Feb. 20, 2008
A Delegate Situation
Keith speaks with Chuck Todd.
O’Reilly’s “Lynching Party”
Keith speaks with Eugene Robinson.
I personally can not believe that Faux will let him get a way with racism on the air. Then again it is faux so I assume too much.
World’s Worst
Worse: Frederick Denmark
Worser: E.D. Hill
Worst: Bill’O
see
By Penny Starr
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
February 20, 2008
College Park, Md. (CNSNews.com) – Former Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.) said her bid for the White House as a Green Party candidate won’t hurt Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Clinton’s chances for being the first African-American or woman U.S. president, respectively, because U.S. elections have been corrupted.
“Basically, what you are suggesting is by participating in the Democratic process the Green Party is going to become, quote, ‘the spoiler,’ ” McKinney told Cybercast News Service at a rally Tuesday at the University of Maryland. “It is impossible to become a spoiler based on past experience when one examines the past.
“In the 2000 election, 6 million votes were not counted,” she said.
…
…continued plus 2 videos
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
Framing Muslims & Locking Up Their Money by Cynthia McKinney
Cynthia McKinney’s Draft Manifesto
The Audacity of Revolution VS The Hope of Chumps by Manila Ryce (video)
by Guadamour
Dandelion Salad
featured writer
Guadamour’s blog post
Feb. 20, 2008
The practitioners of the art of medicine (it is truly not a science and can never be, because there is a magic and mystery in life that can never be completely explained through science) have become one of the leading causes of death, if not the largest.
This is a sad state of irony.
Most doctors and physicians have the best interests of their patients at heart. Physicians take and swear to uphold the Hippocratic Oath.
HIPPOCRATES, the celebrated Greek physician, was a contemporary of the historian Herodotus. He was born in the island of Cos between 470 and 460 B.C., and belonged to the family that claimed descent from the mythical AEsculapius, son of Apollo.
There was already a long medical tradition in Greece before his day, and this he is supposed to have inherited chiefly through his predecessor Herodicus; and he enlarged his education by extensive travel.
He is said, though the evidence is unsatisfactory, to have taken part in the efforts to check the great plague which devastated Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. He died at Larissa between 380 and 360 B.C.
The works attributed to Hippocrates are the earliest extant Greek medical writings, but very many of them are certainly not his. Some five or six, however, are generally granted to be genuine, and among these is the famous “Oath.”
This interesting document shows that in his time physicians were already organized into a corporation or guild, with regulations for the training of disciples, and with an esprit de corps and a professional ideal which, with slight exceptions, can hardly yet be regarded as out of date.
One saying occurring in the words of Hippocrates has achieved universal currency, though few who quote it to-day are aware that it originally referred to the art of the physician. It is the first of his “Aphorisms”: “Life is short, and the Art long; the occasion fleeting; experience fallacious, and judgment difficult. The physician must not only be prepared to do what is right himself, but also to make the patient, the attendants, and externals cooperate.”
THE OATH OF HIPPOCRATES
I SWEAR by Apollo the physician and AEsculapius, and Health, and All-heal, and all the gods and goddesses, that, according to my ability and judgment, I will keep this Oath and this stipulation — to reckon him who taught me this Art equally dear to me as my parents, to share my substance with him, and relieve his necessities if required; to look upon his offspring in the same footing as my own brothers, and to teach them this art, if they shall wish to learn it, without fee or stipulation; and that by precept, lecture, and every other mode of instruction, I will impart a knowledge of the Art to my own sons, and those of my teachers, and to disciples bound by a stipulation and oath according to the law of medicine, but to none others. I will follow that system of regimen which, according to my ability and judgement, I consider for the benefit of my patients, and abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous.
I will give no deadly medicine to any one if asked, nor suggest any such counsel; and in like manner I will not give to a woman a pessary to produce abortion. With purity and with holiness I will pass my life and practice my Art.
I will not cut persons laboring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by men who are practitioners of this work. Into whatever houses I enter, I will go into them for the benefit of the sick, and will abstain from every voluntary act of mischief and corruption; and, further, from the seduction of females or males, of freemen and slaves. Whatever, in connection with my professional service, or not in connection with it, I see or hear, in the life of men, which ought not to be spoken of abroad, I will not divulge, as reckoning that all such should be kept secret.
While I continue to keep this Oath unviolated, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and the practice of the art, respected by all men, in all times. But should I trespass and violate this Oath, may the reverse be my lot.
THE LAW OF HIPPOCRATES
1. Medicine is of all the arts the most noble; but, owing to the ignorance of those who practice it, and of those who, inconsiderately, form a judgment of them, it is at present far behind all the other arts. Their mistake appears to me to arise principally from this, that in the cities there is no punishment connected with the practice of medicine (and with it alone) except disgrace, and that does not hurt those who are familiar with it. Such persons are the figures which are introduced in tragedies, for as they have the shape, and dress, and personal appearance of an actor, but are not actors, so also physicians are many in title but very few in reality.
2. Whoever is to acquire a competent knowledge of medicine, ought to be possessed of the following advantages: a natural disposition; instruction; a favorable position for the study; early tuition; love of labor; leisure. First of all, a natural talent is required; for, when Nature leads the way to what is most excellent, instruction in the art takes place, which the student must try to appropriate to himself by reflection, becoming an early pupil in a place well adapted for instruction. He must also bring to the task a love of labor and perseverance, so that the instruction taking root may bring forth proper and abundant fruits.
3. Instruction in medicine is like the culture of the productions of the earth. For our natural disposition, is, as it were, the soil; the tenets of our teacher are, as it were, the seed; instruction in youth is like the planting of the seed in the ground at the proper season; the place where the instruction is communicated is like the food imparted to vegetables by the atmosphere; diligent study is like the cultivation of the fields; and it is time which imparts strength to all things and brings them to maturity.
4. Having brought all these requisites to the study of medicine, and having acquired a true knowledge of it, we shall thus, in traveling through the cities, be esteemed physicians not only in name but in reality. But inexperience is a bad treasure, and a bad fund to those who possess it, whether in opinion or reality, being devoid of self-reliance and contentedness, and the nurse both of timidity and audacity. For timidity betrays a want of powers, and audacity a lack of skill. They are, indeed, two things, knowledge and opinion, of which the one makes its possessor really to know, the other to be ignorant.
5. Those things which are sacred, are to be imparted only to sacred persons; and it is not lawful to impart them to the profane until they have been initiated into the mysteries of the science.
Something that is also included in the classical Hippocratic Oath is:
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
The above is the ancient oath. What follows is the modern Hippocratic Oath.
I swear to fulfill, to the best of my ability and judgment, this covenant:
I will respect the hard-won scientific gains of those physicians in whose steps I walk, and gladly share such knowledge as is mine with those who are to follow.
I will apply, for the benefit of the sick, all measures [that] are required, avoiding those twin traps of over-treatment and therapeutic nihilism.
I will remember that there is art to medicine as well as science, and that warmth, sympathy, and understanding may outweigh the surgeon’s knife or the chemist’s drug.
I will not be ashamed to say “I know not,” nor will I fail to call in my colleagues when the skills of another are needed for a patient’s recovery.
I will respect the privacy of my patients, for their problems are not disclosed to me that the world may know. Most especially must I tread with care in matters of life and death. If it is given me to save a life, all thanks. But it may also be within my power to take a life; this awesome responsibility must be faced with great humbleness and awareness of my own frailty. Above all, I must not play at God.
I will remember that I do not treat a fever chart, a cancerous growth, but a sick human being, whose illness may affect the person’s family and economic stability. My responsibility includes these related problems, if I am to care adequately for the sick.
I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure.
I will remember that I remain a member of society, with special obligations to all my fellow human beings, those sound of mind and body as well as the infirm.
If I do not violate this oath, may I enjoy life and art, respected while I live and remembered with affection thereafter. May I always act so as to preserve the finest traditions of my calling and may I long experience the joy of healing those who seek my help.
In light of the above, it is interesting to note no Medical School (be it for MDs or DO’s) offers a specialty in Nutritional Medicine.
All but a small handful of physicians are intent of prescribing synthetic chemicals and offering surgery to mask symptoms of disease, and for the most part have no real interest in treating the root cause of a disease or actually curing a patient–-they are too buried in paperwork, and trying to treat more patients than they can reasonably see.
How did this sorry state of affairs come about?
With the turn into the twentieth century doctors were still intent on curing their patients. It should also be noted that at that time when a doctor left medical school he or she was not approximately a million dollars in debt.
During the 1920s and 1930 corporations and insurance discovered medicine. They discovered they could make enormous profits in this gold mine of ill health. That’s when the vast majority of pharmaceutical and insurance companies came into existence.
Medical or life and health insurance and pharmaceutical (read toxic drug) companies are not bound by the Hippocratic Oath. Their sole interest is to their bottom line, the profit or loss, the welfare of their stockholders.
The Food and Drug Administration was created to gain some sort of control over pharmaceutical companies and the toxic chemicals they were purveying. What has come to pass is that this federal agency has become a retirement home for pharmaceutical company employees.
Until the advent of the O. J. Simpson trial, attorneys could take pharmaceutical companies to court when they were purveying particularly noxious drugs or a surgeon badly butchered a patient and get large judgments from them and their insurance companies. For the most part, that is now a thing of the past. Attorney can still take companies and doctors to court, but the dollar amounts currently awarded barely cover the costs.
Currently in the USA pharmaceutical and insurance companies provide a part of the funding for medical schools. Doctors are trained to prescribe drugs and deal with symptoms. They are not trained to cure people and make them healthy, they are trained to “Manage Disease.”
The pharmaceutical and Insurance companies have long since discovered Madison Avenue and are promoting their drugs and death insurance everywhere, and they’ve been hugely successful.
Insurance companies will pay for cholesterol drugs that are highly promoted by pharmaceutical companies. Both patients and doctors have bought into this in spite of the fact that the scientific evidence is that cholesterol has little if anything to do with heart disease, and it has many adverse side effects, up to and including death. The same can be said for other drugs, including many hypertension and “cardiovascular” drugs.
There is an old totally logical and intrinsically simple saying, “We are what we eat.”
At the dawn of the 20th Century there was no real “Processed Food Industry” (IFI). Almost all food for eating was prepared at home or locally from organic whole foods that were not sprayed with herbicides, pesticides and inorganic fertilizers.
Now the vast majority of food eaten by the public is prepared in some way by the IFI.
The long term effects of herbicides, pesticides and inorganic fertilizers on living organisms, such as humans, is still basically unknown.
Furthermore, the IFI in its search for profits adds preservatives, dyes, bleaches, flavor “enhancers,” and other chemicals to the public’s food.
Most of what they add to food has never been properly studied, and it’s long-term effects are unknown. However, it is becoming more and more evident that many things that the IFI has added to food for years is detrimental to health, chemicals such as MSG.
Given the classical Hippocratic rule: “I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice,”and the modern Hippocratic path: “I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure,” doctors and physicians should be warning the people about the food they eat. The same can be said for the FDA which is supposedly protecting the health of the public. This is obviously not the case.
Most MDs and Dos receive little if any training in diet and nutrition or truly preventive medicine. They have been trained in chemical and surgical management of disease. This has nothing to do with getting to the root cause of a disease or cure.
It has been known since before Hippocrates that the food one eats is the cause and prevention of degenerative diseases.
The modern public has been brainwashed into believing processed foods are good to eat and good for the person eating them. These are foods oftentimes with little or any nutrition value and packed with an entire laboratory of toxic and dangerous chemicals. This includes Genetically Modified Organisms in plants, meats saturated with hormones, antibiotics, immunologicals and pharmaceuticals.
The Comptroller General of the United States of America, the Federal Governments Chief Accountant is warning the public that the national is facing a tsunami of debt because of its financial obligations in taking care of an increasingly older and sicker population that is somehow managing to live long and longer. He also notes that the cost of medical care is rising twice as fast as anything else and has been for a large number of years.
It should be noted that the USA has the most expensive healthcare in the world.
It should also be noted that the life expectancy of Mexico, a third world country, has now surpassed the life expectancy of the USA.
The cure is actually fundamentally simple: a change of diet, and changing how crops are grown and meat for consumption is raised.
John McCain who seems to have the Republican nomination for president sewn up is proposing no changes. A major backer of his is, of course, the pharmaceutical industry.
Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are advocating a health insurance plan for everyone. Their health insurance plans will, of course, be aligned with the existing insurance industry. The insurance industry that walks hand in hand with the pharmaceutical and processed food industry.
Is it any wonder that three of the largest donors to the Clinton and Obama campaigns are from the pharmaceutical, insurance and processed foods industries?
The USA is spending approximately $720 million a day on an illegal undeclared war in Iraq, yet it cannot put its medical students through med school without the students accumulating a million in debt each.
The USA cannot seem to afford to fully fund universities so that their medical schools are not controlled by pharmaceutical and insurance companies where doctors are trained to mask symptoms and manage disease.
The collective knowledge of the overwhelming vast majority of the medical establishment cannot seem to understand what was known before the time of Hippocrates, that eating the proper foods not only prevent disease, but also cure it.
The US Federal government does seem to be able to subsidize corporate farms which produce toxic and dangerous “foods, while being unable to help promote support sustainable organic farming and animal husbandry.
The disease in the medical establishment is one of not wanting to take responsibility for its actions and its abdication of the Hippocratic Oath and everything it stands for.
That is not to say that the public in turn is not responsible for taking measures to insure their own health.
Updated: added another video from Countdown; added a more recent video
ScaningTheWaves
February 20, 2008
McCain Your Time Is Over In Our Gov.
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For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk Continue reading
Warning lots of use of the “F” word. If it offends you, please don’t watch this video. ~ Lo
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By Chalmers Johnson
Speaking Truth to Power
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Wednesday, 20 February 2008 Continue reading
Reporter: Geoff Thompson
AM – Wednesday, 20 February, 2008
PETER CAVE: Indonesia’s Health Minister has suggested that the United States may be involved in a conspiracy to use the bird flu virus to develop biological weapons.
The extraordinary allegation is included in a new book, endorsed by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, which describes Indonesia’s fight to assert its ownership of its virulent strains of avian influenza.
Warning
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This video may contain images depicting the reality and horror of war and should only be viewed by a mature audience.
For more: http://linktv.org/originalseries
“Pakistan Election Brings Uncertainty,” Al Jazeera English, Qatar
“Kosovo Declares Independence,” Dubai TV, UAE
“Jerusalem Will Be Last Issue in Negotiations,” Al Arabiya TV, UAE
“Giving Up Territory for Peace,” IBA TV, Israel
“Ambulance Service Stops in Gaza,” Abu Dhabi TV, UAE
“Lebanese Prosecutor Hands Death Sentence to Fateh El Islam Leader,” Al Jazeera TV, Qatar
“Tunis Supports Arab Summit in Damascus,” Syria TV, Syria
“International Women Conference Concludes in Tehran,” IRIB2 TV, Iran
Produced for Link TV by Jamal Dajani.
Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod
.
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
ICH
20/02/08 “Asia Times“
A new report on Iran by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is about to be released and US “pre-emptive” diplomacy, aimed at preventing an IAEA “clean bill of health” that could derail Washington’s effort for a new round of UN sanctions on Iran, is at full throttle – with the timely help of disinformation.
Setting the bar unusually high, the US envoy at the IAEA, Gregory Schulte, has warned that unless Iran “confesses” about its “past work on weapons designs and weaponization and the role of the Iranian military”, international efforts to resolve the nuclear standoff will be “doomed”.
Washington’s brand new benchmark comes in the wake of a spate of US media reports that the US has “shared new intelligence” with the IAEA that corroborates American allegations of past Iranian nuclear proliferation activities. According to the New York Times, the US decided to “turn over intelligence data” and allow the IAEA privileged access for “divulging confidential information” by reversing “longstanding refusal to show the data, citing the need to protect intelligence sources”. [1]
A widely published report by Associated Press cites diplomats as saying that the material forwarded to the IAEA over the past two weeks expands on previous information from the Americans. [2]
But, we learn, the new information pertains to data from the same “stolen laptop” that was the source of the previous information, which was termed unreliable at the time by, among others, David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in Washington. (For more on the laptop story see the author’s The IAEA and the new world order, Asia Times Online, February 3, 2006.)
Meanwhile, in response to this author’s request for clarification regarding this matter, a source close to the IAEA has called the US media reports “misleading”. The source said: “Without going into the intelligence we may or may not have received, I can say that in my view, these news reports were misleading. The [IAEA] report [on Iran] is due to come out Friday or Monday and then things will become clearer for everyone.”
Standing firm
The IAEA must insulate itself from the disinformation campaign against Iran that has by all indications gone into a higher gear as we draw closer to the upcoming meeting of the IAEA’s board of governors, and it must ignore the intensifying American lobbying efforts and those of its junior partners such as France (at a recent meeting of France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy and the IAEA chief, Mohammad ElBaradei, the IAEA was urged to “stay firm” on Iran).
More important, the IAEA must stay firm on the rules of game and consider the fact that any overstepping of its bounds – eg, by pressuring Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program in spite of Iran’s legal rights and its nuclear transparency – will definitely backfire against the agency and, indeed, the entire non-proliferation regime.
After all, Iran has the solid backing of a bulk of international community, namely the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which covers some 118 member states. Recently, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, Mohammad Khazaee, met NAM representatives and urged them to continue with their crucial support for Iran’s right to nuclear technology. Ambassador Khazaee has also written a letter to the UN Secretary General about the recent US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran, reiterating Iran’s peaceful nuclear intentions and urging the UN not to yield to US pressure that could harm the UN’s legitimacy.
South Africa, a key NAM member, has already played a pivotal role in making sure that the UN Security Council does not take any action against Iran before the new IAEA report on Iran.
From Iran’s vantage point, the resolution of so-called “outstanding questions” as a result of a “work plan” with the IAEA, which has full scope to monitor Iran’s nuclear facilities and which has stressed on numerous occasions the absence of any evidence of military diversion, means that there is no justification for any UN sanctions or continued UN Security Council involvement with Iran’s nuclear dossier.
This week, Gholamreza Aghazadeh, the head of Iran’s nuclear energy organization, traveled to Vienna to provide further explanation about Iran’s nuclear activities and to dispel the new suspicions about past activities raised by the US.
Undoubtedly, Washington’s new intransigent strategy has its own limitations. There is only so much emphasis that can be placed on alleged past activities, when the real concern is and should be Iran’s present and future nuclear activities.
By placing the bar artificially high, on the other hand, the US may spoil the steady progress in Iran-IAEA cooperation and, indeed, set the process back if the IAEA heeds the present US pressure tactics and refuses to issue a clean bill of health (or something approximating it) for Iran.
The existence of merely minor or technical questions cannot possibly be the basis for declaring Iran in breach of its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations, which is what the UN Security Council has done, going well beyond the IAEA’s own findings.
What lies ahead then? Iran has categorically stated that it will reject any UN pressure to stop the enrichment program and given Iran’s rapid technological progress with its P-1 and P-2 centrifuges, a fait accompli according to the IAEA chief, the US’s rigid insistence on “zero centrifuges” is unrealistic and in dire need of a revised, new approach that would conceivably place the focus on nuclear transparency and the full implementation of the IAEA safeguard measures. [3]
But with Schulte sending the wrong signal, the Iran nuclear crisis will likely become more aggravated in the coming months if (1) the US and its allies succeed in forcing a more circumspect IAEA report that does injustice to Iran, and (2) Iran fulfills its threat to scale back its work with the IAEA if the agency permits the powers that be to manipulate its findings on Iran. Such a negative leap backward is not in anyone’s interest.
Notes
[1] David Sanger and Elaine Sciolino, U.S. to Produce Data on Iran’s Nuclear Program, New York Times.
[2] George Jahn, US Intel Links Iran With Nuclear Bomb Bid, Associated Press.
[3] For more on this, see the author’s Realism, not idealism: Keeping Iran’s nuclear potential latent, Harvard International Review
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran’s Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of “Negotiating Iran’s Nuclear Populism”, Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote “Keeping Iran’s nuclear potential latent”, Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran’s Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd
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.
By Manuel Valenzuela
20/02/08 “ICH“
Part Two of Three
Crusade of Surge & Siege: Homeland Born & Bred By Manuel Valenzuela (Part 1)
Americans’ ever-enduring, catatonic sleepwalk through the Empire’s vast array of bread and circus, as always produced by the Ministry of Truth and the Department of Propaganda, better known as the corporatist media, has succeeded in the creation of an ignorant, incurious and dumbed down populace completely bereft of knowledge of what is done in its name. With no concern for or understanding of geography, cultures, history, alien societies, the outside world and of the imperial aspirations of the Empire, Americans have proved easy targets to the manipulations and deceptions of the corporatist world. Seemingly unwilling to gain knowledge of anything outside American Idol or the weekly NASCAR rat race, the soldier ants and worker bees of the Empire are content to circumvent the horrors of war and the myriad crimes against humanity committed in their name in order to maintain their beautiful minds at peace.
Indeed, the corporatist media has triumphed in completely erasing America’s two disastrous occupations of Muslim lands from the peoples’ conscious and concern, in effect shifting the ongoing debacles away from the daily reality of Americans and towards the abyss of a most cavernous memory hole. Methodically and systematically, the quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan, with all their inconvenient truths, with all their disturbing realities, with all their corresponding death, suffering and destruction, have virtually vanished into a vacuum of nothingness, transported by the corporatist state into a clandestine and secretive reality, making of these disasters non-existent nightmares that vanish upon the waking of a new day.
This propaganda by omission, this “out of sight, out of mind” machination has virtually erased from American reality the disasters unfolding in Iraq and Afghanistan, thus guaranteeing in the public mind a complete ignorance in or understanding of a barbaric continuation to occupations stuck in the quicksand of fierce resistance and never-ending guerrilla warfare. Thus, America’s aggressive wars, its imperial occupations, its crusade of surge and siege that has done so much harm to millions of people, not to mention to the moral standing of the nation, have become non-existent memories under cover of fog and haze.
To the American people, the hegemonic occupations now descending further into quagmire have become invisible creations that only surface in the rare instance that a branch of the corporate media goes off script and produces footage of death, destruction or suffering. Otherwise, the war against West Asia remains a figment of our imagination, a reality when our beautiful minds want it to be, an inconvenient truth that becomes fiction the moment we decide it is so.
As such, having been conditioned through the corporatist media’s ceaseless dehumanization propaganda to believe Arabs and Muslims sub-human enemies, having been manipulated into hating America’s new enemy and having the corporatist media erase Iraq and Afghanistan from the memory hole, the American people have developed a disturbing, almost criminal indifference for the millions of human beings dying, suffering or otherwise being affected by the Empire’s wars and occupations. To a vast majority of Americans, the malignant tumors that are Guantanamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib, together with what they represent, are as hazy and as far removed from reality as last week’s episode of a favorite sitcom. These cesspools of immorality rarely, if ever, register in the beautiful minds of most Americans, only bothering the conscious when photos, video or whistleblowers surface to incriminate torturers, leaders and patsies. Only then are we forced to confront one of the myriad number of inconvenient truths the red, white and blue does across the globe.
When truth does not surface, however, we revert back to willful ignorance, aided by the fictions of television and the comfort of consumerism, for deep down, inside the dark recesses of our mind, we know exactly what is done in our name, though we chose, willfully, to erase it from memory, to suppress the reality of American criminality. Using denial and delusion in conjunction with conditioned brainwashing and manipulation, we have decided that crimes against humanity do not exist if those crimes are done to sub-human enemies. Thus the barbarian horde at our gates becomes undeserving of human rights and international laws protecting human beings because they do not fit our definition of human.
Thus, never do we seek to know the ugly realities of places like Guantanamo, nor how America’s gulags, with their brutal methods and tactics, will inevitably affect our way of life, or question why they exist in the first place. For us, America’s black sites are reserved for the evildoers wanting to destroy our way of life. Little do we realize, though, that our way of life is being eroded at these very same sites, one right at a time, done not by terrorists, but by those managing our descent into the breadbasket of despotism. Remaining passive, obedient, silently acquiescent and possessing the attention span of a gnat, hundreds of millions of Americans thus concern themselves only with what new toy they can add to the family collection, or what new product they can obediently purchase next, or what new reality show will entertain them the most. After all, we must preserve our “way of life”.
If Guantanamo and what it stands for does not directly affect us, if torture and perpetual suffering and dehumanizing conditions and sadistic treatment and the destruction of habeas corpus and the Bill of Rights only affects the dreaded dark skinned Arab or Muslim, then America’s beautiful minds need not concern themselves or have empathy, they need not contemplate the inflictions of wickedness on their fellow human beings, they need not realize the crimes done in their name, nor the evisceration of American morality, nor the new normal being established, nor the precedence beings set, nor the trial and error being conducted, nor the techniques being experimented and refined, nor the machinations of tyranny being perfected.
Thus, through our transcendental customs, our American “way of life,” of methodically following the exploits of celebrities dead or dying, of aimlessly producing and consuming, as always becoming hypnotized by modern day court jesters, jousters, gladiators and chariot races, as well as exhibiting idol-worshiping, messianic-like followings and tendencies over the Corporatist Party’s current crop of presidential contenders, we have chosen to ignore the plight of the innocent – for most prisoners are – in Guantanamo and Bagram and Abu Ghraib and other places of ill-repute. We have thus chosen to be good Americans, seeing no evil, hearing no evil, mistaking ashes for snow, and pretending the evil done in our name does not exist.
Reincarnation of the Habitual
To look inside one of America’s gulags is to look back at dark history, to times of brutality and primitiveness, using the tunnel of hindsight to peer at the dungeons of the Roman Empire and of the Middle Ages, with their chained and caged collections of dissidents, enemies and scapegoats, their persecuted and tortured, and their sadism and thirst for blood; it is to step back in time to days of Inquisitions and torture chambers, to eras of witch persecutions and heretic trials, of silencing threats to power and spawning a black cloud of fear and intimidation throughout society.
It is a return to days when humans had no right, to nights of barbarism, to the depravity and indecency of our mammalian past, to the possession of the human mind by the wicked demons inherent in man. Looking inside America’s gulags helps us remember that over and over, for as long as humankind has walked the plains of Earth, when authoritarians rise, as always carried high on the shoulders of fear and insecurity, morality, integrity and human rights become lost in a sea of tyranny. These institutions of immorality help us see beyond the veneer and the hypocrisy that those espousing freedom and liberty propagate, helping erase the fog of deception those claiming to be defenders of human rights engender.
America’s archipelago of gulags proves, once again, that the “western” mantra of values, modernity and morality is nothing but an empty shell built on self-adulation, delusion and echoes of ethnocentrism and exceptionalism. This hollow and cynical vociferation falls flat upon the challenge of evolving human rights, for in its claim of moral superiority, hiding behind the theoretical wonders of Judeo-Christian tradition, supposedly progressing away from the primitiveness of our past, the “western” tradition has been one of continuous mass murder, repression, tyranny, oppression, exploitation, suffering and destruction, most aimed directly at the peoples of the “south,” most directed at people not possessing the genetic mutation that turned skin color pale.
American gulags and its system of extraordinary renditions, green lighted at the very top of the food chain, proves to anyone not blinded by delusions and propaganda that America is not now and has never been morally superior to the rest of the world. From the very beginning of the republic, morality has given way to imperialism. Whether done through proxy, by puppets or by America’s own hands, control over the peoples of the world has usually involved some form of tyranny, as always dependent on the vast funding, financing, political support and training of the Empire. However, where once hidden under the veneer of democracy and freedom, under the ruthlessness of puppet dictators, America’s sordid, though clandestine, past has come to the surface thanks to the exposure of its methods and techniques, becoming an open acknowledgment of past indiscretions and present malfeasance.
From the School of the Americas, to research into psychological and physical torture at McGill University, to perfecting the art of “enhanced interrogation techniques,” to support of every tin pot dictator and junta in Latin America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, to the training of their thugs, enforcers and torturers, America has always possessed the wickedness of human malevolence. Its claims of being the defender of human rights is and has always been hypocritical at best and farcical at worst. Today we can see the real America at Guantanamo and its extension of gulags and torture chambers, the America the world entire has known for the last century but that Americans are just now waking up to. For today’s gulags are evolved creations of yesterday’s criminality, just as they will be the inspirations for tomorrow’s tyranny.
Entrapment
Guantanamo, with its cages and sensory deprivation and barking dogs and dehumanization and its stress positions and forced feeding and extremes of cold and hot and its isolation and its medical/psychological experimentation and its waterboarding and its darker, more sinister methods of torture yet to be exposed magnifies American tyranny and her hypocrisy, her injustice and depravity, her criminality and arrogance. It exposes, more and more, the charade that the war on terror is, how the purpose of Guantanamo is not the imprisoning of terrorists, for most there are guilty only of bad luck, persecution, retribution and being at the wrong place at the wrong time, but the methodical evisceration of the Constitution.
For Guantanamo, and its siblings, are a culmination of desperation, an attempt to rationalize the supposed existence of Arab and Muslim evil, an attempt to validate a fictional war on terror by incarcerating people falsely labeled “terrorists.” It is as much a torture center as it is a public relations and propaganda institution, a way to manipulate the American public both that Arab and Muslim terrorists exist, and that the American government is succeeding in bringing the terrorist threat to justice. It is a Hollywood-style set with its corresponding fictions and illusions of reality, a scam to convince Americans that a war that is concocted is indeed real, that it is being won.
The reality of the gulags exposes how an initial hunger for vengeance immediately after 9/11 has led to the imprisonment, suffering and torture of thousands, and how, knowing the falsity of charges and the innocence of men, America steadfastly continues shackling injustice, deciding to stage-manage the illusion of guilt as well as sacrifice the innocent to the continued myth of the so-called war on terror.
Kidnapped, traded in for money, picked up by a giant net of vengeance and imprisoned thanks to false accusations by rivals, the men at Guantanamo have become patsies in a world unconcerned for their rights. They are caged in a land of limbo, lost to the outside world, made to disappear, their lives practically an empty shell of their former selves . They are the scapegoats of American mendacity, labeled “terrorists” so that we can feel secure and protected, so that we can believe that evildoers hate us for our freedom, for our way of life. They are the poster children that grant the military-industrial complex a perpetual stream of blood money, a ceaseless parade of war, an endless flow of propaganda. They are, quite simply, the bread that gives authoritarianism sustenance, the wine that makes drunk with joy the enablers of fascism. They are, for all intents and purposes, dead men walking, ghosts without closure, phantoms forgotten by humanity.
Innocent of criminality, these individuals have been subjected to brutal and sadistic torture, as always leading to false confessions, their barbaric imprisonment and systemic dehumanization more a manifestation of American culture than of their resistance and human spirit. Many have been physically tortured, yet it is the more corrosive damage of psychological torture that has destroyed their minds, and their lives. Many will never return to normalcy, for what their minds have surely been subjected to no human brain should have to endure. Many have become the guinea pigs of psychologists and doctors experimenting with various methods of torture, trying to make torture more effective, more efficient.
Many have quietly, and conveniently, under cover of darkness or media blackout, been returned to their native countries, their innocence confirmed by their release, and by the silence of America. Forced to sign papers preventing them from speaking of their horrors, or from suing their torturers, they return a shell of their former selves, damaged beyond repair, scarred for life, forever to relive the horror they experienced in their nightmares and flashbacks. Yet many remain, shackled to American propaganda, held hostage to the illusions of the war on terror. As long as the fiction lives their guilt is assured, their imprisonment guaranteed. As long as tyrants fear persecution and imprisonment for criminality, they will live in cages. As long as they are used as the meat feeding the dogs of tyranny, they will remain encaged. As long as the authoritarian leadership seeks the continued erosion of the Constitution, and of our rights and freedoms, they will linger in perpetual purgatory, becoming the rotting carcass fed to the vultures of fascism.
Guantanamo’s cages cannot yet be opened and made empty, for to do so would be to expose the fictions, the charades, the method to the madness, the sheer immorality of the Empire. It would be to acknowledge injustice of innocence, the depravity of liberators, the criminality of leadership. Guantanamo’s gates cannot yet be closed, for the Crusade of Surge and Siege must continue, the enemy must exist, profits must remain, our rights and freedoms and liberties must be destroyed. New precedents of American legality must be established, kangaroo courts must convict, enemies must be punished, propaganda must manipulate and the innocent must be executed in order to increase leadership popularity, to refresh propaganda, to feed fear and to politicize elections.
America’s leadership is fully aware of the innocence of the vast majority of prisoners, yet cannot force itself to act against its own inhumanity. For to do so would be to admit mistakes, acknowledge criminality, condemn policies and destroy the authoritarian dream. Closing Guantanamo would expose the façade, the hall of smoke and mirrors, ending the subtleties of fear and intimidation being built around the American public. Perhaps more than anything, freeing the innocent and closing America’s torture centers would confirm the monstrosity of what America has become, destroying the foundations of a new normal being developed, maybe even shattering the bubble of manipulation cast over the population.
As long as Guantanamo remains the motives of fascists will survive, and the indifference of the American people will be assured. As long as its cages are occupied, as long as its torture rooms resonate with the screams of agony and suffering, Guantanamo will be the symbol of a new Amerika, one at war with the Arab and Muslim world, an Amerika at war with its people, and itself. As long as it remains a stain on humanity, America’s clandestine past and her immediate present will be exposed to more and more people, thereby freeing truth and knowledge, liberating the brainwashed and emancipating the manipulated.
Inside America’s gulags the future of the nation is being determined, one malevolent policy at a time, one sadistic interrogator at a time, one tortured soul at a time. It is here where our way of life is being altered, perhaps forever, not by terrorist evildoers hating us for our freedoms, but by fascism’s enablers doing the work of those domestic evildoers that hate us for our freedoms, for our way of life. In this Crusade of Surge and Siege, the Arab and Muslim victims have become a bridge of precedence set and normalcy born reaching out towards America, becoming the scapegoats and patsies granting access, and an omnipresent reach, to tyranny rising over that city on a hill once known as the United States of America.
Part Three: Inside the Fires of Imperialism, to be posted 25 February, 2008
Manuel Valenzuela is a social critic, commentator, Internet essayist and author of Echoes in the Wind, a novel now published by Authorhouse.com . His essays appear regularly at various alternative news websites from around the globe. Mr. Valenzuela welcomes comments and can be reached at manuel@valenzuelas.net.
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.
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see
Crusade of Surge & Siege: Homeland Born & Bred By Manuel Valenzuela
The Year of Living Dangerously Part 1 By Manuel Valenzuela
The Year of Living Dangerously Part 2 By Manuel Valenzuela
What Do We Stand For? By Paul Craig Roberts
New Bill To Allow Police Misconduct Be Hidden From Public + videos
Repress U – How to Build a Homeland Security Campus in 7 Steps By Michael Gould-Wartofsky
‘Why Talk When You Can Shock,’ says Taser Opponent by Robyn Doolittle
by Rodrigue Tremblay
Friday, February 22, 2008
“It’s…poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end.”
Warren Buffett, American investor
“By a continuing process of inflation, government can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”
John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
“New money that enters the economy does not affect all economic actors equally nor does new money influence all economic actors at the same time. Newly created money must enter into the economy at a specific point. Generally this monetary injection comes via credit expansion through the banking sector. Those who receive this new money first benefit at the expense of those who receive the money only after it has snaked through the economy and prices have had a chance to adjust.”
Friedrich A. Hayek (1899-1992), Austrian economist
When Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke says the economic situation is worsening, you’d better believe him. In fact, the U.S. credit markets are collapsing under our very eyes, and there is no end in sight as to when this will stop, let alone reverse itself. 1- Leading economic indicators for the U.S. economy are falling; 2- Consumer confidence sentiment is falling as mortgage equity withdrawals are drying up; 3-employment numbers are falling; 4- the January 2008 report on the U.S. service economy indicates that it contracted early in the year for the first time in 58 months; 5- the number of new jobless claims is still dangerously high; 6- The housing crisis is getting up steam; banks have to place larger and larger subprime losses on their balance sheets, thus undermining their capital bases and bringing many of them to the brink of insolvency; 7- the credit-ratings agencies are under siege; 8- bond guarantee insurance companies are in the process of loosing their triple-A ratings and some are on the brink of bankruptcy; 9- the $2.6 trillion municipal bond market is about to take a nose dive, if and when the bond insurers do not pull it through; 10- the leveraged corporate loan market is in disarray; 11- the more than a trillion dollar market for mortgage- and debt-backed securities could collapse completely if the largest American mortgage insurers continue to suffer crippling losses; 12- large hedge funds are losing money on a high scale and they are suffering from a run on their assets; 13- in the U.S., total debt as a percentage of GDP is at more than 300 percent, a record level (N.B.: in 1980, it was 125 percent!); 14- and, finally, the worldwide hundreds-of- trillion dollar derivatives market could implode anytime, if too many financial institutions go under during the coming months, as most of these transactions are inter-institution trades.
There are a few positive straws in the wind, such as the fact that manufacturing output seems to be holding up pretty well, as the devalued dollar stimulates exports, but the overall economic picture remains bleak. This is a tribute to the U.S. economy’s resiliency.
This mess all begun in the early 2000s, and even as far back as the early 1980s, when the Fed and the SEC adopted a hands-off approach to financial markets, guided by the new economic religion that “markets can do no wrong.” What we are witnessing is the failure of nearly thirty years of so-called conservative debt-ridden and deregulation-ridden economic policies.
It must be understood that the most recent subprime problem really began in 2000, when the credit-rating agency of Standard & Poors issued a pronouncement saying that “piggyback” mortgage financing of houses, when a second mortgage is taken to pay the down-payment on a first mortgage, was no more likely to lead to default than more standard mortgages. This encouraged mortgage lending institutions to relax their lending practices, going as far as lending on mortgages with no down-payment whatsoever, and even postponing capital and interest payments for some time. And, with the Fed and the SEC looking the other way, a fatal next step was taken. Banks and their subsidiaries decided to follow new toxic and risky rules of banking.
Indeed, while traditionally banks would borrow short and lend long, they went one giant step further: they began transforming long term loans, such as mortgages, car loans, student loans, etc., into short term loans. Indeed, they got into the alchemist business of bundling together relatively long term loans into packages that they sliced into smaller credit instruments that had all the characteristics of short-term commercial paper, but were carrying higher yields. They then sold these new “structured investment vehicles” (SIVs), for a fee, to all kinds of investors who were looking for higher yields than the meager rates that alternatives were paying. And, since banks were behind these new artificial financial assets, the credit-agencies gave them an AAA-rating, which allowed regulated pension funds and insurance companies to invest in them, believing they were both safe and liquid. —They were in for a shock. When the housing bubble burst, the value of real assets behind the new financial instruments began declining, pulling the rug out from underneath the asset-backed paper market, (ABCP) which became illiquid and toxic. With hardly any trading on the new instruments, nobody knew the true value of the paper, and thus nobody was willing to buy it. This crisis of confidence has now permeated to other credit markets and is threatening the entire financial system as the contagion spreads.
As late as 2003-04, then Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan was not the least worried by the subprime-financed-housing-mortgage bubble but was instead encouraging people to take out adjustable-rate mortgages, even though interest rates were at a thirty-year low and were bound to increase. Even in late 2006, newly appointed Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke professed not to be preoccupied by the housing bubble, saying that high prices were only a reflection of a strong economy. Mind you, this was more than one year after the housing market peaked in the spring of 2005. History will record that the Fed and the SEC did nothing to prevent the debt pyramid from reaching the dangerous levels it attained and which is now crushing the economy.
On a longer span of time, when one looks at a graph provided by the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) and which shows the relative importance of total outstanding debt (corporate, financial, government, plus personal) in relation to the economy, one is struck by the fact that this ratio stayed around 1.2 times GDP for decades. Then, something big happened in the early 1980s, and the ratio started to rise, with only a slight pause in the mid-1990s, to reach the air-rarefied level of 3.1 times GDP presently, nearly 200 percent more than it used to be.
The adoption of massive tax cuts coupled with government deficit spending policies, and deregulation policies, by the Reagan and subsequent GOP administrations, all culminating in a grotesque way under the current administration, contributed massively to this unprecedented debt bubble. It took many years to build up the debt pyramid, and it will take many years to unwind it and to reduce this cumulative mountain of debt to a more manageable size.
That is the big picture behind this crisis. It is much bigger than the S&L crisis of the 1980s, which looks puny in comparison with the current one. That is why I think this crisis will linger on for at least a few more years, possibly until 2010-11.
Rodrigue Tremblay lives in Montreal and can be reached at rodrigue.tremblay@yahoo.com Visit his blog site at: www.thenewamericanempire.com/blog. Author’s Website: www.thenewamericanempire.com/ Check Dr. Tremblay’s coming book “The Code for Global Ethics” at: www.TheCodeForGlobalEthics.com
h/t: Speaking Truth to Power
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 Global Research News Hour with Michel Chossudovsky & Stephen Lendman (audio link)
Stagflation is Here by Prof. Rodrigue Tremblay
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by Cynthia McKinney
Black Agenda Report
Wednesday, 20 February 2008
The U.S. government has for years been engaged in a witch hunt against Muslim charities, seizing assets and persons on little or manufactured evidence of “terrorist” activities. Meanwhile, blatant spying on behalf of Israel goes unprosecuted, and is even rewarded with promotions to the highest, most sensitive levels of government. Human rights cease to exist in a legal free-fire zone in which all things Muslim or Arab are deemed subversive. All pretense of constitutional government vanishes when institutions and individuals are targeted based on ethnicity and religion. The real conspiracy against so-called “American values” is headquartered in U.S. law enforcement and “security” agencies that “wreak fear and terror inside this country’s Muslim community.”
Framing Muslims and Locking Up Their Money
by Cynthia McKinney
“The government falsified evidence and broke the law while spying on the Foundation.”
Former Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney delivered the following remarks to a banquet for the Dallas Muslim Legal Fund of America.
What I want to talk to you about tonight, is why you must support the Muslim Legal Fund of America even more now than ever before. I know there are some big donors in here, but everyone must donate until you feel it. Then you will know that you did something with your money. You will remember this contribution. And soon enough, you will be glad you did.
That’s because we haven’t reached a point where human rights are respected in this country. We haven’t reached a point where justice rolls down like a might stream in this country. And so, we must be prepared for times of injustice, times of abuse, times of great pain and hurt.
To illustrate my point, I would like you to consider the case of a powerful and famous organization. It had friends that lavished it with money and it learned to use its resources to achieve its goals. Pretty soon, this organization had a multimillion dollar budget. It became very powerful, some said the largest of its kind in the country. Soon, the organization became so effective that people began to take notice. People began to wonder if the organization was really American, advancing American values, or was in service to non-American or even anti-American goals? Eventually, the organization became ensnared in our country’s legal system and its supporters were accused of criminal activity. In some cases even treason! People were maligned, had their lives ruined, and some were even jailed.
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And finally, Sibel Edmonds, who has a gag order on her, but she courageously is now speaking, says that Patrick Fitzgerald will find more than just a few guys spying for Israel if he conducts a real investigation. Sibel says that it’s basically the same people over and over again and the activities include multi-billion dollar black-market nuclear sales to terrorists and unsavory regimes. She says that the beauty of the larger case is that you can start form any angle. If you start from the AIPAC angle, you wind up at the same people. If you start from the Valerie Plame case, you end up with the same people. The FBI probe of Pentagon intelligence activities had as its target Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans. On her website, Sibel Edmonds shows photographs of those involved. I went to her website and I recognized the following photographs:
Retiring former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, retiring Member of Congress Tom Lantos, and Pentagon and State Department officials.
Sibel concludes that the investigations were shut down in 2000 and in 2001 “because they ended up going to higher levels and involving maybe way too many people, US persons. I’m talking about individuals who are breaking the law, misusing the trust and abusing their power, and in some cases I would even say engaging in treason.”
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.
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To learn more about Cynthia McKinney’s record, visit www.allthingscynthiamckinney.com. To make a donation to her campaign fund, visit www.runcynthiarun.org. You can also send a check or money order to Power to the People Committee, P.O. Box 311759, Atlanta, GA 31153.
see
Cynthia McKinney’s Draft Manifesto
Sibelgate: US officials visiting Turkey NOW by Virginia Simson
Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger (must-see video)
The Audacity of Revolution VS The Hope of Chumps by Manila Ryce (video)
Daniel Ellsberg spent three years in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving as rifle platoon leader, operations officer, and rifle company commander.
He worked as a strategic analyst at the RAND Corporation and consultant to the Defense Department and the White House.
“His recent essay, “The Next War”, featured in the October 2006 issue of Harpers magazine, urges government officials to reveal truths about government secrecy and nuclear planning—with documents—to avert a possible attack on Iran.”“A hidden crisis is under way. Many government insiders are aware of serious plans for war with Iran, but Congress and the public remain largely in the dark.” The Next War By Daniel Ellsberg
Vodpod videos no longer available. from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod
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Pepe Escobar: Cuba in transition to more open socialist society
Wednesday February 20th, 2008
Based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Pepe Escobar writes The Roving Eye for Asia Times Online. He has reported from Iraq, Iran, Central Asia, US and China. He is the author of the recently published Red Zone Blues. Pepe is a regular analyst for The Real News Network.
Dandelion Salad 