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| Disclaimer: Mostly, teh small typos were just insrted hear and they're to keep readers on there tows, but if you notice an incorrct date or name or other serious error, please let me know so I can fix the problem. |
January 18, 2008
War Of/Or/On Terror
Here is a video clip from the Real News Network that might interest you. Pay particular attention to the part about at around one minute and ten seconds (give or take a few seconds) into the video clip.
January 12, 2008 _____ New Year!(fill in the blank)
Walt Disney Productions Company, a.k.a. ABC television network, changed the rules for the televised presidential candidate debates just prior to the New Hampshire primary, declaring that Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel would be excluded on the grounds that the new rules required that to qualify, the candidate must have scored within the top four in a nationwide straw poll. Appears they forgot that Dennis Kucinich did in fact place at No. 1on one of their own polls as well as easily placing within the top four on numerous nationwide polls in recent months. Will you be taking your kids to Disneyland any time soon? Or buying them Disney coloring books and other Disney goods? A few days later, General Electric Company, a.k.a. NBC television network, followed suit by excluding Kucinich on equally dubious grounds. As the Gallup Poll can hardly be called a localized or minor polling organization, and as Kucinich had placed fourth in the Gallup Poll, NBC/MSNBC suddenly decided that they would only invite the top three candidates. So they uninvited Kucinich (whom they had previously sent a formal invitation). Any appliances in your house due for replacement? Which brand are you going to buy? A few things to be expecting this year.
posted December 10, 2007 Obstruction of Justice, |
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Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "Take handfuls of soot from a furnace and have Moses toss it into the air in the presence of Pharaoh. It will become fine dust over the whole land of Egypt, and festering boils will break out on men and animals throughout the land." So they took soot from a furnace and stood before Pharaoh. Moses tossed it into the air, and festering boils broke out on men and animals. -- Exodus 9:8-10 |
... And then the same god said, "Let there be depleted uranium," and there was depleted uranium.
Natural uranium, for those of you who don't know much about the process, has to be enriched in a reactor, which is a furnace of some sorts, in order to separate the atoms that can be used in power-generating reactors and thermonuclear weapons from the rest of it. In other words, separating the chaff from the grain. In the case of uranium, the grain is used as fuel in nuclear power plants and in making thermo-nuclear weapons. The chaff is called depleted uranium, and is a hazardous low-level nuclear waste that has to be buried in places where it will hopefully remain out of contact with humans and animals for billions of years.
Or should we say, used to be.
Storing this hazardous waste proved to be a challenge, and very expensive as well. So instead of storing it for billions of years, it was decided that this "soot from the furnace" could be scattered to the wind. Thus, the age of depleted uranium weapons was born.
ElBaradei, Director General of the IAEA, said that there is not an inkling of evidence that either Syria or Iran have any intention of developing nuclear weapons. He went on to say that even if they did, they would still be three to eight years away from producing an actual weapon. And what does Kinda-lies-a-lot Rice have to say about it? You guessed it. Absolutely nothing about ElBaradei's statement about no inkling of evidence, but instead, taking his words out of context and referring to "three to eight years" and warning that it does not leave much time take action.
What else would you have expected.
And what about the Israeli military attack on Syria? Where is the justification for this unprovoked attack?
Again, not a shred of evidence exists that the wanton aggression was justified. But of course, there has got to be justification, even though we can't see what it was. At least, that is what Trent Lott tells us. According to Lott, we don't really need proof of any of these allegations. The fact that Israel claims that it was justified in doing so is in itself sufficient proof that such justification must exist, even though the rest of the world does not know what the supposed proof could be. Because, says Lott, "I don't know the details, but I suspect there was sufficient justification for an action, assuming one was taken in the way it was, but beyond that I couldn't comment because I don't know the details." So... Big Brother is never wrong. I have no idea what the hell happened, but whatever it was, it had to have been right, because Big Brother did it, and BB said he was right in doing so.
Even the likes of Barbara Boxer backed Lott up on that statement, saying "I said, every nation has a right to defend itself, I'm assuming that Israel acted within that boundry." et tu, Boxer!
See for yourself on the Real News
In other words, if Israel attacks its neighbors, it has to have been self defence, and we know that because Israel did it. But if Syria attacks its neighbors, it has to have been naked aggression, and we know that because Syria did it. Ditto Egypt, Iran, Iraq, etc.
On second thought, no, it is not a mad, mad world. It is a sick, sick world.
When LBAM (Little Brown Apple Moths) were discovered in California earlier this year, CDFA panicked and decided it would have to get rid of this pest at any cost, even if it meant spraying the populace in affected areas with a bio-chemical that says, "Harmful if inhaled. Avoid breathing vapor or spray mist" on its label. Alarmed citizens took the case to court, but the judge failed to issue an injuction stating that there is no conclusive data showing that it CheckMate LBAM-F is harmful. Actually, this is true, because there is no data whatsoever concerning CheckMate LBAM-F. In other words, it has never been tested. (CheckMate LBAM-F is a pheromone produced by Suterra LLC of Bend, Oregon.)
And so, in the absence of any evidence of its harmfulness (other than the warning on the label), the go ahead has been given. Despite claims that it poses no danger, the USDA has set up a hotline for people who become ill due to the spraying. Doesn't that make perfect sense to you? Well it apparently does to the USDA, CDFA, and the Governator!
PS: by the way, crops sprayed with CheckMate LBAM-F will still be permitted to carry the "USDA Certified Organic" label.
Benjamin Fulford is an American-born citizen of Japan and an outspoken critic of today's system and an advocate for the overthrow if the illuminati behind the curtain. In his November 1st blog he wrote the following.
The Asian counterattack has begunFurthermore the Chinese government has issued its response to the illuminati philosophy of perpetual war by calling for global peace and harmony as well as equality among the peoples of the planet. The Rockefeller and Rothschild counterattack with high oil prices and a global warming campaign is having little effect. If things continue this way, the withdrawal of Asian money will cause the U.S. economy to collapse. The EU economy will also be damaged because an ultra-high Euro means they will not be able to export. The illuminati plan to use Iran to start World War 3 has also been seen through and will absolutely not succeed. The families that own the central banks of the West are in big trouble. My message to them is this "Be grateful that you have not been all assassinated." The era of Asian peace is beginning. |
With gasoline prices at the pumps for ordinary Japanese consumers now at around 150 yen per liter (USD 4.93 dollars per gallon), ordinary tax-paying consumers have been questioning why they should have to foot the bill for US imperialism in the middle east.
The economic squeeze Benjamin Fulford mentions is probably a lot more significant. For one reason, it is not merely a step taken by one Asian country's government, but by all of them collectively. The illuminati conceived and illuminati controlled US dollar is, in reality, not worth the paper it is printed on. The only thing that gives it any value is its perceived value. In other words, value is in the eyes of the beholder.
Foreign exchange rates fluctuate up and down in response to supply and demand. For instance, if there are lots of people who have yen and want to buy dollars, but only a few people who have dollars and want to buy yen, dollar value goes up and yen value goes down. And vice versa. As the natural demand for US dollars has been declining over the years, there have been primarily only two things preventing it from crashing through the floor. One of those things is, as Fulford points out, massive purchases of US dollars in the form of US treasury bonds and other securities by Asian central banks, especially China and Japan.
If Asian governments do, in fact, start selling off all their dollar holdings en masse, the world market will be flooded with dollars and few buyers, driving the dollar value down against all other currencies in the world, and resulting in a Great Depression. But it is a double-edged sword. If the US economy goes into a tailspin, every country in the world will feel the negative impact. What would happen then is a matter of debate.
C'mon, Fox, make a liar out of me. Splash it all over tomorrow's headlines and prove me to be a liar. C'mon, now, I dare you. In fact, I double-dog dare you!
Will Fox take up the double-dog dare? Stay tuned.
The fact of the matter is, my friends, the mainstream media is lying to us. If you are even reading this blog, you probably already knew that. The media are lying, because they are all controlled by the same small group of corporations. They are allowing us to know only what they decide will not be harmful to their own interests, which needless to say are money, lots of money, and more money.
Remember that old movie, "Network" where the anchor urges people to go open their windows and shout, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"? Well that is what we need today. They did it in Uzbekistan just a couple of years ago, and we can do it here in the US as well. The Uzbekistani people were as mad as hell, and they just decided that they were not going to take that anymore, and they didn't. That proves it. The people have power. No government can control a population who are as mad as hell and decide they are not going to take it anymore. And every government knows that.
So if this is true, why is it that that the American people are not taking to the streets, just like the Uzbekistanis did a couple of years ago, and shouting "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"? Simple. Because the people only have the power when they all stand up and shout "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!"
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"Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship. ...voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
-- Hermann Goering, convicted Nazi war criminal shortly before his scheduled execution |
And so, America stands at a fork in the road. One path has us doing the bidding of the leaders just as Goering has said is how it works in any country, and the other fork has us taking back the media, and shouting out how as mad as hell we are.
One thing is sure. If we don't take back the media, we will never take back the country.
Furthermore, the Rothschilds funded both sides of the Napoleonic War with their various banks across Europe. ...
Nathan had a particular place (a favorite column) at the London Stock Exchange from which he would conduct business. From that position he could direct his traders, while non-affiliated traders could see if he was buying or selling, which usually set the trend for the day. After he learned that Wellington had won the war with Napoleon, Nathan stood at his post and without any expression on his face began to direct his traders to sell. This went on for most of the day. The non-affiliated traders determined that Wellington had lost, and they started to sell. Then, right before the market closed, when prices had hit rock bottom, Rothschild directed his agents to purchase all the bonds for pennies on the dollar. He had known more than they did. Biographer Frederick Morton wrote this about Nathan,
We cannot guess the number of hopes and savings wiped out by this engineered panic. We cannot estimate how many liveried servants, how many Watteaus and Rembrandts, how many thoroughbreds in his descendantsf stables, the man by the pillar won that single day (Morton, 50).
Once it was clear that Britain won the war, these bonds increased in value higher than the face value, which provided Rothschild with a 20:1 return on his investment. This coup gave the Rothschild family complete control of the British economy, now the financial center of the world, following Napoleonfs defeat. Nathan Rothschild, now in essence controller of the new central Bank of England, said,...
The entire article is here.
http://economist.mrwhipper.com/?p=395
It does not tell the whole story, but as the author explains, to do so would take a book. But it does at least provide a fairly accurate jump off point as to who the Men Behind the Curtain really are.
NB: emphasis added by webmaster
REMARKS BY THE VICE PRESIDENT TO THE VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS 103RD NATIONAL CONVENTION
THE VICE PRESIDENT: Much has happened since the attacks of 9/11. But as Secretary Rumsfeld has put it, we are still closer to the beginning of this war than we are to its end. The United States has entered a struggle of years -- a new kind of war against a new kind of enemy. The terrorists who struck America are ruthless, they are resourceful, and they hide in many countries. They came into our country to murder thousands of innocent men, women, and children. There is no doubt they wish to strike again, and that they are working to acquire the deadliest of all weapons.
Against such enemies, America and the civilized world have only one option: wherever terrorists operate, we must find them where they dwell, stop them in their planning, and one by one bring them to justice.
In Afghanistan, the Taliban regime and al Qaeda terrorists have met the fate they chose for themselves. And they saw, up-close and personal, the new methods and capabilities of America's armed services. (Applause.) May I say, as a former Secretary of Defense, that I have never been more proud of the America's military. (Applause.)
The combination of advantages already seen in this conflict -- precision power from the air, real-time intelligence, special forces, the long reach of Naval task forces, and close coordination with local forces represents a dramatic advance in our ability to engage and defeat the enemy. These advantages will only become more vital in future campaigns. President Bush has often spoken of how America can keep the peace by redefining war on our terms. That means that our armed services must have every tool to answer any threat that forms against us. It means that any enemy conspiring to harm America or our friends must face a swift, a certain and a devastating response. (Applause.)
As always in America's armed forces, the single most important asset we have is the man or woman who steps forward and puts on the uniform of this great nation. Much has been asked of our military this past year, and more will be asked in the months and the years ahead. Those who serve are entitled to expect many things from us in return. They deserve the very best weapons, the best equipment, the best support, and the best training we can possibly provide them. And under President Bush they will have them all. (Applause.)
The President has asked Congress for a one-year increase of more than $48 billion for national defense, the largest since Ronald Reagan lived in the White House. And for the good of the nation's military families, he has also asked Congress to provide every person in uniform a raise in pay. We think they've earned it. (Applause.)
In this war we've assembled a broad coalition of civilized nations that recognize the danger and are working with us on all fronts. The President has made very clear that there is no neutral ground in the fight against terror. Those who harbor terrorists share guilt for the acts they commit. Under the Bush Doctrine, a regime that harbors or supports terrorists will be regarded as hostile to the United States.
The Taliban has already learned that lesson, but Afghanistan was only the beginning of a lengthy campaign. Were we to stop now, any sense of security we might have would be false and temporary. There is a terrorist underworld out there, spread among more than 60 countries. The job we have will require every tool at our means of diplomacy, of finance, of intelligence, of law enforcement, and of military power. But we will, over time, find and defeat the enemies of the United States. In the case of Osama bin Laden -- as President Bush said recently -- "If he's alive, we'll get him. If he's not alive -- we already got him." (Applause.)
But the challenges to our country involve more than just tracking down a single person or one small group. Nine-eleven and its aftermath awakened this nation to danger, to the true ambitions of the global terror network, and to the reality that weapons of mass destruction are being sought by determined enemies who would not hesitate to use them against us.
It is a certainty that the al Qaeda network is pursuing such weapons, and has succeeded in acquiring at least a crude capability to use them. We found evidence of their efforts in the ruins of al Qaeda hideouts in Afghanistan. And we've seen in recent days additional confirmation in videos recently shown on CNN -- pictures of al Qaeda members training to commit acts of terror, and testing chemical weapons on dogs. Those terrorists who remain at large are determined to use these capabilities against the United States and our friends and allies around the world.
As we face this prospect, old doctrines of security do not apply. In the days of the Cold War, we were able to manage the threat with strategies of deterrence and containment. But it's a lot tougher to deter enemies who have no country to defend. And containment is not possible when dictators obtain weapons of mass destruction, and are prepared to share them with terrorists who intend to inflict catastrophic casualties on the United States.
The case of Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of our country, requires a candid appraisal of the facts. After his defeat in the Gulf War in 1991, Saddam agreed under to U.N. Security Council Resolution 687 to cease all development of weapons of mass destruction. He agreed to end his nuclear weapons program. He agreed to destroy his chemical and his biological weapons. He further agreed to admit U.N. inspection teams into his country to ensure that he was in fact complying with these terms.
In the past decade, Saddam has systematically broken each of these agreements. The Iraqi regime has in fact been very busy enhancing its capabilities in the field of chemical and biological agents. And they continue to pursue the nuclear program they began so many years ago. These are not weapons for the purpose of defending Iraq; these are offensive weapons for the purpose of inflicting death on a massive scale, developed so that Saddam can hold the threat over the head of anyone he chooses, in his own region or beyond.
On the nuclear question, many of you will recall that Saddam's nuclear ambitions suffered a severe setback in 1981 when the Israelis bombed the Osirak reactor. They suffered another major blow in Desert Storm and its aftermath.
But we now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we've gotten this from the firsthand testimony of defectors -- including Saddam's own son-in-law, who was subsequently murdered at Saddam's direction. Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.
Just how soon, we cannot really gauge. Intelligence is an uncertain business, even in the best of circumstances. This is especially the case when you are dealing with a totalitarian regime that has made a science out of deceiving the international community. Let me give you just one example of what I mean. Prior to the Gulf War, America's top intelligence analysts would come to my office in the Defense Department and tell me that Saddam Hussein was at least five or perhaps even 10 years away from having a nuclear weapon. After the war we learned that he had been much closer than that, perhaps within a year of acquiring such a weapon.
Saddam also devised an elaborate program to conceal his active efforts to build chemical and biological weapons. And one must keep in mind the history of U.N. inspection teams in Iraq. Even as they were conducting the most intrusive system of arms control in history, the inspectors missed a great deal. Before being barred from the country, the inspectors found and destroyed thousands of chemical weapons, and hundreds of tons of mustard gas and other nerve agents.
Yet Saddam Hussein had sought to frustrate and deceive them at every turn, and was often successful in doing so. I'll cite one instance. During the spring of 1995, the inspectors were actually on the verge of declaring that Saddam's programs to develop chemical weapons and longer-range ballistic missiles had been fully accounted for and shut down. Then Saddam's son-in-law suddenly defected and began sharing information. Within days the inspectors were led to an Iraqi chicken farm. Hidden there were boxes of documents and lots of evidence regarding Iraq's most secret weapons programs. That should serve as a reminder to all that we often learned more as the result of defections than we learned from the inspection regime itself.
To the dismay of the inspectors, they in time discovered that Saddam had kept them largely in the dark about the extent of his program to mass produce VX, one of the deadliest chemicals known to man. And far from having shut down Iraq's prohibited missile programs, the inspectors found that Saddam had continued to test such missiles, almost literally under the noses of the U.N. inspectors.
Against that background, a person would be right to question any suggestion that we should just get inspectors back into Iraq, and then our worries will be over. Saddam has perfected the game of cheat and retreat, and is very skilled in the art of denial and deception. A return of inspectors would provide no assurance whatsoever of his compliance with U.N. resolutions. On the contrary, there is a great danger that it would provide false comfort that Saddam was somehow "back in his box."
Meanwhile, he would continue to plot. Nothing in the last dozen years has stopped him -- not his agreements; not the discoveries of the inspectors; not the revelations by defectors; not criticism or ostracism by the international community; and not four days of bombings by the U.S. in 1998. What he wants is time and more time to husband his resources, to invest in his ongoing chemical and biological weapons programs, and to gain possession of nuclear arms.
Should all his ambitions be realized, the implications would be enormous for the Middle East, for the United States, and for the peace of the world. The whole range of weapons of mass destruction then would rest in the hands of a dictator who has already shown his willingness to use such weapons, and has done so, both in his war with Iran and against his own people. Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and seated atop ten percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends throughout the region, and subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail.
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us. And there is no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions will lead him into future confrontations with his neighbors -- confrontations that will involve both the weapons he has today, and the ones he will continue to develop with his oil wealth.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is no basis in Saddam Hussein's conduct or history to discount any of the concerns that I am raising this morning. We are, after all, dealing with the same dictator who shoots at American and British pilots in the no-fly zone, on a regular basis, the same dictator who dispatched a team of assassins to murder former President Bush as he traveled abroad, the same dictator who invaded Iran and Kuwait, and has fired ballistic missiles at Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, the same dictator who has been on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism for the better part of two decades.
In the face of such a threat, we must proceed with care, deliberation, and consultation with our allies. I know our president very well. I've worked beside him as he directed our response to the events of 9/11. I know that he will proceed cautiously and deliberately to consider all possible options to deal with the threat that an Iraq ruled by Saddam Hussein represents. And I am confident that he will, as he has said he would, consult widely with the Congress and with our friends and allies before deciding upon a course of action. He welcomes the debate that has now been joined here at home, and he has made it clear to his national security team that he wants us to participate fully in the hearings that will be held in Congress next month on this vitally important issue.
We will profit as well from a review of our own history. There are a lot of World War II veterans in the hall today. For the United States, that war began on December 7, 1941, with the attack on Pearl Harbor and the near-total destruction of our Pacific Fleet. Only then did we recognize the magnitude of the danger to our country. Only then did the Axis powers fully declare their intentions against us. By that point, many countries had fallen. Many millions had died. And our nation was plunged into a two-front war resulting in more than a million American casualties. To this day, historians continue to analyze that war, speculating on how we might have prevented Pearl Harbor, and asking what actions might have averted the tragedies that rate among the worst in human history.
America in the year 2002 must ask careful questions, not merely about our past, but also about our future. The elected leaders of this country have a responsibility to consider all of the available options. And we are doing so. What we must not do in the face of a mortal threat is give in to wishful thinking or willful blindness. We will not simply look away, hope for the best, and leave the matter for some future administration to resolve. As President Bush has said, time is not on our side. Deliverable weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terror network, or a murderous dictator, or the two working together, constitutes as grave a threat as can be imagined. The risks of inaction are far greater than the risk of action.
Now and in the future, the United States will work closely with the global coalition to deny terrorists and their state sponsors the materials, technology, and expertise to make and deliver weapons of mass destruction. We will develop and deploy effective missile defenses to protect America and our allies from sudden attack. And the entire world must know that we will take whatever action is necessary to defend our freedom and our security.
As former Secretary of State Kissinger recently stated: "The imminence of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the huge dangers it involves, the rejection of a viable inspection system, and the demonstrated hostility of Saddam Hussein combine to produce an imperative for preemptive action." If the United States could have preempted 9/11, we would have, no question. Should we be able to prevent another, much more devastating attack, we will, no question. This nation will not live at the mercy of terrorists or terror regimes. (Applause.)
I am familiar with the arguments against taking action in the case of Saddam Hussein. Some concede that Saddam is evil, power-hungry, and a menace -- but that, until he crosses the threshold of actually possessing nuclear weapons, we should rule out any preemptive action. That logic seems to me to be deeply flawed. The argument comes down to this: yes, Saddam is as dangerous as we say he is, we just need to let him get stronger before we do anything about it.
Yet if we did wait until that moment, Saddam would simply be emboldened, and it would become even harder for us to gather friends and allies to oppose him. As one of those who worked to assemble the Gulf War coalition, I can tell you that our job then would have been infinitely more difficult in the face of a nuclear-armed Saddam Hussein. And many of those who now argue that we should act only if he gets a nuclear weapon, would then turn around and say that we cannot act because he has a nuclear weapon. At bottom, that argument counsels a course of inaction that itself could have devastating consequences for many countries, including our own.
Another argument holds that opposing Saddam Hussein would cause even greater troubles in that part of the world, and interfere with the larger war against terror. I believe the opposite is true. Regime change in Iraq would bring about a number of benefits to the region. When the gravest of threats are eliminated, the freedom-loving peoples of the region will have a chance to promote the values that can bring lasting peace. As for the reaction of the Arab "street," the Middle East expert Professor Fouad Ajami predicts that after liberation, the streets in Basra and Baghdad are "sure to erupt in joy in the same way the throngs in Kabul greeted the Americans." Extremists in the region would have to rethink their strategy of Jihad. Moderates throughout the region would take heart. And our ability to advance the Israeli-Palestinian peace process would be enhanced, just as it was following the liberation of Kuwait in 1991.
The reality is that these times bring not only dangers but also opportunities. In the Middle East, where so many have known only poverty and oppression, terror and tyranny, we look to the day when people can live in freedom and dignity and the young can grow up free of the conditions that breed despair, hatred, and violence.
In other times the world saw how the United States defeated fierce enemies, then helped rebuild their countries, forming strong bonds between our peoples and our governments. Today in Afghanistan, the world is seeing that America acts not to conquer but to liberate, and remains in friendship to help the people build a future of stability, self-determination, and peace.
We would act in that same spirit after a regime change in Iraq. With our help, a liberated Iraq can be a great nation once again. Iraq is rich in natural resources and human talent, and has unlimited potential for a peaceful, prosperous future. Our goal would be an Iraq that has territorial integrity, a government that is democratic and pluralistic, a nation where the human rights of every ethnic and religious group are recognized and protected. In that troubled land all who seek justice, and dignity, and the chance to live their own lives, can know they have a friend and ally in the United States of America.
Great decisions and challenges lie ahead of us. Yet we can and we will build a safer and better world beyond the war on terror. Over the past year, millions here and abroad have been inspired once again by the bravery and the selflessness of the American armed forces. For my part, I have been reminded on a daily basis, as I was during my years at the Pentagon, of what a privilege it is to work with the people of our military. In whatever branch, at whatever rank, these are men and women who live by a code, who give America the best years of their lives, and who show the world the finest qualities of our country.
Just a few simple thoughts for the day.
Four weeks after the earthquake that flattened Niigata, Japan, people started moving into prefabricated houses. Two years after the hurricane that devastated New Orleans, some people are still living in trailers, others are still not able to go back home to New Orleans. I wonder why?
Why have there been so few new blogs on Men Behind the Curtain these days? Basically, because this blog was started in the quest to find out who are the masters of the world, the ones who pull all the strings, the ones who hire and fire presidents and prime ministers. Now we know. So the question now is not "who are they," but rather, "now that we know who they are, what are we going to do about it."
Link to the decree on whitehouse.gov website
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070717-3.html
Persons subject to having their property stolen by the government -- oops!, I mean "confiscated" -- are those whom the above mentioned three secretaries consider "pose a significant risk" of committing violence. Another category of persons/organizations subject to having all of their property stolen by the government includes anyone who has provided assistance or support to the person deemed to pose a significant risk. Also included are any organizations owned or controlled by the above two types of future criminals.
So let's just take a hypothetical example. Being hypothetical, it may never happen. Or, it may happen. We just don't know. OK, here goes.
Let's say that a German citizen is kidnapped by the CIA while on vacation in Macedonia. He is questioned relentlessly for over three weeks by gang of CIA thugs wearing ski masks. Then one day the thugs strip him naked, beat and sexually abuse him, and whisk him off to a torture facility in Afghanistan known as the "Salt Pit" where he is in-terror-gated for the next five months by more men-in-black wearing ski masks. Finally, he is threatened and warned to never speak of what happened, then handcuffed and blindfolded, transported to a deserted location in the mountains of Albania, and abandoned.
Some hypothetical story, eh? (Not really hypothetical, it actually happened to Khaled El-Masri starting on December 31, 2003 and the ordeal ended May 28, 2004.) All right, let's get on with the hypothetical story. Let's say a human rights advocacy organization picks up the case and files a lawsuit on behalf of this victim of CIA torture and false imprisonment. Despite the best efforts of this human rights group, the court refuses to even hear the case. Oh, did I say hypothetical? Not yet. This part actually happened too. The ACLU filed suit on El-Masri's behalf, but the US government intervened and would not allow the case to be heard in court.
One more true fact before we go into the hypothetical part, this blogger/webmaster of Coalition of the Majority is a dues-paying member of ACLU. (Perhaps some of you reading this may be members as well.) Now in consideration of the fact that the above is not fiction, is it really difficult to imagine Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates getting together and deciding that since this innocent man had been wrongly tortured for five months, denied any sort of redress in the courts, he very well could pose a significant risk of seeking revenge against the criminals who did that to him? Because that is all it takes, according to the July 17 edict of King George, is to pose a significant risk. Who determines what is significant? Paulson, Rice, and Gates. Who do they work for? King George, of course.
Well, if Mr. El-Masri were to be determined to pose a significant risk by the trio of Paulson, Rice, and Gates, the ACLU which assisted him would also be subject to the decree. And as described above, that would make anyone who supports ACLU subject to having all their possessions taken as well. And anyone who has ever assisted or supported any ACLU member...
See where this is going? The first part of this story is true. The last part is hypothetical. At least for now. We can only hope (and pray, if that is what you do) that it continues to be hypothetical. In light of what you have seen with your own eyes over the past six and a half years, what do you think?
Their most powerful tool for stealing elections is gerrymandering. Due to the population shift from rural urban areas during the latter post-war period, voting districts became extremely lopsided. By stonewalling the attempts to reapportion the voting districts in order to distribute voter representation evenly, at one point in time, the most populous voting district had nine times as many people as the least populous one. Effectively, that means that a single vote in the least populated district had nine times the actual value of that of the most populous. So, by legally bribing the voters of those low-population districts with all sorts of political favors, they jimmy elections in their favor. Nowadays the lopsidedness is not quite so bad as it was at one time, but still about six to one in the worst case districts. Less lopsided than before, but still, six to one can hardly be called fair.
Another weird thing about Japanese elections is the number of dead people who vote. Of course, dead people can not legally vote. But they do anyway, and get away with it. In other words, these are people who have passed away, but their names have not been removed from the roster of eligible voters. Oddly enough, those who vote from beyond the grave vote overwhelmingly for the LDP. Smell a rat?
Also, every election it never fails that some number of candidates who were elected as independents or from other parties in opposition to LDP will invariably switch loyalty the day after the election and join the ranks of LDP. Never fails. In other words, out and out fraud. They campaign on an anti-LDP platform, and once they have suckered enough voters into voting for them, "so long, sucker! Too bad!" Why aren't they arrested for fraud? Why can't we even sue them for breach of contract?
And getting back to the topic that I started off this blog with -- voter turnout. As I told you, Japan has a long tradition of low voter turnouts favoring the ruling LDP. This is because LDP supporters are the wealthy people, the ones who know that their wealth is largely attributable to LDP being in power. And because they are keenly aware of this fact, they never fail to vote, come hell or high water. The rest of the population tend to be apathetic. They basically dislike the LDP, but also tend to distrust all politicians of all parties. Still, if/when the do go to the polls, they usually vote for one of the opposition parties. Due to lack of any strong conviction, however, on rainy or stormy days those folks are more likely to stay home, thus favoring LDP. Fortunately, however, LDP can not control the weather.
Over the decades, there have been times when the LDP has been particularly arrogant, and the people who normally boycott elections are so pissed off with LDP that they actually go out and vote. This results in fewer LDPers in office and a greater number of opposition party members. But only once in the past 50 years have voters turned out in such large numbers that opposition parties actually gained the majority. Things improved, and shortly thereafter the complacent majority returned to their complacency, and the LDP was back.
Well, LDP has REALLY pissed the people off this time. There is a House of Councilors election looming. LDP can see the writing on the wall. And even with all the gerrymandering, all the dead people voting, and all the LDPers in independent clothing and other election tricks, it is still an uphill battle for the LDP. Fortunately they can't control the weather in order to curb voter turnout. But unfortunately they can control the election date.
Unlike the US, election dates are not fixed, but determined by Parliament. (And we know who controls Parliament.) And so, the election date has been set for this summer's o'Bon season. Bon is the middle of August. It is the time of year when people who came to from rural urban areas to find work go back to their hometowns and pay respects to their ancestors. It is a deeply rooted and culturally significant tradition. It is said that the only two times in any given year that one can actually see Mount Fuji from Tokyo are Bon and New Year. That is because the streets of Tokyo are deserted during those times due to the holidays and everyone being out of town, so less air pollution. And you know something? It is true.
So, come this August, LDP aims to steal another election. They have set the poll date for the time when most people will be outside of their voting district. The rich class, needless to say, did not move from rural to urban areas to find jobs. They will be in their own voting districts for the election. And for those who aren't, they are the ones strongly motivated enough to actually take the trouble to vote absentee. As for the folks who usually don't even bother voting at all, well, how many of them would vote if they were at home for the election but won't make the extra effort to cast their vote by absentee ballot.
We all know that commonly heard phrase, generally attributed to Voltaire (but was actully coined by a biographer who wrote about Voltaire) "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." and many of us live by it. CNN's motto must be "I disapprove of what you say, and therefore will not allow you to say it."
In what CNN broadcasted yesterday that makes a mockery of democracy (demockeracy?) here is the breakdown of time each candidate was allowed to speak.
Clinton, 9:25 minutes
Obama, 8:19 minutes
Richardson, 7:23 minutes
Edwards 7:06 minutes
Biden 4:45 minutes
Dodd 4:00 minutes
Gravel 2:59 minutes
Kucinich 2:28 minutes
Step aside, Faux News, you no longer reign supreme in the field of lopsided propaganda.
The republican presidential candidate debates are coming up soon, anyone want to take any bets on how much time Ron Paul gets?
PS: in the previous round of so-called "debates" televised on Faux News, those Fauxy fair and balanced despots had planned to exclude Paul altogether, but public outrage made them change their plans.
SOURCE: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html
NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51
HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20
Subject: National Continuity Policy
|
Essentially, this presidential decree authorizes the president to assume dictatorial powers in the event of a catastrophic emergency. Congress would be reduced to a mere advisory body, if even that.
Also, take particular note of the very last paragraph, "...the Annexes attached to this directive are classified"! Heil Bush |
(1) This directive establishes a comprehensive national policy on the continuity of Federal Government structures and operations and a single National Continuity Coordinator responsible for coordinating the development and implementation of Federal continuity policies. This policy establishes "National Essential Functions," prescribes continuity requirements for all executive departments and agencies, and provides guidance for State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector organizations in order to ensure a comprehensive and integrated national continuity program that will enhance the credibility of our national security posture and enable a more rapid and effective response to and recovery from a national emergency.
Definitions
(2) In this directive:
(a) "Category" refers to the categories of executive departments and agencies listed in Annex A to this directive;
(b) "Catastrophic Emergency" means any incident, regardless of location, that results in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions;
(c) "Continuity of Government," or "COG," means a coordinated effort within the Federal Government's executive branch to ensure that National Essential Functions continue to be performed during a Catastrophic Emergency;
(d) "Continuity of Operations," or "COOP," means an effort within individual executive departments and agencies to ensure that Primary Mission-Essential Functions continue to be performed during a wide range of emergencies, including localized acts of nature, accidents, and technological or attack-related emergencies;
(e) "Enduring Constitutional Government," or "ECG," means a cooperative effort among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the Federal Government, coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers among the branches, to preserve the constitutional framework under which the Nation is governed and the capability of all three branches of government to execute constitutional responsibilities and provide for orderly succession, appropriate transition of leadership, and interoperability and support of the National Essential Functions during a catastrophic emergency;
(f) "Executive Departments and Agencies" means the executive departments enumerated in 5 U.S.C. 101, independent establishments as defined by 5 U.S.C. 104(1), Government corporations as defined by 5 U.S.C. 103(1), and the United States Postal Service;
(g) "Government Functions" means the collective functions of the heads of executive departments and agencies as defined by statute, regulation, presidential direction, or other legal authority, and the functions of the legislative and judicial branches;
(h) "National Essential Functions," or "NEFs," means that subset of Government Functions that are necessary to lead and sustain the Nation during a catastrophic emergency and that, therefore, must be supported through COOP and COG capabilities; and
(i) "Primary Mission Essential Functions," or "PMEFs," means those Government Functions that must be performed in order to support or implement the performance of NEFs before, during, and in the aftermath of an emergency.
Policy
(3) It is the policy of the United States to maintain a comprehensive and effective continuity capability composed of Continuity of Operations and Continuity of Government programs in order to ensure the preservation of our form of government under the Constitution and the continuing performance of National Essential Functions under all conditions.
Implementation Actions
(4) Continuity requirements shall be incorporated into daily operations of all executive departments and agencies. As a result of the asymmetric threat environment, adequate warning of potential emergencies that could pose a significant risk to the homeland might not be available, and therefore all continuity planning shall be based on the assumption that no such warning will be received. Emphasis will be placed upon geographic dispersion of leadership, staff, and infrastructure in order to increase survivability and maintain uninterrupted Government Functions. Risk management principles shall be applied to ensure that appropriate operational readiness decisions are based on the probability of an attack or other incident and its consequences.
(5) The following NEFs are the foundation for all continuity programs and capabilities and represent the overarching responsibilities of the Federal Government to lead and sustain the Nation during a crisis, and therefore sustaining the following NEFs shall be the primary focus of the Federal Government leadership during and in the aftermath of an emergency that adversely affects the performance of Government Functions:
(a) Ensuring the continued functioning of our form of government under the Constitution, including the functioning of the three separate branches of government;
(b) Providing leadership visible to the Nation and the world and maintaining the trust and confidence of the American people;
(c) Defending the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and preventing or interdicting attacks against the United States or its people, property, or interests;
(d) Maintaining and fostering effective relationships with foreign nations;
(e) Protecting against threats to the homeland and bringing to justice perpetrators of crimes or attacks against the United States or its people, property, or interests;
(f) Providing rapid and effective response to and recovery from the domestic consequences of an attack or other incident;
(g) Protecting and stabilizing the Nation's economy and ensuring public confidence in its financial systems; and
(h) Providing for critical Federal Government services that address the national health, safety, and welfare needs of the United States.
(6) The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government. In order to advise and assist the President in that function, the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism (APHS/CT) is hereby designated as the National Continuity Coordinator. The National Continuity Coordinator, in coordination with the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs (APNSA), without exercising directive authority, shall coordinate the development and implementation of continuity policy for executive departments and agencies. The Continuity Policy Coordination Committee (CPCC), chaired by a Senior Director from the Homeland Security Council staff, designated by the National Continuity Coordinator, shall be the main day-to-day forum for such policy coordination.
(7) For continuity purposes, each executive department and agency is assigned to a category in accordance with the nature and characteristics of its national security roles and responsibilities in support of the Federal Government's ability to sustain the NEFs. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall serve as the President's lead agent for coordinating overall continuity operations and activities of executive departments and agencies, and in such role shall perform the responsibilities set forth for the Secretary in sections 10 and 16 of this directive.
(8) The National Continuity Coordinator, in consultation with the heads of appropriate executive departments and agencies, will lead the development of a National Continuity Implementation Plan (Plan), which shall include prioritized goals and objectives, a concept of operations, performance metrics by which to measure continuity readiness, procedures for continuity and incident management activities, and clear direction to executive department and agency continuity coordinators, as well as guidance to promote interoperability of Federal Government continuity programs and procedures with State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate. The Plan shall be submitted to the President for approval not later than 90 days after the date of this directive.
(9) Recognizing that each branch of the Federal Government is responsible for its own continuity programs, an official designated by the Chief of Staff to the President shall ensure that the executive branch's COOP and COG policies in support of ECG efforts are appropriately coordinated with those of the legislative and judicial branches in order to ensure interoperability and allocate national assets efficiently to maintain a functioning Federal Government.
(10) Federal Government COOP, COG, and ECG plans and operations shall be appropriately integrated with the emergency plans and capabilities of State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to promote interoperability and to prevent redundancies and conflicting lines of authority. The Secretary of Homeland Security shall coordinate the integration of Federal continuity plans and operations with State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure, as appropriate, in order to provide for the delivery of essential services during an emergency.
(11) Continuity requirements for the Executive Office of the President (EOP) and executive departments and agencies shall include the following:
(a) The continuation of the performance of PMEFs during any emergency must be for a period up to 30 days or until normal operations can be resumed, and the capability to be fully operational at alternate sites as soon as possible after the occurrence of an emergency, but not later than 12 hours after COOP activation;
(b) Succession orders and pre-planned devolution of authorities that ensure the emergency delegation of authority must be planned and documented in advance in accordance with applicable law;
(c) Vital resources, facilities, and records must be safeguarded, and official access to them must be provided;
(d) Provision must be made for the acquisition of the resources necessary for continuity operations on an emergency basis;
(e) Provision must be made for the availability and redundancy of critical communications capabilities at alternate sites in order to support connectivity between and among key government leadership, internal elements, other executive departments and agencies, critical partners, and the public;
(f) Provision must be made for reconstitution capabilities that allow for recovery from a catastrophic emergency and resumption of normal operations; and
(g) Provision must be made for the identification, training, and preparedness of personnel capable of relocating to alternate facilities to support the continuation of the performance of PMEFs.
(12) In order to provide a coordinated response to escalating threat levels or actual emergencies, the Continuity of Government Readiness Conditions (COGCON) system establishes executive branch continuity program readiness levels, focusing on possible threats to the National Capital Region. The President will determine and issue the COGCON Level. Executive departments and agencies shall comply with the requirements and assigned responsibilities under the COGCON program. During COOP activation, executive departments and agencies shall report their readiness status to the Secretary of Homeland Security or the Secretary's designee.
(13) The Director of the Office of Management and Budget shall:
(a) Conduct an annual assessment of executive department and agency continuity funding requests and performance data that are submitted by executive departments and agencies as part of the annual budget request process, in order to monitor progress in the implementation of the Plan and the execution of continuity budgets;
(b) In coordination with the National Continuity Coordinator, issue annual continuity planning guidance for the development of continuity budget requests; and
(c) Ensure that heads of executive departments and agencies prioritize budget resources for continuity capabilities, consistent with this directive.
(14) The Director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy shall:
(a) Define and issue minimum requirements for continuity communications for executive departments and agencies, in consultation with the APHS/CT, the APNSA, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Chief of Staff to the President;
(b) Establish requirements for, and monitor the development, implementation, and maintenance of, a comprehensive communications architecture to integrate continuity components, in consultation with the APHS/CT, the APNSA, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and the Chief of Staff to the President; and
(c) Review quarterly and annual assessments of continuity communications capabilities, as prepared pursuant to section 16(d) of this directive or otherwise, and report the results and recommended remedial actions to the National Continuity Coordinator.
(15) An official designated by the Chief of Staff to the President shall:
(a) Advise the President, the Chief of Staff to the President, the APHS/CT, and the APNSA on COGCON operational execution options; and
(b) Consult with the Secretary of Homeland Security in order to ensure synchronization and integration of continuity activities among the four categories of executive departments and agencies.
(16) The Secretary of Homeland Security shall:
(a) Coordinate the implementation, execution, and assessment of continuity operations and activities;
(b) Develop and promulgate Federal Continuity Directives in order to establish continuity planning requirements for executive departments and agencies;
(c) Conduct biennial assessments of individual department and agency continuity capabilities as prescribed by the Plan and report the results to the President through the APHS/CT;
(d) Conduct quarterly and annual assessments of continuity communications capabilities in consultation with an official designated by the Chief of Staff to the President;
(e) Develop, lead, and conduct a Federal continuity training and exercise program, which shall be incorporated into the National Exercise Program developed pursuant to Homeland Security Presidential Directive-8 of December 17, 2003 ("National Preparedness"), in consultation with an official designated by the Chief of Staff to the President;
(f) Develop and promulgate continuity planning guidance to State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector critical infrastructure owners and operators;
(g) Make available continuity planning and exercise funding, in the form of grants as provided by law, to State, local, territorial, and tribal governments, and private sector critical infrastructure owners and operators; and
(h) As Executive Agent of the National Communications System, develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive continuity communications architecture.
(17) The Director of National Intelligence, in coordination with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall produce a biennial assessment of the foreign and domestic threats to the Nation's continuity of government.
(18) The Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretary of Homeland Security, shall provide secure, integrated, Continuity of Government communications to the President, the Vice President, and, at a minimum, Category I executive departments and agencies.
(19) Heads of executive departments and agencies shall execute their respective department or agency COOP plans in response to a localized emergency and shall:
(a) Appoint a senior accountable official, at the Assistant Secretary level, as the Continuity Coordinator for the department or agency;
(b) Identify and submit to the National Continuity Coordinator the list of PMEFs for the department or agency and develop continuity plans in support of the NEFs and the continuation of essential functions under all conditions;
(c) Plan, program, and budget for continuity capabilities consistent with this directive;
(d) Plan, conduct, and support annual tests and training, in consultation with the Secretary of Homeland Security, in order to evaluate program readiness and ensure adequacy and viability of continuity plans and communications systems; and
(e) Support other continuity requirements, as assigned by category, in accordance with the nature and characteristics of its national security roles and responsibilities
General Provisions
(20) This directive shall be implemented in a manner that is consistent with, and facilitates effective implementation of, provisions of the Constitution concerning succession to the Presidency or the exercise of its powers, and the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (3 U.S.C. 19), with consultation of the Vice President and, as appropriate, others involved. Heads of executive departments and agencies shall ensure that appropriate support is available to the Vice President and others involved as necessary to be prepared at all times to implement those provisions.
(21) This directive:
(a) Shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and the authorities of agencies, or heads of agencies, vested by law, and subject to the availability of appropriations;
(b) Shall not be construed to impair or otherwise affect (i) the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budget, administrative, and legislative proposals, or (ii) the authority of the Secretary of Defense over the Department of Defense, including the chain of command for military forces from the President, to the Secretary of Defense, to the commander of military forces, or military command and control procedures; and
(c) Is not intended to, and does not, create any rights or benefits, substantive or procedural, enforceable at law or in equity by a party against the United States, its agencies, instrumentalities, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
(22) Revocation. Presidential Decision Directive 67 of October 21, 1998 ("Enduring Constitutional Government and Continuity of Government Operations"), including all Annexes thereto, is hereby revoked.
(23) Annex A and the classified Continuity Annexes, attached hereto, are hereby incorporated into and made a part of this directive.
(24) Security. This directive and the information contained herein shall be protected from unauthorized disclosure, provided that, except for Annex A, the Annexes attached to this directive are classified and shall be accorded appropriate handling, consistent with applicable Executive Orders.
GEORGE W. BUSH
| When I see what is happening to the dugong, and endangered species and the Asian cousin of the manatee, I am reminded of a scene from the movie The Godfather. In this movie scene, one gangster lifts his gun and points it at the soon-to-be-executed rival gangster. The man with the gun says to the man who is listening to the last words he will ever hear says, "Nothin' personal, you understand. This is strictly business." And so too, with the dugong. For the US military, it is nothing personal. Strictly business, that's all. |
To make a long story short, an agreement was reached recently to move the bases to lesser populated areas. Lesser populated by humans, that is. The US military has decided to construct two runways at Henoko that will extend out into the ocean on reclaimed land, right in the area where some of the world's last remaining living coral reefs are located, and the habitat of the dugong.
Japanese politicians have been very reassuring to animal lovers and conservationist who are concerned about the destruction of the dugong's habitat by saying... and I am not making this up... by saying that due to global warming, tropical sea areas will increase, thereby providing new habitats suitable to the dugong and other tropical creatures.
Excuse me, while I go and pour myself a vodka... or two (or three, or...) !
U P D A T EGood grief! Poor my amothver vodkkka, wooll U? |
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Dear Representative Darlene Hooley
All members of the House of Representatives, including yourself needless to say, have taken an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States of America. All Senators have taken that oath, and so have the president and vice president of the USA. Richard Cheney (and he is not the only one) has violated that oath by committing high crimes and treason against the United States and its People. See H.Res.333 for details. Consequently, in keeping with YOUR oath, it behooves you to, and it is your solemn duty to take action to impeach this criminal, and subsequently all other criminals involved in the conspiracy. Failure to do so would constitute a violation of your oath to uphold and defend the Constitution. Please sign on as a co-sponsor of HRes333. Thank you. |
| Preface We, the Japanese people, acting through our duly elected representatives in the National Diet, determined that we shall secure for ourselves and our posterity the fruits of peaceful cooperation with all nations and the blessings of liberty throughout this land, and resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution. Government is a sacred trust of the people, the authority for which is derived from the people, the powers of which are exercised by the representatives of the people, and the benefits of which are enjoyed by the people. This is a universal principle of mankind upon which this Constitution is founded. We reject and revoke all constitutions, laws ordinances, and rescripts in conflict herewith. We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world. We desire to occupy an honored place in an international society striving for the preservation of peace, and the banishment of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance for all time from the earth. We recognize that all peoples of the world have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want. We believe that no nation is responsible to itself alone, but that laws of political morality are universal; and that obedience to such laws is incumbent upon all nations who would sustain their own sovereignty and justify their sovereign relationship with other nations. We, the Japanese people, pledge our national honor to accomplish these high ideals and purposes with all our resources. |
Despite the atrocious belligerency and crimes against (mostly) the peoples of Asia committed by the Japanese Imperial army in the early 1900s up until the end of World War Two, Japan has lived in peace for the past 60 years. And one would expect that on this 60th anniversary of the promulgation of the Peace Constitution, the Prime Minister might use the occasion to remind the people of the importance of this unique document. Unfortunately, that was not the case today.
Rather than stress the need to preserve the Constitution and all its stipulations, warmongers like PM Shinzo Abe (grandson of Class A war criminal Nobusuke Kishi), and former PM Yasuhiro Nakasone harped on the need to abandon the current Peace Constitution and replace it with one that would allow the government to wage war. At the same time, Minister of Defence Kyuma pointed out that Japan's latent "defence" industry would have to tie up with the US "defence" industry modeling itself after the latter. In other words, Abe, Nakasone, et al. are pushing forward to create a military-industrial complex like the one that has a strangle hold on the US.
In order for it to happen, though, it still faces a plebiscite that will require a simple majority. However, experience over the years, especially more and more so in recent years, shows us that dead people always seem to vote in favor of the LDP (the ruling party) and whatever they propose. What the heck. They are already dead, so they don't have to worry about being killed in a war from which their government makes a big profit.
Dear ACLU Friends,
Last October, all of us at the ACLU vowed that we would leave no stone unturned in our effort to reverse the newly-passed Military Commissions Act -- an affront to our Constitution.
To preserve our American values of freedom and fairness, Congress must act now to reverse this law and to begin to undo the damage done by almost seven years of Bush Administration assaults on our civil liberties.
That's why the ACLU is launching a major campaign to repair the damage and restore the Constitution. As part of that effort, we'll be doing all the things you expect the ACLU to do -- lobbying members of Congress, pursuing high-profile lawsuits, running radio and newspaper ads, and more.
But, to be successful, we know we need to reach a broader audience and get them involved in our work. So we're doing something a bit new for us, in an online campaign to raise awareness through a little character who's meant to embody the idea of habeas corpus.
Let me introduce "Mr. Habeas Corpus."
You may have already seen him. As an unflagging champion of justice and due process of law, Habeas has been looking out for us all. Now he needs us to look out for him before the rights he has been protecting for centuries are lost forever.
As part of the ACLU community, we wanted you to be the first to learn about our Find Habeas outreach effort and the ACLU Campaign to Restore Our Constitutional Rights.
Our goal is to engage as many people as possible in our campaign to find Habeas Corpus and restore him to his rightful place in the Constitution. We know that once the public learns all the facts, the majority won't support laws that run counter to long-held Constitutional principles.
That is where you come in. Your involvement -- your voice, your network of friends and family -- is critical to this effort.
Please visit our Find Habeas website and find out how you can add your voice to this effort. Tell your friends. Check out the blog. Download stickers and postcards. Get involved.
You'll be hearing more about how you can help in this effort in the days and weeks to come. With your help, we can restore habeas corpus and due process and win a victory for freedom and the Constitution.
Sincerely,
Anthony D. Romero
Executive Director
American Civil Liberties Union
Last week Frankenfood designer mon$anto went on the warpath in is drive to force-feed Frankenfood to us all by filing complaints with the FDA and FTC against dairy producers who do not use their products. In a move not strikingly different from last year's assault on the EU market, the charges are unfair competition and false or misleading labelling.
In their attack on the EU, they are claiming that requirements that Frankenfood (officially known as "GM food," for "genetically modified") be labeled as GM food violate free trade agreements. The argument goes that if consumers have a clear choice of either Frankenfood or real food, of course most will choose the real food, thereby creating an unfair disadvantage. So by disguising Frankenfood, they reason, consumers will not be influenced in a way that negatively affects mon$anto. Duh!
In their latest act of aggression, this time on the American public, again, they do not think you have the right to know what is in that milk or other food on the supermarket shelf. Of the several dairy producers they take aim at in their complaints, some of them actually do make statements that suggest the possibility that rBGH may be unsafe, but none of them actually come out and say categorically so. But in advertising and labelling, can anybody show me a company that does not make suggestive statements while avoiding making an actual claim?
But others of those companies being accused do not even make suggestive statements. They merely include a statement that the product comes from cows that have not been treated with mon$anto's growth hormone rBGH. It is not enough that mon$anto has already gotten the FDA to require a statement on the label saying that rBGH has not been proven harmful, now mon$anto are complaining that the size of lettering that informs consumers the product comes from rBGH free cows is larger than the FDA-required disclaimer that there is no scientific proof of the dangers. Again, Duh!
 Does this look natural? |
So if you were concerned that Ashcroft/Gonzales have been infringing on the rights to free speech, now we have a new player in the game. mon$anto.
What next, Ford and General Motors suing Toyota because they provide information to car buyers about how many miles per gallon they get? Using mon$anto logic, that would give Toyota an unfair advantage over their competitors.
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_4698.cfm
And while the arm-twisting to reopen the markets continued, another mad cow was discovered, but this one could not be blamed on Canada since the cow had been born in Texas. Flames went higher. And yet another.
USDA has continued to cite the "low rate of incidence" of mad cow in the US as sufficient reason why no new safety measures were needed. It should be noted, however, that only one cow in 90 is tested in the US as opposed to 100 out of 100 in other countries. Even though three cows sounds like a very small number, using logic that only a cattle rancher would understand, the USDA decided that the best way to reduce the number of mad cows detected in the US was to reduce testing even further.
A relatively small-scale cattle raiser, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, decided that they would voluntarily test every single cow for BSE in exchange for being allowed into the Japan and Korea markets. They spent a million dollars on a testing facility, but were told by the USDA that they were not permitted to test their cows for BSE. Using the same logic as mentioned above, the USDA claimed that testing every cow would endanger the safety of US beef.
What would really be endangered by testing every cow? The safety of your food? Or the profits of the major cattle ranchers and meatpackers?
In March, 2006, Creekstone took the USDA to court.
The USDA has until June 1 to either accept the decision or appeal. There is little doubt in my mind, however, that the USDA will most certainly appeal, considering the "steaks" involved. (Sorry, just could not resist that pun!) The major players in the meat industry, which excludes Creekstone and other smaller cattle ranchers and meatpackers, do not want this. If Creekstone starts testing all cows, the major players will be forced to follow suit.
A simplistic view is that they (the majors) do not want the extra expense, estimated at 20 dollars per cow, which translates to 10 cents per pound of beef. But only 10 cents per pound, and that would probably only be passed on the consumer anyway. I know I would certainly be happy to pay 10 cents more per pound for beef that had been tested. And since testing is voluntary, if there are consumers who prefer the 10 cents lower price, every meatpacker is free to compete in both markets, the tested 10 cents higher market, and the untested 10 cents cheaper market. So where's the beef?
To understand the real reason why the meat industry are against it, just do the math. One cow in 90 is tested, and three mad cows are detected. So if one cow in 30 were tested, how many mad cows would be detected? If one in 10, how many? If every cow slaughtered were tested, how many mad cows now?
If people start doing the math, they will eventually start asking themselves the obvious question: If testing of every cow had begun when the first mad cow was detected, by now, instead of three mad cows, there would be 270 mad cows detected. So what happened to the other 267 cows?
And that question is the major meatpackers' worst nightmare.
Khalid whats'isface? That would no doubt be Khalid Sheikh (a.k.a. Shaikh) Mohammed. The man who has confessed to just about every terrorist attack within memory, except 7/7. And we can probably expect him to come clean on that one, too, with the application of a little more torture.
Now that I reflect back, I remember that time when I was nine years old and wanted a bicycle for Christmas, and Santa brought me a baseball bat instead. Boy! Was I really mad at Santa after that. I don't even like baseball. Never did. So I went around slandering Santa's name all over the place. But now, umpteen years later, I realize I was probably duped. It must have been that wicked evildoer Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- he must have intercepted my letter to Santa, written a bogus letter asking for a baseball bat, and forged my signature! All just so that I would get mad at Santa and slander his name. Nasty Muslim evildoer!
And I bet he must be the same nasty Muslim evildoer who invented dyslexia and spread it all throughout the Christian world so that people would confuse Santa with Satan and further slander his name. That nasty Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. But thanks to Uncle Dubya, that nasty devil is now incarcerated in a torture facility.
According to the Kansas City Star, " his "second wave" attack after Sept. 11 was stymied early because of beefed-up security." Sure. And if you belive that, we can probably expect to learn within the next few days and weeks that it was the NSA spying and listening in on your phone conversation as your aunty was giving you the secret family recipe for blueberry muffins (which has been leaked and is now all over the Internet) that tipped them off on the whereabouts of this Khalid Sheikh Mohammed dude, and through the use of National Security Letters, gag rules, and disregard for the Fourth Amendment, they were finally able to apprehend him. And by similar disregard for the Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Amendments, they have been able to keep this heinous criminal locked up where he will stay forever.
Further reading: Garbage In Garbage Out
Video: WAR ON TERROR OVER! WARNING! This video uses extremely graphic language that some people may find offensive.
If you are offended by crude or foul language, do not follow this link.
Ask 100 Americans what significant event took place on December 7, and at least 99 will respond with some rubbish about a "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor. Well, in this blog I will not go into detail, but simply put, it was neither a sneak attack, nor was it unprovoked. (And in fact, 2388 Americans were killed in that attack, 48 civilians, the rest military.) But those issues are not the point of today's blog.
Now ask the same question of March 9 & 10, and in either Japan or the United States. The most common answer you would likely hear from either group would be "duh!"
From the night of March 9 to the morning of March 10, 1945, American B-29 bombers, under the orders of General Curtis LeMay, carpet bombed the city of Tokyo with a napalm-like substance (and the forerunner of napalm), killing more than 100,000 civilians. The estimated death toll in Hiroshima is 80,000, and that of Nagasaki, an estimated 39,000. So on a scale of number of people killed, the LeMay bombings killed nearly as many people as the two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (excluding the people who to this very day are still dying from radiation poisoning, including those who were not even born yet at the time.)
What is more, not only were virtually all of those 100,000 deaths civilians, but since nearly all able-bodied men were already in the military, the victims comprised almost exclusively women and children, along with a few debilitated old men.
Curtis LeMay later acknowledged that he was quite aware that if the US had lost the war, he would most certainly have been hanged as a war criminal.
But as we all know, the US did not lose the war. Japan lost that war. Tojo Hideki and other Japanese war criminals were hanged, but not Curtis LeMay. And for reasons unknown to this day, Kishi Nobusuke, grandfather of current prime minister Abe, and who had been arrested as a Class A war criminal suspect, was released even though Tojo et al. were hanged. Why was Kishi released? It remains a mystery.
A carpet bombing similar to the one in Tokyo had been also carried out by the US/UK against Dresden Germany only a month prior to that. Death estimates are more difficult, due to the turmulous situation there at the time, but is believed to be in the 30,000 range. No American or British military officer or lower ranking personnel, to my knowledge, have ever been hanged for the crimes against Tokyo or Dresden. And the Tokyo / Dresden atrocities were only the summit of the tip of the iceberg.
So what is a war crime? From history, it would seem to be defined as those persons from the losing side of any war, who committed atrocities against humanity. And therefore by definition, you are not a war criminal unless you lose the war.
But move over revisionists. We are about to revise the definition. Cheney, Rumsfeld, the rest of you war criminals, beware!
In 2001, current Prime Minister Abe, who was Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary at the time, together with Shoichi Nakagawa, who not yet LDP policy chief at the time, but was already a big-whig in his party at the time, applied political pressure to NHK broadcasting to censor a documentary dealing with the issue. Needless to say, this again brought protests from China and Korea, the two primary victim countries of the kidnappings. To make a long story short, the documentary was aired in its censored form, but whistleblowers brought this fact to light later on.
And now, dishonest Abe rubs salt into the wounds, effectively issuing a negation of the formal apology issued by the Japanese government 14 years ago. Why is he so hell bent on denying that the atrocities ever occurred? Especially when the owning up to it is one of the primary factors in smooth relations with two important neighbors?
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One possible explanation for why Abe may be so hell bent on denial of the military sex-slave legacy could perhaps have to do with his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi.
In the intro to what we now know as WW2, the Japanese Imperial army invaded Manchuria, China in 1931 and ruled it as a colony until the end of the war. Resource poor Japan procured many precious resources from Manchuria and other colonies it had conquored. It just so happens that Nobusuke Kishi, grandfather of current prime minister Abe, was the Viceroy of the colony of Manchuria. Is it possible that one of the "recources" procured from Manchuria was a type of human resource? More specifically, female human resource? This question has been on my mind for some time. Abe's determination to expunge any information about wrongdoings by the Japanese Imperial army and especially, the recent denial of the sex-slave issue, make me suspect so more and more.
As a post script, it should be noted that Kishi was arrested and imprisoned as a war criminal after the war ended. But unlike his colleagues who were hanged for their crimes, Kishi was released. No explanation has ever been given. Speculation is rife, and concerns the CIA, but no known evidence exists in the public domain at this time.
Without evidence, all we can do is speculate. What do you think?
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NB: Ira_ Starting this blog, I am referring to the country formerly known as Iraq simply as Ira_ so that next year I can save myself some time by just copy/pasting the same blogs referring the the country which will then be formerly known as Iran. |
She sort of looked at me as though I were some sort of creature from outer space. As though to say that pay raises and standard of living have nothing to do with it. Of course we profit, because our country profits, and we are the people and this is our country and therefore if our country profits, we profit. How could I be so dense not to understand that. For a few brief moments we both stood there wondering how the other could be so dense. She retired not long after that, and so I have not seen her since, but I wonder if she still thinks I am dense?
But of course, it is all about education. That includes not only school education, but what is absorbed from the environment in general. "We" when refering to national issues, means US. (pun intended) More specifically, it means the US government, and the US military. But by using the words "we/US/our," the conjured image is of one's self and family and colleagues. How clever. So we inherently means one's self and family and colleagues and we also takes on the meaning of US, which is the US government and US military. And then in algebra classes, they teach if A = B, and B = C, then C = A. Oh, I get it.
It is so frustrating when friends say things like "we never should have invaded Ira_" and "yesterday we bombed a school/hospital/old peoples home and killed xx children/patients/old people" and " we should get our troops out of Ira_". I always take the opportunity to challenge them, "You did what? You should do what with your what? What do you mean by we, you refer to yourself and who else?" But mostly, the point is never taken. We has been so firmly ingrained into their heads that they can never separate the thought of whatever is good for US (id est fascist plutocrats) is good for we the people.
Meanwhile, the 110th Congress has managed to pass a non-binding resolution in the House recommending to the pResident that he declare peace on Iraq. Not bad after only a month and a half since the inception of the new Congress. Wonder what they do for an encore?
The Senate, meanwhile, is more cautious. Rather than getting off to a jackrabbit start, they are watching for the proper timing to consider whether or not to debate the possibility of perhaps passing a non-binding resolution. Perhaps they are thinking that it is more prudent to wait until there are US troops in not only Afghanistan and Iraq, but also Iran, and by then, they can consider the possibility of perhaps passing a non-binding resolution to get the troops out of all three countries. Sort of like killing three birds with one stone.
But all of this is really beside the point. The latest issue of Mother Jones magazine arrived today, and in it, I read about a website created by a 16 year old girl. To be more accurate, she is 16 now, but 15 when she started her website Peace Takes Courage. Don't miss the videos produced by 15/16 year old Ava. These are true works of art, with a poignant message. Spread the word, tell everyone you know to check out this fantastic website.
Perhaps the most appealing thing about Ava's videos, in the opinion of this blogger, is that she approaches the question of war from an angle where most of us in the pro-peace camp fail, and Ava comes through with flying colors. If you have ever tried to talk reason with one of the anti-peace people, you will know that logic simply does not phase them. If intelligent conversation is what you seek, you will often find that a hornet is more prone to debate from a standpoint of logic. Getting back to the point, Ava's videos are a combination of spiritualism, religion, and emotion. Up until now, that has been the highly successful neocon formula. Except of course, Ava applies this formula to the cause of peace.
Just go to her website and see for yourself. Especially don't miss the videos California Dreaming and WWJD?
http://www.peacetakescourage.com/
The army, needless to say, was not too happy about that. In fact, they probably got cold chills, what if other soldiers got wind of this and also refused... So they decided to set an example. They threatened the Lieutenant with four years in the slammer for refusing an order and an additional three years for exercising his right to free speech, a total of seven years in the slammer. That ought to be enough to dissuade any would-be copy cats!
But that turned out to be their undoing. Overnight, support groups for Lt. Watatda sprang up everywhere. Suddenly this case was in the spotlight. At the core of the issue, the Lieutenant's assertion is that his refusal was not only within his legal rights, but it was his duty under the military code. Therefore, the case suddenly turned from one of simply whether a soldier was guilty of refusing to obey orders into a question of the legality of the war. If the war is indeed illegal as Watada says, he has committed no crime. If the war were to be declared legal, the army would win and Watada would have to be found guilty.
So at this point, the quesion revolves solely around the legality or illegality of the war. The army finally realized that it had dug its own grave. By their own hand, they had created a test case on the legality of their war of terror. There was no way they could win, even with the stacked deck they had, and they knew it. But they could not afford to lose, considering the widespread publicity.
A couple of weeks ago, the decision was made to bulldoze their way out. They would drop certain charges in exchange for certain concessions, bringing the jail time down to four years for refusing orders. And then they cranked up the bulldozer and declared that the Lieutenant was not permitted to present evidence in his own defence. Well, that raised a few eyebrows and got the army into some real deep doo-doo.
What to do? What to do? This has already gotten far more publicity than the army or the Cabal want.
Yesterday, they decided to just toss it out and pretend it never happened. The prosecution (! not the defence!) requested a mistrial on totally absurd grounds. The defence actually tried to BLOCK the move for mistrial, but mistrial was declared despite it all.
What it means is that the whole thing is all over, and the question of the illegality of the Cabal's war of terror was never debated in court, not even a military one. For Lieutenant Watada and all of the rest of us who contend that the war of terror is both illegal and a crime against humanity, the army has denied us our right to air this in court.
Fox Faux News has reported in today's issue that Watada's trial ended in mistrial, but totally sidestepped any mention of the core question, that of the illegality of the war. It has been dutifully reported, and now they will go on to cover the next fair and balanced issues, so do not expect to see any followup. (I'm still waiting for a followup to the Downing Street memos! Or even a followup to Loose Change's "911 was an inside job" story!)
But today this blogger bearer of bad news and doomsday sayer brings a ray of hope. A few days ago, the state of Maine passed a resolution refusing to comply with the REAL-ID Act. Here is the text of the resolution:
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WE, your Memorialists, the Members of the One Hundred and Twenty-Third Legislature of the State of Maine now assembled, most respectfully present and petition the President of the United States and the United States Congress, as follows:
WHEREAS, the federal REAL ID Act of 2005 mandates an unfunded national driver's license on the people of Maine, and; WHEREAS, implementation of REAL ID would cost Maine taxpayers approximately $185 million, and; WHEREAS, the REAL ID national database will invite theft of identity and invasion of privacy, and; WHEREAS, REAL ID will impose inconveniences and higher taxes on Mainers with no attendant benefit such as protections from terrorism; now, therefore, be it RESOLVED: that Maine State Legislature refuses to implement the REAL ID Act and thereby protest the treatment by Congress and the President of the states as agents of the federal government; and be it further RESOLVED: That the Maine State Legislature implores the United States Congress to repeal the REAL ID Act of 2005; and be it further RESOLVED: That official copies of this resolution, duly authenticated by the Secretary of State, be transmitted to the Honorable George W. Bush, President of the United States; the Honorable Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff; the Honorable John E. Baldacci, Governor of the State of Maine; Richard Cheney, President of the United States Senate; Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives; and each member of the Maine Congressional Delegation. |
In the ole' keep the ball rolling spirit, I have written to my district's State Senator and State Representative asking them to follow suit. I encourage you to do the same. For my fellow Oregonians, if you do not have the contact info for your state senator and state representative, you can find it HERE. For other states, please do the research on your own, but you should be able to find the needed informantion on the www if you look for it.
Just for your reference, here is a copy of Blogger Brian's email to his own state legislators.
Here is the likely scenario as seen by Blogger Brian:
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"That is easy. You just tell the people they are being attacked and denouce the pacifists for exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." -- Hermann Goering, convicted Nazi war criminal, Nuremberg, 1946 |
And even if they did succeed, suppose it turns out that the Iranians were developing nuclear energy for peaceful use only, like they claim, it will be Iraq deja vous. Even with all the might of the Great Spin Machine, could they really pull off another switcheroo as to why they invaded? But if they can nuke the facilities to smithereens, all the evidence or lack thereof will have been destroyed. Voila! Fait accompli. The allegation that the Iranians had nuked the US first, and that the US retaliated with fury, will not even be questioned.
How many sheople are the Cabal planning to vaporize this time? More than the 3000 they killed in 2001?
The guess of this blogger is that the Cabal probably does not want to kill more Americans than necessary. After all, that would result in fewer taxees. But given the potential of nuclear weapons, how can they keep the casualties down to the minimum necessary to justify the nuking of Iran? One way would be to nuke a strategic target. Someplace that would have great propaganda significance without having to kill hundreds of thousands.
This is nothing but a wild speculation, but how about Cheyenne Mountain? That is the mountain they hollowed out and installed the military command post center for intercontinental ballistic missiles back in the Cold War era. For propaganda purposes, it would be a fantastic target. And it would kill a few thousand people maybe, but not hundreds of thousands. Well, that is only speculation. On the other hand, maybe they wouldn't mind killing off a few hundred thousand taxees after all. Then raise taxes on the ones remaining.
A few days ago I was reading some comments on some online message board. There were five or six people exchanging opinions there, one warmonger and the rest pro-peace. No matter what any of the pro-peace people said, the warmonger would always counter with some stupid remark about the others having 20/20 hindsight, or that the war on Iraq was somehow justified "based on the best information we had at the time." Well, I remember being one of 15 million people around the world who, a month before the official kickoff of the Iraq invasion, took to the streets with placards in opposition to the war. We did have better information at the time. Fifteen million of us knew then what people like the above mentioned warmonger are apparently just finding out now.
So I ask all of you reading this blog, if there is anybody reading this blog, help me get the word out. Go to the public online message boards. Especially ones of Senate and House members. Post messages warning that the war on Iran has already begun, and the official kickoff is coming soon, but it will be preceded by a 911 Part II.
PS: Keep your eyes out for mysterious sell-short put-options on the stock market!
-- American Heritage Dictionary.
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My dictionary also defines: bush - A low shrub with many branches. shrub - A woody plant of relatively low height, having several stems arising from the base and lacking a single trunk; a bush. weed - A plant considered undesirable, unattractive, or troublesome, especially one growing where it is not wanted Take your pick. |
It is all based on the grand facade of the United States being a democracy. Here is a reality check.
The great majority of people would love to see universal health care for everyone who does not presently have any health care plan. And since even in two-parent families, the mother usually has to work to make ends meet, my guess would be that universal preschool is very much desired. Now let's just take those two things only and calculate the annual cost. It comes to $135 billion. (REF: New York Times) Well, gee, some people might think, those things would be nice, ideally, but the money just isn't there.
But why is the money just not there? Well, for one thing, the war on Iraq is costing $200 billion annually. Do the math. Universal health care plus preschool, 135 billion, subtracted from the cost of war in Iraq, 200 billion, that still leaves 65 billion dollars for other useful purposes.
The majority very clearly do want health care. The majority very clearly do not want to wage war on a country halfway around the world that poses no threat and never did pose any threat to our country. So, in a democracy...
But when the senate timidly requested Weed and his Cabal to stop the war, Cheney lost no time is saying that they didn't care what anybody thinks. They have decided to continue and even escalate the war, so the war will be escalated.
So if the people do not want war, who does? Well, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, General Electric are a few names that come to mind.
Some Italian guy more than a half a century ago coined a term for the merger of government and big business. Who was that guy, and what did he call it? Hmm.
The Weed himself once said something to the effect that democratic nations don't go around attacking other countries and developing weapons of mass destruction (sorry, cannot find the exact quote, but something of that nature). Well, in addition to attacking two countries so far and with plans to attack others soon, he has also ordered an increase in the development of new nuclear weapons (while simultaneously demanding other countries to cease their development). So?
| It doesn't? Well then tell us, Mr. Seedy Gonzales, what is meant by "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." (Article IX of the Bill of Rights)? |
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If you have never read or heard of this book, it is highly recommended that you check it out. A person can easily read this entire book in a single sitting. Or, if you are the "show me" type like this blogger, you may want to spend a little more time, cross checking all of the facts with other reference materials. And guess what... they all check out. But don't take my word for it, do your own homework. And then you, too, can tell others, "... but don't take my word for it, do your own homework."
In its clear and concise style, the book answers all of those mysteries that lingered my in head when I graduated from high school and which it subsequently took me many years to find answers for. Case in point: the American people have always wanted peace, to live and let live. Right? And the same was true for the Vietnamese people (back in the 60s 70s as well as now) and the Japanese people a generation before that. So, (back in my school days) why were American young men going to Vietnam and killing its people? It did not make sense to me at the time, but when I learned that Ford Motors, DuPont Chemical, and other US companies were trading with Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo all throughout World War II, the gears in my head started grinding. And it was not until the current millennium that I learned that it was Prescott Bush, father of George H.W. (Poppy) Bush and grandfather of George W (Dubya) Bush who financed Hitler's war machine. Even after war was declared Germany by the US congress (December 1941), Prescott Bush continued to finance Hitler's war machine until the US government finally shut him down under the "Trading with the Enemy Act." (Although Addicted to War does not cover that particular point.)
Anyway, if you have not read the book, please do so. It is now an official part of the curriculum in San Francisco schools. Why not get in touch with the school board in your own community and ask them to do the same???
Since 1979, the IRS has been keeping tabs on the gap between the super-rich and everyone else. It probably comes as no surprise to you to learn that IRS data supports the age-old observation that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer." The richest one tenth of one percent of Americans (that calculates out to 300,000 people) saw their income rise by 27% last year raking in about 4.9 million dollars per household. That is not accumulated wealth we are talking about, but simply the amount they declared to the IRS as income in a single year. Putting it in a different perspective, this same group of 300,000 people had income far greater than the lower 120,000,000 million people combined. In other words, one rich person makes more money than 400 of the rest of us, or you could also say that such a person makes considerably more money in one day than any of us make in a year.
And yet another article on the same website as the above mentioned article says that the 400 richest of rich have a total accumulated wealth of 1.25 trillion dollars. That's "trillion" with a "tr," not an "m" or even a "b." In other words, 1,250,000,000,000 dollars. Count the zeros. If these 400 super-rich people were to pool their money and redistribute it to the rest of America, every man woman and child would receive 4000 dollars worth of the pie.
So what is the point of all this you may ask? In my blog of a couple of weeks ago I told you of an online video by the title of Who Controls the World giving a history and detailed look at the Illuminati, or the real Men Behind the Curtain, the men and women who control all world governments. Most of the video is not actual footage, but simply text scrolling on the screen with music in the background. And much of the text is difficult to read. Good news! I have found a text version, much friendlier to the eye. It will be posted on the Coalition of the Majority website within a few days.
The simple fact is, the rich are getting richer, and have been for many many years / decades / centuries and will continue to do so until they are stopped by the People. And needless to say, the poor are getting poorer, and ditto about past present and future. The Golden Rule has been paraphrased as "he who has the gold makes the rules." This may sound like a joke, but in the world as we know it, it is very true. The Illuminati have the gold, and they are the ones controlling the governments of the world, and thus making the rules. It could also be reversed, to say that he who makes the rules gets the gold. So whoever has the gold makes the rules, and whoever makes the rules gets the gold. Viscious circle. Hence, the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. And I absoluetly guarantee that this situation will continue UNTIL THE SHEOPLE WAKE UP AND DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
And if that doesn't happen soon, it will be too late, it will never happen. It may already be too late.
As I got closer and closer to finding them and naming names, suddely I came upon a video produced by somebody who has really done their homework. And this is not merely a simple list of names, it is more or less a history lesson. Except that it is a history lesson that they don't teach you in schools.
Hopefully this link will continue working...
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3891535120990840079
Your computer and web browser need the capability to play video in order to see this documentary, even though it is more for reading than it is for watching. Perhaps the creators of this work should consider publishing a text version. But in any case, if you want to know the "who" and the "how," it is all here in this video.
Which brings us to the next question: now that we know who and how, what are we going to do about it? Suggestions please?
Alright, so those are not his exact words. But pretty close.
Now this is a little bit old, so you may already know it, but in case not, you would not want to miss out on this. Surely you know by now that the day after the November 7 election, Rumsfeld was fired. And you may also remember Resident Shrub saying last April about speculation that Rumsfeld should go, "I have strong confidence in Don Rumsfeld. I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation but I'm the decider and I decide what is best and what's best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the Secretary of defense," and even as recent as the week before the election, the Mighty Shrub insisted that Rumsfeld would be staying the course. So how is it that the day after the election Rumsfeld gets the sack?
BUSH'S ACTUAL EXACT WORDS AT PRESS CONFERENCE:
STEVE HOLLAND, Reuters: Last week, you told us that Secretary Rumsfeld would be staying on. Why is the timing right now for this? And how much does it have to do with the election results?
GEORGE W. BUSH: Right. No, you and Hunt and Keil came into the Oval Office, and Hunt asked me the question and one week before the campaign. And, basically, are you going to do something about Rumsfeld and the vice president? And my answer was, no, they're going to stay on. And the reason why is I didn't want to inject a major decision about this war in the final days of a campaign. And so the only way to answer that question and to get you onto another question was to give you that answer.
So there you have it. The decider has decided. And the decider has decided on two things; 1) it is now time for Rumsfeld to go, and 2) it is perfectly acceptable to tell a lie, so long as some advantage can be gained from doing so. But remember, no telling lies if it does not meet that criteria! (Say, does anyone remember the so-called Downing Street memos? Did THOSE lies meet the criteria? Yes, by George, they did!) (Pun intended.)
the official White House press release.
It escapes my mind at the moment, who originally uttered those words that the more things change, the more they stay the same. But so true be it. The more things change, the more they really do stay the same. Take for instance back in 1986, when this blogger was still living in home country Japan. The prime minister at the time was Nakasone, a war-monger who had been lurking in the wings for some number of years, finally standing at the top. For the sake of brevity, I will not describe details here about his war-mongering past and present.
The point is, in a nutshell, that the LDP, (Nakasone's party, who held a majority in both houses of parliament as well as the prime ministership) had for at least a decade or so been trying to railroad a national sales tax though parliament. But even at the slightest whisper of it in the press, the People shouted it down. Anyone with a brain, or at least even half of one, knew at the time that Nakasone was out to railroad such a bill though parliament, whether the People wanted it or not. Or to be more precise, despite that the People did not. But Nakasone vehemently denied that.
An election loomed. Those of us who had at least half a brain, some of us more, knew damn well that Nakasone was lying through his teeth as he vehemently denied that he or his party had any intention of imposing a national sales tax. Right up until election day, he swore up and down that he would never allow such a tax to be passed.
But alas, election day came and Nakasone and his LDP heisted the election through gerrymandering and various other manipulation techniques (some semi-legal, others not).
The polls closed at eight that evening. And although this blogger does not know the exact time that the Special Session of Parliament was convened that evening, the fact is, before the sunrise the following morning (literally, not an exaggeration), Japan's legislature had enacted a new national sales tax. And it probably comes as no surprise to you that there were no opposition party members present in that parliamentary session, only LDP members.
So the next day, the news reporters asked the inevitable question, "Mr. Nakasone, all throughout the election campaigning that ended with yesterday's election, you swore up and down that you would never allow the introduction of a national sales tax. So how is it that between the time that the polls closed last night and sunrise this morning, we now have a new national sales tax?"*1
To which Nakasone replied nonchalantly, "Well, as you know, the idea of a national sales tax was highly unpopular among the People. So in the midst of an election campaign, what else would you expect me to say!"*1
Duh!
And the beat goes on.
*1: Not actual exact quotes, but the gist of what was said. If anyone can send me the actual exact quotes, I would very much like to publish them here.
Hugo Chavez, the outspoken president of Venezuela, has offered to sell heating oil at discounted prices to poor people in New York and Alaska. Did talk show host Neil Cavuto commend Chavez for his generosity? Did he compliment the act with a charitable offer of his own? No. He insinuated that by taking Chavez up on the cheap oil, these folks who would otherwise have to go cold are committing treason.
"Huh?" I can hear you saying, "treason? How could that possibly be?" Well I admit, at first the logic escaped me, too. But after considering the problem from a logical viewpoint for a few minutes, it all became very clear.
Consider the facts. Thousands of American soldiers have already died and tens of thousands maimed so far, with many more likely deaths and
P>
iACTUAL WORDS AT PRESS CONFERENCE: of STEVE HOLLAND, Reuters: keeping oil prices high so as to keep oil companies' profits high. So by taking Chavez up on the offer of low-priced oil, these impoveriGEORGE W. BUSH:s are negating the effects that the soldiers are dying for. That is treason.
It is an unforgivable sin. If soldiers are willing to sacrifice their lives for the oil companies, the very least these destitute scoundrels should do is either pay the full price to the oil companies for their heating oil or be willing to freeze to death. If they can't do that, send them to the gulags.
And so, as the great majority of pro-peace, pro-choice, pro-liberty, pro-rights, pro-Constitution groups and individuals around the USA rejoice, we must ask what there really is to celebrate. Congratulations America, for having chosen the lesser of two evils, despite the uphill battle of having to combat the odds of rampant election fraud.
So for the next two years, we shall all be travelling down the road to hell at 100 miles per hour instead of the 200 miles per hour we've been doing for the past six years. This is good news? Well, while this blogger can hardly rejoice at the "good" news, he must at least concede that 100 mph is not as bad as 200 mph. But the fact remains, we are still in dire straights. And don't forget it.
Duh!
This is so absurd, I just have to let you all read it for yourself. The original is here on the official GOP website. But I am copy/pasting the entire article here in addition, just in case he GOPpers realize how absurd it sounds and delete it from their own website.
This blogger sure would love to have a list of names of people who believe this. According to a poll of my own, people who believe this are also very likely to be interested in purchasing oceanfront property in Arizona at very reasonable prices, and it just so happens that this blogger has an unlimited supply of such property that he would be very willing to sell.
Biased And Inaccurate Predictions Have Led To Poor
GOP Exit Poll Showings In Past Three National Elections
_______________________________________
FAST FACTS ON EXIT POLLING
Election Experts Believe Exit Polls Give An Edge And Sway Towards Democrat Candidates.
National Exit Polls Will Skew In Favor Of Democrats This Year, Due To Large Numbers Of Uncontested Democrat Seats In The House Of Representatives.
Early Exit Polling Returns In 2004 Were Widely Inaccurate, Declaring Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) To Be The Next President Of The United States And Republicans Barely Holding A One Seat Majority In The U.S. Senate.
In The 2002 Midterm Elections, Exit Polling Produced Unusable Data.
In 2000, Exit Polling Malfunctioned And Incorrectly Projecting Vice President Al Gore As The Winner Of The Crucial Battleground State Of Florida.
EXIT POLLS TRADITIONALLY HAVE A DEMOCRAT BIAS
Exit Polls Give Democrats An Edge:
Exit Polling Always Tends To "Give An Edge To Democratic Candidates." President of Mitofsky International, Warren Mitofsky: "Mitofsky said exit polls have always tended to give an edge to Democratic candidates ..." (John Cook, "Early Exit Polls Overstated Kerry Results, Media Group Says," Chicago Tribune, 1/20/05)
"[Mitofsky] Said That For Reasons That Remain Unclear, Democratic Voters Are More Likely Than Republicans To Agree To Interview Requests From Pollsters."
(John Cook, "Early Exit Polls Overstated Kerry Results, Media Group Says," Chicago Tribune, 1/20/05)
Democrats More Likely Than Republicans To Respond To Exit Polls:
October 2006 Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll Found Democrats Were More Likely To Respond To Exit Polls Than Republicans.
72% Of Democrats Responded They Were Very Or Somewhat Likely To Fill Out Questionnaire, Compared To 66% Of Republicans.
(Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 10/26/06)
44% Of Democrats Claimed They Were Very Likely To Fill Out Exit Poll Survey, Compared To 35% Of Republicans.
(Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 10/26/06)
Democrats (37%-10%) And Republicans (25%-18%) Agreed That Democrats Are More Likely To Share How They Voted With A Pollster They Do Not Know.
(Fox News/Opinion Dynamics Poll, 10/26/06)
In 2006, Exit Polls Skew In Favor Of Democrats, Due To Large Numbers Of Uncontested Seats In The House:
In 2006, There Are Over 40 Uncontested Democrat Seats And 10 Uncontested GOP Seats, Which Will Overstate National Democrat House Vote In Exit Polling. (National Journal Website, www.nationaljournal.com, Accessed 11/6/06)
In 2004, There Were 39 Uncontested Republican Seats, Compared To 30 Uncontested Democrat Seats.
(National Journal Website, www.nationaljournal.com, Accessed 11/6/06)
In 2002, There Were 45 Uncontested Republican Seats, Compared To 36 Uncontested Democrat Seats.
(National Journal Website, www.nationaljournal.com, Accessed 11/6/06)
IN 2004, EXIT POLLING PREDICTED OVERWHELMING DEMOCRAT VICTORIES
In 2004, Exit Polls "Got All Of The Bush States Wrong" - Predictions Were "Most Skewed" Since Exit Polling Began:
Exit Polls Showed Across-The-Board Failure. "[T]he networks did get the exit polls wrong. Not just one of them. They got all of the Bush states wrong." (Dick Morris, "Those Faulty Exit Polls Were Sabotage," The Hill, 11/4/04)
"It Was Dej? Vu All Over Again With Major Embarrassment For Exit Pollsters Since It Was Clear That They Way Underestimated Bush's Support In States Like Virginia That The President Won Handily Once The Real Vote Came In."
(Deborah Orin et. al., "Voters Choose Double Dubya," New York Post, 11/3/04)
USA Today: "In fact, the 2004 numbers were the most skewed since joint exit polling began in the 1980s." (Editorial, "Exit Polls' Cloud Crystal Ball," USA Today, 1/20/05)
The [Cleveland, OH] Plain Dealer:
| Excuse me, did I just hear you say that programming errors and other technical glitches...produced the most inaccurate information in the past five presidential elections? And you are referring to... the exit polls? (Perhaps the exit polls should use the same software used in the voting machines?) |
San Francisco Chronicle:
"If exit polls have a role at all, they need to be staged carefully and handled with caution. Along with improved methods, the report [by firms who came up with flawed 2004 exit polls] suggested that no numbers be released to news organizations until near the end of Election Day. That's the least poll-takers can do." (Editorial, "Exit-Poll Errors," San Francisco Chronicle, 1/21/05)
In 2004, National Election Pool (NEP) Incorrectly Projected Victories For Sen. John Kerry (D-MA):
"ABC, AP, CBS, CNN, Fox, And NBC ... Created The National Election Pool To Provide Tabulated Vote Counts And Exit Poll Surveys ... These Six Major News Organization, In A Joint Decision ... Appointed Edison Media Research And Mitofsky International As The Sole Provider Of Exit Polls ..." (Exit-Poll.net Website, http://www.exit-poll.net/, Accessed 10/24/06)
"In The 32 States With Exit Poll Estimates For Both A Presidential Race And A Senate Race The Average Error On The Difference Between The Top Two Candidates Was 5.0 Points In The Democratic Direction For President And 3.6 Points In The Democratic Direction For Senate." (Edison Media Research And Mitofsky International, "Evaluation Of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 For The National Election Pool," 1/19/05, p. 20)
Iowa: NEP Projected Sen. Kerry Winning By 1% - President Bush Carried Iowa By .7%;
Nevada: NEP Projected Sen. Kerry Winning By 1.4% - President Bush Carried Nevada By 2.6%;
New Mexico: NEP Projected Sen. Kerry Winning By 4.2%- President Bush Carried New Mexico By .8%;
Ohio: NEP Projected Sen. Kerry Winning By 6.5% - President Bush Carried By 2.1%;
NEP's Exit Poll Projections Underestimated President Bush's Support In Several Key States:
Minnesota: NEP Projected Sen. Kerry Winning By 14.3% -- Sen. Kerry Won By 3.5%;
New Hampshire: NEP Projected Sen. Kerry Winning By 15% -- Sen. Kerry Won By 1.4%;
North Carolina: NEP Projected President Bush Winning By 3.6% -- President Bush Won By 12.4%;
Pennsylvania: NEP Projected Sen. Kerry Winning By 13.8% -- Sen. Kerry Won By 2.3%;
Wisconsin: NEP Projected Sen. Kerry Winning By 5.7% -- Sen. Kerry Won By .4%.
(Edison Media Research And Mitofsky International, "Evaluation Of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 For The National Election Pool," 1/19/05, p. 21-22)
NEP's Exit Poll Projections Had Republicans Winning Only 51 Senate Seats Instead Of 55 Seats They Hold Now:
Alaska: NEP Projected Former Gov. Tony Knowles (D-AK) Senate Victory; Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) Won;
Florida: NEP Projected Dem Betty Castor (D-FL) Senate Victory; Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) Won;
Kentucky: NEP Projected Dem Dan Mongiardo (D-KY) Senate Victory; Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) Won;
North Carolina: NEP Projected Dem Erskine Bowles (D-NC) Senate Victory; Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) Won.
(Edison Media Research And Mitofsky International, "Evaluation Of Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 For The National Election Pool," 1/19/05, p. 23)
Political Professionals Agree 2004 Highlighted Exit Polling's Failures:
Zogby International's John Zogby: "I'm not sure that I will ever believe an exit poll again ... How could they have been so way off? They were worse than virtually every pre-election poll." (John Cook, "Early Exit Polls Overstated Kerry Results, Media Group Says," Chicago Tribune, 1/20/05)
Zogby:
"The sum total of what we got today is enough to suggest that there should never be exit polls again." (Donald Lambro, "Polling Firms Blame Youth, Leaks For Errors," The Washington Times, 1/20/05)
The Washington Post's Director Of Polling Richard Morin: "[T]he 2004 election may have finally stripped exit polling of its reputation as the crown jewel of political surveys, somehow immune from the myriad problems that affect telephone polls and other types of public opinion surveys." (Richard Morin, Op-Ed, "Surveying The Damage," The Washington Post, 11/21/04)
Morin:
"Instead, this face-to-face, catch-the-voters-on-the-way-out poll has been revealed for what it is: just another poll, with all the problems and imperfections endemic to the craft." (Richard Morin, Op-Ed, "Surveying The Damage," The Washington Post, 11/21/04)
President Of Mason-Dixon Polling Firm Brad Corker: "Exit Polls Are Often Wrong". "[B]rad Coker, president of the Mason-Dixon polling firm that called Bush's 2.5-percentage-point win in Ohio practically right on the nose for The Plain Dealer, says ... exit polls are often wrong." (Ted Diadiun, "Rest Assured, We Checked Out Election 2004 Thoroughly," The [Cleveland] Plain Dealer, 6/18/06)
"Herb Asher, An Ohio State University Political Scientist, Said Election Results Don't Necessarily Reflect Exit Polls." (John Nolan, "Forty Voters Want November Election Results Thrown Out," The Associated Press, 12/14/04)
Asher:
"We all know that exit polls can be wrong. Exit polls are basically a sample." (John Nolan, "Forty Voters Want November Election Results Thrown Out," The Associated Press, 12/14/04)
CNN's Bill Schneider: "The lesson here is put not your faith in exit polls ... particularly if the exit poll is close ... Exit polls are designed for analysis. ... They are not very good ..." (William Douglas, "Turnout: The Early Exit Polls Mostly Wrong," Detroit Free Press, 11/4/04)
Then-CNN Anchor Judy Woodruff: "People want to jump on (exit polls) because they are the first little sliver, little shred of evidence ... It's dangerous to seize on those numbers and assume anything - and yet that's what happened." (Michelle Mittelstadt, "Exit Poll Group Assailed For Erroneous Early Results," The Dallas Morning News, 11/4/04)
Pollster Andrew Kohut: "[D]oing [exit polls] on the fly has led us astray." (Michelle Mittelstadt, "Exit Poll Group Assailed For Erroneous Early Results," The Dallas Morning News, 11/4/04)
EXIT POLLS WERE ALSO WIDELY INACCURATE IN 2002 AND 2000 ELECTIONS
FLASHBACK FACT: In 2002 Midterms, Exit Polls Were Scrapped Due To Inaccuracy:
VNS Consortium Scrapped 2002 National Exit Polls Because It Could Not Guarantee Accuracy. "Voter News Service abandoned its state and national exit poll plans for Election Night, saying it could not guarantee the accuracy of the analysis which media organizations use to help explain why people voted as they did." ("VNS Abandons National Exit Poll Operation, A Setback For Revamped Elections System," The Associated Press, 11/6/02)
"The Exit Poll Failure Was A Major Setback For VNS - A Consortium Consisting Of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox And The AP. VNS Had Completely Rebuilt Its System In Response To The 2000 Election, When Television Networks Twice Used Its Information To Make Wrong Calls In The Decisive Florida Vote For The Presidential Election." ("VNS Abandons National Exit Poll Operation, A Setback For Revamped Elections System," The Associated Press, 11/6/02)
Zogby International's John Zogby:
"The early [2002] exit-poll data was awful. ... And it came with the caveat that it was unreliable. Can you imagine a doctor saying that about a diagnosis? What a mess!" (Beth Gillin, "Media Organizations Discuss What Went Wrong With Exit-Poll Service," The Philadelphia Inquirer, 11/7/02)
FLASHBACK FACT: In 2000 Presidential Campaign, Exit Polls Were Badly Flawed In Critical State Of Florida:
In 2000, Exit Polls Were Badly Flawed In Critical State Of Florida. "[S]ome bad assumptions led Voter News Service, the television network exit poll consortium, to make and then retract two dramatic election-night predictions on the winner of the presidential race in Florida." (Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, "Why The Fla. Exit Polls Were Wrong," The Washington Post, 11/8/00)
Networks Blame Incorrect Projections On Erroneous Exit Polling. "[The networks] concluded the problems were largely due to bad information supplied by Voter News Service, an exit poll consortium run by television networks and Associated Press." (Elizabeth Jensen and Megan Garvey, "TV Election Gaffes Called Statistical, Not Political," Los Angeles Times, 2/9/01)
CBS' Director Of Surveys Kathy Frankovic: "In the Tampa area, the exit poll results from the [sample] precincts turned out to be more Democratic than the vote turned out to be." (Richard Morin and Claudia Deane, "Why The Fla. Exit Polls Were Wrong," The Washington Post, 11/8/00)
Experts Lament Exit Polling's "Poor" Predictions In 2000. "Paul Biemer, a statistician hired to review the VNS methodology, reported that 49 percent of those surveyed leaving the polls declined to respond. In the parlance of his trade, Mr. Biemer said 'a non-response rate of this magnitude is a potential source of statistical bias in the model projections ...' In other words, exit polls are poor predictors." (Jules Witcover, Op-Ed, "Voters Don't Need Instant TV Results," The [Baltimore, MD] Sun, 2/16/01)
Faulty Media Reports In 2000 Impacted Florida Panhandle And Congressional Races:
"About 7:50 P.M. EST Tuesday, Less Than An Hour After Most Of The Polls Closed In Florida, Both CBS And NBC Declared Mr. Gore The Winner In That State, A Decision Based Largely Upon Exit Polls Conducted By Voter News Service. Fox News, CNN And ABC Followed Within Minutes." (John Godfrey, "Tauzin Plans Hearings On Gaffe," The Washington Times, 11/10/00)
"A Survey Conducted By John McLaughlin & Associates Found That The Early And Incorrect News Network Announcements Declaring Al Gore The Winner In Florida May Have Influenced Thousands Of Last-Minute Voters In The Central Time Zone Section Of The Florida Panhandle Not To Vote. The Premature Announcement Discouraged Many Registered Voters Who, According To [The] Survey's Results, Would Have Voted Like The Rest Of Their Neighbors - Overwhelmingly For George W. Bush."
(McLaughlin & Associates Website, "Panhandle Poll Summary," www.mclaughlinonline.com, Press Release, 11/20/00)"
Although the average life span for Japanese women is in the 80s and that for men is late 70s, it is doubtful that constitutions share in that longevity. Japan's Constitution, one of the best ever written, seems to be on its last legs. In fact, this blogger was pleasantly surprised to see that it has not completely bitten the dust already by this time. The men behind the curtain, the same ones who own Wall Street, the Square Mile, and Kabutocho, the same ones who control whoever happens to be the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and 10 Downing Street, now also have near total control of Nagatocho as well. Those same demons have had Article 9 of Japan's Constitution in their cross hairs for decades. And in recent times, it is not only Article 9 but the whole kit and caboodle.
And what could be more abominable to those ghoulish fiends who prey on the blood and ignorance of the masses of proletarians than peace based on justice and order ! Imagine the horror for the stockholders and board of directors of companies like Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Raytheon, et al. and their Japanese counterparts upon hearing that land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained! But that is exactly what it says in Article 9.
For those who may be unfamiliar, Article 9 states, "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."
And there is more to it than just that. The preface of the Constitution states that the Japanese people shall "never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government" and goes on to say that "[t]his is a universal principle of mankind." In fact, the preface mentions peace and peaceful five times in all. And not only that, the Constitution expounds such principles as freedom and human rights. It ranks the government as being subservient to the people instead of the other way around. Clearly, this sort of impudence can not be tolerated by the men behind the curtain. It has got to go. In its place, a new document as is now waiting in the wings, ready to be thrust upon the people, which instead of emphasizing peace will emphasize the supremacy of the Japanese government and the obligation of the people to make whatever sacrifices their leaders determine as necessary. And as the September 11, 2006 attacks demonstrated beyond any shadow of a doubt, just as Herman Goering explained in such easy to understand terms back in 1946, Of course the people don't want war. But after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.
We have seen how beautifully the Goering principle worked in the United States in September 2001, exactly as it was predicted by PNAC just one year earlier in September of 2000 on page 63 of their "Rebuilding America's Defences" white paper, "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor."
Will the North Korea provide Japan's catastrophic and catalyzing event like a New Pearl Harbour? Only PNAC know for sure.
Move over Iran. You are no longer the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism.
In other news, Japan's new prime minister Abe (grandson of war criminal Kishi) said today, "Criticism that (our) purpose for revising the Constitution is to create a country that will engage in war overseas is completely off the target." He is referring, of course, to the ploy by warmongers in the Japanese parliament who wish to delete Article 9 from the Constitution. Article 9 bans Japan from ever again wreaking death and destruction on its neighbors, as it did in the 1930s and 1940s. But if you do not intend to engage in war overseas, Mr. Abe, could you please tell us why you are so hell-bent on deleting Article 9?
Meanwhile, Kim Jon Il, dictator of North Korea and a warmonger himself, plays right into the hands of Abe and his cronies and the warmongers in the US by announcing that he will conduct a nuclear bomb test in the near future. Nice move Kim. The Carlyle Group commends you.
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"Halliburton is a unique kind of company." -- Dick Cheney, September 2003 |
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"Since leaving Halliburton to become George Bush's vice-president, I've severed all of my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind." Former CEO Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, September 2003 |
Annual payments that Cheney has received from Halliburton since he's been vice-president:
By now, everybody has probably heard Pink's song "Dear Mr. President" and probably seen the video. Well, there are two new versions of it. The song itself is only modified a very tiny bit, but the scenes of video accompre different. The two versions are here and here. In addition to Pink's two new versions, singer Jamison Hodge also has a song by the same title, which you can listen to here. His version is an entirely different song, but the title and message are the same as in Pink's song.
Now that you have calmed yourself listening to Pink and Jamison Hodge, and you know that there really are still some peace-loving and compassionate people in this world, prepare for the bad news.
A few months ago, as you may recall, several retired army generals demanded the resignation of Secretary of Offence Donald Rumsfeld. Yesterday, again three generals testified to a Senate committee about the botched job he did in Iraq, and how it is making America less and less safe as this unjust war continues to create more and more new enemies. And of course, the generals reiterated the demand for Rummy to step down. That, in itself, is not bad news. You can read the article in the Washington Post.
Joseph Goebbels... Oops, I mean Tony Snow denied the fact that the NIE report made any such reference, as we could have easily predicted. But we already know the content of the report. How can he expect anyone to believe his denial when we have already read the report? I don't know, that is beyond my understanding. But he went on to reveal the Cabal's plans for our future.
In regard to the National Intelligence Assessment (NIE) report, here is what Phony Tony had to say. "It assesses that a variety of factors, in addition to Iraq, fuel the spread of jihadism, including longstanding social grievances, slowness of the pace of reform and the use of the Internet."
So on one hand, he denies that the war against Iraq has anything to do with the increase in the number of jihadists, and on the other hand, he states three more factors in addition to Iraq that are fueling the spread of jihadism. For a moment, please put this self-contradiction to one side and look at the rest of his message. Longstanding social grievances (perhaps reference to animosity among Baathists, Sunnis, and Shiites?) are somehow causing them to cooperate in launching attacks on America? I don't quite get that logic, but I am not a scholar well-versed in Middle-East affairs, so how could a dork like me be expected to understand. And another factor is slowness of the pace of reform? What reform?
I hope you are sitting down for this one.
While the above claims can simply be chalked up to stupidity, the last one is truly frightening. The inference that one of the factors fueling violence is alleged to be the use of the Internet. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to put two and two together, folks. You know what they have up their sleeve.
When they come for my keyboard, they can have it when they pry it from my cold dead hands.
To make a long story short, it all started out when a reporter asked Dubya what he thought of Colin Powell's suggestion that people are beginning to have second thoughts about the righteousness of the "War of Terror" currently being waged. It sort of boils down to making a comparison between the bad guys who murder innocent women, men, and children and torture their victims as opposed to the good guys who murder innocent women, men, and children and torture their vicitms. Now we all know, or at least we are supposed to know, that the good guys do such things only in order to stop the bad guys from doing it, but the bad guys do such things because they are evildoers. Well I hope you, dear reader, do not make such a comparison between what the bad guys are doing and what the good guys are doing, because the Furher has said that even to think such a thing is unacceptable. That would make you guilty of thought crime.
Sixth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America |
Enforcing the principle of habeas corpus, according to mr. Hunter, would be tantamount to surrender to the terrorists. And as we all know, the terrorists are those nasty evil people who hate us because we have things like a Constitution that guarantees habeas corpus, the right to be confronted by our accusers, and all that stuff. So in order to defend our way of life, which includes things like the right of habeas corpus, the right to know what law we are charged with violating, the right to confront our accuser, the prohibition of torture, the obligation to abide by International Treaties (including those "quaint" ones like the Geneva Conventions), we must deny those very same things to the nasty evildoer terrorists. And if you question that logic, my friend, you are guilty of thought crime.
My worst nightmare is playing itself out right before my eyes. I keep pinching myself, but just cannot seem to wake up.
In this nightmare, Bush, Cheny, Rumsfeld, Rice, et al. are all impeached, tried for war crimes, convicted, and hanged. Across the Atlantic, Blair et al. ditto. And the people rejoice. And in this nightmare, I rejoice with them. That is the good part. The bad part is, even as all the people rejoice and dance and sing "Hail, Hail, the devil's are gone," little do they know, they have only eliminated the symptoms of the disease, but the disease itself that is eventually going to kill them has not been eradicated.
Little do the people know, in this nightmare, that nothing has changed. The powers that were, are the powers that still be. George Blair, Tony Bush, Condeleeza Rumsfeld, Donald Cheney, and all the rest, they were never in charge to begin with. More than simple pawns, for sure, but in a game of chess, even the knights, rooks, and bishops sometimes have to be sacrificed for the higher cause.
And they were.
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Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US
Clandestine, foreign government, and media reports indicate Bin Ladin since 1997' has wanted to conduct terrorist attacks in the US. Bin Ladin implied in US television interviews in 1997 and 1998 that his followers would follow the example of World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef and "bring the fighting to America." After US missile strikes on his base in Afghanistan in 1998, Bin Ladin told followers he wanted to retaliate in Washington, according to a [CENSORED] service. An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [CENSORED] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike. The millennium plotting in Canada in 1999 may have been part of Bin Ladin's first serious attempt to implement a terrorist strike in the US. Convicted plotter Ahmed Ressam has told the FBI that he conceived the idea to attack Los Ange, thtles International Airport himself, but that Bin Ladin lieutenant Abu Zubaydah encouraged him and helped facilitate the operation. Ressam also said that in 1998 Abu Zubaydah was planning his own US attack. Ressam says Bin Ladin was aware of the Los Angeles operation. Although Bin Ladin has not succeeded, his attacks against the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 demonstrate that he prepares operations years in advance and is not deterred by setbacks. Bin Ladin associates surveilled our Embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam as early as 1993, and some members of the Nairobi cell planning the bombings were arrested and deported in 1997. Al-Qa'ida members -- including some who are US citizens -- have resided in or traveled to the US for years, and the group apparently maintains a support structure that could aid attacks. Two al-Qa'ida members found guilty in the conspiracy to bomb our Embassies in East Africa were US citizens, and a senior EIJ member lived in California in the mid-1990s. A clandestine source said in 1998 that a Bin Ladin cell in New York was recruiting Muslim-American youth for attacks. We have not been able to corroborate some of the more sensational threat reporting, such as that from a [CENSORED] service in 1998 saying that Bin Ladin wanted to hijack a US aircraft to gain the release of "Blind Shaykh" 'Umar' Abd aI-Rahman and other US-held extremists. Nevertheless, FBI information since that time indicates patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks, including recent surveillance of federal buildings in New York. The FBI is conducting approximately 70 full field investigations throughout the US that it considers Bin Ladin-related. CIA and the FBI are investigating a call to our Embassy in the UAE in May saying that a group of Bin Ladin supporters was in the US planning attacks with explosives. |
This document seems to support the "they knew in advance, but they let it happen" theory. However, if you believe, as I do, not that "they let it happen" but in fact "they made it happen," this would imply that whoever prepared that report must have not been a part of the conspiracy. So does that mean Condi was not in on it? Or, does it mean that someone working for her who was not in on it drew up the report. If that is the case, by choosing not to submit the report to the Resident, it would have implicated her as being part of the plot. You decide.
Now we all know that the zaibatsu in Japan (Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Sumitomo, Yasuda, and their underlings) made plenty of of money during WW2 by trading with US corporations (DuPont, Ford, General Electric, and others). It mattered not to them that Japanese people were being slaughtered by the millions, just so long as the money kept rolling in. Who knows, maybe some of the chemicals used in the incendiary bombs dropped on Tokyo by B-29s on the night/morning of March 9/10 (killing 100,000 Japanese women and children) were produced by Sumitomo Chemicals? Or, possibly some of the chemicals used in the production of poison gas used by the Japanese Imperial army to kill hundreds of thousands of Chinese might have come from DuPont? We don't know, we can only speculate.
I can just visualize the scene behind the closed doors of the Carlyle Group's secret meeting place. All of them grinning from ear to ear with dollar signs in their eyes as they dance on the boardroom table. The men behind the curtain have chosen Abe Shinzo to replace Koizumi as prime minister when the "election" is held later this month. Of course, there are a couple of other token candidates, but the outcome has already been decided.
Abe (not "Abe" as in "honest Abe," but pronounced "ah" as in "Arlington" and "be" as in "beta") is the grandson of Kishi Nobusuke. Kishi was in charge of exploitation of Manchuria in the late 1930s when Japan had colonized most of Asia until he became Minister of Commerce around the time the US entered WW2. After the war he was arrested as a class A war criminal, but when seven of his colleagues were hanged, others given prison sentences, Kishi was released. No explanation. Rumor has it that he had made a deal with the CIA. I have no facts to either back up nor debunk that rumor, so take it for what it is worth. And Kishi's grandson Abe also has a strong reputation as a warmonger.
This article in the Japan Times Abe expresses intent to revise Constitution to exercise collective defense explains Abe's intention to "revise" the Constitution. If somehow he should fail in the attempt to throw out the Constitution by quasi-legal means, he will simply adopt the Bush strategy and declare, "it means whatever I say it means."
Meanwhile, Nakasone Yasuhiro, another known warmonger from way back, has returned. A few years ago, the ruling politburo came to the conclusion that he was getting too old and they decided to put the old boy out to pasture. But as the war drums get lounder, the men behind the curtain are leaving no stone unturned, and have taken the old boy out of mothballs and back into war service. Nakasone was chosen to write the new preamble to Japan's new constitution-to-be.
In the current Constitution, the preamble says in part,
Nakasone has long been known not only as a mere warmonger, but an advocate of builiding up a nuclear arsenal. Here is another article in the Japan Times entitled, Nakasone proposes Japan consider nuclear weapons. No surprise, from this warmonger. And Nakasone has finally joined the Orwellian Newspeak club, saying, "the country should consider the nuclear option while at the same time maintaining its nonnuclear status and endeavoring to strengthen the nonproliferation regime."
Meanwhile, back in the Carlyle Group boardroom, a bottle of champagne is opened as the festivities shift into high gear.
It happened at a press conference, when Fox News correspondent Tony Snow was unavailable to entertain the reporters. (Perhaps Mr. Snow was too busy reporting on the prime suspect in a ten year old murder case -- what was wearing, what he ate, what kind of magazines and magazine articles the suspect was reading and other working on a ten year old murder case of a little girl, and/or trying to tie Michael Jackson into the said murder case), pResident George Dubya Bush filled in for Tony the tiger Snow. When a reporter asked, "What did Iraq have to do with the attack on the World Trade Center?" the Fearless Fuhrer replied, "Nothing!"
This is the first known truth spoken by p Resident Dubya in the six years of occupation of the White House. What next, Condi hinting at the truth? Or do we have to wait a bit longer for that?
In any case, what it all means is that the SSS aka Vampires aka Plutocrats aka Illuminati may be getting ready to come out of the closet. EN MASSE! Like cockroaches crawling around in the dark, like Orwell's pigs occupying the human residence, they are about to come out and say to the sheople what we enlightened ones have known all aloKiP>
Do not be surprised to hear truth emanating from the mouth of Condi, just because you have never heard such a thing before. Do not assume it will never happen. Condi will in the near future come out with a true statement, you just wait and see.
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Goering: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
Goering: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country." |
But not only have the plutocrats been using the exact same formula for rallying the sheople 'round the flag and marching to the beat of wardrums, even the locking of the doors after the horses are gone, even that has become so predictable that it is obscene. As if real terrorists would be stupid enough to come up with a clever plan like blowing up airplanes with liquid explosives in soft drink bottles, have the plan exposed before they could carry it out, and then use the same modus operandi again? No, real terrorists are not so stupid. Only the sheople are that stupid. The sheople have had war after war after war fobbed off on them by the very same techniques, but no matter how many times it happens, they still fall for it again and again. So. No liquids on airplanes any more. And you have the terrorists to blame for this.
So what? Well, you've just been on a 12 hour flight. (Actually, 7 hours standing in line, 5 hours in the air.) Your wife/husband/lover is waiting at the airport to greet you. Freshen up with a little mouthwash and cologne before landing? Touch up your make-up? Sorry, no can do. And it is all the fault of those nasty terrorists.
The question everyone needs to be asking at this moment, though, is "who are the real terrorists?"
Ask not what your government can do for you, Ask what your govenment can do (and is doing) TO you!
I am able to say this quite frankly without hesitation and not have to be concerned that I might hurt any one's feelings or have them be angry with me, because that is a large part of what it is all about; our way of life, and our freedoms. Freedom to say what we think. My comrades will no more be angry with me for disagreeing with them than I shall be about their disagreeing with me.
So what is it that I think is so silly?
Cindy Sheehan, a woman for whom I have great admiration, and CodePink founder Diane Wilson and many others including celebrities, are doing what they call the "troops home FAST." Now just in case you are unfamiliar with that, these people, and many followers around the USA and I don't know if there are others in any countries, but these people are fasting in the call to bring US military troops back to the US (which they never had any business leaving in the first place). Certainly I agree with that part, about pulling the soldiers out of Afghanistan, Iraq, and everywhere else where they have no business being. What I disagree with is the so-called fast.
Perhaps Mahatma Mohandas Ghandi is their inspiration for the hunger strike. Again, a person for whom I have great respect. But in the humble opinion of this blogger, the "troops home FAST" so-called hunger strike does nothing but belittle and make light of Ghandi's great sacrifice.
Let us take a look at the facts. First of all, Ghandi launched his hunger strike with the intent of either accomplishing his goal, or his own demise, whichever came first. He had no intention whatsoever to break his fast before his demands were met. And it was knowing this fact that his followers complied with his request. If Ghandi had announced that he was not going to eat either until his demands were met OR until such-and-such a date, who would have listened? Cindy has vowed to fast either until her demands are met or until September 2, whichever comes first. (Are you on the edge of your chair?)
The second major problem is this. Ghandi was perplexed when his own followers failed to heed his beckoning. Nearly every person in all of India loved and revered Ghandi, Moslem and Hindu alike. And yet the Hindus and Moslems were fighting and killing each other (due to instigation by the British). So if Ghandi had died, Moslems would have lost a great spiritual leader, and so would the Hindus. They would both be greatly saddened by his death. And each and every Hindu, each and every Moslem, would have to ask themselves if they were responsible for the death of their great and beloved prophet. And even though the British had created a hatred between these two groups where none had existed before, and fanned the flames up high, the two groups finally stopped killing each other. Ghandi had succeeded. And only then did he begin to eat again.
Cindy has set a date to end her fast if (yeah, right, "IF") her demands are not met by then. Other CodePink fasters are fasting for a day, only to be replaced by another volunteer faster who will also fast for a day, to be replaced...
Total poppycock. And I do not mean this as an insult any of my friends, but it is meaningless. Even if the hunger strikers intended to continue to refuse food until either their demands are met or until they meet their maker, as Ghandi did intend, it would still be useless. In Ghandi's case, it was his own followers who held the key to Ghandi's life or death. Do Diane Wilson et al's followers hold the key to stopping the war? Would Bush, bLiar, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and the rest of the Men Behind the Curtain be saddened by the loss of Diane Wilson, Cindy Sheehan, Susan Sarandon, et al? Well, duh, so far these evil creatures have already sacrificed more than 2500 American soldier plus 100,000 Iraqi children and women. Would they miss Cindy Sheehan and a bunch of other pro-peace activists?
And then came the kicker. Until this morning, I had understood the "fast" to mean that the "fasters" would not eat during the so-called fasting period. Guess what? Juice (a kind of liquid food) is OK. Ice cream (a frozen kind of food) is OK. Protein powder (a solid form of food) is also OK. There's a whole list of things that it is OK to eat (like slices avocado and banana) while you are on your 24-hour hunger strike. Hey, ya'all, just add pizza and beer to the list and I may join the hunger strike!
So how is a hunger strike a hunger strike when
1) you are eating food
2) you are dieting only for a limited time
3) you do not risk any health consequences (like death for instance).
Actually, I think I may join the hunger strike even if pizza and beer are not added to the menu. The CodePink hunger strike rules ask people to commit to a minimum of 24 hours. I will commit to that. Starting midnight tonight until 8:00 o'clock tomorrow morning, and ditto for the next two more days after that, for a total of 24 hours, I will eat nothing but fruit juice, ice cream, avocado and banana slices, and protein powder.
What would the people of impoverished countries think of this? Many of such people only get as much nourishment in a week as these so-called "hunger strikers" get per day.
Cindy Sheehan became a pro-peace symbol when she did what she felt she had to do after her son was murdered by the Men Behind the Curtain. She did not set out to become a pro-peace symbol, it just happened. Over the course of time, the whole flock of pro-peace sheople have been hijacked.
As further evidence, even the slogans are starting to sound like government Newspeak, like the play on words "troops home FAST." I haven't heard a clever pun like that since Senator Ron Wyden's CAN SPAM ACT of 2003 (Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act) or the PATRIOT ACT (Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism) before that! ...and the twisting of meaning of words. How can one reconcile fasting with a diet of juice, ice cream, avocados and bananas? That reconciles about as easily as War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
To this blogger, it appears that the pro-peace movement, if there is/was such a thing, has been hijacked by the neocons, the Illuminati, the Men Behind the Curtain.
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CORRECION:
This paragraph originally erroneously stated 1993 instead of 1933 as the date of Hitler's ascending to chancellor. Sorry if that typo confused anyone. |
So who are they, and what are they doing now? Many people refer to this group as "the Illuminati," which more or less means "the enlightened ones." This blogger has traditionally referred to them as the plutocrats, which is probably the most accurate word to describe them in the dictionary sense. But in a more symbolic or metaphoric sense, I also often refer to them as the Vampires. This is because the mythical vampire creature must surely have been created based on these very same fiends. Since times immortal, they have pitted common man against common man in battles and warfare, the Group getting richer and more powerful with each drop of blood shed by the common man. And like vampires in the night, they must do everything in the cover of darkness, and behind closed doors. If sunlight shines upon these creatures of darkness, and their true nature and doings are exposed to the light of day, they perish. Like Tom DeLay, whose dirty dealings have been exposed to sunlight. And as George "Poppy" Bush (Bush senior) once told a colleague, "Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched*."
Call them Illuminati, Plutocrats, Vampires, or the Men Behind the Curtain. Call them by any name you prefer, in any case, we are still speaking of the same evil doers. The ones who throughout the centuries, indeed, throughout the millennia, have successfully duped the common people, and made themselves richer and more powerful at the expense of the blood spilled by the common proletarian.
The original purpose of this blog when it started out as Brian's Blog was an attempt to make people aware of the things the mainstream media hide from them. But those things are starting to ooze out, despite efforts to plug the leaks. So I am shifting the focus of this blog to exposing the Men Behind the Curtain. First off, it is imperative for everyone to know that there is a lot more to the situation than a bunch of nasty neocons running the show. If you think the Democrats sweeping offices this November is going to change anything, sorry, not so. The Men Behind the Curtain control both the Republicans and the Democrats in the USA. In Japan, the Men Behind the Curtain control all the political parties except one: they have the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Komeito, and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), and Social Democratic Party (SDP). The only party in Japan NOT controlled by the Men Behind the Curtain is the JCP, Japan Communist Party! In Austrailia, the UK, everywhere, it is the same group of Men Behind the Curtain controlling everything.
Secondly, after the masses of people come to the realization that this small group is running the world, we must be more specific in naming names. Names that usually surface in discussions like this are the Bilderberger group, including the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Vanderbilts, but probably nobody has an exact list. Although the group is small in comparison to the six billion people under their control, there must be more than just those few families. And not even every member of typical plutocrat family is by default included. Before we can break free from their control, first we must know who they are, precisely.
Join with me, my friends. Let us expose them to the sunlight. We must purge them from the the darkness in which they hide, and stop them from feeding off the bloodshed of the common proletarian.
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Crank up you speakers and check this out: |
While trying to figure out if it was some kind of error on my part, like maybe I was looking at the listings for the wrong theater or something, I came across another movie that tells another story, but all ties in with the "Men Behind the Curtain" syndrome that describes the plutocratic fascist society we live in today. Here are a few quotes from the official website of Who Killed the Electric Car? by Sony Pictures:
Hmmm.
A 50% increase in efficiency in less than a decade but zero increase in efficiency thereafter,
+ the electric vehicle initiative scrapped,
+ war in the middle east drives gasoline prices to over three dollars a gallon,
+ the oil companies making record profits,
+ more war in the middle east threatens to drive gasoline prices to over four dollars a gallon...
= ???
It doesn't take a genius to do the math.
First of all, there is hardly ever a time when I am not busy, so can't use that as an excuse. And no matter how busy I am, I can always find the time to procrastinate. So those might be partial factors, but there is much more to it than that.
You will often hear this blogger complain that sheople (sheep people) today are guilty of allowing the plutocrats to pull the wool over their eyes. Like the parlor magician who creates a smokescreen and while distracting you with one hand, pulls a "magic" trick with the other. The plutocrats divide and conquer. They create two teams, Demicans and Republocrats, and encourage the sheople to "make a choice," of which team they want to join, while all along the Repocrats and Demublicans are nothing more than the two sides of the same coin. And the name of the coin is Plutocracy. And the plutocrats create a myriad of other issues and non-issues to divide the sheople. And while the sheople argue back and forth over things like whether the husband of a brain-dead woman should be allowed to pull the plug, they do not see the plutocrats stealing everything from under their noses.
Divide and conquer. Julius Caesar is often credited as the father of this technique, but in reality, I am sure it was around long before Caesar came onto the scene. But maybe the old boy did refine it into a fine art. And in the two millennia since then, the technique has been refined even further.
And even Blogger Brian has fallen into the trap. What's that??? Good grief! Has Blogger Brian become a Democran??? or Yikes! worse yet, a Republicat???
No, no, nothing like that. But I have allowed myself to become divided in my own priorities. Take for instance the two or three dozen e-newsletters I subscribe to: American Civil Liberties Union, Marijuana Policy Project, Organic Consumer News, Sexual Intelligence, Downsize DC, NARAL, CodePink, Compassion and Choices, A.N.S.W.E.R., Earth Action, and countless others. Each in their own right highly worthy organizations, yet who has time to read them all?
Of course we want to know what efforts the ACLU is making to stop the violations of the Fourth Amendment, that is very important. And progress vs. setbacks of the MPP and how anti-marijuana barons twice underhandedly stole the 'legalize marijuana' initiative off the Nevada ballots. Without OCU, would you have known the REAL facts behind mad cow meat being sold in US supermarkets and how mon$anto has bought the USDA in their plot to label frankenfood as organic? And the same goes for all the other organizations mentioned. All of them do good work and we need them all. But no human is capable of devoting 100% of her/his time to all of these different and yet highly worthy causes all at the same time. So pick one (or create one of your own) and stick with it.
As for this blogger, I will continue to support all the above organizations as my comrades in the fight for freedom and justice. But there are just not enough hours in the day or enough days in the week to keep fully informed of all of their activities (even if I didn't have a daytime job). From now on, I will try to keep informed in general terms, but not necessarily all of the details of what is transpiring with all of the above-mentioned comrades while working toward my own goal.
For these sheople, you might want to throw them a few tidbits of food for thought. (Don't be surprised if they ignore it.) One of the least productive ways of allocating your time would be to point out in great detail the fallacy of their matrix world, or worse yet, start arguing about the facts. Nothing will become of it. It is just a waste of valuable time.
Instead of wasting your time talking to rocks, look for the folks who are already aware that something is drastically wrong. If they are Democrats, they will blame everything on Bush, Cheney, and their cronies. If Republican, they believe Bush and Cheney are doing a good job, but eight years is not enough for them to clean up the mess left behind by eight years of Clintonianism. Regardless of which side of the plutocrat coin they are, if they are at least aware that something is gravely wrong, you at least stand a chance of showing these ReDempuboliccratans the light of day.
Careful not to allow yourself to be sucked into their Spy versus Spy mode. Help them to realize that the 2004 so-called "election" was nothing more than a show of hands between Skull and Bones versus Skull and Bones. It would not have made any difference if Kerry had won, we would still have a Bonesman in the whitehouse. Nothing would be different.
There is a movie called America: Freedom to Fascism, by director/producer/writer Aaron Russo, scheduled for release July 28. Not having seen it yet, I can only tell you as much as I know about it, but it seems that this movie at least scratches the surface in revealing the plutocratic fascism (or is it fascist plutocracy?) we live under today, which is becoming more and more tyrannical with each passing day. This movie is opening at the theater here in my town of Newport on its official release day of July 28, and I plan to see it on opening day if possible or a.s.a.p. thereafter.
Help me in spreading the knowledge. Whenever you hear anybody blaming the entire mess on the Bush, bLiar, Cheney, Rumsfeld, et al. cabal, give them a few facts to ponder on so that eventually they will awaken on their own and finally see the forest for the trees.
In the previous article, I told you how a company called Blue Security was fighting unwanted junk email by retaliating with "stop junkmailing me" messages that were equally unwelcome by the junkmail senders. And it looked like we were winning the battle. As the number of Blue Frog users climbed to near 450,000, this was starting to become an annoyance to the junkmail senders. Their websites were no better able to filter out our requests to stop hassling us than we are of filtering out their junk in the first place. For every one junkmail received by Blue Frog members, one automated opt out request was sent to the company who had sent the unwanted junkmail. Six of the world's top ten worst junkmailers had agreed to take Blue Frog users off their junkmail lists. As the number of Blue Froggers increased, the rest of them would have had to follow suit eventually. But... One junkmail sender, reputed to be the either No. 1 or No. 2 worst junkmail sender, decided to retaliate against our retaliation. Basically, I mentioned all of this in the previous blog. But here is what happened after that.
The early anti-retaliation took the form of the mobsters sending tons of junkmail to all 450,000 Blue Froggers and simultaneously launched an attack on the Blue Security website, knocking them off the net for a time. When they got their servers back up and online, the attacks on Blue Security continued, but the mobster stopped the attacks against the 450,000 of us ordinary members. Well, not exactly. You see, Blue Frog is -- I mean was -- free for ordinary home users, but corporate members had to pay a fee. Which is fair, in my opinion, since less junkmail on the company's computers meant less time wasted by employees deleting it. So the mobster then focused on only the paying users. Needless to say, if the objective of the corporate users was to have their employees waste less time deleting unwanted junkmail, this proved to be a negative factor for them.
So basically, since profit is the only motivation for most corporations, their only reason for supporting Blue Frog had been negated, and they started withdrawing support. (Although it seems like a very short-sighted advantage, because if Blue had succeeded, in the long run, it would have been worth it. Right?) Anyway, even though support was being withdrawn by the paying users, the president of Blue Security was determined to continue the fight. (Once Blue establishes itself as having beaten the junkmail senders, the corporate users would be back.)
And it looked like it was going to be curtains for the mobsters. But another self-interest factor, again short-term vision in this blogger's opinion, came into play.
In addition to having at first taken down Blue's servers, the attack wreaked havoc on Blue's ISP. And also severely damaged several upstream providers of that ISP as well. Needless to say, this affected the services of a huge number of people, most of whom were not even Blue Froggers. So, a company by the name of Tucows pulled the plug on Blue Security. Some might say it was reasonable to for Tucows to protect themselves, as the attack on Blue was severely hurting them too. This blogger thinks it was short-sighted, narrow-minded, and stingy. Less junk email benefits everyone in the long run, except the junkmail senders and... and... and who else?
Hmmmm. Just who does benefit from junkmail besides the mobsters who annoy us with it? Well, there are the manufacturers and producers whose products are being hawked by the mobsters. Certainly not the wholesalers and retailers who sell similar goods. And one more group comes to mind. And this group is very significant. Because it is this group and only this group who could put the junkmail mobsters out of business! And come to think of it, this very same group uses mass volumes of junkmail of the old-fashion paper "snail-mail" type to promote their products and services. Just ask yourself, where does the bulk of all your postal junkmail come from? Oh, sure, you get junkmail from the likes of War*Mart, the cable companies and so on, but doesn't the lion's share of your junkmail come from credit card companies?
And think of this. How many online sales outlets accept payment by check or money order? If there are any, I have yet to see one. At least 99% of all online transactions go through credit card companies. Some online sales go through PayPal, but they, in turn, collect via credit card. So if the banks and/or their credit card subsidiaries stopped collecting money for the mob, the latter would be out of business in 24 hours. No, it wouldn't even take that long. They would disappear, a la presto!
In 2003, Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon managed to get the very clever "Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing" Act passed through the Senate and then the House. What, you ask is so clever about the Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography and Marketing Act? Answer: the acronym -- CAN SPAM. Now isn't that clever. The only thing CAN SPAM does is to require the junkmail marketers mob to send their junkmail from non-US servers. Piece of cake! What other jobs are you going to outsource, Mr. Wyden?
Not to be outdone by Senator Wyden of Oregon, Oregon's District 5 House Rep Darlene Hooley introduced the anti-phishing act a couple of years later, but it never got acted on. Guess it didn't have a clever enough acronym.
So the point is, Blue Frog, the only chance of a grass roots effort to rid the world of the junk email epidemic died when a company called Tucows waved their magic wand and made Blue Frog disappear. The only sector of the business world that could stop the plague is also a major junkmail sender itself, and it also profits from the mob's activities. And the government? They are more interested in sending jobs overseas than in doing anything for their subjects.
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"I can think of no faster way to unite the American people behind George W. Bush than a terrorist attack on an American target overseas. And I believe George W. Bush will quickly unite the American people through his foreign policy."
-- Henry Kissinger December 13, 2000
Did you read that in the mainstream media? |
The group knew that taking any money in any form from the government or any corporation or special interest group would doom them as is has already destroyed honesty in the present day MSM. So they vowed to take no money from those entities. Their calculations are that if they can get a few hundred thousand patrons to make regular contributions of an affordable (to ordinary people) amount, they can cover their expenses. And then, being beholden to the ordinary people who support them and only to those people, they will be obliged to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
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"Sarah, if the American people had ever known the truth about what we Bushes have done to this nation, we would be chased down in the streets and lynched."
-- George "Poppy" Bush (Senior) speaking in an interview with Sarah McClendon in December 1992
Did you read that in the mainstream media? |
So my friends, I ask you to join me in making a contribution pledge to The Real News. The fact that you are reading this blog is evidence that you have a computer and an Internet connection. This means that YOU already have access to the real news, if you know how to look for it. But remember that there are also millions upon millions of people who either do not have a computer with Internet, or they have the computer and connection but do not know how to search for the real news, and those people know only what the MSM tell them. Which is only what their sponsors allow them to say. If those hundreds of millions of people do not have access to The Real News on television, they are not going to know the real news at all. That makes it worth your while to donate to The Real News.
So join us please. Go to http://www.iwtnews.com/home and watch their promotion video clips and read their policies and mission statement and et cetera, and make a donation. The future depends on the truth being known, and you can be part of that happening.
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"No oppressor has ever given freedom. Those who have been oppressed have been required to take it."
-- Harry Bellafonte (shortly after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans)
Did you read that in the mainstream media? |
The time has finally come when despite the corporate America media cover-up of the truth about the September 2001 attacks and subsequent war crimes and other crimes against humanity that are still going on today, the truth about those heinous atrocities is now coming out into the open. This, needless to say, puts the criminal perpetrators into a precarious position. The tide has tuned to the point where they can no longer cling to any hope of stuffing the cat back into the bag or putting HumptyDumpty back together again. THINK! What are their alternatives now? (1) Give themselves up and walk voluntarily up onto the hangman's gallows, or (2) stage a 911 Part II, or (3) launch a military Junta. As for No. 1, everyone who was born at least the day before yesterday would not take this serious, as for No. 3, they do not appear to have the support of the military top brass (but I could be wrong about that), which leaves No. 2...
Japan's parliament, at this very minute while this blog is being written, is debating whether or not to ban freedom of speech, freedom of press, freedom of assembly, freedom to redress the government for grievances -- all of which are guaranteed by the Japanese Constitution. (A few weeks ago, while this same bill was being debated, this blogger anticipated its passage and erroneously uploaded a blog on that topic, but fortunately the bill was defeated that time (and the erroneous blog was subsequently deleted)). BUT... Will it be defeated again?
But on the bright side (he says, tongue-in-cheek), the Japanese parliament did pass legislation today that would rectify the gerrymandering that has existed for decades. In January 2004, the Supreme Court ruled that the maximum disparity in the relative value of the 2001 election that reached 5.06 "could be" considered unconstitutional. And so, the disparity of 5.18 between Tokyo and Tottori constituencies in the most recent election has now been reduced to a "Constitutional level" of 4.84 to 1 ratio. Hey! Hey! Hey! Now, if that ain't democracy in action, aye mate! Now, thanks to the new legislation, it takes only 484 Osaka voters to elect the same number of representatives as can be elected by 100 Tottori voters. (You get as many guesses as you need to figure out which party usually gets more votes in rural areas like Tottori as opposed to urbanized areas like Tokyo/Osaka.)
Blogger yours truly has been on the alert for some time now. If/when the impeachment and criminal conviction of President George III and his Cabal becomes a certain reality, we all need to be ready to focus on the next problem immediately. It would be so easy to blame the the whole thing on george and company, impeach them, hang them, and go back to the same old same old. And that is what the "men behind the curtain" are counting on. They could allow Dubya, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, a few others to be hanged and made the scapegoats for what they have ALL been in together for ages. Not even Poppy Bush would likely step in to rescue his own son. The wolves are hungry? OK, feed them. Then back to business.
Hey, nothin' personal Dubya! (says Poppy Bush to his son). Just business, son! (as he leads his son to the hangman's gallows).
The only alternative would seem to be that I and many others who believe the same as I believe must have been wrong. But following the link, and watching the newly released videos did NOT show a 757 crashing into the Pentagon. But on the other hand, neither do they show a cruise missile nor any other identifiable craft. They show that SOMETHING flew into the Pentagon. But not what. We already knew that.
Let's back up a little and put this into perspective. Various 911 truth-seeking individuals and organizations have been demanding the release of the videos for several years now. Surveilance videos that must show the crash scenario are from several sources: the gas station directly across the street from the section of the Pentagon hit, the Sheraton Hotel not too far away, and the Virginia Department of Transportation which has surveilance cameras that cover the approach route of the trajectory that whatever hit the Pentagon would have had to pass through. Oh, and not to mention that the Pentagon has an unknown number of surveilance cameras mounted on the building itself every few meters.
| Friends, one of my saddest teenage memories was seeing a steel framed car that had hit a tree head on at roughly 100 mph. The tree is still there. The car and two of its three occupants (one of whom was my ex-girlfriend at the time) are not. And trees are not made out of steel-reinforced concrete. |
The question is, where are the wings? No photo ever released to date has ever shown us wreckage of the wings, which are also made of aluminum, and were also travelling at 350 m.p.h. when the alleged 757 allegedly hit. Are we to believe that the aluminum wings broke off (is what we are told) and then DISINTEGRATED without leaving a scratch on the building? OK, let us just pretend to be so gullible and hypothetically believe that is what happened. So NOW TELL US where the two jet engines are! Jet engines are not made of aluminum. They are made of very hard and strong metal, and are very heavy. I do not have data, but some number of tons, to say the least. Could we please see the photos showing the parts of the building where the jet engines, one on each side of the fuselage, must have crashed?
Anyway, back to the newly released videos. The two videos realease are from the Pentagon's own surveilance system. They would appear to this pair of untrained eyes to be a few hundred meters from the crash site. Both cameras from near-identical angle and near-identical distance. And what do you know. Both cameras show the nose of some type of airborne craft entering from the right hand side of the frame, and in the next frame we see the building erupting into a fireball. Nowhere do we see WINGS. One or both of these videos are the same one(s) from which about four or five frames had been released several years ago. And the newly released videos show little more than the still frames already released. But with cameras mounted at intervals of every few meters, where are the other ones? Where is the gas station video? Sheraton? Virginia DOT?
Are you ready for the kicker? Judicial watch, one of the petitioning organizations seeking "all video and still photo" evidence from the crash had this to say about the long awaited release: "Finally, we hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories involving American Airlines Flight 77. As always, our prayers remain with all those who suffered as a result of those murderous attacks." If you tend to suffer from high blood-pressure, take a dose of medication, then click HERE. (That page also has a link to the videos themselves.)
So we are all plagued by these pests. But what to do.
In the opinion of this blogger, no law will ever stop the Lords of Junkmail since the Internet is an international entity. The only way to stop the evil varmints would be if the credit card companies refused to process any purchases from any company that engages in this dastardly act. But since they make a buck or two off the sales via junkmail...
Around the end of January or maybe early February this year, I heard of a project called "Blue Frog" being promoted by a company named BlueSecurity. Their approach is to do unto the Lords of Junkmail as they are doing unto us.
Here's how it works.
Sign up to join Blue Frog. Install the Frog on your computer. Forward all your junkmail to Blue Frog (this can sometimes be done automatically or semi automatically depending on your type of email setup). For every one piece of junkmail we BlueFrog members receive, Blue Frog sends one request to the Lords of Junkmail to stop junkmailing us. "Why use Blue Frog," you may ask, "why not just send the complaint yourself?" Well we would if we could, and some people may even think they are doing that. But the fact is that all of the return addresses on junkmail are forged. So by hitting the REPLY button, you are either sending your complaint to another innocent victim whose email address has been hijacked by the Lords of Junkmail, or your email is destined for a non-existent address and will be swallowed up by a black hole.
You may have seen the BlueFrog logo and link posted on this website which I removed near the end of April. After three months of resending all our junkmail to Blue Frog, the volume did not decrease. On the other hand, it took up some (not a lot, just some) of my precious time to forward the junk. So I removed the links from the website and uninstalled BlueFrog from my computer. But I did not log into my Blue Frog account to cancel it (fortunately).
A few days after giving up on the Frog, suddenly a barrage of junk email started flooding our inboxes. Ten, maybe twenty times the usual volume of junk. "What is going on?" we wondered. Soon the answer came. One or more of the Lords of Junkmail proclaimed, "You are receiving this high volume of unwanted mail because you are a member of BlueFrog. BlueFrog is hurting our business. Quit BlueFrog and we will go back to sending you only the usual volume of unwanted mail."
So Blue Frog really was having the intended effect after all! Needless to say, I hurriedly reinstalled my BlueFrog. I will not be intimidated. Especially now that the Lord of Junkmail has admitted that our actions against them are working! (I will put all the BlueFrog links back up when I get time, for now, go to http://bluesecurity.com/ to get your Blue Frog.)
While wife and I were busily working out measures to deal with the additional volume of junkmail and trying to meet our work deadlines at the same time, suddenly an amazing thing happened. After clearing all the junk out of our inbox Friday night, we got up Saturday morning prepared to deal with the volume of junk that had been accumulating overnight since the attacks began. But to our surprise, the volume of junk was only about what it had been before the attack started. And throughout the day Saturday, the volume was even less than what it used to be! Sunday morning, only a fraction of the normal junk! And for the rest of Sunday (it is Sunday evening as I write this), so far we have only received two or three junkmails! (Compared with the normal 15 to 20 per day total among the various email addresses we have.)
Of course we do not know if the Lord of Junkmail has given up on this small Blue Frog group, or if he is scheming some other evil plot and the attacks will increase in scale. We hope for the former but are prepared to deal with the latter, if that is what it comes to.
update
It has been a while since my last blog (due to work restraints, needless to say) and there is much to say, but too little time to say it.
Today's topic, Bill Frist. While surfing the www, somehow I got pointed to the March 13 blog of Bill Frist. In that blog, Frist makes outlandish attacks on Russ Feingold for introducing a motion to censure Bush for illegal spying and incessant lying. That probably does not surprise you.
The blog provides a mechanism for readers to leave their comments, and I read some of them. Most were in agreement with Frist, many rattling off unfounded extremist propaganda with a passion. Of the few in disagreement, none said much except for simpleton statements like "At first I thought Feingold was reaching too far with this legislation. But as of today, and the daily disclosures of just how much real manipulation and poor judgement went into our 'going to war'...I've come to think maybe the Senator from Wisconsin was right all along!" And another praising Frist for honoring free speech by saying, "First, thank you for providing a forum, even for those in opposition to your position. President Bush should be censured for the illegal wiretapping." Is that all these whimps can say to a bald-faced lying dictator-in-waiting like Bill Frist?
So I got on my keyboard and pounded out a rebuttal pointing out the fallacies of Frist's so-called "logic." But I guess I forgot to thank the generous Mr. Frist for providing a free speech forum that includes even those of us who disagree with the kind senator, and that must have made it unfit for publication, because they never published my email.
So much for fair play. But you have got to admit, the Honorable Esteemed Noble Mister Frist sure must fool a lot of fools into thinking that his forums present both sides. In fact, I would dare say that I do not believe any of those wishy-washy whimp emails that disagree with Frist are even real. The real emails in disagreement get round-filed, and the Frist propaganda team make up this whimpish stuff to pretend they are presenting both sides. Ha!
But this is nothing new of course. In fact it was not new in the 1930s when Hitler's master of propaganda Joseph Goebbels perfected the art. Gobbels just raised an old trick to a new plane, that's all. And now Frist and the mainstream media are simply following the patterns established by Gobbels.
So tell us again, Mr. Frist, how "the NSA terrorism surveillance of suspected terrorist phone calls is critical in the fight against Al Qaeda and groups that would do America harm." Just as Hitler's #2 man Hermann Goering said before being sentenced to death as a war criminal, "all you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
And remind us again "what a disservice Senator Feingold and his colleagues do" lest we might forget. And of course, how you and your cronies are protecting us by walking all over our civil rights. If we don't hear it often enough, we may tend to be skeptical.
What's the matter mr. Frist? Are you chicken? Haven't got the GUTS to print my rebuttal? Yeah, that must be it. You're chicken!
A few blogs ago, you read about a law that would be going into effect April first, and this is no April fool joke, that would have banned the sale of used appliances in Japan. Not an all-out ban, but in effect it would have made it virtually impossible. (The law would require the second-hand store to purchase a sticker from the government to affix to the appliance, a major expense already, and the manufacturer would be relieved of any responsibility for defects that cause accidents, but the seller would have to assume that responsibility instead. So if you bought a used vacuum cleaner, and it short-circuited and burned your apartment building down, the second-hand store would be liable but not the manufacturer.)
The people did not like that. And, it would have put every second-hand store in the country out of business. There was an uproar from the people, and the government backed down. Pretty much, that is the end of the story.
PS: Perhaps I should have said we hope it is the end of the story. The Japanese government, like the US government, has a tendency to just put unpopular legislation in a desk drawer or filing cabinet and wait for some major news event to grab the headlines, or sometimes they create a major story themselves, and then pop the dirty laundry out of the file cabinet and sneak it through parliament when nobody is looking. But for now, it is so far, so good.
The reason given by the USDA for their refusal to permit voluntary testing of every animal is that it is "scientifically unjustified." While that point itself is highly debatable, let us just pretend for a moment that it were true. So, how does the testing of every animal make the meat less safe? And isn't food safety what the USDA is all about? One could argue that if one meat processor conducts voluntary testing, others will have to follow suit in order to compete, and that will result in higher costs for the meat processors. But the USDA does not exist for the purpose of protecting profits of meat processors. Or does it?
Since 2003 (and I am not sure why everything prior to 2003 is ignored in these discussions, but for now, I will follow the precedent anyway), three mad cows have been detected in the United States. Keep in mind that one of those three was given a clean bill of health the first time it was tested, but a person with a sharp eyes suspected misdiagnoses and ordered further testing. The second test turned up positive. Instead of being commended for her diligence, she was reprimanded for second-guessing her boss and ordering the retest without permission of the higher-ups. She later resigned from her post.
Now comes the stickler. In the United States, approximately one cow in 90 is tested for BSE. In these three years, three mad cows have been detected (and one of those almost snuck through). So, what if testing were carried out on every cow? Let's see, 3 x 90 = ? Imagine if suddenly every animal started being tested and instead of three cows in three years, it became 3 x 90 cows in three years, in other words, seven to eight mad cows per MONTH are found. What is the first question every red-blooded hamburger-eating American is going to ask?
Where have all the mad cows, gone, long time passing
Where have all the mad cows gone, three years ago
Where have all the mad cows gone, gone to market every one...
Needless to say, the long answer is a little more complex. But the fact is, there ARE people refusing to pay taxes that make it possible for the government to bankroll these illegal wars. And there are even war-tax resisters groups. Like see War Resisters League for a starter. It's all about "show me the money." You see, the greedy rich vampires who cause poor young easily-duped proletarians to go off to war and kill and die do not understand anything else besides money and power. It is all about money and/or who has the bigger missile. So unless you can show them that you have a bigger missile, the only other way to get their attention is money. And you needn't flash it in front of their faces, they can smell it a mile away.
Now, it seems that a lot of people refuse to pay war-taxes, and there are a variety of ways of doing so. Some do it symbolically, by refusing to pay a small charge added to their telephone bill, which comes to only a few cents a month, others calculate the percentage of the national budget that is spent on war and deduct that percentage from their overall IRS assessment, and there are others who just say No Way Jose! and just do not pay any taxes at all.
Everyone is entitled to his/her own opinion on how they choose to resist. As far as this blogger is concerned, the symbolic few cents per months is about as effective as the recent vote by the demopublicans to cloture on the Samuel Alito filibuster and then "symbolically" cast a NAY vote on his confirmation. Fine, if you are into symbolism, but the fact is, we now have Alito on the Supreme Court even though the Democans voted OK on the real vote and then voted symbolically NO on the symbolic vote. Big deal. And while we are on the topic of symbolism, don't forget that in February 2003, a month before the US rape of Iraq began, millions of people worldwide took to the streets protesting the impending invasion. What did this symbolic action accomplish? Nothing. Why? Because it didn't show'em the money!
So, in the opinion of this blogger, symbolism is noble, but accomplishes absolutely nothing.
As for deducting from your taxes the percentage used by the war machine, in this blogger's opinion, (with no disrespect for differing opinions), it amounts to little more than the symbolism described above. In other words, instead of contributing X$ to the taxman, you send the taxman only half that amount, and refuse the other half that is being spent on killing machines. Well, the fact is, my friend, that half of the one-half X$ that you do send is still going to be used to purchase more killing machines. So what is the point?
So my formula is this:
Starting from my January monthly check to the Taxman, I have started printing the following message on the face of the check:
"By cashing this check the payee agrees that no portion of these funds may be used for any illegal purpose, including but not necessarily limited to, the use of torture or illegal spying in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
"
So as *I* see it, since the IRS has cashed both my January and February checks, they have violated the terms of agreement, since the spying and torture are both still going on. (Not to mention who knows what other illegal activities are going on behind our backs.) And as the time draws nearer for the Taxman's March stipend, it is time to set up a special bank account for disputed funds. In other words, an account into which the payment can be made, but the payee cannot withdraw until the dispute is settled.
More later...
PS: Perhaps the truly patriotic thing to do would be to instead of putting the money into a disputed-payment account, send it directly to the ACLU or other organization who directly challenge those abuses of power. But has this blogger got the mojo to do that? Stay tuned.
I can hear you now. "Ahhhh... Pardon?" and you may be scratching your head. So let me enlighten you on how this happened.
A scientific study was conducted on cherries by bona fide scientists. The peer-reviewed study that was published in a scientific journal concluded that not only were cherries beneficial in helping to prevent colon cancer, but cherries are also more effective than FDA-approved drugs in alleviating arthritis inflammation and pain! And when some cherry growers posted this information on their websites, the FDA warned them, "These claims cause your product to be a drug..."
!
In Japan, people were reminded this week that the new law concerning used appliances would go into effect April 1. The new law prohibits the purchase or sale of used appliances, and even makes it illegal to repair home electric appliances.
Other news from Japan, a referendum was held in the city of Iwakuni in west Japan on whether or not the US military should be allowed to expand the military base it maintains there. Proponents of allowing the expansion (the merchants who cater to military customers) urged people to boycott the election, hoping to invalidate the results, but there was a 59% voter turnout anyway. Of the voters, 90% said NO. Will Don'ichiro Koizumi heed the voice of 90% of Iwakuni residents, or will he obey his instructions from Emperor George? We shall see. But remember, only last December when 75% of people said NO to US beef unless it were required to meet the same safety standards as Japanese domestic beef, Don'ichiro ignored 75% of the Japanese population (and not only those living in one area such as Iwakuni) and heeded the bidding of Emperor George.
Back in the USA again, the House of Non-representatives passed a bill that trumps all state laws in regard to food safety. Basically, it cancels all laws in all states that require warnings to consumers in regard to dangers posed by certain foods. So if you live in any one of the 50 states of the United States, your state can no longer require safety warnings And if you don't live in the US, id est you live in one of the colonies, it will be coming to your colony soon.
You know, today's blog just seems so negative. Even more so than any previous blog. Let's see if we can end on a positive note.
Kalki, a guru who lives in India, predicts the arrival of the Golden Age in the year we refer to as 2012. His goal is to enlighten 64,000 people by 2010, who will subsequently enlighten the rest of humanity by 2012, when we will enter a new realm in which time and space do not have the same rules as the ones we have now. By coincidence, the Ancient Mayans, who were very knowledgeable in astronomy, also constructed a calendar up until 2012. Why stop there? Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not.
REFLECTIONS ON TIME, CONSCIOUSNESS AND ENLIGHTENMENT
Another related article:
The Amazing Holographic Universe
As you may know, a silent coup d'etat took place in Tokyo last September and the sinister Prime Minister Koizumi established himself as absolute dictator. In the six months since then, prime sinister Koizumi has made one grab after another, gobbling up all of the resources and assets belonging to the Japanese people and making decisions based solely on his own preferences. Even when as large a majority as the 75% of the people, according to polls, who opposed the importation of US beef unless it were required to meet the same safety standards as Japanese domestic beef as well as the standards for beef in the EU, that did not deter the sinister prime minister from doing the bidding of his good buddy George. So imports of US beef were resumed, despite that the beef did not meet the safety standard of Japan nor even the EU. And then Japan's postal system was privatized, and the sharks from Wall Street and the Square Mile lost no time scarfing up the delicious morsels that the Japanese people had accumulated over the six decades since the end of World War II. Let's see. Did Koizumi's desire to please buddies George W and Tony B.Liar have anything to do with that? I'll leave that up to you to decide. And in the most recent grab, the sinister prime minister is now about to put NHK, Japan's public broadcasting network, on the chopping block.
What does all of this mean? Well, NHK, which has its own network of broadcasting satellites, will be turned over the the US military. Exactly what the US military is going to do with NHK is not too clear at this point, but possibly the satellites will be used for broadcasting propaganda all over the world? So what else has Koizumi done to appease the US military? The US military bases spread all throughout Japan have always been a sore spot with the Japanese people, especially the people in Okinawa. But of course, the people realize that when you lose a war, you don't get to make the decisions. But hey, the war ended 61 years ago. Isn't it about time...
So here is one of the deals worked out between the Koizumi regime and the Bush regime. One of the military bases on Okinawa will be moved to Guam -- at Japan's expense! Another base will be expanded, with a runway that will extend out into the ocean, where there happens to be one of the worlds last surviving coral reefs! Of course Japan is to pick up the tab.
Let us digress for a moment and talk about something that happened last year before the Tokyo coup. Prime Sinister Minister Koizumi tried to ram a bill through Parliament that would outlaw more than two people from gathering at any given place and speaking in opposition to government policy. A clear violation of Article 21 of the Japanese Constitution, which basically protects the same freedoms as in the US Bill of Rights Amendment No. 1.
Article 21:
Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and
all other forms of expression are guaranteed. 2) No censorship shall
be maintained, nor shall the secrecy of any means of communication
be violated.
But the people would not stand for this new bill that clearly violated Article 21. And the bill was scrapped. Or so we thought. But then came the coup, and while the media and the populace were glued to a series of scandals (especially the one scandal very closely resembling Enron in the US), Koizumi and the Rubber Stamp Parliament slipped it in like a stealth condom. (Stealth Condom = She will never know you are coming!) So now, you could go to a pub with your friends and have a beer or three and a slip of the tongue could land you in the slammer. But that is really not the true purpose of this new law.
The whole point is this (tying back in to the Okinawa situation with the US military bases). As the prime sinister gives more and more concessions to his good buddies George and Tony, the Japanese people, especially Okinawans, will take to the streets en masse. The new law is designed to
1) reduce the number of demonstrators by way of intimidation and threat of arrest
2) arrest those who refuse to be intimidated.
And one wonders why they even want to bother when the "government" is about to alter the Constitution anyway. They are going to justify all the illegal actions they have taken by deleting from the Constitution all the protections of human rights (such as the right to assemble, free speech, et cetera), not to mention Article 9. For those of you not very familiar with the Japanese Constitution, Article 9 is the guarantee that the right of the people to live in peace shall not be violated.
Article 9:
Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and
order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign
right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of
settling international disputes. 2) In order to accomplish the aim
of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as
other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of
belligerency of the state will not be recognized.
Ahm. Duh!
When this blogger first landed on Japanese shores in the late 1960s, there was already a standing army/navy/air force in place despite Article 9. Except, they didn't call them army/navy/air force. They called them, "Ground Self Defence Force," "Naval Self Defence Force," and "Air Self Defence Force." Like dude, a rose by another name would still smell as sweet as a rose! And a skunk by any other name...
So here we are nearly four decades later. Despite that they have ignored the Constitution all these years, why are they now so eager to "legalize" the military by deleting Article 9? I don't know. Maybe it is just one of the inherent idiosyncrasies of the vampire class.
And yet, for four and a half years, the FBI has been sitting on a number of video tapes from various sources that would have to show the actual aircraft homing in for the kill and its demise as it crashed into the Pentagon. If those tapes show a 757 as the FBI and other agencies claim, why don't they release them to the public and end the debate? The NSA keeps telling us that if we have nothing to hide, we should not be concerned about their illegal wiretapping. Well, what is good for the goose is good for the gander, so if the FBI has nothing to hide, why not show us the videos?
Against that backdrop, I am sending the following letter to my two senators and one house representative.
|
Dear ______________
While the debate goes on about what really hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, the FBI continues to deny FOIA requests to release the surveillance videos from the gas station across the street, the roof of a nearby hotel, and from security cameras of the Virginia Department of Transportation, all of which would have captured Flight AA 77, and two of which would have also captured the actual impact. The Zapruder films of the Kennedy assassination taught us how much knowledge can be gleaned from films and videos. Videos from the gas station would give us a close up of the actual impact. Those from the hotel, a wider angle of the same view. And the ones from the highway would show AA 77 homing in on its target. And yet, the FBI still refuses to release them. In one instance I know of, their refusal was based on US Code Title 5 Section 552 subsection (b)(7)(A) and in another instance based on US Code Title 5 Section 552 subsection (b)(7)(C). The former states that documents need not be released if doing so "could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings" and the latter if doing so "could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy." The 911 Commission has already concluded its investigations. I am unaware of any enforcement proceedings currently in progress that would be interfered with in the case the videos were released. And as for the privacy issue, I fail to see how the release of these videos could possibly or reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of anyone's personal privacy. Especially in this day and age when NSA snooping into private telephone conversations and emails are being condoned, how could a surveillance video from a gas station or highway or hotel rooftop be reasonably expected to invade anyone's personal privacy? And even if that were the case, the videos could easily be redacted so as not to invade the said person's privacy. For these reasons, I implore you to force the FBI to obey the Freedom of Information Act and release the videos as they are required to do by law. This can end the controversy for once and for all. I shall be looking forward to your reply on this matter. |
I invite you to join me in this campaign, and send letters to your own Senators and Representative. You may write your own version, or use and edited version of the above, or even copy/paste the above verbatim (filling in the correct names of your senators and representative, of course). Or call them on the phone if that is your preference. Whatever it takes. Let's pressure the FBI to show us whatever it is they claim not to be hiding.
Copyleft notice: the above may be copied and used and distributed freely without restriction.
Some things are mutually exclusive, like war and peace for example. Despite the constant Bush Cabal rhetoric of fighting for peace, you cannot have both war and peace at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. And another one they like to throw around is "military intelligence," but again, there can be military OR there can be intelligence, but not both at the same time. They are mutually exclusive. But there is nothing mutually exclusive about cookies and milk. It is perfectly possible for a person to like both cookies and simultaneously like milk. Ditto for peanut butter and jelly.
But another area that seems to be getting a little confused these days is about Demicans and Republocrats. Like being either a Beatles fan or a Rolling Stones fan, somehow many people these days seem to be under the impression that you must be either a Repocrat or a Demublican, but cannot grasp the concept of being both. They just cannot fathom the fact that the Remocrats ARE the Depublicans and the Depublicans ARE the Remocrats. You cannot be one without being the other. Face it, there is one and only one party in the US of A -- the PLUTOCRATS. Sure, some plutocrats wear Repocrat hats, others wear Demublican hats. But it makes no difference which hat they wear, they were all cast from the same mold. When you cut them open, they are all rotten inside.
It is a part of the Great American Smokescreen and Mirrors game. Either a Democran or a Republicat. Make the sheople think they have a choice. Take the 2004 presidential election, for example. Kerry had already been chosen before Oregonians even held their primaries, so even though many Oregonians symbolically cast their vote for Dennis Kucinich, that is all it was. Symbolic. That's all. So then, the "choice" we were presented with was either a Yale University Skull-and-Bonesman war-monger billionaire from Texas or a Yale University Skull-and-Bonesman war-monger billionaire from Massachusetts. Some choice.
Don't forget. They had elections in Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, the Communist Soviet Union, and even in Iraq under the Saddam Hussein regime. Were any of those free and/or democratic societies? Just the guise of holding elections, does that really mean government of the people, hence "democracy"? (Especially when the votes are counted secretly by machines whose source codes are proprietary!)
Look at all the top people in government, those in the Bush Administration and our senators and representatives in congress. With only a handful of exceptions, they are all millionaires and billionaires. And again with only a handful of exceptions, in all election contests, it was the candidate who collected the most money who walked away with the trophy. Putting two and two together, we come the the conclusion that what we have is a government of the RICH, not a government of the people. Government of the rich, by the rich, and yes, you guessed it, FOR the rich. That is called plutocracy, not democracy.
And the Great Smokescreen and Mirrors game goes on. Whichever party is in the majority at any given time is villianized by the underdogs, who cry "foul" at every turn. The out-crowd will stand up for the sheople and demand that the in-crowd cease their actions that hurt the sheople and pass legislation that will benefit the sheople, knowing all the while that they are going to be voted down anyway. Good cop / bad cop. It makes for a nice show.
Maybe it is time to download a newer version of the Constitution?
My October 27, 2005 blog gives a little bit of background on the USDA policies toward Japan and the December 12, 2005 blog continues telling the saga. Well, what you are going to hear today is absolutely going to blow your socks off!
In the most recent mad cow blog, I told you how the Japanese government (PM Koizumi to be more specific) went against the wishes of 75% of the Japanese people by authorizing the import of US beef. Well, less than six weeks after the unwanted imports started, it was discovered that some of the shipments contained certain parts of the animal that are considered more susceptible to BSE than others, and are therefore banned under the Japan/US agreement on beef. The USDA had been arm-twisting ever since the import ban was first imposed and insisting that the United States takes the strictest measures in the world and can guarantee beyond any shadow of a doubt that US beef is the safest in the world because of the strict regulations. Japan was accused of errecting non-tariff barriers to trade in violation of GATT, and the US even threatened economic sanctions against Japan if the latter did not capitulate and allow US beef back onto Japanese supermarket shelves. But during the first six weeks of lifting the import ban, not one, but some number of shipments of the banned products had been made. Yeah, like really strict regulations are failsafe guarantees. So, to make a long story short, the US beef import ban was reinstated, and on the very same day of reinstatement, the US was already mouthing off about economic sanctions again, insisting that US safeguards are inpenetrable. (sic!)
But I told you today's blog would blow your socks off, and the above did not quite do that, did it. Well, it was not intended to. But this is...
In a USDA report released today (or might have been yesterday), it was revealed that between June 2004 and April 2005, 29 US cows "suspected" of possible BSE infection somehow managed to slip through the USDA's strictest regulations in the world and find their way onto the supermarket shelves of the US of A. Of course "suspected" does not necessarily mean that they actually were infected. It simply means that they could not walk straight. Which just happens to be the classic tell-tale sign of mad cow. So just how safe is US beef? You be the judge.
The amazing thing is that on September 11, 2001, a bunch of Arabs with boxcutters (so we are told) managed to use their ace flying skills to manoeuvre a Boeing 757 through the cracks of the US Stategic Air Command and straight into the most heavily defended building in the world, the Pentagon, without even being engaged by fighters from an air base only 14 miles away whose only mission in life is to protect Washington DC and its government buildings. And then went on to penetrate the dedicated missile defence shield of the Pentagon itself. But if you think THAT was a whopper, now we have a new contestant for the Guiness Book record -- 29 mad cows that cannot even walk straight, penetrate the defences of the USDA, the world's strictest and most thorough watchdog of the people's welfare, and land on the shelves of US supermarkets.
What's next? How about these headlines...
Not to worry. Just have "Faux" News report it and Bill O'Reilly give an in-depth analysis, and the sheople will buy it. Works every time.
Anyway, as expected, George III the caveman gave his annual Lies to the Nation speech. The most stunning revelation: George III ordered searches without warrant on tens of thousands of people because, he says, he had the constitutional authority to do so! Wow! I wish he would have specified what constitution he was talking about. Because it is certainly not the Constitution of the United States of America. I ought to know, I have a copy, and I have read my copy.
So, either George III is
(a) talking about a different constitution, or
(b) he has not read the US Constitution, or... (fanfare) ... or
(c) he is lying. So which is it.
Article 2 of Section 2 of the United States Constitution delegates the power of Commander in Chief of the army and navy to the president. And most would agree that by extrapolation, it would also include the the air force. But NO-WHERE, not in Article 2 Section 2 nor anywhere else, does it say anything about economic sanctionsthe presidentca capihaving authority to conduct searches without warrants. In fact, the Constitution specifically states that he can not.
Amendment 4 states:
"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."
Now, you don't have to be a Constitutional scholar to understand that this amendment specifically prohibits the government from conducting warrantless searches.
In addition, Amendment 9 says:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." Well, first of all, the right to be secure in our persons, home, papers, and effect IS enumerated in the Constitution, but even if it were not, this is not to be construed to deny or disparage such an unalienable rights that are retained by we the people. (Disparage -- that's a big word. I wonder if anybody looked it up in the dictionary for George III.)
And let us not forget Amendment 10:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Well I would paraphrase that in a way to make it simpler to understand, except that I cannot think of any simpler way to say it. You just can't make it any clearer than that. The power to search without warrant is not delegated to the president by the Constitution, it IS prohibited by by the Constitution to the States, and therefore it is a right reserved to the people. How does much simpler can it be phrased?
So it all boils down to this. Article 2 Section 2 of the Constitution delegates the authority of commander in chief to the president. George III somehow equates "commander in chief" with meaning "exempt from the law, exempt from the Constitution." If you agree, go over there and stand by George III. But if you disagree, come over here and join the Coalition of the Majority.
If the 17 of you two-faced lying yellowbelly slimebag turncoats had voted Nay on the cloture, together with the 25 true blue Nay sayers, that would have given us 42 votes when all we needed to keep Alito at bay was 41. There might have been a possibility of the people taking back control of the government by peaceful means. But that is all gone now. And we have you two-faced turncoats to thank for it. You have undone the American Revolution and brought George III back from the grave to torture (literally) us again.
So what do you expect for your endeavors, a plastic medal? Do you think we should throw roses at your feet because you did cast you "symbolic" vote to protect the Constitution even though you had already cast your actually meaningful vote to run the Constitution through the shredder?
(drum roll...)
Well alright then, I hereby bestow upon all of you evildoing scoundrels the Plastic Medal of Dishonour for Outstanding Betrayal. Wear it in shame. You deserve it.
Here's the nitty gritty folks. The ones if red are the hypocrite double-crossing liars who approved Alito and then cast a symbolic vote against him, for whatever that is supposed to mean. Et tu, all of you Demonic-rats.
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Cloture Vote Akaka (D-HI), Yea Alexander (R-TN), Yea Allard (R-CO), Yea Allen (R-VA), Yea Baucus (D-MT), Yea Bayh (D-IN), Nay Bennett (R-UT), Yea Biden (D-DE), Nay Bingaman (D-NM), Yea Bond (R-MO), Yea Boxer (D-CA), Nay Brownback (R-KS), Yea Bunning (R-KY), Yea Burns (R-MT), Yea Burr (R-NC), Yea Byrd (D-WV), Yea Cantwell (D-WA), Yea Carper (D-DE), Yea Chafee (R-RI), Yea Chambliss (R-GA), Yea Clinton (D-NY), Nay Coburn (R-OK), Yea Cochran (R-MS), Yea Coleman (R-MN), Yea Collins (R-ME), Yea Conrad (D-ND), Yea Cornyn (R-TX), Yea Craig (R-ID), Yea Crapo (R-ID), Yea Dayton (D-MN), Nay DeMint (R-SC), Yea DeWine (R-OH), Yea Dodd (D-CT), Nay Dole (R-NC), Yea Domenici (R-NM), Yea Dorgan (D-ND), Yea Durbin (D-IL), Nay Ensign (R-NV), Not Voting Enzi (R-WY), Yea Feingold (D-WI), Nay Feinstein (D-CA), Nay Frist (R-TN), Yea Graham (R-SC), Yea Grassley (R-IA), Yea Gregg (R-NH), Yea Hagel (R-NE), Not Voting Harkin (D-IA), Not Voting Hatch (R-UT), Yea Hutchison (R-TX), Yea Inhofe (R-OK), Yea Inouye (D-HI), Yea Isakson (R-GA), Yea Jeffords (I-VT), Nay Johnson (D-SD), Yea Kennedy (D-MA), Nay Kerry (D-MA), Nay Kohl (D-WI), Yea Kyl (R-AZ), Yea Landrieu (D-LA), Yea Lautenberg (D-NJ), Nay Leahy (D-VT), Nay Levin (D-MI), Nay Lieberman (D-CT), Yea Lincoln (D-AR), Yea Lott (R-MS), Yea Lugar (R-IN), Yea Martinez (R-FL), Yea McCain (R-AZ), Yea McConnell (R-KY), Yea Menendez (D-NJ), Nay Mikulski (D-MD), Nay Murkowski (R-AK), Yea Murray (D-WA), Nay Nelson (D-FL), Yea Nelson (D-NE), Yea Obama (D-IL), Nay Pryor (D-AR), Yea Reed (D-RI), Nay Reid (D-NV), Nay Roberts (R-KS), Yea Rockefeller (D-WV), Yea Salazar (D-CO), Yea Santorum (R-PA), Yea Sarbanes (D-MD), Nay Schumer (D-NY), Nay Sessions (R-AL), Yea Shelby (R-AL), Yea Smith (R-OR), Yea Snowe (R-ME), Yea Specter (R-PA), Yea Stabenow (D-MI), Nay Stevens (R-AK), Yea Sununu (R-NH), Yea Talent (R-MO), Yea Thomas (R-WY), Yea Thune (R-SD), Yea Vitter (R-LA), Yea Voinovich (R-OH), Yea Warner (R-VA), Yea Wyden (D-OR), Nay |
Confirmation Vote Akaka (D-HI), Nay Alexander (R-TN), Yea Allard (R-CO), Yea Allen (R-VA), Yea Baucus (D-MT), Nay Bayh (D-IN), Nay Bennett (R-UT), Yea Biden (D-DE), Nay Bingaman (D-NM), Nay Bond (R-MO), Yea Boxer (D-CA), Nay Brownback (R-KS), Yea Bunning (R-KY), Yea Burns (R-MT), Yea Burr (R-NC), Yea Byrd (D-WV), Yea Cantwell (D-WA), Nay Carper (D-DE), Nay Chafee (R-RI), Nay Chambliss (R-GA), Yea Clinton (D-NY), Nay Coburn (R-OK), Yea Cochran (R-MS), Yea Coleman (R-MN), Yea Collins (R-ME), Yea Conrad (D-ND), Yea Cornyn (R-TX), Yea Craig (R-ID), Yea Crapo (R-ID), Yea Dayton (D-MN), Nay DeMint (R-SC), Yea DeWine (R-OH), Yea Dodd (D-CT), Nay Dole (R-NC), Yea Domenici (R-NM), Yea Dorgan (D-ND), Nay Durbin (D-IL), Nay Ensign (R-NV), Yea Enzi (R-WY), Yea Feingold (D-WI), Nay Feinstein (D-CA), Nay Frist (R-TN), Yea Graham (R-SC), Yea Grassley (R-IA), Yea Gregg (R-NH), Yea Hagel (R-NE), Yea Harkin (D-IA), Nay Hatch (R-UT), Yea Hutchison (R-TX), Yea Inhofe (R-OK), Yea Inouye (D-HI), Nay Isakson (R-GA), Yea Jeffords (I-VT), Nay Johnson (D-SD), Yea Kennedy (D-MA), Nay Kerry (D-MA), Nay Kohl (D-WI), Nay Kyl (R-AZ), Yea Landrieu (D-LA), Nay Lautenberg (D-NJ), Nay Leahy (D-VT), Nay Levin (D-MI), Nay Lieberman (D-CT), Nay Lincoln (D-AR), Nay Lott (R-MS), Yea Lugar (R-IN), Yea Martinez (R-FL), Yea McCain (R-AZ), Yea McConnell (R-KY), Yea Menendez (D-NJ), Nay Mikulski (D-MD), Nay Murkowski (R-AK), Yea Murray (D-WA), Nay Nelson (D-FL), Nay Nelson (D-NE), Yea Obama (D-IL), Nay Pryor (D-AR), Nay Reed (D-RI), Nay Reid (D-NV), Nay Roberts (R-KS), Yea Rockefeller (D-WV), Nay Salazar (D-CO), Nay Santorum (R-PA), Yea Sarbanes (D-MD), Nay Schumer (D-NY), Nay Sessions (R-AL), Yea Shelby (R-AL), Yea Smith (R-OR), Yea Snowe (R-ME), Yea Specter (R-PA), Yea Stabenow (D-MI), Nay Stevens (R-AK), Yea Sununu (R-NH), Yea Talent (R-MO), Yea Thomas (R-WY), Yea Thune (R-SD), Yea Vitter (R-LA), Yea Voinovich (R-OH), Yea Warner (R-VA), Yea Wyden (D-OR), Nay |
The Supreme Court now has a guaranteed majority for anything the Bush Gang and the plutocrats want to push through. The ACLU has absolutely no chance of winning its case against the NSA for illegal spying. Even if we brought a lawsuit against the FBI to force (under the Freedom of Information Act) the release the September 11, 2001 surveillance videos from the gas station across the street from the Pentagon, a nearby hotel, and the Virginia DoT, we would only lose it in Supreme Court anyway, so what's the use. Same goes for forcing a reopening of the investigation into the 911 attacks, what's the use. There is no way a fair investigation is ever going to be carried out now, no way. Not a snowflake's chance in hell.
And to think that 72 senators voted to scrap the Constitution by confirming Alito. Shows you who you can trust. It is a sad day, a sad day indeed. Who ever thought this would happen in their own lifetime, and yet, if you are alive, it has happened to you in your lifetime.
Just a few days ago Bush said, "I think its best that I just leave it that all options should be on the table, and the last option is the military option. We've gotta work hard to exhaust all diplomacy and that's what your... that's what the country is seeing happen." And on Friday, the senate passed resolution S.CON.RES.78, condemning Iran (that's iraN, with an "N," not a "Q") for its program of weapons of mass destruction. Tomorrow Bush will deliver his annual lie to the nation. Are his speech writers even going to bother with coming up with new lies this time? Or are they just going to recycle the Nigerian yellowcake story and the "smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud" line. What the heck, those lines worked so beautifully before, and if it ain't broke, why fix it. And besides, nobody even remembers Joe Wilson anymore, or Valerie Plame.
Oh, and speaking of this S.CON.RES.78 that condemns Iran and sets the stage for the invasion of another oil-rich middle-east country even though we have been assured that all efforts will be made to disarm the rogue terrorist nation using diplomacy, just who was behind that bill? Well let's see. The sponsor was none other than Bill Frist. OK, no surprise there. And the cosponsors? Sen Allard, Wayne [CO], Sen Allen, George [VA], Sen Biden, Joseph R., Jr. [DE], Sen Boxer, Barbara [CA], Sen Brownback, Sam [KS], Sen Burr, Richard [NC], Sen Cantwell, Maria [WA], Sen Clinton, Hillary Rodham [NY], Sen Coleman, Norm [MN], Sen Crapo, Mike [ID], Sen Dodd, Christopher J. [CT], Sen Ensign, John [NV], Sen Feingold, Russell D. [WI], Sen Feinstein, Dianne [CA], Sen Graham, Lindsey [SC], Sen Hagel, Chuck [NE], Sen Kerry, John F. [MA], Sen Kyl, Jon [AZ], Sen Lieberman, Joseph I. [CT], Sen Lugar, Richard G. [IN], Sen McCain, John [AZ], Sen Menendez, Robert [NJ], Sen Mikulski, Barbara A. [MD], Sen Nelson, Bill [FL], Sen Reid, Harry [NV], Sen Santorum, Rick [PA], Sen Schumer, Charles E. [NY], Sen Talent, Jim [MO], Sen Voinovich, George V. [OH], Sen Warner, John [VA].
Well then, with Boxer, Clinton, Feinstein, Kerry and Biden all jumping on the war wagon, who, then, opposed it? Not a one, my friend. The vote was unanimous.
And in several years from now when some memo is leaked proving once again that the "all options on the table" line was crap, and that the decision to invade another oil-rich nation (just by coincidence) had already been made a long time ago, what are they going to use for an excuse? How about this one... "Of course, I believed the commander in chief. I never suspected that he might lie to us. Really. And based on the evidence which I believed to be true at the time..." What the heck, that line worked just so beautifully before, and it ain't broke, so they can use it again. All it really proves is this: The all important fact that man learns from history is that man never learns from history.
So next time you hear anyone talking about the two-party system in this country, remind them that there is but one party. The Plutocrats. Democrans and Republicats are merely an illusion, a smokescreen, two factions within the one party, the Plutocratic Party of America.
The only time this country ever had a two-party system was back in the 60s and 70s, when there really were two parties; one on Friday night, the other on Saturday night.
| "I think its best that I just leave it that all options should be on the table, and the last option is the military option. We've gotta work hard to exhaust all diplomacy and that's what your... that's what the country is seeing happen." |
You may recognize that quote. In case you don't, let me clue you in, those are the words straight from the mouth of George W. Bush. We all remember back in 2002 and early 2003 when George Bush said that...
Whoa! Back up a minute!
That quote is NOT from 2002 or 2003 and it is NOT in reference to Iraq! Those were the words of George Bush YESTERDAY, January 27 2006, and he is talking about IRAN.
Many of us knew in real time back in 2002, 2003 that George Bush was lying when he said the same thing about Iraq, but we didn't have proof until the Downing Street Memos were leaked. Now we do have proof. And what have we done about it in the nine months since the first memo was leaked? Well, that is not really the question I wanted to ask you. The questions I want to ask are:
1) Does George Bush take us for absolute imbeciles?
and
2) Is he right?
One thing is perfectly clear. While many people claimed that they had been duped the first time around, how could anyone use that lame excuse again this time? But then again, if Dubya can use the same line he used four years ago even after it had been proven a lie, and so far he seems to have gotten away with it...
I have these words to you, George:
| "There's an old saying in Tennessee -- I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee -- that says, fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again." |
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In December 2005, for instance, Bush cited the "unitary" powers of the Presidency when he signed the McCain amendment, which prohibited cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees in U.S. custody. In a "signing statement," Bush reserved the right to bypass the law by invoking his commander-in-chief powers.
"The Executive Branch shall construe [the torture ban] in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary Executive Branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power," the signing statement read. In other words, since Bush considers his commander-in-chief authority boundless, he can choose to waive the torture ban whenever he wants, much as he ordered wiretaps of American citizens without getting a court warrant as is required by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. |
In the newsletter he speaks of the corruption and violation of human rights such as spying on citizens without a warrant and he lashes out against Sam Alito for his support of dictatorship. And of course he tells us that he hopes very much "that you'll be part of this fight, and that you'll help us to make sure we're ready by contributing $35 or more, if you can afford it, to my re-election campaign," but he did not say what he was actually going to do to earn the $35 or more. So I wrote back that I will be more than glad to contribute $35 to his campaign PROVIDED that he either filibusters Alito or supports any other senator who does, or both. And I aim to make good on that promise, if there really is a filibuster and if Kennedy is the one who does it or at least supports it, I will send him 35 bucks. It'll be well worth it.
After all, that is what poli-ticks (poli = many; ticks = blood sucking parasites) are all about. Show me the money.
But still there are many who simply refuse to see. Not that they CAN'T see, but just that they REFUSE to see. There is no way that a person could look at the evidence objectively and not come to the obvious conclusion that the 911 WTC/Pentagon attack was the dirty work of the cabal. Each person will have his/her own take on what initially caused reason to be suspicious of the "official story," and what his/her own investigations (since there were no government nor media investigations) finally proved to be the convincing factor that 911 WTC/Pentagon had to have been an inside job. And then the more you investigate, the more absolutely positive you have to become. The official story, when held up to the light, begins to resemble a snowflake in hell. Ain't no way, baby!
But for some, the truth is just too horrible to be true, so for them, it just isn't. They will agree that the plutocrats are scoundrels who squander our tax dollars on absurd projects that do nothing but make some rich dudes richer while it makes us poor proles poorer. But Good Grief! Our own government officials attack our own country and kill our own country(wo)men? NO! NEVER HAPPEN! they holler. And then they go and bury their heads in the sand because they can not bear to look at the evidence that proves it to be true. After all, these government officials are the men and women WE the people elected to look after our best interests, right?
The battle cry "Remember the Maine!" was the catalyst that launched the Spanish-American war over a hundred years ago. And yet, only within the last decade, the Maine was raised and studied, and whaddaya know! The explosion that sank the Maine in Havana Harbor turns out to have been an explosion of its own boiler! So it wasn't the Spaniards after all. Well, what can we do about that now? Can we un-fight the war and give Guantanamo and the Philippines back to the Spaniards? Or should we just say, "oh well, we acted on the information we had at the time."
A very similar story could be said of the Lusitania which was the catalyst for WW I and the Gulf of Tonkin incident that was the catalyst for the assault on Vietnam. I am not even going to go into the details of how Pearl Harbor was neither unprovoked nor unforeseen.
But if anyone really wants to see documentation of the US government's false-flag attacks, just take a look at the Operation Northwoods documents. Now let me tell you, Operation Northwoods was a plan that was never executed. Some people believe that John F. Kennedy was executed because he prevented Operation Northwoods from being executed, and I am not going to speculate on that in this blog other to say that it certainly would not surprise me. In any case, it was the Joint Chiefs of Staff who formulated the plan. And some of you may remember that Kennedy's predecessor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, warned against a military-industrial complex. Actually, the original speech was written as military-industrial-congressional complex, but in order not to anger congress, he deleted the "congressional" part when he delivered the speech.
So to make a long story short, yes, they could. They really could be so evil.
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CC: Gail Kimberling, editor, the Newport News Times
OPEN LETTER to Senator Gordon SmithDear Senator Smith As the decision to install or not to install Sam Alito as Chief Justice draws nearer, I wish to tell you the points that bother me most about the Alito nomination. POINTS OF DIFFERENCE (TOP THREE): - Sam Alito believes it is perfectly alright to strip-search little girls. I certainly do not, and I hope you don't either. - Sam Alito believes it is perfectly alright to shoot 15-year old boys in the back when they flee from the scene of a $10 robbery. (Provided, of course, that they are BLACK 15-year old boys.) I certainly do not, and I hope you don't either. - Sam Alito believes it is perfectly alright for the president to declare himself above the law, above the Constitution, above the Congress, above the Supreme Court, and even above the People. I certainly do not, and I hope you don't either. Those are my top three reasons for opposing Sam Alito's nomination. I assure you, the list does not stop there. This man's beliefs and ideology contradict everything America stands for. I respect you, Senator Smith, as a man of honor dedicated to upholding the laws of Oregon and the laws of the United States, and the principles for which they stand. Certainly you must abhor the strip-search of little girls, the shooting in the back of little boys, and the usurpation of dictatorial powers as much as I do, in which case you will oppose the confirmation of Sam Alito. If, however, I am wrong and you do not abhor the strip-search of little girls, the shooting in the back of little boys, and the usurpation of dictatorial powers by the president, then I should like to know the reasons why you do not, on a point-by-point basis. Thank you for your attention, and I look forward to your response. |
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This is not a blog. But it is sooo cooool that I just have to pass it on.
I would rather someone was wrapped in the Constitution burning the flag than wrapped in the flag burning the Constitution. Quote taken directly from Moxie Grrrl's blog |
As a news gathering and reporting organization, the New York Times has a social obligation to the citizens of New York and the citizens of the United States. There could never have been any doubt in your minds whatsoever that the NSA's domestic spying program authorized and ordered by the president of the United States is a violation of the Fourth Amendment. The ludicrous claim that as commander in chief the president is exempt from the law and the Constitution is just that; ludicrous. After all, who do you think the Fourth and other Amendments of the Bill of Rights were meant to protect us from, Santa Claus?
The fact that you knew about this illegal and unconstitutional action and failed to report this conspiracy and crime to the public makes you an accomplice after the fact. That you knew it a full year ago means that when the Downing Street Memo story finally broke (after being hushed up for as long as was possible) you already knew of the NSA spying at that time. And the Plame affair, and when Bush reneged on his pledge to fire any member of the administration found to have been involved in the leak, and the imprisonment of one of your own staff members in that affair -- even then you knew all along that this illegal and unconstitutional spying was being conducted. Shame on you for keeping those secrets. What ELSE do you know that you hiding from us?
| The other thing I learned from Ries and Trout came from their book "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing." The very first law in that book is "The Law of Leadership - it's better to be first than it is to be better." They ask, "Who was the second man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean?" Everyone remembers the first, Charles Lindbergh. But Bert Hinkler flew faster and used less fuel. Who remembers Bert? |
In yesterday's blog, I told you that I would be catching up on the backlog unless another batch of work came in. And guess what. But nevertheless, I will try to at least do what I can.
Last month, it was revealed that Dubya had ordered the NSA to spy on Americans. A lot of people were shocked. Many of us were not surprised one bit by the news itself, but just had not expected that what we knew to be going on all along would be exposed in the open.
But exposed it is. So what does Dubya do? Resign? Apologize to the people and beg forgiveness? No, instead our Resident and Commander in Thief makes the asinine claim that it is legal for him to do so. Well, excuse me, Mr. Resident, but just what part of "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated" do you not understand?
In response, the Dubya asserts, "I th... I think most Ameri-heh-heh-cans under-heh-heh-stand the need to find out what the enemy is thinking." But really, you have to hear this in Dubya's own words with your own ears to appreciate it. And watching the video with audio is even more revealing. A video clip was available on Tokyo's TBS News for a while, but unfortunately, they remove all their video clips after having them online for brief periods. (Knowing it would soon disappear, I downloaded and saved the clip. Can't put it up here, but will email it to you on request. Size: 2.3 megabytes.) But an audio clip is available on the www, it is Amy Goodman's January 3 broadcast. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11442.htm The whole segment is almost 49 minutes, but Amy introduces the topic, then starts playing the audio clip of Dubya a little less than two minutes into the show. The sentence quoted above comes in at about two and a half minutes into Amy's program. Really, folks, listen to this clip. And if you can find a video clip of it still online, let me know.
And it will probably not surprise you to know that Alberto "Seedy" Gonzales advised Dubya that it was OK to spy on Americans because the Constitution makes him Commander in Chief and besides, Congress authorized him to do whatever was necessary. That makes it legal. NOT! You remember Seedy Gonzales, he's the guy that told Dubya that it was legal to torture prisoners.
And speaking of torture. The Dubya Cabal tried to twist arms in Congress to exempt the CIA from the ban on torture. (This is despite Dubya's claim that "we do not torture," but if that is the really the case, why exempt the CIA from the ban? Kinda like requiring the hen house to be locked at night, but mandating that the fox be given a master key!) But Congress finally had the backbone to stand up and say NO! So what does Dubya do then? Same thing he did when arm twisting failed to get UN support to invade Iraq in the first place, which was of course to just ignore the UN saying that the UN does not have jurisdiction and it doesn't matter what they think, since has the authority vested by god to invade Iraq, and then go ahead and invade. Ditto for wiretapping, and ditto for torture. He tried on both accounts to get Congress to rubber stamp his unconstitutional actions, but when they just said NO, he just claims that Congress has no authority to prevent him from exercising his powers vested in him by god, and then he goes ahead and does as he pleases. Well, Mr. Resident, you are about to find out that you and your cabal are the only ones in the world who think that way. The rest of us, excluding a few sheople who still have a bad case of wool-over-eyes, call that dictatorship. Your reign of tyranny is about to come to an end.
A few things that have been happening: The EPA is trying to weasel out of doing its job, impeachment has been looming larger and larger, the holocaust in Fallujah is becoming more and more known to the public, word is out that Tom Delay has been working for the Russians, hate-mongers have invaded Newport, Bush has been caught ordering illegal wiretaps, Bush retaliates by sending the Justice (sic) Department to investigate the people who revealed his illegal activities, and petitions are circulating everywhere to impeach and prosecute the real terrorists.
This year just might turn out to be a good one after all. Even some of the top Republicants are censuring the commander in chief and repudiating his claim to be above the law. As the sound of the beating war drums begins to recede into the distance, the sound of impeachment drums grows louder.
A toast to 2006!