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RedditAs I listened to Magic, the new (and maybe last?) album from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, I thought of a buddy and a movie.
A few days ago, a pal of mine, who had spent about a year in Iraq in a nonmilitary but intense position, told me about a recent episode. He had gone to a bar on a weekend night and had fallen into a dispute with a bouncer--a big bouncer. My friend, who's not that young and not that fit, surprised himself by becoming highly aggressive with the bouncer. He was ready for a fight--eager for it--knowing damn well that if one came his way, he would end up on the downside of the deal. Fortunate for him, the moment was defused, and he moved on intact. "That's not me," he told me. "That's Iraq. After being there, you feel you don't have to put up with anything here and what happens here is nothing compared to what happens there."
In Paul Haggis's new film, In the Valley of Elah, GIs come back from Iraq with a different attitude toward violence and death. The war has changed them--not by robbing them of limbs, but by stealing them of innocence (yes, a cliche) and, more important, by undermining their sense of decency. To say too much would be to give away the mystery in the movie. But Haggis's point is that besides the obvious impact of the war--the death count, the physical wounds, the mental injuries (such as post-traumatic stress disorder), there are other costs--subtle but deep--to turning young men and women into killers forced to make choices no one ought to have to face.
As Haggis's film and my friend's experience illustrate, there is a consequence of war that does not fit into the box scores of lives lost, troops hospitalized, and money spent. It's what warring turns us into. And that seems to have been on Springsteen's mind when he penned the foundational songs of Magic.
Much of the album is imbued with a melancholy and a sense of loss, even when Springsteen deploys the power chords, searing guitars, and cascading piano that once (oh so long ago) underscored themes of youthful exuberance, rebellion and escape. This loaded-with-hooks album has its obvious moments. On "Last To Die," Springsteen sings, "Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?" It's John Kerry's once-famous line rock-and-rollified. (In the last election, Springsteen campaigned with Kerry.) "The wise men were all fools," Springsteen wails, as drums pound. Neocons, take note.
But on other tracks, Springsteen eschews the big picture for the nitty-gritty, chronicling broken souls and detailing lovers lost in grief, all apparent victims of a faraway war. On the elegiac "Devil's Arcade," a gravely wounded soldier lies in bed at home and feels "the glorious kingdom of the sun" on his face, as the song's narrator--probably his wife--asks him to "just whisper the word 'tomorrow' in my ear." In the pop-infused (maybe too infused) "Livin' in the Future," a fellow who's received a letter saying "somethin' 'bout me and you never seein' one another again" feels untethered from the present moment. "My faith's been torn asunder," he says, "tell me is that rollin' thunder/Or just the sinkin' sound of somethin' righteous goin' under?"
Well, the answer is clear. The ship's gone down, and folks are left to deal with the wreckage on their own. And the grand sum of all these individual tragedies marks a societal demise. On the title track--a somber, violin-draped number--Springsteen sings of a magician who moves from making a coin disappear to sawing a volunteer into two. "I'll cut you in half," the sly trickster says, "while you're smiling ear to ear. And the freedom that you sought's driftin' like a ghost among the trees." As Springsteen has acknowledged, this song is about the Bush administration, and the Bush-Cheney magic act ends apocalyptically:
Now there's a fire down below
But it's comin' up here
So leave everything you know
And carry only what you fear
On the road the sun is sinkin' low
There's bodies hangin' in the trees
This is what will be, this is what will be.
There's a lot more than darkness on the edge of town. There's ruin. Yet overall the album's music does not match it's downhearted view. Springsteen creeps along a tight rope, balancing his musical brightness with his belief the nation has lost its soul at the hands of deceivers.
He ties it all together, though, in "Long Walk Home." Against Springsteen's long-perfected anthemic bar-band sound, he sings of returning--that is, trying to return--to his home town. But things ain't the same. The place is full of strangers. The veterans hall is closed: "The diner was shuttered and boarded/With a sign that just said 'gone.'" He recalls his father once telling him,
Son, we're luck in this town
It's a beautiful place to be born
it just wraps its arms around you
Nobody crowds you, nobody goes it alone.
That you know flag flying over the courthouse
Means certain things are set in stone
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't.
It's no secret; he's talking not about a fine ol' town but about the romanticized American ideal. Whether it ever truly existed on the ground can be debated. (Remember "Born in the U.S.A"?) But what's for sure is that it's promise has been trampled by the current gang. And the war's one helluva tipping point. In this song, Springsteen's narrator sings, "Hey pretty Darling, don't wait up for me/Gonna be a long walk home."
Springsteen, whose last album was a romping collection of pumped-up versions of songs associated with Pete Seeger, is not wallowing in nostalgia. (Bodies hanging in the trees? We're way past nostalgia, he seems to be saying.) He's expressing a desire. Rock and roll has always been about yearning. In earlier days, it was about longing for sex, love, a fast car, flight. You know, "it's a death trap, it's a suicide rap," and so on. But as he surveys the horizon and sees a nation in trouble, that small town Springsteen wanted to flee as a young man doesn't look so bad now--that is, as a symbol of America's best values: community, compassion, the rule of law. So he's brought the band together and called upon the rock idiom he knows so well to share his present-day yearnings. At the age of 58, Springsteen knows that it's not about running away, it's about walking back. And though the music soars, his message is mired in realism: this walk is not going to be easy.
Posted by PRETZEL 10/02/2007 @ 6:49pm
Let's see:
Bush - Commander in Chief of US Armed Forces Cheney - "Vice" Commander in chief of US Armed Forces Rush Limbaugh - Political opinion commentator Sean Hannity - Political opinion commentator Bruce Springsteen - Aging pop star.
Which one of these does not apply to the "I really want to hear your take on politics" category?
Posted by Sliver at 10/02/2007 @ 7:16pm
mr. corn
before i read this article,
once again, congratulations.
carry that flame, dude!
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/02/2007 @ 1:58pm
well, i guess mr. springsteen won't be playing this year's STUPORBOWL XLII.
they'll give his spot to the new PARIS HILTON BAND!
"Jacques Ellul observes in Propaganda: When dialogue begins, propaganda ends. His theme, that propaganda is not this or that ideology but rather the action and coexistence of all media at once, explains why propaganda is environmental and invisible. The total life of any culture tends to be "propaganda", for this reason. It blankets perception and supresses awareness, making the counter environments created by the artist indispensible to survival and freedom."
"The artist is the only person; his antennae pick up these messages before anybody. So he is always thought of as being way ahead of his time because he lives in the present." (1970)
Marshall McLuhan
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/02/2007 @ 2:05pm
The day after I saw Springsteen in 1981, I jumped off the catwalk to the factory floor, and I was Bruce jumping off that piano. He gave me dignity in my work, joy in the company of others and strength to be more than my surroundings wanted to tell me I was. We can beat these guys. We can fix the place. We just gotta get out in the street, talk the way we wanna talk and walk that way too. --Jim Caton
Posted by ednahall at 10/02/2007 @ 2:40pm
Rush Limbaugh says that Bruce Springsteen is an unpatriotic liberal who is invested in the defeat of America. He also says that Springsteen hangs out with 'phoney' soldiers.
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 2:57pm
Reid Calls On Senators To Join In Condemning Limbaugh's Attack On Our Troops
Washington, DC--Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid made the following statement today on the floor of the U.S. Senate, urging Senators to sign a letter that calls on Mark P. Mays, CEO of Clear Channel Communications, to publicly repudiate Rush Limbaugh's characterization of troops who speak out against the Iraq war as "phony soldiers."
Below are his remarks as prepared for delivery:
"Freedom of speech is one of our country's most cherished values. Nothing sets us further apart than the countries and regimes we oppose than our belief that everyone's opinion matters, and everyone has the right to express it. That is why, when we hear things on the radio that are offensive, by and large, we tolerate them.
"But last week, Rush Limbaugh went way over the line – and while we respect his right to say anything he likes, his unpatriotic comments cannot be ignored.
"During his show last Wednesday, Rush Limbaugh was engaged in one of his typical rants. This rant was unremarkable and indistinguishable from his usual drivel, which has been steadily losing listeners for years – until he crossed that line by calling our men and women in uniform who oppose the war in Iraq ‘phony soldiers.' This comment was so beyond the pale of decency that it cannot be left alone. And yet, he followed it up with denials and an attack on Congressman Jack Murtha, a 37-year active member of the Marine Corps.
"We have been debating the Iraq war here in the Senate and throughout the country for not months, but years. There are good, patriotic Americans who favor the war – and good, patriotic Americans who oppose President Bush's handling of it. Neither party holds a patent on patriotism. I know all my Republican colleagues would agree with that.
"Yet Rush Limbaugh took it upon himself to attack the courage and character of those fighting and dying for him and for all of us. Rush Limbaugh got himself a deferment from serving when he was a young man. He never served in uniform. He never saw in person the extreme difficulty of maintaining peace in a foreign country engaged in civil war. Ye he thinks that his opinion on the war is worth more than those who are on the front lines.
"And what's worse – Limbaugh's show is broadcast on Armed Forces Radio, which means that thousands of troops overseas and veterans here at home were forced to hear this attack on their patriotism. Rush Limbaugh owes the men and women of our Armed Forces an apology.
"On Friday, many Democrats joined me in drafting a letter to the Chief Executive Officer of Clear Channel, Mark Mays that we will send out this week. Here is what we wrote:
‘Dear Mr. Mays,
‘At the time we sign this letter, 3,801 American soldiers have been killed in Iraq, and another 27,936 have been wounded. 160,000 others awoke this morning on foreign sand, far from home, to face the danger and uncertainty of another day at war.
‘Although Americans of goodwill debate the merits of this war, we can all agree that those who serve with such great courage deserve our deepest respect and gratitude. That is why Rush Limbaugh's recent characterization of troops who oppose the war as "phony soldiers" is such an outrage.
‘Our troops are fighting and dying to bring to others the freedoms that many take for granted. It is unconscionable that Mr. Limbaugh would criticize them for exercising the fundamentally American right to free speech. Mr. Limbaugh has made outrageous remarks before, but this affront to our soldiers is beyond the pale.
‘The military, like any community within the United States, includes members both for and against the war. Senior generals, such as General John Batiste and Paul Eaton, have come out against the war while others have publicly supported it. A December 2006 poll conducted by the Military Times found just 35 percent of service members approved of President Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, compared to 42 percent who disapproved. From this figure alone, it is clear that Mr. Limbaugh's insult is directed at thousands of American service members.
‘Active and retired members of our armed forces have a unique perspective on the war and offer a valuable contribution to our national debate. In August, seven soldiers wrote an op-ed expressing their concern with the current strategy in Iraq. Tragically, since then, two of those seven soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice in Iraq.
‘Thousands of active troops and veterans were subjected to Mr. Limbaugh's unpatriotic and indefensible comments on your broadcast. We trust you will agree that not a single one of our sons, daughters, neighbors and friends serving overseas is a "phony soldier." We call on you to publicly repudiate these comments that call into question their service and sacrifice and to ask Mr. Limbaugh to apologize for his comments.'
"Just as patriotism is the exclusive realm of neither party, taking a stand against those who spew hate and impugn the integrity of our troops is a job that belongs to all of us. I can't help but wonder how my Republican colleagues would have reacted if the tables were turned – if a well-known Democratic radio personality had used the same insulting line of attack against troops who support the war.
"The letter I read will be available on the Senate floor for the entire day. My colleagues on both sides of the aisle will have every chance to add their names to it, and I encourage all of us to do so. If we take the Republican side at their word that last week's vote on another controversial statement related to the war was truly about patriotism, not politics, then I have no doubt that they will stand with us against Limbaugh's comments with equal fervor.
"I am confident we will see Republicans join with us in overwhelming numbers. Anything less would be a double standard that has no place in the United States Senate. I ask my colleagues, Democrat and Republican alike, to join together against this irresponsible, hateful, and unpatriotic attack by calling upon Rush Limbaugh to give our troops the apology they deserve."
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 3:05pm
Top Democrat slams Limbaugh over 'phony soldiers'
Reid had some harsh words for Rush Limbaugh Monday.
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid slammed Rush Limbaugh Monday over his recent controversial "phony soldiers" remark, despite the conservative talk-radio host's protests that his words have been taken out of context.
Limbaugh's comments in question came last Wednesday when he and a caller were discussing critics of the Iraq war:
"What's really funny is, they [Iraq war critics] never talk to real soldiers," the caller said. "They like to pull these soldiers that come up out of the blue and talk to the media."
"The phony soldiers," Limbaugh then said.
Several Democrats released statements late last week condemning the remarks and in a speech on the Senate floor Monday, Reid called the comments "so beyond the pale of decency that it cannot be left alone."
"Just as patriotism is the exclusive realm of neither party, taking a stand against those who spew hate and impugn the integrity of our troops is a job that belongs to all of us," Reid said.
"I can't help but wonder how my Republican colleagues would have reacted if the tables were turned – if a well-known Democratic radio personality had used the same insulting line of attack against troops who support the war," the Nevada Democrat added.
Responding to his critics on Friday's show, Limbaugh said he was "taken out of context," adding his remark was referring to one soldier specifically -- Jesse MacBeth, a vocal war critic who falsely claimed to have served in Iraq.
"The effort here is simply to discredit people that they consider effective and powerful on the right ginning up, leading up into the '08 elections," Limbaugh said Friday.
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 3:07pm
Limbaugh's AFN audience has heard only misrepresentations of his "phony soldiers" comment on his show
During the first hour of the October 1 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, in response to a Media Matters for America item documenting his recent description of service members who advocate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq as "phony soldiers," Rush Limbaugh said: "I want to apologize to all of the members of the United States military, both in uniform and out, active duty and retired, for Media Matters for America." Limbaugh continued: "They will not apologize to you, and they will not apologize to me. I want to apologize to you on behalf of them." Limbaugh later asserted: "The bottom line to all this is that, last week, with this smear and this phony accusation regarding something I had not said about active duty military personnel, or even those who opposed the war, was that, once again, the integrity of the U.S. military was brought into question when the integrity of the sourcing group, Media Matters for America, should have been brought into question." But Limbaugh has misrepresented his "phony soldiers" comments; indeed, listeners to Armed Forces Network (AFN), which broadcasts only the first hour of The Rush Limbaugh Show, heard only a spliced version of Limbaugh's remarks in which he edited out 1 minute and 35 seconds of discussion, while falsely claiming that he was providing the "entire transcript."
Limbaugh's original reference to "phony soldiers" occurred during the second hour of the September 26 edition of his show, and therefore was not heard by AFN listeners. During the first hour of the September 28 broadcast of his show, however, Limbaugh -- reacting to strong criticism over his comments -- played an edited version of the discussion, which he presented as complete. That was the first time his AFN audience would have heard the comments on his radio show. During that broadcast, Limbaugh claimed that on September 26, he had not been talking "about the anti-war movement generally," but rather "about one soldier ... Jesse MacBeth." To support this claim, Limbaugh purported to air the "entire" segment in question from the September 26 broadcast. But as Media Matters noted, the clip he aired omitted a full 1 minute and 35 seconds of the 1 minute and 50 second discussion that occurred between Limbaugh's original "phony soldiers" comment and his reference to MacBeth.
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 3:09pm
So, we've got a performer like Bruce Springsteen using his music to try to wake America up while at the same time we've got a pathetic demagogue like Limbaugh spewing his garbage over the people's air waves and not being held accountable. What's wrong with this picture?
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 3:11pm
Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/02/2007 @ 3:11pm
dummocracy in action!
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/02/2007 @ 3:14pm
Limbaugh was caught yet again disparaging patriotic Americans and what's his response? Instead of taking responsibility for his remarks, he instead, like a school bully in the Principal's office tries to blame someone else, in this case Media Matters. Rush has been getting away with his garbage for years. Now there is a watchdog organization monitoring him and he can't handle it.
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 3:14pm
A plea to all Dittoheads and Wingnuts: Do your homework. Follow up on the things you hear Limbaugh say. Do some research and you'll find the lies. Do you like being lied to everyday?
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 3:16pm
"A plea to all Dittoheads and Wingnuts: Do your homework. Follow up on the things you hear Limbaugh say. Do some research and you'll find the lies. Do you like being lied to everyday?
Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/02/2007 @ 3:16pm"
Thanks - somebody had to say it. The dittoheads are just so sad listening to the bloviations of chickensh*t chickenhawks.
Hard to say which is worse Rush or BO?
Posted by CaptainKirk at 10/02/2007 @ 5:13pm
Do you like being lied to everyday?
Posted by FRANKGRITS 10/02/2007 @ 3:16pm |
Relax, Frank...Rush isn't running for office. Besides, you listen to WAY more Limbaugh then all the conservatives here combined. He's just another point of view. Dollars to donuts though says that Reid or Harkin, et al wouldn't bother to confront him personally or debate the issue.
My brother-in-law has been a lifelong Springsteen fan since the 70's. Always had Springsteen playing either at home, in the car, etc. He finally got tired of his act a few years ago and quit buying his newer stuff. I imagine he's not alone. If Bruce were a rah-rah Bush guy on all his recordings, I would expect the drop in "listenership" to drop off just the same.
If you really want your audience to think out reality, then give both viewpoints and leave it up to the listener to decide. After all...Bruce Springsteen has about as much combat experience as Katrina Vanden Heuvel.
Posted by Sliver at 10/02/2007 @ 6:04pm
There's the truthful lie and then there's the lieful lie; see both sides...
Posted by hsuBfools at 10/02/2007 @ 6:38pm
Rush is not just another point of view. He's the mouthpiece for the neo-con movement that is taking our foreign policy over the cliff. Whenever the WH wants to get a message out to millions of people that they politically can't deliver themselves, they call Rush and he does the dirty deed for them. This is not just any other commentator. He's got an agenda and he's well taken care of. He should be held to account for the things he says, just like Imus was.
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 6:38pm
If you really want your audience to think out reality, then give both viewpoints and leave it up to the listener to decide. After all...Bruce Springsteen has about as much combat experience as Katrina Vanden Heuvel.
and rush and george bush have how much combat experience?
Posted by pretzel at 10/02/2007 @ 6:49pm
and how much combat experience does cheney have? sean hannity?
Posted by pretzel at 10/02/2007 @ 6:49pm
i like springsteen...but still trying to get "born in the usa" out of my head...
Posted by ibbleblibble at 10/02/2007 @ 10:38pm
Posted by FREIHEIT 10/02/2007 @ 10:57pm
He clearly insulted the troops. I don't know what you were listening to or why but I'm not wrong. When it comes to Limbaugh, I never am. Go to mediamatters.com for the transcript and the coverup.
Posted by frankgrits at 10/02/2007 @ 11:43pm
Americans can clearly see that Demoncrats are the real "Betrayus" of the members of our armed services!
Posted by RIO BRAVO 10/02/2007 @ 11:44pm |
well, i'm no fan of the democrats, but they didn't send your people to die in iraq for absolutely no reason except greed (or maybe some perverse mission to "save" the world)
Posted by frosty zoom at 10/02/2007 @ 11:49pm
"and rush and george bush have how much combat experience?
Posted by PRETZEL 10/02/2007 @ 6:49pm
The same as Bill Clinton, actually Bush has some military experience, since he flew jets..
I think the Senate looked foolish today and this will baclk fire on them..
SOMEONE tell Frank, that if he could get his head out from under Hillarys skirt, he would find out that MEDIA MATTERS is a Hillary creation, and therfore not a credible source to quote when discussing any news event.
Another question for the resident Rush addict,is How did he miss what RUSH really sdaid when he listens to him so much...Reid "franked up" here...
Posted by john maasch at 10/03/2007 @ 03:56am
Back in the good ole days of the 90's, Bruce 'the Boss' left the stage long enough for Bruce 'the Seer' to pen 'The Ghost of Tom Joad'. These observations on NAFTA job loss, immigration problems, social change, and their impact on ordinary people were early warnings of things to come. If there is a more haunting song than the title tune, I can't think of it right now. But, nobody wants to listen to a scruffy old guy with a reconstituted rock band warning about what may come. Let's leave that up to the politicians and pundits. They are so much more insightful, fair and balanced, eloquent and upright. Let's show this 'phoney poet' that he's no, uh, can't be, uh, won't be, hm, never was, oh well, a prophet!
Posted by Moderatus at 10/03/2007 @ 06:34am
"I got those unemployment compensation, what was you last occupation blues, They make me feel i'm committing a sin to get back what i paid in...." How much money did you earn,stand in line and wait your turn blues P. Seager
Springstein wants back democratic America> Me too.
From an American person who can vocalize from Britain:
"http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html
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Fascist America, in 10 easy steps
From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all
Tuesday April 24, 2007 The Guardian
Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------- They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps. As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.
Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.
It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.
Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the US.
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:38am
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
After we were hit on September 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on October 26 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilisation". There have been other times of crisis in which the US accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the civil war, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the second world war, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: all our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space - the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."
Creating a terrifying threat - hydra-like, secretive, evil - is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.
It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain - which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks - than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilisation as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.
2. Create a gulag
Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") - where torture takes place.
At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals". Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders - opposition members, labour activists, clergy and journalists - are arrested and sent there as well.
This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.
With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused, and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.
Gulags in history tend to metastasise, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalised. We know from first-hand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the US-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.
But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.
By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favour of Nazi ideology when making decisions.
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:38am
3. Develop a thug caste
When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorise citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.
The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the US military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time US administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution
Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode - but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home in US cities.
Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order".
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China - in every closed society - secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbours to spy on neighbours. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.
In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state programme to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.
In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:39am
5. Harass citizens' groups
The fifth thing you do is related to step four - you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favour of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under US tax law, have been left alone.
Other harassment is more serious: the American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents: a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents". The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organisations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary US citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism". So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power, describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: you are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.
In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco; liberal Senator Edward Kennedy; a member of Venezuela's government - after Venezuela's president had criticised Bush; and thousands of ordinary US citizens.
Professor Walter F Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic Constitutional Democracy. Murphy is also a decorated former marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list".
"Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.
"I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the constitution."
"That'll do it," the man said.
Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.
James Yee, a US citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the US military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.
Brandon Mayfield, a US citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.
It is a standard practice of fascist societies that once you are on the list, you can't get off.
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:39am
7. Target key individuals
Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.
Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate", in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7 1933.
Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalise or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.
Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.
Most recently, the administration purged eight US attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.
8. Control the press
Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the 30s, East Germany in the 50s, Czechoslovakia in the 60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the 70s, China in the 80s and 90s - all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.
The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.
Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C Wilson accused Bush, in a New York Times op-ed, of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy - a form of retaliation that ended her career.
Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organisations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the US military and taken to violent prisons; the news organisations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.
Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.
You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America - it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:40am
9. Dissent equals treason
Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage'. Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalise certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor". When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful", while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and rightwing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers smugly that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.
Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death", according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.
In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people". National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors".
And here is where the circle closes: most Americans do not realise that since September of last year - when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 - the president has the power to call any US citizen an "enemy combatant". He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.
Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door; ship you or me to a navy brig; and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)
We US citizens will get a trial eventually - for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is trying increasingly aggressively to find ways to get around giving even US citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence - it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model - you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.
Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: it is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests - usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.
10. Suspend the rule of law
The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency - which the president now has enhanced powers to declare - he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.
Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialised about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night ... Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition'."
Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act - which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic senator Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militias' power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.
Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing-down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.
Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.
It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.
That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still- free-looking institutions - and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs".
What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack - say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani - because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.
What if the publisher of a major US newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a rightwing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing; but they would suddenly be very polite.
Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us - staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a US unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.
We need to look at history and face the "what ifs". For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: that is how it was before - and this is the way it is now.
"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.
· Naomi Wolf's The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot will be published by Chelsea Green in September."
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:40am
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20070917_giving_and_taking/
‘Giving' and Taking Email Print Share Del.icio.us Digg Facebook Ma.gnolia Newsvine Reddit StumbleUpon Yahoo
Posted on Sep 17, 2007
AP Photo / Pablo Martinez Monsivais
By Chris Hedges
Bill Clinton has written a new book. It is called "Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World." He will give a portion of the proceeds to charity. Giving, the former president informs us, gives us fulfilment in life and is "the fabric of our shared humanity."
His book is the political equivalent of "Marley & Me" It is filled with a lot of vapid, feel-good stories about ordinary and wealthy Americans setting out to make the world a better place. It smacks of the philanthropy-as-publicity that characterized the largesse of the robber barons--the Mellons and the Rockefellers--and has become a pastime for our own oligarchic elite. Clinton's call for charity is the equivalent of well-scrubbed prep school students spending a day in a soup kitchen, doling out food to the people whose jobs were outsourced by their mommies and daddies. It does little to alleviate suffering. But it is a balm to the conscience of the oligarchic class that profits handsomely from the impoverishment of the working class, globalization and our anti-democratic corporate state. The rich love to dine out on their own goodness.
The misery sweeping across the American landscape may have begun with Ronald Reagan, but it was accelerated and codified by Bill Clinton. He sold out the poor and the working class. And Clinton did it deliberately to feed the pathological hunger he and his wife have for political power. It was the Clintons who led the Democratic Party to the corporate watering trough. The Clintons argued that the party had to ditch labor unions, no longer a source of votes or power, as a political ally. Workers would vote Democratic anyway. They had no choice. It was better, the Clintons argued, to take corporate money and use government to service the needs of the corporations. By the 1990s, the Democratic Party, under Clinton's leadership, had virtual fund-raising parity with the Republicans. In political terms, it was a success. In moral terms, it was a betrayal.
The North American Free Trade Agreement was sold to the country by the Clinton White House as an opportunity to raise the incomes and prosperity of the citizens of the United States, Canada and Mexico. Goods would be cheaper. Workers would be wealthier. Everyone would be happier. I am not sure how these contradictory things were supposed to happen, but in a sound-bite society, reality no longer matters. NAFTA would also, we were told, staunch Mexican immigration into the United States.
"There will be less illegal immigration because more Mexicans will be able to support their children by staying home," President Clinton said in the spring of 1993 as he was lobbying for the bill.
But NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, had the curious effect of reversing every one of Clinton's rosy predictions. Once the Mexican government lifted price supports on corn and beans for Mexican farmers, they had to compete against the huge agribusinesses in the United States. The Mexican farmers were swiftly bankrupted. At least 2 million Mexican farmers were driven off their land from 1993 through 2002. And guess where many of them went? This desperate flight of Mexicans into the United States is being exacerbated by large-scale factory closures along the border as manufacturers leave Mexico for the cut-rate embrace of China's totalitarian capitalism.
Clinton's welfare reform bill, which was signed on Aug. 22, 1996, obliterated the nation's social safety net. It threw 6 million people, many of them single parents, off of the welfare rolls within three years. It dumped them onto the streets without child care, rent subsidies and continued Medicaid coverage. Families were plunged into crisis, struggling to survive on multiple jobs that paid $6 or $7 an hour, or less than $15,000 a year. But these were the lucky ones. In some states, half of those dropped from the welfare rolls could not find work. Clinton slashed Medicare by $115 billion over a five-year period and cut $25 billion in Medicaid funding. The booming and overcrowded prison system handled the influx of the poor, as well as our abandoned mentally ill.
The growing desperation provided a pool of broken people willing to work for low wages and without unions or benefits. And while Clinton was busy selling out the poor, he lowered the capital gains tax from 28 percent to 20 percent, a reduction that permitted the wealthiest 1 percent of the population to derive 80 percent of the tax savings. Clinton, like George W. Bush, also provided lavish government funding for his corporate backers, including in 1998 a $200-billion highway and transportation package for the big construction companies and a $17-billion increase in the military budget. This was the largest increase in military spending since the end of the Cold War. Corporations, flush with government aid, saw their taxes dwindle. Amway, for example, had its taxes cut during the Clinton years by an estimated $280 million. The Clinton and Bush administrations, through tax breaks and corporate bailouts, have squandered billions of our tax dollars on corporate welfare.
The appreciative oligarchs and corporate class have made Bill rich. He is fond of boasting in public about how wealthy he has become. Hillary raised $26 million in the first quarter of the year, almost three times as much as any politician previously raised at that point in a presidential election.
We face the prospect of having two families govern the country for 16 years. The system is rigged. Our democracy is a consumer fraud. The government has given up any pretence of serving the interests of citizens. The corporations rule. And for all Clinton's charm and talent for self-promotion, he is largely to blame.
Half a century ago, corporations paid 45 percent to 50 percent of the income tax. Today they pay 6 or 7 percent. This is why our infrastructure is crumbling, there is no universal health care, our public education is in crisis, regulatory agencies are impotent and our poor and working class are desperate.
The bottom line is that the Democrats, including John Edwards, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, will never govern on our behalf. They are hostage to those who put them in power. And it is not us. Until we throw our weight behind fringe candidates such as Dennis Kucinich or Ralph Nader, if he runs, we will continue to be fleeced by corporate pawns such as the Clintons and the Bushes. It is no longer possible to argue between the lesser of two evils. The corporate state, which is carrying out a coup d'etat in slow motion and has already shredded most of our constitutional rights, is an unmitigated evil. We do not need charity. We need justice. And all of Bill Clinton's heart-warming stories about giving are not going to save us from the corporations who sucked out his soul and seek to imprison the rest of us. "
Hillary voted for the Lieberman resolution to use "any, and all means of military force to stop Iran.
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:43am
Any and all means of force includes Dick Cheney's wish to nuke Iran
or rebuilding America's Defenses, which called for a New Pearl Harbor to happen, and get money from Social programs like Social Security, welfare etc.
to pay for preemptive war.
They even mean use of Genocidal weapons: "http://www.peace.ca/racetargetablebioweapons.htm
On Race-Targetable Biological Weaponry by John Wilmerding 10 August 2003 15:51 UTC
------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------
You may have wondered about the recent suspicious death of Dr. David Kelly, a microbiologist in the UK with connections high in the Tony Blair administration.
What did he know? What did he say .... when, and to whom? Was he killed because he 'knew too much'?
"... former member of the Knesset (Israeli parliament), Dedi Zucker, caused a storm ... when he claimed that the institute (the Institute for Biological Research, one of the most secret places in Israel).was "trying to create an ethnic specific weapon" in which Arabs could be targeted by Israeli weapons."
A suspicious pattern of deaths of prominent microbiologists has emerged around the world, but especially highly-advanced researchers connected with the USA, the UK, Russia, and Israel, and who were known to be familiar with this arcane branch of germ weapons research.
Are these people being killed in order to hush a scandalous, monstrous fact of recent research in this field -- that secret services in major countries are investigating how to kill off whole races of people with germ weapons -- even developing the means to do that?
What accounts for the appearance of AIDS (HIV), and now SARS, which have predominantly victimized people of other than European ancestry? That may not really apply, but what of the facts in this matter? Do people high up in Israeli and US government really intend to develop germ weapons that will selectively attack or kill off certain races of people?
The fake presidency -- the Bush regime -- is known to be influenced by individuals who advocate this kind of research ... in fact, specifically calling for the "political usefulness" of gene-targetable bio-weapons (see the quote and reference below). Several of these individuals have strong links to Israel; possibly even dual citizenship:
Here is a quote from their most important policy document:
http://www.newamericancentury.org/RebuildingAmericasDefenses.pdf
"... the art of warfare ... will be vastly different than it is today ... "combat" likely will take place in new dimensions ... advanced forms of biological warfare that can "target" specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool."
From 'Rebuilding America's Defenses' the leading policy "white paper" of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which has essentially dictated Bush regime "defense" policies since early 2001:
http://www.newamericancentury.org
This is why I call them PNACzi's."
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:48am
Time to investigate the shadow government : Fed Is Not Beholden To Any, Government Agency Track this topic | Email this topic | Print this topic CRAIG-OXLEY Posted: Sep 21 2007, 08:02 PM
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Greenspan Admits Fed Is Not Beholden To Any Government Agency
Abe Day Prisonplanet.com Friday September 21, 2007 http://propagandamatrix.com/articles/septe...907Beholden.htm
This week, former chairman of the Fed Reserve Alan Greenspan in an interview aired on PBS' News Hour was asked by Jim Lehrer what should be the proper relationship between a chairman of the Fed and The President of the United States. In a shockingly honest tone Greenspan replies,
"Well, first of all, the Federal Reserve is an independent agency, and that means, basically, that there is no other agency of government which can overrule actions that we take. So long as that is in place and there is no evidence that the administration or the Congress or anybody else is requesting that we do things other than what we think is the appropriate thing, then what the relationships are don't, frankly, matter."
This issue with the Fed being above government is one of the key things We The People need to understand in order to wake up to the awful situation that we have found ourselves in. Our wealth, our labor, and anything we gain buy being productive has been stolen from us since the Federal Reserve took over our money system in the 1913.
Most people believe the Fed to be a government agency overlook by the President of the United States. Others fully believe the statements of Mr. Greenspan but don't really understand what it means to have an "independent agency" (i.e. private banks) be above The Presidency, The Congress and Senate, and the Supreme court of the United States. This power to create money has been given over to a group of businessmen not beholden to our U.S Constitution; a document to protect our God given freedoms from tyranny. Hopefully enough of our rising generation can learn this sad truth and vote to return the power to regulate money back into the hands of those to whom it belongs…We The People.
Kissinger Admits Iran Attack Is About Oil
"So what?, we need the oil," sneer deluded Neo-Cons as oil prices explode due to orchestrated artificial scarcity
Paul Joseph Watson Prison Planet Friday, September 21, 2007 http://propagandamatrix.com/articles/septe...7_about_oil.htm
In a new op-ed, Bilderberg luminary Henry Kissinger admits that U.S. hostility against Iran is not about the threat of nuclear proliferation, but as part of a larger agenda to seize Iranian oil supplies. But the true meaning behind this is lost on Neo-Cons, who are still deluded into thinking that Americans benefit from the imperial looting of natural resources in the middle east.
In an Washington Post op-ed, Former US Secretary of State Kissinger comes clean on the true motives behind the planned military assault on Iran.
"An Iran that practices subversion and seeks regional hegemony - which appears to be the current trend - must be faced with lines it will not be permitted to cross. The industrial nations cannot accept radical forces dominating a region on which their economies depend," writes Kissinger.
As blogger Robert Weissman points out, the "legitimate aspirations" that Kissinger affords Iran later in the piece "do not include control over the oil that the United States and other industrial countries need."
According to the CIA's world factbook, Iran has the world's second largest reserves of conventional crude oil at 133 gigabarrels. Adding non-conventional oil, Iran holds 10% of the global oil supply.
Kissinger's admission that U.S. control of Iranian oil supplies is the real agenda behind hostility towards Iran would raise eyebrows and bring condemnation from many, but there are a hard core of Neo-Con cheerleaders who would support such an agenda even if it is openly accepted that nuclear proliferation is just a smokescreen for looting more middle east oil.
That is because they are still deluded into thinking that foreign wars of aggression to monopolize natural resources make America, and as a consequence make them, richer and more prosperous - when nothing could be further from the truth.
The fact that the Iraq invasion was about oil is a familiar cliche that was even acknowledged by Alan Greenspan last week.
"So what? We need that oil," the Neo-Cons sneer.
Americans don't benefit from the Globalists' control of Iraqi oil because the agenda is to artificially restrict global oil supplies in order to jack up prices and reduce the living standards of industrial countries.
The oil flowing out of Iraq has never recovered to pre-invasion levels and still stands at a measly 0.5 gigabarrels a year, a huge chunk of which is piped directly to Israel.
This artificial scarcity is the stated goal of Bilderberg luminaries like Kissinger and José Manuel Barroso, who have sworn to inflate prices up to $200 dollars a barrel and spark the onset of a "post-industrial revolution", which translates as another economic depression and a wholesale "correction" of living standards that will all but obliterate the middle class.
Neo-Cons who trumpet the ethnic cleansing of the middle east using the twisted logic that it benefits Americans as their dollar sinks to peso level and gas prices explode while the cost of living becomes unaffordable are living in a complete fantasy world, but when the wake up call arrives the consequences of their ignorance are going to reap a hellish revenge.
Sep 21 2007, 07:56 PM
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Group: Admin Posts: 37,675 Member No.: 1 Joined: 10-September 05
Jon Stewart to Alan Greenspan: Why Do We Need the Fed?
Dennis Behreandt JBS Friday September 21, 2007 http://www.jbs.org/node/5640
For most of the last many years that he served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the public heard very little from Alan Greenspan. His public utterances were usually short and devoid of content that might cause unintended consequences in the financial markets. Clearly, freed from the his role at the Fed as one of the most powerful men in the world, Greenspan no longer feels the same inhibitions. With the release of his new book, the former Fed Chair is even making the rounds on a publicity campaign. In one recent appearance he sat down with the Jon Stewart, host of Comedy Central's spoof news broadcast, The Daily Show.
The irreverent Stewart suffers none of the nervous ticks that prevent the cowardly cadre of so-called real "journalists" that staff America's news rooms from asking important questions during interviews. For instance, while talking with Greenspan, Stewart brought up the idea that America, supposedly, has a free market economy. "So, why do we have a Fed?" Stuart asked. "Wouldn't the market take care of interest rates and all that? Why would we have someone adjusting the rates if we are a free market society?"
Greenspan's answer: "You didn't need a central bank when you were on a gold standard."
Bingo! Somebody give that man a cookie!
It's worth watching the rest of Stewart's interview with Greenspan, but this is really the most important admission a central banker has ever made. A truly free market would be based on a standard of value that can not easily be manipulated for political or other purposes.
Since the move away from the gold standard and the creation of the Fed, that is exactly what has happened with the dollar. As Greenspan admits in the interview, we no longer have a free market where the currency is concerned, we have regulation.
We also have severe inflation through the "miracle" of fractional reserve banking and the inflationary monetary policies that the Fed has followed ever since it's creation. For more on that, see economist Murray Rothbard's The Mystery of Banking or get a copy of The Creature from Jekyll Island.
Or, just wait around for a few days or weeks here at the beginning of the 21st century. The consequences of the massively inflationary policies the Fed has followed for the last few years are sure to come home to roost sooner or later.
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:53am
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/09/365426.shtml
-Ever wonder how the FBI monitors an Activists telephone or email? excepts:
How the FBI and corporations take your rights and make billions doing so Posted September 6th, 2007 by Anonymous in Cell Phones Data Mining Editorial Electronic Privacy Technology Wiretaps
Ever wonder how the FBI monitors an Activists telephone or email?
Well The Loyal Nine is going to blow the lid off that for you. Basically federal agents have a tool called DCS-3000. I know it sounds like some kind of power engine but its not. Its a windows based application that any agent can install on their workstation or laptop. It gives them the instant ability to wiretap any phone, email, text message account, Instant messenger account, VOIP account... basically anything you can think of, in less then 3 clicks of a mouse.
The biggest joke out of all of this is that the phone/internet companies allow the government to do this, not because they are required but because the government pays these companies an average of $1,775 per month per tap (U.S. Department of Justice OIG Audit Report 06-13 March 2006). Think about the millions of americans who have been subject to the NSA Wiretapping program and now think about the billions of tax dollars given to companies like AT&T and Verizon.
The power of DCS-3000 becomes even scarier with the knowledge that federal authorities can use any phone, landline or cell, as a listening device even if that phone is not in use.
For example, if your cellphone is powered off and just in your pocket federal agents can still listen to the conversations around the area of the phone in up to a 30 foot radius. The only way to protect yourself is to take out the batteries.
Basically I pay Cingular $70 a month for phone service and the government pays $1,775 a month to listen in. It's a good deal for the corporations and therein is the problem. With each tear to the Bill of Rights someone is making a buck, and it will just get worse.
To add to all this, the Real ID Act is coming in less than a year, if you don't know about this then learn about it.
In his book, "The Creature From Jekyll Island," [1] author G. Edward Griffin described the secret meetings which created the Federal Reserve in 1913. The architect of the plan, Paul M. Warburg, was a representative of the Rothschild banks in England and France and his brother Felix headed the Warburg banks in Germany and the Netherlands. Of significance is the fact that the first "official" media report about the Federal Reserve occurred three years later. In "Leslie's Weekly," [2] B.C. Forbes described the secret meeting between Republican Senator Nelson W. Aldrich and six of the most powerful bankers in the world. That this meeting had to be conducted in a secret, clandestine island location indicates the level of deception, concealment--and treason--at work.
Paul Warburg
That Paul Warburg, a German national, spoke English well enough to craft a financial document (a volume consisting of 1,750 pages) resulting in the Federal Reserve Act designed to control the finances of the United States (from Europe) was no small feat. Of particular interest was how Warburg was able to establish these important connections prior to his arrival in the U.S. in 1913 and then orchestrate this financial coup. Warburg had to have known his co-conspirators before coming to America.
The first official record of Paul Warburg's trip to the U.S. appeared in the Kaiser Wilhelm II passenger manifest, upon arrival at Ellis Island, October 13, 1903. [3] The official manifest (on line 7) lists a "Mr. P. Warburg, age 35; Occupation: Banker; Nationality: American; Heritage: German; Last Residence: Hamburg; Final Destination: New York; Home: 3 E. 82nd St., New York.
In fact, Paul Warburg claimed he was an American in 1903. Was this claim valid in 1903?
Of special interest in this October 13, 1903 passenger manifest, is the fact that other prominent passengers in the elite financial community were also on the same passenger manifest. Harry Sachs (of Goldman Sachs fame) is listed as a passenger but, unlike Warburg, he was not required to declare his destination or his address. In fact, of the 30 passengers listed on page 293 of the Ellis Island database of ship and passenger arrivals, P. Warburg was the only passenger required to declare his destination.
Was this an attempt to establish Warburg's nationality?
Suspiciously, the second half of the page is missing from the database, so we are not privileged with pertinent and "official" information as to his place of birth nor his physical description on this occasion. Future arrivals to the Port of New York would shed more light on these issues. The record keeping by the Immigration Office on October 13, 1903, was not merely sloppy. It appears that Warburg and other passengers were not scrutinized to the extent required by law and were assisted in entering the country with special, yet illegal considerations. Unlike earlier or later arrivals, immigration officers were permitted (or instructed) to be lax and obviously negligent, in their duties, particularly where destinations and birthplaces were of concern.
Warburg's second arrival to the U.S. (on the SS Deutschland) was similar to his first. Though still a "U.S. citizen" in 1905, he was demoted to "merchant." [4] However, on a third arrival in 1906, Warburg was, once again, a "banker." His memory had failed him on this (third) trip, when he declared he had "never been to the U.S. previously." Neither had his wife and two children, who had travelled with him on prior trips. He had also forgotten about his home in New York City, too, when he claimed he had no address in the United States. On this visit, Warburg declared "Hamburg, Germany" as his place of birth.
Incredibly, on a later visit to the U.S., Warburg claimed he was officially a "naturalized citizen," citing the "Circuit Court of New York City, March 21, 1911" [5] as the place and date where he had been bestowed his citizenship. Despite Warburg's earlier proclamations, he was not declared a U.S. citizen until that time. Warburg thereby committed perjury, which was overlooked on numerous occasions by the Immigration Service officials, seemingly an act of treason on each occurrence. During subsequent visits to the U.S. in 1910, 1912 and 1913, while again proclaiming his U.S. citizenship, Warburg referred to 17 E. 80th St., New York as his home address. Not once was there any mention of his association with the Rothschild banks in Paris and London, and his permanent residency in Europe, not in America. Why the deception?
James Loeb
Not to be outdone, James Loeb, a partner in the Kuhn, Loeb & Company banking firm in New York City, traveled with Warburg on October 13, 1903. Loeb declared his U.S. citizenship on this trip, though he apparently suffered from amnesia in 1910, neglecting to declare any country of origin and later, in 1912, declaring to the U.S. Immigration Service that his birthplace was "Landsberg, Germany," [6] a small town west of Munich.
Loeb also indicated (trip on this) that he was staying "with Mr. Warburg."
Amnesia must have been a disease that plagued most German bankers at the turn of the century. The disease didn't stop there and soon spread to institutes of higher education. Harvard University Press published a memorial biography to the founder of the Loeb Classical Library, bequeathed to Harvard University by none other than James Loeb, one year after his death in 1933. "James Loeb was born August 6, 1867, in New York City, the son of Solomon and Betty (Goldberg) Loeb. Solomon was a partner and founder of the banking firm, Kuhn, Loeb & Company," the tribute began. [7]
Certainly, Harvard University would have known where Loeb was born and, for that matter, so would have Loeb. If this quotation were true, then what would have caused Loeb to state (to the INS) in 1912 that he was born in "Landsberg, Germany?"
The Harvard Press biography did little to legitimize the matter of Loeb's birthplace, though it was a valiant attempt.
Still, if there remained any confusion, the U.S. Immigration Service could have clarified the issue based on the information it had acquired in 1903 and again in 1910. But that was not the agency's intention. The Immigration and Naturalization Service agents were complicit in hiding James Loeb's true birthplace and his association with financiers of the future German Nazi Party, an act which was aided and abetted by the sloppy, incomplete immigration records kept at Ellis Island and the Port of New York. That was part of the deception. Yes, he lived and worked in New York and may have attended Harvard University. But, considering the connections Kuhn, Loeb & Company had to the banks that supported the Nazis through money-laundering activities until getting caught in 1942, it was most likely that Loeb (like Warburg) had been groomed for his role in order to maintain the founders' (of this "master plan") "bloodline."
There were other inconsistencies in the Harvard Press biography, again, based upon the above-mentioned records. "In the winter of 1891 a severe illness (possibly depression) obliged him to give up business and he spent the summer traveling in Scandinavia, returning to banking again only until January 1, 1902, when he retired due to renewed health problems" [Amnesia?].
James Loeb could not have traveled and returned to the United States during 1892, unless he had swum upon his return trip. The first of his three voyages to Ellis Island (from Europe on the Kaiser Wilhelm II) arrived on October 13, 1903, as previously mentioned. It was unlikely he would have returned to any port of entry other than New York, unless he had arrived at some other secret location. And there were no transatlantic airline flights in 1903. The Harvard story had to have been a fabrication intended to hide some dark secret.
Considering the sizable endowments Loeb lavished upon Harvard and other notable educational, medical, and art institutions in Boston and New York, it was most advantageous for Harvard to portray Loeb as a philanthropist and victim of "depression" (hardly fit for a transatlantic swim), than as a German banker whose father's company supported the "master planners'" war machine before and during two world wars.
According to further reminiscent accounts, "He retired to a quieter place, his farm at Shrewsbury, New Jersey, moving to Germany in 1905, where he stayed (except for a period during World War I) until his death in 1933."
much more at link: http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070405.htm
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:54am
I strongly recommend reading America Betrayed on line, Universoty press on line, to see exactly how Nazis were brought to America by CIA.
BUT not all CIA are NAZI's: http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_alan_mil_070922_seven_cia_vetera ns_c.htm
http://www.opednews.com
Official Account of 9/11 a "Joke" and a "Cover-up"
September 23, 2007 – Seven CIA veterans have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and have called for a new investigation. "I think at simplest terms, there's a cover-up. The 9/11 Report is a joke," said Raymond McGovern, 27-year veteran of the CIA, who chaired National Intelligence Estimates during the seventies. "There are a whole bunch of unanswered questions. And the reason they're unanswered is because this administration will not answer the questions," he said. McGovern, who is also the founder of VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity), is one of many signers of a petition to reinvestigate 9/11.[1]
Raymond McGovern
During his 27-year CIA career, McGovern personally delivered intelligence briefings to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, their Vice Presidents, Secretaries of State, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and many other senior government officials. Upon retirement in 1990, McGovern was awarded the CIA's Intelligence Commendation Medallion and received a letter of appreciation from then President George H. W. Bush. However, McGovern returned the award[2] in 2006 in protest of the current George W. Bush Administration's advocacy and use of torture.
In his blurb for 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out," edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott, McGovern wrote[3]: "It has long been clear that the Bush-Cheney administration cynically exploited the attacks of 9/11 to promote its imperial designs. But the present volume confronts us with evidence for an even more disturbing conclusion: that the 9/11 attacks were themselves orchestrated by this administration precisely so they could be thus exploited. If this is true, it is not merely the case, as the Downing Street memos show, that the stated reason for attacking Iraq was a lie. It is also the case that the whole "war on terror" was based on a prior deception. This book hence confronts the American people---indeed the people of the world as a whole---with an issue second to none in importance and urgency. I give this book, which in no way can be dismissed as the ravings of ‘paranoid conspiracy theorists,' my highest possible recommendation."
William Christison, a 29-year CIA veteran, former National Intelligence Officer (NIO) and former Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis also describes the 9/11 Commission Report as a "joke" and offers even more outspoken criticism. In a 2006 audio interview[4] he said, "We very seriously need an entirely new very high level and truly independent investigation of the events of 9/11. I think you almost have to look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a joke and not a serious piece of analysis at all."
William Christison
Earlier this year, in an endorsement of David Ray Griffin's book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Christison wrote[5], "[There's] a strong body of evidence showing the official U.S. Government story of what happened on September 11, 2001 to be almost certainly a monstrous series of lies." And in an online essay[6] in late 2006, he wrote, "I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11 Commission would have us believe. … An airliner almost certainly did not hit The Pentagon. … The North and South Towers of the World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth because hijacked aircraft hit them."
Prior to his retirement from the CIA in 1979, Christison served as Director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis, overseeing 200 analysts who collected intelligence and provided analysis on all regions and every country in the world. Prior to that, he served as one of only a handful of NIO's in the intelligence community. NIO's are responsible for the intelligence community efforts in a particular area and are the principal advisors to the Director of Central Intelligence. Christison was NIO for Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Africa.
Melvin Goodman, PhD, is another former senior CIA official who calls the 9/11 Commission Report a "coverup" and who signed the petition to reinvestigate 9/11.[7] Goodman was the Division Chief of the CIA's Office of Soviet Affairs and served as Senior Analyst from 1966 - 1990. He also served as Professor of International Security at the National War College from 1986 - 2004.
Melvin Goodman, PhD
In testimony before a 2005 Congressional briefing on the 9/11 Commission Report[8], Goodman said, "I want to talk about the [9/11] Commission itself, about the flawed process of the Commission and finally about the conflict of interest within the Commission that is extremely important to understand the failure of the Commission. … The final report is ultimately a coverup. I don't know how else to describe it." Goodman is currently Senior Fellow at the Center for International Policy and Adjunct Professor of Government at Johns Hopkins University.
Robert Baer is another well known CIA veteran who has questioned the official account of 9/11. A 21-year CIA veteran and specialist in the Middle East, Baer was awarded the Career Intelligence Medal upon his retirement in 1997. After retirement, he wrote two best-selling non-fiction books about the CIA, See No Evil and Sleeping with the Devil, the former of which was the basis for the Academy Award-winning movie Syriana, starring George Clooney. Baer was also the writer and on-camera commentator for the Emmy Award-nominated documentary Cult of the Suicide Bomber.
Robert Baer
Baer has repeatedly questioned whether al-Qaida could have accomplished 9/11 alone. The 9/11 Commission Report categorically found al-Qaida to be entirely responsible for 9/11, stating, "Similarly, we have seen no evidence that any foreign government -- or government official -- supplied any funding." However, this 9/11 Commission finding directly contradicts the earlier finding of the Joint House-Senate Select Intelligence Committee's 2002 Report[9] (p.415) of "sources of foreign support for some of the September 11 hijackers."
In a 2002 essay[10] for The Guardian, Baer wrote, "Did bin Laden act alone, through his own al-Qaida network, in launching the attacks? About that I'm far more certain and emphatic: no." In subsequent interviews, Baer has suggested that support for the attacks could have come from Saudi Arabia and Iran.
In 2006, during an interview by Thom Hartmann[11], Baer, after commenting on the financial profits being made from 9/11, was asked: "What about political profit? There are those who suggest that ... someone in that chain of command ... had pretty good knowledge that 9/11 was going to happen -- and really didn't do much to stop it -- or even obstructed efforts to stop it because they thought it would lend legitimacy to Bush's ... failing presidency." Baer replied: "Absolutely." Hartmann then asked, "So you are personally of the opinion ... that there was an aspect of 'inside job' to 9/11 within the U.S. government?" To which Baer replied, "There is that possibility, the evidence points at it." When Hartmann continued, "And why is it not being investigated?" Baer replied, "Why isn't the WMD story being investigated? Why hasn't anybody been held accountable for 9/11? We held people accountable after Pearl Harbor. Why has there been no change in command? Why have there been no political repercussions? Why has there been no -- any sort of exposure on this? It really makes you wonder."
In his blurb for the revised and updated edition of David Ray Griffin's Debunking 9/11 Debunking, Baer wrote[12]: "Until we get a complete, honest, transparent investigation …, we will never know what happened on 9/11."
"I am forced to conclude that 9/11 was at a minimum allowed to happen as a pretext for war," wrote well-known intelligence analyst Robert David Steele in 2006 in a review of the book, 9/11 Synthetic Terror by Webster Tarpley[13]. Steele is the author of numerous books on the intelligence services and is currently the CEO of OSS.net, a proponent of Open Source Intelligence. Steele has 25 years of combined service in the CIA and the U.S. Marine Corps. He also served as the second ranking civilian (GS-14) in U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence from 1988 - 1992 and was a member of the Adjunct Faculty of Marine Corps University. Steele continued, "I have to tell anyone who cares to read this: I believe it. I believe it enough to want a full investigation that passes the smell test of the 9/11 families as well as objective outside observers."
Robert David Steele
In a subsequent interview on the Alex Jones Show[14], Steele said, "The U.S. government did not properly investigate this [9/11] and there are more rocks to be turned over," and added, "I'm absolutely certain that WTC 7 was brought down by controlled demolition and that, as far as I'm concerned, means that this case has not been properly investigated. There's no way that building could have come down without controlled demolition."
In late 2004, a group of 25 intelligence service and law enforcement veterans sent a joint letter to Congress[15] expressing their concerns about "serious shortcomings," "omissions," and "major flaws" in the 9/11 Commission Report and offering their services for a new investigation. Their letter was apparently entirely ignored. Among the signers were four CIA veterans; Raymond McGovern and Melvin Goodman (both mentioned above) and Lynne Larkin and David MacMichael.
Lynne Larkin was a CIA Operations Officer who served in several CIA foreign stations before being assigned to the CIA's Counter-Intelligence Center. There, she co-chaired a multi-agency task force, which, among other functions, provided direction to other federal agencies for coordinating intelligence efforts among the many intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Lynne Larkin
David MacMichael, PhD, is a former Senior Estimates Officer at the CIA with special responsibility for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the CIA's National Intelligence Council. Prior to joining the CIA, he served as a U.S. Marine Corps officer for ten years and for four years as a counter-insurgency advisor to the government.
David MacMichael
Their letter read:
"[W]e the undersigned wish to bring to the attention of the Congress and the people of the United States what we believe are serious shortcomings in the report and its recommendations. …
Omission is one of the major flaws in the Commission's report. We are aware of significant issues and cases that were duly reported to the commission by those of us with direct knowledge, but somehow escaped attention. …
The omission of such serious and applicable issues and information by itself renders the report flawed, and casts doubt on the validity of many of its recommendations. ...
The Commission, with its incomplete report of "facts and circumstances", intentional avoidance of assigning accountability, and disregard for the knowledge, expertise and experience of those who actually do the job, has now set about pressuring our Congress and our nation to hastily implement all its recommendations. …
We the undersigned, who have worked within various government agencies (FBI, CIA, FAA, DIA, Customs) responsible for national security and public safety, call upon you in Congress to include the voices of those with first-hand knowledge and expertise in the important issues at hand. We stand ready to do our part."
And they and thousands of dedicated, loyal, and experienced military officers, intelligence service and law enforcement veterans, and government officials still stand ready to provide assistance for a thorough, impartial, and honest investigation into the terrible acts of 9/11.
Statements questioning the official account of 9/11 and calls for a new investigation by hundreds of credible individuals can be found at http://PatriotsQuestion911.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------ --------
[1] Petition to Reinvestigate 9/11. Oct. 26, 2004 http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633
[2] I Do Not Wish to be Associated with Torture by Ray McGovern March 2, 2006 http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi/58/18096
[3] Ray McGovern's blurb for 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out," edited by David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott. March, 2007 http://www.interlinkbooks.com/product_info.php?products_id=1545&osCsid=5 a22b94fffd724962a118f454c5d7194
[4] William Christison interviewed by George Kenney on Electric Politics. Sept. 29, 2006 http://www.electricpolitics.com/podcast/2006/09/the_case_for_intellectua l_inte.html
[5] William Christison's blurb for David Ray Griffin's book, Debunking 9/11 Debunking March 2007 http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/pro duct-description/156656686X
[6] Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11 by William Christison Aug. 16, 2006 http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Aug06/Christison14.htm
[7] Petition to Reinvestigate 9/11. Oct. 26, 2004 http://www.911truth.org/article.php?story=20041026093059633
[8] The 911 Commission Report – One Year Later, a Congressional Briefing July 22, 2005 http://www.vt911.org/McKinneyReport20050722transcript.pdf
[9] Congressional Reports: Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 December, 2002 http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html
[10] See No Evil (part 2) by Robert Baer in The Guardian January 12, 2002 http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,,631434,00.html
[11] Robert Baer interviewed on The Thom Hartmann Show June 9, 2006 http://www.911blogger.com/2006/06/former-cia-member-robert-baer-comments .html
[12] Robert Baer's blurb for the revised and updated edition of David Ray Griffin's Debunking 9/11 Debunking March 2007 http://www.amazon.com/Debunking-11-Mechanics-Defenders-Conspiracy/dp/pro duct-description/156656686X
[13] Robert David Steele's review of the book, 9/11 Synthetic Terror by Webster Tarpley Oct. 7, 2006 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0930852370
[14] Robet David Steele interviewed on The Alex Jones Show Oct. 27, 2006 http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2006/271006googlecia.htm
[15] Letter to Congress signed by 25 intelligence service and law enforcement Sept. 13, 2004 http://www.pogo.org/m/hsp/hsp-911commission-040913.pdf
Posted by Rese at 10/03/2007 @ 06:57am
Any possibility The Nation will put some intern on the task of editing its boards to ensure they remain on topic? All this web 2.0 stuff sucks when its just an opportunity for idiots to spout off about whatever whenever.
Posted by threehegemons at 10/03/2007 @ 07:04am
Mr. Corn: incase you didn't read the news today these articles are very interesting! http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1191257212152&pagename=JPost% 2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
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Oct 2, 2007 13:53 | Updated Oct 2, 2007 15:55 Censorship lifted on September 6 IAF strike inside Syria By JPOST.COM STAFF Print Subscribe E-mail Toolbar
Talkbacks for this article: 15
Israel on Tuesday began to lift its strict veil of secrecy on an air strike in Syria last month, allowing the media to report on the raid without attributing such reports to foreign sources.
An F-16I fighter jet on the runway. Photo: IDF
Three F-16 jets during maneuvers. Photo: IDF
RELATED Assad downplays Israeli air strike, option of retaliation Syrian FM blasts US 'fabrications' The censor did not release any other details for publication.
The censor's statement implied that Israel was, for the first time, confirming that the IAF carried out the raid.
Israel has kept quiet on the subject until now. However, Syrian President Bashar Assad told the BBC on Monday that IAF jets had hit an "unused military building" in his country.
Assad said Israel's air raid on northern Syria showed Israel's "visceral antipathy towards peace," according to excerpts posted on the BBC's Web site.
The comments were the first by the Syrian leader about the incursion, which raised speculation that warplanes had hit weapons headed for Hizbullah or even a nascent nuclear installation - reports Damascus has repeatedly denied.
Journalists in Israel are required to submit articles related to security and military issues to the censor, which can make changes to stories or bar publication altogether. In a rare move, the censor's office issued a special directive about the Syrian air raid, specifically prohibiting publication of any details.
Violation of the censorship orders can result in the loss of press credentials or other sanctions.
Although Israel did not come out with an official statement following the incident, Likud leader Binyamin Netanyahu broke the silence two weeks afterwards when he said he had congratulated Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on the strike.
In an interview with Channel 1, Netanyahu said that he was "part of the matter from the beginning" and that he knew to separate matters of national security from politics.
The overflight was first reported on Syrian television just after the attack, and various reports regarding the strike's target have circulated in the press over the past month.
The Washington Post reported that the target had been a facility involved in a joint Syrian-North Korean nuclear project - a claim backed by former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton.
Britain's Sunday Times, meanwhile, reported just over a week ago that soldiers from the IDF's elite General Staff Reconnaissance Unit (Sayeret Matkal) had seized North Korean nuclear material from a secret Syrian military installation before it was bombed by IAF jets.
The paper claimed that the IAF attack on September 6 was sanctioned by the US after the Americans were given proof that the material was indeed nuclear-related. It also stated that Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who used to head the unit, personally oversaw the operation.
However, Syrian officials have repeatedly called news of the strike lies and fabrications, and on Monday, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem accused the US of inventing these reports.
"Some sources in the United States have spread rumors and fabricated news in order to justify this act of aggression," Moallem charged. "By distorting the facts they have become Israel's accomplices in this act of aggression." Speaking to the UN, Moallem said the act was proof that the Jewish state wanted to escalate tensions.
Yaakov Katz and AP contributed to this report.
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN0238746420071002?feedType=RS S&feedName=topNews&rpc=22&sp=true
Clinton reports raising $27 million in 3Q Tue Oct 2, 2007 9:32am EDT
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton on Tuesday reported raising $27 million in campaign money in the third quarter, surpassing all other candidates in the race.
"Hillary wanted you to know that this was our best quarter yet," said an e-mail from her campaign manager, Patty Solis Doyle.
Her top rival, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama, reported raising $19 million for the primary election season and $1 million for the general campaign in the quarter that ended September 30.
Clinton's $27 million included $22 million for the primary race that begins in January and the rest for the general campaign ahead of the November 2008 election.
Doyle said the amount was "substantially more than any other candidate in the race."
(To read more about the U.S. political campaign, visit Reuters "Tales from the Trail: 2008" online at http://blogs.reuters.com/trail08/ )
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/01/AR200710 0101235_pf.html
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Most in Poll Want War Funding Cut Bush's Approval Rating Ties All-Time Low
By Jon Cohen and Dan Balz Washington Post Staff Writers Tuesday, October 2, 2007; A01
Most Americans oppose fully funding President Bush's $190 billion request for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a sizable majority support an expansion of a children's health insurance bill he has promised to veto, putting Bush and many congressional Republicans on the wrong side of public opinion on upcoming foreign and domestic policy battles.
The new Washington Post-ABC News poll also shows deep dissatisfaction with the president and with Congress. Bush's approval rating stands at 33 percent, equal to his career low in Post-ABC polls. And just 29 percent approve of the job Congress is doing, its lowest approval rating in this poll since November 1995, when Republicans controlled both the House and Senate. It also represents a 14-point drop since Democrats took control in January.
Despite discontent with Congress this year, the public rates congressional Republicans (29 percent approve) lower than congressional Democrats (38 percent approve). When the parties are pitted directly against each other, the public broadly favors Democrats on Iraq, health care, the federal budget and the economy. Only on the issue of terrorism are Republicans at parity with Democrats.
Part of the displeasure with Congress stems from the stalemate between Democrats and the White House over Iraq policy. Most Americans do not believe Congress has gone far enough in opposing the war, with liberal Democrats especially critical of their party's failure to force the president into a significant change in policy.
At the same time, there is no consensus about the pace of any U.S. troop withdrawals from Iraq. In July, nearly six in 10 said they wanted to decrease the number of troops there, but now a slim majority, 52 percent, think Bush's plan for removing some troops by next summer is either the right pace for withdrawal (38 percent) or too hasty (12 percent would like a slower reduction, and 2 percent want no force reduction). Fewer people (43 percent) want a quicker exit.
John Csanadi of Nanuet, N.Y., said he has mixed feelings about what to do next in Iraq. Asked about Bush's proposal for a modest drawdown of troops, h