Shorts and asides

Ron Paul: the only candidate worth voting for, so far...

2011-12-26T10:05:00.000-08:00

Commentary on Rep. Ron Paul from CNN's David Frum:

Frum's commentary is typical corporate media weasel-talk. Anyone who the mainstream media regard as a "clear threat" to the current, terminally corrupt political establishment in America, must be worth voting for.

Any alternative to the Obama administration and its neocon directed obsession with a 'paranoid maximum security state', and trashing our Constitution, is not only most welcome, but essential for the survival of this nation.

Even though I am a liberal, Ron Paul will get my vote over all the establishment candidates

As in the US, so in Russia...

2011-12-24T10:00:00.000-08:00

LINK here

The Russians now have a taste of what we Americans experienced in November of 2000, and 2004. Two fraudulent elections in which criminal elements allied to the Republican Party gained control of the vote in two crucial states. In 2000, Florida was ground zero, where 10s of thousands of black voters were systematically struck off the voter rolls by Database Technologies, a "front company".

In 2004, Ohio was election fraud central, where every method was used, including outside parties taking over the central tabulators via the phone lines, and physically swapping hard drives. The Russian people must remove the criminal elements within their government, by force if necessary, just like what we here in the US *SHOULD* have done early in 2001. By being complacent after the "Cheney Administration was sworn in, we failed our country, and look what happened on 9/11/2001 as a result.

Michele Bachmann hates Muslims

2011-12-17T19:26:00.000-08:00

LINK HERE: Ron Paul on Jay Leno Show, Friday December 16, 2011.

It's not just Bachmann who hates Muslims. Its the entire Washington DC establishment (and most of middle America) that hates Muslims. The hatred of Muslims (and Arabs) has been indoctrinated into the minds of mainstream America ever since the end of WWII.

If there is any discomfort re. Ron Paul's pointedly accurate statement, it would is that the little secret that nobody dared to discuss is now in the open. I don't particularly like Ron Paul's platform, but he is honest and straightforward, which is far more than can be said about *any* of the others, barring Gary Johnson.

Occupy. Wall. Street.

2011-11-17T08:47:00.000-08:00

Occupy is not against free enterprise. It's against a system that rewards BANKSTERS AND CORPORATE CRIMINALS through entrenched cronyism, fraud, corruption, extortion, greed, usury, embezzlement, theft and blackmail. The perps know they can keep doing it because nobody in authority has the will to stop it... because the people in authority are rewarded by the same, evil ,status quo. 1776 will have its day, again.

Banksters... I shit 'em.

2011-11-01T09:01:00.001-07:00

When loans are doled out by pimps and thieves with extortionate interest rates and demands with menaces attached... IT IS RIGHT TO DEFAULT. Repayment would only encourage the psychopaths in the financial world to more criminal activity. The Greeks MUST adopt a zero tolerance attitude towards the banksters and financial crime cartels.

A busted system attracts "busted people", in other words, leeches and predators who have privileged access, and take advantage of such a busted system to screw others and enrich themselves.

We have to remember that, most of the big money is "made" by moving money around. Each maneuver accrues interest, thus devaluing currencies and causing inflation. *Interest* is problem, combined with the presence of a disproportionate number of psychopaths in the banking sector.

I don't like Sharia Law as a system (neither does anyone I know), but with interest-free finance, the Muslims have one over we in the West. Sharia Law as regards Islamic banking is working relatively well, and they have not been susceptible to the insane Ponzi type schemes and derivative scams which have caused so much trouble with *our* banks.

Thomas Edison said that "interest is the invention of Satan". The revered inventor who contributed so much to humanity and modern life undoubtedly had to deal with banker parasites who are very adept at making money while contributing nothing to the world.

Wall St. protests continued....

2011-10-01T10:25:00.001-07:00

This is not so much an "anti-capitalist" protest, but to draw attention to getting Wall St. and the banking industry to abide by the law, and to get the laws governing the banking and finance sectors policed, just for a change. Is that such a tall order?

If we, as members of society, have to follow the law, then why are the Wall Streeters largely exempt? Why do so many Americans, especially those on the right wing - who are constantly trumpeting about "getting tough on crime" - remain mute on this issue, or even openly supporting the banksters and corporate parasites?

Do people honestly feel that the financial sector has the right to extort, defraud, rob and pillage without penalty? In a sane world, the answer is a big round NO! But the world today is an asylum, and the inmates are in control.

Michael Moore at Wall St.

2011-09-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Love him or hate him, Michael Moore is a self-made American, who made his money on creative effort and hard work. In other words, he is living the so-called "American Dream". He may be fat and unshaven, but he's not a criminal.

Many of the wealthiest on Wall St. made their money via being in positions of privilege, insider trading, convoluted accounting scams, and financial parasitism (pushing money around to make money)

The difference between Michael Moore and the Wall Street crew, is that the former makes real money from a tangible product, and the latter makes fake money out of thin air.

That errant satellite.....

2011-09-24T10:08:00.000-07:00

The government has satellites which can "read newsprint from geostationary orbit", but cant locate and track an object the size of a school bus, re-entering the atmosphere in a fiery blast visible to the naked eye? Gimme a frackin' break!

Coming to you from the same media that told us of the "rescue" of Jessica Lynch, the "dead incubator babies" in Kuwait, Saddam Hussein's ability to attack the US with miniature airborne drones loaded with sarin gas, and the miraculous ability for random office fires to collapse buildings at free fall acceleration for the first time in history.

LIARS!

"Hikers" released by Iran...

2011-09-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

This is one of the most LENIENT treatments for espionage I can recall. Hikers, my a$$! Why would three US citizens travel half way across the world, to go "hiking" in an unfriendly nation when there are so many wonderful, beautiful and challenging places in the US to hike without being harassed?

Now, imagine the situation in reverse... three Iranians illegally in the US, apparently "hiking"? Gitmo, held without charge for years, no access to counsel, branded as terrorists in the corporate media, tortured, and then, 10 years later, still in solitary, no charges, no legal counsel, torture and still branded as terrorists.

The Lockerbie "bomber" near death.

2011-08-29T09:56:00.000-07:00

Link here.

al Megrahi's trial was one of the worst travesties of justice in Scottish history. It is so plain that this guy was railroaded and the case was rigged. All the evidence against him is either hearsay or has since been roundly debunked.

The mandate from both US and UK governments was "get someone, get anyone", as long as he has an Arabic name, invoke phony "national security" language to restrict information and evidence in court, and the supine, cowardly corporate media will play along and write history, diverting attention away from the real perpetrators, the identities of whom REMAINS UNKNOWN.

The worrying part of this stinking case, is that the bomber or bombers, are probably still be on the loose. Who knows what they may have done since Lockerbie, and how many people have been killed? It could be in the thousands, and not necessarily in either Europe, Africa or the Middle East.

Enough of the wacky Libyan conspiracy theories. Infantile baby-formula bull-buscuits for the gullible masses in their comfort zone bubbles.

"A lie can make its way half way around the world before the truth has got its boots on". Mark Twain.

Banksters: the real looters

2011-08-10T20:04:00.001-07:00

It's so easy to criticize looters who ripped off some electronics and tennis shoes... they are common criminals, and should get dealt with severely by the courts.

However.. put it into perspective: We seem to be blissfully unaware of the biggest looting spree in human history - the wholesale rape, pillage and ransacking, of TRILLIONS of dollars, from the taxpayers of western nations by the international banksters and corporate Wall Street insider elites, in 2008 and 2009, and continuing to this day... these guys do it just because they can, and can threaten politicians. It's just a big game in the fevered, sociopathic minds of those scum, and the losers are the ordinary taxpayers. These super-criminals are above and beyond the reach of the law... they do golf and dinner parties with favored lawmakers.

In the light of the real mega-crime wave of the millennium, the sense of proportion and priority appears wildly out of whack.

Taxation!

2011-07-31T10:49:00.001-07:00

To anyone complaining about taxation: think about where 60%+ of your tax dollars go: The Pentagon and the humingous corporate welfare black hole that is “defense” spending. The corruption and scamming that is the Pentagon’s budgetary (mis)management is a conman’s wet dream.

On the afternoon of September 10, 2001, Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced in a US Senate hearing that the Pentagon was “cannot account for $2.3 Trillion in transactions….”. For the mathematically challenged, that’s $2.3 Trillion, or $2,300 Billion, or $2,300,000,000,000. If you spent $1 million each day (imagine that!), for the next 6,300 YEARS, that would pretty much cover this missing money, pilfered from the US taxpayers in recent years.

So, what happened as a result of what was arguably the biggest rip-off in human history? SQUAT…. everyone was too stunned and busy, in a state of shock and awe, flying flags and pretending to be “patriotic”, to do anything: the 9/11 attacks happened on the following morning. And the thieves were never brought to justice.

Talk about going soft on crime!

Norwegian terrorist: an ardent supporter of Zionism.

2011-07-26T20:11:00.001-07:00

Breivik got much of his “inspiration” and hatred from the likes of prominent Islamophobes Daniel Pipes and David Horowitz, and the political philosophy of the neoconservative cartel which stacked the 2001 Bush Administration, whose members admittedly “craved an event like 9/11″ to get their otherwise unsellable “endless war” agenda up and running.

Whether there is a “mass movement” as described by Ledeen in the above article is immaterial: many innocent people were murdered in cold blood for doing nothing worse than becoming politically aware of a terminally unjust and perpetually horrific situation in Gaza, and showing moral support for this unfortunate population under heavy manners.

The new yellow journalism: Goebbels would be proud

2011-06-20T11:10:00.000-07:00

Much of what we hear in the corporate media, as regards controversial events for example, war and terrorist events, is single sourced, for example, a particular government spokesman, or a particular government agency. The Iraq war of 2003, and the 9/11/2001 terror attacks were prime examples.

In the case of the Iraq war, the entire corporate media took government pronouncements on Saddam Hussein's alleged "weapons of mass destruction" as a religious truth which cannot be denied. All the networks featured an endless procession of self-proclaimed experts and pundits, retired colonels and generals, defense analysts, Pentagon officials, White House propagandists, politicians on both "sides" of the aisle, defense sector spokespeople and more, all touting material that was known to be 100% false. What was even worse, is that the actuality of Iraq's 100% lack of WMDs, was already known by everyone in the relevant circles of those promoting the war. Philip Zelikow even admitted such, when asked about the reasoning behind choosing "WMDs" as the rationale for invasion: making a case for WMDs was the best option to achieve consensus. The story put forward by the man known as "Curve Ball" was known to be false, and he was known to be an unreliable witness with criminal tendencies. The Iraq war was largely "justified" and started on the basis of this one story, known to be false, from one person: A single, dishonest source, and the corporate media, in true Goebbels-wannabe obedience, regurgitated it in lockstep. 4500 American soldiers and 500,000+ Iraqi civilians were killed, and defense contractors made a killing, and the American people paid $1.2 trillion as a result this stack of corporate-media/government single sourced garbage.

As regards news from the Middle East in general, even many of the translations are being single sourced: MEMRI is the organization used by the US corporate media to translate most of what we hear from the region, from Arabic or Farsi or other language/dialect, to English. MEMRI, as has become well-known, has a very checkered history as regards accuracy, and an intent to fool or mislead readers.

Just as controversially, as regards 9/11, what we have all heard, and led to believe as the infallible truth, is as a result of the long, protracted, and detailed phone calls, allegedly sent from passengers about the alleged hijackers, most especially the infamous call to former Solicitor General Ted Olson from his wife Barbara, who was allegedly on AA Flight 77 when it allegedly hit the Pentagon. However, according to the FBI (referencing the case transcript in the trial of the alleged 20th hijacker Zararias Moussouai), *zero* cell phone calls were connected from Flight 77, and specifically, none as regards the case of Barbara and Ted Olson. Furthermore, according to a study of cellphone connectivity from the air by a certain Professor A. K. Dewdney, it was highly unlikely that any of the alleged phone calls could have been successfully connected as alleged, since the technology to do just that did not exist in 2001. The first reliable "in-air cellphone technology" was demonstrated by Qualcomm in 2004, a full three years later.

In other words, the entire backbone of the version of events on 9/11, relayed to us via the corporate media is not just single sourced, but also hearsay. It appears that we tend to give credence to versions of events that fit our comfort zone, and the art of not just journalism, but also how we write history is being poisoned for the sake of convenience, or worse. The corporate media, in the mandate to appear superficially 'patriotic'... a government lapdog as opposed to watchdog.... appears to have become no more reliable than a very well sponsored and far reaching blogger.

Fukushima news blackout

2011-06-13T22:06:00.000-07:00

The cessation of coverage of the Japan catastrophe is most likely as a result of the lobbying power of the defense and nuclear power industry: the nuclear disaster at Fukushima is already likely to have caused that 35% spike in infant mortality in the Pacific Northwest, since the anomaly started a week or so after the radiation plume spread across the area.

The nuclear power industry, in the US at least,primarily exists not for the civilian infrastructure and generating power, but for the manufacture of atomic weapons: the very bad PR generated by the Fukushima multiple meltdowns, and the Chernobyl scale radioactive pollution would have been disastrous for the US (and worldwide) nuclear industry, and could have faced major funding hurdles, that is, had the media covered the story to the extent that was justified.

Since the US mainstream media is owned by the same corporate cartels that benefit from warmongering, (such as General Electric etc etc) it's hardly a surprise that coverage was strictly censored after 2 weeks or so.

Hurricane Earl... and possible responses according to where it hits...

2010-08-30T10:19:00.000-07:00

August 30, 2010: On the 5th anniversary of Huricane Katrina's landfall on the Gulf Coast, that 2nd "day of infamy" during the Bush Adminstration's reign of crime (9/11 being the first), a new potentiel threat to the US.

Hurricane Earl became a Category 3 storm this morning. It is expected by the National Hurricane Center to make a turn to the Northwest, and eventually recurve out over the Atlantic. However, the further west it goes before making its turn, the greater the chances of an impact on the US East Coast. If Earl does hit the East Coast, expect two different types of responses from the authorities, according to which demographic gets most affected.

Hurricanes Katrina and Andrew, for example, hit (mainly) low income black and low income white areas respectively: federal help was not forthcoming until almost a week after the event.
On the other hand, after the major fire-storm disaster in the San Diego area two years ago, FEMA did an incredibly efficient job, as did all the powers-that-be. Victims and evacuees were treated to free concerts, quality free hotel accommodation, free gourmet food, free counseling, yoga and massage therapy and more.

It just happened that the San Diego firestorm struck a (mainly) wealthy area, populated by many military and defense contractor people, many obviously with a lot of influence. In stark contrast, the evacuees from Katrina were treated like common criminals, at best: Some were even used as target practice by the domestic terrorist group Blackwater Inc. (now Xe).... some 400+ bodies recovered by rescue services in the wake of the storm had multiple bullet wounds from automatic rifle fire, according to the New Orleans coroner's reports, although this serial mass murder was kept well away from any article in the corporate media.

If by chance Hurricane Earl impacts the posh Hilton Head area, for example, expect the San Diego type response from FEMA etc. If Earl hits a primarily poor area, whether black or white, expect little response at best.

West Virginia bombing incident... more duplicity.

2010-05-22T09:54:00.000-07:00

There has just been an incident in W. Virginia, in which a bomb exploded, killing one person (probably the bomber), but apparently, terrorism has been ruled out. Other explosive devices were discovered by police... indicating that the bomber had planned multiple explosions.

This says it all: "Ferguson called the blast an "isolated incident" and said it was unlikely that the explosion was related to terrorism. We don't have much of that here."

Good heavens... someone builds a bomb, detonates it, a person is killed, and the powers-that-be consider that it's "not related to terrorism"? Earth calling West Virginia.... beep... beep....beep....

Perhaps they should be a little more honest and say it the way it is: Basically, the public in the US have been programmed and conditioned for decades that terrorism is a Muslim characteristic.. all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslims: There is no muslim connection here, so this is merely a crime, nothing to look at here folks. If the perps' name had been Saeed (or Mohammed, or Ahmed etc.), the fearmongering mainstream media would have swarmed all over this like ants, as they did with the Times Square fake bomb incident, which didn't kill (and couldn't have killed) anyone.

How did our country get into such a duplicitous frame of "awareness"? Consider who owns the mainstream media, and then consider who provides all the translation services to the MSM as regards news from the Middle East (MEMRI), and then consider the words of William Colby, ex CIA chief, who was very frank and honest about the influence of the intelligence agencies, regarding the material that Americans are permitted to hear. Hatred and irrational fear of middle eastern people (non-Jewish of course) is one of the biggest factors here.

The Liberal Media. LOL

2010-05-21T10:18:00.000-07:00

Liberal media? If journalists had the liberty to publish the articles they would wish to write in the mainstream media, then we might have a liberal media. But journalists, radio and TV presenters etc are shackled, hidebound and straitjacketed: as everyone knows, the further up the media hierarchy one goes the more "un-liberal" it gets. The way this ridiculously meaningless "liberal media" phrase gets bandied about would make any unsuspecting visitor believe that the corporate media boardrooms (where the major policy decisions are made) were populated by a bunch of forward-thinking, centered, people with a sense of decency and proportion. The media is no more "liberal" than the market is "free". The "liberal media" in the US is limited to city freebies and a few boutique magazines, and even they have taboos regarding a number of topics which should (if there was any justice or sense of priorities in the world) be in blazing 4 inch flashing headlines.

Liberal media... Goebbels would be proud of such doublespeak.

Kagan: Saudis princes count for much more than US families.

2010-05-12T21:03:00.000-07:00

To protect the personal security and wellbeing of Saudi royalty/princes, Kagan stuck a big fat middle finger up at family members bereaved as a result of the 9/11 attacks. Some 6000 family members had filed lawsuits against the Saudi elite.

Kagan posited “that the princes are immune from petitioners’ claims” because of “the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.

Anyone who has read up on 9/11 (outside of the infantile gibberish regurgitated by the mainstream media of course) knows full well that the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by those alleged 19 Arabs (including 15 alleged Saudis), and Kagan probably also knows this is the case. The threat of a highly public lawsuit, with thousands of plaintiffs involved, following the money trail and other aspects of 9/11, where high level people in both the US and Saudi (and elsewhere) are subpoenaed and placed under oath in a courtroom, is the LAST thing that the powers-that-be wanted to happen, and get the subject under public scrutiny. Kagan (as well as the Supreme Court justices) were probably under enormous pressure to get this issue swept under the carpet ASAP.

But the message reaching mainstream American, if the media do their duty and report this, is as follows:

Elena Kagan to Saudi princes: "FUNNELING $$$ TO TERRORISTS IS OK,.... and the US supreme court agrees with me.
Elena Kagan to thousands of American families: GO FUCK YOURSELVES!!!!

Silly season at the Supreme Court... yet again.

2010-05-11T10:23:00.001-07:00

The controversial cross in the middle of the Mojave desert has been stolen. I cannot condone theft and vandalism, of course, but this is the inevitable result of the lack of forethought and awareness on the part of those who selected the final design of the monument. Same old.....

A war memorial honoring the dead should be "faith neutral". Perhaps some of those who died in the service of their country (or to be more accurate, multinational corporations) were Jews, or Buddhists, or atheists. A cross is an inappropriate design, and when placed on federal land, plainly provocative. The supreme court's decision was not only wrongheaded and unconstitutional, but pandered to the over powerful "Christian" right.

The article at yahoo.com, written by a seemingly geographically challenged A.P. reporter, mentions that the cross was erected some "200 miles northwest of Los Angeles". This would place the monument in the Pacific Ocean, perhaps the best place for it.

Health "care" or health terror?

2010-04-26T10:28:00.000-07:00

The insane state of heath care in the US:

Many people think the problem is about "greedy doctors and surgeons". Yes, there a always a few bad apples in the bunch: this can be expected anywhere. The real problem has little to do with medical practitioners: Think in terms of the parasitic insurance scammers, ie the middle men who get between doctors and patients, while providing nothing except a huge set of bills; perhaps so the directors and senior management can own yet more luxury cars, mansions and yachts, and the shareholders can reap yet fatter dividends?

Then there's the fact that we here in the US have become so bad at communication skills that we resort to the practice of "sue first, maybe talk later". Doctors have to insure against being arbitrarily sued by and army of criminally unscrupulous lawyers serving an army of predatorial, opportunistic clients.

This uncivilized approach is reflected in our arrogant dealing with certain other nations: we bomb them first, rather than to find diplomatic solutions, perhaps because its more profitable for defense contractors with close relationships with DC lawmakers.

The real terrorists...

2010-04-23T10:21:00.000-07:00

Here we go again. Killer Fungus is going to get us all! It doesn't take just bombs and bullets to terrorize the masses ... which in the USA is extraordinarily rare; the chances of dying via a terrorist's bomb in the USA is 150 times less likely than being struck by lightning... and on that occasion, it would most likely be courtesy of some domestic crazy, invariably a white man who wears the "Christian" religious label.

It is the corporate media that are doing most of the fearmongering, using the more subtle but equally effective approach by telling the people that we are all in grave danger from fungus, avian flu, Africanized killer bees, swine flu, Muslims or Martians. What's next? Crows? Godzilla?

Then there's the banks and credit agencies.... but that's not a "short" or "aside".

Holocaust: Selective Denial and the ever present threat

2010-04-13T09:14:00.000-07:00

Two days ago, April 11, 2010 was Holocaust Remembrance Day. This is a very tough subject to deal with, riddled with duplicity of a most disrespectful and unfortunate variety. Whenever we hear mention of the Holocaust, the “6 million” figure is consistently the fashionable number quoted; it has become common awareness, via historical revision, that the death toll in the Holocaust was “6 million”. However, this figure refers to the Jewish toll only, the group which suffered the largest numerical loss. For those who are unaware (which seems to be a large majority these days), the total death toll in the Holocaust ranges from about 11.5 million (the lowest estimate) to as many as 17 million, and perhaps even 26 million (the high estimate).
In addition to Jews, many other groups were targeted by the Nazis, including blacks, gays, academics of all variety, physically and mentally handicapped people, Soviet POWs, the Romani, Slavs, Poles, Jehovah’s Witnesses, communists, socialists, the unemployed, non-comformist youth, Freemasons, prostitutes and beggars. It has been estimated that the Romani (Gypsy) community might have suffered the largest *proportional* loss.

We must never forget about this, one of the most horrific events in human history. Sadly, the most visible parties associated with keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive, (the Simon Wiesenthal Center and the Anti Defamation League) have relegated, ignored and forgotten the other Holocaust victims to the extent of pursuing a form of selective "Holocaust Denial". Does this lack of acknowledgment imply that the non-Jewish victims are “less worthy of mention”, or represent some kind of “off-message inconvenience?

The double standard is breathtaking, and the implications are ugly. Anyone recall what happens to those who are considered "inferior"?

*

Because the Jewish people bore the brunt of the Holocaust, obviously there is far greater general awareness amongst the Jewish community as a whole regarding the nature of the Holocaust and the extent of the Nazi regime's gross inhumanity. Unfortunately, a large section of public at large do not share this knowledge; the viewpoints cover a spectrum of ignorance, ranging from the simple unawareness of non-Jewish victims, to cancerous idiocy, such as belief that the "Holocaust never happened".

Despite the unspeakably horrific deeds planned and executed by the Nazis, the fact remains that these people were human beings, like you and I, and anyone else. They had homes and jobs, owned businesses, tended their gardens, they had wives, and families, they had friends and acquaintances, and essentially they led normal lives. Psychopaths were no more common in Germany than in any other nation.

Then, Hitler took the stage, and over a period of some 10 years or so, he built his Nazi party and political platform, with considerable support from American and European/British businesses and prominent families. The slide towards brutal fascism didn't happen overnight, but rather in a gradual process, a parallel of "immersing a frog in water, heating the water very slowly and gradually so their frog isn't aware that he is about to die from being boiled alive". The German public, decent ordinary people, unwittingly permitted a tyrant to take the reins and take the world into six years of hell.

One of Hitler's many obsessions was "national security". One of his methods of exercising such was the gradual erosion of civil rights; this program got a big boost when the Nazi party staging a "false flag" event on their own nation, the firebombing and destruction of the German "Reichstag" Parliament Building, for which they blamed the Communists; the German and world's media echoed the regime's explanation, and the German public were utterly duped. Hitler's evil agenda grew by deliberate marginalization of those groups targeted by his regime, for example, the forced and violent rehousing of Jews in ghettos (which eventually culminating with the systematic extermination of millions). He started invading nations which represented no threat. He maintained power by playing on the fears of the German people, using the threat of terrorism as a big stick. The rest is ugly history, which we still appear doomed to repeat.

Herman Goering was even arrogant enough to admit what they were doing, when he uttered these (in)famous words:

........... “Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” ............

If we are to make sure that such events "never happen again", as is allegedly the mission of those committed to Holocaust remembrance, then we must become aware of that most disquieting part of the Holocaust, which, unlike the actual Nazi perpetrators, is still very much alive. Humanity is no different in the 21st Century to what it was in the 1940s, or the 1300s, or at any time in recorded history. If such an appalling debacle could happen to a long established European democracy in the 1930s and 1940s, then what is to stop a similar thing happening elsewhere, in modern times, in a democracy, and all in the name of some misappropriated version of patriotism, and where the mainstream media dupes the public wholesale into supporting and believing a tyrant?

We are all human beings, flawed, susceptible beings with fears, and we are all equally at risk.

Apollo XIII: 40 years ago.

2010-04-12T21:21:00.000-07:00

The crew and flight controllers of Apollo XIII are true heroes. This event, a truly amazing rescue effort on the part of NASA, happened in a day when the future looked bright, America was on top of the world and (apart from an insane, wasteful, expensive and idiotic war in Vietnam started after the people were lied to about the Gulf of Tonkin), people truly looked up to us. Now, after 8 years of infamy under a rogue, unelected, wannabe-fascist-of-a-president, and a year and a half under a cowardly weasel who has abandoned his base, fear and economic terrorism rule the roost, the banks are run by thieves, corporations have more rights than people, the economy is in a nosedive, and we are fighting two more insane, wasteful, expensive and idiotic wars... both of these also started on the basis of lies, regarding 9/11 and weapons of mass destruction.

America is almost 234 years old ; we should be doing better than this. We need more heroes like Gene Kranz in positions of public office. America's rescue mission is long overdue.

Street Gangs... the terrorists we love

2010-04-07T09:57:00.000-07:00

It is peculiar, that despite the government and media's obsession with Islamic terrorism (i.e. "all Muslims are terrorists and all terrorists are Muslims", an absurd notion heavily promoted by paranoid 'neoconservative' Islamophobic hatemongers in both the Bush and Obama Administrations), domestic street gang activity, which terrorizes millions of people throughout the U.S on a daily basis, both actively and passively, is largely ignored as regards the terrorism framework in which it belongs. Perhaps street gangs are not "Muslim" enough to warrant a terrorism moniker, according to State Department classification?

The chance of witnessing, and even more to the point, succumbing to an act of international (read Muslim) terrorism in the US is 100 times less likely than being struck by lightning.. and we all know how unlikely that is. However, we all know about domestic terrorist groups, ie street gangs, whose member annually murder thousands of people in all major cities nationwide; this violence being the primary byproduct of the illegal status of certain drugs, the second of course being the profit motive for the largely privately run prison industry.

WikiLeaks: Serving freedom and the people.

2010-03-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

From Michael Collins: U.S. Army Counterterrorism issued a report that said WikiLeaks is a threat to U.S. security, particularly in Afghanistan. The report says that the organization should be destroyed and offered a plan. Does the government really think it can destroy WikiLeaks or is the leaked report part of a plan to smear the organization so badly, it will lose supporters and money?

If Wikileaks has garnered such a paranoid and over-the-top reaction from the evildoers, THEN THEY MUST BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT. Without a shadow of doubt, Wikileaks is not an enemy of this country... that title should be reserved for those who insist that "Wikileaks should be destroyed".

There are very few areas of life which are best kept secret,... obvious examples being nuclear weapons technology,or troops deployment on the battlefield (referring to war in the *genuine defense* of the United States, of course). Virtually ALL secrecy is used as an mechanism to protect powerful people from the law, and to permit the continuation of their exercise of power.

It is blindingly obvious that nothing of what Wikileaks has published has any bearing on the *national* security of the United States, but rather the job and financial security of well-placed individuals within the US Government, corporate, and military who are, and have been involved in serial criminal activity.

What's the IDF doing in Haiti?

2010-01-20T15:45:00.001-08:00

Heres a factoid set that makes very little sense:

Within 3 days after the quake on January 12, the IDF (Israeli Defense Force) had a comprehensive fully-equipped and staffed field hospital set up with the latest medical technology. They had to fly all the required personnel and hardware from half way around the world, at considerable expense. Is that efficiency or what? In contrast, the medical response effort from the US, despite being far closer at hand (ie just across the Caribbean), is painfully slow; the US Navy hospital ship is still on the way to Haiti and it will probably take a few more days to become operational.

There are 50,000 US citizens in Haiti (presumably there are many injuries (and fatalities)... yet the Jewish population in Haiti numbered less than 50 in 2007. Even though there's an obvious effort on the part of both nations to be seen to be a part of (or leading) what is being touted in the media as a "humanitarian response", what is with the enormous disparity in effort and efficiency, especially as, apart from the great PR scoop, the IDF has zero interest in Haiti... unless there are other factors that we are not aware of?

Haiti Response: A convenient presidential makeover opportunity?

2010-01-16T11:23:00.000-08:00

Former Presidents Bush and Clinton team up with Obama in an effort to raise funds for Haiti.

Is this out of genuine concern and empathy with fellow humanity, or a PR exercise to give the office of the president a much needed makeover?

* Why the sudden concern by the US elite, on both sides of the poltical aisle,. for a bunch of people in one of the poorest nations on Earth, who contribute NOTHING to the bottom lines of big business?
* Is the US (financial and military) involvement more to do with maintaining order and the continuity of a government which was the result of a US aided coup d'état in 2004?
* Is this a PR exercise, taken up by both major parties, and the establishment in general, to make it appear that the powers-that-be in the U.S. have an element of humanity, especially after the last 10 years of infamy?
* The ordinary American *PEOPLE*, on the other hand, have a long history of extraordinary generosity and concern when it comes down to disaster response. Look at the $billions collected in the wake of 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the SE Asian Tsunami and more.

Ordinary people act out of their own concern for our fellow humans, no matter their what religious/ethnic/national etc backgrounds. Governments, on the other hand, play on peoples' emotions, and at times like this, out comes the emotional blackmail card.

If, for the sake of a thought experiment, an earthquake leveled the Iranian capital Tehran killing 10s of thousands, you can bet your ass that the American people would step up to the plate and donate $Billions in aid (yet again) even though Iran/Iranians have been officially designated as "evil" by our media and members of a prior administration. There would also be a similar exercise in PR-mongering by the administration, while behind the scenes, a sizable portion of influential DC policy makers and think tanks would be High Fiving and laughing like drains.

Cynical, harsh reality, or both?

Where capitalism and brutality merge.

2009-12-25T12:30:00.001-08:00

If there was any justice in the world, the international community would have imposed severe economic sanctions on China decades ago, on account of their long and continuing horrific human rights record. China has now merged capitalism with their totalitarianism and has become an economic powerhouse. Money trumps civilized values every time; a sad but true indictment of human nature.

Climategate... c'mon folks.

2009-12-12T17:57:00.000-08:00

Tt is the potential interference in the so-called "free market" that is fueling the ire of those who regard the human factor in global warming as a "lie", or a "scam". Suddenly, a long-standing 'way of life' in the US, namely the freedom to conduct business exactly as we please, is being threatened by the specter of some faceless international regulators telling us what we can and cannot do, in an area which we have dominated for a century or more. (How dare they!). Our energy M.O. has given rise to the national infra-structure as it stands currently, and to have some global regulations forced upon us is an absolute no-no. To be dictated to by some non-US body, comprising people of all nationalities is akin to giving up a part of our national sovereignty. The allegiance of many groups who lead the skeptics' charge tend towards the "libertarian" end of the political spectrum, especially in regards to the sacred principle of "keep government out of my business".

When politics interferes with science and people (from either side of an argument) fudge the facts, cook the books, dry-lab the studies and generallycheat to bolster their political stance, or to save face, there are no winners. The last one standing never wins; we all lose.

Iran's next in line... when will the rain of terror start?

2009-10-24T20:20:00.000-07:00

.... most likely courtesy of the US and/or UK. The terrorist group Jundulluh has claimed responsibility for the attack which killed some 30 people including 6 senior Iranian military personnel.

What is Jundullah anyway? Even the sanitized wikipedia entry lists alleged international support and funding, from countries including the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, Sweden and Pakistan. Iran is already accusing the US and UK of involvement in this latest bombing, and this history of US/UK etc involvement appears solid. The degree of US funding appears to be around $400,000,000 . Even the very establishment-friendly Daily Telegraph national newspaper published an article in 2007 in which links between CIA and Jundullah, as well as black operations to destablize Iran's government were approved and sanctioned by the Bush Administration. Significantly, this group is not included in the State Department's FTO (foreign terrorist organization) list, even though it is far more active in bombing outrages and other incidents of terrorism than most of the other organizations listed.

Then there is this article in the UK Daily Telegraph. A quote extracted:

Quote:

The operations are controversial because they involve dealing with movements that resort to terrorist methods in pursuit of their grievances against the Iranian regime.

In the past year there has been a wave of unrest in ethnic minority border areas of Iran, with bombing and assassination campaigns against soldiers and government officials.

So, what is the difference between the activities attributed to "al Qaida' and those associated with Jundullah? Bombings and assassinations are all terrorist acts, regardless of the identity of the perps are. But is "al Qaida" any less involved with the US government than Jundullah? Maybe not. Osama bin Laden is (was?) is alleged to be the leader of "al Qaida", but the sworn testimony of whistleblower and former FBI Turkish-American translator Sibel Edmonds alleges that Osama bin Laden was working for the US Government right up until 9/11. Ms Edmonds' direct quote:

Quote:

“I have information about things that our government has lied to us about. I know. For example, to say that since the fall of the Soviet Union we ceased all of our intimate relationship with Bin Laden and the Taliban - those things can be proven as lies, very easily, based on the information they classified in my case, because we did carry very intimate relationship with these people, and it involves Central Asia, all the way up to September 11.”

Of course the mainstream US media has not reported on this story, presumably because it makes the "boogeyman out to get us" which they have been promoting 24/7 for 8 years appears more like the "boogeyman who is fighting for certain interests within the US government".

So, there is a welter of evidence that the US (UK and others) supports and funds terrorist groups, on the tax payer...(that makes us all guilty of funding terrorism). It's yet one more in thousands of similar pieces of evidence that the "war on terrorism" is nothing of the kind, and should be viewed with the utmost skepticism. It appears that the previous administration were controlled by thugs, and by default, so is the current one, in that the groups we accuse of doing terrible things are doing it on our dollar.... and we're being fed the usual pack of lies to justify the continuation of state-sponsored thuggery.

I have to add that despite the fact that the Iranian government under Ahmadinejad and the fundamentalist clerics is not exactly a paragon of decency (!!), it remains inappropriate that the nation of Iran remains singled out as the target for the next Israeli/Neocon demand for a war of aggression. As with Iraq and Afghanistan , it will not be the *government* of that country which will face a rain of terror from the skies.... it will be the blameless Iranian people.

The war on drugs... BOGUS!

2009-08-01T11:50:00.000-07:00

In 2001, the Portuguese government decriminalized the possession/use of most "recreational" drugs, including marijuana, heroin and methamphetamines. Statistics reveal that since then, fewer people are turning to drug use, and the number of people seeking treatment for drug abuse has soared.... on other words, the policy has proven to be a resounding success.

In the US (and many other places in the world), the Portuguese approach has been roundly ignored. Why is this?

If the powers-that- be really are concerned with maintaining the health of the nation in the area of drug abuse, then nobody has paid a blind piece of attention to this (and other) studies. It appears that either
(a) the powers-that-be don't give a flying fuck about public health issues, or
(b) the powers-that-be don't give a flying fuck about public health issues unless profitable to wellplaced corporations, or
(c) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because of laziness, inertia and/or inefficiency, or
(d) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because changing things would mean 'loss of face" for certain high profile people who have championed the so-called "war on drugs", or
(e) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because going Portugal's way would likely see a decrease in revenue streams for certain wellplaced parties who benefit from the illegality of these substances, or
(f) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because America is very traditionalist in approach, and old habits die hard, or
(g) the powers-that-be keep things the way they are because drug abuse is rampant amongst inner city minorities, and we are a nation which actively maintains "institutionalized racism". A way of keeping the black and latino communities down is to keep them fighting amongst themselves, and the proliferation of street gangs is a most effective vehicle for such. The story of widespread cocaine importation in the 1980s which was written up in the San Jose Mercury, and the deliberate setting up of crack houses in numerous cities simultaneously and specifically targeting the black communities, is witness to this.

Lunar Landings

2009-07-17T10:56:00.000-07:00

40 years ago, the Apollo program climaxed with the first manned mission to the Moon, Apollo XI. Today, there a few people who claim that this program did not take place, and the whole thing was staged in a studio in Burbank, or wherever. For those debunkers, consider this:

The Soviets, for military and security reasons, were closely monitoring the Apollo program at a point when the US and USSR were locked into the arms race and the Cold War, and the prestige of being the first to the Moon and back was enormous. Had the Apollo program been faked in even the slightest way, the Russians would have jumped on it and exposed the fraud for the world's media, to embarrass the US at a time when bogged down in a long, unpopular war in Vietnam; the Soviets would have so loved that! The Soviets reluctantly accepted they had lost the race to the Moon.

Then, there were 6 more successful lunar missions, and also the "successful failure" of Apollo XIII, until the program was abandoned some 2 years later. We would have had to pull the wool over the Soviets' eyes in 7 consecutive, incredibly expensive fakes. The Russians remained mute.

Yes, the Apollo landings did happen, of that there is no doubt. And best wishes and happy 40th Anniversary to all who participated in this wonderful pioneering and peaceful adventure.

Iranian election, and the events of 56 years ago...

2009-06-16T12:01:00.000-07:00

One banner which reappears time and again in the recent election protests: "Coup 1953, Coup 2009". Iranians (who like other middle easterners appear to have longer attention spans than we westerners) haven't forgotten how 56 years ago, their parliamentary democracy was violently overthrown in CIA led coup, Operation TP-AJAX, to be replaced by a vicious dictatorship, in order to further the profit margins of private US and European (oil) corporations.

Obama even acknowledged this event in a recent speech in Cairo to the world's muslim community where he maintained that the US "isn't at war with the world's Islamic community" ... honestly... (!!). But then he admonished Iran regarding "behaving themselves in the global community", as regards their alleged (but unproven) program to manufacture nuclear weapons. Such a flagrantly duplicitous statement doesn't go down well with Iranians, makes the US appear even more arrogant and is more of a diplomatic faux pas than helpful. The US (and Iranian) people would obviously prefer stable relations between the two countries, but as far as the US (and current Iranian powers-that-be) are concerned, that seems to be entirely a different matter.

Its probably more about flowing testosterone on both sides, and the paranoia of "losing face", or seen to be "weak".... not to mention the recurring problem of hardline religious conservatives such as Iranian president Ahmedinejad, and others who shall remain nameless

Auditing the "Federal" Reserve....

2009-06-14T11:20:00.000-07:00

HR 1207, introduced by Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) has now got 224 sponsors, with Rep. Kucinich (D) OH being the 218th, thus taking HR 1207 out of Committee to a full debate in Congress. All indications are that this Bill is going to have a rough time, especially in the Senate, and will probably get defeated, and Federal Reserve is marshaling all the lobbying power at their disposal to keep this bill from becoming law.

This bill is seeking accountability and transparency re. the "Federal" Reserve. Why would such a standard concept in an official institution be seen as such a threat? What kind of practices might be threatened (or even stopped) by the legal requirement of such accountability?

My speculation on this, is that because of the (private, non-Federal) nature of the "Federal" Reserve Bank, it will be ruled that Congress has no jurisdiction over the rules and laws governing how the "Fed" works, and the Bill will be quietly dropped for such technical reasons. Of course, the national media will ignore the issue and accuse those who level any criticism of the "Fed" as being wacko conspiracy theorists. Such is the current state of play in the corporate media arena.

Piracy....

2009-06-07T12:29:00.000-07:00

The Indian Ocean is massive and thus its impossible to know exactly what goes on the recent piracy off the East African coast. However, we believe mostly what we want to believe, prefer to believe, or are more comfortable believing, and what story gets the endless repetition in the national media. The clear winner in the story stakes, is that these Somalis are a bunch of opportunists without a cause. The probability that piracy emerged as a result of foreign corporate irresponsibility/criminality combined with the lack of formal policing/coastguards in the waters off the Somali coast, is heresy.

The squashing of unorthodoxy has long been a national pastime, and its never been more popular as in the last few years.

The pot calling the kettle... part 24539

2009-06-01T10:34:00.000-07:00

The paranoia about Iran and North Korea is absurd and overblown beyond all proportion. The wars in which both nations have been involved in modern history have been local affairs, against their neighbors; Iraq in the 1980s and South Korea in the 1950s respectively. In Iran's case, they were attacked by US ally Iraq. Neither Iran nor NK have a current intent, or a past track record of far-reaching imperialism accompanied by wanton violence, and neither have the means to even fantasize along those lines, let alone accomplish such. The temptation for NK to develop nuclear weapons, and the possibility that Iran might want to follow suit, is to lessen the chances of being attacked, end of story. The US (and allies) have a track record of initiating dozens of wars in recent decades.. this cannot be denied.. and it is difficult or impossible to rationalize "national security" as a reason for any of them.

The likelihood of Iran attacking a European country, or the United States, is as far fetched as aliens landing on the W.H. lawn. The possibility of the US, or Israel, (or a US led coalition) attacking Iran is very real however, and the neocons have been itching for such a conflict since 1999. We're addicted to making war, but we are in denial about it.

Some people are after a war with North Korea? (!!)

2009-05-28T21:28:00.000-07:00

If NK (or rather lunatic Kim and his crazy government) is a genuine security threat to the region (as opposed to a bit of testosterone-induced bluster with the odd nuke test and missile launch), then perhaps the nations in that region should deal with it. Perhaps they should organize their own coalition of the willing, issue a "disarm or else" ultimatum, and go to war if as a last resort. I say the US should stay out of it this time around. We're already in two endless, major wars against countries on the far side of the globe, neither of which were a proven threat to US national security, and which have cost our tanking economy $1 trillion so far. We can't afford a 3rd simultaneous war, especially if it spreads and drags other countries in (no names). We've also proven ourselves a lousy, godawful global policeman for the last few decades... so lets stop digging that hole any deeper. If we lay off this time around, maybe we may gain a little bit of respect and regain some friendships (perhaps even make some, yikes what a concept), after the last 8 years debacle. But maybe we're so addicted to conflict that the powers-that-be won't be able to resist another fight.

Bloomberg, and his weasel brigade....

2009-04-01T18:35:00.001-07:00

Regarding the recent arrest of patriot Luke Rudkowski, after asking "His Excellency", NYC Mayor Bloomberg a difficult, but relevant question:

What pathetic little weasels Bloomberg and his cronies are. It is becoming more and more apparent that our alleged "representatives" are doing their utmost to insulate themselves from the people they are *allegedly* representing. This denotes either complicity in criminal activity (thus questions from the public are unwelcome), or their opinion of ordinary people is so low that they cannot stoop to addressing the questions of what, in their kinds, are the "unwashed masses". It is also abundantly clear, all over the world, that police departments' priorities are to protect these mega-criminals from challenges by the people, thus further insulating them from the awkward questions that are impossible to answer without telling blatant lies and obvious fabrications.

This kind of police activity is becoming de rigeur here in the West: one famous case last year involved a journalism student, in a *privately run class*, asking Sen. John Kerry an awkward question: the police present in the room were obviously under instruction to use force to quell any verbal challenges, and the man was instantly assaulted with a taser, without warning, repeatedly, while retrained on the ground, merely for using his First Amendment rights as a citizen of the United States, for asking a question which has not been answered satisfactorily (by Kerry of anyone else), to date, in any public forum. As the West degenerates into various degrees of proto-fascism and oligarchy, expect more of this in the coming years. Perhaps another false flag terrorist attack is on the cards, in order to speed up the general process of the destruction of freedom.

If a politician cannot, or refuses to answer questions from the public in a representative democracy, then he has no right to be in office. So the question now is, if the public are now forbidden from asking questions, do we still have any semblance of a real democracy? The answer is a clear, resounding, NO.

Psychopaths are us?

2008-07-28T18:30:00.000-07:00

Anyone who *orders* torture must have some degree of psychopathic personality disorder, at the least, especially in the knowledge that torture produces garbage "intelligence". Torture is fundamentally against any principles of civilized human conduct. Those who *execute* methods of torture would, of course, benefit from having a psychopathic kind of personality, but the consequences of disobeying orders is likely to be considered more important than any moral issues raised by torturing people; in the military, shit rolls downhill, (aka chain of command).

There are people in very senior positions in this administration who exhibit psychopathic traits. Furthermore, when many of the neoconservatives within (and associated with) the Bush Administration have a blatant track record of hatred and phobia towards arabs and muslims, and that a principle aim of the neoconservatives within this administration is to demonize the muslim community worldwide..... it's hardly surprising that torture would be part of their M.O. They probably even derive pleasure from the knowledge that they have the power and motivation to inflict great pain from the comfort of their offices and executive suites.

Fred Phelps and inverted Christianity...

2008-03-31T13:00:00.000-07:00

Today, gays and lesbians protested outside the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka KS, bastion of the "Rev". Fred Phelps' agenda of bile and hatred spewing. Its amazingly odd that such bizarre interpretations of Christianity can gain mainstream traction...but I guess in Kansas, anything goes?

These hatemongers cherrypick the bible looking for whatever fits their preordained agenda, while ignoring the legion of material that contradicts, or is inconvenient. If these folk are so entangled with following Biblical dogma to the letter, then they should perhaps be demonstrating other such "abominations" such as working on the Sabbath, or eating shellfish etc. Why this medieval old Testament focus on gay and lesbian people, especially considering that Jesus himself never said anything against homosexuality?

Cherrypicking the most convenient or conclusion-friendly facts is the same method used by the 9/11 Commission regarding their fatally flawed "investigation" into the September 11, 2001 attacks, or the Bush Administration's methods when it came to justifying their preordained war against Iraq. The pre-selection of material that fits a pre-ordained conclusion, or agenda (while ignoring everything that doesn't fit) is the classic methodology of bad science. But since we live in times of a War Against Science™ on many fronts, such manipulation and distortions of reality are par for the course.

McCain and the media vultures

2008-02-21T11:50:00.000-08:00

I have no love for McCain, and I really dread the possibility of a "President McCain"... but this nascent media circus re. a "possible affair with a lobbyist" is as much BS as the other "sex scandal" that everyone was obsessing about 9 years ago. IF McCain had had an affair with a lobbyist, so fucking what? It's McCain's (alleged) business, his wife's business, and the lobbyist's (alleged) business, and nobody else's! When we get so bent out of shape regarding gossipy trivia, an indiscretion in the PRIVATE LIFE of a politician (and not even proven), while all the real gnarly stuff gets glossed over and ignored, things are in a really sad way.

Our nation's consciousness is a mess, and our priorities seem to be more ass backwards than ever before.

Obama for "change"? Pull the other one!

2008-02-07T12:13:00.001-08:00

"CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.... STAND FOR CHANGE" .....

Amongst the current crop of front-running candidates, who is going to represent and support "change"? Obama talks part of the talk, and makes it appear on the surface as if he is for the people...(he's damned good at it, he is an excellent orator). However, if he prevails in November, he will not walk any of the walk (let alone half of it). He's 2 moves in front of the rest of us, and the muscle that will be assembled in an Obama White House are 5 moves in front of him.

There will be no change, apart from the spokesperson in the form of the CEO. It will remain business as usual. Another 4 years of the current "in pur faces" approach could result in civil unrest, and the most effective way of defusing that potential is to get behind a charismatic intelligent person with communication skills (albeit insincere ones), i.e. someone who can string a sentence together, to present a fresh, more velvet gloved approach to towards whatever kind of society that the powers-that-be would like to realize, or impose upon us.

Having said this about Obama... Clinton would be several degrees worse. I also believe that the majority of America isn't ready for a black person of any gender, or a woman of any race (sadly).

Hence my prediction that McCain will win in November, by fair means or foul.

Let's see.

Election Observations....

2008-01-08T21:29:00.000-08:00

There is no doubt about the Democratic Party's ability to select two candidates to run for president and vice president. However, can a nontraditional/unconventional team consisting of a white woman and a black man win the hearts of "middle America" over a traditional/conventional Republican pair; I have my doubts, unfortunately. I don't have a list of democratic "electables": any candidate which represents the base, or core values of the party (for example Dennis Kucinich), as opposed to "Republican-Lite", have been been ignored by the media, and thus been denied the publicity and face recognition required for any hope as a front-runner. The lion's share of the attention has been given to Clinton and Obama. Similarly on the the Republican side, the candidate closest to traditional values of the party, Ron Paul, has been actively shut out of the circus by the media.

The majority of the voting public are starved for the time to do the necessary reading/research into the strengths and weaknesses of the candidates. Had these two designated outsiders (Paul and Kucinich) been given the same degree of attention and publicity given by the media to the favorites (Romney/Huckabee/McCain Clinton/Obama), then maybe we would see their percentages up in a similar range? I guess we will never know, because the media will continue to ignore them. Why does the media ignore them?.... now that's a hard one to know, but I very much doubt that "merit" comes within several light years of being a parameter in that equation.......

NewsMax: virtual toilet paper that I wouldn't wipe my virtual ass with.

2007-12-05T09:52:00.001-08:00

Hands up... who is getting spammed relentlessly by NewsMax?

To paraphrase John Cleese's retort to Manuel in Fawlty Towers, these folks are such a "waste of (cyber)space". Their latest garbage is beyond ridiculous, or what.. to claim that the National Intelligence Estimate report on the lack of a nuclear weapons program in Iran is the work of "Iranian extremists" score highly on the "giggle factor" index. So Ahmedinejad and company are the CIA's paymasters? Tell that to the Israelis! (rolls eyes).

My little morning greeting to these imbeciles at NewsMax went as follows.

Good Morning Appeasers,

If you really want people to see the world the way you see it, how about delivering some genuine news items, rather than episodic, ridiculous conspiracy theories and cheap Bush Admininstration propaganda. Why talk down to the US public as if everyone is a bunch of total morons? You output is reminiscent of a hybrid of Baghdad Bob, Joseph Goebbels and "Dick and Jane". I guess thats par for the course re. the likes of Bill O'Reilly and company: see who can shout the loudest, content be damned!

So please quit spamming me. Thankyou.

Bloggulator (sic).

Maybe, someone, somewhere on the payroll of Ruddy's little "Weekly World News" wannabe empire, might wake up.

Democracy... It's sadly over in the United States, no doubt.

2007-08-20T21:15:00.000-07:00

To what extent does "publicly elected government" (as is popularly perceived) affect peoples' lives, as compared with powerful privately run institutions? Unelected bodies, for example the banking system, the mortgage and credit card companies, credit rating organizations, corporate employers, health management organizations etc. etc., have a huge influence in directing and shaping people's everyday existence, and the less a person earns , the greater extent that these institutions have in inflicting their will, which runs the gamut from "minor inconvenience", all the way to what is becoming known as "financial terrorism".

The main contact most people have directly with "government" comes around in April each year, when taxtime comes around. Apart from that (as well as any need to contact the emergency services), contact with "government" remains largely indirect. And then, one has to examine "government", to determine on whose behalf this "tool of force" (as you call "government") is largely acting. The overwhelming evidence is that "government", when not serving itself, is almost always acting in the service of big business. The great unwashed public (peasantry?) is being cut out of the equation. If you look behind the new Massaschusetts auto-insurance laws, as you mention, the most pragmatic guess would point to lobbying on behalf of the insurance industry, to influence the state government into passing those very regulations.

Private enterprise/corporate America is affecting and controlling people's lives not only directly, via its own rules and regulations, but also in its ever increasing ability to control/run government. This is Mussolini's fascism in action to a tee, although many people would instantly cover their ears on hearing the other "F-word" used to describe what they still might see as a bona fide "democratic republic" (50% of the people are still under the impression that their votes actually do count for something)! We now have a uniform coalescence of state and corporate power, where there is little to distinguish between the two. Bland feel-good references to the "people's representatives", when referring to "elected government", are becoming yet more unrealistic and redundant in time; an individual and collective denial of the failure of democracy.

Google and Censorship......

2007-08-10T01:13:00.000-07:00

I just "googled" the author Sander Hicks. Hicks is a playwright, journalist, songwriter and activist. He founded Soft Skull Press, Inc. in 1996, the same company that released the unauthorized biography of George W. Bush, (the author of which died shortly afterwards). Hicks was the lead singer in the band "White Collar Crime "from 1996 to 2003. He has some controversial political viewpoints, something that is now being increasingly regarded as suspicious (or even criminal) in these days of raging paranoia on the part of government/corporate.

The first two google entries for "Sander Hicks" display a warning: [B]"this site might damage your computer"[/B]. (!!!!!). Try it! How the hell can a website "damage a computer", according to the great gods of google? What kind of crack have the googly-mooglies been smoking now? If you try to go to Sander Hicks' website via Google, it won't even let you in (!), instead displaying a dire warning *not to go there*. So naturally, I went there. It's a perfectly normal working website, and my computer, OS and browser remains predictably intact. The site didn't crash, or spew a load of obnoxious pop-ups, or anything else sinister or weird. There are numerous websites on the net that *are* unstable, and will hang your machine., which google doesn't mention....

Can anyone shed any light on the latest round of google paranoia and arbitrary lockouts? Are there any other sites out there which come with similar warnings? The Sander Hicks censorship appears to be politically motivated. Is this the shape of the "net to come", when people with unconventional viewpoints have their webpages blocked or are subject to phony warnings, courtesy of the overlords? When the internet is subject to this kind of crap, the rest of society will probably follow suit.. down the toilet.

Giuliani: Villain of 9/11, never a hero.

2007-07-24T16:57:00.000-07:00

Mr. Giuliani is on very shaky ground when it comes to talking about terrorism: his Mayoral office misled New Yorkers as to the extreme dangers from the toxic dust fallout from the 9/11 attacks, to the extent that thousands of people are now suffering chronic and severe illnesses, including mesothelial cancers; several hundred have died already, including a number of members of the FDNY and NYPD.

If anything, Giuliani's office's actions have exaggerated the toll of the attacks, and could result in more premature deaths during the coming decade than what happened on the day of 9/11 itself. The dangers from breathing such a dense atmospheric suspension of sub-micron particles of asbestos, PCBs, mercury, lead, cadmium and other toxic elements and compounds are well known to his office (and others), and any action taken by Giuliani and company in lying to, or misleading New Yorkers as to the safety of the air and water should be regarded as criminal negligence and gross dereliction of duty. People should be charged for multiple counts of manslaughter at the very least, and that includes not only Giuliani and his complicit officials, but also parties in the White House (James Connaughton et al) who ordered the EPA to lie about the dust, even altering the scientific data gathered on the toxicity/content of the dust to make the situation appear much safer than in reality.

This issue must be raised by the mainstream media in the coming election campaign, but to date, virtual silence still reigns. If the American public were aware of this scandal to just 5% of the extent they know about, for example, Paris Hilton's antics, Giuliani would never again be regarded as the "hero of the 9/11 attacks, but instead, one of the villains.

High School Cannon Fodder

2007-07-17T18:45:00.000-07:00

Teenage kids are being increasingly targeted as cannon fodder by aggressive recruitment drives by the Department of Defense. Are these children wise to the ways of the world? Hell, no way. Ethnic minorities and working-class whites are undoubtedly in the bull's eye - the military is sold to them as an attractive and even glamorous mode of employment that's way more exciting than flipping hamburgers or punching cash registers, in an employment world where institutionalized racism still hangs on... (please excuse the hint of rhetoric there). Many of these kids really do believe the recruitment hype... including the one about "proudly fighting for America in the name of freedom and justice". I have no bother with that concept at all, if were real and sincere, that is, when it refers to an occasion when America gets genuinely attacked. (Of course I hope none of us here will ever see that happen).

Will we ever see the Department of Defense truly live up to its name? The last two times America was attacked, Pearl Harbor and 9/11, we weren't exactly defended... (on 9/11, the USAF was deliberately stood down by Pentagon brass ?!!) .... and the other numerous wars over the last 60 years in which we have gotten into have had little, at best, to do with "defending America and liberty". The Iraq war, for example, is a particularly egregious example of how our troops have been betrayed by their government, and used as a private security force in the service of big business, and for promoting a political doctrine, which has nothing to do with the notion of "fighting for our country".

Al Gore! Environmentalism... libertarianism... big government, small government... rules and regulations... ouch!

2007-07-10T21:39:00.000-07:00

Al Gore's son has just been busted for being a naughty boy. The nanny media predictably get all antsy about it and lump all environmentalists alongside him..... How weird things are getting:

There are some folks out there who must hate the Earth to such an extent that the slightest faux-pas by a prominent environmentalist, or a member of his family, or spokesperson is met with a shower of verbal bricks. Weird... what's so "wrong" with this planet (apart from the corporate polluters whose short term profit requirements reign supreme over every other consideration), that some people can't resist throwing bile at those who are more comfortable with a "responsible stewardship" approach? Nobody complains about running a company properly... but as soon as "looking after the planet in a sensible fashion" gets an airing, so many folk get bent out of shape. What is that all about anyway? In my book, the term "tree-hugger", as a simple example, should be a compliment,, but it's always used as an insult, or for "name-calling" intent. That is so weird.

Earth is the only place we've got.. anywhere else, (if it exists) is unknown and inaccessible. What's so wrong (or embarrassing, etc etc?) about supporting the health of the Earth for the sake of those who follow us? One would have thought that everyone with kids would be super-concerned.... but apparently not. Perhaps the animosity is generated by the necessary regulations that come with "responsible stewardship", and that these rules, regulations and laws often have a habit of getting in the way of the free market. I am no fan of big government myself, and some of my more Libertarian views get severely tested by this issue. Libertarianism is all well and good, but in the process of claiming ones rights and liberties, is it correct that we trash the rights and liberties of others en masse? Civilization is always a series of compromises.. and Alex Jones should recognize that. I appreciate much of what A.J. et al have to contribute.. but their stance on global warming and refusal to even consider that human activity could be even a contributing factor, is destroying whatever credibility he has... and that is extremely frustrating in these days of ever more powerful centralized and consolidated media, when the alternative sources need all the credibility they can muster.

Rev. Jerry Falwell died today.

2007-05-15T23:01:00.001-07:00

The "Christian Right" is one heck of an oxymoron. :wow:

Of course Rev. Falwell will get a "Christian" funeral...however he was one of the most effective ambassadors of the "inverted Christianity" practiced by the US religious right.. which (albeit a little oversimplified) implies "blessed are the mean, for they shall inherit the earth", and "if you're not like us, then go to hell". "Moral Majority"... oh dear, oh dear. Even to this non-Christian, it is glaringly obvious that hatred and exclusion are not Christian values

Falwell and company have precious little do with Jesus Christ, apart from co-opting that name, and then using the label of "Christianity" as a means to perpetrate spiritual blackmail on their followers to wield power and make cartloads of MONEY. Charlatans like him have been pulling stunts like that throughout the ages... ie misrepresenting the words of a spiritual master and using them for their own ends. There are lots of good people who follow(ed) Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson etc. and gotten ripped off. "Falwellism", and Christianity as taught by Jesus, are so far apart as to be unreconcileable

These guys are prime examples of the false prophets that Jesus taught (Christians) to beware of. Robertson, Falwell and their ilk are playing with peoples' minds and fears and milking them for their very earthly cash. Falwell and co. are more about Mammon, mind games, manipulation and materialism. It's a flawed part of human nature we're dealing with here, which allows for con men with loud voices and public speaking skills to use the name of a revered person for greed and power. Jesus is not the only originator of a faith whose name is being used in corrupt ways wholly at odds with what the teacher intended. Any faith are subject to piracy by fakes and phonys.

Illegal Immigration...

2007-05-07T10:13:00.001-07:00

It's always the people at the end of the chain who get jerked around. Immigrants, for example are wowed by ads placed on the Mexican side (by US agribusiness etc), encouraging migration (both legal and illegal). The employers are seldom prosecuted. Same with the 'war on drugs'... where the established dealers and distributors often have cozy relations with law enforcement, while the end users are the ones who get the shaft. Same in the military.. in the recent spates of torture and abuse in Iraq etc., its the grunts who get court martialed for carrying out orders, and the brass get away with it. Its a similar picture in whatever area of human activity you care to name.

Not a lot anyone can do about it.. its a product of human nature.

Reality is whatever you can get away with.

Immigration rally: LAPD, aided by Wackenhut and Blackwater terrorists

2007-05-03T10:14:00.000-07:00

Here is a video of the LAPD forcibly breaking up a peaceful and permitted rally, by firing indiscriminately into the crowd.

Even a Fox News (!!!!) cameraperson was beaten up and her equipment damaged. Strange that the news organization whose leaders endorse this kind of move towards the hardline right end up getting their own (innocent) employees attacked.

The purpose of this officially sanctioned arbitrary violence is most likely to intimidate people from peaceful assembly (especially minorities and other targeted groups). Of course, the LAPD (and their hired private security thugs from Wackenhut, Blackwater etc) will use the standard claim that "they were provoked first".

Now there are claims by LAPD Chief William Bratton that there will be a "vigorous investigation" into the conduct of officers. Ha! Gimme a break... the police investigating the police... is this amateur comedy hour or what?

This has shades of the Miami anti-WTO demonstration some 4 years ago where Miami P.D. Chief John Timoney ordered his men (and an army of hired goons) to wade in indiscriminately attacking and terrorizing peaceful marchers.

The pattern is clear. Major city police are becoming increasingly politicized, firmly on the side of big money and hard line rightwing causes.

Rosie O'Donnell vs. the weasels in the corporate media

2007-04-25T12:52:00.000-07:00

Now that Rosie O'Donnell has parted company with "The View", there has been a enough pus, slime and slurry emitted by the spew-merchants of the extremist right wing to fill the Grand Canyon, and then some. What did Rosie do to offend these people to warrant such an outpouring of hatred, vitriol and bile?

* Perhaps its because she doesn't conform to the standard TV personality image expected for women?

* Perhaps it's because she is large, i.e. not 36:24:36? Perhaps its because she's a gay woman and successful too? That definitely makes her a target, through no fault of her own.

* Perhaps its because she isn't a coward, and she's prepared to use the (rapidly diminishing) right to speak freely? Perhaps because she breaks arbitrary rules and speaks out on issues that the ranks of asslicking weasels in the corporate media back away from?

* Perhaps its because she's not a manufactured pawn, spewing pabulum and piss, like Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake and the modern plastic icons of moronic mediocrity?

* Perhaps its because she dared to break the taboo on the WTC7 aspect of the 9/11 attacks and asked a question. How subversive of her! OMG.. she had the audacity to ask a question! Put her in front of a firing squad! (She didn't actually accuse anyone specifically, or speculate, she merely asked a question.. but in this age of rampant Big Brotherism and toeing the line without thought, merely asking a question seems to incur the wrath of the *Nellie brigade. Rosie is neither a "conspiracy theorist, nor a *Nellie. She just asked a legitimate question. Why would such a question cause so many frayed nerves and angst?

We are living in an increasingly, gray, conformist, arbitarily obedient, generic, baby formula, cookie cutter world, where anyone who breaks the strait-jacketed norms, like Rosie, are cast asunder with knee-jerking streams of hatred, abuse and namecalling.

How come Rosie was such a "terrible" threat, when we have the likes of Murdoch and company out there, defining what 10s of millions of hapless, time-strapped Americans see, hear, and eventually "think"?

The domination of the airwaves by the powerhungry psychopaths at the top of the corporate heirachy is one the greatest threats to our way of life. If the founders were here to witness the Murdoch doctrine and what happening to this country... they would undoubtedly cast a verdict of "abject failure.. the train has left the tracks".

The hate addicted need some serious help

~~~~

*nellie n. a person belonging to the mindset that believes that the powers-that-be are 100% unconditionally honest, unimpeachable and committed to the general good.

Cheney to be Impeached?

2007-04-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

On April 17, 2007, Rep. Dennis Kucinich informed his congressional colleagues by letter that he was filing articles of impeachment against Vice President Dick Cheney. This is a timely step in the right direction, in an attempt to rid this nation of the cabal of thugs and crooks occupying the White House, Cheney being the junta's head honcho.

Thankyou Rep. Kucinich. And while you are at it, it is imperative that Cheney be required to testify, under oath, about the status of US air defenses on the morning of 9/11. He must also disclose the full details of the numerous drills and wargames under his command that morning which effectively took a large proportion of the US air defense capability North into Canada and Alaska, and East out over the North Atlantic, allowing four rogue airliners to fly freely across US airspace, unhindered and unchallenged, for up to an hour and a half, in flagrant violation of all standard procedures and protocols. Furthermore, Cheney should be required to provide details as to his whereabouts on the morning of 9/11; Norman Mineta informed the 9/11 Commission, under oath, that Cheney was in the PEOC under the White House at 9-20, corrobrated by other witnesses , whereas Cheney lied to the Commission, saying that he didn't arrive there until about half an hour later.

This is just the tip of a very ugly iceberg. We the people are his bosses, and he needs to be accountable to US.

Unfortunately, the weasels in the Democratic Party leadership, who shall remain nameless, are not lending their support. Apart from having both Cheney and Bush impeached (implying a "President Pelosi", which would appear a somewhat engineered situation), it makes me wonder why the leadership of the "opposition" is taking the extraordinary step of supporting Cheney, a true enemy of the State.

In the meantime, some timely advice for Rep. Kucinich: Remember what happened to the unfortunate Senator Paul Wellstone (MN), who was killed in a light plane "accident" (!) shortly before the Iraq war started. Some of those in recent history who have done the most work for the most worthy of causes, have paid the ultimate price for their patriotism and humanity.

Love me, love my gun.

2007-04-21T11:02:00.000-07:00

How many people have to die in a firearms attack, in order to classify it as a act of terrorism? 100? A million?

Or is it a case that in the US, no amount of firearms deaths could ever be classified as "terrorism" because ...

(1) we have a dysfunctional 230 year addiction, and love affair with guns.. and
(2) we are fighting a war against terrorism.

That would be shooting our culture in the foot.

Does anyone honestly think that we won't see a repeat of this kind of violence, all because we wrung our hands for a couple of weeks, shed some crocodile tears and said "oh how sad, oh how tragic", before the collective amnesia sets in and the story disappears from the headlines?

"The definition of insanity is the repetition of the same action expecting a different result." John Laroquette. In cases involving terrorism by the gun, just substitute "action" for "inaction".

Idiotsville, anyone?

VA Tech tragedy. :(

2007-04-17T12:22:00.000-07:00

Every time there's a horrible multiple shooting incident like this, there's a few weeks of heated discussion over what to do about it, and how to prevent the next one. Each time, it's all hot air and no action, apart from the predictable investment in more security and more surveillance (which any determined shooter can evade). The causes of what triggers some people to "lose it completely" remain in place, unaddressed. Subsequent newsworthy events then cause our memories to blur, and then we forget... until the next time. Repeat cycle.

Because 32 people were killed in one incident, it makes the national headlines (as well it must, it's a ghastly tragedy. But what about all the 100 people who die by the gun every day in the U.S. whose deaths usually go unreported in the national media (unless its a celebrity of course)? Our society is not only sick, but in denial. It reminds me of the strange feel-good ritual we go through each year by acknowledging (on the media) the plight of the homeless at Christmas.. and then for the rest of the year, pretending the problem doesn't exist....

GM foods, bees, DNA patents, cronyism, and disaster in the making.

2007-04-10T11:11:00.000-07:00

Bee populations throughout the US and the industrial world are dying off at alarming rates, with some nations reporting losses of up to 80%, and nobody is really sure why. Last night, I watched the documentary movie "The Future of Food" It's probably one of the scariest and most sinister documentaries of recent times, and shows Monsanto (etc) for what they really are: "planetary terrorists". But nobody in the mainstream media is talking about it. If it can be shown that GM foods are related to this bee population decline, then the reasons for the media staying mum about it are obvious. The three government agencies responsible for making sure that the food reaching America's dining rooms and restaurants is safe to consume, namely the USDA, EPA and FDA, are stacked with Monsanto board members. They probably play golf and sit on the same boards as other major players in the media as well; there is only one degree of separation in the world of the corporate elite. Hence, the nefarious activities of Monsanto and other major agribusiness and chemical/GE corporations are not only immune from mainstream media coverage, but also immune to any form of legal challenge. Monsanto is attempting to patent life itself, and soon these patents may extent to the DNA sequences of higher animals and even humans, if they get their way. And from the conduct of US senior judges involved in making legal decisions (100% behind Monsanto etc), do not be surprised if the very worst happens.

The case of Josh Wolf.

2007-04-08T11:07:00.000-07:00

Read this link here.

Every journalist is political. And the mainstream media journalists are bound, not by their personal political convictions, but by the policies set in the boardrooms of their corporate employers. We all know that, or at least *should*. Violent beatings by police on protesters greatly outnumber violence committed by protesters; I have attended hundreds of protests in the last 6 years since the Bush regime started, and I have never once seen a bona fide protester deliberately engaging in violence against police officers *without provocation*. Those are the key phrases: "bona fide" and "without provocation". I have witnessed numerous attacks on protesters by police, and if someone defends himself, as opposed to the recommended "going limp", he will be charged with assaulting a police officer. A count of all the hospitalizations and wrecked cameras wrecked by "overzealous policing" (read mindless thuggery protected by the blue uniform), especially since the Bush regime's onset, would be spectacular.

Violence committed by stooges, however, is commonplace. An prime example of this was in the 1999 when the mainstream media were led by the nose to the downtown area, where masked thugs in the guise of "black block anarchists" were deployed by parties unfamiliar to the organizers of the demonstration, for whom a peaceful action was of an obvious and paramount priority. These individuals, with the mainstream media TV cameras ready on site with cameras rolling, threw rocks and bricks at the windows of many downtown Seattle businesses, including McDonald's and other high profile institutions. The scenes of mayhem and destruction, faithfully recorded to videotape, were duly broadcast on prime time television, and repeated over several days, effectively branding the entire demonstration as a violent affair run by rowdy and criminal elements. The mission was to trash the "anti-WTO" image in the minds of the general public that the "globalists" were "the good guys" and the demonstrators were all a bunch of out-of-control hooligans. Mission accomplished, with the aid of the Seattle Police Dept?

It is plain that urban police departments have deliberately engaged in unconstitutional activity, in alignment with the causes that attract popular demonstrations. The anti-FTAA protests in Miami 2003 was a prime example such of police tactics characteristic of tinhorn dictatorships. From the Save Our Civil Liberties website, comes the following sinister revelation:
"For almost 2 years, the Miami Police Department has desperately been trying to ensure that the 2003 FTAA police operations plan remains a secret, even from the city's own Civilian Investigative Panel which is charged with investigating the large scale police brutality that took place on November 20-21, 2003. MPD has finally revealed it's reasoning for the secrecy: releasing the plan could "jeopardize future operations nationwide" because "authorities THROUGHOUT THE COUNTRY have adopted the plan". This is a stunning, yet frightening admission, as it confirms the deep suspicions of political activists who have personally witnessed the same repressive tactics travel from city to city, protest to protest. This also lends further support to the ominous statements made earlier by Miami Police Chief John Timoney, that the FTAA was "the first big event for Homeland Security...the first real realistic run-through to see how it would work."

In this case, Miami Police Chief John Timoney authorized state sponsored terrorism on US citizens peacefully going about their constitutional right to freedom of assembly and expression.

Question: How often have you, the reader, watched on mainstream television news, unprovoked police violence upon protesters? Here's your answer: Probably never, because of the unwritten rule. But the reality is sadly very different. Even if Wolf's actions could be construed as "biased", the balance of bias in mainstream media reportage towards "the status quo" and conservative or corporate causes, remains stunningly lopsided, for a so-called "democracy".

BRITAIN? or D.C.?

2007-03-31T11:35:00.000-07:00

Judging by the way the NeoCons do international business, i.e. attack first, the standoff with Iran (re. the 15 captive British sailors) is perfect for the Bush Administration; many of history's wars have started when a small incident escalates out of control. Blair's extraordinary degree of dishonesty, as well as his support for preemptive war since the NeoCons started their global rampage on the back of 9/11, is out of character, and only further suggests that he is a weak, bought politician, and speaking on behalf of his D.C. masters.

As an afterthought: would either the UK or the US ignore 15 Iranian sailors in an Iranian military ship straying into their waters?? Excuse me while I roll around on the floor laughing my ass off.

Giuliani: Yet another sociopath for the White House?

2007-02-07T20:34:00.000-08:00

New Yorkers should never forget Amadou Diallo, an unarmed man murdered in cold blood by police as he was minding his own business, searching for the keys in the doorway to his apartment. He was shot 41 times by his killers.

Rudy Giuliani's response fiited neatly into the sociopathic pattern he displayed with consistency during his term as mayor. Extracted from this article:

Quote:
"Giuliani's response was callous. He refused to meet with black leaders for a month -- then again, he pretty much always refused to meet with black leaders. And he absolutely refused to reconsider his police department's policies. But it was his response to the killing of another young black man a year later that was, perhaps, his Katrina moment with the New York public.

In 2000, 26-year-old Patrick Dorismond was shot and killed by an undercover detective participating in Operation Condor. The cop had approached Dorismond to ask where he could buy marijuana. Dorismond was offended, a scuffle ensued, and Dorismond died.

In the outcry following Dorismond's death, Giuliani was snide and unapologetic. He released Dorismond's juvenile records to justify Dorismond's homicide eight years later. He also, famously, sneered that Dorismond was "no altar boy" and defended his comments with a breathlessly cynical legalism, saying it was impossible to libel the dead".

With his disregard for the victims of the poisonous dust on and after 9/11, he has an extraordinary ability to divide a community. This is not the kind of character that America needs, when it comes to repairing decades worth of damage in the wake of the current occupants of the White House.

Limousine Liberals

2007-01-29T17:03:00.000-08:00

John Edwards, possible presidential candidate for 2008 has just purchased a 30,000 sq. foot monster-mansion on a 100 acre estate. Included in this huge $6 million property are two (!) squash courts, a swimming pool, a four story tower (!) and two (!) stages! (What is that all about? Has he turned all literary and Shakespearean on us?).

Yes, this is hypocrisy... and it's especially noticeable amongst the "elite left" (if there is such an oxymoronic reality). Look at the "limousine liberal" syndrome: politicians living mega-opulent lifestyles whilst calling for social change, or egalitarianism, to make it look on the surface as if they have the interests of the less fortunate, or average earner in mind). To preach "progressive values" while filtered by such wealth to the harsh realities of life endured by the average working class American to whom they are trying to reach (i.e. those 10s of millions with 2 jobs, no health insurance and no life).... doesn't quite compute.

I am not saying that "liberals" should be disqualified from earning megasalaries because of their political stance: it just kinda stinks that a public figure like John Edwards who claims to speak for "ordinary Americans", goes and purchases a spread like that. This is sticking the finger at his potential support base. For sure, he has every right to to earn whatever he can and spend it however he wants...but a 30,000 sq ft mansion with all those "extras" is a supremely inappropriate gesture for a left-leaning politician (that is, if he really is left leaning, of course). At least at the other end of the spectrum (the Rupert Murdoch, Enron etc. doctrine, and similar), there's no pretense to be something they are not: in their case, what you see is what you get, in all its sociopathic or even psychopathic, reptilian, ugliness.

I forget whose quote this is, but perhaps John Edwards and the Hollywood elite (for example) should take it to heart: "Money is like fertilizer. Pile it all up in one place and it starts to smell bad.... but when spread around, it will grow things"

World Economic Forum: Mafiosi, Corporate Barons and Psychopaths... oh my!

2007-01-23T11:50:00.000-08:00

The World Economic Forum is getting up to one of its somewhat inaccessible ivory tower hideyholes: this time, Davos, a posh Swiss ski playground for the rich and famous plays host to the reptiles. Of course it is business as usual: once the corporate media have had their splurge at the celebrity trough, their attention will be transferred to broadcasting the usual stageplay of hired black-clad stooges, masquerading as "protesters", breaking windows of McDonalds in the downtown area, thereby publicly casting the opponents of jungle-law capitalism as "rowdy anarchists" on prime time TV. Meanwhile, the psychopaths, war mongers, and merchants of death and destruction sip the champagne and sample the caviar. Louis XIV would be so proud!

Hillary, or Obama... for President?

2007-01-21T12:05:00.000-08:00

Hillary is too "establishment" (ie bought and corrupt) to provide any real hope of honest leadership. Not only that, but she's being marketed as "America's Margaret Thatcher". That spells "nightmare".

and Obama...that's a democratic party suicide ticket. Traditional "values" in much of mainstream America (both dem and repub) are still subject to too much inertia to result in Obama becoming president. A woman *could* make it, if she has an excess of "yang" or male qualities, (in the mold of Thatcher, or Jeane Kirkpatrick, for example). But a black person, or bachelor, or gay, or genuine progressive.. etc etc... no matter how brilliantly qualified they might happen to be.... fergettit!

To become president. it takes access to almost unlimited wealth to campaign at highlevel intensity for 2 years and a blanket endorsement by big business. Hillary *might* have that already.. but Obama? He would have to sell his soul.

It is depressing to think further about all this, because when one gets into it... we all know that "business as usual" will reign.

The sociopaths and psychopaths always seem to win.

Eye-popping executive salaries

2007-01-04T20:38:00.000-08:00

I think it was Bertrand Russell who said (pls correct me if I'm mistaken): "a specialist is a person who gets to know more and more, about less and less, until he finally knows everything about nothing". The executive salary situation reminds me a little about the above quote, in that (proportionately) fewer and fewer people are getting paid more and more, until finally a tiny elite owns everything. Well, thats obviously an exaggeration, but it is a parallel.

How much reward constitutes "enough", or "too much", or "too little" (dare I ask?)? I am vehemently against government regulation and intrusion into peoples' private affairs... but this Thomas Paine quote puts it in a nutshell: "Society is produced by our wants, and governments by our wickedness." In the case of insane executive rewards, when society fails to exercise self-discipline and the top individuals within it fail to exercise "reasonable self restraint", where bloated excess, greed, grossness, opulence and the resulting astronomical wealth does not reflect those individuals' worth to civilization, then that is the (unfortunate) time where responsible government ends up having to step in, for the sake of everyone.

How much higher can executive salaries get, before regular people start getting pissed enough to do something about it? There may be also a fear factor, a cold war relic at play here preventing this, (especially here in the US): Are we too afraid of being called "communists" or similar, because suddenly we recommend that the top people are limited to getting paid only 5,000 times the rate of regular workers, for example, as opposed to 10,000 times, or 20,000, or 100,000 times or unlimited?

The top exec. salary thing is also a game they play ... a celebrity competition amongst the elite to see who leads the table of excess. Not only that, but these people can afford to hire teams of skilled accountants and lawyers to set up complex trusts and overseas accounts etc. etc. in order to "legally" avoid paying taxes.

If these top salaried folks cant keep their own houses in order, re pay, and the situation gets so crazily out of kelter and lopsided that government is forced to finally step in, then that is the fault, not of government, but the narrowminded greed, lack of vision, and the "out-of-touch-with-reality" of these pigs. It's a bit of a parallel with the effects of terrorism, where the (evil) actions of a tiny minority screw things up for all... or in microcosm, where a kid misbehaves, doesn't own up, and the entire class ends up being punished.

At some point, I believe, enough is enough.

More troops for Iraq?

2007-01-02T17:33:00.000-08:00

What in the f*** is Bush (and Congress) trying to prove here? The only thing that is going to result from this extension of the Iraq war folly is to provide the burgeoning insurgency with more targets to fire at. Are they trying to ramp the troops' casualty roll up to 4,000 dead by next Christmas? Or sooner, perhaps?

Of course Bush is not going to give up on his pet Neo Con war. He's full of testosterone as well as being a self-righteous character who is scared witless about admitting being wrong. Facing up to reality, losing face and changing course is an alien concept to this excuse of a president (and his cohorts). If he pubicly admitted the mistake of the invasion,left the fate of Iraq up to the Iraqi people, and plugged the endless corporate welfare gravy-train that is the Iraq war, then history will look a little less harshly upon his presidency.

If thr Pentagon asks for $100 billion for the immediate war costs, then they will get $100 billion. How many democrats are there who have the spine to vote for what is best for the USA, rather than being on their knees to their corporate owners and their agenda?

In Congress right now, Weasels outnumber Patriots by a huge factor. Count the brave men and women there on the fingers of two hands, at best.

Saddam Executed

2006-12-29T19:59:00.000-08:00

Many officials within the Bush Administration will be heaving sighs of relief, including ex Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others. Saddam Hussein, if he had been tried for the illegal invasion of Kuwait (amongst other crimes) could have caused a huge amount of trouble for numerous US and European officials and corporate executives, by calling witnesses pertaining to the sales of chemical and biological weapons throughout the 1980s, in its war against Iran.

He might also have called into evidence the Bush Sr. administration's complicity in the brutal suppression of the anti-Saddam revolt shortly after the conclusion of the Gulf War.

Finally, it would have also brought into public light illicit manipulations of international oil prices by Kuwait and other OPEC nations, which forced the then bankrupt Iraq to sell oil at a loss, leaving Hussein with no choice but to take military action, on the US assurance that there would no repercussions as a result of taking such actions.

It's hardly a wonder that Saddam was tried specifically for a rather obscure event (a massacre in Dujail, an Iraqi town) for which there was no easy connection with figures of current international standing, rather than the numerous, far more visible atrocities, with which (Saddam Hussein) was linked.

U.S. spied on Princess Diana?

2006-12-11T13:39:00.000-08:00

Well, well. Surprise surprise.

Diana was a most unpopular figure with the (US and European) arms manufacturing industry:she was the world's most 'visible" woman, and she was heavily involved with the global movement to ban anti-personnel and other types of landmines: landmines are of little military use; the huge majority of people who are maimed and killed by these weapons are civilians. Her actions in spreading awareness of the effects of these types of weapons was extremely bad PR for a number of corporations which are not only household names, but also profit handsomely from the purveying of death and destruction.

Diana was just one of many people who were trying do something decent and moral in an uncaring world ,on behalf of civilized values and humanity, and end up being targeted by those who don't give a flying fvck about anything other than power and profit margins.

It's hardly surprising that she was "spied upon". Business as usual, whether if be under Clinton, Bush, or whoever.

Pinochet gets off the hook, yet again

2006-12-10T11:18:00.000-08:00

Brutal dictator, supported by thugs allied to the Nixon regime, has escaped justice once more, in this lifetime that is. For those who acknowledges karma, Pinochet's next pairs of shoes will not be comfortable fits. For those who acknowledges the concept of heaven 'n' hell, Augusto had better don his asbestos suit.

However, his death meant that justice was never done. Tens of thousands of living relatives of innocent folk who were tortured, murdered or simply disappeared, have never had the chance of even that (unsatisfactory) degree of closure.

Back in the 1990s, the British Government had the chance to bring this slimebag to justice, when the Spanish government was trying to extradite him ... but in its usual form, Tony Blair's weasel administration chickened out, like the political cowards they are. They let him go back home to Chile, under the pretence (or lie) that he was "mentally incapacitated and unable to stand trial". He spent the rest of his days in comfort, instead of the jail cell he should have been in.

Then we have the disgusting spectacle of former UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who on one hand, blathered on about 'democracy and the rule of law"... and ridding the world of vicious dictators, (blah blah freakin' blah)... yet she was a close personal friend and supporter of this vicious scumball.

The most important question of all, of course, is how did someone like this manage to overthrow a democatically elected government, and get away with it?

Pinochet: What a sorry excuse for a human being.. a total non-starter.

John Bolton: Good Riddance

2006-12-05T11:13:00.000-08:00

It is with relief that John Bolton's tenure as US Ambassador to the U.N. is about to finish: it is evident from his track record that he has an unstable nature, and an anger management problem. Those in senior diplomatic positions should at least be capable of exhibiting diplomacy first and foremost.

With the United States' reputation for promoting liberty in shreds as a result of the last 5 years of foreign and domestic policy, it is now even more inappropriate for the likes of Bolton, an ideologue who shares the same extremist Neoconservative viewpoints as the crew who got us into this current mess, to be in public office.

Furthermore, the way in which he was appointed to this vitally important position, when Congress was out of session, added insult to injury.

His resignation will be for the good of all.

Our (d)evolving system in the US?

2006-12-01T20:20:00.000-08:00

Mussolini did say that Fascism "should more properly be called corporatism, being a merger of state and corporate power". However, the modern term "fascism" has been redefined to imply totalitarianism and all that accompanies such (military or other style dictatorship, no real democratic/electoral process, relatively few civil liberties and rights, arbitrary imprisonment/kangaroo justice... and all the baggage that goes with such).

Bearing that redefinition in mind, it is absurd to suggest that the current system in place in the US is anywhere near that variety of "fascism", despite a number of current trends in that direction. However, "corporatism" is a pretty good fit: One just has to look at the parties and organizations who influence peoples' lives and livelihoods to the greatest extent.. and one comes up with non-governmental, private, unelected parties in big business every time... expecially the big banks and credit card companies. To argue that our elected representatives are the ones whose decisions affect us the most is also moot... since they are also in the pockets of big business and financial institutions.

No conspiracy required here: its the natural evolution of the system we have in place, which could be described as a "Quasi-Democratic Republicorporatocracy". (ouch)

Iraq: When is the US getting out?

2006-11-25T14:15:00.000-08:00

The investment in permanent military bases is massive. I can't quote a$ figure in what has been directly spent by the US Government on these bases, but they are like small US cities, with facilities to match. Similarly re. the new US Embassy in Baghdad: this covers an area larger than the Vatican. We are not about to quit Iraq, leaving these multi $10s of billion facilities to the insurgents. We are staying there, probably permanently. I feel that the length of the war is directly related to the length of the occupation: without the US military occupation as a focal point for all the insurgent groups, they would instead turn increasingly on each other.. with a period of utter chaos (as if what is happening now isn' t just that).. and out the power vacuum would rise a Saddam Hussein-like strongarm (dictator)... and we would all be back to square one. No democracy for Iraq, but at least relative stability.

I wish the US government and media had taken the anti-war movement in 2002 and early 2003 seriously. Their dire predictions were spot on: Everything that they were warning against has taken place, and is taking place as we write....and even worse. The endless parade of Bush Administration officials, defense analysts, high ranking military personnel and (neo)conservative commentators who had a perpetual free lunch with the mainstream US media in the build-up to the war were absolutely pathetic. They got everything wrong; totally and utterly, 100% wrong. Their analyses were pie-in-the-sky fantasies of Lewis Carroll proportions that any 16 year old with half a brain, and a bit of a handle on human nature, could have seen through.....

There is no answer to this conundrum, when all parties are paranoid of being seen as losing. Nobody in power in D.C. is going to be looking for a real answer in the near future. The recent switch-over of power in Congress from GOP to Democrat will tell all. My take is that the GOP will take full advantage of what will be the Congressional Democrats' utter inability to deal with Iraq effectively. The GOP don't/didnt have the will, and the Dems do not have the spine. Sure they will pretend to make it appear as if they are trying to take some responsibility.... and people will be taken in...

The only way this nightmare will end... is when the (largely unrepresented) US public gets aware enough, and so angry with the continuing astronomical waste of taxpayer funds, and human life, that they take matters into their own hands.

Another Lebanese Assassination....

2006-11-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

This time, its the turn of Pierre Gemayal, the anti-Syrian Industry minister. Think back to the assassination of Rafik Hariri. Who got the blame for that? Syria. How much evidence was there that Syria was involved? Zero, apart from conspiracy theories spread by enemies of Syria, involving secret tunnels, remote controlled detonators, pre-knowledge by the Syrian authorities etc. etc. none of which in existed in reality. The murder weapon was a car-bomb, and the assassin (or one of them) was Ahmed Adas, a 24-year-old Palestinian refugee living in the poor Beirut neighborhood of Tarik Jadida. and was a member of an unknown jihadist group,"Advocacy and Holy War in the Levant".

Regarding this latest atrocity: Who is getting the blame this time around in Lebanon itself: Hezbollah and Syria. Their rivals in the region will link Gemayel's killing to Damascus, by default, and this will be backed up by Washington, by default. The administration of Bashar al-Assad is a pretty unsavory bunch of thugs, but they are not so stupid and politically naive enough to go pulling cheap stunts like these... being fully aware of the obvious outcome. Logically, the most likely perpetrators, in both cases are enemies of Syria.

Murdoch versus Simpson: Scumbags United!

2006-11-19T20:12:00.000-08:00

It really goes without saying that anyone with somewhere near half a brain knows that O. J. Simpson had some part to play in the murder of his ex-wife and her friend, back in the mid 1990s. He might even have been the one who wielded the murder weapon. Now, media tycoon Rupert Murdoch, just at the point when one thought that human beings could not descend to greater depths of depravity and bottom feeding, surpasses even his own extraordinary standards of plumbing the abyss, all for the sake of his jungle law standard of ethics and anti-humanity. To sponsor a double murderer in what is seen as a smug "confession", but laced with a "haha...tried me once, can't get me now, suckers..." is really the ultimate example of scouring the bottom of the parrot's cage for the sake of accumulating more almighty dollars.

What does Mr. Murdoch want to prove from this bizarre and perverted exercise? Is he trying to prove to the world that when it comes to the race to be the world's biggest sleazebag, he is the worthy winner of the gold medal? Surely he doesn't need or even want another yacht, mansion or Rolls Royce.. that kinda swag gets old after awhile. Does he just want some extra cash in order to eat up another perfectly decent business in his effort to destroy the essence of free enterprise in media by relentless monopoly building? No, I don't really think it's anything like that: Murdoch can afford to buy a few entire cities if he wanted to, just from the annual interest from his investments. No, for him, this life is a shallow game, borne about by a condition of the mind that renders its sufferer incapable of feeling empathy with ordinary humans, in which he just plays them, like so many inanimate pieces on a board game, manipulating them, moving them, using them and eventually wasting them. To Murdoch, O.J. Simpson is just another chip on his monopoly board, and just this once, he has almost found his match, when it comes to human dregs.

"Almost" being the operative word.

The people spoke. Well, about HALF of them did!

2006-11-08T13:35:00.000-08:00

I have to admit to being somewhat relieved. I don't want to gloat, as I remain very skeptical that the Democrats are finally going to grow a spine. However, I am so sick and tired, of being sick and tired, of the sick and tired people who are ruining the country and the world, that just a little hint of a change away from encroaching fascism, is a welcome relief. It's like we are in a hurricane, and one of the fiercer squalls has just eased up; are we to enter a relatively calmer region between rain bands?

The whole world, apart from organized crime networks, corrupt big business and terrorist groups (the main beneficiaries of the Bush Administration's disastrous and destructive policies), is going "phew" right now. However, let is not bank on anything, and lets not get complacent. Yes, Rumsfeld resigned. Big deal. The Neocons, such as Richard Perle, now divorce themselves from their own policy set that brought on the Iraq war and civil rights and liberties restrictions (etc etc) enabled by the 9/11 attacks. But there is so much work to do, in uncovering the solutions to awful crimes and answering some very difficult questions... and I remain skeptical that the Democrats under Speaker Pelosi will have the courage to do what is necessary. America grew up, painfully, on 9/11/2001, and now we must be able to handle the nastier-tasting adult medicine, rather than the fruit flavored kiddy stuff.

(1) Articles of impeachment against President Bush, VP Cheney and others must be enacted. Listen up, Nancy Pelosi! Do it!
(2) A full truly independent inquiry into the 9/11 attacks must be held, with no holds barred.

America's future standing in the world depends upon openness and transparency of government. Are the Democrats, and moderate Republicans, capable of such?

Saddam Death Penalty

2006-11-06T10:44:00.000-08:00

So Saddam gets the death penalty. If he deserved his punishment, then so do all the people who enabled his crimes, as accessories both before and after the fact. In many legal systems, accessory before the fact is punishable by a similar sentence as the principal offender. If there was any true justice, Saddam's supporters and enablers would get their day in court as well... but we all know who they are (senior officials in the Reagan, Bush Senior and current Bush administrations), and that they are insulated from the requirements of the law.

Devolution towards fascism in the U.S., (continued)

2006-11-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

Good heavens. I don't know how much truth there is in this kind of threat; it does bear watching, with both alarm but also a healthy dose of skepticism.

It does looks odd, on the surface at least. The US makes huge revenue from the tourist industry, and this legislation, if it does exist, given widespread publicity, would make a great many people uneasy about visiting the US. I imagine that the huge majority of Americans would be pissed (royally so), if they were to read about kangaroo court laws of this variety. What sort of people support this sort of legislation? And if so, what would be the justification for that support?

This is a counterproductive type of measure, if it indeed exists. The only way this sort of measure could ever be brought into play, and accepted without vigorous protest by the general public, would be another very large terrorist attack in the US. Dare one suggest that HSA "expects" an incident like this, and the law has already been prewritten to go into effect when the public will accept it? After all, that is exactly what happened with the "Patriot" Act... the bulk of which was drafted several months before the September 11 attacks, but never saw the light of day until a week or afterwards.

John Kerry: Weasel.

2006-11-01T19:59:00.000-08:00

So few people in Congress understand that the insurgency exists largely because of the presence of a hostile, foreign occupying force. There will always be violence in Iraq as long as US troops remain there. Congress just don't seem to understand that the vast majority of the Iraqi people, (as opposed to the puppet government), want US/coalition troops out of Iraq, now or very soon. You can bet that if more Congressmen and Senators had kids who are over there in harm's way, there would be a different take on the Iraq fiasco in DC now. As it happens, out of the 100 Senators and 435 Repesentatives, only 3 have children who are serving there. Senator Tim Johnson (D-South Dakota), and Representatives Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) and Duncan Hunter (R-California).

Kerry's comment about "being stuck in Iraq" was a stark warning to all those who do not complete their education. He was referring to the NeoCon's abuse of the US military, who are over there in Iraq, fighting not for America, but as a private security force, paid for by the US taxpayer, for and on behalf of multinational corporations well connected with the Bush Administration. Many are there, getting killed and maimed because they come from poorer, disproportionately black, latino and working class white families, who do not/did not have access to the same standard of education as wealthier folk, and many of whom would be out of work, or working two or three minimum wage jobs just to pay the bills, had they not enlisted in the military.

John Kerry: "I can't overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq."

Senator Kerry was correct. If "you don't complete your education, the only job open to you that pays better than $5-50 per hour will be in the military, as cannon fodder for big business. He wasn't insulting any troops, even though it was cynically spun that way. And now Kerry, in true Election 2004 form, apologized, needlessly. What a wimpy, spineless weasel. He should have used the opportunity to explain to the troops exactly why they are "stuck in Iraq", and blast the insane and counterproductive foreign policy program that put them there in the first place.

Right now, the troops have no clue "why they are in Iraq". >80% say they are there to avenge 9/11, which was perpetrated by Saddam Hussein (!). Why are they so misinformed and ignorant about the campaign in which they are risking their lives and limbs? One reason is that the only television/media they are allowed to receive is Rupert Murdoch's FOX Channel.

Kerry should leave politics now. Not for what he first said, but for appeasing the warmongers.

Waterboarding, and more of Cheney's serial lies.

2006-10-27T23:11:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2006-10-24T20:08:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2006-10-22T21:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Visualizing another false flag operation?

2006-10-20T11:28:00.000-07:00

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.

Air America goes yellow belly up

2006-10-14T11:59:00.000-07:00

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".

Smoking in public places

2006-10-09T11:57:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2006-10-07T13:26:00.000-07:00

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'.

The sky is falling... oh is it?

2006-10-03T12:31:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2006-10-01T16:23:00.000-07:00

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.

Coddling Dictators, again.

2006-09-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Oh my!!!! It's hardly a wonder the U.S. has lost all credibility with the rest of the planet. Bush is currently having nice easy going talks with Kazakhstan's Thug-In-Chief President Nursultan Nazarbayev. Business as usual, despite the presidential proclamation in 2004: " Proclamation by the President: To Suspend Entry as Immigrants or Nonimmigrants of Persons Engaged in or Benefiting From Corruption". By the way, Kazakhstan has as much oil as Iran.... but this dictator is a nice US friendly dictator, who supported the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. But a corrupt one nonetheless.

Successive US governments have always preferred interfacing with friendly, easily malleable dictators and thugs, rather than democracies which put PEOPLE first. With this administration, priority goes by default to multinational corporations, tinhorn dictators and organized crime syndicates.

Business as usual. Are we ever going to rewarded with "business not as usual", or have we become at one with the weasels?

House Approves Warrantless Wiretaps Law

2006-09-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

The bad guys who supposedly "hate America for our freedoms" just got a massive victory, handed to them by the House. Changing our laws and giving more absolute power to the federal government is acknowledging that "the terrorists are winning the war." In actuality, it is a rogue element within the U.S. military/government power structure that is the REAL terrorist syndicate.

But this group, who set the ball rolling with the 9/11 False Flag attack on America on behalf of the NeoCons, and then gave the excuse that were we attacked "because they hate our freedoms" were ironically correct; in passing all the anti-American measures that have happened since 9/11, now allowing Big Government to spy on citizens without a warrant, the NeoCons (as well as the weasel appeasers in the House and Senate) have proved that they really do hate America and its freedoms.

If a "terrorist group" can get America to change its laws, then they've won. A lapdog (i.e. WEAK) legislative branch, in cowering to the terrorists, has handed EVEN MORE power to the executive branch. Despite being at risk of invoking Godwin's Law here, one can safely say that the entire course of events since 9/11 is reminiscent of Germany in the 1930s.

the undoing of the Flying Toilet Terror Lab!

2006-09-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

Just before the 5th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the British Government came out with the discovery of a scheme whereby "terrorists could bring down planes in mid-air using explosives (TATP) manufactured in situ (on the plane) from common liquid household products smuggled on board". As a result, security was upped, liquids were banned from hand luggage, and we were all perpetually bombarded by the fearmongers of the corporate weasel-media appeaser brigade. It worked a treat for the "war on terror" scam, and "9/11-scare-consciousness" was brought to the fore once again.

Yesterday, the federal government suddenly relaxed the rules as regards the same liquids in carry-on baggage. My goodness, what happened here? Did the chemical properties of nail polish remover, toothpaste, shampoo and denture cleaner suddenly change, as if by federal decree, from being the harbinger of doom and destruction, to just mere household products again? Or is it because the date is now "post 9/11" and the authorities milked that item of political fear-capital to the greatest extent possible? Perhaps now, the inconvenience to passengers and airlines has registered, and been balanced against the known impossibility of making a bomb on board a plane using these products, enough to warrant this subtle relaxationof the rules.

This article tells it the way it is. Hilarious, and true. What a refreshing change.

Whatever happened, the threat was bogus to start, and by arbitrarily changing the rules for no apparent reason, they have all but admitted it.

Who's soft on real crime?

2006-09-26T11:39:00.002-07:00

Andrew Fastow, former CFO of the Enron (Organized Crime) Empire has just been sentenced to 6 years in "jail". My liberal heart, it bleedeth all over. Fastow will no doubt be released from his presumably well-appointed "cell" within 2 years, (if President Bush doesn't pardon him sooner), and he will probably be at his old tricks all over again, this time with more knowledge in how to avoid breaking the 11th Commandment of big business corruption: "THOU SHALT NOT GET CAUGHT!"

Incidentally, most of the real damning evidence against these crooked friends of the Bush Administration (amongst many others) was housed in World Trade Center Building 7, which "collapsed" (read demolished?) at 5-30 pm, 9/1/2001. How very, very convenient.

9/11 deaths now equalled by US troops death

2006-09-22T16:01:00.000-07:00

As usual, the Associated Press, a fully paid up member of the corporate media weasel brigade, tell lies in their "reporting". Jayson Blair should apply for a job.

Quote, from last paragraph: "In contrast, the United States had no imminent war intentions against anyone on Sept. 10, 2001. One bloody day later, it did".

Full article here:

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were planned well before 9/11, and units of the US military campaign to oust the Taliban were already in place, in the area, by August 2001. They were just waiting for the go ahead and "justification, which was 9/11.

More here:

Without 9/11, BushCorp and the Neocons would be dead in the water, marooned, a ship with no engine to power it, and no rudder to guide it. Their entire policy set, prewritten before 9/11, was wholly dependent upon those attacks being successful.

The U.N. at an impasse.

2006-09-21T10:51:00.000-07:00

After the recent commentaries at the U.N. by President Bush, Iran's President Ahmadi Najad and Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez, it is plain that the U.N. is in trouble. It has been for years. Security Council Resolutions are arbitrarily enforced; for example, one small nation (which I shall not name) with a close relationship to the U.S. can flout some 5 decades of U.N. Resolutions with impunity. This kind of privilege is fuel for unrest, and is the antithesis of fair international relations. The planet does needs some kind of international body, but the current U.N. is out of date, and needs restructuring. Right now, it's a forum for the largest and most powerful nations to undermine stability, presumably with the aim of furthering aggression and war.

The world is run on the principles of capitalism, and war-making is one of mankind's most profitable enterprises. Always follow the money trail.

Humanity evolves very slowly; expect no changes anytime soon.

***

The U.N. is a fairweather friend to US conservatives. When the S.C. makes a "favorable decision", for example Resolution 1442 authorizing BushCorp to make a preemptive strike against a sovereign nation..., the enmity of the rightwing towards the U.N. was conveniently forgotten.

Now the black helicopters are swarming again.