-  We are witnessing 'pulpit freedom Sunday' across this separation of church and state land of ours. 33 ministers have decided to defy federal law and endorse a candidate (guess who would appeal to conservative Christians?). They are going to send copies of their sermons to the IRS in order to force the 'tax exempt status before the Supreme Court. In 1954, an amendment to the tax code was added saying that charitable organizations known as 501(c)(3)’s, which accept tax-deductible contributions, cannot intervene in political campaigns. The legislation was intended to prevent nonprofit organizations from funneling money and resources to political candidates.

- Finally, the AG Michael Mukasey has hired a Special Prosecutor to investigate the firing of the nine US Attorneys (especially, New Mexico's David Iglesias). Will former hack Alberto Gonzales get his due? Stay tuned.

-  Queen Latifah played Gwen Ifill on last night's Saturday Night Live parody of the Biden/Palin debate. Since NBC will take down all of the youtube links I am attaching the NBC link itself.

- Raise your hand if you are gosh darned tired of hearing the word 'maverick?' (wink wink). Terrellita Maverick, 82, a San Antonio descendent of the original progressive family named Maverick is pissed at her family's name being used so loosely.

-  Frank Rich writes this week about Sarah Palin vs Barack Obama called Pitbull Palin Mauls McCain

- Put your money where your mouth is please. I have decided to send money to the campaigns of Minnesota's Al Franken and former Governor Jean Shaheen of New Hampshire. I think these two democrats have a very good shot at gaining two seats for the Blue team. Check out other close races at fivethirtyeight and make a contribution please.

- Here is Rachel Maddow's critique and analysis on the Palin side of the debate:

- Check out my photos from last week's visit to California and the Oakland Zoo and San Francisco Zoos.

-  In the always leave 'em howling mode:

1. "But I'm still very proud of Gage, thank God they are doing this, because even if the USA endures for a thousand years, how shameful it would be if future generations will point back to us and say "Holy Shit, is it possible they were all THAT stupid?" So even though it is doomed to failure, I salute Gage and Griffin and the rest, in the same way that we can admire the Roman slave rebel Spartacus. Even though Spartacus ultimately failed, at least his actions stand against the accusation of posterity - all those generations of slaves and NOBODY ever hit back? These guys are the intellectual, non-violent equivalent and will be well-regarded by history."

http://www.911blogger.com/node/17794

2. It's kind of hard to believe that NATO might actually be interested in the truth:

"One thing was already clear to the officers at NATO headquarters in Brussels: They thought that the Georgians had started the conflict and that their actions were more calculated than pure self-defense or a response to Russian provocation. In fact, the NATO officers believed that the Georgian attack was a calculated offensive against South Ossetian positions to create the facts on the ground, and they coolly treated the exchanges of fire in the preceding days as minor events. Even more clearly, NATO officials believed, looking back, that by no means could these skirmishes be seen as justification for Georgian war preparations."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,578273,00.html

3. " What leads me to remark on this matter, however, is not its technological nuts and bolts or its connection with master-puppet relations in southwest Asia, but rather the complete insouciance with which the American public greets reports of deaths by drone. I do not exaggerate if I say that the general reaction is "ho-hum." Well, the average American says, that disposes nicely of another "bad guy." The gratuitous murder of the bad guy’s family members, neighbors, and other innocent persons in the vicinity appears to create no blip on the average American’s moral radar screen. Perhaps Americans do not consider Yemenis, Afghanis, and Pakistanis to be real human beings whose right to life we are obliged to respect?"

http://www.lewrockwell.com/higgs/higgs88.html

4. "Earlier this month, the Iraq war, arguably the biggest mass murder expedition of the twenty-first century, was branded by Republican vice-presidential pick Sarah Palin as a "task that is from God."

The fervent Christian evangelist has implied that the slaughtering of hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians, as well as the displacement of more than four million others is actually "God's plan."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20769.htm

September 15, 2008

1. And of course we already know that steel melts at 2,800 degrees:

"Dr. Shyam Sunder repeated several times that any combustibles at any one location in the building took about 20 minutes to be consumed. It
is, of course, self-evident that fires cannot last for very long in one place in an office building, as there is not so much burnable material available.
...
the temperature of fireproofed steel members remains under 200 degrees Celsius (390 Fahrenheit) during a 20-minute fire exposure in normal office fires"

http://www.911blogger.com/node/17785

2. "Even if there would have been perfectly ideal fires around every column on every floor, the "collapse" could not have happened as observed. It is thermodynamically impossible for fire to cause the floor by floor simultaneous failures of the columns which must have been occurred in WTC. The idea is absurd."

http://www.911blogger.com/node/17781

3. "Brown said that the plan to kill JFK had its origins in the 1960 Democratic Convention, at which John F. Kennedy was elected as presidential candidate with Johnson as his running mate, where H.L. Hunt, an American oil tycoon, and Lyndon Johnson hatched the assassination plot."

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/august2006/300806jfk.htm

4. "The United States has just invaded Cambodia. The name of Cambodia this time is Pakistan, but otherwise it’s the same story as in Indochina in 1970.

An American army, deeply frustrated by its inability to defeat an anti-American insurgent movement despite years of struggle, decides that the key to victory lies in a neighboring country. In 1970, the problem was the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia. Today it is Taliban and al-Qaida bases inside Pakistan, which the United States has been attacking from the air for some time, with controversial “collateral damage.”

George W. Bush has now authorized independent ground assaults on Taliban and al-Qaida targets in Pakistan’s Tribal Territories, without consultation with Pakistan authorities. These already have begun.

...

The eventual outcome of the American intervention in Cambodia in 1970 was Communist overthrow of the American-sponsored military government in that country, followed by genocide. The future consequences in (nuclear-armed) Pakistan await."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080911_quagmire_phase_2_the_invasion_of_pakistan/

5. "White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."
...
White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20767.htm

6. Why is someone who can't handle community college being taken seriously?

"In 1982, Palin enrolled at Hawaii Pacific College but left after her first semester, transferring in 1983 to North Idaho College and then to the University of Idaho. She attended Matanuska-Susitna College in Alaska for one term, returning to the University of Idaho to complete her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism, graduating in 1987.^[11][12]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin

September 15, 2008

1. "ust supposing you were physically fit enough to scale a power station chimney stack, wouldn't you be daunted by the prospect of a night in the nick, a trial up against the best barristers that money can buy, or the very real threat of losing your job? Most seasoned campaigners, trade unionists, professional activists employed by NGOs, veterans of conference motions, council votes, demonstrations, petitions, rallies, vigils and all, baulk at putting themselves so much on the line, no matter how much they believe in the issue at stake.
Even the most engaged, active citizens throw in the towel when they have exhausted all lawful, established mechanisms for action. Seasoned campaigners become resigned to defeats, but then you get those surprising people - the retired Quaker accountant at the back row of the meeting, the previously apolitical housewife who has never been involved in any campaign to date - who are just so outraged at a decision or event, that they are prepared to go much further than the usual suspects, even if that means taking wire cutters to an MoD fence, or breaking into a nearby incinerator plant.

People like these are essential to the proper functioning of democracy. Not everyone is so tenacious. After the watershed of the Iraq war, many of us have retreated into defeatism and frustration. We feel alienated from the the ritualistic cut and thrust of party politics, let down by our elected representatives at all levels, local, national, global, so much so that we can't see the point of voting."
http://www.sundayherald.com/oped/opinion/display.var.2446099.0.small_protests_can_beat_the_big_guys.php

2. http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-entry/2008093712/firing-back-ten-myths-about-national-security

September 14, 2008

"The abuse of power investigation against Sarah Palin, Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate, took a potentially ominous turn for her party on Friday when state lawmakers voted to subpoena her husband.
...

Palin, cast at last week's Republican National Convention as a supportive husband, oil rig worker and championship snowmachine racer, has emerged in the days since as also a powerful figure in his wife's administration. Despite holding no government position, he attends official meetings and is copied on e-mails concerning state business."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/palin_troopergate

September 14, 2008

1. No wonder Bush/McCain like her so much:

"Throughout her political career, she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials," The Times wrote.
The paper said that its investigation had shown that in Alaska, Palin was running an administration that "puts a premium on loyalty and secrecy."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080914/pl_afp/usvote

2. So many people say we have nothing to worry about from overly intrusive anti-terror rules. They are just sheeple, and they should stop acting like ostriches and pull their heads out of the sand:

"Anti-terror powers were used to spy on a member of the public after his neighbour complained about his noisy wardrobe doors and loud footsteps.
...
"No one wants to stand in the way of the detection of crime but with the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act the pendulum has swung too far. Some of these surveillance operations are quite costly and counterproductive. [No kidding.]

"They are costing more than some of the problems they are designed to tackle.

Mr Parker went on: "There is a danger that council staff will begin to behave like police officers. They will come to regard themselves as super-sleuths and everyone will be under suspicion." [Exactly.]

The Fife case has come to light as more councils admit to using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act to tackle apparently minor misdemeanours such as littering and smoking in public places.

Last week The Sunday Telegraph revealed that 89 out of 115 councils contacted under the Freedom of Information Act had used the legislation to tackle problems such as noisy children, barking dogs and unruly car-boot sales."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/2910962/Council-uses-anti-terror-rules-to-spy-on-man-with-noisy-wardrobe.html

3. Unbelievable - or at least it was prior to this decade:

"Britain is playing a key role in efforts to block the prosecution of Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir for the carnage in Darfur.

Human rights activists yesterday accused the government of a 'shocking abdication' of its commitment to justice after it emerged that Britain is backing moves by Libya, the Arab League and several African countries to halt the indictment of Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.

...

But Steve Crawshaw of Human Rights Watch said bargaining with justice will permanently undermine the ICC's credibility and independence. 'The idea that you can do deals on justice is both short-sighted and a shocking moral abdication on Britain's part. It can only be damaging to the court.

'Justice is not a tradeable option. We have seen again and again that Sudan makes empty promises. To think that Sudan is likely to act in good faith is either naive or cynical,' said Crawshaw."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/14/sudan.humanrights

4. "Not to mention, one staffer said sheepishly, Palin wears pretty thick Tina Fey glasses, and can't actually even see who she is talking to, much less all the way to Russia. She only agreed to run with John McCain, he explained, because she mistook him for Fred Thompson and thought it would be neat to appear as a judge sometime on "Law and Order."
...
The campaign finally broke down and admitted that Palin is not even governor of Alaska and only ever visited it once, on spring break in the 1980s. Palin admitted that it was an unusual choice for a spring break fling, but explained that she had been heading for Ft. Lauderdale when she and some friends tried some weed in the car and that she "couldn't remember very much else about the trip." She said it was the "spring break of a lifetime," though, and she'd like to visit Alaska again someday after she dealt with the charges stemming from impersonating a politician."

Satire alert.

5. "The FBI claims that mail-sorting equipment crushed the killer anthrax in the letters to Senators Daschle and Leahy down to a fine powder.
...
1/4 of an inch equals 6,350 microns. So the FBI is trying to say that a mail-sorting machine which is designed to process letters 6,350 microns thick crushed something down to 3 microns . . . 2,116 to 4,232 times smaller than the type of envelope sorting machines are designed to handle (the smaller number is compared to 3 micron thick anthrax powder and the larger is compared to 1.5 micron powder) .

I don't know about you, but my mail isn't crushed into oblivion when I get it."

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/09/fbis-mail-sorting-theory-doesnt-add-up.html

6. "

In what may be the first case of its kind, American citizens have been arrested and charged as terrorists for no other act than planning to protest and obstruct a political event. In this case the occasion was the nominating convention of a party chiefly responsible for policies detested by the majority of Americans, including the war in Iraq and the enrichment of a tiny layer of the enormously wealthy. (Tom Eley, "Political dissent as terrorism: 'Minnesota Patriot Act' charges filed against RNC Eight," World Socialist Web Site, 11 September 2008)

As Eley points out, "more alarming than the case itself, however, is the fact that it has gone virtually unnoted by the national news media. This reporter could also find no mention of the case on the web sites of left-liberal publications such as the Nation, the Progressive, or In These Times."

But as with all such repressive actions, the goal of "preemptive policing" and the mass surveillance that accompany the run-up to "cops-gone-wild" events like St. Paul, their purpose is to intimidate--and serve as a warning--to the population as a whole. In this respect, the Lower Manhattan Security Initiative like the NSA's warrantless spying programs are clearly designed to insure a seamless transition from surveillance to wholesale repression."

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10200

7. No kidding:

"All this is rationalized by various brands of racism, cultural superiority, social Darwinism, historical determinism, “dominion of the Elect,” “God’s chosen people,” etc. Or, simply, “might makes right.”
...

The bluster of Kissinger, Brzezinski, the Kristols, the Christian fundamentalists, and their paid-off politicians and media millionaires notwithstanding, America —indeed, the entire West—has been found out, perhaps even checkmated on the world stage."
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10191

8. "And I support academic freedom, but using that to defend John Yoo is as misguided as using confidentiality of sources to defend Judith Miller. A liar is not a source. And a facilitator of torture about whom the evidence is public knowledge has lost the right to freedom of any sort, academic or otherwise.
...
What we want is for them to immediately introduce a bill stating roughly this:
The presidential pardon power shall not include the power to self-pardon the president, or to pardon any staff or contractors of the executive branch, including the vice president, of crimes authorized by the president, or to preemptively pardon any individuals of crimes for which they have not yet been convicted."
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10190

9. "While the foreign policy segments of the Democratic Party platform as outlined in my most recent article is disappointing in many respects, the Republican Party platform is downright scary."

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10189

10. We already know the US is trying to break up Bolivia into smaller parts. Now we learn the US ambassador to Bolivia was in charge of forcing the secession of Kosovo from Yugoslavia. What a surprise:

"George Bush sent to Bolivia his Ambassador of Ethnic Cleansing [original title translated from the Spanish]

He presented his credentials before President Evo Morales on October 13, 2006; but three months before his arrival in Bolivia, when he was still in Pristina fulfilling his role as head of the US mission in Kosovo, it was already being said that the new US ambassador designated by George Bush for this Andean country, Philip Goldberg, would come to take part in the separatist process that was being cultivated in the background to pierce the Bolivian regime."

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10187

11. "It's certainly reasonable to argue that, in some respects, the Bush Doctrine has no precise meaning and is subject to debate, and Gibson provided some vague definitional parameters when asking the presidential candidates about it. None of that negates that Palin appeared quite clearly never to have even heard of the term "The Bush Doctrine" before ("His world view?"), leading one to wonder if she has paid any attention at all to the central foreign policy debates over the last eight years and whether she even watched or was vaguely aware of the presidential debates this year and many of the most critical expressed differences between the candidates -- including the one with whom she's running.
...
More alarming than the extremism of the positions that she has clearly formed is the fact that, as her startling ignorance of "the Bush Doctrine" reflects, she doesn't seem to have clearly formed positions on very much of anything. She's clearly willing to spout standard right-wing talking points, and perhaps that's all she'll ever end up embracing, but it's one's inability to know any of that, and the McCain campaign's commitment to ensuring that we won't find out between now and November, that makes her potential ascendancy to that office so deeply disturbing."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

12. "New Transcripts of Kissinger's Role in Chilean Coup
...

Kissinger: the President's view is to do the maximum possible to prevent an Allende takeover, but through Chilean sources and with a low posture."

The next day, during a 15 minute meeting at the White House attended by Kissinger, Nixon instructed CIA director Helms that Allende's election was "not acceptable" and ordered the agency to "make the economy scream" and "save Chile," as Helms recorded in his notes. The CIA launched a massive set of covert operations--first to block Allende's inauguration, and, when that failed, to undermine his ability to successfully govern. "Our main concern in Chile is the prospect that [Allende] can consolidate himself and the picture projected to the world will be his success," Nixon told his National Security Council on November 6, 1970, two days after Allende took office."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20751.htm

September 13, 2008

Are you comfortable with a "Christian" candidate whose theology doesn't appear to incorporate very much of the New Testament, and who doesn't seem to have ever made any public statement of sympathy for the 1.2 million dead Iraqis since 2003?

"‘Dominionists teach that men can be coerced or compelled to enter the kingdom. They assign to the Church duties and rights that belong Scripturally only to Jesus Christ. This includes the esoteric belief that believers can ‘incarnate’ Christ and function as His body on Earth to establish His kingdom rule. An inordinate emphasis is placed on man’s efforts; the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is diminished.’5"

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10167

(And no, I'm not hinting that you - or anyone else - should vote for Obama. Remember, there are already two independent Pres. candidates whose main goal is to stop the killing.)

September 13, 2008

1. Could this possibly be any more incestuous?

"Judge Mukasey has also presided over high-profile civil cases, including World Trade Center developer Larry Silverstein's battle with the insurers of the trade center. "

"Born in the Bronx, Judge Mukasey went to work as a federal prosecutor in Manhattan during the 1970s, rising to become chief of the official corruption unit. He befriended Rudolph Giuliani there and is the subject of a passage in Mr. Giuliani's book describing how the two would prepare for trial together, with Mr. Mukasey playing the role of a witness while Mr. Giuliani practiced his cross-examinations. As a federal judge, Mr. Mukasey swore in Mayor-elect Giuliani in 1994 and 1998."

At the same link, and even worse:

"The changes would give the FBI's more than 12,000 agents the ability at a much earlier stage to conduct physical surveillance, solicit informants and interview friends of people they are investigating without the approval of a bureau supervisor. Such techniques are currently available only after FBI agents have opened an investigation and developed a reasonable suspicion that a crime has been committed or that a threat to national security is developing...

The overhaul touches on several sensitive areas. It would allow, for example, agents to interview people in the United States about foreign intelligence cases without warrants or prior approval of their supervisors. It also would rewrite 1976 guidelines established after Nixon-era abuses that restrict the FBI's authority to intervene in times of civil disorder and to infiltrate opposition groups..."
http://www.911blogger.com/node/17750

2. Should we make this our group motto?

"The Constitution is NOT going to "collapse" into pulverized dust no matter how much thermate/explosives or planes they throw at it."

3. "Make no mistake. George W. Bush has been a horrible president and is one of the worst in U.S. history. But of the 42 men who have served as president, these four men – Polk, McKinley, Wilson, and Truman – were probably worse.
...

Although Bush lied us into a war, many presidents have done that, and he appeared to have at least some vague conception that it was in U.S. security interests to do so (even if safeguarding U.S. oil supplies was the real reason). In 1846, President James Polk lied to Congress in starting a war with the much weaker Mexico just to blatantly grab huge amounts of its land – the American Southwest, including California.

In 1898, President William McKinley attacked the frail Spanish Empire to grab its colonies of Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. He annexed Hawaii to boot. Strangely, the Filipinos were not so grateful about their "liberation" from Spain. They started a guerrilla war when they found out that instead of gaining their independence, they were going to become the anti-colonial United States' first colony. In the U.S. repression of the insurgency in the Philippine islands, about 200,000 Filipinos died from torture, atrocities, combat, starvation, and disease. The Spanish-American War made the U.S. a military power and began the long quest for a U.S. overseas empire. The war also allowed McKinley to become the first modern president – that is, permanently expanding the president's powers (vis-à-vis the other branches of government) past what the nation's founders and the Constitution had ever envisioned."
http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=13452

4. "No shield law protects journalists or their sources who plant phony evidence in a terror investigation.
...
The Judiciary Committee has the power to call Matsumoto, Ross, Spertzel and Jacobsen and force them to either tell the truth or go to jail for refusing to provide the malevolent sources that led the US toward war."

http://www.truthout.org/article/congress-asks-who-misled-anthrax-investigation-pointing-iraq

5. After US covert forces caused so much trouble in Georgia over South Ossetia, it now looks as US covert forces have moved ACROSS the border into Russia to cause trouble in North Ossetia - dangerous and stupid:

" A declaration addressed to the Council of Europe by Russian human rights activists said that 'the situation in the North Caucasus republics has became greatly more agitated since the war [between Russia and Georgia] in the South Caucasus.'"

http://www.monstersandcritics.com/news/europe/news/article_1430440.php/Separatist_passions_heating_up_in_Russias_restive_North_Caucasus_

6. Finally. What an asshole. I had hoped that he had died a painful death decades ago:

"General Jaruzelski goes on trial for the imposition of martial law in 1981"

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article4742093.ece

7. At least a little bit of good news:

"The government must obtain a warrant based on probable cause of criminal activity before directing a wireless provider to turn over records that show where customers used their cellphones, a federal judge ruled Wednesday, in the first opinion by a federal district court on the issue.

...

"This is a great ruling for location privacy and for people who think the government should have probable cause before they track you,"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103292_pf.html

8. The Bolivian death squads are funded by the US, and US "trainers" are on the ground there organizing actions like this:

"Roberto Tito, one of the rural workers who was on this bridge when the shooting against the defenseless people began, testified that they were marching unarmed, and soon they heard shots and people began falling, mortally wounded.

Snipers located in the treetops fired at the group without caring who they hit: children, women, and old people were amongst the farmers, whose only weapons were sticks and machetes."

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10184

9. A GREAT article that explains in detail just exactly how stupid, and vicious, Palin's

lust to kill as many small brown people as humanly possible "Christian" philosophy of domination and war is:

"‘Dominionists teach that men can be coerced or compelled to enter the kingdom. They assign to the Church duties and rights that belong Scripturally only to Jesus Christ. This includes the esoteric belief that believers can ‘incarnate’ Christ and function as His body on Earth to establish His kingdom rule. An inordinate emphasis is placed on man’s efforts; the doctrine of the sovereignty of God is diminished.’5"

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10167

10. Russian warships in the Caribbean:

"Worryingly, the nuclear-powered guided missile cruiser Peter the Great, a vessel with massive firepower whose missiles can deliver nuclear or conventional warheads, will participate in the Caribbean maneuvers. The ship is armed with the Granit long-range anti-ship missile system, which is known in military circles as the Shipwreck missile. It also has a sophisticated air defense missile system capable of striking both air and surface targets.

Jon Rosamund, editor of Jane's Navy International, a specialist maritime publication, said the Peter the Great is large and heavily armed with both surface-to-surface and around 500 surface-to-air missiles. “On paper it's an immensely powerful ship,” he said. “We are not really sure if this is a show of force or if it poses a viable operational capability at this stage.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10177

11. "In a reckless and criminal attempt to suppress the growing insurgency in Afghanistan, President Bush has secretly authorised the use of US Special Forces against targets inside the border areas of Pakistan. The first publicly acknowledged operation took place on September 3 when helicopter-borne soldiers landed at a village in South Waziristan, attacked three compounds and slaughtered at least 20 people.
...

The New York Times cautiously noted: “It is unclear precisely what legal authorities the United States has invoked to conduct even limited ground operations in a friendly country.” In fact, military attacks on the territory of any nation—allied or not—constitute an act of war. While a US official claimed that Islamabad had “privately assented to the general concept of limited ground operations,” the Pakistani government has publicly opposed any intrusion by US troops and issued a formal protest over the September 3 operation.:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10179

12. "2008 In February, McCain votes against a bill that would supposedly ban torture, and then applauds Bush for vetoing the bill.
2008 McCain runs for president, and almost nobody mentions his positions on torture, not even his fiercest critics. It is as if the most repulsive moral collapse in U.S. political history has never happened.

And yet McCain and his campaign rarely open their mouths without taking us back to 1968 when McCain was tortured. McCain critics even make lists and videos of his "flip-flops" and never mention the most frightening reversal of position imaginable. Are they scared to do so? Are they not really serious about keeping this tortured torturer out of the White House?"
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10176

September 13, 2008

I actually hold out more hope that Congress won't give up on the anthrax story (unlike their capitulation on 9/11) because it is so much easier to understand:

Ft. Detrick did not have the required equipment to aerosolize the anthrax, or to coat the spores with silica, so by definition Ivins couldn't have done it. Further, Ivins was an immunologist with no training in weaponizing anthrax.

Since the whole story can be summed up in two sentences, a Congressman determined to pursue it won't be so easily put off the trail.

September 12, 2008

1. "Sarah Palin revealed herself in the Charlie Gibson interview on ABC to be nervous,uninformed, green and generally not ready for prime time. The interview was full of stock phrases she was made to memorize, and which she repeated over and over again when stumped. She knows nothing about how Iran is run, or about Pakistan, or about al-Qaeda, and even is ignorant of the Bush doctrine of preemptive warfare. It was a shockingly bad performance.

She had the hubris to suggest that her lack of knowledge and experience is a virtue. Why Americans, practical people, would fall for this line is beyond me. Would you want your car to be worked on by an inexperienced and ignorant mechanic? Would you want a plumber messing around with your pipes who did not know his way around wrenches?"

http://www.juancole.com/

2. ""You have to realize that what they’re trying to do is to roll back the Enlightenment, roll back the moral philosophy and social values of classical political economy and its culmination in Progressive Era legislation, as well as the New Deal institutions. They’re not trying to make the economy more equal, and they’re not trying to share power. Their greed is (as Aristotle noted) infinite. So what you find to be a violation of traditional values is a re-assertion of pre-industrial, feudal values. The economy is being set back on the road to debt peonage. The Road to Serfdom is not government sponsorship of economic progress and rising living standards, it’s the dismantling of government, the dissolution of regulatory agencies, to create a new feudal-type elite."

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-time-is-it.html

3. " Bob Schiefer, long-time CBS newsman told Dan Rather,”I’m a block north of the White House some miles from the Pentagon, as you look over my shoulder…you can see there’s still these huge clouds of smoke billowing out of the Pentagon. This was no small explosion. It can be seen literally for miles.”
A plane crash into a building would not produce such an explosion or a massive amount of smoke. The huge Russian AN-124 that crashed into a building and an El Al Boeing 747 crashing into a 12-story apartment complex in Amsterdam produced no large explosions or billowing clouds of smoke and flame."
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10158

September 12, 2008

2. "Nearly three decades later, during the Gulf War, columnist Sydney Schanberg warned journalists not to forget "our unquestioning chorus of agreeability when Lyndon Johnson bamboozled us with his fabrication of the Gulf of Tonkin incident."

Schanberg blamed not only the press but also "the apparent amnesia of the wider American public."

And he added: "We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth."

http://www.911blogger.com/node/17725

3. What in the world is wrong with her?

"Gov. Sarah Palin linked the war in Iraq with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, telling an Iraq-bound brigade of soldiers that included her son that they would "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans."The idea that the Iraqi government under Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaeda plan the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, a view once promoted by Bush administration officials, has since been rejected even by the president himself."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/11/AR2008091103789_pf.html

4. "Solzhenitsyn theorizes that evildoing has a threshold magnitude, and when individuals cross that threshold they leave humanity behind. George Orwell's doublethink is the power "to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them." In his celebrated essay "On Bulls***," Professor Harry G. Frankfurt suggests that what bulls***ters misrepresent has nothing to do with their beliefs, that the only value they recognize is expediency.
...
Here's what Solzhenitsyn had to say about the bad men of his time and place: In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundation s of justice from beneath new generations… Young people are acquiring the conviction that foul deeds are never punished on earth, that they always bring prosperity.

It is going to be uncomfortable, horrible, to live in such a country!

http://www.military.com/opinion/0,15202,175239_1,00.html

September 12, 2008

As you may have noticed recently, while I always argued with you that, economically at least, things were not as bad as the scare stories say, this bailout and nationalization of the US mortgage market is a different kettle of fish. I'm VERY worried about our economic future now.

Go back and read the debt peonage article again:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20709.htm

And here, scroll down to the graph, and make the effort to learn the economics of what it is warning us about:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20707.htm

So far, at least, what that graph warns us about is not yet occurring this week since the bailout (and may never occur), but it clearly identifies the problem. If that graph ever comes true, we're through.

September 12, 2008

One of the ways that modern discourse has been coarsened and cheapened is the overuse of "nerd" and "geek". Many folks, when coming in contact with someone smarter than they are, will refer to the person as a nerd or geek to bring the person down a notch in their eyes, to make themselves feel better and less inadequate when faced with a big brain. Whether the target of the insult has memorized baseball statistics, learned all the members of 70s classic rock and English punk bands, or just gotten really good at Jeopardy, the common reaction of many folks is to call the person a geek or nerd, and to think that type of knowledge is useless.

I'm pleased to discover that Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling thought differently:

“…He believed strongly that memory of isolated facts lay at the core of intellect and creativity….In the mid-1930s, he was riding a train from London to Oxford. To pass the time, he came across an article in the journal, Nature, arguing that proteins were amorphous globs whose 3D structure could never be deduced. He instantly saw the fallacy in the argument — because of one isolated stray fact in his memory bank — the key chemical bond in the protein backbone did not freely rotate, as was argued. Linus knew from his college days that the peptide bond had to be rigid and coplanar. He began doodling, and by the time he reached Oxford, he had discovered the alpha helix.”

http://tweetmedicine.wordpress.com/2008/08/13/medicine-memory-and-balanced-equations/

Nerd and geek are never used with any positive connotation, and thus should never be used at all, especially in polite conversation.

September 11, 2008

"(7) In addition to the absence of evidence for hijackers on the planes, there is also evidence of their absence: If hijackers had broken into the cockpits, the pilots would have "squawked" the universal hijack code, an act that takes only a couple of seconds. But not one of the eight pilots on the four airliners did this (NPHR 175-79).
...
(13) Wedge 1 would have been the least likely part of the Pentagon to be targeted by foreign terrorists, for several reasons: It was as far as possible from the offices of Rumsfeld and the top brass, whom Muslim terrorists presumably would have wanted to kill; it was the only part of the Pentagon that had been reinforced; the reconstruction was not finished, so there were relatively few people there; and it was the only part of the Pentagon that would have presented obstacles to a plane's flight path (NPHR 76-78).

[By way of contrast, if the US blew up the Pentagon itself, it makes sense that it picked the least populated part of the building so as to kill fewer Pentagon employees.]
...

(16) Given the fact that the Twin Towers and WTC 7 had steel columns running from their basements to their roofs, they simply could not have come down as they did---straight down at virtually free-fall speed---unless these columns had been sliced by means of explosives. Therefore, the official theory, according to which the buildings came down because of fire plus (in the case of the Twin Towers) the impact of the planes, is scientifically impossible (NPHR 12-25).

(17) The destruction of the Twin Towers had many other features---such as the horizontal ejections of steel beams, the melting of steel, and the sulfidation and thinning of steel---that can be explained only in terms of powerful explosives. For example, the fires could not have come within 1000 degrees Fahrenheit of the temperature needed to melt steel (30-36)."
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10145

September 11, 2008

A memorial dedicated to the Pentagon 9/11 victims is being dedicated today:
"The Pentagon Memorial contains 184 memorial units, each of which are dedicated to an individual victim by its unique placement within the collective field.

...

Each memorial unit is specifically positioned in order to distinguish victims on board American Airlines Flight 77 from victims within the Pentagon. The memorial units representing the 59 lives lost on American Airlines Flight 77 are positioned so that a visitor to the park will face the sky when reading the name of the victim to whom that unit is dedicated."

http://www.defenselink.mil/home/features/2008/0708_memorial/index.html

Bastards. Why isn't this memorial going to be located at the military base where the passengers on Flight 77 were frog-marched off the plane into a hangar where each received a bullet in the head?

September 11, 2008

"The truly aggravating thing is watching opportunity after opportunity pass by the Obama campaign. Here's some advice to them: you are not living in subtle times. You are living in an era in our nation where people only react if you use a fucking mallet, not a stiletto, to get your point across. The choice of Sarah Palin as a running mate was a brilliant read of the national zeitgeist. She's like the winner of America's Next Top Model, not a qualified politician, and as such, idiot America thinks they relate.
...
And it's not only the issue of lying. Go after their personal weaknesses. You should be making ads that imply McCain is too old to be president. And if you're criticized for it, you gotta say, "I think it's up to Senator McCain to demonstrate he has the necessary energy for this job."

Stay angry. Again: The McCain campaign just said that Barack Obama wants to teach 6 year-olds how to fuck. That deserves a little more of a response than it's "perverse" or whatever shit the Obama campaign just put out.

You want the best route? Here it is: emasculate John McCain. Use Palin to cut his nuts off. Constantly say shit like, "Am I running against John McCain or Sarah Palin?" or "If the Republicans wanted her to be president, they should have nominated her" or "Maybe Republicans are used to a vice president that runs the show" or whatever. Make McCain have to defend himself. Turn him into Palin's bitch. It'll make him insane. And if there's one thing that Republicans hate most about women, it's the perception of the castrating bitch telling men what to do (see all the shit about Hillary Clinton).

In other words, Obama campaign, as so many others have advised, go on offense, and that means you have to offend."

http://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2008/09/note-to-barack-obama-use-sex-ad-to.html

September 10, 2008

1. "The much vaunted liquid bomb “terror plot” that provoked paranoid airport security measures, an overnight change in baggage procedures, and at one point led to mothers having to drink their own breast milk, completely collapsed yesterday in court after the alleged ringleader was completely acquitted and none of the other suspects were charged with conspiracy to blow up an airliner.

“Mohammad Gulzar, 27, who Scotland Yard accused of being a ringleader in the plot, was cleared of all offenses,” adds the Register.

the “liquid terror plot” was a complete fabrication became apparent from the very start.

In every single major terror bust or terror alert we have proven the evidence to be flawed and the charges to be cooked up nonsense aimed at prolonging the illusion that terror cells are lurking around every corner waiting to cause mayhem. The geopolitical agenda of the U.S., Britain and Israel depends on the proliferation phony terror threats in order to continue the farcical war on terror and take more of our innate freedoms at home to stifle dissent against the plot for worldwide hegemony.

“None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time,” said Murray.

The embarrassing collapse of another government-concocted terror fairytale should immediately mandate the repeal of ridiculous measures in airports that do nothing to stop would-be terrorists and everything to hassle and inconvenience innocent travelers - but don’t expect the authorities to give up a key aspect of their prototype police state without a fight."
http://www.infowars.com/?p=4429

2. ""David Ray Griffin stands at the center of one of the most impressive citizen research projects in history. In this superb new volume, he draws together a great quantity of recent evidence and demonstrates beyond question the fraudulent nature of the official account of 9/11."

http://www.911blogger.com/node/17649

Nice long book review at Amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/New-Pearl-Harbor-Revisited-Cover-Up/dp/1566567297/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1221009067&sr=1-1

By the author:

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Was-America-Attacked-by-Mu-by-David-Ray-Griffin-080909-536.html

3. "Palin Billed State for Nights Spent at Home - Taxpayers Also Funded Family's Travel

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/08/AR2008090803088.html?hpid=topnews&sid=ST2008090900325&s_pos=

4. "The reader said that Palin wasn’t actually saying that the Iraq invasion and occupation were part of God’s plan but instead was simply requesting people to pray that the operation is part of God’s plan.

The reader might have a point, but isn’t it a distinction without a difference? Praying that the commission of sin is part of some plan of God is ludicrous. God doesn’t have plans that involve people in the commission of sin. Sinners, not God, are responsible for their sins.

The simple, undeniable truth remains: The U.S. government did not have the right to attack a country that had not attacked the United States or even threatened to do so. Therefore, the CIA and the troops did not have the right to kill any Iraqi, much less a million of them. Hoping and praying that such killings are part of some plan of God is ridiculous. Again, God does not have plans that involve people in the violation of His sacred commandments."

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2008-09-09.asp

September 10, 2008

"The much vaunted liquid bomb “terror plot” that provoked paranoid airport security measures, an overnight change in baggage procedures, and at one point led to mothers having to drink their own breast milk, completely collapsed yesterday in court after the alleged ringleader was completely acquitted and none of the other suspects were charged with conspiracy to blow up an airliner.

“Mohammad Gulzar, 27, who Scotland Yard accused of being a ringleader in the plot, was cleared of all offenses,” adds the Register.

the “liquid terror plot” was a complete fabrication became apparent from the very start.

In every single major terror bust or terror alert we have proven the evidence to be flawed and the charges to be cooked up nonsense aimed at prolonging the illusion that terror cells are lurking around every corner waiting to cause mayhem. The geopolitical agenda of the U.S., Britain and Israel depends on the proliferation phony terror threats in order to continue the farcical war on terror and take more of our innate freedoms at home to stifle dissent against the plot for worldwide hegemony.

“None of the alleged terrorists had made a bomb. None had bought a plane ticket. Many did not even have passports, which given the efficiency of the UK Passport Agency would mean they couldn’t be a plane bomber for quite some time,” said Murray.

The embarrassing collapse of another government-concocted terror fairytale should immediately mandate the repeal of ridiculous measures in airports that do nothing to stop would-be terrorists and everything to hassle and inconvenience innocent travelers - but don’t expect the authorities to give up a key aspect of their prototype police state without a fight."
http://www.infowars.com/?p=4429

September 10, 2008

Looks as if I was right with my theory that all of the absurd airport "security" measures have absolutely nothing to do with protecting us, and everything to do with the harassment of the public by the government, at a minimum forcing us all to participate in a shadowplay that wastes everyone's time:

"Security theater consists of security countermeasures intended to provide the feeling of improved security while doing little or nothing to actually improve security.^[1] The term was coined by Bruce Schneier for his book Beyond Fear, but has gained currency in security circles, particularly for describing airport security measures. It is also used by some experts such as Edward Felten to describe the security measures imposed after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Security theater gains importance both by satisfying and exploiting the gap between perceived risk and actual risk.
Security theater has been defined as ostensible security measures which have little real influence on security whilst being publicly visible and designed to demonstrate to the lesser-informed that countermeasures have been considered. Security theater has been related to and has some similarities with superstition.

Security theater has real monetary costs but does not necessarily provide tangible security benefits. Security theater typically involves restricting certain aspects of people's behaviour in very visible ways, that could involve potential restrictions of personal liberty and privacy, ranging from negligible (where bottled water can be purchased) to significant (prolonged screening of individuals to the point of harassment).

The direct costs of security theater may be lower than that of more elaborate security measures. However, it may divert portions of the budget for effective security measures without resulting in adequate, measurable gain in security. In many cases, intrusive security theater measures also create secondary negative effects whose real cost is hard to quantify and likely to dwarf the direct expenses.

Security theater encourages people to make uninformed, counterproductive political decisions. The feeling of (and wish for) safety can actually increase the real risk.

The disruption, cost, and fear caused by security theater acts as positive feedback for those who wish to exploit it: even if they fail to take lives, they can cause large economic costs.

Security theater is a component of the culture of fear.

• The American government has introduced a screening system called Computer Assisted Passenger Prescreening System. This system relies on static screening of passenger profiles to choose which people should be searched. Systems of this nature have been mathematically demonstrated to reduce the effectiveness of searching below that of random searches since terrorists can test the system and use those who are searched least often for their operations.^[3]
• With the aim of preventing individuals on a No Fly List from flying in commercial airliners, U.S. airports require all passengers to show valid picture ID (e.g. a passport or driver's license) along with their boarding pass before entering the boarding terminal. At this checkpoint, the name on the ID is matched to that on the boarding pass, but is not recorded. In order to be effective, this practice must assume that 1) the ticket was bought under the passenger's real name (at which point the name was recorded and checked against the No Fly List), 2) the boarding pass shown is real, and 3) the ID shown is real. However, the rise of print-at-home boarding passes, which can be easily forged, allows a potential attacker to buy a ticket under someone else's name, to go into the boarding terminal using real ID and a fake boarding pass, and then to fly on the ticket that has someone else's name on it.^[4][5][6][7] Additionally, recent investigations show that obviously-fake IDs can be used when claiming a boarding pass and entering the departures terminal.^[8][9] (Another assumption that must be made in order to justify this system in the first place, let alone to conclude it is effective, is the assumption that the No Fly List is a reliable list of potential attackers, i.e. that a name is on the No Fly List if and only if that person is a probable attacker)."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater

September 9, 2008

1. "At first, LAX Security was very upset because it seemed to Security that none of the FAA's Air Traffic Controllers (ATCs) tracking the hijacked airliners had notified NORAD as required. More chatter revealed that ATCs had notified NORAD, but that NORAD had not responded, because it had been "ordered to stand down."

This report made Security even more upset, so they tried to find out who had issued that order. A short time later the word came down that the order had come "from the highest level of the White House." Security was puzzled and very upset by this and made attempts to get more details and clarification, but these were not forthcoming while I was still there.

Another piece of information that I heard, shortly after my arrival, was that the Pentagon had been "hit by a rocket." It's possible that the word was "missile," although I'm quite certain it was "rocket." I was, in any case, quite surprised when I later got home and learned that the media were reporting that an airliner had hit the Pentagon.

...

This station also reported that two fighter jets had been scrambled and had successfully shot down a hijacked airliner over Pennsylvania. The point of deployment of the fighter jets was also mentioned, but I can't remember the name of the military base.

...

During the conversation, I told her that I heard everything Security was discussing on 9/11 at Guard Post II and that I did not see how the attacks could have succeeded without inside participation. She replied that LAX security was well aware that 9/11 was an inside job."
http://www.911blogger.com/node/17614

2. "And perhaps this is a good time to respond explicitly to your apparent assumption that, to challenge the official conspiracy theory, one must have an alternative theory of equal specificity, with answers to all the questions that could conceivably be raised about it. But this is not true. Let's say that you were accused by the authorities of murdering Bill Jones. You would assume that, to get the case dismissed, all you and your lawyer had to do was to prove that you could not possibly have killed Jones. But imagine that, after you had done so, the judge then declared: "Sorry, that's not good enough. You must also tell us who did kill Jones, how the murder was committed, and why." You would surely consider that unreasonable. By analogy, the 9/11 Truth Movement has provided abundant evidence that the 9/11 attacks could not have been carried out by al-Qaeda terrorists. We need not also specify exactly who did organize and carry out the attacks, all their motives, and why they handled each part of the operation and the cover-up as they did. So there is simply no need for us to try to explain why Zubaydah was not liquidated."

http://www.911blogger.com/node/17604

3. "So what is being alleged is essentially that the United States (Rumsfeld & Paul Bremer) installed on the Debaathification Commission a secret agent of Iran who was running Iran-backed death squads based on the information to which he became privy by virtue of being on the commission!
...
So you've been having Iran-backed assassination teams running all over the place killing Sunnis and helping ethnically cleanse them so Iran can nail down Baghad as a Shiite city, extending the region of Shiite dominance in Iraq west and north. And they have been working out of government ministries and agencies!
...
The Surge was a dirty war. It was a vast effort at identifying, finding and assassinating the leaders of the Sunni Arab resistance.
...
Crowing about the success of Surge wouldn't look so pretty if you were actually celebrating an assassination campaign.
...
The French won the Battle of Algiers in the capital of their colony, 1954-1960. By 1962 they had nevertheless been forced out of Algeria anyway, by nationalist fighters outside Algiers. I am not saying the same thing will necessarily happen in a pacified Iraq. But it could."

http://www.juancole.com/

4. "In response, Yglesias correctly pointed out that McCain's ability to get away with endless lying actually has "something to do with the way the campaign press reports news" and that -- in stark contrast to how the press invented multiple false stories in the 2000 election to depict Al Gore as a chronic liar -- the media simply passes along McCain's lies (sometimes debunking them) without ever embracing the narrative that the McCain campaign is continuously spouting falsehoods.
...
many journalists perceive that meek and passive or complict coverage of the Bush administration or the McCain campaign advances their self-interest -- by allowing them to curry favor with important sources, gain access, please their bosses, develop relationships with the next potential President of the U.S."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

September 8, 2008

1. " Anti-terrorism laws used to spy on noisy children

Councils are using anti-terrorism laws to spy on residents and tackle barking dogs and noisy children."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2696031/Anti-terrorism-laws-used-to-spy-on-noisy-children.html

2. As I said at the time:

"Dr. Assaad said of Ivins:

"He's a great man. He's honorable, sincere, honest and most important, he didn't kill five people and he didn't kill himself".

If Ivins didn't kill himself, that can only mean that he was murdered."

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/09/colleague-of-ivins-says-he-was-murdered.html

3. "The irrefutable fact is that nothing attracts ratings for MSNBC -- and nothing has attracted ratings in the entire history of that channel -- the way that Olbermann does. Yet here is MSNBC removing him from the anchor position, reducing his role in its political coverage, and clearly diminishing his stature (and implicitly criticizing his coverage). That is extraordinary for a media company to publicly embarrass, diminish and tarnish its own principal asset. It is plainly doing so for ideological, not ratings-based, reasons: namely, it fears doing anything to anger the White House, the McCain campaign and the Right in this country."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

September 8, 2008

1. "Georgia tortures people. Every year since 2004, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have reported on Abu Ghraib-like treatment of prisoners in Georgian jails and prisons: Suspects have been suspended between poles and beaten with truncheons or burned with candles until they hemorrhaged from various parts of their bodies; there have been threats to beat their mothers and children if they do not confess to charges against them, according to Amnesty. In 2005 and 2006, Human Rights Watch detailed “several cases of torture” and reported that in 2006 alone, at least seven detainees died in Tblisi Prison No. 5. The group noted that Georgia’s government has neither adequately investigated nor held anyone accountable for these and other deaths in detention. Indeed, Georgia’s response in 2006 to prisoner abuse claims constituted an additional abuse: It “used the plea bargaining system to cover up allegations of torture,” warning prisoners, “If you tell anyone then it will get worse for you,” and “promising lower penalties to defendants who agreed to the official’s version of events,” according to Human Rights Watch."

http://www.forward.com/articles/14141/

2. Good:

"It has taken two bloody conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan to shatter these illusions, but judging by Garton Ash's article we can finally conclude that liberal interventionism is dead and buried."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/07/foreignpolicy.military

3. "This forgotten nineteenth-century writer noted the great sympathy the human race extended to those who have been the victims of misfortunes: famine, shipwreck, railway accidents, whatever. He then invited his readers to "compare the feeling with which the community hears of the loss or peril of a few human lives by these accidents with which the news of the death or mutilation of thousands of men, equally precious, on the field of battle is received."

How different is the valuation! How different in universal sympathy! War seems to reverse our best and boasted civilization, to carry back human society to the dark ages of barbarism, to cheapen the public appreciation of human life almost to the standard of brute beasts….

And this demoralization of sentiment is not confined to the two or three nations engaged in war; it extends to the most distant and neutral nations, and they read of thousands slain or mangled in a single battle with but a little more human sensibility than they would read the loss of so many pawns by a move on a chess-board. With what deep sympathy the American nation, even to the very slaves, heard of the suffering in Ireland by the potato famine! What ship-loads of corn and provisions they sent over to relieve that suffering! But how little of that benevolent sympathy and of that generous aid would they have given to the same amount of suffering inflicted by war upon the people of a foreign country! This…is one of the very worst works of war. It is not only the demoralization, but almost the transformation, of human nature. We can generally ascertain how many lives have been lost in war. The tax-gatherer lets us know how much money it costs. But no registry kept on earth can tell us how much is lost to the world by this insensibility to human suffering which a war produces in the whole family circle of nations."

http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods95.html

September 8, 2008

Remember, we also have good reason to think the whole "boorish dumb Texan" routine is just a ruse to make people see him as somehow "nonthreatening". He didn't project that public image until after he lost his first race in Texas. Since taking on this image of stupidness, he hasn't lost an election. I don't think false flags happen without the President's awareness. FDR knew about Pearl Harbor ahead of time, even if the Navy Commanders at Pearl were kept in the dark.

September 8, 2008

With the government now having taken over Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, it looks a lot like a nationalization of the US mortgage market, with all of us as taxpayers now on the hook to pay for other folks' failures to pay their mortgages.

While it's normal for each of us to talk about "our" house as if we own it, we all know that the bank (as the mortgage holder) actually owns our house until we pay off our mortgage in full. If the US is now the ultimate mortgage holder of $5 trillion worth of mortgages, then the US is the ultimate owner of much of the private housing stock in this country - which means our housing stock may no longer really be "private".

This is horrible for a number of reasons, but I will just point out two.

First, think about housing in communist countries, like Cuba and the old Soviet Union, where there is no private property, and the government owns all housing. Dilapidated, unpleasant, and falling apart.

Second, and more important, if the US holds your mortgage, and you exercise your First Amendment rights to speak out against the government, it really isn't much of a stretch to imagine the government threatening to take your house (foreclose) for some "technical" violation of your mortgage terms. This has an obvious chilling effect on the free exercise of your First Amendment rights, which exist almost solely to protect unpopular speech, whether you speak out through words, worship, assembly or petition. Someone who may lose his house will just keep his mouth shut.

September 7, 2008

"Your theory is essentially based on two physical observations:
1. There were office fires in WTC 7 that burned for some hours.

2. The building completely collapsed.

Observation 1 is not in dispute, except as to the location, extent, and effect of the fires. You never observed these fires from inside the building, and you have no actual measurements of the thermal expansion and deformation of the structural steel beams whatever. You never examined any of the steel.

Observation 2 runs contrary to 100 years of experience with the behavior of steel-framed buildings that have caught on fire. Every one of them was subjected to thermal expansion. Never before has there been such a collapse. To now postulate that a collapse did occur due to office fires is the height of scientific recklessness.

In contrast to the non-existent observational basis for your theory, there exists a large and growing body of evidence, physical, eye-witness, anecdotal, and circumstantial, that points to controlled demolition as the reason for the building's collapse.

...
It is impossible to understand your abysmal "scientific" work unless you have been directed to propose and promulgate your "fire" theory by the government, whose agency you are. While your theory may serve the present government well, in a political sense, it does not serve the cause of truth, science, or the people of this country and of the world who desire to know the truth and deserve to have it. It does not serve the victims of 9/11 and their families. It does not serve you as individuals who must now live and be known by this piece of pseudo-scientific nonsense.
Every scientific theory, to be valid, must give results that are repeatable.

What does your theory predict?

Firstly, it predicts that other steel-framed buildings that have office fires may also completely collapse after a few hours. Will firemen attend to such fires? What will be the result in loss of life and property if they decline to fight these fires? What will be your liability for these losses, if they act on the basis of your theory?

Secondly, fire insurance rates for steel-framed buildings should now jump astronomically. What will be the effect on building owners, and society in general?

Thirdly, will control demolition companies now attempt a cheap way to bring down a building by setting a few fires? What mischief will this cause to surrounding properties and all concerned?

Your theory, if believed, leads to general mayhem in the steel building construction industry. For this reason, I doubt whether anyone there will pay any attention to it. In addition, a vast and growing number of citizens of this and other countries are now on the march toward a truthful accounting of 9/11. The chances are that both you and your current handlers will be repudiated by history as criminals and their accomplices, and will be scorned by future generations for the shameful deception you are perpetrating."
http://www.911blogger.com/node/17578

September 7, 2008

"If the TRADE Act were to pass, the working class of the countries affected would notice that nothing had actually changed. The bill would most likely function in the same manner of the UN’s International Labor Organization: strict labor requirements are written, violations are investigated, solutions are proposed, but absolutely nothing is ever accomplished. The ILO in fact acts as a cover-up for the horrible abuses of global capitalism, something the TRADE Act aims to accomplish on a smaller scale. No congressional bill, no matter how finely worded, can change the natural, predatory habits of profit making.
...
Trade barriers are no answer for the working-class. Protectionism increases prices (inflation) and can deepen recessions; it is used by the ruling class to blind workers and to incite war. A capitalist economy needs free-trade like the body needs oxygen, but we do not need capitalism. An economy that produces for social need and not a blind market is the only alternative for ordinary people, a proposal that only seems radical to those who benefit from the status-quo."

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10094

September 7, 2008

1. Nice analogy:

"No physical reason to think that a chunk of a top of a building would obliterate 80,000 tons of structural steel designed to resist it. Try this: "Imagine making a pile of nine junk cars, then dropping a tenth on top of it, would you expect the total destruction of all ten cars?" No."

2. "When Norm Covert, a conservative former Fort Detrick public affairs officer, and attorney Barry Kissin, liberal activist opposing Detrick's biolab expansion, agree that Bruce Ivins was not the anthrax killer, either the world's spinning off its axis, or the truth is staring us so hard in the face we'd have to be blind to miss it.

...

Ivins had neither the expertise nor the equipment to create such a sophisticated form of anthrax."
http://www.fredericknewspost.com/sections/opinion/display_columnist.htm?StoryID=79410

3. A conservative Republican woman who idolizes Margaret Thatcher decries McCain's choice of Palin as cynical and dishonorable:

"I had thought that McCain was, for a politician, an honourable man. Certainly honour is one of his top selling points. But who can think so now? In choosing a woman he doesn’t know or understand, purely for electoral advantage, he reveals a dishonourable lust for office, a disrespect for women generally and a dishonourable indifference to the future of his country. After all, if this known unknown woman does become president, it will almost certainly be because he himself is dead - quite possible given his age and health - and past caring.

Though he didn’t know Palin personally, he must have known a few facts about her. He must have known that she compares feebly with previous vice-presidential candidates. Her education is minimal, her real political and managerial experience very slight. The only previous woman candidate for vice-president, the Democrat Geraldine Ferraro, was well qualified, well educated and experienced; Palin can’t hold a candle to her. Palin’s experience is as nothing compared to that of Dick Cheney (congressman, secretary of defence and White House chief of staff), Al Gore (senator and congressman) or George Bush Sr (congressman, ambassador to the United Nations and China, head of the CIA). Being a vice-president is not just a matter of PR and homespun rhetoric, or used not to be."
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/minette_marrin/article4692133.ece

4. "She's not prepared to be governor. How can she be prepared to be vice president or president? Look at what she's done to this state. What would she do to the nation?” [About Gov. Sarah Palin, McCain's choice for a running mate]

Lyda Green, Republican Alaska State Senate President

5. Remember, we know that in 2001 it wasn't possible to make cell calls from planes:

"This is why Deena Burnett's story is so important. Unless people are willing to call her a liar or to reject the FBI's 2006 report, the calls she received cannot be explained except on the assumption that someone was prepared to fake several calls to her, pretending to be her husband calling on his cell phone. If even just one person was prepared to make such calls, this proves that the whole official story---that the airliners, to everyone's surprise, were taken over by hijackers---is false. The faked calls to Deena Burnett have thus turned out to be the Achilles Heel of the whole idea that real hijackers were reported by real phone calls from the airliners.
...
The answer to this question can be reasonably inferred from the fact that the original story, according to which Sweeney had called from a cell phone, was doubly problematic: Besides being made from too far up to be believable, the call also allegedly stayed connected for twelve minutes, which would be impossible in a plane traveling several hundred miles per hour."

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10103

6. "The bizarre American reaction to 9-11 in which Rudy Giuliani and George W. Bush were so comically turned into figures of authority was facilitated by religious thought. If so many people were not in the habit of turning to a lord or savior in times of fear, Hedges and all those trying to talk some sense into them would have a much easier task. If people were less like sheep in search of a shepherd, governments could not persuade them to kill each other at all."

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10096

September 6, 2008

1. Great article on ethics and just-war doctrine:

http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0806b.asp

2. "I just cannot understand the need to drag a child afflicted with Down syndrome in front of national TV at 10:00pm. Is that good for him? Or does the need to rally the base trump the needs of a child?"

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/kamangeer.php?articleid=13417

3. "given the importance of the job she accepted Wednesday night in her nomination speech, it's entirely reasonable for voters to expect Palin to answer questions from journalists about her positions and her record."

http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/palin-media-avo.html

4. Watch the video:

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/09/wtc-7-collapsed-at-same-speed-as-known.html

Funny, it looks exactly like what happened in New York to me.

5. http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-evidence-shows-ivins-case-even.html

6. "

“I asked how her using a city computer for her campaign business was any different than Ruedrich’s use of a state computer at the AOGCC to do Republican Party business,” Jenkins wrote in a column on July 7, 2006. “Not the same, she said, simply not the same.

“Then, she shifted gears and asked, ‘Is this what they’ve got to destroy my campaign? E-mails from 4½ years ago?’ We had barely hung up -- and I was wondering if there was any story in all this -- when her campaign fired off a ‘news’ release headlined: ‘Palin Campaign Sees First Signs of Rumored Smear Campaign.’ Good grief. Frankly . . . I’ve never seen a politician come unhinged so quickly as Palin when asked a few straightforward questions.”

Jenkins excoriated his Alaska media colleagues for lapping up Palin’s “reformer” talking points. He said her “campaign [was] rooted in one thing: the perception that Palin somehow wears a halo and is not your average, run-of-the-mill politician.”

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=10092

7. " It is no surprise that we are seeing our own citizens being brutalized and arrested for imaginary political crimes before any crimes are committed; and when there is no possibility that they will be committed. For this government there is no longer any concept of innocence until guilt is proven in a court of law. A court of law un-tampered with, a court uncontrolled by compromised loyalists, a court left free to honor its commitment to see justice done. There is no longer any concept of requiring proof of any crime at all. "

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20703.htm

September 6, 2008

1. Good for the Russians:
"But, in driving Georgian invasion troops out of Ossetia, pursuing them back into Georgia, proper, the Russians briefly occupied those two military airfields and reportedly destroyed most of the U.S. and Israeli equipment they found there (and elsewhere), perhaps creating serious obstacles to the near-term implementation of the Israeli "bomb-bomb Iran" game-plan.

You see, the new "sovereign" state of Iraq had prohibited the Israelis from penetrating Iraqi airspace in order to attack Iran. However, if the Israelis could launch and recover their fighter-bombers from airfields in Georgia, they could avoid Iraq and the distance they would have to cover to their targets would be sharply reduced."
http://www.antiwar.com/prather/?articleid=13418

2. "The most chilling of his public pronouncements has received little attention, though ... He said that without prompt action, Baghdad could become America’s Dien Bien Phu, where superior French forces were surrounded, trapped, cut off from supplies, and ultimately destroyed by Vietnamese guerrillas.

The comparison is not as absurd as it might seem. America possesses a powerful force in Iraq, but, as military analyst William Lind has repeatedly emphasized, that force is almost entirely dependent on a long and slender supply line from Kuwait, which runs through territory controlled by Shi’ite forces friendly to Iran. Some 500 tanker trucks of fuel must reach the American Army each day for it to maintain operational mobility. If widespread guerrilla action were to reduce substantially the number or transit speed of those convoys, America’s advantage in advanced hardware—our primary strength—would become increasingly irrelevant.

Under such a scenario, any American president who finally issued a command to withdraw would be forced to abandon vast amounts of military hardware, thereby publicly formalizing the greatest defeat in American history. But any president who did not issue such a humiliating withdrawal order would risk the total loss of America’s huge expeditionary force. That result would rank with the greatest military disasters in all history—enormously worse than Dien Bien Phu, and comparable in scale to the doomed Sicilian Expedition of the Athenians."

http://www.amconmag.com/article/2008/sep/08/00006/

September 6, 2008

An editorial in Pravda, the Soviet/Russian newspaper of propaganda:

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/22-08-2008/106172-september_11_attacks-0

Wow. I guess I won't be so quick to call their stuff propaganda anymore.

September 6, 2008

Neil Bush, the president's brother, committed financial crimes at Silverado S&L back in the 90s:

"The US Office of Thrift Supervision investigated Silverado's failure and determined that Bush had engaged in numerous "breaches of his fiduciary duties involving multiple conflicts of interest."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neil_Bush

In the late 80s John McCain acted criminally in connection with Charles Keating and the failure of his S&L.

How is any of this relevant now? Yesterday the FDIC had to take over Silver State Bank in Nevada - and guess who is on the Board of Directors? What a surprise. It's Andrew McCain:

http://news.yahoo.com/story/ap/bank_closure_silver_state

Andrew is also the Chief Financial Officer of Cindy McCain's beer distributorship.

Think some attention should be paid to this? No mention in the Atlanta paper this morning, so it looks as if the mainstream media is going to be part of the coverup - what a surprise.

Is financial crime an atavistic (reappearing genetic trait) part of all these guys' makeup, and their relatives? Oh, that's right, Andrew is adopted, so I guess it can't be genetic - must just be a character flaw, not that that's any more comforting for the shareholders and depositors of this bank.

September 5, 2008

1. "The McCain campaign has made 9/11 the centerpiece of their platform. The argument, of course, is that America has not suffered another terrorist attack since 9/11 because of strong Republican leadership.

Let's put aside the fact that the anthrax attacks occured just a couple of weeks later (and were an inside job).
...
Let's just focus on whether the Republican White House and their democratic and republican co-conspirators in Congress have made us any safer. The answer is clearly no
...
even insider and war hawk Zbigniew Brzezinski and other leading experts are now admitting that the war on terror is a racket; a top advisor to the U.S. military has confirmed that the war on terror is a hoax because there is no battlefield solution to terrorism; and the neocons themselves admit that the war on terror is a hoax) Given that the White House and their republican and democratic co-conspirators in Congress have made America significantly less safe in their handling of 9/11 (oh yeah, that was a false flag attack also) , it is good that they are making 9/11 the centerpiece of the campaign. It gives us the opportunity to point out how unsafe the government has really made us."

http://georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2008/09/our-leaders-have-prevented-more.html

2. Tom Morello of Rage Against The Machine is not only one of my very favorite musicians (see this, for an example of their best - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5nQUlbKdc74 ), but he just said this in public:

"When the media speaks of terrorism it tends to be in the context of lone bandits from middle eastern countries when most of the terrorism that occurs in the world is government sponsored." Morello told Change reporters.

"Whether it's the Bush administration or the Putin administration, terror is not something that is unfamiliar to governments."

"It is nothing new," Morello continued, "From Gulf of Tonkin to the Maine, in the Spanish American war, it is something that is embedded, unfortunately, in the DNA of American politics."

...

Last night the band were allowed to play a pre-arranged show at the Target Center in St. Paul. After the concert ended at 10.30pm riot police had surrounded the building in waiting for protesters who emerged and took to the streets to march and chant.
Police reportedly used batons, pepper spray and fired bean bag rounds and tear gas to disperse the demonstrators, in scenes more akin to the streets of communist China. After whittling the crowd down to around 75, police surrounded them, ordered them to the ground and arrested them all."

http://www.infowars.net/articles/September2008/040908Morello.htm

And let's not forget their vocalist, Zach de la Rocha, who along with Morello graduated from Harvard. Think these two may be able to articulate the truth about 9/11 to thousands of people? No wonder the police over-reacted.

September 5, 2008

"Sources told CBS4 police found two high-powered, scoped rifles in the car along with camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest, a spotting scope, licenses in the names of other people and 44 grams of methamphetamine. One of the rifles is listed as stolen from Kansas... Subsequently authorities went to the Cherry Creek Hotel to contact an associate of Gartrell's. But that man, identified as Shawn Robert Adolph, 33, who was wanted on numerous warrants, jumped out of a sixth floor hotel window. Law enforcement sources say Adolph broke an ankle in the fall and was captured moments later. Sources say he had a handcuff ring and was wearing a swastika, and is thought to have ties to white supremacist organizations."

"When law-enforcement officials let this stuff slip by, they send a dangerous message to other would-be plotters out there. And next time, they may in fact be more competent."

http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2008/09/fbi-wanted-obama-plotters-charged-but.html

And how much time did your beloved mainstream media spend on the Obama assassination attempt last week? Oh, let me guess - this is the first you've heard of it. But wait, it gets even better - this was the SECOND recent assassination attempt on Obama. How much did you hear about that first one?

You might ask yourself why Karl Rove and the Republicans are forcing a mainstream media blackout of multiple assassination attempts on a Presidential nominee.

Still trust the TV news you see everyday?

Ever feel like you've been cheated and lied to?

September 5, 2008

After asking me why the Democrats don't go after Bush/Cheney, your next question would obviously be why the media hasn't done so:

http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2005/10/hit-them-with-truth.html
(Every word in this article written in blue is a link to something else.)

Now do you see why it doesn't do any good for anyone, including you, to watch the mainstream media?

• A former National Security Adviser told the Senate that the war on terror is "a mythical historical narrative"

• Famous leaders have stated again and again that false flag terror is the name of the game:
  

• U.S. President James Madison said: "If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy."

• Adolph Hitler said: "Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death".

• Nazi leader Hermann Goering said:
  

  "Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the 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".

• Josef Stalin said:
  

  "The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened"

September 5, 2008

it sounds as if you are spending part of it every day watching TV news. You say this is a good thing because you're hearing both sides. That just isn't true. It's not a good thing, because you're not hearing both sides.

Watching propaganda and lies that are intended to seductively draw you in and make you support what sounds plausible on the surface ISN'T helping you discriminate between good and bad, evil and not-evil, sin and not-sin, or right and wrong. All it is doing is confusing you and making it harder for you to figure out what is really going on. It's certainly NOT giving you both sides of anything. Listening to the Republicans isn't helping you decide what to do about the implications of a 16-foot hole in the Pentagon and three controlled demolitions in New York, because their propaganda and misdirections are distracting you with irrelevancies and appeals to emotion - so that you won't focus on what is real and true.

If they have to lie to make their case, THEY DON'T HAVE A CASE TO MAKE.

This should be your filter to analyze everything - and I can guarantee you that I am not lying to you. Hard as it may be to believe, since I love you with every fiber of my being, with everything I've got in me, I love God and the truth even more. I am not misleading you or leading you down the garden path. I am not toying with you in any way. These people are murderers, and it makes me sad to see you listen to, and get drawn in, by them.

1. " Seriously, when the following is your message, you have a major problem with reality:
From the days of Abraham Lincoln to the ticket of John McCain and Sarah Palin (WTF?), reform is a core value guiding this party.

Today, John McCain stands ready to reform our nation’s tax, healthcare, energy and government spending policies.

Reform? Reform from what? The last eight years of GOP rule?

Reform from yourself?

Delusional narcissistic leaches"

2. "One could spend the rest of the days until the election pondering the “why” of Sarah Palin becoming the VP pick- although its doubtful that she’ll be on the ticket come November, given the various details about starting to emerge- did ya know she once served on a group who’s aim was to have Alaska secede from the United States? Doubt we’ve ever had a candidate with that on their resume before.

...

But something is afoot. There is absolutely no way that the political apparatus that sold the lies of 9-11, the Iraqi war, stole two elections and stonewalled Congress on everything does something this incredibly stupid. No way in hell.

So what the hell are they up to?"

3. "Romney: McCain earned his homes; Obama didn’t

Dumping your disabled first wife to hump a beer heiress in the hopes of a joint checking account isn’t “earning” shit, as anyone other than your typical amoral GOP “leader” could tell ya."
4. "In all the discussion of John McCain’s recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?
...

Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture. Someone somewhere cried out in pain for the same reasons McCain once did. And McCain let it continue.

These are the prices people pay for power.

John McCain, who can’t utter a public statement on anything without he or his AARP fan club interjecting “He was a POW for five years”, he doesn’t believe he was tortured either.

So it begs the question: Other than raw power and his wife’s cash, what does John McCain believe in…really?

And why is nobody asking him about it?"

5. " Hell, McCain isn’t even a victim.

At a time when more than a fourth of all combat troops in Vietnam were forcibly drafted (the actual victims), McCain volunteered to drop napalm on “gooks” (his term, not mine). He could have waited to see if his number came up in the draft lottery. Like Bush, he could have used family connections to weasel out of it. Finally, he could have joined the 100,000 draft-eligible males–true heroes, to a man–who went to Canada rather than kill people in a war that was plainly wrong.

When McCain was shot down during his 23rd bombing sortie, he was happily shooting up a civilian neighborhood in the middle of a