Former FBI translator and whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has promised to tell us everything she knows about treason at the highest level of the US government - with one proviso:
"Here's my promise to the American Public: If anyone of the major networks --- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, FOX --- promise to air the entire segment, without editing, I promise to tell them everything that I know."
So of course, not one media outlet has bitten and further, it looks as if google has tried to hide it...
Also see, lukery's interview on Sibel's latest offer challenging the news media to tell her complete story, even if it means prison.
In 2005 Karen Hughes "REVISED" The "GODDAM PIECE OF PAPER"
3. Distribute widely, in English and in the host country’s language, the revised copies of the American constitution (in the process of being shipped to your post) that now contain the Under Secretary’s remark, made in Egypt, that the Constitution contains the phrase “One Nation under God.” The first sentence of the improved Hughes Constitution now reads: “We the People of the United States, ONE NATION UNDER GOD, in order to form a more perfect Union … ” While the Department rarely organizes exhibits abroad as it did in the past, we have obtained special funds from the White House for a “Paper Show” that will highlight the new Hughes Constitution and stress the important role that religion plays in the life of the President and his confidantes.
This is nice too:
5. Be sure to highlight the Under Secretary’s brilliant comment in Turkey regarding Iraq: "You’re concerned about war, and no one likes war ... to preserve the peace, sometimes my country believes war is necessary." On every possible occasion, repeat that in Iraq war is necessary for peace, stressing that the United States has killed tens of thousands of Iraqis because that was the only way to bring them peace — the true eternal peace of death, which gives them the opportunity to happily be in the presence of their Maker in heaven.
During a "town hall" meeting for State Department employees held on September 8, 2005, she described her plans to improve US image abroad in militaristic phrases, outlining a "rapid-response unit" and "forward-deploy regional SWAT teams" to "formulate a more strategic and focused approach to all our public diplomacy assets."
The Washington Post's Dana Milbank wrote: "One of her underlings rose to ask how this effort squared with the administration's famously tight control over its message. … Hughes replied that ambassadors are free to talk -- if they use the talking points she sends them.
Onward Christian soldier.. For King, country Corporation, and god.
A sample of the original content that appeared in OVO blog this month:
Christ @ Work. The Bible does contain some fine moral advice in it. It also contains some inhumanly evil moral advice. It also contains some foolish nonsense that dresses itself up as moral advice. That doesn't make it much different from any number of other books, ancient and modern.
Extremophiles. What might humanity be able to engineer for ourselves to become extremophiles? What dangers do exremophiles present to humanity?
Interfaith Dialog. In some places, disagreements are resolved by discussion. In other places, disagreements are resolved by flogging.
Islam is Peace. Islam, like Christianity and all religions, is a collection of mean-spirited superstitions invented by illiterate pre-scientific nobodies that we have no reason to heed.
More Sperm. February 2005 saw the return of OVO after 13 years of hibernation. The theme for that issue was 'sperm.' Sperm remains in the news, and here are some of the top sperm stories from the past two years.
Peaceable Protests After Amsterdam Attacks. Police in the Dutch city of Amsterdam say several peaceful protests were held in the sixth night of memorials after officers shot a Moroccan man dead.
Priorities. It seems that other people being free to celebrate or have their own superstitions is intolerable to Muslims, while public whippings and stoning are just fine as long as they occur in-house.
Publius Enigma. It has something to do with Pink Floyd and the Internet and a treasure hunt.
Saturn Return. Saturn Return is when Universe picks you up from under the Christmas tree and shakes you to see if it can figure out what you are.
SB777. SB777 protects religious belief against discrimination. It also protects discrimination in religious belief. Only religion can distort the rule of law to this degree.
Sharia in the United States of America. It is illegal to non-surgically amputate people's hands as a punishment for a crime. Illegal under United States law, but legal under sharia law.
Superstitious Exemption from the Rule of Law. For better and for worse, it is not the case that we can all happily get along. But where there is the rule of law and not force, fiat or superstition we can at least get along peaceably.
Two Links via God is for Suckers. All money spent on religion is money wasted, wasted more thoroughly than money spent on weapons or torture. At least when someone is killed or tortured, something happened.
Comparisons of America and Rome are everywhere these days, whether deploring an over-extended military, social decadence, or illegal immigration. A more disturbing—and largely ignored—similarity lies in the wholesale privatization of the U.S. government, which has blurred the line between public good and personal gain. In an excerpt from his new book, Cullen Murphy charts a dynamic that is more dangerous than corruption, unprecedented in scale, and visible everywhere from Hurricane Katrina to the Iraq war, to the justice system.
Donald Rumsfeld should be more careful about where he travels.
In Paris last week, Rumsfeld left a prestigious speaking event in haste, slipping out a side door to avoid the human rights lawyers and journalists waiting to confront him with criminal charges of torture. He reportedly avoided the confrontation by sneaking out a door that attached the conference venue to, of all places, the United States Embassy.
The charges have been filed in a French court by international human rights organizations. The claim is that France is under a legal obligation to investigate and prosecute Rumsfeld's accountability for alleged crimes.
The legal pursuits against Rumsfeld are the latest in a trend toward invoking universal jurisdiction.
The essence of the principle is that some crimes are so serious as to be of "international concern.” Hence torture in Guantanamo and Iraq is the business all of humanity, existing everywhere, and should be heard in the French courts. Indeed, any court in the world could host such a trial.
The death of economist Milton Friedman last week* at the age of 94 marks a great loss for advocates of freedom everywhere. He was perhaps the most successful free-market economist of the 20th century, in terms of his real-world impact on politics and policy. Many modern politicians, including Ronald Reagan, considered him a major influence in their careers.
He (Ron Paul), isn't there as an alternative to anything. He's there to make sure an alternative movement doesn't develop.
I'm also beginning to suspect that is also the role of the Kucinich\Gravel gambit; to be used knowingly or not as an OFV (overflow valve) and set of sealing washer's.
OFV (overflow valve)and sealing washer's
Ultimately provided for with actuating means for a discharge valve. Often, an overflow valve is for use in a vapor return line of a vapor recovery system. In other words, returning dissent back into the current flow.
To discharge collective angst.
An overflow valve controls the pressure on the inlet side. It is used wherever a specific inlet pressure must not be exceeded. And status quo must be maintained.
Does the U.S. Government have a reason to believe that the American people are about to snap out of their zombie trance and actually do something?
Maybe… Just maybe the USG knows that the situation on the ground is going to change substantially and that the general level of comfort is going to drop. In other words, less bread and fewer compelling enough circuses. If that was the case, increasing numbers of people could become radicalized. The USG will do what all other governments do as they collapse: Turn inward.
As the level of sociopolitical cohesion falls, the state increasingly views the people as a national security problem.
To wit, from the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007:
(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.
(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.
Yes, indeed. People are about to become very uncomfortable indeed. When that happens, there will almost certainly be trouble–demonstrations, protests–and riots.
Sounds like “homegrown terrorism” is intended to cover any form of protest by US citizens, whether peaceful or otherwise:
“…the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence…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.”
So, how do they define “force”? I suppose that could include blocking a public road or sidewalk, or even making a forceful statement–or perhaps even planning to do these things.
A while back the [House Judiciary Committee] set up a web tipline for tipster with information on politicization and wrongdoing at the Bush DOJ. Today the committee sent an email to all the tipsters alerting them to extremely tight safeguards in place to keep their identities and stories confidential. Unfortunately they put the 150+ email address in the "to:" field in the email, not "bcc:". So everyone's email got sent to anyone else. And probably because of pranksters one of the addresses those emails got sent to was to non other than the vice president's office.
Incompetence? Really? Really??? There will be no further comment from moi...
except...
unfrigginbelievea.... ahk, who am I kidding, nothing these dinks do is surprising. Seriously sad, these are peoples lives and livelihood they are toying with, this will be seen as deliberate rather or not it was, just as torture is purely for the shock value. In other words deliberately meant to silence dissent.
Now the Bush administration wants to take away the American people's freedom to travel within their own country by airplane. Not content with an 80,000 "no fly" list, a subset of a 500,000-750,000 "watch list," the Bush administration's Transport Security Administration has proposed new rules that will require Americans to get government permission 72 hours in advance prior to being allowed to board a domestic flight.
Talk by Naomi Wolf author of "The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot" given October 11, 2007 at Kane Hall on the University of Washington campus.
Both books are about the Blueprint for Transforming A Society Into Fascism.
Klein's book is about the economic transformation.
Wolf's book is about the political transformation.
Even if they seem obvious, much of the historic parallels they both reference are well worth re-reading (if not learning about for the first time).
For me, these two books are the best two books I've purchased in 10 years, as obvious as they seem. For many people, they should be must-reading, if you're concerned about historic fascism but are not fully aware of world history of the 20th Century.
We are a society in the latter stages of a final metamorphosis.
Former Bush General Touts Privatization of National Disaster Response
"Country Club Fees" Would Guarantee Protection A retired general now working for a controversial private security company told an audience last night about the services the company plans to provide.
The government does not have the tax base to provide services to everyone in the event of a major catastrophe, retired Brigadier General Richard W. Mills told an audience in Pellston last night.
Mills served as Deputy Director of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC) of the Central Intelligence Agency before retirement this year. At a public meeting at the Pellston High School he presented himself as the executive vice president for strategic development for Sovereign Deed, an 18 month old company that offers private disaster response services.
So,
Mills said that Sovereign Deed would offer planning and rescue services to subscribers who pay a "country club type membership fee." Basic service, he said, would involve a one time $50,000 fee and $15,000 per year.
So if they rock up in a disaster area and try to evacuate paying customers, and others try to jump on board or, they rock up with food supplies and non customers try to get them they will do what. Shoot them?
This is so fucked up its beyond belief. We can save you, you know, if the $$$ is right!
We have a federal government that treats Americans like the enemy, steals our money and is UNACCOUNTABLE for anything, and now these mercenary creeps trying to take advantage of the messes created by the traitors. It HAS to have been planned.
I heard Jeremy Scahill (investigative reporter on Blackwater) say that post Katrina, Blackwater just deployed to New Orleans without anyone asking them! They just fucking showed up and started policing the streets. A couple of weeks later they were rewarded with a federal contract. The had automatic weapons and cars without license plates.
Bill Moyers Journal/youtube video of blackwater in New Orleans
MESA, Ariz. -- A Gilbert family whose home burned to the ground while town firefighters refused to douse the flames will get a bill from the private fire company that eventually responded.
Jane Harmon was the original sponsor of the bill. She's on the AIPAC payroll. AIPAC and Israel are the trojan horse in the USA. I'd like to know who wrote the legislation.
With the federal government lagging behind on its plans to implement the use of electronic passports, identification cards and driver’s licenses, biometric vendors are targeting a new market: schools.
But the use of biometric technology in schools, such as a system being used by Stayton Middle School’s cafeteria, has some parents and privacy advocates condemning the move as outright Orwellian.
“This is biometric data collecting,” said Jann Carson, the associate director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Portland. “It’s the ‘Big Brother’ theory. The last thing we should do is teach parents and their young children to be casual about turning over personal data, like a fingerprint, just for the sake of speeding up a lunch line.”
Generational incrementalism...slowly ever so slowly but dead on steady..they'll get there.
WWIV: Giuliani wants to go to war with Iran "soon," says advisor
Norman Podhoretz believes that America needs to go to war soon with Iran. As far as he knows, Rudy Giuliani thinks the same thing.
“I was asked to come in and give him a briefing on the war, World War IV,” said Mr. Podhoretz, a founding father of neoconservatism and leading foreign policy adviser to Mr. Giuliani. “As far as I can tell there is very little difference in how he sees the war and how I see it.”
During a long interview this week in his bookcase-lined East 81st Street home, Mr. Podhoretz, 77, explained the very straightforward proposition he has been proposing to Mr. Giuliani from the start of the campaign: “The choice before us is either bomb those nuclear facilities or let them get the bomb.”
SAN DIEGO, California (AP) -- Like Hurricane Katrina evacuees two years earlier in New Orleans, thousands of people rousted by natural disaster fled to the NFL stadium here, waiting out the calamity and worrying about their homes.
The similarities ended there, as an almost festive atmosphere reigned at Qualcomm Stadium.
Bands belted out rock 'n' roll, lavish buffets served gourmet entrees, and massage therapists helped relieve the stress for those forced to flee their homes because of wildfires.
"The people are happy. They have everything here," Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared Monday night after his second Qualcomm tour.
Sounds beautifully close to Babs Bush's stunner,
"And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."
World oil production has already peaked and will fall by half as soon as 2030, according to a report which also warns that extreme shortages of fossil fuels will lead to wars and social breakdown.
The German-based Energy Watch Group will release its study in London today saying that global oil production peaked in 2006 - much earlier than most experts had expected. The report, which predicts that production will now fall by 7% a year, comes after oil prices set new records almost every day last week, on Friday hitting more than $90 (£44) a barrel.
From Geoff Dyer's wonderful book on the history of photography...
A script for Summer:
Crowded cars going out on the open road. Gas station attendant filling tank of open touring and convertible cars.
Rock gardens: sun parasols; beach umbrellas; sandy shores with gently swelling waves; whitecaps showering spray over sailboat in distant horizon.
People standing in shade of trees and awnings. Open windows on street cars and buses; drinking water from spring or old well; shady spot along bank – sun on water beyond; swimming in pools, rivers, and creeks.
A book that probably won't get reviewed (unless its a pan) by any of our two daily papers but you can find information here and here and here and here and here. Video here and here.
So why should this be brought up? I think it should be brought up because, well, here's a crazy theory. Bear with me. One of the shocking things I've seen is the aftermath of the November 2006 elections. It was clear that the American public voted against the war. Its also clear to me that if the Democrats actually end the war (by withholding funding which they can definitely do) they would probably hold the presidency and the congress for the next 25 years, maybe longer. It would cause a generational shift toward the less ruthless business party, which might be incrementally better. Afterall, the Clinton years gave us the Internets. True, if they had known how important it was I probably couldn't afford to be writing these words and I would be as likely to have a platform on the internet as I would be to hosting my own show on cable television but anyway...
Yet that's not what the democrats have done. I suppose it could be just a dark tactic whereby they think that as the war stalls and burns people will vote democratic party as a reaction. Of course, if people see no difference in the parties on the war it would make the republicans competitive again. And of course, as we've seen the republicans don't actually have to win to be competitive, just close enough so that the courts can call it in their favor. They can destroy the evidence later and throw roadblocks into reform. Its not like the traditional media would write about it.
Well, there is an uncomfortable theory out there, first written about by Alexander Cockburn to his credit. He thought that the Dem recruiters, Schumer in the Senate and Rahm Emmanual (who once volunteered to serve in the Israeli army. Here's a thought experiment: say that Obama once tried to join the Cuban army where would he be politically...? Really. Think about it.) were deliberately recruiting pro war dems. Both Schumer and Rahm, who some have said is Mossad's man in DC, are Jewish. What if they're Jewish and think that the war benefits Israel.
Here's another thought experiment: Let's just assume for a moment that they're more loyal to Israeli foreign policy interests than American interests, specifically the American interest of ending this war. What would they do. How would they behave. They would, and this is just wild speculation, recruit democrats to win back the house and senate but not democrats who have the common sense and decency to withhold funding for the war. Corporatist DLC power elite dems. That would be the deal. We would know that's the deal because democrats won't have ended the war even though its in their power to do so.
Here's a more frightening thought experiment: what if they wanted to thank the republicans. Why would you want to harm the party that enthusiastically spills blood for Israel (and oil reserves but that would be secondary to the Israelis, unless they wanted a cut but who knows...). You wouldn't want a handy party like that eviscerated. In fact, you would do everything in your power to keep them viable. Going slow on ending the war might just do the trick. A Hillary nomination gives the Republicans a pulse for the presidency. Blur the distinctions. That means that everything just keeps getting worse.
A wrench in the works would be the creation of a viable well funded progressive third party. Let's hope Cindy Sheehan, the only candidate I know that wants AIPAC out of congress, widens her efforts.
Update: Markos, who's wising up and routinely bashes the dem leadership, looks at these numbers optimistically. But what if some dem leaders wanted to bring back the republicans? Think about it. Watch what they do. If you were a dem voter would you be excited about voting? What if Schumer and Rahm want it that way...? Yes, we know the Israeli lobby puts pressure on people who aren't Jewish. But what about Jewish reps who don't need to act with pressure...Perhaps all is going according to the plan.
Two more vids from this gifted Youtube director. Profiled earlier here. The first one I remixed and added a different tune. His original is here. It also makes me want to fuck Audrey Hepburn. Her being "dead" wouldn't stop me. That's the kind of fella I am.
The second one features a song from The Stone Roses, a band I wish had made more music.
"One soldier recalled: 'After two months in Rafah, a [new] commanding officer arrived... So we do a first patrol with him. It's 6am, Rafah is under curfew, there isn't so much as a dog in the streets. Only a little boy of four playing in the sand. He is building a castle in his yard. He [the officer] suddenly starts running and we all run with him. He was from the combat engineers.
'He grabbed the boy. I am a degenerate if I am not telling you the truth. He broke his hand here at the wrist, broke his leg here. And started to stomp on his stomach, three times, and left. We are all there, jaws dropping, looking at him in shock..."
Please read the whole thing if you have the stomach for it, it's about time this dehumanization comes out, after years and years of ethnic/ethic subjugation.
Learn to use the “Six Steps in Mission Planning” on a real corporate mission, not a simulation. Your team will see immediate results AND have a repeatable process they can use to improve future project planning and execution. ..... Fighter Pilots can’t afford to make the same mistakes twice — that’s why they use a powerful Debriefing process to perfect their mission-planning process. Your team will learn this same process to get to the root causes of performance problems and eliminate them.
Business is Combat.
You're fighting for market share. You're fighting to make your numbers. You need a team that works as one. You need a team that works for the same goals. You need a team that knows not only how to plan a mission, but how to execute that mission flawlessly from start to finish. Enter Afterburner Fighter Pilots.
Our team of real Fighter Pilots from across the globe will help your team improve execution, and will help you lead more effectively, through our legendary team building, employee team building, team building seminars, motivational keynotes, corporate team building events, leadership seminars, and execution leadership training programs.
We understand how critical it is to have effective leadership skills and to know how to handle yourself and your team in hostile, fast-changing environments every single day. Our team building programs will not only charge your team with energy and know-how for one day — it will put them in full fighter form every day!
Fighter Pilots get the job done using the Flawless Execution ModelSM. This is a simple, continuous team building and performance improvement process designed to help military aviators win in combat. Today, companies in all industries, from small to large, are using the Flawless Execution Model to dramatically improve the way their teams perform.
Everyone works together for a common goal and — IT WORKS!
Has anybody noticed how everything, I mean damn near EVERYTHING, has become militarized? From language to clothes. Been shopping for new clothes lately? See the trends of hunter camo's and heavy industrial clothes, military clothes? Everywhere you look, from military cargo pants to welder jackets. If you are like me you haven't, as I mostly shop at thrift stores, and even if I had the money and could afford the brands they sale, I wouldn't buy their shit.
Hell, I purposely take the labels off my clothes for that matter, something I retained from my punk days. But look around at the younger generation and see what they are wearing, and how they are talking, many look as if they are in industrial strength, rugged survival type clothes and talk like mini-sports casters. At least around here.
Remarks by the President in Tribute to Milton Friedman Eisenhower Executive Office Building Room 450
11:37 A.M. EDT
THE PRESIDENT: Well, thank you all very much. It's an honor for me to be here to pay tribute to a hero of freedom, Milton Freidman. He has used a brilliant mind to advance a moral vision: the vision of a society where men and women are free, free to choose, but where government is not as free to override their decisions.
That vision has changed America and it is changing the world. All of us owe a tremendous debt to this man's towering intellect and his devotion to liberty. So it's my honor to welcome you all to the White House. Thank you for coming, I'm looking forward to having lunch.
I appreciate Larry Lindsey, and I want to thank him for his leadership and his friendship. I, of course, want to welcome Rose Friedman, as well. I'm so honored that the Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld, has joined us, as well as the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz.
I want to thank the Chairman for being here. Chairman Greenspan is a steady influence on our country; and I appreciate your leadership.
I want to welcome Dr. Gary Becker, Professor at the University of Chicago, who mentored Milton Friedman. (Laughter.) A Nobel Prize winner. And I want to thank Guity for coming, as well. Welcome. And I appreciate Ed Meese being here, as well. It's great to see you, General.
Milton Friedman has shown us that when government attempts to substitute its own judgments for the judgments of free people, the results are usually disastrous. In contrast to the free market's invisible hand, which improves the lives of people, the government's invisible foot tramples on people's hopes and destroys their dreams.
He has never claimed that free markets are perfect. Yet he has demonstrated that even an imperfect market produces better results than arrogant experts and grasping bureaucrats. But Milton Friedman does not object to government controls solely because they are ineffective. His deeper objectives flow from a moral framework. He has taught us that a free market system's main justification is its moral strength. Human freedom serves the cause of human dignity. Freedom rewards creativity and work, and you cannot reduce freedom in our economy without reducing freedom in our lives.
As Milton Friedman has written, "I know of no society that has been marked by a large measure of political freedom, and that has not also used something comparable to a free market to organize the bulk of economic activity." This viewpoint was once controversial, as was Milton Friedman, himself.
When he began his work, the conventional wisdom held that capitalism's days were numbered. Free market systems were thought to be unsuited to modern problems. Today we recognize that free markets are the great engines of economic development. They are the source of wealth, and the hope of a world weary of poverty and weary of oppression.
We have seen Milton Friedman's ideas at work in Chile, where a group of economists called the "Chicago Boys" brought inflation under control and laid the groundwork for economic success. We have seen them at work in Russia, where the government recently adopted a 13 percent flat tax with impressive results. We have seen them at work in Sweden, which has adopted personal retirement accounts. We have seen them even at work in China, where the government conceded long ago that Marxism was, in their words, "no longer suited" to China's problems.
These are extraordinary developments. They demonstrate that the rest of the world is finally catching up with Milton Friedman. (Laughter and applause.)
Yet Milton Friedman has done more than defend freedom as an abstract ideal. He has creatively applied the power of freedom to the problems of our own country, and in the process he has become an influential social reformer.
Milton has shown us how freedom can enhance our national security. He is the intellectual godfather of our all-volunteer army. He argued that America could rely on the dedication of soldiers who serve in armed forces of their own free will -- and he was right. We have recently seen the quality and idealism and skill of the all-volunteer army. Those who serve our country by choice are serving it with honor.
Milton Friedman has also shown us how freedom can foster educational reform. For many years, he has been a tireless advocate of school choice as a way of empowering parents and improving the performance of our schools. Educational reform advances when parents have the information and the authority to push for reform. And there is no greater authority than a good alternative. Poor children in America need better options when they're trapped in schools that will not teach and will not change. (Applause.)
In all of these issues and debates, Milton Friedman has argued with consistency and courage, and trademark bluntness. His ideas have influence around the world. And by his strength of conviction, he has served his country with distinction. And it has been recognized as such -- after all, he received the 1976 Nobel Prize for Economics, and in 1988 he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
In 1938, Milton Friedman married Rose Director, an outstanding economist in her own right -- and the only person known to have ever won an argument with Milton. (Laughter.) Half a century later, Milton and Rose Friedman published a joint memoir called, "Two Lucky People." There's no doubt that Milton and Rose Friedman have been lucky. But not as lucky as America. We're lucky that their parents chose to immigrate from Europe. We're lucky they gave them the love and encouragement they needed to be bold and to succeed.
We're lucky that Milton Friedman flunked some of his qualifying exams to become an actuary -- (laughter) -- and became an economist, instead. (Laughter and applause). We're thankful for those tough exams -- (laughter) -- but not nearly as thankful as we are for the lives and talents and intellect of Milton and Rose Friedman.
May God bless them both, and welcome. (Applause.)
END 11:47 A.M. EDT
Here's an interesting test, now that you have read the above, I urge you to re-read it with Aesopian Language in mind.
Brian de Palma's Redacted shocks Venice By David Gritten, at the Venice Film Festival Last Updated: 1:57am BST 01/09/2007
A wave of new American films about the Iraq war are due to arrive in cinemas over the next few months. Yet it's safe to say few could be more shocking or harrowing than the low-budget Redacted by veteran director Brian de Palma (Scarface, The Untouchables), which had its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival yesterday.
Shot with a cast of unknown actors on high-definition video cameras, it is about a small group of bored, restless US soldiers stationed at a checkpoint in Samarra.
They are impatient with the war's progress, distrustful of all Iraqis (even the children) and eager to go home. Two of them concoct a plot for the group to revisit a household recently raided in a search for insurgents, and to rape the family's 15-year-old daughter. In a chilling finale they do the deed, but their mission also ends in multiple murder.
Intriguingly, one of the group (who harbours ambitions to go to film school) is compiling a video diary of life at the checkpoint. He takes his camera along on the raid and simply keeps shooting during the terrible events. Only later does he realize that this implicated him in the crimes.
To tell the story, de Palma boldly uses a variety of forms: blogs, YouTube posts, videologs on the internet and the video diary the soldier is shooting. There are several references to the shortcomings of the mainstream media in reporting the real horrors of the Iraq war; de Palma makes a telling point with these alternative narrative devices.
'Redacted' means 'edited' or 'blacked out,' and the film's first image is a written disclaimer on the screen, with more and more words gradually being deleted. The director calls the film 'a fictional story inspired by true events,' and insists everything depicted has really happened.
Whatever the truth of those claims, there's no doubt Redacted packs an extraordinary emotional punch. It ends with shocking still photos of Iraqis, dead, disfigured or in extreme distress because of the war. This montage left the audience at a Venice press screening stunned, silent and in a few cases tearful. The combination of De Palma's visceral style and the horrifying subject matter left me reeling.
Controversy will clearly rage around Redacted, especially when it opens in America. But for those who have seen it, the images of that awful appointment in Samarra will linger joltingly in the memory.
Good for BDP is all I can say. Most sane people in the know would immediately suggest that the likes of Bush, Blair, Cheney and Co should be made to watch this kinda stuff 24/7 while sitting in their cells awaiting trail for war crimes.
My problem with that would be that they would probably get off on it.
Note: the scroll bar is your friend if you find this post to long or boring...
In his Presidential address to the American Society of Criminology, William Chambliss raised the issue of what he called "State-Organized Crime" (Chambliss, 1988). Chambliss defined state-organized crime as "acts committed by state or government officials in the pursuit of their job as representatives of the government" (Chambliss, 1988: 327). In Chambliss' view governments often engage in smuggling (arms and drugs), assassination conspiracies, terrorist acts, and other crimes in order to further their foreign policy objectives. While these actions may be seen as having immediate benefits (despite their illegality), they often have unanticipated and unintended outcomes, sometimes referred to in intelligence circles as "blowback." In this section we will examine the issue of state- organized crime as it relates to the United States and some of the "blowback" which law enforcement agencies have had to cope with as a result of these state-organized crime activities.
When governments commit acts that are defined by their own laws as criminal or when government officials break the law as part of their job, they engage in state-organized crime (Chambliss, 1986). While the state rarely makes public its criminality or keeps tabulations on the number of illegal acts it has committed, it is clear from both a historical and contemporary perspective that state organized crime is neither new nor rare. State-organized crime is particularly apparent in the covert operations of intelligence agencies.
Any government operation that is shielded from the public and hidden from Congressional oversight over a long period of time will inevitably become reliant on criminal activity to support and fund the operation. Covert operations provide the perfect setting for organized criminal activity simply because they are clandestine operations conducted with state sanction (Chambliss, 1986). Covert intelligence activities avoid the usual law enforcement scrutiny and surveillance. Passage through customs can be facilitated through official channels. Normal financial accounting procedures are not followed in covert operations. Investigators from law enforcement agencies can be diverted by claims of "national security." And finally, organizers of such operations recruit individuals with the skills necessary to carry them out, most of which are criminal skills. It is typical for covert operators to work with well-established criminal undergrounds and for the government sponsoring the covert operation to at the very least tolerate and often abet the criminal activities of its organized crime allies.
In recent years, intelligence agencies in the United States have sought and received assistance from drug traffickers. While it is, of course, outrageously hypocritical for a government waging a drug war against its own citizens to seek assistance from drug traffickers, it is not surprising. After all, as Chambliss (1986) points out, the characteristics of successful drug trafficking are the same qualities that are essential to successful intelligence operations. Both activities require the movement of bulky commodities, money and couriers quickly and secretly. Both activities require great discretion and allegiance from temporary workers employed for illicit and covert activities. And both activities require the use of force and violence to assure the security of the operation.
State-Sponsored Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy
Iran: The CIA engaged in a massive conspiracy to overthrow the democratically elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammed Mossadegh, in 1953 (Beirne and Messerscmidt, 1991: 258-259; Prados, 1986; Simon and Eitzen, 1986). Following his election, Mossedagh had nationalized several foreign-owned oil companies. His government had offered compensation to the oil companies. But the Eisenhower administration was not tolerant of any independence by foreign leaders and began a campaign to overthrow the Mossedagh government and replace it with the monarchy of Shah Reza Pahlavi. In return for U.S. support for the coup d'etat, the Shah promised U.S. oil companies control over 50 percent of Iran's oil production. After removing the democratic government in Iran and placing the Shah in power, the CIA helped create, train, and finance SAVAK, a vicious secret police force loyal to the Shah. SAVAK arrested over 1,500 people a month during the Shah's reign. On June 5, 1953, SAVAK murdered about 6,000 Iranian citizens in one day (Simon and Eitzen,. 1986: 158). Torture was frequently used on prisoners, and Amnesty International declared, "No country in the world has a worse record in human rights than Iran" (Beirne and Messerscmidt, 1991: 258).
While American oil companies and arms merchants profited from the Shah's reign (Iran purchased $17 billion in military equipment from the U.S.), the ultimate costs of the coup can only by calculated by considering the impact of the 1979 Islamic revolution which replaced the Shah's regime. The government of the Ayatollah Khomeni which took over was virulently anti-American, heavily engaged in the sponsorship of terrorism, responsible for the seizure of American hostages, and part of a bizarre conspiracy involving U.S. intelligence during the Reagan administration.
Guatemala: Fresh from its dubious success in Iran, the CIA intervened in the internal affairs of Guatemala the following year. In 1954 the CIA orchestrated a military coup which removed the democratically elected leader of Guatemala, Jacobo Arbenz, from power (Beirne and Messerchmidt, 1991: 259; Herman, 1982: 176). Arbenz was committed to democracy and had received 65 percent of the vote in Guatemala's election. His crime, however, was that he favored land reform. Guatemala was a country in which 3 percent of the landowners owned 70 percent of the agricultural land. After his election Arbenz nationalized 1.5 million acres of arable land, including land owned by the U.S.- based United Fruit Company. United Fruit insisted that the government act against Arbenz, and the CIA financed a rebel "army" in Honduras. On July 8, 1954, Arbenz fled the country. The U.S.- sponsored dictator immediately canceled the land reform program, ended literacy programs, fired teachers, ordered the burning of "subversive" books, and broke up the peasants' agricultural cooperatives. For the next 30 years, Guatemala was ruled by a vicious military dictatorship which had been imposed on the citizens and was propped up by U.S. military forces.
Cuba: In 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Batista had been friendly to U.S. corporations and to U.S. organized crime interests who had run massive gambling, prostitution, and narcotics operations out of Havana (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 1991: 259-261; Kruger, 1980; Hinckle and Turner, 1981). Once again, the Eisenhower administration elected to use the CIA to try to resolve the problem. As a first step, the CIA began to train anti-Castro Cuban exiles in terrorist tactics in what was known as "Operation 40." Operation 40 involved terrorist attacks on Cuba, attempted assassinations of Cuban leaders, and an alliance with organized crime figures Sam Giancana, Santo Trafficante, and Johnny Roselli in a series of assassination plots against Castro himself.
In April, 1961, the CIA-trained Cuban exiles attempted an invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The invasion was a military disaster, and much of the military force was captured or killed. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion forced a change in tactics against Cuba. Operation 40 was replaced by JM/WAVE, an operation involving some 300 CIA agents and 4,000-6,000 Cuban exiles. JM/WAVE engaged in a series of terrorist attacks on Cuba, targeting sugar and oil refineries and factories. It also continued the assassination campaign begun earlier under Operation 40.
In 1965, JM/WAVE was disbanded, as a direct result of the discovery that its aircraft were engaged in narcotics smuggling, leaving thousands of highly-trained, politically fanatic Cuban exiles in place in the United States. The "blowback" from JM/WAVE was considerable. Some of these CIA- trained exiles turned to terrorism, engaging in 25-30 bombings in Dade County, Florida, alone in 1975 and assassinating diplomats around the world (Herman, 1982). Other JM/WAVE participants, having been trained in smuggling techniques and violence by the CIA, turned to organized crime, creating large gambling syndicates in New Jersey and Florida and forming the infrastructure for massive cocaine trafficking by Cuban and Colombian organized crime groups.
Chile: In 1972 the CIA targeted yet another democratically- elected government for overthrow, presumably as part of America's overall foreign policy commitment to democracy around the world. This time the target was the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende. (Beirne and Messerschmidt, 1991: 263; Simon and Eitzen, 1986). In 1970 Allende had been elected president, and immediately IT&T. which had significant mining investments in Chile, and the CIA worked to destabilize the economy and his government. Their plans did great damage to the Chilean economy but failed to bring the Allende government down. In 1973, the tactics changed when the CIA conspired with the Chilean military to overthrow Allende in a coup d'etat. Allende, along with 30,000 Chilean citizens, was killed in the coup. The democratic institutions Allende had created were dismantled, and General Pinochet, a man who saw himself as the successor to Adolph Hitler, began an unprecedented regime of repression. The Pinochet regime incarcerated over 100,000 Chileans and murdered another 20,000.
Operation Condor: In one of the most disturbing examples of state-organized crime involving the U.S. government, the CIA, along with secret police agencies from six Latin American countries, entered into a conspiracy to identify, monitor, and assassinate political dissidents in those countries. The terror campaign was orchestrated by Pinochet's secret police, the DINA, but was abetted by the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the United States. Hundreds of people were abducted and murdered during Operation Condor (Herman, 1982).
U.S. Intelligence Agency Collaboration with Organized Crime
Active alliances between various organized crime groups and the U.S. government can be traced, at least, to World War II, when the Office of Naval Intelligence asked new York organized crime figures Meyer Lansky, Albert Anastasia, and "Lucky" Luciano to assist them with counter-intelligence operations on the New York waterfront:
Such escapades allegedly began during World War II when the underworld figures in control of the New York docks were contracted by navy intelligence officials in order to ensure that German submarines or foreign agents did not infiltrate the area. It was thought that waterfront pimps and prostitutes could act as a sort of counter- intelligence corps. The man whose aid was sought for this purpose was Lucky Luciano; he was reportedly quite successful in preventing sabotage or any other outbreak of trouble on the New York docks during the war. Despite his arrest and conviction for compulsory prostitution in 1936, Luciano was granted parole and given exile for life in 1954 in exchange for the aid he provided from his prison cell during the war (Simon and Eitzen, 1993: 81).
The OSS in Italy and Marseilles: The military also sought assistance from organized crime during World War II in the invasion of Sicily. New York organized crime syndicates sent their members door-to-door in Italian neighborhoods collecting recent letters, maps, photographs, and postcards from Sicily to assist military intelligence (Messick, 1976). In addition, Vito Genovese, who was living in self-imposed exile in Italy, decided to play both sides against the middle. While he had spent a great deal of money and effort currying favor with Mussolini, he now saw an opportunity to ingratiate himself to the U.S. government. Genovese acted as an "unofficial advisor to the American military government," following the invasion (Pearce, 1976: 149; Simon and Eitzen, 1993: 81). Genovese assisted the military in finding and installing right-wing politicians loyal to organized crime in official positions in Italy as a buffer against popular support for socialist political parties. This collaboration continued in the post-war 1950s, as the government perceived a new threat on the horizon - Communism. Both organized crime and U.S. foreign policy interests were well-served by this alliance with Genovese. Italian politicians opposed to the socialists and Communists were assisted in maintaining power by organized crime, and organized crime was virtually given a "crime-committing license" by the government for almost four decades.
In the early 1950s, the intelligence community once again sought the assistance of organized crime figures, this time in France. France was engaged in a war to prevent its colony of Vietnam from gaining independence. However, socialist dockworkers in Marseilles refused to load ships with military supplies bound for Vietnam. U.S. foreign policy was threatened in two ways. First, policies dedicated to the containment of communism would be impaired in the French did not resist Ho Chi Minh and Viet Minh in Vietnam. Second, the government of France, a major U.S. ally was itself threatened by a possible socialist-Communist electoral alliance, and Communist Party domination of the trade unions. Attacking the French longshoremen, one of the most powerful leftist unions, served both ends. U.S. intelligence officers contacted Corsican organized crime syndicates heavily involved in prostitution and waterfront corruption to assist them in breaking the French dockworkers union. The Corsicans created "goon squads," which attacked union picket lines, harassed and even assassinated union leaders, and eventually broke the union, thereby allowing the French to resume their war in Vietnam and providing the prologue for their own involvement a decade later. The payoff to the Corsican gangsters was of enormous value. They were granted the right to use Marseilles as a center for heroin trafficking, not only giving Corsican crime groups a new and very profitable enterprise, but creating the infamous "French Connection," which would supply much of America's heroin needs for the next twenty years (Pearce, 1976: 150).
Here's something I want. I humbly ask Cindy Sheehan: Expand your run into a national campaign. Raise money. People are open minded now after watching the dems in action, or inaction or capitulation as it were.
We need 5 senate seats and 25 house seats. That would give an independent third party make or break numbers on close votes in both chambers. And they need to be properly funded. 1 Million for house seats and 2 Million for each senate seat. (I have a plan as to how you could win with that.)This would give us hope that we could change things within two years.
I think it would happen if you asked for this. Attempt to raise 35 million dollars. Target blue dog dems and run candidates against the worst republicans.
And every candidate should have to endorse your positions which you listed here in your piece called "Pro Democracy Means Anti Fascism":
* Repeal the Patriot Act * Repeal No Child Left Behind * Scale down the Department of Homeland Security and rename it so it loses its Nazi tone and is brought under civilian control. * Restore habeas corpus and close all torture camps by repealing the Military Commissions’ Act. * Repeal all contracts with paid mercenary killer companies. * Restore the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. * Repeal all BushCo-Presidential directives (especially Directive 51) and review all laws that contain signing statements. * Restore the 4th Amendment by enforcing warrants for spying on Americans. * Impeach Bush and Cheney-post presidency so they can’t receive federal benefits. * Bring all troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and review military needs for other bases around the world. * Repeal all free trade agreements. * Kick AIPAC and other lobbyists out of the halls of Congress where they have no business.
This has got to have a lot military people taking notice. They know this was no mistake. By painting the Air Force as a bunch of bozos, they may actually create a more diligent bunch of service personnel, which is exactly what we need. Those three airmen who reported this story to the Military Times (instead of a CO) probably threw huge wrench in Cheney's plans and averted something terrible for the time being..
However, when it does come, --and I believe it will--, it will be the same make and model as last time. In other words, a catastrophic event followed immediately by another. Or combination blows, say, like a one, two, punch to the head, neck and stomach, and lastly to the groin, and back to the head, if need be, i.e., if the results aren't quick enough. I have suspected, a 'nuke & biological' prize was in the plans for a while. And still may be. However, that may have had it's cover blown.
Further, I believe this was why CIA operative Valerie Plame was outed. Not many know that it has since been learned that she and her crew were major watchdogs on the nuclear black market. She was something of an expert in the transfer of nuclear materials.
The outing of Valerie Plame may have severely damaged a CIA operation to monitor a nuclear black market faciliated by the shadowy but well-connected Washington lobby group, the American Turkish Council (ATC). (Those familiar with the Sibel Edmonds case will know the ATC is the very same organization that the former FBI translator heard on wiretaps in connection with various alleged illegal activities, some connected to 9/11.) From Edmonds, Deliso obtained the following admission: "Plame's undercover job involved the organizations [the FBI had been investigating], the ATC (American-Turkish Council) and the ATA (American-Turkish Association) . . . the Brewster Jennings network was very active in Turkey and with the Turkish community in the U.S. during the late 1990s, 2000, and 2001 . . . in places like Chicago, Boston, and Paterson, N.J."
Moreover, just like the anthrax mailings, and beltway Manchurian candidates snipers it will be a wall of sound, the sound of fear.
Or maybe not.... Maybe it will be incremental as it has been a slow but noticeable ratcheting up...Plan B?
When the first IED blows away some family on their way to Wally World, I predict we will be thrust into the comforting bosom of a police state. We won't need a nuke like Tommy Franks suggested. Just mess with our driving.
I predict it will be a Homeland Security production.
The reason birdflu has not become an epidemic among humans is 'cuz it settled in the lower lungs, so wasn't expelled w/the breath. Can anyone think of any legitimate reason for doing the research needed to turn it into epidemic??? 'Cuz it looks like they may have succeeded... Change ONE Amino Acid & you hit the jackpot
The superrich are gobbling up an ever larger piece of the economic pie, and the poor are seeing their share of earnings shrink: new IRS data shows the top 1 percent of Americans are claiming a larger share of national income than at any time since before the Great Depression.
The top percentile of wealthy Americans earned 21.2 percent of all income in 2005, up from 19 percent in 2004, according to new Internal Revenue Service data published in the Wall Street Journal Friday.
Americans in the bottom 50 percent of wage earners saw their share of income shrink to 12.8 percent in 2005, down from 13.4 percent.
Iraq is ‘unwinnable’, a ‘quagmire’, a ‘fiasco’: so goes the received opinion. But there is good reason to think that, from the Bush-Cheney perspective, it is none of these things. Indeed, the US may be ‘stuck’ precisely where Bush et al want it to be, which is why there is no ‘exit strategy’.
....One can’t say for certain that oil supplied the prime motive [for the war]. But the hypothesis is quite powerful when it comes to explaining what has actually happened in Iraq. The occupation may seem horribly botched on the face of it, but the Bush administration’s cavalier attitude towards ‘nation-building’ has all but ensured that Iraq will end up as an American protectorate for the next few decades – a necessary condition for the extraction of its oil wealth. If the US had managed to create a strong, democratic government in an Iraq effectively secured by its own army and police force, and had then departed, what would have stopped that government from taking control of its own oil, like every other regime in the Middle East? On the assumption that the Bush-Cheney strategy is oil-centred, the tactics – dissolving the army, de-Baathification, a final ‘surge’ that has hastened internal migration – could scarcely have been more effective. The costs – a few billion dollars a month plus a few dozen American fatalities (a figure which will probably diminish, and which is in any case comparable to the number of US motorcyclists killed because of repealed helmet laws) – are negligible compared to $30 trillion in oil wealth, assured American geopolitical supremacy and cheap gas for voters. In terms of realpolitik, the invasion of Iraq is not a fiasco; it is a resounding success.
I found the preface to this book by Naomi Wolf (linked above) at informationclearinghouse.info. You can find a video of a talk by Ms. Wolf at the site, as well as the text of the preface to her book.
Here's an excerpt:
Americans expect to have freedom around us just as we expect to have air to breathe, so we have only limited understanding of the furnaces of repression that the Founders knew intimately. Few of us spend much time thinking about how "the system" they put in place protects our liberties. We spend even less time, considering how dictators in the past have broken down democracies or quelled pro-democracy uprisings. We take our American liberty for granted the way we take our natural resources for granted, seeing both, rather casually, as being magically self-replenishing. We have not noticed how vulnerable either resource is until very late in the game, when systems start to falter. We have been slow to learn that liberty, like nature, demands a relationship with us in order for it to continue to sustain us.
Most of us have only a faint understanding of how societies open up or close down, become supportive of freedom or ruled by fear, because this is not the kind of history that we feel, or that our educational system believes, is important for us to know. Another reason for our vagueness about how liberty lives or dies is that we have tended lately to subcontract out the tasks of the patriot: to let the professionals -- lawyers, scholars, activists, politicians -- worry about understanding the Constitution and protecting our rights. We think that "they" should manage our rights, the way we hire a professional to do our taxes; "they" should run the government, create policy, worry about whether democracy is up and running. We're busy.
But the Founders did not mean for powerful men and women far away from the citizens -- for people with their own agendas, or for a class of professionals -- to perform the patriots' tasks, or to protect freedom. They meant for us to do it: you, me, the American who delivers your mail, the one who teaches your kids.
I am one of the citizens who needed to relearn these lessons. Though I studied civics, our system of government was taught to me, as it was to you, as a fairly boring explication of a three-part civil bureaucracy, not as the mechanism of a thrilling, radical, and totally unprecedented experiment in human self-determination. My teachers explained that our three-part system was set up with "checks and balances," so that no one branch of government could seize too much power. Not so exciting: this sounded like "checks and balances" in a bureaucratic turf war. Our teachers failed to explain to us that the power that the Founders restrained in each branch of government is not abstract: it is the power to strip you and me of personal liberty.
So I needed to go back and read, more deeply than I had the first time around, histories of how patriots gave us our America out of the crucible of tyrants, as well as histories of how dictators came to power in the last century. I had to reread the stories of the making and the unmaking of freedom. The more I read these histories, the more disturbed I became.
I give you the lessons we can learn from them in this pamphlet form because of the crisis we face.
This week on the program two talks that illuminate the extent to which the so-called "war on terrorism," specifically, and the concept of national security generally, is about the bottom line, though that is not how its sold to the general public. You will hear this week how it resembles the cold war in many ways, from red scares at home to wars abroad. At home the target is people whose politics threaten profits, abroad, ditto. A matrix of relationships designed to defend these financial interests involves nearly every influential sector of society, and our speakers will go into detail on who some of they key actors have been, and what laws and policies have resulted.
In the first hour, we'll hear from Peter Phillops director of project censored , and in the second hour, Will Potter, a DC based journalist ...with a talk The Green Scare:Eco-Activism in the Age of Terror"
Verizon also disclosed that the FBI, using administrative subpoenas, sought information identifying not just a person making a call, but all the people that customer called, as well as the people those people called. Verizon does not keep data on this "two-generation community of interest" for customers, but the request highlights the broad reach of the government's quest for data.
For over 100 years conventional medicine has seized control of the US health care system and as a result we have over 800,000 people who are killed by interacting with this system. It is likely that over 50 million Americans have died prematurely from this abuse.
psychobiology[1] is the application of the principles of biology to the study of mental processes and behavior. A psychobiologist, for instance, may compare the imprinting behavior in goslings to the early attachment behavior in human infants and construct theory around these two phenomena.
that should scare the shit out of you.
The Most Important Future Military Technologies
"...[W]hat are we getting for our money? That $75 billion budget covers a vast array of projects, from perfecting new weapon systems like the Joint Strike Fighter plane to studying pure physics. Focusing on the research side of R&D, Discover looked at four key areas where the military is placing its bets: hypersonic vehicles, laser technology, using information technology and neuroscience to combine human and machine on the battlefield, and employing sociology and psychobiology to combat terrorism."
It's the final frontier, your mind. They want into your mind, to control your bodily experiences. Operation Mindfuck 2.0, full spectrum collective controlled dissonance.
I no longer believe that they want these things hidden, the psychological impact alone reinforces they're dominance over us. Which in turn reinforces our sense of powerlessness. As a friend wrote,
"Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, Jose Padilla, ghost detainees, wiretaps, the open secret about US-sponsored torture, et cetera, ad nauseum do not, let me repeat not, represent damage to the political capital of the neocon administration. Those who oppose these things are also cowed by them and those who do not oppose these things revel in the fact that we are doing them. Stories like these hurt the administration not one tiny iota and are carried out and leaked to us with malicious forethought. It simultaneously quells domestic dissent and shores the domestic hawk base. Win/Win if you are a sociopath.
We are shocked by this gross inhumanity because we are supposed to be shocked by it."
Never mind that this psychosis to dominate, control, through shock and awe which is ravaging our planet, and us as a species right along with it, is but a symptom of a deeper problem. C. G. Jung once wrote, “Indeed,it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man’s greatest danger to man." George Bush is a mirrored reflection of the part of ourselves that is unconscious and wounded, a unhealed wound that is allowed to remain unhealed. We birthed him. He is us. He is our shadow.
I'm reminded of the terrifying scene in the 1995 movie 'Se7en', a psychodrama, in which the victim is found tied to his bed, emaciated but alive, obviously tortured by the serial killer over a long period of time, perhaps tortured to the brink of death, but not allowed to die. Almost like that of a ritual.
A SPECIES GONE MAD.
Terrified into submission. Terrified into paralysis. They want what Klein talks of in that, this shock and trauma is methodical and endemic and used to suspend us in liminal ego regression or chronic liminality. Anthropologist Victor Turner, in his work entitled, 'The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-Structure' speaks of liminality as an ambiguous state of being, "betwixt and between" normal states or conditions (and also between inner desires and social controls). Turner sees liminality present in all sorts of rituals. He stresses that it is an inverse state, or anti-structure: it is the reversal of social norms. For Turner, liminality symbolically represents a period of regression, away from culture (and its ordering of life) toward nature (and its untamed chaos). Liminality, collectively realized, also involves communitas. Communitas is an intense feeling of group unity and solidarity, reinforced and facilitated by collective liminality. That feeling of oneness one sometimes feels for instance say, like at a rave without the hug beans or MDMA ecstasy after dancing oneself into endorphin brain change. However, in this case they want the anti-Communitas the polar opposite,the intense feelings of group powerlessness and individual alienation.
A population of little mini Patty Hearst's. It's all about conditioning and programing. Yet another baby-step towards totalitarianism. Beginning with small rituals of disempowerment, humiliation etc... training us to think they are watching out for us, our saviors, by means of control. For example, recall the Patty Hearst syndrome theory (better known as "Stockholm syndrome ") of falling in love with her captors...; not so subtle mind control, in which one gives up their will as a cost of a form of survival mechanism. At first it's little things like taking off your shoes and increasing restrictions regarding so-called "personal items" at the airport for one small example, incremental often subtle reliquishing of our control in overt and covert micro and macro ways. Under one big panopticon sexual BDSM voyeur prison under the eager protection of the warden watcher, the Gaze of the Magus, the nun raping Negroponte types. So be sure and await the savior democrats, in 09, vote proud and often, your choice of tit clamps and spanking/hot wax or the harder stuff, erotic asphyxia i.e strangulation during sex, nerco sex w/the dead, w/children, bears, or snuff sex, while stuck between a mafia and a cabal. Both ruthless, both dangerous both deadly criminal both soul sick;but if you even suggest this you're called a conspiracy nut. And it's just begining; five years from now, which will be over a decade away from sept 11, another generation will have grown accustom to it. Trading liberty for security, freedom for slavery. Where denial is not only a river in Washington, but the whole of America, a bifurcated herd of lobotomized slaves locked into and inter-locked within a comicbook reality. With both jailer and prisoner in either one of the Arkham Asylum or the Blackgate Penitentiary system by and ever terminally sick overseer warden. 'The Hospital of incurables' as Octavio Paz wrote in 'An Erotic Beyond: Sade'. And the sickest part? You literally paid for it, by topping from the bottom.
... to lay the blame solely at the feet of the Bush administration is to overlook the complicity of Democrats in accepting a neoliberal agenda that has gutted government services and redistributed its wealth into the hands of private interests. After all, the Clinton administration first expanded the use of military contractors, deploying them in the Balkans, Somalia, Haiti and Colombia.
In fact, in late September, as the most recent Blackwater massacres started to gain mainstream press attention, hundreds of corporate luminaries joined Bill Clinton in New York City to extol the charitable efforts of the Clinton Global Initiative. The former president said his humanitarian endeavor is needed to tackle education, poverty and global warming because these are issues the “government won’t solve, or that government alone can’t solve.”
That might be true, but only because we’ve undergone 30 years of a political ideology that has robbed government of needed revenues, derided regulation that might impinge on corporate profits and sneered at the idea that a public spirit could be preferable to private motives. Rather than rely on the charity of those who have so handsomely profited, it’s time we alter the perverse arrangement.... (more)
I predict this wont make amazon's best seller list, but it very could become a underground hit in it own right, a cult classic, you know, sorta like the Turner Diaries.
The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. His account was confirmed by the head of another private security company.
Oh, and for some of you 'thinking fellers' out there, if you think this is about gangs, and immigration, your not paying attention.
"When the Law breaks the Law, there is no Law". -Billy Jack
George Carlin is a cynic. That's obvious from his comedy routines dating to the Vietnam era. But he's an oddly happy cynic.
"I discovered I didn't care about the outcome on this planet or this country. A lot of comedians and social critics are rooting for a certain outcome or result. I don't. I just enjoy watching the destruction," Carlin said during a recent phone interview to promote his Fox Theatre appearance Saturday night.
Carlin's biting commentaries on culture and language have entertained multiple generations. His rant from the early '70s about the seven words you can never say on television has become folklore and still resonates as people wrangle over the issue of obscenity decades later.
He has taped 13 HBO specials and is set to do his 14th early next year. He's working on his fourth book. Despite some heart problems earlier this decade, he said he feels good and, at age 70, he keeps on touring with an indefatigable spirit.
"I still like people to know what I'm thinking," he said. "I do this for me, not for them. I enjoy getting these thoughts off my chest in my own unique way."
Then again, Carlin is gratified he still has an audience, including plenty of younger people who weren't around when he began his career. "People say I've changed their whole outlook on things in more profound ways than comedy normally affects them. Things like, 'My father and I weren't getting along, but we watched your show and now we're buddies again.' I don't aim for that sort of thing, but it's gratifying and makes me feel worthy."
Carlin said he has no real hobbies, no need to ride motorcycles or cook gourmet meals. ("My hobby is being alive," he notes.) He doesn't blog about his thoughts on his Web site, which hasn't been updated in years. He doesn't hobnob with other celebrities, much less other standup comics.
"I love watching people destroy themselves in public," Carlin said. "That's kind of fun. But I don't participate in show business. I just do my stuff. I'm a combination artist and entertainer. The artist does the writing. The entertainer performs. They live happily together and have a good time."
And though Carlin keeps up with the news and mines it for material, his routines don't play off the headlines a la Jay Leno. "It's too easy," he said. "I don't like targets that are easy. I do mention people along the way to make a point. I mention George Bush a couple of times in my current show. It's not about him specifically, but he comes in for a little abuse on the side."
Take Michael Vick. Carlin sighed and called the star quarterback's dog-fighting travails a "side attraction in the big circus of America. That's not the kind of thing I generally talk about. But I did write about how I feel about humans vs. animals. I agree with the writer Patricia Highsmith. She said a friend told her if she saw a baby human and a baby kitten crying in the street, she'd feed the baby kitten. I agree with that. That's what I would do: Put animals ahead of human beings."
In fact, Americans in his mind prefer to focus on the sideshows and ignore the big picture.
"People have lost interest in governing themselves," he observed, "for the sake of gizmos and toys. They sold out for jet skis and cellphones and salad shooters and leaf blowers. It's just a shame. It will be the ruin of this country. But it's fun to watch.
In the tumultuous days of the much-talked-about protest by Buddhist monks, in Burma the military junta had 5 generals and over 400 soldiers arrested who had refused to open fire on those taking part in the marches.
This was told to the Indonesian daily Jakarta Oost by a high-ranking functionary of the regime who requested anonymity. "Five generals refused and were rapidly arrested," said the source, who did not want to give the names of the soldiers arrested.
The same happened to "almost 400 soldiers from the Sikai division near the city of Mandalay, who did not want to shoot at the monks."
"I'd never seen anything like it in my life," the Washington lawyer said. "They were large for dragonflies. I thought, 'Is that mechanical, or is that alive?' "
That is just one of the questions hovering over a handful of similar sightings at political events in Washington and New York. Some suspect the insectlike drones are high-tech surveillance tools, perhaps deployed by the Department of Homeland Security.
This is some funny shit. I could not stop laughing..
But then I had a glimpse of reality in the future..
Bush administration appeals Patriot Act ruling in Oregon case 10/10/2007, 1:11 p.m. PDTBy WILLIAM MCCALL The Associated Press
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The Bush administration is appealing a ruling by a federal judge in Oregon striking down key portions of the USA Patriot Act as unconstitutional.
U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken ruled last month the act cannot be used to authorize secret searches and wiretapping to gather criminal evidence — instead of intelligence gathering — without violating the Fourth Amendment ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
The ruling came in a challenge to the act by Brandon Mayfield, a Portland lawyer whose home and office were secretly searched and bugged after the FBI misidentified a fingerprint in the Madrid train bombings that killed 191 people in 2004.
The FBI apologized to Mayfield for the mistake and the federal government settled his lawsuit for $2 million.
But Mayfield challenged the Patriot Act over the searches and surveillance, winning a sharply worded ruling from Aiken that criticized the government for "asking this court to, in essence, amend the Bill of Rights ... "
Mayfield's attorney, Elden Rosenthal, said he had been notified of the appeal and was expecting a briefing schedule, but had no other comment.
The Justice Department, in a statement released after the ruling, said "we are concerned that if its reasoning were adopted and extended by other courts, it could have a significant impact on our ability to effectively share information in terrorism and other national security investigations."
The notice of appeal was filed Tuesday with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
"America was never innocent. We popped our cherry on the boat over and looked back with no regrets. You can't ascribe our fall from grace to any single event or set of circumstances. You can't lose what you lacked at conception.
"Mass-market nostalgia gets you hopped up for a past that never existed. Hagiography sanctifies shuck-and-jive politicians and reinvents their expedient gestures as moments of great moral weight. Our continuing narrative line is blurred past truth and hindsight. Only a reckless verisimilitude can set that line straight."
--James Ellroy, American Tabloid
Ensure a Free and Fair Election (Ban Paperless Voting Machines
"The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words."
Post a Comment