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Topics - kaydeejaded

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16
Tacitus' Realm / Apathy and Powerlessness
« on: April 14, 2004, 11:58:00 AM »
Chomsky...
 There has been much public clamor about the "stolen election" of November 2000, and surprise that the public does not seem to care. Likely reasons are suggested by public opinion studies, which reveal that on the eve of the election, 3/4 of the population regarded the process as largely a farce: a game played by financial contributors, party leaders, and the Public Relations industry, which crafted candidates to say "almost anything to get themselves elected" so that one could believe little they said even when it was intelligible. On most issues, citizens could not identify the stands of the candidates, not because they are stupid or not trying, but because of the conscious efforts of the PR industry. A Harvard University project that monitors political attitudes found that the "feeling of powerlessness has reached an alarming high," with more than half saying that people like them have little or no influence on what government does, a sharp rise through the neoliberal period.

 

Issues on which the public differs from elites (economic, political, intellectual) are pretty much off the agenda, notably questions of economic policy. The business world, not surprisingly, is overwhelmingly in favor of corporate-led "globalization," the "free investment agreements" called "free trade agreements," NAFTA and the FTAA, GATS, and other devices that concentrate wealth and power in hands unaccountable to the public. Also not surprisingly, the great beast is generally opposed, almost instinctively, even without knowing crucial facts from which they are carefully shielded. It follows that such issues are not appropriate for political campaigns, and did not arise in the mainstream for the November 2000 elections. One wouold have been hard-pressed, for example, to find discussion of the upcoming Summit of the Americas and the FTAA, and other topics that involve issues of prime concern for the public. Voters were directed to what the PR industry calls "personal qualities," not "issues." Among the half the population that votes, heavily skewed towards the wealthy, those who recognize their class interests to be at stake vote for those interests: overwhelmingly, for the more reactionary of the two business parties. But the general public splits its vote in other ways, leading to a statistical tie. Among working people, noneconomic issues such as gun ownership and "religiosity" were primary factors, so that people often voted against their own primary interests -- apparently assuming that they had little choice.

 

What remains of democracy is to be construed as the right to choose among commodities. Business leaders have long explained the need to impose on the population a "philosophy of futility" and "lack of purpose in life," to "concentrate human attention on the more superficial things that comprise much of fashionable consumption." Deluged by such propaganda from infancy, people may then accept their meaningless and subordinate lives and forget ridiculous ideas about managing their own affairs. They may abandon their fate to the wizards, and in the political realm, to the self-described "intelligent minorities" who serve and administer power.

 

>From this perspective, conventional in elite opinion particularly through the last century, the November 2000 elections do not reveal a flaw of US democracy, but rather its triumph. And generalizing, it is fair to hail the triumph of democracy throughout the hemisphere, and elsewhere, even though the populations somehow do not see it that way.

 

The struggle to impose that regime takes many forms, but never ends, and never will as long as high concentrations of effective decision-making power remain in place. It is only reasonable to expect the masters to exploit any opportunity that comes along -- at the moment, the fear and anguish of the population in the face of terrorist attacks, a serious matter for the West now that, with new technologies available, it has lost its virtual monopoly of violence, retaining only a huge preponderance.

 

But there is no need to accept these rules, and those who are concerned with the fate of the world and its people will surely follow a very different course. The popular struggles against investor-rights "globalization," mostly in the South, have influenced the rhetoric, and to some extent the practices, of the masters of the universe, who are concerned and defensive. These popular movements are unprecedented in scale, in range of constituency, and in international solidarity; the meetings here are a critically important illustration. The future to a large extent lies in their hands. It is hard to overestimate what is at stake.  

In all life one should comfort the afflicted, but verily, also, one should afflict the comfortable, and especially when they are comfortably, contentedly, even happily wrong

--John Kenneth Galbraith


17
Tacitus' Realm / Check Check Reality Check Mr President
« on: April 10, 2004, 04:14:00 PM »
"Q Mr. President, can you just tell me -- the 9/11 Commission, the Chairman yesterday, Governor Kean, said a date had been set, I think, for your testimony and the Vice President's. Is that --

"THE PRESIDENT: I would call it a meeting.  :-?  :o

"Q A meeting, I'm sorry.  :wink:

 
"THE PRESIDENT: Thank you.

"Q Has that date been set, and could you share it with us? And number two, can you tell us the rationale as to why you have chosen to testify or rather meet with them with the Vice President?

 
"THE PRESIDENT: First of all, it will be a great opportunity from them to ask both of us our opinions on the subject. And we're meeting with the entire commission. I'm not exactly sure what the status is of putting out the date. I told them I'd meet with them at a time that's convenient for all of us, and hopefully we'll come to that date soon.

"I look forward to sharing information with them. Let me just be very clear about this: Had we had the information that was necessary to stop an attack, I'd have stopped the attack. And I'm convinced any other government would have, too. I mean, make no mistake about it; if we'd had known that the enemy was going to fly airplanes into our buildings, we'd have done everything in our power to stop it. And what is important for them to hear, not only is that, but that when I realized that the stakes had changed, that this country immediately went on war footing, and we went to war against al Qaeda. It took me very little time to make up my mind, once I determined al Qaeda to do it, to say, we're going to go get them. And we have, and we're going to keep after them until they're brought to justice and America is secure.

"But I'm looking forward to the conversation. I'm looking forward to Condi testifying. I made a decision to allow her to do so because I was assured that it would not jeopardize executive privilege. And she'll be great. She's a very smart, capable person who knows exactly what took place, and will lay out the facts. And that's what the commission's job is meant to do, and that's what the American people want to see. I'm looking forward to people hearing her.

 
"All right, got to go to work. Thanks. Good to see you all."
 :tup:  :skull:

The right of self-defense is the first law of nature . . and when the right of the people to keep and bear arms is, under any color or pretext whatsoever, prohibited, liberty, if not already annihilated, is on the brink of destruction.

--St. George Tucker, in his edition of Blackstone's Commentaries


18
Tacitus' Realm / Condoleeza Rice come on down
« on: April 08, 2004, 10:07:00 AM »
9/11 committee meeting on TV today worth watching she is starting to stutter now. Worth the wait.

Wonder if she is going to crack under the pressure (doubt it)

This lady does have a Chevron oil tanker named after her...........damn does oil ever not have a part in government???

India Indicas, Mr. Peabody?
-- Sherman


19
Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / So..this is politics.... But
« on: April 06, 2004, 03:41:00 PM »
Dick Cheney and George Bush get to go infront of the 9/11 committee together.

They get to testify, with each other. And it is not going to be tape recorded.

I am shocked at this. This is the equivalent of me bringing my best friend into the principals office with me to corroborate my story.

The fact that it is not going to be recorded??? That we the American people got to hear every blasted detail of Bill and Monica's fucking everything and Linda Tripp which I don't give a rat's ass about and we all had to pay for it too...yet we don't get to hear this testimony on President Bush and Vice President Cheney's possible knowledge of 9/11 or the threats or anything is an abomination.

It is fucked up and crazy. We got to see the OJ trial, I didn't want to see that shit. Let me hear this.

I think it is our right to hear it. Its wrong that they are not seperated to be questioned its bullshit. It is a set-up, the whole thing is a farce and a joke on anything that even comes close to resembling justice.

"The FARC is part of the history of Colombia and a historical phenomenon", (President Pastrana) says, "and they must be treated as Colombians". ... They come and ask for bread [aid from Washington], and you give them stones.

Robert White is a former American ambassador to Paraguay and El Salvador, and former No. 2 man with the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, is president of the Centre for International Policy in Washington D.C.
http://narconews.com/' target='_new'>Robert White


20
Tacitus' Realm / A poem by William Eon about Bush
« on: April 04, 2004, 08:24:00 PM »
OH, The Dirty Web Bush Weaves!  
by William Eon

Oh the Dirty Web Bush weaves.

Spinning lies into the truth: then Deceive!
The Coin of his realm is: Deceit!
Placebos, Rhetoric, Dogma and propaganda
The Poisoning of the Environment and masses.

This is Bushes Way
He Puffs himself up and says:
It?s me or the Highway, Love it or leave it!
Grin and bare it!  
We love our country!
And we love the American people!
You represent neither! You leave first! Oh, Pompous rich one!
You represent everything that is wrong with this country!

You sold us out!
And you sold the American people short?
Diplomatic, dogmatic, selfish Mercenaries!
Playing your silly War Games: in the cemetery.

The truth is rarer then clean air and water in America today!
In this Sick Society we are poisoned and laughed at by our FAUX Leaders!
Who cry Arsenic for the poor and Perrier for the rich!
The Media Puppet Sell-outs in their disgrace: Parrot.

Their hollow words are wasted on the Hungry.
With innocent child?s mouths to feed.
Your propaganda is wasted on the homeless.
Whom the Compassionless King disowns: watch Bleed.

They sit on the edge of life.
Wondering what they did wrong?
Nothing my friends.
We all witness and are victims of This:

Embarrassing ineptitude and Moral decadence
Their inhumanity to man is blatantly apparent.
Cooperation is needed: tempered with
Helpfulness, Patience, Peace and Brotherly love!

Their actions and assumptions are wrong.
Selfishness and greed is the evil we must cleanse.
From the face of the world and from our own hearts!
This is the only war we must fight!

Does it mean you own it!
Never: in your treasonous life.
You can never own America!
It belongs to everyone!

Immigrant and native
Black and White
Sick and healthy
Wealthy, Middle-class and Poor

Not a place upon earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.
--Thomas Paine

[ This Message was edited by: kaydeejaded on 2004-04-04 17:25 ]

21
Tacitus' Realm / Information is only as good as its source.......
« on: March 31, 2004, 03:13:00 PM »
http://www.zmag.org/altmediaresources.htm

list of alternative media sources thanks to Z-mag

 ::heart::
 

There lives more faith, in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creeds.
http://www.tatteredcover.com/NASApp/store/IndexJsp?s=showproduct&affiliateId=000095&isbn=0753816571' target='_new'>Alfred Lord Tennyson


22
Tacitus' Realm / Support the "Good Guys" US War propaganda
« on: March 31, 2004, 03:06:00 PM »
It's one of the basic tenets of U.S. war propaganda that "we" are the good guys. It's always U.S. vs. Them: the evildoers...and no matter what our boys do to take on such monsters, we at home must always support the troops.

The next time you hear the "support the troops" bullshit, I suggest you remember that it usually means two things: 1. Support the policy that put the troops there in the first place 2. Ignore what those troops might be doing

The home of the brave claims it does not approve of torture as policy. For example, the State Department criticizes the Burmese military because it has "routinely subjected detainees to harsh interrogation techniques designed to intimidate and disorient." Cambodia has received condemnation due to "torture, beatings, and other forms of physical mistreatment of persons held in police or military custody continued to be a serious problem throughout the country." In China, "police and other elements of the security apparatus employed torture and degrading treatment in dealing with some detainees and prisoners." Out of Egypt comes "numerous, credible reports that security forces tortured and mistreated citizens." In Greece, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka...well, you get the idea. Across the globe, human rights are nothing more than a convenient issue to be bandied about by amoral leaders when a pretext for sanctions or war is needed.

What about the land of the free? According to a brand new report from Human Rights Watch (http://www.hrw.org), the US in Afghanistan is "maintaining a system of arrests and detention as part of its ongoing military and intelligence operations that violates international human rights law and international humanitarian law." This system, says the report, calls into question U.S. "commitment to upholding basic rights."

Stop me if you've heard it all before...

As Operation Enduring Freedom (sic) endures, the troops we're supposed to be supporting, no matter what, are doing things like this to detainees who've been denied POW status:

"Bright lights were set up outside their cells, shining in, and U.S. military personnel took shifts, keeping the detainees awake by banging on the metal walls of their cells with batons. The detainees said they were terrified and disoriented by sleep deprivation, which they said lasted for several weeks. During interrogations, they said, they were made to stand upright for lengthy periods of time with a bright spotlight shining directly into their eyes. They were told that they would not be questioned until they remained motionless for one hour, and that they were not entitled even to turn their heads. If they did move, the interrogators said the 'clock was reset.' U.S. personnel, through interpreters, yelled at the detainees from behind the light, asking questions."

As they say, if these are the good guys, I wouldn't wanna...you know the rest. Here are the conclusions reached by Human Rights Watch in the report:

U.S. forces regularly use military means and methods during arrest operations in residential areas where law enforcement techniques would be more appropriate. Members of the U.S. armed forces have arrested numerous civilians not directly participating in the hostilities and numerous persons whom U.S. authorities have no legal basis for taking into custody. Persons detained by U.S. forces in Afghanistan are held without regard to the requirements of international humanitarian law or human rights law. The general lack of due process within the U.S. detention system violates both international humanitarian law and basic standards of human rights law. There are serious concerns regarding the treatment of detainees at Bagram airbase, particularly in light of the failure of the United States to investigate and publicly report on several unexplained deaths in detention. There is credible evidence of beatings and other physical assaults of detainees, as well as evidence that the United States has used prolonged shackling, exposure to cold, and sleep deprivation amounting to torture or other mistreatment in violation of international law.

This is hardly news. On December 26, 2002, Dana Priest and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post wrote of detainees "sometimes kept standing or kneeling for hours, in black hoods or spray-painted goggles" or "held in awkward, painful positions and deprived of sleep with a 24-hour bombardment of lights."

Human Rights Watch says the U.S. detention policy in Afghanistan serves as "a poor example for other nations around the world," but don't hold your breath waiting for a full-fledged denial...because declaring war on a tactic (i.e. terror) means never having to say you're sorry.

Last year, Roger King, a U.S. military spokesman at Bagram, explained: "We do force people to stand for an extended period of time. . . . Disruption of sleep has been reported as an effective way of reducing people's inhibition about talking or their resistance to questioning. . . . They are not allowed to speak to each other. If they do, they can plan together or rely on the comfort of one another. If they're caught speaking out of turn, they can be forced to do things, like stand for a period of time-as payment for speaking out."

As another official told the Washington Post in December 2002: "If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job."

If you wanna sleep better tonight, try repeating this until catatonia sets in: "They hate us because we're free. They hate us because we're free. They hate us because we're free."

Mickey Z. is the author of two upcoming books: "A Gigantic Mistake: Articles and Essays for Your Intellectual Self-Defense" (Prime Books) and "Seven Deadly Spins: Exposing the Lies Behind War Propaganda" (Common Courage Press). He can be reached at [email protected].


Tough Love: Abuse of a type particularly enjoyable to the abuser, in that it combines the pleasures of sadism with those of self-righteousness. Commonly employed and widely admired in 12-step groups.
--Chaz Bufe


23
Feed Your Head / Rude Dog's parenting advice
« on: March 31, 2004, 02:59:00 PM »
The Dog Pound

If I can?t eat it or fuck it; it has to DIE!

By The Rude Dog

  I am going to offend SOMEBODY with this piece.

If you are offended easily; DO NOT READ ON.

 The Good Old Days

 No, I am not going to tell you about how I used to walk to school barefoot and fight grizzly bears with my loose leaf notebook. I will say that shit is just plain different nowadays.

We used to go out as soon as the sun came up. There were trees to climb, places to explore, and generally elbows, knees and chins to scrape, bash and make sore. We didn't die. We didn't fucking sue anybody either. I once thought it was a good idea to ride a bicycle that had no brakes down the steepest hill in the neighborhood. I limped home and Mom put red fucking iodine on the son of a bitch! I'll tell you that neither one of us thought to sue the bike manufacturer to recoup the one million dollars worth of skin I left on the pavement when I wiped out. I guess we were afraid that the Department of Transportation would find out that I had left blood on their highway and sue us for two million dollars.

When we got in trouble it wasn't the school or authorities that we worried about. They were meek and mild in comparison to our parents. My Dad was the last person on the planet that I wanted to know that I was cutting up in class. The school principal called home once (The only time he called, not the only time it happened.) to inform my Father that I was about to meet the wooden paddle. My Dad asked him what the Hell he was calling him for. "If he deserves it; give him his swats and quit bothering me about it." I guess Dad figured that it would give him a little time off from having to beat my ass himself if somebody was going to do it too. Trust me, I deserved it more often than not and when I did get wailed on in one of those rare mistaken identity or I just plain didn't do it cases, it made up for all the shit I did get away with.

Now, if the teachers and administrators even thought of doing anything to a child in their charge, other than stopping small caliber handgun ammunition with their face, they are subject to criminal, civil and any other types of retribution thought of by man. This is wrong in that there is no sense of consequences in our school systems and therefore proliferates the idea that they can get away with anything they want to as a whole and anyone that dares to correct them is subject to any manner of carnage available. If your kid got caught smoking and ended up either getting three swats and a three day suspension or had to clean the toilets in the bathroom where they got caught for a week, I'm sure the little shit would be second guessing where and when they fired up their next Marlboro. Instead they get the parents screaming and threatening lawsuits about how the teachers are violating some kind of skewed version of their civil rights by even thinking about punishment to Dear Little Johnny. Next year Little Johnny ends up going to trial because he couldn't read the sign in the Girl's locker room that told him it was a "NO RAPE ZONE".

Kids today are fucking sissies compared to when we were young. My friend fell twelve feet out of an apple tree and bounced two feet into the air when he hit the ground. We didn't even call the Trauma Hawk to life flight his ass out to the nearest hospital. We all gathered around and oohed and ahhed about how far up the fucking thing he was before he missed the jump to the next tree. The fucking Superman got back up after a few minutes and brushed the dirt off of his back and we went on playing.

The youth out there today would rather fire an UZI into a crowd of innocent bystanders to kill one person rather than take the chance the fucker would give him a fat lip in a fistfight. Fucking pansy assed bitches lately are too afraid to get their behind walloped for being a fuck up than they are to go to school without an AK-47 tucked into the waistband of the mother fucking Fubu pants that he is wearing around his kneecaps. Maybe that's why they need guns. You couldn't duke it out with a fucking retard dressed that way. You sure as Hell couldn't run from the beating you are about to take either.

I blame the parents. If more people kicked the living dog shit out of their kid for stealing a 32 inch TV VCR combo instead saying that they are a victim of society, we'd have less fucking miscreants out there today. The fucking kid is a thief and the rightful owner of the property is the victim you twisted, psycho, bullshit I heard Oprah saying babbling, asshole. If your kid killed his teacher with a 38 caliber Saturday night special, he wasn't just in the wrong place at the wrong time kind of victim of circumstances. He is a murdering piece of shit that needs to meet Old Sparky. Give me a break about how it is the World that is at fault and not the individual who committed the crime. The knowledge of Right and Wrong is a simple enough concept. The ability to discern the difference and choose our actions is overruled by the fact that when it was time to teach these values to young people there was someone asleep at the switch.

I am not saying to pound your child into a punch drunk person that is afraid to move or make a sound in front of you, but I am saying that discipline in any way, shape, or form is a lost art. There are alternatives to the entire pugilistic forms of discipline.  Whoever came up with all this shit about smacking your kid on the ass being "Child Abuse" needs to have their ass smacked and then their head slammed in a car door to realize that there are differences between the two . One is an extreme act of violence and the other is a wake up call that you fucked up.

No, the Good Old Days weren't really that good overall, but it was a simpler time with the main thing that is lacking today in our Microwave Satisfaction Society. Morals and Responsibilities cannot be instilled into young people while they are being babysat by the fucking Playstation and Sponge Bob Squarepants. Take an active participation in your child's lives from this moment forward and hopefully you won't be bailing them out of jail or identifying the body in a couple of years.

 The Dog Pound by Rude Dog

If triangles had a God, He'd have three sides.
--Old Yiddish proverb


24
Tacitus' Realm / Bush's Nuclear Failures
« on: March 27, 2004, 01:31:00 PM »
Bush's Nuclear Failures


The Bush Administration has not done nearly enough to defuse the two biggest nuclear threats we face, and yes we still face them.


The first threat is of an accidental nuclear war, which may sound improbable, but we've come awfully close, even in the last decade, because our nuclear weapons and those of Russia remain on hair-trigger alert.


The President of Russia or the President of the United States can launch a nuclear weapon at a moment's notice. This is dangerous because, as has happened before, computers--or the humans reading them--may falsely detect an incoming nuclear missile.


In such cases, the opposing President has as little as three minutes to decide whether it's a false alarm or the real thing. If he misreads the situation, he is likely to launch his own nuclear weapons, which cannot be recalled or destroyed prior to impact, and then we're in nuclear hell.


The second threat is loose nukes, and the Bush Administration has been woefully lax in this department.


"We are not refocusing our energies on stopping proliferation," says Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control.


Despite all the rhetoric about WMDs, Bush has not fully funded the Nunn-Lugar program to round up the leftover nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, safeguard the storage of nuclear material in Russia, and work with former nuclear scientists there.


And the Administration, like others before it, has not recovered the weapons-grade uranium that Washington foolishly spread around the world to help other countries build nuclear power plants. There's enough of this uranium floating out there to build 1,000 nukes, according to a March 7 article in The New York Times. And for the past eight years, the United States has been charging countries $50,000 to get back the uranium needed for one single bomb, that article notes. We should be paying them to return it, not vice versa.


What's more, for three years, Bush was asleep at the wheel as A.Q. Khan, the father of the Pakistani bomb, ran his own nuclear Wal-Mart. "Our intelligence either didn't pick it up, or didn't act on it," Milhollin says. "It was a very effective nuclear smuggling operation."


Bush finally put pressure on Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to cashier Khan. But when Musharraf then pardoned Khan in an elaborate charade that shielded the Pakistani government from blame, Bush did not utter a word of criticism, even though Musharraf is not letting Washington ask Khan who his nuclear customers were.


This is irresponsibility of the highest order, and it undermines Bush's claim that he is keeping the United States safe from nuclear terror.

-- Matthew Rothschild


May 12-13: Sowed Hemp at Muddy  hole by Swamp. August 7: Began to separate the Male from the Female at Do - rather too late.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/188301123X/circlofmiamithem' target='_new'>George Washington (Diary)


25
Tacitus' Realm / Sharon, Bush Endanger Israelis, Americans
« on: March 27, 2004, 11:02:00 AM »
March 23, 2004



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sharon, Bush Endanger Israelis, Americans


Israel's assassination of Hamas leader Sheik Ahmed Yassin proves how reckless and dangerous the Sharon government is, and how complicit and counterproductive the Bush government is.


This illegal, incendiary act will not make Israel any safer. All you had to do to figure that one out was look at the pictures of the throngs of outraged Palestinians marching through Gaza and you would know that another ugly turn of the vicious cycle of violence is soon to follow.


As Israeli peace activist Uri Avnery put it, "This is worse than a crime, it's an act of stupidity. This is the beginning of a new chapter of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he said. "It moves the conflict from the level of a solvable national conflict to the level of religious conflict, which by its very nature is insoluble."


Israel's provocation is not one that will fade quickly from memory, either in the Palestinian territories or elsewhere in the Arab and Muslim world.


It will only serve to more deeply ingrain the anti-Israel and anti-U.S. sentiment that already prevails there at frightening depths.


This was the last thing Israel or the United States needed.


And yet the Sharon government, far from backing off, is vowing to accelerate its murderous policy. Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz says it aims to kill the entire Hamas leadership, and Israel's army chief, General Moshe Yaalon, has suggested that Israel may also take out the leadership of Hezbollah, as well as Yasser Arafat himself.


Sharon will have to answer to his own people for this reprehensible escalation of violence, but Bush must answer to the American people for his unqualified support for Sharon over the past three years.


When you uncage a lion, it ends up mawling people, and Sharon has been on a rampage for years now.


I know, I know, Hamas is hardly blameless. Sheik Yassin vowed to destroy the state of Israel, and Hamas's suicide bombings are absolutely indefensible. But the Palestinians cannot be vanquished militarily, except by genocide. Sharon has not tried peace; he has provoked Palestinians to violence at every turn, especially whenever a flicker of peace occurred. Plus, as Avnery says in an interview in the latest issue of The Progressive, "Violence is a symptom; the occupation is the disease."


Just as Sharon has made Israelis more vulnerable, so, too, has Bush made Americans more vulnerable. U.S. support for Sharon was not lost on the protesters in Gaza, nor is it lost on the millions of Arabs and Muslims who watch Al-Jazeera.


After 9/11, Bush had two crucial tasks: go after Al Qaeda, and resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which waters the roots of Islamic terrorism.


Instead, Bush took a detour through Baghdad and turned a blind's eye on the plight of the Palestinians.


He and Sharon have made every Israeli and every American less safe today.

-- Matthew Rothschild


A democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
A republic is where the sheep get to pick which wolves vote on what to have for dinner.
But in a constitutional republic, voting on dinner is strictly
forbidden.

--A Patriot


26
Tacitus' Realm / US policy ...by William Blum
« on: March 26, 2004, 08:24:00 PM »
"It is remarkable indeed that what we call our government is still going around dropping huge amounts of exceedingly powerful explosives upon the heads of defenseless people. It wasn't supposed to be this way. Beginning in the late 1980s, Michael Gorbachev put an end to the Soviet police state, then the Berlin Wall came down and people all over Eastern Europe were joyfully celebrating a NEW DAY, and South Africa freed Nelson Mandela and apartheid began to crumble, and Haiti held its first free election ever and chose a genuine progressive as president ... it seemed like anything was possible, optimism was as widespread as pessimism is today. And the United States joined this celebration by invading and bombing Panama, only weeks after the Berlin Wall fell. At the same time, the US was shamelessly intervening in the election in Nicaragua to defeat the Sandinistas. Then, when Albania and Bulgaria, "newly freed from the grip of communism", as our media would put it, dared to elect governments not acceptable to Washington, Washington just stepped in and overthrew those governments. Soon came the bombing of the people of Iraq for 40 horrible days without mercy, for no good or honest reason, and that was that for our hopes of a different and better world. But our leaders were not through. They were soon off attacking Somalia, more bombing and killing. Meanwhile they continued bombing Iraq for years. They intervened to put down dissident movements in Peru, Mexico, Ecuador and Colombia, just as if it was the cold war in the 1950s in Latin America, and the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and still doing it in the 1990s. Then they bombed the people of Yugoslavia for 78 days and nights. And once again, last year, grossly and openly intervened in an election in Nicaragua to prevent the left from winning. Meanwhile, of course, they were bombing Afghanistan and in all likelihood have now killed more innocent civilians in that sad country than were killed here on Sept. 11, with more to come as people will continue to die from bombing wounds, cluster-bomb landmines, and depleted-uranium toxicity. And all these years, still keeping their choke hold on Cuba. And that's just a partial list. There was none of the peace dividend we had been promised, not for Americans nor for the rest of the world. What the heck is going on here?

We had been taught since childhood that the cold war, including the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the huge military budgets, all the foreign invasions and overthrows of governments -- the ones we knew about -- we were taught that this was all to fight the same menace: The International Communist Conspiracy, headquarters in Moscow. So what happened? The Soviet Union was dissolved. The Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The East European satellites became independent. The former communists even became capitalists. ... And nothing changed in American foreign policy. Even NATO remained, NATO which had been created -- so we were told -- to protect Western Europe against a Soviet invasion, even NATO remains, bigger than ever, getting bigger and more powerful all the time, a NATO with a global mission. The NATO charter was even invoked to give a justification for its members to join the US in the Afghanistan invasion.

The whole thing had been a con game. The Soviet Union and something called communism per se had not been the object of our global attacks. There had never been an International Communist Conspiracy. The enemy was, and remains, any government or movement, or even individual, that stands in the way of the expansion of the American Empire; by whatever name we give to the enemy -- communist, rogue state, drug trafficker, terrorist ... You think the American Empire is against terrorists? What do you call a man who blows up an airplane killing 73 people? Who attempts assassinations against several diplomats? Who fires cannons at ships docked in American ports? Who places bombs in numerous commercial and diplomatic buildings in the US and abroad? Dozens of such acts. His name is Orlando Bosch, he's Cuban and he lives in Miami, unmolested by the authorities. The city of Miami once declared a day in his honor -- Orlando Bosch Day. He was freed from prison in Venezuela, where he had been held for the airplane bombing, partly because of pressure from the American ambassador, Otto Reich, who earlier this year was appointed to the State Dept. by George W. After Bosch returned to the US in 1988, the Justice Dept condemned him as a totally violent terrorist and was all set to deport him, but that was blocked by President Bush, the first, with the help of son Jeb Bush in Florida.

 So is George W. and his family against terrorism? Well, yes, they're against those terrorists who are not allies of the empire. The plane that Bosch bombed, by the way, was a Cuban plane. He's wanted in Cuba for that and a host of other serious crimes, and the Cubans have asked Washington to turn him over to them; to Cuba he's like Osama Bin Laden is to the United States. But the US has refused. Can you imagine the reaction in Washington if bin Laden showed up in Havana and the Cubans refused to turn him over? Can you imagine the reaction in the United States if Havana proclaimed Osama Bin Laden Day?

Washington's support of genuine terrorist organizations has been very extensive. To give just a couple of examples of the past few years -- The ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have carried out numerous terrorist attacks for years in various parts of the Balkans, but they've been our allies because they've attacked people out of favor with Washington. The paramilitaries in Colombia, as vicious as they come, could not begin to carry out their dirty work without the support of the Colombian military, who are the recipients of virtually unlimited American support. This, all by itself, disqualifies Washington from leading a war against terrorism. Bush also speaks out often and angrily against harboring terrorists.

Does he really mean that? Well, what country harbors more terrorists than the United States? Orlando Bosch is only one of the numerous anti-Castro Cubans in Miami who have carried out hundreds, if not thousands of terrorist acts, in the US, in Cuba, and elsewhere; all kinds of arson attacks, assassinations and bombings. They have been harbored here in safety for decades. As have numerous other friendly terrorists, torturers and human rights violators from Guatemala, El Salvador, Haiti, Indonesia and elsewhere, all allies of the Empire. The CIA is looking for terrorists in caves in the mountains of Afghanistan at the same time as the Agency sits in bars in Miami having beers with terrorists. What are we to make of all this? How are we to understand our government's foreign policy?

 Well, if I were to write a book called The American Empire for Dummies, page one would say: Don't ever look for the moral factor. US foreign policy has no moral factor built into its DNA."

bits of a talk given in Boulder Colorado by William Blum
  author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II and Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower

If the personal freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution inhibit the
government's ability to govern the people, we should look to limit those guarantees.

--President Bill Clinton


27
Straight, Inc. and Derivatives / misc. quotes that I like
« on: March 24, 2004, 02:15:00 PM »
"Never forget that only dead fish swim with the stream" -Malcolm Muggeridge

Don't wait for your ship to come in.  Row out to meet it.

Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there. -Will Rogers

Omnia Mutantur, Nihil Interit. [Everything changes, but nothing is truly lost.]

We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though the maker
and molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in whatever shape thou shalt prefer - Pico della Mirandola, "Oration on the Dignity of Man"

I mean how do you know what you're going to do till you do it? The answer is, you don't. -JD Salinger, Catcher in the Rye


If you can't get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you'd best teach it to dance.:wink:
- Bernard Shaw


"Our friends and allies in the Middle East and Europe will soon be subject to forms of intimidation by an Iraqi government bent on dominating the Middle East and its oil reserves,"
http://www.sptimes.com/' target='_new'>Project for the New American Century (were they talking about themselves?)


28
Tacitus' Realm / unsafe at any speed.....R. Nadar
« on: February 24, 2004, 03:09:00 PM »
I was such a supporter and now that he is running again I just cannot believe it.

This makes me feel like...he doesn't really care about the American people he only cares about his own agenda, his own fame and his own name.

Why would he do this ? He knows he made Gore lose indirectly but...still and now he goes for it again?

I have lost total respect for him I no longer believe his is the honorable person that  I once thought he was. Sad. I feel let down.... hmmm figures just another politican.

If you think yourself too wise to involve
yourself in government, you will be governed
by those too foolish to govern.  
--Plato


29
yes yes .....just in time for elections kiddies.....

1. I support gay marriage

2. Don't ammend the consitiution with something as stupid as that

3. Please God let there be more Gay and lesbians then freaky right winggers!!! (starts to pray)

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house.
-- George Carlin


30
[ This Message was edited by: kaydeejaded on 2005-05-10 05:48 ]

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