The Dynamics – Live at The Blue Note
Columbia, Missouri
Audio by Dylan McCord
Camera & Editing by Scott Wilson
Day: November 21, 2007
Hi-tech Torture by Rosemarie Jackowski (ADS) + Pioneering ‘heat wave’ gun may be used in Iraq
by Rosemarie Jackowski
Dissident Voice
November 21st, 2007
…Now the US military directorate charged with developing non-lethal weapons, which has invested more than a decade developing the Active Denial System (ADS), has launched a concerted effort to convince both the public and its own bosses at the defence department of the device’s merits.
With brand new technology like this, perception is everything,” said Col Kirk Hymes, a former Marine artillery officer who heads the directorate.
He added that tests were almost complete and the first ADS, also known as the Silent Guardian, could be deployed early next year if the Pentagon allows. The decision is so sensitive that it is expected to be made personally by the defence secretary, Robert Gates, who sent senior representatives to the demonstrations…
– The Telegraph, November 19, 2007
Just when it seems that things cannot get any worse, we learn that U.S. military commanders in Iraq are seeking permission to use a new weapon system. This will be the ultimate torture weapon. Its purpose is to cause excruciating pain, but leave no evidence of wounds on the victim. Imagine this weapon at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. Imagine this weapon at your local precinct. The Department of Defense has named this weapon system “Active Denial”. Besides torture, this weapon can also be used for crowd control — a ray gun which could literally make blood boil. It is based on the same technology as a microwave oven. The human body is comprised mostly of water… think of the sensation of boiling blood. The purpose of this weapon system is to cause an unbearable level of pain so that the victim will submit to the will of the US military or police.
The gun produces a 95-gigahertz microwave beam that is designed to penetrate 1/64th of an inch. Hummmm, should the experts be trusted to achieve zero defects with a technology that requires so precise a tolerance?
Raytheon, with headquarters in Waltham, Mass. is listed as the prime contractor on this project. Raytheon reports sales of $20.3 billion in 2006. The development of torture devices brings high profits to the corporation. Profits before people seems to be the accepted practice in the United States.
This project brings to mind some questions. The Raytheon web site states that this weapon will be used for “civilian law enforcement”. Is this system being designed for domestic use against U.S. citizens? Will it be used for “crowd control” at sites of labor disputes and strikes? Will it be coming soon to a war protest near you? Will it be used at the borders to prevent immigration? Does International Law prohibit the use of this weapon on the battlefield? Will the government hide behind Sovereign Immunity when a citizen is injured or killed by this weapon? How will this weapon effect children? Will the NRA lobby for access to this weapon? How will it affect the performance of an implanted medical device, such as a pacemaker?
The bad news is that this weapon is now operational. The good news is that the weapon system has had some major design problems. The designers have failed to realize that a person is not a potato. Microwaving a human to the exact degree of doneness is proving to be problematic. Is there anyone out there who wants to volunteer as a subject for any further field tests that may be required? What they need is a test subject, with a pacemaker, contact lenses, a lot of amalgam dental fillings, and maybe a few metal surgical staples from an old appendectomy. Will they pay a bonus if the subject is pregnant? When the experiment is completed, if the subject is incapacitated, but still alive with no visible wounds, the field test is a success.
Fifty-one million dollars has already been spent on this weapon system. This gun has killed before the trigger was even pulled. In the U.S., 18,000 die each year because of the lack of health care. If that 51 million dollars had been used to provide health care to our fellow citizens many lives would have been saved. The real enemies of the American people are those whose priorities are so warped that they allocate money for ray guns while ignoring the humanitarian needs of the populace.
The design and production of redundant weapon systems is pushed by the lobbying efforts of the arms manufacturers who have been doing a land-office business. Somehow all of this seems to be OK with the employees of Raytheon. The argument that, “We need the jobs”, is an old one that has been used to justify the development of the most horrific weapons. It is puzzling that the psyche of so many U.S. workers allows them to be engaged in the design and manufacture of a weapon system designed to torture. As the U.S. economy disintegrates, more will be willing to sell their souls for the pay check at the end of the week.
Will those in the legal community speak out against this hi-tech torture system? Its legality under international law is questionable — but then compliance with international law is not a high priority in the US.
Will church leaders give sermons about hi-tech torture? It does not seem to be a hot topic among the clergy.
Will shareholders dump their Raytheon stock? Does Wall Street have a conscience — dumb question, I know.
Will US taxpayers object to having their money used to make weapons of torture? They don’t seem to object to cluster bombs, land mines, or nukes.
Will US citizens be duped by the spin of the Pentagon and State Department into thinking that this is just another “nice” weapon that we need to “protect our freedom”? The propaganda campaign has already begun. Col. Kirk Hymes is quoted as saying, “With brand new technology like this, perception is everything.”
Waterboarding is low-tech torture. Active Denial is hi-tech torture. Torture is torture no matter how it is done. Most people — with the exception of at least one Justice on the Supreme Court — understand that. Torture by any other name is still torture.
By Philip Sherwell in Quantico, Virginia and Jacqui Goddard
Telegraph
2:31am GMT 21/11/2007
American commanders in Iraq are urging Pentagon chiefs to authorise the deployment of newly-developed heat wave guns to disperse angry crowds or violent rioters.
But the plea for what senior army officers believe could prove a valuable alternative to traditional firepower in dangerous trouble-spots has so far gone unanswered.
Washington fears a barrage of adverse publicity in the suspicious Muslim world and is concerned that critics will claim the invisible beam weapons were being used for torture.
Now the US military directorate charged with developing non-lethal weapons, which has invested more than a decade developing the Active Denial System (ADS), has launched a concerted effort to convince both the public and its own bosses at the defence department of the device’s merits.
see
Bio-electromagnetic Weapons: The ultimate weapon (ADS; torture)
New Weapon Coming to a Warzone or Neighborhood Near You (heat ray gun; ADS)
US military unveils new ray gun (video; propaganda; ADS)
USA Army manufactered Beam Gun! Warming Gun! (video; heat ray gun; ADS) (not in English)
Bloomberg Crams On Foreign Policy: Proof That He’s Planning ’08 Bid? by Sam Stein
by Sam Stein
Huffington Post
November 21, 2007 05:16 PM
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been receiving foreign policy briefing sessions on a wide variety of topics, providing the strongest indication yet that he is considering a run for the White House, the Huffington Post has learned.
The sessions, which were confirmed by multiple sources, have been conducted with Nancy Soderberg, a former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and a Clinton Administration foreign policy adviser. One source described her as “Bloomberg’s Condi.”
…
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
AOL Poll: Democratic Nomination and Republican Nomination
Who would you like to see win the Democratic presidential nomination?
Hillary Clinton 23%
Barack Obama 19%
John Edwards 15%
Other 14%
Joe Biden 11%
Bill Richardson 8%
Dennis Kucinich 6%
Chris Dodd 2%
Mike Gravel 2%
Total Votes: 152,706
Who would you like to see win the Republican presidential nomination?
Rudy Giuliani 23%
Mike Huckabee 20%
Ron Paul 15%
Fred Thompson 15%
John McCain 10%
Mitt Romney 9%
Other 6%
Tom Tancredo 1%
Duncan Hunter 1%
Total Votes: 161,929
Updated: Nov. 22, 2007 9:08 PM CT
Hillary Clinton 23%
Barack Obama 19%
John Edwards 15%
Other 14%
Joe Biden 11%
Bill Richardson 8%
Dennis Kucinich 7%
Chris Dodd 2%
Mike Gravel 2%
Total Votes: 198,827
Rudy Giuliani 22%
Mike Huckabee 19%
Ron Paul 19%
Fred Thompson 14%
John McCain 9%
Mitt Romney 9%
Other 5%
Tom Tancredo 1%
Duncan Hunter 1%
Total Votes: 216,316
h/t: *RC_REVOLUTION [resistance]
see
Clash of Worlds: Britain and Palestine (videos)
BBC Documentary focusing on the relationship between Britain and Palestine, the resulting foundation of the state of Israel, and the effects felt to this day.
Added: November 19, 2007
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEE8IrQU7Ew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEZf2nJCza4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGMH-KB14Co
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pEjK8WWPM0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCrHefk7VHM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bm2a5f1so4
h/t: ICH
see
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Dr. Ilan Pappe (videos)
Al-Qaeda Urges Iraq’s Insurgents to Consolidate Victory Over America By Michael Scheuer
By Michael Scheuer
ICH
11/21/07
Nearly a month since Osama bin Laden published his message to “our people in Iraq,” it is worth taking a look at what bin Laden really said versus what the media, Western leaders and some prematurely mirthful pundits claim he said (IntelCenter, October 23). In the most obvious sense, bin Laden’s October 23 statement is a post-Iraq war statement and a further development of Ayman al-Zawahiri’s 2005 message to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (www.dni.gov, July 9, 2005). From al-Qaeda’s perspective the war is over and Islam has won; Washington’s announcement last week that it intends to begin the withdrawal of 3,000 troops, as well as Congress’s recess without renewing war funding, will bolster this perception. Bin Laden’s message is, however, a warning to all Iraqi mujahideen—Sunni and Shiite—that the hardest task is yet to come: namely, the creation of an Islamist state in Iraq.
Bin Laden’s October 23 message builds on the July 2005 letter from al-Zawahiri to al-Zarqawi. At that time, al-Zawahiri told al-Zarqawi that the mujahideen had beaten the U.S.-led coalition and urged him to prepare for U.S. withdrawal, which might, he added, be “precipitous.” Bin Laden’s October message mirrors al-Zawahiri’s in concluding that the U.S. coalition has been beaten, and in stating that the only unknown is the precise moment of its withdrawal. There is nothing in bin Laden’s statement that criticizes the mujahideen for not fighting well—indeed, he refers to “magnificent victories” that make Americans “prisoners of their bases and the Green Zone”—much less anything that suggests they are losing. “The world has stood stunned, amazed, delighted and wonder struck” over the Iraqi mujahideen’s effectiveness and perseverance, the al-Qaeda chief said.
“[W]atching America the tyrannical: watching its legions breaking apart under your strikes, its brigades being wiped out in front of your raids and its battalions being obliterated by the pounding of your squadrons… O people of Iraq … O eminent ones of the Turks, Kurds and Arabs: the affair of unbelief [the U.S. occupation] has been shaken and confused, and the time of his fleeing is nigh, so increase his confusion and disarray, and strike some more at his neck and hit it with a bone-cutting sword. The bearer of the banner of the Cross has increased his soldiers and claimed that he will defeat the soldiers of faith, so be resolute—may Allah be merciful to you—and remember Him much, for he is watching you… You have done well by carrying out one of the greatest of duties which few carry out: repelling the attacking enemy.”
Bin Laden’s words are a bit more hyperbolic than usual, but they match the presiding sense of what he described as the “amazement” that exists among both the mujahideen and Muslims generally over the fact that U.S.-led forces have been beaten so easily in Iraq, and that they are withdrawing with what Islamists surely view as minor losses for a superpower with a population of more than 300 million. And we may already be seeing the insurgents spreading the “confusion” bin Laden called for among U.S.-led forces, whose leaders are perhaps too eager to see victory in statistics that show a slowing of insurgent attacks. Always students of Sun-Tzu, Mao and the great Afghan commander Ahmed Shah Masood, the Iraqi insurgents and their al-Qaeda and other foreign allies are simply not taking on U.S. “surge” forces toe-to-toe—knowing they would be crushed—and are making fewer but more targeted attacks, moving to other areas of Iraq or simply lying low to fight another day [1]. As important—and this was the Masood-model during the Red Army’s retreat—the Iraqi mujahideen have heard U.S. politicians promise withdrawal, and they know U.S. voters favor withdrawal. In this case, they see little sense in aggressively attacking a retreating foe, risk humiliating him, and thereby causing him to reconsider his decision to leave in favor of staying to fight.
After praising the insurgents’ victory, bin Laden delivers the crux of his message and puts it frankly: “But some of you have been tardy in performing another duty which is also among the greatest of duties: combining your ranks to make them one rank as loved by Allah, who said, ‘Truly Allah loves those who fight in His cause in ranks, as if they were a solid cemented structure’.” Bin Laden here is reaffirming al-Qaeda’s consistent post-2003 position on Iraq: (a) the U.S.-led coalition will be evicted because the Iraqi mujahideen will prolong the war and kill unacceptable numbers of U.S. military personnel—thereby causing political discord in America—and (b), in al-Zawahiri’s words to al-Zarqawi, it will be a harder struggle for the insurgents “to fill the void stemming from the departure of the Americans, immediately upon their exit and before un-Islamic forces attempt to fill the void…” Bin Laden, like al-Zawahiri before him, warns the Iraqi mujahideen that the Islamist movement has a wretched record in consolidating victory over infidel forces, and warns them that they must be fully alert to “the full magnitude of the [infidel] conspiracies being hatched against you.”
Even before U.S. forces withdraw, bin Laden explains, “infidelity on all its levels—international, regional and local—is combining to prevent the establishment of the state of Islam” as they effectively did after the Red Army left Afghanistan, once the Taliban took power there and after Hasan Turabi stated his intention to make Sudan an Islamic state. As always, however, bin Laden does not blame these Islamist failures on the infidels; rather, he damns the Islamists for not recognizing that only mujahideen unity can prevent the wasting of military victory. Bin Laden reminds the Iraqi insurgents:
“And the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said: ‘Observe the group and avoid factionalism, for Satan is with the loner and farther away from the pair. Whoever wants the comfort of the Garden must stay with the group… Sticks refuse to break when banded together. But if they come apart they break one by one.’
My brothers, the amirs of the Mujahid groups [in Iraq]: The Muslims are waiting for you to gather under one banner to enforce truth. And when you carry out this act of obedience [to God], the Ummah will enjoy the birth year of the group. And how it longs for this year, and perhaps it will come soon at your hands. So seek—may Allah have mercy on you—to carry out this great lost obligation.”
Bin Laden goes on to urge “sincere people of knowledge and virtue”—Islamist scholars not in the Arab rulers’ pay and control—to help the mujahideen to rectify their “faults and lapses,” and to “engender reconciliation between every two parties in dispute, and they must judge between them according to the law of Allah.” Bin Laden also instructs the Iraqi insurgents to seek the masses’ support and active assistance, implicitly reminding the mujahideen of al-Zawahiri’s 2005 warning to al-Zarqawi that “in the absence of this popular support, the Islamic mujahid movement would be crushed in the shadows … our planning must strive to involve the Muslim masses in the battle, and to bring the mujahid movement to the masses and not to conduct the struggle far from them.” Finally, bin Laden warns the Iraqi fighters to “beware of your enemies, especially the hypocrites who infiltrate your ranks to stir up trouble among mujahid groups.” Bin Laden is here referring to Saudi officials or agents who deliver advice, money and weapons to the Iraqi mujahideen in a way that favors the groups that are most Wahhabist in their orientation and therefore most disruptive of efforts to promote insurgent unity. Bin Laden has long believed this kind of Saudi activity prevented the formation of an Afghan mujahideen regime after the Soviets’ defeat (Through Our Enemies’ Eyes, pp. 53-54).
The tone of bin Laden’s appeal to the Iraqi mujahideen is beseeching and fretful; there is little in it to suggest he believes unity is forthcoming. As noted, bin Laden believes the support of Saudi Arabia, other Arab regimes and Iran for their Iraqi favorites works against unity. He also believes that those he calls the “rulers’ clerics” will deceive the mujahideen as to their religious obligations and thereby obstruct unity. He may also believe that there has been too little preparatory work in laying the groundwork for a post-U.S. Islamic state. My Jamestown colleague Lydia Khalil recently and cogently argued that al-Qaeda’s pivotal part in forming a wartime Islamic government in Iraq was a “blunder,” and she may well be right. Al-Qaeda’s decision to do so, however, was a calculated gamble based, as al-Zawahiri explained to al-Zarqawi, on the fear that without political “fieldwork starting now [2005], alongside the combat and war” there would be no chance of quickly installing a post-occupation Shura council … elected by the people of the country to represent them and overlook the work of the authorities in accordance with the rules of the glorious Sharia.” The wartime government may now seem a blunder, but it was not a capricious act. It was an effort to avoid the disastrous Afghan experiences of 1989 and 1996.
Bin Laden’s near-pessimism regarding the post-U.S. unity of the Iraqi mujahideen also derives from his realization that some substantial portion of their disunity is the result of the actions and attitudes of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is now a thankfully—from al-Qaeda’s perspective—dead hero. Al-Zarqawi’s attempt to force himself into the leadership of the Iraqi insurgency, his zeal in taking credit for most resistance activities, his decision to televise the beheading of captives and his indiscriminate slaughter of Shiites, whether or not they were working for the U.S.-backed regime, all undercut what must be regarded as the always limited potential for Shiite-Sunni cooperation after the occupation ends. Al-Zarqawi’s actions also alienated many neutral and anti-American Sunnis and led to the transitory success of the so-called “Awakening” programs in Anbar Province and elsewhere; at day’s end, Iraqi Sunnis will reconcile with al-Qaeda and other foreign fighters because they will need non-Iraqi Sunni assistance to avoid annihilation by the Shiites.
Thus, the negative aftershocks of al-Zarqawi’s tenure as al-Qaeda’s chief in Iraq have begun to be tempered, but still pose tall hurdles in the path of both intra-Sunni and Sunni-Shiite unity; indeed, had al-Zarqawi lived longer his impact may have been more harmful to al-Qaeda than that of the Pakistani army, which al-Zawahiri claims has done the most damage to al-Qaeda since 2001. While al-Qaeda appears to be playing its more traditional role in supporting but not dominating the Iraqi insurgency since al-Zarqawi’s death, the wounds he opened in the mujahideen ranks continue to bleed. Bin Laden seems to recognize this and the best he can do in response is exhort his fighters to avoid al-Zarqawi-like behavior that widens rifts in insurgent ranks. “And before concluding,” bin Laden said in a rather dispirited tone, “I advise myself and the Muslims in general, and the brothers in [the] al-Qaeda organization everywhere in particular, to beware of fanatical partiality to men, groups and homelands. The truth is what Allah (the Most High) said and what the Messenger (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) said, and everyone’s statement is to be accepted or rejected except the Messenger’s (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): his order is to be accepted with pleasure.” Although left unsaid, bin Laden clearly is worried that once again the mujahideen and Muslims generally will, in al-Zawahiri’s words, allow themselves to be “robbed of the spoils” because of disunity, and be unable to prevent others from moving in to “reap the fruits of their labor.”
Notes
1. Several U.S. officials have forthrightly said that the declining number of attacks should not yet be considered indicative of permanent success. For example, Major General Mark P. Hertling, commander of the coalition’s multi-national division in northern Iraq, told the media on November 19 that northern Iraq was now experiencing the highest level of violence in Iraq and that “the enemy is shifting there” because of the surge forces present in Anbar province and the Baghdad area. Hertling added that “there are certainly [insurgent] cells remaining in all the key cities” in the north. In addition, retired General Montgomery Meigs, director of the U.S. counter-IED program, said that IED attacks were falling faster than U.S. casualties from such attacks because the insurgents have grown proficient in the use of IEDs against U.S. forces (AFP, November 19; USA Today, November 20).
Michael F. Scheuer is a former CIA employee. In his 22-year career, he served as the Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station (aka “Alec Station”), from 1996 to 1999, the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorist Center. He then worked again as Special Advisor to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004. Scheuer resigned in 2004.
Published by The Jamestown Foundation
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine by Dr. Ilan Pappe (videos)
Added: July 15, 2007
The present dismal reality unfolding in the Middle East has clear historical roots and a journey into the past may help to illuminate what lies behind the destructive policies of Israel in both Palestine and Lebanon.
Zionism arrived in Palestine in the late 19th as a colonialist movement motivated by national impulses.
The colonisation of Palestine fitted well the interests and policies of the British Empire on the eve of the First World War.
With the backing of Britain, the colonisation project expanded, and became a solid presence on the land after the war and with the establishment of the British mandate in Palestine (which lasted between 1918 and 1948).
While this consolidation took place, the indigenous society underwent, like other societies in the rest of the Arab world, a steady process of establishing a national identity.
But with one difference. While the rest of the Arab world was shaping its political identity through the struggle against European colonialism, in Palestine nationalism meant asserting your collective identity against both an exploitative British colonialism and expansionist Zionism.
Thus, the conflict with Zionism was an additional burden. The pro-Zionist policy of the British mandate there naturally strained the relationship between Britain and the local Palestinian society.
This climaxed in a revolt in 1936 against both London and the expanding Zionist colonisation project.
At the end of November 1947, the UN offered to divide Palestine into two states almost equal in their territorial space. The Jews were only one third of the population by 1947 and most of them had arrived in Palestine only a few years earlier.
The categorical Palestinian refusal to go along with this deal, backed by the Arab League, allowed the Zionist leadership to plan carefully the next step. Between February 1947 and March 1948, a final plan for ethnic cleansing was prepared.
The Zionist leadership defined 80 percent of Palestine (Israel today without the West Bank) as the space for the future state.
This was an area in which one million Palestinians lived next to 600,000 Jews.
The idea was to uproot as many Palestinians as possible. From March 1948 until the end of that year the plan was implemented despite the attempt by some Arab states to oppose it, which failed. Some 750,000 Palestinians were expelled, 531 villages were destroyed and 11 urban neighbourhoods demolished.
Half of Palestine’s population was uprooted and half of its villages destroyed. The state of Israel was established in over 80 percent of Palestine, turning Palestinian villages into Jewish settlements and recreation parks, but allowing a small number of Palestinian to remain citizens in it.
The June 1967 war allowed Israel to take the remaining 20 percent of Palestine.
This seizure defeated in a way the ethnic ideology of the Zionist movement. Israel encompassed 100 percent of Palestine, but the state incorporated a large number of Palestinians, the people who Zionists made such an effort to expel in 1948.
The fact that Israel was let off easily in 1948, and not condemned for the ethnic cleansing it committed, encouraged it to ethnically cleanse a further 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank and the Gaza strip.
h/t: ICH
Why Corporations Can Lie – And How We Can Stop It (videos)
Videos no longer available.
Currently we are in a situation where out of control corporate power and influence is controlling our government. As American’s we know it is our inalienable right to have proper representation and due influence on our elected representatives. Corporations have no such right at all. It is the true citizens that make this nation, not the moneyed corporations that fuel the corrupt politician’s coffers.
This video about educating people about the true role of corporate powers, we are not subservient to them, their charter is in fact a privilege granted by the people to conduct a common good. They are the servants, the people are the masters.
After you watch my video please take a look at these essential links:
Economy in Crisis:
http://www.economyincrisis.org/
Reclaim Democracy:
Thanks for watching my videos, please leave a comment or send a message with any suggestions.
Added: November 21, 2007
Who should be the Democratic Nominee? (poll)
Who should be the Democratic Nominee?
Updated: Nov. 22, 2007 9:13 PM CT
Dennis Kucinich 73.98 %
h/t: d018019c
see
Who would the world elect? (poll)
Who is your favorite candidate for U.S. President in 2008? (Poll)
Radio: Kucinich on Impeachment (link)
Radio: Kucinich on Impeachment
Submitted by davidswanson on Wed, 2007-11-21 12:48.
Building Bridges: Your Community and Labor Report, National Edition, Produced by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
Democrats Oppose Call for Impeachment, with: U.S. Representative & Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich
When Rep. Kucinich introduced his resolution for impeachment of Vice President Cheney, he received the support of only a handful of Democrats. A Presidential hopeful, we´ll talk to Kucinich from the campaign trail in Iowa about impeachment, whether Democrats really want to end the War, and one of his signature issues, national single payer health care for all. GO HERE.
…
FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Dennis and Elizabeth Kucinich: You Can’t Get More Presidential Than This! by Meryl Ann Butler
11.20.07 Uncensored News Reports From Across The Middle East (video; over 18 only)
Warning
.
This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
Selected Episode
Nov. 20, 2007
For more: http:// linktv.org/originalseries
“Lebanese Presidential Elections Postponed,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Laws Governing Jordanian Elections,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Syria and Jordan Warm Relations,” Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
“Olmert Seeks Mubarak’s Support,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“Nepotism in Government,” IBA TV, Israel
“Palestinian Farmers Go Hi-tech,” Al-Alam TV, Iran
“The Shaaban Criminal Case in Iraq Resumes,” Al-Iraqiya TV, Iraq
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
The End of America? Naomi Wolf Thinks It Could Happen By Don Hazen
By Don Hazen
AlterNet
November 21, 2007
An interview with author Naomi Wolf, whose new book, “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot,” may confirm your worries about democracy in America.
If you think we are living in scary times, your worst fears may be confirmed by reading Naomi Wolf’s newest book, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot. In it, Wolf proves the old axiom that history does repeat itself. Or more accurately, history occurs in patterns, and in order to understand where our country is today and where it is headed, we need to read the history books.
Wolf began by diving into the early years leading up to fascist regimes, like the ones led by Hitler and Mussolini. And the patterns that she found in those, and others all over the world, made her hair stand on end. In “The End of America,” she lays out the 10 steps that dictators (or aspiring dictators) take in order to shut down an open society. “Each of those ten steps is now under way in the United States today,” she writes.
If we want an open society, she warns, we must pay attention and we must fight to protect democracy.
I met with Wolf to discuss what she learned while researching this book, how the American public has received her warnings, and what we can do to squelch the fascist narratives we are fed in this country each day.
Don Hazen: Let’s take up a big question first — your fears about the upcoming U.S. presidential election and what the historical blue print about fascist takeovers shows in terms of elections.
Naomi Wolf: We would be naive given the historical patterns to have hope that there’s going to be a transparent, accountable election in 2008. There are various ways the blueprint indicates how events are much more likely to play out. Historically, the months leading up to the national election are likely to be unstable.
What classically happens is either there will be a period of provocation, and we have a history of this in the United States — agitators who are dressed as or act like activist voter registration workers, anti-war marchers … but who engage in actual violence, torch property, assault police officers. And that scares people. People are much less likely to vote for change when they’re scared, and it gives them the excuse to crack down.
In addition, I’m concerned about the 2007 Defense Authorization Act, which makes it much easier for the president to declare martial law.
DH: Are you saying that they keep on adding coercive laws for no apparent reason?
NW: Yes. Why amend the law so systematically? Why do you need to make martial law easier? Another thing historical blueprints underscore is the hyped threat; intelligence will be spun or exaggerated, and sometimes there are faked documents like Plan Z with Pinochet in Chile.
DH: Plan Z?
NW:Yes, Plan Z. Pinochet, when he was overthrowing the Democratic government of Chile, told Chilean citizens that there was going to be a terrible terrorist attack, with armed insurgents. Now there were real insurgents, there was a real threat, but then he produces what he called Plan Z, which were fake papers claiming that these terrorists were going to assassinate all these military leaders at once.
And this petrified Chileans so much that they didn’t stand up to fight for their democracy. So it’s common to take a real threat and hype it. And close to an election it’s very common to invoke a hype threat and scare people so much that they will not want to have a transparent election.
Americans have this very wrong idea about what a closed society looks like. Many despots make it a point to try to hold the elections, but they’re corrupted elections. Corrupted elections take place all over the world in closed societies. Ninety-nine percent of Austrians voted yes for the annexation by Germany, because the SA were standing outside the voting booths, intimidating the voters and people counting the vote. So you can mess with the process.
One current warning sign is the e-mails that the White House is not yielding about the attorney general scandal. The emails are likely to show that there were plans afoot to purge all of the attorneys at once, like overnight. And then to let the country deal with the shock.
Now that’s something that Goebbels did in 1933 in April, overnight. He fired everyone, focusing on lawyers and judges who were not a supporter of the regime. So you can still have elections … in an outcome like that. If that had happened, if the bloggers and others actually hadn’t helped to identify the U.S. attorney scandal, and they had been successful and fired them all, our election situation would be different.
Basically we’d still have an election, but it is possible the outcome would be predetermined because it’s the U.S. attorneys that monitor what voting rights groups do, what is legal and who can decide the outcome of elections.
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FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
The “Use of the Armed Forces” in America under a National Emergency by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky
Interview: Naomi Wolf: The End of America (must see video) + Bush on Blackwater USA
Bush Declares Himself Dictator – Presidential Directive 51 (May 2007; video link)
Bush Directive for a “Catastrophic Emergency” in America by Prof. Michel Chossudovsky (Iran)
Bush Pens Dictatorship Directive, Few Notice by Kurt Nimmo
National Security & Homeland Security Presidential Directive 51 (2007)
Bush To Be Dictator In A Catastrophic Emergency by Lee Rogers (Martial Law; Police State)
Who would the world elect? (poll)
NY Fire Chief: Giuliani Is A Coward Who Ran Away On 9/11 (videos)
Black Friday: Why This One is Especially Dark By Carolyn Baker
By Carolyn Baker
Speaking Truth to Power
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
A few moments ago I posted on my site the MSNBC version of “The Coming Consumer Crunch” which forecasts severe and painful belt-tightening for American families in 2008. Then when I checked my inbox, a Truthout bulletin listing Kelpie Wilson’s latest article “Give Thanks For Oil” appeared. One paragraph leapt out at me:
Why should we give thanks that the future holds no cheap oil? There are several reasons, but the first is that cheap oil has fueled a 50-year-long party in the industrialized West that has left us with an unsustainable economy that is wrecking the planet. The recent awareness of global warming is beginning to put a damper on our out-of-control binge, but not fast enough to slow the heating of the planet. Rising oil prices will force a cutback in consumption. Rising oil prices will also chill the fantasy of endless growth and force us to confront the reality of planetary limits.
I have no crystal ball, nor do I claim to have well-developed psychic powers, but I’d be willing to bet almost anything that next Thanksgiving season will be dramatically different from this one. A dark curtain of despair has descended, along with $100 oil, on Wall Street, and the amount of debt that the American working and middle classes are trying to juggle is, as Stan Goff so eloquently stated in his article on my site, “Middle Class Angst“, nothing less than “pre-volcanic.”
Cheap oil will allow us to travel “over the river and through the woods” to grandmother’s or someone else’s house, or we may prepare our food orgy at home using gas or electric ranges, savoring the turkey and trimmings made possible by low-cost hydrocarbon energy. While the feast will be more expensive than it was last year, its cost may pale by comparison with the price of next year’s gastronomical adventure-if indeed we can afford one. The after-dinner experience is likely to consist of television or movie viewing at home or another car trek to the local cine-plex for a new Thanksgiving Day release or two. A walk or bike ride requiring no use of hydrocarbon energy would be ideal, but it will take much more energy depletion than we are now experiencing to make that option viable for most Americans.
On Friday, millions of shoppers will descend on malls and box stores where the bells and whistles of credit card transactions will reverberate every few seconds, non-stop for perhaps seventy-two hours. Those bills will come due for those shoppers in a post-holiday hangover of dollar plummeting hysteria, monumental levels of debt, foreclosure, bankruptcy, unemployment, energy depletion, skyrocketing gas and food prices, illnesses treated without health insurance coverage-or just not treated, unprecedented levels of homelessness, and by all indications, within a few months into 2008, America will be well on the road to a re-run of 1929-or something inconceivably worse.
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FAIR USE NOTICE: This blog may contain copyrighted material. Such material is made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of human rights, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, etc. This constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Title 17 U.S.C. section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
see
Middle Class Angst: The Politics of Lemmings Part 1 By Stan Goff
Dandelion Salad 