " - a centuries-old civil war being fought between two weird sects about whose daddy was the real prophet ? You say its just like CNN says- the war in Iraq is really about Sunni vs. Shi'a, them against them, not them against us. We just happen to be dere at the time, trying to spread Democracy.
This is all precisely what was designed- mutual annihilation, neighbors and friends killing neighbors and friends, vicious pointless murderous chaos.
This is what they want everywhere- chaos and internecine annihilation. The more disorder and unstability, the less anyone gets in their way, and the more reason to stay in even greater numbers. And of course if a buncha ragheads or Africans or illegal aliens or indigenous non productive eaters happen to die, hey, the fewer competitors for precious resources the better.
And of course blame the victims.
The same same same in Palestine, where the US stooge Fatah and legitimately elected Hamas just can't seem to get along. Fatah getting fattah on US dollars every day, and Hamas deprived of many millions legitimately owed to them by Israel as taxes collected- so the Palestinian people starve, die, and hate even more.
Or in Lebanon, where the stooge Prime Minister watches from his palace window as hundreds of thousands of his people yell for his removal every day ?
Ah yes, more of that darned Sectarian Violence.
This is what the Busheviks wanted, this is what they created, and what they are getting.
They sent Bremer into Iraq to create the maximum in destructuring and chaos -- removing by decree any and all remnants of Iraqi infrastructure, administration, and order. Anyone who had functioned in any way previously, was out. Then they handed the keys to the inmates of the asylum. Nutcases like SCIRI and al Sadr. Of course, this translated as Sunnis Raus - who might have been slightly annoyed, ya think ?
Not to mention Israel, our genocidal Tonto in so much of this. Nothing serves them more than chaos and disorder, and death.
Who's gonna fight you when you build your apartheid walls, or bulldoze their houses ? Nobody, if you can succeed in creating total disarray, where just getting enough food and water is a daily war all itself. Nobody if your Supreme Court makes it Legal to kill anyone who tries to obstruct you.
You say that Israel's war against Hezbollah was a mistake ? Hah.
It succeeded totally.
Lebanon infrastructure trashed, the government in total chaos, and a beautifully packaged nokiddin identifiable nasty bearded Islamic Radical Cleric Enemy to fight.
Hey give me one more chorus of Sectarian Violence from the top Maestro.
Look further: Darfur, where US intervention and blatant interference -- (another round of GrabdaOil-- or didya not know that there's Oil there ?)
has felicitously destabilized an entire region. Genocide in Darfur in B flat, play it again Unka Sam.
Say, do you have a cell phone ? Or a remote on your 40 inch TV ? Do you know whats In those things ? Haveya heard of Coltan ?
Yup, then ya gots ta know all about The Republic of Congo, Rwanda and on and on.
Create chaos, arm everyone, finance both sides, grab the resources. Call it Sectarian Strife.
No boob jobs here, bunky.
No stupid blundering. This is all planned -- and its all working. Globally.
Do you see ? The major pimp media plays the backup track- and the sniggling Left does its onanistic Karaoke-
It ain't us, babe. Its Bush. Bush is an idiot. He has stupidly created disorder and chaos everywhere. What a dummy.
Everytime he does something, Bushdadummy makes a mess. Yuk Yuk.
And all the time, he and the people he works for are getting exactly what they want, and nobody even notices.
Nowhere is the planned chaos and destabilization working better than here, in the good ole USA.
You say that our educational system is in ruins, that our prisons are jammed to inhuman overflow, that we are breathing eating and drinking poison ? That every day every kid born here is jammed with toxins ?
That the gap between the richest and the poorest of us has exploded into proportions that recall nothing less than South American banana republics or Russian Serfdom ? That poverty and inequality is epidemic and health care unavailable, for tens of millions of full-time working people not to mention the unemployed or disabled or old ? That upward mobility and legitimate aspiration are as moribund as the Arctic Ice Shelf and that MOST Americans --the 60% of us who earn less than 38K a year -- are actually earning less than they did in 2000 ?
You think this is because Bush is an idiot, and screws everything up ?
Au seriously contraire bunky.
He and the people he works for are getting exactly what they wanted, and planned for and designed. When anyone self-righteously dares to argue withya about Wade Churchill's term "Little Eichmanns" tell them about this.......
Goldman Sachs profits just increased by 93% ! They made 9 BILLION dollars this year- or about 600 grand per employee.
They are out buying 10 million dollar manhattan fixer uppers, and cars that cost more than most of us make in a year.
Meanwhile, the vast rest of us have seen our wages and salaries and tips and pensions go DOWN by great handfuls.
Do you think this is because Bush is stupid ? Or that They screwed it up ? They need cheap labor, and cannon fodder. They need cheap dollars to pay off the Alps of Debt they have created.
Debt that We pay off. Debt that deprives us of the education and health care that's rightfully ours.
Debt that has gone directly to the Halliburtons and Bechtels and Goldman Sachs scum of the world.
The Pentagon budget will go up to 480 billion dollars this year.
And the profits of those who sell all that stuff to the Pentagon, and the profits of the people who issue and trade the stocks of the people who sell that stuff to the Pentagon, and the earnings of the people who protect all those people and their geometrically expanding vast property --- annnnnd the bribes to the elected officials who make the laws that make the wars and laws that create all that profit ----- all have exploded beyond believability.
But poverty here has exploded even worse, and is increasing and widening every day.
When the Idiot Bush said that he represented the haves and the have mores, it was much more a prophecy than a joke.
The Great Wealth Transfer
It's the biggest untold economic story of our time: more of the nation's bounty held in fewer and fewer hands. And Bush's tax cuts are only making the problem worse
By Paul Krugman
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15923.htm
"...The economic pie is getting bigger -- how can it be true that most Americans are getting smaller slices? The answer, of course, is that a few people are getting much, much bigger slices. Although wages have stagnated since Bush took office, corporate profits have doubled. The gap between the nation's CEOs and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts. In the Bush era, economic inequality is on the rise.
Rising inequality isn't new. The gap between rich and poor started growing before Ronald Reagan took office, and it continued to widen through the Clinton years. But what is happening under Bush is something entirely unprecedented: For the first time in our history, so much growth is being siphoned off to a small, wealthy minority that most Americans are failing to gain ground even during a time of economic growth -- and they know it..."
Now if there is anyone out there who still believes that ANY of this was stupidity, bungling, or idiocy, or that the people who run The Idiot Bush are dummies, or that Bush himself is even one nanoputz in control of any of this - clap your hands.
The longer we demonize Bush, or patronize him, or invest in his supposed idiocy, the deeper we are burying ourselves in servitude and irrelevance.
Plus, They get one more big ole whopper of a benefit from our complicity in making it all George's fault.
They get to present us with a McCain or Giuliani-- a real Macho Man, a supernaturally competent brave forthright testituditious Hombre, who knows not only how to make a war, but gosh darn it, how to WIN one. Who can face down the Enemies of Freedom, and won't screw it up.
Or even worse, we can get a Hilary or Obama or Edwards- who will do ALL of the above, but be really sincerely nice about it.
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Mission Accomplished: A New Look at Bush's Victory in Iraq
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1321&Itemid=135
Posted: 22 Oct 2007 06:13 AM CDT
In the latest London Review of Books, Jim Holt provides a cogent, powerful account (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n20/holt01_.html) of a theme we have been sounding here for years; i.e., that the Iraq War has actually been a resounding success for the Bush Faction (and the various elites it represents and embodies). The Bushists have achieved almost all of their initial war aims and are now set to reap a windfall of up to $30 trillion that will maintain the American elite's whip-hand over the world for generations to come. And all it cost was a measly $1 trillion in taxpayer money, a few thousand pieces of lower-class cannon fodder from the U.S. military – and the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq: an excellent return on investment for Bush-Cheney Inc. and their cronies.We've covered this issue at various times from various angles; a sampling includes:Claiming the Prize: Bush Surge Aimed at Securing Iraqi Oil (http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content task=view id=989 Itemid=135) (Jan. 8, 2007)Why Bush Smiles: Victory is at Hand in Iraq (http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content task=view id=886 Itemid=135)(Oct. 17, 2006)Blood of Victory (http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd06182004.html)(June 18, 2004)Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law (http://empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/2005/03/dubya-indemnity-bush-barons-beyond.html) (Aug. 15, 2003)From Pakistan to the Potomac: The Terror Warriors' Enduring Victory (http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/From_Pakistan_to_the_Potomac%3A_The_Terror_Warriors%27_Enduring_Victory/) (Aug. 9, 2007)Below is a brief mashup from the above articles:In a world of dwindling petroleum resources, those who control large reserves of cheaply-produced oil will reap unimaginable profits – and command the heights of the global economy. It's not just about profit, of course; control of such resources would offer tremendous strategic advantages to anyone who was interested in "full spectrum domination" of world affairs, which the Bush-Cheney faction and their outriders among the neocons and the "national greatness" fanatics have openly sought for years.
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Saturday, December 23, 2006
The Strategy of Disintegration: False flags, dirty tricks and the dismemberment of Iraq
http://mparent7777.blogspot.com/2006/12/strategy-of-disintegration-false-flags.html
December 22, 2006
By David Montoute
The erosion of a target country’s integrity and viability has always been a conscious goal of the Western colonial project. Creating instability and dissatisfaction with existing reality was a necessary prerequisite to "tame" and then integrate native peoples into the dominant hierarchical model. Today, of course, we are told that colonialism is a thing of the past. The leading nations of the international community no longer seek to enslave their less fortunate neighbours, but rather pursue policies of world benefaction - within the limits imposed by healthy competition, of course. When this miraculous conversion took place we are not told, but perhaps it occurred incrementally, parallel to the increasing divide between the world’s rich and poor. In any case, a casual glance at the state of the Muslim world is enough to shatter this foolish delusion.
As Iraqi society descends further and further into mayhem, comedians, satirists and commentators of all kinds have made great hay from the supposed incompetence and stupidity of our leaders. But as the Canadian Spectator suggested recently, if it should happen that the United States is not run by buffoons, "one must conclude that chaos, impoverishment and civil war in the Muslim world…far from being the unintended consequences, are precisely the objectives of U.S. policy." (1)
As with 9/11, the trigger event for the War on Terror, incompetence is the preferred explanation for the nightmare scenario in Iraq today. Though counterintuitive to the domesticated populations of the West, a plan to deliberately fragment Iraq along ethnic lines is amply confirmed by the published record. Resuscitating earlier Zionist schemes, the US Council on Foreign Relations recently called for the dissolution of the "unnatural Iraqi state." (2) On the grounds of its ethnic diversity, Iraq is said to be a false, artificial construct, a product of arbitrary colonial decisions in the early 20th century. It is a judgment that could apply to many of the world’s countries, and yet the theme is being enthusiastically adopted by reams of 'experts’ who would never dream of questioning state sovereignty in Quebec, the Basque Country or Northern Ireland. In typical fashion, policy analyst Michael Klare recently dismissed Iraq as an "invented country…to facilitate their exploitation of oil in the region [the British] created the fictitious "Kingdom of Iraq" by patching together three provinces of the former Ottoman Empire…and by parachuting in a fake king from what later became Saudi Arabia." (3) Accepting the Bush Administration’s bogus rationale for the invasion, Klare ascribed Sunni resistance to the desire for a bigger share of oil revenues in the future partition of the country. Missing is any idea that resistance extends beyond "Sunnis" or could be motivated by Iraqi nationalism or the need for self-determination.
Ultimately, the ease with which Western academics casually decide to reshape the countries of their choice owes itself to the continuing legacy of Orientalism. In classic nineteenth century style, the chattering classes suggest that Iraq, despite its five thousand-year history, is now incapable of managing itself, and so its fate must be decided by outside powers. A country that held together in 1991 through six weeks of the most intensive bombing campaign in history, (which according to the UN left Iraq in a "pre-industrial age") and continued to survive through 12 years of the most complete and devastating sanctions ever imposed on any nation is now blithely consigned to history by concerned Western experts. To bolster their case, the myth of ancient sectarian hatreds, a staple of the 'humanitarian intervention’ crowd, is rehashed and fed on a daily basis by journalists who neither question the authorship of "sectarian" attacks nor report the view of ordinary Iraqis, who blame the Occupation army and its puppet government for the orchestrated chaos.
Dismantling Iraq
The preparations for the occupation of Iraq began almost immediately after the first assault in 1991. With the imposition of no-fly-zones in the north and south of the country and the western media already dividing the country into three mutually antagonistic regions, the stage was set. The first glimpse of the organized plan to destroy Iraqi society came with the organized sacking of museums (170,000 pieces lost) and burning of libraries following the fall of the regime in 2003. The looting had two aspects, one indiscriminate and spontaneous and a second, in which organized trafficking network looted pieces from Uruk, Nimrud, Niniveh, and the Nabi Jarjis Mosque. The theft required a prepared, logistical infrastructure, whilst the subsequent sale of the booty was facilitated by the systematic destruction of archives, inventories and museum records (4) Later, when the Occupation forces’ first chief, General Jay Garner, recommended maintaining the Iraqi military and creating a coalition government, defense secretary Rumsfeld removed him. His successor, Paul Bremer, went on to dismantle the army and other key national institutions, as well as 'losing’ some $9 billion of Iraq’s oil revenues along the way. The reconstituted puppet army was formed almost exclusively from the Kurdish and Shia communities, a move specifically designed to incubate sectarian tensions. Meanwhile, anonymous assassins began targeting Iraq’s academic community, eventually provoking a huge 'brain drain’ from the country and further debilitating the country’s capacity to recover.
When the armed opposition groups became active in the country, there then followed a string of events bearing the hallmarks of undercover operations designed to stoke up sectarian conflict and taint the Iraqi Resistance. What follows is a brief summary of the most suspicious incidents.
UN targeted, after 12 years in Iraq
When a truck bomb tore through U.N. headquarters four months into the occupation, killing special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 19 others, pro-consul Bremer suggested two possible culprits: "Saddam loyalists or foreign insurgents". The interim government’s Ahmed Chalabi, however, had received prior notice of the attack the week before. Chalabi had been warned that a "soft target" was to be attacked, although it would be "neither the Coalition Authority nor coalition troops". But the UN, whose security had been withdrawn that day, was never warned. (5)
Kerbala and Baghdad
By November 2003, with the guerilla campaign inflicting heavy losses on US forces, the media and interim governing authority began a steady drumbeat of sectarian brainwashing. After weeks of scare mongering about a civil war, coordinated explosions left 143 Shia civilians dead in Kerbala and Baghdad. The blame fell on 'Al Qaeda’, but journalist Robert Fisk asked the obvious question: "If a violent Sunni group wished to evict the Americans from Iraq…why would it want to turn the Shia population…60 per cent of Iraqis, against them?" No answer was provided, and the senseless attacks increased. (6)
Al Iskandariya
In early February 2004 American authorities claimed to have intercepted a message from Iraq asking 'Al Qaeda’ for help in fomenting a civil war. Almost immediately, as if to underline the message, an explosion killed 50 Shias in the small town of Iskandariya. "Terrorists spark fear of civil war," announced The Independent, contradicting the town’s residents who, without exception, attributed the blast to an American air strike. "They heard a helicopter overhead, and the whoosh of a missile just before the blast." The blast itself left a crater three metres deep, more consistent with a missile than a car bomb (7)
'Al Qaeda in Iraq’
As with the parent organization, nothing about this group rings true. Until 2004 'Al Qaeda,’ a Sunni-only set up, had never uttered a word against Shias. But as the Iraqi Resistance campaign gained unstoppable momentum, the reportedly deceased Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi suddenly resurfaced. Calling for war against the 'infidel’ Shia community, he went on to wage a parallel campaign characterized more by gratuitous attacks on civilians than by ejecting the US from Iraq. In the following years, wherever the US unleashed massive assaults in Iraq, Zarqawi was conveniently 'discovered’ to be hiding. The November 2004 assault on Fallujah was waged with white phosphorous and left at least 6,000 dead beneath the ruins, and yet US surveillance was so sharp that Zarqawi, with his one wooden leg, was apparently observed fleeing on the first day! Amongst Iraqis, the all-purpose Zarqawi was referred to as a kind of mobile WMD able to appear wherever required. His story remained incredible right up to the end, the released photo evidence showing the lightly bruised body of a man killed with a 500lb bomb. (8)
Nick Berg, Margaret Hassan and the Abu Ghraib scandal
By April of 2004 the game was well and truly up. Fallujah became the first major town to come under the open control of the Resistance. Simultaneously, US repression provoked an uprising by the Shia Mehdi Army and the US found itself waging a war on two fronts. Massive shows of inter-faith solidarity ensued with 200,000 Sunnis and Shias on April 9th gathering for collective prayers in Baghdad’s largest Sunni mosque, where the lead preacher derided the possibility of civil war as an American pretext for extending the occupation. The US faced a chorus of protest around the world as it bludgeoned Fallujah from the air in a desperate attempt to retake the city. Then, photographs of systematic torture in the Abu Ghraib detention center were released to the press, finishing off what little credibility the US retained in world opinion. Detracting from the negative publicity, however, previously unknown militant groups began kidnapping foreign nationals and releasing gruesome videos in which the kidnap victims were frequently beheaded on camera when the kidnappers’ demands were not met.
The first victim was businessman Nick Berg, in an alleged 'retaliation’ for Abu Ghraib. The killing, said to be the work of al Zarqawi, came under scrutiny when independent media questioned the execution tape’s veracity. It was determined that the video had first been uploaded to the Internet from London, and after examination of the images by a Mexican forensic surgeon, many observers agreed that the man shown in the film was already a corpse when beheaded. (9)
Anglo-Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan had lived in Iraq for 30 years and dedicated her life to the welfare of Iraqis in need, fighting tirelessly against UN sanctions and opposing the Anglo-American invasion. So when she was kidnapped on her way to work in the autumn of 2004, Iraqis were incredulous. Spontaneous public information campaigns were started and a poster showing Mrs Hassan holding a sick Iraqi child appeared on billboards across the capital. "Margaret Hassan is truly a daughter of Iraq," it read. Patients of Iraqi hospitals took to the streets in protest against the hostage takers, and prominent Resistance groups, even including the phantom Zarqawi, called for her release.
Her kidnappers did not issue any specific demands, but in the captivity video Hassan pleaded for the withdrawal of British troops. In previous cases, the groups had identified themselves and used the videos to make their demands. But Margaret Hassan’s kidnapping was different from the start. This group used no specific name and no banners or flags to identify itself. In their videos appeared none of the usual armed and hooded men or Koranic recitations. Other abducted women, Robert Fisk noted, were released "when their captors recognised their innocence. But not Hassan, even though she spoke fluent Arabic and could explain her work to her captors in their own language."
A video soon surfaced purporting to show her execution and an Iraqi man, Mustafa Salman al-Jubouri, was later sentenced to life imprisonment by a Baghdad court for aiding and abetting the kidnappers. To this date, no group has ever claimed responsibility. (10)
The 'Salvador Option’
Long after piles of corpses began appearing by the roadsides, victims of anonymous assassins, Newsweek magazine reported on a Pentagon plan to use counterinsurgency death squads to eliminate Iraqi Resistance fighters and their supporters. The so-called 'Salvador Option’, named after a similar campaign in Central America in the 1980s, was confirmed by later reports of Interior ministry involvement in the burgeoning death squads. As the victims mounted, the corporate media filtered the story through its angle of Sunni fanatics targeting innocent Shia civilians. But the facts showed a different story. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the bulk of resistance attacks (75%) were on Coalition Forces, far exceeding that of any other category in their survey (with attacks organized by quantity, type of target, and numbers killed and wounded). In sharp contrast to the corporate media’s picture, civilian targets comprised a mere 4.1% of attacks. After 300,000 Baghdad Shias staged the largest popular demonstrations since 1958, M. Junaid Alam asked: "Would such a massive number of Shiites have shown up to protest the occupation if they thought that most of the Sunni-based armed resistance, also opposed to the occupation, was trying to kill them?" (11)
Car bombs
2005 saw a spectacular rise in the use of car bombs, many directed against innocent civilian targets. Though the Zarqawi network was said to have no more than about a thousand men in Iraq, it apparently had an endless supply of personnel ready to sacrifice themselves for the holy war. Other accounts, however, suggest a different explanation.
In May 2005, former Iraqi exile Imad Khadduri, reported how a driver whose license had been confiscated in Baghdad was questioned for half an hour at an American military camp, informed that there were no charges against him, and then directed to the al-Khadimiya police station to retrieve his license. "The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was…carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and … found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat…the only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated 'hideous attack by foreign elements’". (According to Khadurri, the scenario was repeated again in Mosul, when a driver’s car broke down on the way to the police station where he was sent to reclaim his license. The mechanic he then turned to discovered the spare tire to be laden with explosives.) (12)
In the same month, 64-year-old farmer Haj Haidar, who was taking his tomato load from Hilla to Baghdad, was stopped at an American checkpoint and had his pick-up thoroughly searched. Allowed to go on his way, his 11 year-old grandson then told him he saw one of the American soldiers placing a grey melon-sized object amidst the tomato containers. Realizing the vehicle was his only means of work, Haidar fought his initial impulse to run and removed the object from his truck, placing it in a nearby ditch. He later learnt that it had in fact exploded, killing part of a passing shepherd’s flock of sheep. (13)
At this point, legendary Iraqi blogger 'Riverbend’ reported that many of the supposed suicide bombings were in fact remotely detonated car bombs or time bombs. She related how a man was arrested for allegedly having shot at a National Guardsman after huge blasts struck in west Baghdad. But according the man’s neighbours, far from having shot anyone, he had seen "an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away." (14)
The SAS in Basra
In Basra on September 19th 2005, suspicious Iraqi police stopped undercover British soldiers in a Toyota Cressida. The two men then opened fire, killing one policeman and wounding another. Eventually captured, they were identified by the BBC as members of the SAS elite special forces. The soldiers were in wigs and dressed as Arabs and their car was packed with explosives and towing equipment. (15) Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, told Al-Jazeera TV that the car was meant to explode in the centre of Basra’s popular market. Before his thesis could be confirmed, however, the British army’s tanks flattened the local prison cell and freed their sinister operatives.
The phony 'hostage crisis’
Plans to orchestrate sectarian chaos became more obvious in the Occupation’s third year. In one incident, the Baghdad police told commanders of the Shia Mehdi Army that gunmen near the village of Madain were holding 150 Shia civilians hostage. When the militia sent fighters to the area to negotiate their release, they were fired upon, losing at least 25 men. "I think it was a set-up; the fire was too heavy," said an aide said to the Mehdi militia, adding the attackers used snipers and heavy machineguns. (16) Local townspeople were unaware of the supposed hostage crisis and no hostages were ever discovered there.
"Could it be a good thing?" Samarra and the 'Civil War’
Although the incessant sectarian brainwashing was clearly having an effect, Iraqis continued to dismiss the idea of a civil war. (17) In the wake of the destruction of Samarra’s Golden Mosque, however, the scale of the killing in Iraq rose sharply. Those responsible for this critical attack wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms according to the mosque guards. Joint forces of Iraqi ING and Americans, patrolling the surrounding area the whole while, went on to assist a militia attack on a Sunni mosque in a pre-programmed 'response’. The response of most ordinary Iraqis, however, was quite different, According to Sami Ramadani "None of the mostly spontaneous protest marches were directed at Sunni mosques. Near the bombed shrine itself, local Sunnis joined the city's minority Shias to denounce the occupation and accuse it of sharing responsibility for the outrage. In Kut, a march led by Sadr's Mahdi army burned US and Israeli flags. In Baghdad's Sadr City, the anti-occupation march was massive." (18) The Western media, however, could now seize upon each and every incident as evidence of an irreparable social disintegration. Columnist Daniel Pipes approvingly observed that sectarian conflict would reduce attacks on US forces as Iraqis fought each other. His comments were then reflected on Fox News with onscreen captions that read: "Upside To Civil War?" and "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" (19)
History as mystery
The key to justifying the horrendous colonial assault on Iraq was the non-stop manufacture of lies. Zionist cheerleader Thomas Freidman had likened Saddam’s Iraq to an ethnically segregated Alabama in the era of lynchings, where Shia and Kurds held sub human status. That the Minister of Health was Kurdish, that the regime had two Shia Prime ministers (Sadoun Humadi and Mohammed Al-Zubaidi), or that the Vice President was a Christian, never intruded on Freidman’s 'analysis’. In fact, Iraqis rarely asked about the religion or ethnicity of the leaders and functionaries they reported to. It was simply not a matter of concern for them.
Meanwhile, for the 'human rights’ brigade, propagandists such as The Independent’s Johann Hari would hash out a two-dimensional caricature of a country in which a hellish regime murdered, each year, 70,000 of its own citizens (without anyone really noticing). In spite of the Ba’ath government’s admitted crimes, however, a visitor could pass through Baghdad in the 1990s without coming across tanks, car bombs, kidnappings, air strikes, fuel shortages (!) power cuts and vast detention gulags. And whatever the scale of Saddam’s crimes, they pale next to those of the Occupation. As Mike Whitney has said "Saddam had no intention of dismantling the government, the army, the civic institutions; of looting the museums and killing the teachers and intellectuals, of ethnic cleansing the Christians and the Sunnis, and inciting violence between the sects. Saddam had no plan to increase malnutrition, to reduce the flow of clean water, to cut off the electricity, to remove the social-safety net, to increase the poverty and unemployment, or to set Iraqi against Iraqi in a vicious struggle for survival. Saddam did not abide by the neoconservative theory of "creative destruction," which deliberately plunged an entire nation into chaos destroying the fabric of Iraqi society and leaving the people to flock to militias for safety." (20)
The truth is that the approaching peak of global oil production threatens to fatally weaken the US power bloc. (21) Hence, Saddam’s Iraq, an independent, oil-rich state in the most geostrategically important region on earth could not be allowed to survive. But the intractable resistance to the Occupation has obligated the US to turn to its contingency plan (officially, of course, it didn’t have one) In this plan, something similar to Oded Yinon’s tripartite balkanization of the country is being thrashed out. (22) Existing independent states are to be broken up and replaced by a cluster of weak and pliant protectorates. The particulars may be very different, but the engineered breakup of Yugoslavia undoubtedly serves as the model for this dismemberment. "In the 1990s" wrote Diana Johnstone, "the US-led International Community was no longer interested in state-building. Nation-state deconstruction was more compatible with economic globalization measures." (23) To this end, in Iraq as in Yugoslavia, the US has allied itself with "state-splitters" and sectarian bigots, all the while publicly claiming to uphold national sovereignty. In case of any misunderstanding, neocon ideologues have clarified matters: 'natural’ sectarian tensions, they say, will inevitably arise in the absence of a repressive state to subdue them. Therefore, under their benevolent guidance, Iraq must be allowed to devolve into its ethnic components.
Iraq resists
After the 1991 bombing of Iraq, and George Bush Sr.’s announcement of a 'New World Order’ of American hegemony, foreign policy forums effectively proclaimed the nation-state obsolete. In fact, the global imposition of the Western model of development after WWII had already ended the traditional independence of the State. The 'new’ ideology was simply a recognition of facts on the ground. After the Soviet collapse, celebrated advocates of the anti-nation-state ideology predicted an approaching 'End of History’, which would see all the world’s peoples integrate into a globalized, urban, capitalist, consumer lifestyle. Thus, the "chaotic diversity of cultures, values and beliefs that lay behind the conflicts of the past" would be removed in a general process of political and cultural homogenization. (24) It is still too early to predict the end of this delirious vision, but across the world, people are opting to forge their own future, increasingly deaf to the advice of the super elites. In Iraq, consciousness of the big picture is greater than anywhere. Thus, the planned breakdown into generalized sectarian conflict has not materialized. As the armed resistance intensifies its struggle against the US and openly confronts the Salafi Jihadist terrorists (25), a pendant has become extremely popular amongst Iraqis. Seen on the streets and on television, anchorwomen wear it while reading the news. The pendant has the form of Iraq.
When TV stations showed Kalashnikov-weilding teenagers going toe-to-toe with the world’s most powerful army in Fallujah, the images evoked a struggle of epochal significance. But alongside the armed resistance, journalists, intellectuals, trade unionists and Iraqis of all walks of life are, each on their own terrain, facing off against military-corporate rule. However we decide to contribute, it is incumbent on all people of conscience to join them.
The author can be reached at gnaoua22@yahoo.co.uk
Notes:
1. http://canadianspectator.ca/stuff/WWIII.html
2. http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=6559
3. http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/1/154940/816
4."Saqueo a la Arqueologia" Clio: El Pasado Presente Madrid, #.20, June 2003
5. Asia Times, 20 August 2003
6. http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles360.htm
7."Terrorists spark fear of civil war as 50 die in car bomb" The Independent, Wednesday 11th February 2004
8. www.kurtnimmo.com/?p=419
9. http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CAR405A.html
10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1353695,00.html
11."Does the Resistance Target Civilians? According to US Intelligence, Not Really" M. Junaid Alam Left Hook April 18, 2005
12.(http://www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/0505/Combat-terroris
m_160505.htm)
13. http://abutamam.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_abutamam_archive.htl
m
14. http://riverbendblog.blogspit.com/2005_05_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#111636281930496496
15. www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0365.html
16. Omar al-Ibadi, (Reuters) Oct 28
17. www.uruknet.info?p=12150
In Riverbend’s words: "Iraqis have intermarried and mixed as Sunnis and Shia for centuries. Many of the larger Iraqi tribes are a complex and intricate weave of Sunnis and Shia. We don't sit around pointing fingers at each other and trying to prove who is a Muslim and who isn't and who deserves compassion and who deserves brutalization." Regarding the lies about ethnically-based oppression by the Ba’ath, see: http://www.iraqresistance.net/article.php3?id_article=372
18. Sami Ramadani, Friday February 24, 2006 The Guardian
19. www.uruknet.info
20. http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_1341.shtml
21."Crossing the Rubicon", Michael C. Ruppert, New Society Publishers, 2004
22."The March of The Monoculture" Helena Norberg-Hodge, The Ecologist, Volume 29, No.3 May/June 1999
23."Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions", Diana Johnstone, Pluto Press 2002
As N. Hildyard once observed: "Scratch below the surface of inter-ethnic conflict, and the shallowness and deceptiveness of 'blood’ or 'culture’ explanations are soon revealed. 'Tribal hatred’ (though a real and genuine emotion for some) emerges as a product not of 'nature’ or of a primordial 'culture’, but of a complex web of politics, economics, history, psychology and a struggle for identity." N. Hildyard, Briefing 11 – Blood and Culture: Ethnic Conflict and the Authoritarian Right, The Cornerhouse. 1999
24.Oded Yinon "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s"
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html
25. "Anbar Revenge Brigade Makes Progress in the Fight Against al-Qaeda"
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=23
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Posted by Marc Parent mparent7777 mparent CCNWON at 8:59 AM
Read more!!
The longer we demonize Bush, or patronize him, or invest in his supposed idiocy, the deeper we are burying ourselves in servitude and irrelevance.
Plus, They get one more big ole whopper of a benefit from our complicity in making it all George's fault.
They get to present us with a McCain or Giuliani-- a real Macho Man, a supernaturally competent brave forthright testituditious Hombre, who knows not only how to make a war, but gosh darn it, how to WIN one. Who can face down the Enemies of Freedom, and won't screw it up.
Or even worse, we can get a Hilary or Obama or Edwards- who will do ALL of the above, but be really sincerely nice about it."
DRANT #203
People are finally realizing that The Dummy is not stupid.
That Bush and company have WON -
Some of us have been bleating this for years-
(below, my DRANT #203 ("Idiocy by Design") Dec. 2006)
And- in today's
EMPIRE BURLESQUE -- (see below) Cliff Floyd puts it out there as well, as he has been doing for good while.
Plus a great essay by David Montoute about the Bushevik victory.
It's all there folks. No incompetence here. Idiocy by design-- and so far- they win.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
DRANT DAILY
Number 203
December 18, 2006
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The more ya call Bush an idiot, the more They win.
It means They gotya. You bought their Jive.
U have been outFoxed into thinking that everything that's gone down is a series of dunderheaded blunders by a grippe of fools, lead by the biggest schmuck ever to sleep with a president's wife.
Look pal, its all going EXACKLY the way They planned it. Millions of runs, lots of hits, and damn few errors. And never ever forget - They knew George was a putz when they picked him. No surprises there- ya got it ? One thing about George- he is totally disposable. He is the perfect fall guy. A putz for all seasons.
And such a delectably easy scapegoat for all of Us Good Americans who were liedtoliedtoliedto, and just got fooled and are really good people down deep ..... sooo delectably easy for US to say- Its all HIS fault. He's an idiot.
It serves everybody to blame the idiot George. Them and Us. But it wasn't him what did it, it was Us. And for Them, none of it was a mistake.
They wanted chaos, they got chaos.
Ya say that there's chaos in Iraq and Afghanistan ?
Ya say that savage ragheads with moustaches are running around killing each other, and a buncha muslim/islamic/ fanatics keep blowing somebody's wives and kids to slivers of mutton Tikka every night, and ya can't even go to the grocery store or school, or to see grandma, or even to the local Mosque any more- cause somebody wants to tie your hands behind ya, and chop your head and fingers off, and drill a hole in your skull ? Chaos is a half million INTERNAL refugees inside Iraq, and 2 million miraculously unkilled people having fled the country. Yah man. Thass right. But- not In Kurdland. Not where the OIL is.
You say Iraqi kids by the thousands are being born deformed by birth defects caused by our D.U. and radioactive cluster bombs ? And that's just over there- cause there are hundreds of kids being born with the same birth defects and worse, to wives and husbands of OUR soldiers when they get back here to the USA ?
You say you're buying the 1000% unadulterated crapola that the real problem is Them, the Iraqis, not the hundreds of thousands of American occupiers, torturers, "contractors" and their stooge "security forces" --- that this is all about so-called "Sectarian Violence " - a centuries-old civil war being fought between two weird sects about whose daddy was the real prophet ? You say its just like CNN says- the war in Iraq is really about Sunni vs. Shi'a, them against them, not them against us. We just happen to be dere at the time, trying to spread Democracy.
This is all precisely what was designed- mutual annihilation, neighbors and friends killing neighbors and friends, vicious pointless murderous chaos.
This is what they want everywhere- chaos and internecine annihilation. The more disorder and unstability, the less anyone gets in their way, and the more reason to stay in even greater numbers. And of course if a buncha ragheads or Africans or illegal aliens or indigenous non productive eaters happen to die, hey, the fewer competitors for precious resources the better.
And of course blame the victims.
The same same same in Palestine, where the US stooge Fatah and legitimately elected Hamas just can't seem to get along. Fatah getting fattah on US dollars every day, and Hamas deprived of many millions legitimately owed to them by Israel as taxes collected- so the Palestinian people starve, die, and hate even more.
Or in Lebanon, where the stooge Prime Minister watches from his palace window as hundreds of thousands of his people yell for his removal every day ?
Ah yes, more of that darned Sectarian Violence.
This is what the Busheviks wanted, this is what they created, and what they are getting.
They sent Bremer into Iraq to create the maximum in destructuring and chaos -- removing by decree any and all remnants of Iraqi infrastructure, administration, and order. Anyone who had functioned in any way previously, was out. Then they handed the keys to the inmates of the asylum. Nutcases like SCIRI and al Sadr. Of course, this translated as Sunnis Raus - who might have been slightly annoyed, ya think ?
Not to mention Israel, our genocidal Tonto in so much of this. Nothing serves them more than chaos and disorder, and death.
Who's gonna fight you when you build your apartheid walls, or bulldoze their houses ? Nobody, if you can succeed in creating total disarray, where just getting enough food and water is a daily war all itself. Nobody if your Supreme Court makes it Legal to kill anyone who tries to obstruct you.
You say that Israel's war against Hezbollah was a mistake ? Hah.
It succeeded totally.
Lebanon infrastructure trashed, the government in total chaos, and a beautifully packaged nokiddin identifiable nasty bearded Islamic Radical Cleric Enemy to fight.
Hey give me one more chorus of Sectarian Violence from the top Maestro.
Look further: Darfur, where US intervention and blatant interference -- (another round of GrabdaOil-- or didya not know that there's Oil there ?)
has felicitously destabilized an entire region. Genocide in Darfur in B flat, play it again Unka Sam.
Say, do you have a cell phone ? Or a remote on your 40 inch TV ? Do you know whats In those things ? Haveya heard of Coltan ?
Yup, then ya gots ta know all about The Republic of Congo, Rwanda and on and on.
Create chaos, arm everyone, finance both sides, grab the resources. Call it Sectarian Strife.
No boob jobs here, bunky.
No stupid blundering. This is all planned -- and its all working. Globally.
Do you see ? The major pimp media plays the backup track- and the sniggling Left does its onanistic Karaoke-
It ain't us, babe. Its Bush. Bush is an idiot. He has stupidly created disorder and chaos everywhere. What a dummy.
Everytime he does something, Bushdadummy makes a mess. Yuk Yuk.
And all the time, he and the people he works for are getting exactly what they want, and nobody even notices.
Nowhere is the planned chaos and destabilization working better than here, in the good ole USA.
You say that our educational system is in ruins, that our prisons are jammed to inhuman overflow, that we are breathing eating and drinking poison ? That every day every kid born here is jammed with toxins ?
That the gap between the richest and the poorest of us has exploded into proportions that recall nothing less than South American banana republics or Russian Serfdom ? That poverty and inequality is epidemic and health care unavailable, for tens of millions of full-time working people not to mention the unemployed or disabled or old ? That upward mobility and legitimate aspiration are as moribund as the Arctic Ice Shelf and that MOST Americans --the 60% of us who earn less than 38K a year -- are actually earning less than they did in 2000 ?
You think this is because Bush is an idiot, and screws everything up ?
Au seriously contraire bunky.
He and the people he works for are getting exactly what they wanted, and planned for and designed. When anyone self-righteously dares to argue withya about Wade Churchill's term "Little Eichmanns" tell them about this.......
Goldman Sachs profits just increased by 93% ! They made 9 BILLION dollars this year- or about 600 grand per employee.
They are out buying 10 million dollar manhattan fixer uppers, and cars that cost more than most of us make in a year.
Meanwhile, the vast rest of us have seen our wages and salaries and tips and pensions go DOWN by great handfuls.
Do you think this is because Bush is stupid ? Or that They screwed it up ? They need cheap labor, and cannon fodder. They need cheap dollars to pay off the Alps of Debt they have created.
Debt that We pay off. Debt that deprives us of the education and health care that's rightfully ours.
Debt that has gone directly to the Halliburtons and Bechtels and Goldman Sachs scum of the world.
The Pentagon budget will go up to 480 billion dollars this year.
And the profits of those who sell all that stuff to the Pentagon, and the profits of the people who issue and trade the stocks of the people who sell that stuff to the Pentagon, and the earnings of the people who protect all those people and their geometrically expanding vast property --- annnnnd the bribes to the elected officials who make the laws that make the wars and laws that create all that profit ----- all have exploded beyond believability.
But poverty here has exploded even worse, and is increasing and widening every day.
When the Idiot Bush said that he represented the haves and the have mores, it was much more a prophecy than a joke.
The Great Wealth Transfer
It's the biggest untold economic story of our time: more of the nation's bounty held in fewer and fewer hands. And Bush's tax cuts are only making the problem worse
By Paul Krugman
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15923.htm
"...The economic pie is getting bigger -- how can it be true that most Americans are getting smaller slices? The answer, of course, is that a few people are getting much, much bigger slices. Although wages have stagnated since Bush took office, corporate profits have doubled. The gap between the nation's CEOs and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts. In the Bush era, economic inequality is on the rise.
Rising inequality isn't new. The gap between rich and poor started growing before Ronald Reagan took office, and it continued to widen through the Clinton years. But what is happening under Bush is something entirely unprecedented: For the first time in our history, so much growth is being siphoned off to a small, wealthy minority that most Americans are failing to gain ground even during a time of economic growth -- and they know it..."
Now if there is anyone out there who still believes that ANY of this was stupidity, bungling, or idiocy, or that the people who run The Idiot Bush are dummies, or that Bush himself is even one nanoputz in control of any of this - clap your hands.
The longer we demonize Bush, or patronize him, or invest in his supposed idiocy, the deeper we are burying ourselves in servitude and irrelevance.
Plus, They get one more big ole whopper of a benefit from our complicity in making it all George's fault.
They get to present us with a McCain or Giuliani-- a real Macho Man, a supernaturally competent brave forthright testituditious Hombre, who knows not only how to make a war, but gosh darn it, how to WIN one. Who can face down the Enemies of Freedom, and won't screw it up.
Or even worse, we can get a Hilary or Obama or Edwards- who will do ALL of the above, but be really sincerely nice about it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Mission Accomplished: A New Look at Bush's Victory in Iraq
http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1321&Itemid=135
Posted: 22 Oct 2007 06:13 AM CDT
In the latest London Review of Books, Jim Holt provides a cogent, powerful account (http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n20/holt01_.html) of a theme we have been sounding here for years; i.e., that the Iraq War has actually been a resounding success for the Bush Faction (and the various elites it represents and embodies). The Bushists have achieved almost all of their initial war aims and are now set to reap a windfall of up to $30 trillion that will maintain the American elite's whip-hand over the world for generations to come. And all it cost was a measly $1 trillion in taxpayer money, a few thousand pieces of lower-class cannon fodder from the U.S. military – and the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people in Iraq: an excellent return on investment for Bush-Cheney Inc. and their cronies.We've covered this issue at various times from various angles; a sampling includes:Claiming the Prize: Bush Surge Aimed at Securing Iraqi Oil (http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content task=view id=989 Itemid=135) (Jan. 8, 2007)Why Bush Smiles: Victory is at Hand in Iraq (http://www.chris-floyd.com/index.php?option=com_content task=view id=886 Itemid=135)(Oct. 17, 2006)Blood of Victory (http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd06182004.html)(June 18, 2004)Dubya Indemnity: Bush Barons Beyond the Reach of Law (http://empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/2005/03/dubya-indemnity-bush-barons-beyond.html) (Aug. 15, 2003)From Pakistan to the Potomac: The Terror Warriors' Enduring Victory (http://www.chris-floyd.com/Articles/Articles/From_Pakistan_to_the_Potomac%3A_The_Terror_Warriors%27_Enduring_Victory/) (Aug. 9, 2007)Below is a brief mashup from the above articles:In a world of dwindling petroleum resources, those who control large reserves of cheaply-produced oil will reap unimaginable profits – and command the heights of the global economy. It's not just about profit, of course; control of such resources would offer tremendous strategic advantages to anyone who was interested in "full spectrum domination" of world affairs, which the Bush-Cheney faction and their outriders among the neocons and the "national greatness" fanatics have openly sought for years.
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Saturday, December 23, 2006
The Strategy of Disintegration: False flags, dirty tricks and the dismemberment of Iraq
http://mparent7777.blogspot.com/2006/12/strategy-of-disintegration-false-flags.html
December 22, 2006
By David Montoute
The erosion of a target country’s integrity and viability has always been a conscious goal of the Western colonial project. Creating instability and dissatisfaction with existing reality was a necessary prerequisite to "tame" and then integrate native peoples into the dominant hierarchical model. Today, of course, we are told that colonialism is a thing of the past. The leading nations of the international community no longer seek to enslave their less fortunate neighbours, but rather pursue policies of world benefaction - within the limits imposed by healthy competition, of course. When this miraculous conversion took place we are not told, but perhaps it occurred incrementally, parallel to the increasing divide between the world’s rich and poor. In any case, a casual glance at the state of the Muslim world is enough to shatter this foolish delusion.
As Iraqi society descends further and further into mayhem, comedians, satirists and commentators of all kinds have made great hay from the supposed incompetence and stupidity of our leaders. But as the Canadian Spectator suggested recently, if it should happen that the United States is not run by buffoons, "one must conclude that chaos, impoverishment and civil war in the Muslim world…far from being the unintended consequences, are precisely the objectives of U.S. policy." (1)
As with 9/11, the trigger event for the War on Terror, incompetence is the preferred explanation for the nightmare scenario in Iraq today. Though counterintuitive to the domesticated populations of the West, a plan to deliberately fragment Iraq along ethnic lines is amply confirmed by the published record. Resuscitating earlier Zionist schemes, the US Council on Foreign Relations recently called for the dissolution of the "unnatural Iraqi state." (2) On the grounds of its ethnic diversity, Iraq is said to be a false, artificial construct, a product of arbitrary colonial decisions in the early 20th century. It is a judgment that could apply to many of the world’s countries, and yet the theme is being enthusiastically adopted by reams of 'experts’ who would never dream of questioning state sovereignty in Quebec, the Basque Country or Northern Ireland. In typical fashion, policy analyst Michael Klare recently dismissed Iraq as an "invented country…to facilitate their exploitation of oil in the region [the British] created the fictitious "Kingdom of Iraq" by patching together three provinces of the former Ottoman Empire…and by parachuting in a fake king from what later became Saudi Arabia." (3) Accepting the Bush Administration’s bogus rationale for the invasion, Klare ascribed Sunni resistance to the desire for a bigger share of oil revenues in the future partition of the country. Missing is any idea that resistance extends beyond "Sunnis" or could be motivated by Iraqi nationalism or the need for self-determination.
Ultimately, the ease with which Western academics casually decide to reshape the countries of their choice owes itself to the continuing legacy of Orientalism. In classic nineteenth century style, the chattering classes suggest that Iraq, despite its five thousand-year history, is now incapable of managing itself, and so its fate must be decided by outside powers. A country that held together in 1991 through six weeks of the most intensive bombing campaign in history, (which according to the UN left Iraq in a "pre-industrial age") and continued to survive through 12 years of the most complete and devastating sanctions ever imposed on any nation is now blithely consigned to history by concerned Western experts. To bolster their case, the myth of ancient sectarian hatreds, a staple of the 'humanitarian intervention’ crowd, is rehashed and fed on a daily basis by journalists who neither question the authorship of "sectarian" attacks nor report the view of ordinary Iraqis, who blame the Occupation army and its puppet government for the orchestrated chaos.
Dismantling Iraq
The preparations for the occupation of Iraq began almost immediately after the first assault in 1991. With the imposition of no-fly-zones in the north and south of the country and the western media already dividing the country into three mutually antagonistic regions, the stage was set. The first glimpse of the organized plan to destroy Iraqi society came with the organized sacking of museums (170,000 pieces lost) and burning of libraries following the fall of the regime in 2003. The looting had two aspects, one indiscriminate and spontaneous and a second, in which organized trafficking network looted pieces from Uruk, Nimrud, Niniveh, and the Nabi Jarjis Mosque. The theft required a prepared, logistical infrastructure, whilst the subsequent sale of the booty was facilitated by the systematic destruction of archives, inventories and museum records (4) Later, when the Occupation forces’ first chief, General Jay Garner, recommended maintaining the Iraqi military and creating a coalition government, defense secretary Rumsfeld removed him. His successor, Paul Bremer, went on to dismantle the army and other key national institutions, as well as 'losing’ some $9 billion of Iraq’s oil revenues along the way. The reconstituted puppet army was formed almost exclusively from the Kurdish and Shia communities, a move specifically designed to incubate sectarian tensions. Meanwhile, anonymous assassins began targeting Iraq’s academic community, eventually provoking a huge 'brain drain’ from the country and further debilitating the country’s capacity to recover.
When the armed opposition groups became active in the country, there then followed a string of events bearing the hallmarks of undercover operations designed to stoke up sectarian conflict and taint the Iraqi Resistance. What follows is a brief summary of the most suspicious incidents.
UN targeted, after 12 years in Iraq
When a truck bomb tore through U.N. headquarters four months into the occupation, killing special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 19 others, pro-consul Bremer suggested two possible culprits: "Saddam loyalists or foreign insurgents". The interim government’s Ahmed Chalabi, however, had received prior notice of the attack the week before. Chalabi had been warned that a "soft target" was to be attacked, although it would be "neither the Coalition Authority nor coalition troops". But the UN, whose security had been withdrawn that day, was never warned. (5)
Kerbala and Baghdad
By November 2003, with the guerilla campaign inflicting heavy losses on US forces, the media and interim governing authority began a steady drumbeat of sectarian brainwashing. After weeks of scare mongering about a civil war, coordinated explosions left 143 Shia civilians dead in Kerbala and Baghdad. The blame fell on 'Al Qaeda’, but journalist Robert Fisk asked the obvious question: "If a violent Sunni group wished to evict the Americans from Iraq…why would it want to turn the Shia population…60 per cent of Iraqis, against them?" No answer was provided, and the senseless attacks increased. (6)
Al Iskandariya
In early February 2004 American authorities claimed to have intercepted a message from Iraq asking 'Al Qaeda’ for help in fomenting a civil war. Almost immediately, as if to underline the message, an explosion killed 50 Shias in the small town of Iskandariya. "Terrorists spark fear of civil war," announced The Independent, contradicting the town’s residents who, without exception, attributed the blast to an American air strike. "They heard a helicopter overhead, and the whoosh of a missile just before the blast." The blast itself left a crater three metres deep, more consistent with a missile than a car bomb (7)
'Al Qaeda in Iraq’
As with the parent organization, nothing about this group rings true. Until 2004 'Al Qaeda,’ a Sunni-only set up, had never uttered a word against Shias. But as the Iraqi Resistance campaign gained unstoppable momentum, the reportedly deceased Jordanian militant Abu Musab Zarqawi suddenly resurfaced. Calling for war against the 'infidel’ Shia community, he went on to wage a parallel campaign characterized more by gratuitous attacks on civilians than by ejecting the US from Iraq. In the following years, wherever the US unleashed massive assaults in Iraq, Zarqawi was conveniently 'discovered’ to be hiding. The November 2004 assault on Fallujah was waged with white phosphorous and left at least 6,000 dead beneath the ruins, and yet US surveillance was so sharp that Zarqawi, with his one wooden leg, was apparently observed fleeing on the first day! Amongst Iraqis, the all-purpose Zarqawi was referred to as a kind of mobile WMD able to appear wherever required. His story remained incredible right up to the end, the released photo evidence showing the lightly bruised body of a man killed with a 500lb bomb. (8)
Nick Berg, Margaret Hassan and the Abu Ghraib scandal
By April of 2004 the game was well and truly up. Fallujah became the first major town to come under the open control of the Resistance. Simultaneously, US repression provoked an uprising by the Shia Mehdi Army and the US found itself waging a war on two fronts. Massive shows of inter-faith solidarity ensued with 200,000 Sunnis and Shias on April 9th gathering for collective prayers in Baghdad’s largest Sunni mosque, where the lead preacher derided the possibility of civil war as an American pretext for extending the occupation. The US faced a chorus of protest around the world as it bludgeoned Fallujah from the air in a desperate attempt to retake the city. Then, photographs of systematic torture in the Abu Ghraib detention center were released to the press, finishing off what little credibility the US retained in world opinion. Detracting from the negative publicity, however, previously unknown militant groups began kidnapping foreign nationals and releasing gruesome videos in which the kidnap victims were frequently beheaded on camera when the kidnappers’ demands were not met.
The first victim was businessman Nick Berg, in an alleged 'retaliation’ for Abu Ghraib. The killing, said to be the work of al Zarqawi, came under scrutiny when independent media questioned the execution tape’s veracity. It was determined that the video had first been uploaded to the Internet from London, and after examination of the images by a Mexican forensic surgeon, many observers agreed that the man shown in the film was already a corpse when beheaded. (9)
Anglo-Irish aid worker Margaret Hassan had lived in Iraq for 30 years and dedicated her life to the welfare of Iraqis in need, fighting tirelessly against UN sanctions and opposing the Anglo-American invasion. So when she was kidnapped on her way to work in the autumn of 2004, Iraqis were incredulous. Spontaneous public information campaigns were started and a poster showing Mrs Hassan holding a sick Iraqi child appeared on billboards across the capital. "Margaret Hassan is truly a daughter of Iraq," it read. Patients of Iraqi hospitals took to the streets in protest against the hostage takers, and prominent Resistance groups, even including the phantom Zarqawi, called for her release.
Her kidnappers did not issue any specific demands, but in the captivity video Hassan pleaded for the withdrawal of British troops. In previous cases, the groups had identified themselves and used the videos to make their demands. But Margaret Hassan’s kidnapping was different from the start. This group used no specific name and no banners or flags to identify itself. In their videos appeared none of the usual armed and hooded men or Koranic recitations. Other abducted women, Robert Fisk noted, were released "when their captors recognised their innocence. But not Hassan, even though she spoke fluent Arabic and could explain her work to her captors in their own language."
A video soon surfaced purporting to show her execution and an Iraqi man, Mustafa Salman al-Jubouri, was later sentenced to life imprisonment by a Baghdad court for aiding and abetting the kidnappers. To this date, no group has ever claimed responsibility. (10)
The 'Salvador Option’
Long after piles of corpses began appearing by the roadsides, victims of anonymous assassins, Newsweek magazine reported on a Pentagon plan to use counterinsurgency death squads to eliminate Iraqi Resistance fighters and their supporters. The so-called 'Salvador Option’, named after a similar campaign in Central America in the 1980s, was confirmed by later reports of Interior ministry involvement in the burgeoning death squads. As the victims mounted, the corporate media filtered the story through its angle of Sunni fanatics targeting innocent Shia civilians. But the facts showed a different story. According to a report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the bulk of resistance attacks (75%) were on Coalition Forces, far exceeding that of any other category in their survey (with attacks organized by quantity, type of target, and numbers killed and wounded). In sharp contrast to the corporate media’s picture, civilian targets comprised a mere 4.1% of attacks. After 300,000 Baghdad Shias staged the largest popular demonstrations since 1958, M. Junaid Alam asked: "Would such a massive number of Shiites have shown up to protest the occupation if they thought that most of the Sunni-based armed resistance, also opposed to the occupation, was trying to kill them?" (11)
Car bombs
2005 saw a spectacular rise in the use of car bombs, many directed against innocent civilian targets. Though the Zarqawi network was said to have no more than about a thousand men in Iraq, it apparently had an endless supply of personnel ready to sacrifice themselves for the holy war. Other accounts, however, suggest a different explanation.
In May 2005, former Iraqi exile Imad Khadduri, reported how a driver whose license had been confiscated in Baghdad was questioned for half an hour at an American military camp, informed that there were no charges against him, and then directed to the al-Khadimiya police station to retrieve his license. "The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was…carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and … found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat…the only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated 'hideous attack by foreign elements’". (According to Khadurri, the scenario was repeated again in Mosul, when a driver’s car broke down on the way to the police station where he was sent to reclaim his license. The mechanic he then turned to discovered the spare tire to be laden with explosives.) (12)
In the same month, 64-year-old farmer Haj Haidar, who was taking his tomato load from Hilla to Baghdad, was stopped at an American checkpoint and had his pick-up thoroughly searched. Allowed to go on his way, his 11 year-old grandson then told him he saw one of the American soldiers placing a grey melon-sized object amidst the tomato containers. Realizing the vehicle was his only means of work, Haidar fought his initial impulse to run and removed the object from his truck, placing it in a nearby ditch. He later learnt that it had in fact exploded, killing part of a passing shepherd’s flock of sheep. (13)
At this point, legendary Iraqi blogger 'Riverbend’ reported that many of the supposed suicide bombings were in fact remotely detonated car bombs or time bombs. She related how a man was arrested for allegedly having shot at a National Guardsman after huge blasts struck in west Baghdad. But according the man’s neighbours, far from having shot anyone, he had seen "an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away." (14)
The SAS in Basra
In Basra on September 19th 2005, suspicious Iraqi police stopped undercover British soldiers in a Toyota Cressida. The two men then opened fire, killing one policeman and wounding another. Eventually captured, they were identified by the BBC as members of the SAS elite special forces. The soldiers were in wigs and dressed as Arabs and their car was packed with explosives and towing equipment. (15) Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, told Al-Jazeera TV that the car was meant to explode in the centre of Basra’s popular market. Before his thesis could be confirmed, however, the British army’s tanks flattened the local prison cell and freed their sinister operatives.
The phony 'hostage crisis’
Plans to orchestrate sectarian chaos became more obvious in the Occupation’s third year. In one incident, the Baghdad police told commanders of the Shia Mehdi Army that gunmen near the village of Madain were holding 150 Shia civilians hostage. When the militia sent fighters to the area to negotiate their release, they were fired upon, losing at least 25 men. "I think it was a set-up; the fire was too heavy," said an aide said to the Mehdi militia, adding the attackers used snipers and heavy machineguns. (16) Local townspeople were unaware of the supposed hostage crisis and no hostages were ever discovered there.
"Could it be a good thing?" Samarra and the 'Civil War’
Although the incessant sectarian brainwashing was clearly having an effect, Iraqis continued to dismiss the idea of a civil war. (17) In the wake of the destruction of Samarra’s Golden Mosque, however, the scale of the killing in Iraq rose sharply. Those responsible for this critical attack wore Iraqi National Guard uniforms according to the mosque guards. Joint forces of Iraqi ING and Americans, patrolling the surrounding area the whole while, went on to assist a militia attack on a Sunni mosque in a pre-programmed 'response’. The response of most ordinary Iraqis, however, was quite different, According to Sami Ramadani "None of the mostly spontaneous protest marches were directed at Sunni mosques. Near the bombed shrine itself, local Sunnis joined the city's minority Shias to denounce the occupation and accuse it of sharing responsibility for the outrage. In Kut, a march led by Sadr's Mahdi army burned US and Israeli flags. In Baghdad's Sadr City, the anti-occupation march was massive." (18) The Western media, however, could now seize upon each and every incident as evidence of an irreparable social disintegration. Columnist Daniel Pipes approvingly observed that sectarian conflict would reduce attacks on US forces as Iraqis fought each other. His comments were then reflected on Fox News with onscreen captions that read: "Upside To Civil War?" and "All-Out Civil War in Iraq: Could It Be a Good Thing?" (19)
History as mystery
The key to justifying the horrendous colonial assault on Iraq was the non-stop manufacture of lies. Zionist cheerleader Thomas Freidman had likened Saddam’s Iraq to an ethnically segregated Alabama in the era of lynchings, where Shia and Kurds held sub human status. That the Minister of Health was Kurdish, that the regime had two Shia Prime ministers (Sadoun Humadi and Mohammed Al-Zubaidi), or that the Vice President was a Christian, never intruded on Freidman’s 'analysis’. In fact, Iraqis rarely asked about the religion or ethnicity of the leaders and functionaries they reported to. It was simply not a matter of concern for them.
Meanwhile, for the 'human rights’ brigade, propagandists such as The Independent’s Johann Hari would hash out a two-dimensional caricature of a country in which a hellish regime murdered, each year, 70,000 of its own citizens (without anyone really noticing). In spite of the Ba’ath government’s admitted crimes, however, a visitor could pass through Baghdad in the 1990s without coming across tanks, car bombs, kidnappings, air strikes, fuel shortages (!) power cuts and vast detention gulags. And whatever the scale of Saddam’s crimes, they pale next to those of the Occupation. As Mike Whitney has said "Saddam had no intention of dismantling the government, the army, the civic institutions; of looting the museums and killing the teachers and intellectuals, of ethnic cleansing the Christians and the Sunnis, and inciting violence between the sects. Saddam had no plan to increase malnutrition, to reduce the flow of clean water, to cut off the electricity, to remove the social-safety net, to increase the poverty and unemployment, or to set Iraqi against Iraqi in a vicious struggle for survival. Saddam did not abide by the neoconservative theory of "creative destruction," which deliberately plunged an entire nation into chaos destroying the fabric of Iraqi society and leaving the people to flock to militias for safety." (20)
The truth is that the approaching peak of global oil production threatens to fatally weaken the US power bloc. (21) Hence, Saddam’s Iraq, an independent, oil-rich state in the most geostrategically important region on earth could not be allowed to survive. But the intractable resistance to the Occupation has obligated the US to turn to its contingency plan (officially, of course, it didn’t have one) In this plan, something similar to Oded Yinon’s tripartite balkanization of the country is being thrashed out. (22) Existing independent states are to be broken up and replaced by a cluster of weak and pliant protectorates. The particulars may be very different, but the engineered breakup of Yugoslavia undoubtedly serves as the model for this dismemberment. "In the 1990s" wrote Diana Johnstone, "the US-led International Community was no longer interested in state-building. Nation-state deconstruction was more compatible with economic globalization measures." (23) To this end, in Iraq as in Yugoslavia, the US has allied itself with "state-splitters" and sectarian bigots, all the while publicly claiming to uphold national sovereignty. In case of any misunderstanding, neocon ideologues have clarified matters: 'natural’ sectarian tensions, they say, will inevitably arise in the absence of a repressive state to subdue them. Therefore, under their benevolent guidance, Iraq must be allowed to devolve into its ethnic components.
Iraq resists
After the 1991 bombing of Iraq, and George Bush Sr.’s announcement of a 'New World Order’ of American hegemony, foreign policy forums effectively proclaimed the nation-state obsolete. In fact, the global imposition of the Western model of development after WWII had already ended the traditional independence of the State. The 'new’ ideology was simply a recognition of facts on the ground. After the Soviet collapse, celebrated advocates of the anti-nation-state ideology predicted an approaching 'End of History’, which would see all the world’s peoples integrate into a globalized, urban, capitalist, consumer lifestyle. Thus, the "chaotic diversity of cultures, values and beliefs that lay behind the conflicts of the past" would be removed in a general process of political and cultural homogenization. (24) It is still too early to predict the end of this delirious vision, but across the world, people are opting to forge their own future, increasingly deaf to the advice of the super elites. In Iraq, consciousness of the big picture is greater than anywhere. Thus, the planned breakdown into generalized sectarian conflict has not materialized. As the armed resistance intensifies its struggle against the US and openly confronts the Salafi Jihadist terrorists (25), a pendant has become extremely popular amongst Iraqis. Seen on the streets and on television, anchorwomen wear it while reading the news. The pendant has the form of Iraq.
When TV stations showed Kalashnikov-weilding teenagers going toe-to-toe with the world’s most powerful army in Fallujah, the images evoked a struggle of epochal significance. But alongside the armed resistance, journalists, intellectuals, trade unionists and Iraqis of all walks of life are, each on their own terrain, facing off against military-corporate rule. However we decide to contribute, it is incumbent on all people of conscience to join them.
The author can be reached at gnaoua22@yahoo.co.uk
Notes:
1. http://canadianspectator.ca/stuff/WWIII.html
2. http://www.cfr.org/publication.html?id=6559
3. http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/11/1/154940/816
4."Saqueo a la Arqueologia" Clio: El Pasado Presente Madrid, #.20, June 2003
5. Asia Times, 20 August 2003
6. http://www.robert-fisk.com/articles360.htm
7."Terrorists spark fear of civil war as 50 die in car bomb" The Independent, Wednesday 11th February 2004
8. www.kurtnimmo.com/?p=419
9. http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CAR405A.html
10. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1353695,00.html
11."Does the Resistance Target Civilians? According to US Intelligence, Not Really" M. Junaid Alam Left Hook April 18, 2005
12.(http://www.albasrah.net/maqalat/english/0505/Combat-terroris
m_160505.htm)
13. http://abutamam.blogspot.com/2005_05_01_abutamam_archive.htl
m
14. http://riverbendblog.blogspit.com/2005_05_01_riverbendblog_archive.html#111636281930496496
15. www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0365.html
16. Omar al-Ibadi, (Reuters) Oct 28
17. www.uruknet.info?p=12150
In Riverbend’s words: "Iraqis have intermarried and mixed as Sunnis and Shia for centuries. Many of the larger Iraqi tribes are a complex and intricate weave of Sunnis and Shia. We don't sit around pointing fingers at each other and trying to prove who is a Muslim and who isn't and who deserves compassion and who deserves brutalization." Regarding the lies about ethnically-based oppression by the Ba’ath, see: http://www.iraqresistance.net/article.php3?id_article=372
18. Sami Ramadani, Friday February 24, 2006 The Guardian
19. www.uruknet.info
20. http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_1341.shtml
21."Crossing the Rubicon", Michael C. Ruppert, New Society Publishers, 2004
22."The March of The Monoculture" Helena Norberg-Hodge, The Ecologist, Volume 29, No.3 May/June 1999
23."Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions", Diana Johnstone, Pluto Press 2002
As N. Hildyard once observed: "Scratch below the surface of inter-ethnic conflict, and the shallowness and deceptiveness of 'blood’ or 'culture’ explanations are soon revealed. 'Tribal hatred’ (though a real and genuine emotion for some) emerges as a product not of 'nature’ or of a primordial 'culture’, but of a complex web of politics, economics, history, psychology and a struggle for identity." N. Hildyard, Briefing 11 – Blood and Culture: Ethnic Conflict and the Authoritarian Right, The Cornerhouse. 1999
24.Oded Yinon "A Strategy for Israel in the 1980s"
http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/articles/article0005345.html
25. "Anbar Revenge Brigade Makes Progress in the Fight Against al-Qaeda"
http://jamestown.org/terrorism/news/article.php?articleid=23
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Posted by Marc Parent mparent7777 mparent CCNWON at 8:59 AM
Read more!!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
DRANT #264: PRAISING FOR FAINT DAMNS
To continue from last time--
We were discussing the Gorific PR campaign and magical transformation of a man who talks endlessly and righteously about the rape of the planet but never names the rapists-- my man Al. Last week he could barely walk under the weight of the pollyannic profusion of detritistical fawnacious crap lobbed his way by the pimp media and self-delusional Democrats with Hillariphobic dysentery.
People are so starved for any miniscule sign that anyone is even listening, that they latch onto the slightest dissentious uttering like it was The Gettysburg Address.
Near asphyxiation, we have lionized and inflated middle of the road whiners like Keith Olbermann to be our standard bearers. Just by squeezing some Bush bashing in between trashing Britney and OJ and Rush Limbaugh, Olbermann has become a multi-blogged email-forwarded cable Spartacus, despite the fact that his vision, in deference to the guys who sign his checks, sees no further than The White House.
And of course -- as I said last time- "...finally, comes Frank Rich- of that famous bastion of morality and journalistic integrity- The New York Times, to declare that We, (the group formerly known as) The People quite possibly might be sidling toward Good Germanism. What a blast of bracing fresh air, bleats the flaccid progressive blogopoly. At last, someone to Pericles our asses into shape. A crock of dialed tears, I say, a sanctimonious self-semi-flagellation with a licorice stick. After all, how COULD we have known ?"
FRANK RICH
Ya can't be amazed at Frank being what and who he is. And ya can't be surprised that The NY Times carries his stuff, since its exactly the kind of myopic propaganda for which their paper has become famous.
It's Us -- the desperately gullible who Paul Revere this kind of superficial bilge that should be ashamed.
How many emails did U get -- how many "progressive" blogs did U read- trumpeting Rich's Op-Ed of Oct 14-
"The Good Germans Among Us"?
As if it was some kind of brilliant call to arms, or piercing revelation, or courageous self-analysis.
As if-- it meant one damn thing, except more evidence that we are none of us ready to take real responsibility for what WE have done.
It seems that Rich has just figgered out that We have some culpability in the global atrocities and murders being committed in Our name, with Our money, and Our acquiescence. What a concept !
“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves."
A promising start, if a litttttle tardy.
But the Big Lie goes on- It's THEM, the bad guys, Bush and them, what did it, and not US. We should be speaking up more, but its not like it was US that actually did any of it or anything like that.
"...We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.
Like Gore, Rich reports the crime, and then refuses to name the perps. Hint: it wasn't Paul Bremer.
Causing chaos, destroying the rule of law, disbanding the fundamental organizing principle of the Nation of Iraq- and then obliterating the Iraqi Army, sending 300,000 armed angry vengeful UNEMPLOYED men into the streets -- was no "folly" -- no mistake. Calling it folly perpetuates the myth of inadvertent disorder, and misses the whole point.
"...I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top."
And why, does he suppose, did "powerful institutions" coalesce to push us into war ? And WHO, does he suppose, are the REAL powers - the quintessential beneficiaries of murderous cuibonoism- who really did the deed ?
Rich names only "Congress and the press" as the guilty parties, which is like busting two 14 year old nickel bag pushers, and letting the big time dealers walk.
He knows who Congress works for, everybody does.
He DEFINITELY knows who the press works for, who HE works for.
Like Al, he is totally mum on the real villains --- who he KNOWS run the show, whose profits have exploded logarithmically, whose share prices have octupled, whose labor costs have evaporated, who have sold enough weapons to arm every country on earth eight times, and who have bought and control the very "powerful institutions" that Rich sticks in front of our eyes to blind us from the truth.
And then, Rich lets US off the hook. It really wasn't our fault.
"...It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war..."
We were merely poor innocent dupes, bamboozled into acquiescence, ignorance, complicity.
We were lied to, and couldn't see the real truth.
We were bribed by tax cuts and distracted by Cable news, lulled into passive consumeristic somnambulance -- unawakened by a draft or nasty TV pictures.
"...Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq."
Who is he talking to here ? Who is he exculpating if not his own self ? We are all totally responsible for our own ignorance, and the fact that most of us have sacrificed nothing is not justification for never noticing that sacrifices were made-- it only reinforces the arrogance of our reliance on our own privilege to feel safe.
At long last, Rich speaks tersely - exactly one paragraph - of the real victims-- the Iraqis. Then, of course, it's back to our problems.
He bemoans the inefficiency of our interrogation techniques, complaining that torture just doesn't work too well, we need to try chess.
Here's his Big Finish. Read it, but don't eat first:
"...Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name."
Our humanity has been "compromised " ?
Is that it ?
And it's been done by "Them" again- those nasties who used "Gestapo" tactics.
Oh.
And who ya gonna call ?
Congress.
And, there is nothing left to lose but the good name of the USA ?
Help me someone I can't breathe. The stench is too strong.
I know why everyone sends around Frank Rich-- because he grants us moral absolution. We need to complain to Congress more, but basically we are good people who got fooled by the Bad Guys.
Please don't send me Frank Rich, or Aribotox Huffingbilge, or Keith Smirk.
if ya wanna quote someone with some balls- who stands up and tells it, send me Pete Stark.
Anyone who offends Nancy Pelosi is OK in my book.
Read more!!
We were discussing the Gorific PR campaign and magical transformation of a man who talks endlessly and righteously about the rape of the planet but never names the rapists-- my man Al. Last week he could barely walk under the weight of the pollyannic profusion of detritistical fawnacious crap lobbed his way by the pimp media and self-delusional Democrats with Hillariphobic dysentery.
People are so starved for any miniscule sign that anyone is even listening, that they latch onto the slightest dissentious uttering like it was The Gettysburg Address.
Near asphyxiation, we have lionized and inflated middle of the road whiners like Keith Olbermann to be our standard bearers. Just by squeezing some Bush bashing in between trashing Britney and OJ and Rush Limbaugh, Olbermann has become a multi-blogged email-forwarded cable Spartacus, despite the fact that his vision, in deference to the guys who sign his checks, sees no further than The White House.
And of course -- as I said last time- "...finally, comes Frank Rich- of that famous bastion of morality and journalistic integrity- The New York Times, to declare that We, (the group formerly known as) The People quite possibly might be sidling toward Good Germanism. What a blast of bracing fresh air, bleats the flaccid progressive blogopoly. At last, someone to Pericles our asses into shape. A crock of dialed tears, I say, a sanctimonious self-semi-flagellation with a licorice stick. After all, how COULD we have known ?"
FRANK RICH
Ya can't be amazed at Frank being what and who he is. And ya can't be surprised that The NY Times carries his stuff, since its exactly the kind of myopic propaganda for which their paper has become famous.
It's Us -- the desperately gullible who Paul Revere this kind of superficial bilge that should be ashamed.
How many emails did U get -- how many "progressive" blogs did U read- trumpeting Rich's Op-Ed of Oct 14-
"The Good Germans Among Us"?
As if it was some kind of brilliant call to arms, or piercing revelation, or courageous self-analysis.
As if-- it meant one damn thing, except more evidence that we are none of us ready to take real responsibility for what WE have done.
It seems that Rich has just figgered out that We have some culpability in the global atrocities and murders being committed in Our name, with Our money, and Our acquiescence. What a concept !
“BUSH lies” doesn’t cut it anymore. It’s time to confront the darker reality that we are lying to ourselves."
A promising start, if a litttttle tardy.
But the Big Lie goes on- It's THEM, the bad guys, Bush and them, what did it, and not US. We should be speaking up more, but its not like it was US that actually did any of it or anything like that.
"...We can continue to blame the Bush administration for the horrors of Iraq — and should. Paul Bremer, our post-invasion viceroy and the recipient of a Presidential Medal of Freedom for his efforts, issued the order that allows contractors to elude Iraqi law, a folly second only to his disbanding of the Iraqi Army. But we must also examine our own responsibility for the hideous acts committed in our name in a war where we have now fought longer than we did in the one that put Verschärfte Vernehmung on the map.
Like Gore, Rich reports the crime, and then refuses to name the perps. Hint: it wasn't Paul Bremer.
Causing chaos, destroying the rule of law, disbanding the fundamental organizing principle of the Nation of Iraq- and then obliterating the Iraqi Army, sending 300,000 armed angry vengeful UNEMPLOYED men into the streets -- was no "folly" -- no mistake. Calling it folly perpetuates the myth of inadvertent disorder, and misses the whole point.
"...I have always maintained that the American public was the least culpable of the players during the run-up to Iraq. The war was sold by a brilliant and fear-fueled White House propaganda campaign designed to stampede a nation still shellshocked by 9/11. Both Congress and the press — the powerful institutions that should have provided the checks, balances and due diligence of the administration’s case — failed to do their job. Had they done so, more Americans might have raised more objections. This perfect storm of democratic failure began at the top."
And why, does he suppose, did "powerful institutions" coalesce to push us into war ? And WHO, does he suppose, are the REAL powers - the quintessential beneficiaries of murderous cuibonoism- who really did the deed ?
Rich names only "Congress and the press" as the guilty parties, which is like busting two 14 year old nickel bag pushers, and letting the big time dealers walk.
He knows who Congress works for, everybody does.
He DEFINITELY knows who the press works for, who HE works for.
Like Al, he is totally mum on the real villains --- who he KNOWS run the show, whose profits have exploded logarithmically, whose share prices have octupled, whose labor costs have evaporated, who have sold enough weapons to arm every country on earth eight times, and who have bought and control the very "powerful institutions" that Rich sticks in front of our eyes to blind us from the truth.
And then, Rich lets US off the hook. It really wasn't our fault.
"...It was always the White House’s plan to coax us into a blissful ignorance about the war..."
We were merely poor innocent dupes, bamboozled into acquiescence, ignorance, complicity.
We were lied to, and couldn't see the real truth.
We were bribed by tax cuts and distracted by Cable news, lulled into passive consumeristic somnambulance -- unawakened by a draft or nasty TV pictures.
"...Instead of taxing us for Iraq, the White House bought us off with tax cuts. Instead of mobilizing the needed troops, it kept a draft off the table by quietly purchasing its auxiliary army of contractors to finesse the overstretched military’s holes. With the war’s entire weight falling on a small voluntary force, amounting to less than 1 percent of the population, the rest of us were free to look the other way at whatever went down in Iraq."
Who is he talking to here ? Who is he exculpating if not his own self ? We are all totally responsible for our own ignorance, and the fact that most of us have sacrificed nothing is not justification for never noticing that sacrifices were made-- it only reinforces the arrogance of our reliance on our own privilege to feel safe.
At long last, Rich speaks tersely - exactly one paragraph - of the real victims-- the Iraqis. Then, of course, it's back to our problems.
He bemoans the inefficiency of our interrogation techniques, complaining that torture just doesn't work too well, we need to try chess.
Here's his Big Finish. Read it, but don't eat first:
"...Our humanity has been compromised by those who use Gestapo tactics in our war. The longer we stand idly by while they do so, the more we resemble those “good Germans” who professed ignorance of their own Gestapo. It’s up to us to wake up our somnambulant Congress to challenge administration policy every day. Let the war’s last supporters filibuster all night if they want to. There is nothing left to lose except whatever remains of our country’s good name."
Our humanity has been "compromised " ?
Is that it ?
And it's been done by "Them" again- those nasties who used "Gestapo" tactics.
Oh.
And who ya gonna call ?
Congress.
And, there is nothing left to lose but the good name of the USA ?
Help me someone I can't breathe. The stench is too strong.
I know why everyone sends around Frank Rich-- because he grants us moral absolution. We need to complain to Congress more, but basically we are good people who got fooled by the Bad Guys.
Please don't send me Frank Rich, or Aribotox Huffingbilge, or Keith Smirk.
if ya wanna quote someone with some balls- who stands up and tells it, send me Pete Stark.
Anyone who offends Nancy Pelosi is OK in my book.
Read more!!
Monday, October 15, 2007
DRANT #263: CROCK OF DIALED TEARS
"... Americans...must at last commence the process of facing up both to the realities of their national history and to the realities that their history has bequeathed. In effect, Americans will either become active parts of the solution to what they and their country have wrought, or they will remain equally active parts of the problem."
"... There is no place for either spectators or bystanders at a Holocaust..."
"...There is no painless, privilege-preserving pill that can be taken to effect a quick fix of what ails the U.S., no petition, no manifesto, no song nor candle light vigil that will suffice.
The terms of change must and will be harsh, inevitably so, given the propensity of those who seek to prevent it to gauge their success by the rotting corpses of toddlers. This truth, no matter its inconvenience to those snugly situated within the comfort zone of political pretense, is all that defines the substance of meaningful struggle."
Ward Churchill: On The Justice of Roosting Chickens
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"My nickname for our current economic system is "The Tapeworm. " For decades I have listened to Americans from all walks of life insist that we must find solutions within the system -- i.e. within the socially acceptable boundaries laid down by the Tapeworm. Believing that our solutions for addressing global warming lie within the system defined by the Tapeworm goes hand in hand with obtaining our media from companies controlled by the Tapeworm, and having to choose from among leaders anointed by the Tapeworm, such as Al Gore. This belief is, in fact, the source of our hopelessness..."
"...Gore defines our problem as "what." He is silent on "who..."
By Catherine Austin Fitts , Solari Inc. -- http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2007/FittsGore.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As Cindy Sheehan pointed out yesterday after sending out the info about Gore and Occidental Petroleum--
"... We cannot with any shred of decency or any pretense to moral superiority try and pluck the speck out of our neighbor's eye when we look at the world through eyes that are blinded to our own abject failures and crimes..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh what Miracles the Weeny Left has celebrated these past few days. Such joy, such self-righteous vindication; but ya could hardly tell the peacocks from the ostriches.
!- The Great Wimp Gore wins a PEACE prize previously given to men like King, Mandela, Muhammad Yunus -- but also to such eminently deserving notables as Menachem Begin, Henry Kissinger, Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat, F. Willem de Klerk, and Kofi Annan and the UN.
And the drums roll, and the clarions sound: Al for Prez ! All of a sudden, Gore is transformed into a vertebrate morally courageous peace-loving knight, unsullied by corporate sponsorship, untainted by conflicts of interest. Yeah, right. The Inconvenient Truth man never mentions ONE real perp by name. Never breathes a word about the global environmental decimation wrought by the U.S. War Machine. Why ? because he WORKS for them. And the Nobel Selection Committee does too.
2- The Lying Fascist Bastard Sanchez, under whose watchful gaze Abu Ghraib and Fallujah were perpetrated, not to mention D.U. and the wholesale slaughter of children-- gets his hair dyed a nice dark brown, and comes - not exactly clean ya unnerstand, but ummm, lightly rinsed, when he declaims that the Iraq War was and remains a misconceived mess. Welllll, this guy should know. He did it.
3- And finally, comes Frank Rich- of that famous bastion of morality and journalistic integrity- The New York Times, to declare that We, (the group formerly known as) The People quite possibly might be sidling toward Good Germanism. What a blast of bracing fresh air, bleats the flaccid progressive blogopoly. At last, someone to Pericles our asses into shape. A crock of dialed tears, I say, a sanctimonious self-semi-flagellation with a licorice stick. After all, how COULD we have known ?
For today, let's stick with - GORE.
From DRANT #209 January 18, 2006:
Inconvenient Truth:
"The entire discourse regarding the rape of our planet and its inhabitants has been framed as an "environmental" problem, benignly named "Global Warming" by the corporate pimp media and PR firms who work for The Rapists.
...Not that a tiny few of Them take more than all the rest of us combined, or that the real perps are meticulously maintained in their fortress corporate anonymity- as their global parasite corporations voraciously consume the earth. Its not the insatiable waging of global war, which murderously squanders incalculable mountains of energy-- no, its us commuters in our SUVS. All we gots ta do is grow some mighty fine Monsanto GMO corn and Rumpelstilskin it into ethanol, and lordy lord our troubles are OVER !
Please read this brilliant deconstruction of our polite tsk-tsk machine -- the world of Gore and our own pervasive refusal to take real responsibility for our own annihilation."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"... The fundamental lie that Al Gore is telling comes from defining our problem as environmental -- in this case global warming, whereas our environmental problems -- as real and important as they are -- are but a symptom of the problem, not the problem. Gore defines our problem as "what." He is silent on "who..."
"... Understanding the fundamental imbalance of the corporate model -- where enterprises have the rights of personhood, but not the finite existence of people or the legal responsibilities and liabilities -- and the corporate model's economic dependence on subsidy that drives up debt, economic warfare and the destruction of all living things is a critical piece to developing actions to reverse environmental damage. Al Gore is a man that has made money for corporations his entire life. He is a member in good standing of the Tapeworm and his current lifestyle and this documentary are rich with the resources that corporations can provide...
"... There is also no personal accountability. Al Gore has not "come clean." There is no discussion of Gore's role in the Clinton Administration in facilitating worldwide economic centralization and warfare, and with it genocide and environmental destruction..."
THE SOURCE OF HOPELESSNESS: A REVIEW OF 'AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH'
Solari, Inc., January 1, 2007
http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/prn_the_tapeworm.070112.htm ( http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=1 The Environmental Research Foundation)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Look you guys, if you can't see the devious and brilliant Bernaysian campaign that has been waged by The Tapeworm, Its Corporate Proprietors, and the media they own and control, to get Gore drafted and elected in 2008- then I got a dog and a stick for ya, and maybe an accordion.
This ranks as one of the slickest and most carefully executed con jobs in the long history of modern politics.
January 6, 2001-- there was Al, on the podium before the whole of the U.S. Congress -- and all he had to do was vote yes, one time, and the whole disgraceful rape of the electoral process might have come to a grinding halt.
But no- not one of them, not even Gore- would be the ONE Senator needed to stand up and shut the larceny down.
If there was one defining moment when our One Party system fused into the transparent political paramecium we endure today, it wasn't when the Supreme Court stopped the vote count- for after all- trained dogs bark on cue-- it was when Al Gore and every single one of the other Democratic Senators went limp, and handed over The Presidency. Kaiser Wilhelm himself could not have done better.
Now why do you suppose they would do that ? The pimp promoter Thomas Friedman praised it in - you guessed it- The NY Times- as a grand act of holding together this great Union of ours.
But seen more clearly through the prism of the Democrats total complicity and co-dependence for the past 7 years-
this was clearly just business as usual on a sunny day in the oligopoly.
Gore is one of Them. Born into it, he is a typically guilt-ridden son of a thieving racist union bashing Pop, trying to work off some of that reallllly stinko Karma.
The kind of witness who will tell us the truth about the rape of our environment, but avoid naming the rapists.
They are selling this guy as the Great White Honest Hope, the man to save the planet and get us out of a war.
Well friends, if you believed the tales of Snowsama and the Nineteen Dwarves, and Saddam and the Magical WMD, and Greenspan and the Endless Boom, then you'll probably swallow this one too.
I can't really blame you if the prospect of President Hillary makes you vomit, but please, let's not build a Taj Mahal out of a one night stand.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
small note: I have been first-time Grandpa-ing, so these may be slightly more sporadic than usual. As you may have noticed though, it hasn't exactly mellowed me down.
Read more!!
"... There is no place for either spectators or bystanders at a Holocaust..."
"...There is no painless, privilege-preserving pill that can be taken to effect a quick fix of what ails the U.S., no petition, no manifesto, no song nor candle light vigil that will suffice.
The terms of change must and will be harsh, inevitably so, given the propensity of those who seek to prevent it to gauge their success by the rotting corpses of toddlers. This truth, no matter its inconvenience to those snugly situated within the comfort zone of political pretense, is all that defines the substance of meaningful struggle."
Ward Churchill: On The Justice of Roosting Chickens
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"My nickname for our current economic system is "The Tapeworm. " For decades I have listened to Americans from all walks of life insist that we must find solutions within the system -- i.e. within the socially acceptable boundaries laid down by the Tapeworm. Believing that our solutions for addressing global warming lie within the system defined by the Tapeworm goes hand in hand with obtaining our media from companies controlled by the Tapeworm, and having to choose from among leaders anointed by the Tapeworm, such as Al Gore. This belief is, in fact, the source of our hopelessness..."
"...Gore defines our problem as "what." He is silent on "who..."
By Catherine Austin Fitts , Solari Inc. -- http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Archives2007/FittsGore.html
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
As Cindy Sheehan pointed out yesterday after sending out the info about Gore and Occidental Petroleum--
"... We cannot with any shred of decency or any pretense to moral superiority try and pluck the speck out of our neighbor's eye when we look at the world through eyes that are blinded to our own abject failures and crimes..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh what Miracles the Weeny Left has celebrated these past few days. Such joy, such self-righteous vindication; but ya could hardly tell the peacocks from the ostriches.
!- The Great Wimp Gore wins a PEACE prize previously given to men like King, Mandela, Muhammad Yunus -- but also to such eminently deserving notables as Menachem Begin, Henry Kissinger, Shimon Peres, Yasser Arafat, F. Willem de Klerk, and Kofi Annan and the UN.
And the drums roll, and the clarions sound: Al for Prez ! All of a sudden, Gore is transformed into a vertebrate morally courageous peace-loving knight, unsullied by corporate sponsorship, untainted by conflicts of interest. Yeah, right. The Inconvenient Truth man never mentions ONE real perp by name. Never breathes a word about the global environmental decimation wrought by the U.S. War Machine. Why ? because he WORKS for them. And the Nobel Selection Committee does too.
2- The Lying Fascist Bastard Sanchez, under whose watchful gaze Abu Ghraib and Fallujah were perpetrated, not to mention D.U. and the wholesale slaughter of children-- gets his hair dyed a nice dark brown, and comes - not exactly clean ya unnerstand, but ummm, lightly rinsed, when he declaims that the Iraq War was and remains a misconceived mess. Welllll, this guy should know. He did it.
3- And finally, comes Frank Rich- of that famous bastion of morality and journalistic integrity- The New York Times, to declare that We, (the group formerly known as) The People quite possibly might be sidling toward Good Germanism. What a blast of bracing fresh air, bleats the flaccid progressive blogopoly. At last, someone to Pericles our asses into shape. A crock of dialed tears, I say, a sanctimonious self-semi-flagellation with a licorice stick. After all, how COULD we have known ?
For today, let's stick with - GORE.
From DRANT #209 January 18, 2006:
Inconvenient Truth:
"The entire discourse regarding the rape of our planet and its inhabitants has been framed as an "environmental" problem, benignly named "Global Warming" by the corporate pimp media and PR firms who work for The Rapists.
...Not that a tiny few of Them take more than all the rest of us combined, or that the real perps are meticulously maintained in their fortress corporate anonymity- as their global parasite corporations voraciously consume the earth. Its not the insatiable waging of global war, which murderously squanders incalculable mountains of energy-- no, its us commuters in our SUVS. All we gots ta do is grow some mighty fine Monsanto GMO corn and Rumpelstilskin it into ethanol, and lordy lord our troubles are OVER !
Please read this brilliant deconstruction of our polite tsk-tsk machine -- the world of Gore and our own pervasive refusal to take real responsibility for our own annihilation."
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
"... The fundamental lie that Al Gore is telling comes from defining our problem as environmental -- in this case global warming, whereas our environmental problems -- as real and important as they are -- are but a symptom of the problem, not the problem. Gore defines our problem as "what." He is silent on "who..."
"... Understanding the fundamental imbalance of the corporate model -- where enterprises have the rights of personhood, but not the finite existence of people or the legal responsibilities and liabilities -- and the corporate model's economic dependence on subsidy that drives up debt, economic warfare and the destruction of all living things is a critical piece to developing actions to reverse environmental damage. Al Gore is a man that has made money for corporations his entire life. He is a member in good standing of the Tapeworm and his current lifestyle and this documentary are rich with the resources that corporations can provide...
"... There is also no personal accountability. Al Gore has not "come clean." There is no discussion of Gore's role in the Clinton Administration in facilitating worldwide economic centralization and warfare, and with it genocide and environmental destruction..."
THE SOURCE OF HOPELESSNESS: A REVIEW OF 'AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH'
Solari, Inc., January 1, 2007
http://www.precaution.org/lib/07/prn_the_tapeworm.070112.htm ( http://www.rachel.org/bulletin/index.cfm?St=1 The Environmental Research Foundation)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Look you guys, if you can't see the devious and brilliant Bernaysian campaign that has been waged by The Tapeworm, Its Corporate Proprietors, and the media they own and control, to get Gore drafted and elected in 2008- then I got a dog and a stick for ya, and maybe an accordion.
This ranks as one of the slickest and most carefully executed con jobs in the long history of modern politics.
January 6, 2001-- there was Al, on the podium before the whole of the U.S. Congress -- and all he had to do was vote yes, one time, and the whole disgraceful rape of the electoral process might have come to a grinding halt.
But no- not one of them, not even Gore- would be the ONE Senator needed to stand up and shut the larceny down.
If there was one defining moment when our One Party system fused into the transparent political paramecium we endure today, it wasn't when the Supreme Court stopped the vote count- for after all- trained dogs bark on cue-- it was when Al Gore and every single one of the other Democratic Senators went limp, and handed over The Presidency. Kaiser Wilhelm himself could not have done better.
Now why do you suppose they would do that ? The pimp promoter Thomas Friedman praised it in - you guessed it- The NY Times- as a grand act of holding together this great Union of ours.
But seen more clearly through the prism of the Democrats total complicity and co-dependence for the past 7 years-
this was clearly just business as usual on a sunny day in the oligopoly.
Gore is one of Them. Born into it, he is a typically guilt-ridden son of a thieving racist union bashing Pop, trying to work off some of that reallllly stinko Karma.
The kind of witness who will tell us the truth about the rape of our environment, but avoid naming the rapists.
They are selling this guy as the Great White Honest Hope, the man to save the planet and get us out of a war.
Well friends, if you believed the tales of Snowsama and the Nineteen Dwarves, and Saddam and the Magical WMD, and Greenspan and the Endless Boom, then you'll probably swallow this one too.
I can't really blame you if the prospect of President Hillary makes you vomit, but please, let's not build a Taj Mahal out of a one night stand.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
small note: I have been first-time Grandpa-ing, so these may be slightly more sporadic than usual. As you may have noticed though, it hasn't exactly mellowed me down.
Read more!!
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