Friday, October 27, 2006

Waterboarding, and more of Cheney's serial lies.

I can't believe this maniac. Who the hell does he think he's kidding? Now he's saying the the U.S. doesn't torture people: what a complete and total liar this person is.

Does anyone know exactly what "waterboarding" really is? According to Cheney, it's a "dunk in water".

Not quite. Wiki describes it as follows: but the version of waterboarding described here is the mildest form of waterboard torture there is. In Iraqi and Afghan prison camps, waterboardings are often carried out in far more extreme fashion: the prisoner is held underwater until he properly drowns - he actually dies. Then he is forcibly revived. If the interrogators are not satisfied with the prisoner's answers, then he is drowned again. And so on. The process involves intense pain and complete terror. Some prisoners subjected to this hell end up with irreversible brain damage. These techniques have been used in Iraq and Afghanistan since the wars started there, but a problem being, the standard of intelligence acquired via torture is often useless garbage, yet more spurious noise to obscure any worthwhile signal, should it exist. A prisoner will say literally anything just to stop the pain and terror, especially those who are innocent. And judging by the incredibly miniscule number of "terrorist" prisoners in US custody who have been charged with any kind of "terrorism" offense, and just held in limbo without access to legal representation, incommunicado, the logical extension is that most of these people are innocent, and when tortured, will give useless answers. It was recently revealed that the "intelligence" that was used to "justify" the Iraq war fiasco, was obtained via torture. If that was a waterboarding session, then each gallon of water used has so far cost the US taxpayer about $50,000,000,000.

When it comes to rogue governments, riddled with corruption, corporate scams, double-dealing, setting up fake terror attacks to justify war, and the mass killing of 655,000 Iraqis on the basis of lies, (amongst other evil deeds), the Bush Administration surely leads the pack.

Tuesday, October 24, 2006

ABC's Path to 9/11, and other embarrassing 9/11 weasel productions

That "movie", for want of a better term, contained some of the most embarassingly preposterous garbage ever released on American television. It was also an exhibition of unremitting hearsay "evidence" for which in the most part zero proof has been offered. The way most of that material has been accepted as "true" by a large section of the gullible American public, is through endless repetition, ad nauseam, on our mainstream weasel-media. It is amazing how so often, what we want to believe, because it is inoffensive to out comfort zones, is what usually makes it into the history books. Lets call it faithbased bullshit, in the Bush Administration's ongoing war against science and rationality.

Another appalling effort was DC 9/11: A time of crisis, a "made for television" movie directed by one Lionel Chetwynd. It was dubbed a "mind-numbingly boring propaganda" film by salon.com. In reality, it was far worse than that: the actions of Bush and co. are so far removed from even the officially endorsed timeline... the entire movie is based on false premises.

Enter the big Hollywood budget productions: Flight 93. If this movie was based on sound, verified facts, then it might be construed as being well done. But the official story of Flight 93 is so based on hearsay that it might as well be discounted: none of the material comprising the central plot of the movie (the official offal) would stand up in a U.S. court of law. For questions about Flight 93, this site as well as this one, are both essential references.

More recently, Oliver Stone's "World Trade Center" was released. With relief, I discovered it contained a minimum of propaganda, and the content was largely non-political, and concentrated on the heroic story of two Port Authority police officers. It is a shame that Oliver Stone wouldn't talk to William Rodriguez, who was undoubtedly one of the greatest heroes of the day, now shunned by the media because he wouldn't keep his mouth shut about the basement blast under the North Tower just before the first plane slammed into the 90th floor.

One day, someone will make a feature movie on 9/11 that doesn't insult the memory of the almost 3000 Americans who perished in order to kick-start the NeoCon Agenda.

Sunday, October 22, 2006

A 9/11 Inquiry needed, as opposed to a White House White Wash

On November 7 this year, there is a possibility that the Democratic Party may regain control of Congress, and perhaps even the Senate. Not that I have much hope of this, due to their appalling record of weasel behavior during the last 5 years or so, but if they actually regain a majority and then regrow a SPINE, instead of assuming the position of Bush Administration lapdogs, we may finally get a REAL INQUIRY into the 9/11 attacks, to replace that embarassing exhibition of ineptitude, the national disgrace that the Kean-Hamilton (or more accurately Philip Zelikow) Commission became.

It is about time that Mr. Cheney and others were put in the hotseat, and forced to answer some tough, unanswered questions, not only about the numerous military drills and exercises under his command that morning and why, as a direct result, the USAF/Air National Guard failed to intercept the rogue jets, but also some 400+ other facts, problems and timeline aspects that make the Bush Administration's explanation of the attacks appear bogus.

Friday, October 20, 2006

Visualizing another false flag operation?

There are a lot of people talking on the blogs and alternative media sites about some kind of attack (terrorist or perhaps open warfare) during the lead up to the elections. One I heard (this was via word of mouth) was a major attack on a US naval ship, somewhere off the Iranian coast near the Straits of Hormuz. The ship involved could be aircraft carrier Eisenhower, USS Anzio, USS Ramage, or the USS Mason which are currently in the region. The attack would be blamed on Iran (either if it was they, or some other party, who did it). The attack would give the US the justification to retaliate in what would be viewed as defense, and the much vaunted part of the neoconservative agenda, to engage Iran, would be started on what appeared on the surface to be a more legitimate basis than an Iraq war style preemptive strike.

Saturday, October 14, 2006

Air America goes yellow belly up

As far as I'm concerned, good riddance to Air America. (Btw, Al Franken was complaning awhile back that "his paychecks has suddenly dried up, but I don't think he was exactly "hurting", somehow. His and other stars' fees were most likely a big hit on AA's bank balance). Also, if Air America couldn't sustain itself, then it was probably perceived by its listenership as being too close to the mainstream Democratic Party, which is now all about "going where the wind blows".

Their Republican counterparts have effectively invented a perception within mainstream America (and effectively exploited it to the maximum) that 'liberals' and left of center ideology exhibit a number of traits that can be quite easily framed as 'unpatriotic', 'anti-military', 'soft on crime', 'bad for business', and so on. In fact the Bush Adminitration has even gone to the ultimate extreme with this tactic, accusing some of their political enemies as "siding with al Qaeda", implying an allegiance with terrorist groups. Under such assault, what is a Democrat to do? They have two choices.. either they can regroup and become the party which places the interests of the working and middle class Americans as priority, or cowardly creep along the path of appeasement, and go "conservative-lite".

It is quite obvious which path Air America chose; the compromised and insincere one: the listenership saw through it, and wouldn't support it. They went 'yellow belly up".

Monday, October 09, 2006

Smoking in public places

In the wake of France's measure to ban tobacco smoking in public places, as well as less stringent moves in a number of cities in the US and UK, we might ask the question, "what's so sacred about tobacco anyway"? Yes, there's a long tradition of tobacco smoking in both modern industrial and tribal societies, but the tradition took hold long before we were aware of the extreme health risks. There are regulations governing the incineration of toxic materials in public places in most nations, for glaringly obvious reasons. Perhaps we should ask ourselves, why one rule for tobacco and another rule for everything else?

Relatively speaking, tobacco smokers are on easy street, and might appreciate the fact. First of all, their addiction and habit is legal, despite it's use being responsible for over 400,000 deaths in the US each year. For those who prefer to smoke a marijuana joint however, incarceration and/or a fine is the likely outcome should they get caught by law enforcement.... as well as indirect effects of a drug bust, such as losing your job, your house, and custody of your children....

I dont think tobacco should be illegal however; we all know the folly of prohibition (even those who own shares in the private corrections corporations). For those who insist on their right to smoke, just remember, that when you light up your cancer stick, non-smokers have rights as well.

Saturday, October 07, 2006

The "Liberal" media? Has anyone seen it yet?



Conservatives love to make this statement: "Most of the media are 'left". But that doesn't make much sense, honestly. 'Left' and 'right' are relative, rather than absolute positions on the closed-loop political "spectrum", and if most the media are defined (by you) as being "left", then what are they 'left" of?

The content of the mainstream media in the US (radio, newspapers, periodicals, magazines, television whatever) is defined by what is acceptable to their advertising sponsors, most of which are private corporations (usually) run by conservative minded business folk, as opposed to some fictitious army of "pot-smoking tree-hugging commie-pinko birkenstock-wearing ex-hippies" who "hate the military and Christians".

If the media was truly representative of a "socialist" leaning, or true "left" position, then there would be no need for websites like "Project Censored":

and a whole bunch of similar sites online. Why are these extremely newsworthy stories not given any space in a supposedly free society with a free flow of information?

Is there a similar set of censored stories that fail to get published in the mainstream media because they lean the other way? Not a chance in hell, believe me. If the US media was truly "left", then why have they been cheerleaders for the Bush Administration's program of perpetual war? The media's behavior and conduct in the run up to the Iraq war , for example, was nothing short of prostitution.

The "left" media in the U.S. is represented by periodicals like Mother Jones, The Nation, Utne Reader etc., and the freebies that you find in major cities... and even they have mild content compared to some of the stories they could run, should they so wish, but don't; these "gatekeepers of the left" seem to have as much bite as a wet lettuce.

Ironically, the most courageous media out there is run by folk on the right with a libertarian or constitutional agenda, who are fuming and horrified at the distortion of what they see as true conservatism at the hands of the plutocrats, authoritarians and 'wannabes-for-a-theocracy'.

Tuesday, October 03, 2006

The sky is falling... oh is it?

Lets have a look around this link: some interesting information is apparent that doesn't quite fit with the overarching message from both british and US administrations.. namely.. "Muslims are the big threat and they are all terrorists by default".

One of the things one might stumble across is the following, inconvenient statistic:
Since 7/7/05 (the date of the multiple bombings in London), 1000 Muslims have been arrested in British terror swoops/police ops - of course with the obligatory accompaniment of ratcheting the fear of muslims to inhuman levels by all available mainstream media outlets.

Of these 1000 arrestees, only 12% have been charged with anything.

Of this 12% - that is of the 12% of 1000 that have been charged with an offence - 80% have been acquitted, (that is, they have been found to have had nothing to do with any criminal activity of any description whatsoever.)

This adds up to little over 2% of the entire 1000 charged with anything that sticks - and of that virtually nothing is related to "terrorism".

The miniscule police "success" rate refer not to terrorism but to other crimes that the police have found whilst trying to frame them up on spurious terror charges.

Of course, this information will never be published in any mainstream media outlet like the BBC, for example. Weasels, by definition, behave like weasels, and do not roar like lions.

The noise will have to come from the bullhorns; the billion-watt public address system of the mainstream remains predictably mute.

Sunday, October 01, 2006

Video of *alleged* hijackers. Should we believe it is authentic, and why?

A videotape of "Mohamed Atta" and "Ziad al-Jarra" has surfaced via the UK Sunday Times newspaper. The newspaper alleges that it was shot in a "training camp in Afghanistan", and the documents were of the mens' "last will and testament". Lip readers have been unable to decipher the words on the soundless tape.

Considering that so many of the videotapes released by alleged "al Qaida" members in the past few years have been proven fraudulent, the issue of "no sound" on this latest release, as well as unidentifiable background, raises the eyebrows again. Then there is the overarching issue of indeterminate "CHAIN OF CUSTODY VERIFICATION". Verification of such is absolutely essential in determining the authenticity and date of any media. Being aware of the CHAIN OF CUSTODY of any videotape allows us to know, with confidence, that it has not (or otherwise) been tampered with, or ended in places and situations where the tape could has been creatively edited, etc.

This particular tape is dated January 18, 2000. How do we know is this date is real? The answer is, we have no idea; the tape could have been shot 10 years, or 10 days ago. Regarding the ongoing series of taped releases from "terrorists", "hijackers" or whatever: Since so many of these recent videotapes have been proven to be faked, a precedent has already been set. Unfortunately, most Americans have seen these fake products presented by national news-anchors in primetime spots, repeated ad nauseam as gospel, unassailable truth; the justification for the wars and anti-people measures that quickly followed on the heels of the 9/11 attacks, as well as a litany of other frauds that have been widely circulated in the weasel-appeaser mainstream media as genuine, on behalf of the myth makers.