28 December 2009

The Empire's Next Target

[click image]

Just getting an early start. I'm expecting another false flag attack somewhere, to provide an excuse to invade Yemen.
And there's something mighty fishy about the recent airliner incident.
In 2008, the ACLU estimated the US 'No Fly List' to have grown to over 1,000,000 names --heck, even Cat Stevens and the late Senator Ted Kennedy were on it --and it continues to expand. But, suspected terrorist Abdul Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was curiously able to obtain military-grade high explosives -- 80 grams of PETN (gee, where'd he get that?) -- managed to escape airport security and detonate his underwear bomb! In April 2009, American authorities reportedly refused an Air France flight from Paris to Mexico entry into US airspace because a left-wing journalist writing a book on the CIA was on board. Got it? Write a book critical of the CIA -- you cannot fly. Carry explosives (allegedly from Yemen) on board when the US is trolling for an excuse to invade and occupy Yemen for its oil -- yes you can!
http://www.legitgov.org/northwest_bomb_plot_oddities.html

17 December 2009

Kill It Before It Comes to Life!

on the health care "reform" bill:

Give credit to Howard Dean. This still practicing physician, former governor of Vermont, former chair of the Democratic Party and former Democratic presidential candidate has called for progressive members of Congress in both houses to join their Republican colleagues in killing what he rightly says has become "an insurance company's dream."

Those namby-pamby, self-described "progressives" in the Democratic Party who claim that the health bill can still be saved with the inclusion of a fake, carefully circumscribed and thoroughly emasculated "public option" government insurance plan that at best would only be able to offer lousy coverage at high rates to a small number of self-employed poor people are wrong. This supposed attempt at reforming the US health care system--the costliest and least effective in the developed world--is simply past saving.

The only appropriate place for the bill at this point is a dumpster.

What could have been a transformational moment in American politics--an end to decades of corporate health care and the creation of a system in which all Americans were guaranteed affordable, quality care as a basic right of citizenship, the way people are in Canada, in all the countries of Europe, in Japan, in Taiwan, in Cuba and much of the rest of the world, has been squandered.

It has been squandered by President Obama, who was too gutless to take a leadership role, and left matters to Congress, and who then slithered up to the major players in the medical-industrial complex and cut secret deals with all of them--doctors, insurance companies, pharmaceutical companies and the hospital industry--in return for their "support."

It has been squandered by many leading members of Congress in both houses, especially those who call themselves the Blue Dogs, but also by many who call themselves "liberals," who accepted the tainted coin of those industries (and their lobbyists have been flooding Congress over the past year with contributions in unprecedented amounts), and who have transformed the legislation into a huge gift for those industries, producing a bill that will leave employers as the main agency for providing health coverage (though not for paying for it--that will be the employees' responsibility), require those without coverage to buy it themselves, guaranteeing a vast new market of mostly health young people for the insurance industry, and that will do almost nothing to control costs.

Doctors will get richer under this "reform." Insurance companies will get vastly richer under this "reform". Pharmaceutical companies will get richer under this "reform". But there will still be millions of people left with no access to health care. There will still be tens of millions of people who will get substandard or even pathetically trashy health care. And the cost of medical care, both for individuals and for society as a whole, already the highest in the world, will continue to soar. To make matters worse, taxes will also go up dramatically, by at least $100 billion a year. For extra laughs, while these costs would start hitting the public right away, the "benefits" of the bill wouldn't go into effect until 2013, meaning that a likely resurgent Republican Party, ousting Obama from the White House, and the Democrats from the majority in Congress in 2012, would simply undo the whole thing anyhow.

Dr. Dean is right. This is indeed a bad bill. But it's not just a bad bill. It is a morally outrageous, politically disgusting and economically dangerous bill. It moves the country in exactly the wrong direction--not towards the socialism that the right has been decrying, but towards an increasingly costly corporatist system that will be even harder to reform down the road.

There is only one hope, and that is that enough liberal members of House and Senate will recognize that nothing is better than something in this case, and that for the sake of their constituents they will refuse to support this legislative monstrosity.

The Health Insurance Enrichment Act of 2009 must be killed in the congressional womb before it can emerge to become the monster it has become.

The only positive thing I can see in this debacle is that perhaps if President Obama is slapped down by his own most ardent backers on what he has claimed is his number one legislative goal, he and his too-clever-by-half advisers will realize that they need to do a U-turn and rethink how they are trying to govern.

More likely, however, this defeat will be the beginning of the end of the Obama administration, which has now been revealed as devoid of principle, incapable of leadership, and in thrall to the most cynical and greedy corporate interests.

Triumph of the Money Party




Health Care Reform DOA. Why the Surprise? They Did what they Always Do

[image lifted from capitt.com]

15 December 2009

And the Prize for Best Xmas Decorations Goes To...

This Guy!



Apparently he had to take it down after a couple days. People kept attempting a rescue.

Had Enough?



Video from puppetgov.com

13 December 2009

Chamber of Horrors



After Fox railed about it the idiot wing responded by flooding VR with hate mail and death threats.

11 December 2009

Obama is WRONG About Afghanistan


Members of the Nobel Peace Prize committee were stunned to hear President Obama preaching war at the award of his prize medal. The fact is we need to be winding down our ruinous occupational excursion there, not getting in deeper. And the most appalling thing is the way the hardcore neocons are chortling over their new "war president".

They tell us our military force in Afghanistan is fighting terror. The exact opposite is true. Ten percent of every dollar we pour into that country goes to bribe the Taliban not to shoot at us. And when they talk about building up the Afghan army, what they don't tell you is how many recruits are in fact terrorists in for the free training. Yes, that's right, in essence the U.S. Army is running the terrorist training camps for the terrorists.

Click HERE to send a free fax to President Obama and all your members of Congress.

The North American Jaguar Needs Your Help



Click pic to sign petition and, if you can spare it, make a donation. Extinction is forever.

10 December 2009

A Righteous Rant

From Michael D. Rectenwald at Citizens for Legitimate Government.

The Obama Effect: The Demise of the Democratic Party and a Gift to the Country

The decision to escalate Afghanistan War should put the final nail in the coffin of "change" and "hope" that Democrats and others crawled into when they supported Obama. The evidence that Obama is every bit the representative of the corporate oligarchy and no less a corporate shill than the rest has been mounting for nearly a year-or well before the election for the cognoscenti. Only fanatics could have heard Obama's speech on Afghanistan and failed to hear the resonances of Bush. But the writing was on the wall over a year ago when Obama supported the bailouts of the banks and brokerage firms that leveraged their destruction of the economy on the foreclosures of homes. Few could miss the fact that the health care reform bill, should it ever pass, will be another unwarranted and gratuitous bailout-this one of the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

Obama diverted the legitimate anger and energy for real change and scuttled it under the fraudulent tent of the Democratic Party. He led millions to the cliff; they are now falling off in droves. Those who've not quite gotten to the edge screech and yell: "Wait! Give him time!" Those who gave warning from the outset are not busy casting nets. We welcome the demise of the Democratic Party.

And that is exactly the Obama Effect. Every last tissue of belief in the Democrats should by now be shred and cast aside. The Democrats are no less the corporate bailers and militarists than the Republicans. They hand trillions to the banks and brokerage firms; they dissolve union contracts and send the workers to the dogs; their unmanned drones bomb Pakistan, killing and maiming innocents and displacing tens of thousands; they sell the same lies about the wars-that they have to do with terrorism or democracy rather than oil and other resources-as their predecessors; they fund the very enemy that they claim to fight; they keep up the same contracts with Blackwater and its successors; they vote for the same war funding; they carry out the same secret renditions; they sanction and continue the same spying on US citizens; they exonerate torturers and war criminals from the previous administration; they are war criminals in complicity with other war criminals.

Click here to continue...

08 December 2009

The Dream is Over


On November 4, 1980 Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States.
Five weeks later John Lennon was assassinated.
The world has never recovered.



"Laurel and Hardy, that's John and Yoko. And we stand a better chance under that guise because all the serious people like Martin Luther King and Kennedy and Gandhi got shot."
- John Lennon
http://www.john-lennon.com/whokilled.htm

01 December 2009

Obama's Afghanistan Speech.


Reactions to sending 30,000 more solders into harm's way.





30 November 2009

Obama Keeping Murderers on the Payroll?


(This is an update to a story which broke in August. LINK )

Some low level Acorn worker gets caught in a sting and the whole organization loses funding, yet Obama keeps gun-running murderers on the payroll. What the fuck has happened to this country?

Autumn in Mendocino

Click pics to appreciate fully.





(Olympus C2040Z - 1/400, f2.8)


Who is Obama Working For Anyway?

Dave Lindorff has nailed it again! His latest essay contains this gem:
If the Republicans had created and inserted into the Democratic Party a secret candidate designed to trick Democrats into electing him, so that he could then enact Republican policies of robbing from the poor to enrich the rich, expanding the military budget to a level not seen since World War II, putting the nation deeper into a global war against Islam, sabotaging efforts to combat climate change, and further deregulating the financial sector, could they have come up with anything better than Barack Obama?
Read the whole thing at thiscantbehappening.net

28 November 2009

Cheap Cat Toy

Buddy demonstrates how an entertaining cat toy can be made using a cardboard box and a golf ball.

Pentagon Hijack Impossible - Cockpit Door Never Opened


Newly decoded data provided by an independent researcher and computer programmer from Australia exposes alarming evidence that the reported hijacking aboard American Airlines Flight 77 was impossible to have existed. A data parameter labeled "FLT DECK DOOR", cross checks with previously decoded data obtained by Pilots For 9/11 Truth from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) through the Freedom Of Information Act.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, American Airlines Flight 77 departed Dulles International Airport bound for Los Angeles at 8:20 am Eastern Time. According to reports and data, a hijacking took place between 08:50:54 and 08:54:11[1] in which the hijackers allegedly crashed the aircraft into the Pentagon at 09:37:45. Reported by CNN, according to Ted Olson, wife Barbara Olson had called him from the reported flight stating, "...all passengers and flight personnel, including the pilots, were herded to the back of the plane by armed hijackers..."[2]. However, according to Flight Data provided by the NTSB, the Flight Deck Door was never opened in flight. How were the hijackers able to gain access to the cockpit, remove the pilots, and navigate the aircraft to the Pentagon if the Flight Deck Door remained closed?[3]
[source]

Just more of the magical forces at work that day.

23 November 2009

Now *This* is Some Scary Shit!


From The Guardian -- For 23 years Rom Houben was ­imprisoned in his own body. He saw his doctors and nurses as they visited him during their daily rounds; he listened to the conversations of his carers; he heard his mother deliver the news to him that his father had died. But he could do nothing. He was unable to communicate with his doctors or family. He could not move his head or weep, he could only listen.
Doctors presumed he was in a vegetative state following a near-fatal car crash in 1983. They believed he could feel nothing and hear nothing. For 23 years.
Read on...

The thought of that is chilling. I think I'd go mad after the first few years. Coincidentally, there was an episode of House MD about a patient like that. It was pretty cool, with scenes from the patient's POV. You can watch it here

22 November 2009

It's Been Fun


[click image]

Forty-Six Years On




Was the Zapruder film tampered with in the years before it was released to the public?
John Costella makes a strong case for it at his website assassinationscience.com

Was JFK taken out by the mob? Was he planning a coup against Castro? The updated edition of Legacy of Secrecy says that's what happened. See a short interview with the authors HERE.

Forty-six years on and JFK truth is still buried. Will 9/11 truth fare any better by 2047? I doubt it.

20 November 2009

Nuremberg Anniversary




64 years ago today the Nuremberg Trials started. The defendants were accused of the following:
1. Conspiracy against world peace
2. Planning, provocation and execution of a war of aggression
3. Crimes and violations against the law of war
4. Crimes against humanity

Of course, those are not crimes unless you lose.

18 November 2009

Change? Keep Hoping


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 17, 2009
11:56 AM

CONTACT: Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR)
press@ccrjustice.org

CCR Files Opening Brief in First Supreme Court Case to Challenge Patriot Act

Obama Administration Defending Law that Makes Speech Advocating Human Rights a Terrorist Crime

WASHINGTON - November 17 - Yesterday, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) filed the first brief in Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project, the first case to challenge a portion of the Patriot Act before the Supreme Court. The case, originally brought in 1998 on behalf of a human rights group, a retired federal administrative judge, a doctor, and several nonprofit groups, challenges the constitutionality of the law that makes it a crime to provide "material support" to groups the administration has designated as "terrorist." In particular, the plaintiffs charge that the law goes too far in making speech advocating lawful, nonviolent activity a crime. The lower courts have unanimously declared several provisions of the law - including one added by the Patriot Act - unconstitutionally vague because they encompass speech and force citizens to guess as to their meaning.

The case challenges those aspects of the "material support" statute that criminalize pure speech - specifically the prohibitions on providing "training," "personnel," "expert advice or assistance," and "service." Under the law, any speech that falls within these terms - no matter how peaceable and nonviolent - is a crime if communicated to, for, or with the collaboration of any organization placed on a list of "foreign terrorist organizations" maintained by the State Department. Convictions can result in sentences of fifteen years to life. According to the government, the statute requires no showing that the donor intended to further any act of terrorism or violence.

Said CCR Cooperating Attorney David Cole, "This statute is so sweeping that it treats human rights advocates as criminal terrorists, and threatens them with 15 years in prison for advocating nonviolent means to resolve disputes. In our view, the First Amendment does not permit the government to make advocating human rights or other lawful, peaceable activity a crime simply because it is done for the benefit of, or in conjunction with, a group the Secretary of State has blacklisted."

The lower courts held unconstitutionally vague the law's prohibition on the provision of "services," "expert advice or assistance," and "training," reasoning that these terms could easily encompass a wide range of lawful speech, such as providing training in international law. The Obama administration sought Supreme Court review of that decision.

Plaintiffs in the case include the Humanitarian Law Project (HLP), a human rights organization in Los Angeles that seeks to provide human rights advocacy training to the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the main Kurdish political party in Turkey, and a former federal administrative law judge, Ralph Fertig, who is the president of the HLP. Once the State Department designated the PKK a terrorist organization, it became a crime for HLP to continue to train the group in human rights advocacy, even though that assistance is designed to reduce violence by encouraging peaceful ways of resolving conflict.

"To deny me the right to speak of peace to a group because it is branded ‘terrorist' is to defer the possibility that it could ever be anything else," said plaintiff Ralph D. Fertig, JD, ACSW, retired U.S. Administrative Judge and Clinical Associate Professor, University of Southern California School of Social Work. "And to punish those who seek peaceful resolutions of conflict is to yield to violence. Surely the First Amendment must protect against such government action."

The Patriot Act added a prohibition on the provision of "expert advice or assistance" to the statute. After earlier court decisions declared that and other parts of the statute unconstitutional, Congress amended it in 2004 to try to correct the infirmities. However, the district court and court of appeals concluded that the prohibitions on "services," "expert advice and assistance," and "training" remained unconstitutionally vague. The court of appeals decision the administration is seeking review of is the sixth ruling from the lower courts since 1998 finding significant parts of the material support statute to be unconstitutionally vague.

For more information on the case, including briefs and a detailed explanation of material support, visit http://ccrjustice.org/holder-v-humanitarian-law-project.

Attached Files

###
The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.


09 November 2009

Flu Facts You Won't See on TV


The World Health Organization recently (May '09) changed the definition of a Level 6 pandemic, dropping the criteria of high morbidity and high mortality. Without that change, they couldn't call the current H1N1 outbreak a pandemic, there wouldn't be any talk of mandatory vaccinations, and big pharma wouldn't be about to rake in billions from it.

Teresa Forcades is a Spanish Benedictine nun who is also an MD specialist in internal medicine with a PhD in Public Health. In this hourlong talk (Spanish, w/English subtitles) she speaks to that change and other disturbing irregularities about the (not so) "new" flu "pandemic."
[WATCH as a 6-vid playlist at Youtube]

(I recommend watching the entire thing, but a brief summary is available HERE.)

28 October 2009

Global Warming = Local Weirding

Snapped this pic out front an hour ago.



Nobody told the roses November starts in four days.

27 October 2009

Musical Interlude

iball presents a great parody of a great song.




For those who were asleep or in a cave from 1975-1985, here is the original video.

23 October 2009

GOP Hypocrites on Medicare but Against Public Option




May they all be fornicated unnaturally.

Change? Bullshit!


9/11 State of Emergency Renewed

Obama Shelves Plan to Close Corporate Tax Loophole

Trillions for Wall Street While States Suffer

How obvious does it have to get before the sheeple see that Obama serves not the people, but the corporate vampires?

The Looting of America


"The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial
element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since
the days of Andrew Jackson."
-- Franklin D. Roosevelt



21 October 2009

None Dare Call It Bribery

Under conditions of growing unemployment and deepening social misery for working people throughout the US, President Barack Obama flew into New York City Tuesday to raise millions of dollars in campaign donations from America’s financial elite.

He was expected to clear at least $3 million, largely from a Manhattan bash with an entry fee of $30,400 per couple — the maximum contribution allowed by law.
[Story continues HERE]

09 October 2009

Happy Birthday

John Winston Ono Lennon Oct 9 1940 - Dec 8, 1980

04 October 2009

The Awful Truth about American Politics


Over at OpEd News is a righteous rant by Stephen Pizzella which is worthy of wider distribution.
Here's a snippet:
Ever since the Democrats started squealing at the same corporate trough as the Republicans, the Left has responded by sucking on a hopeium crack pipe that the Democrats have been more than happy to fill with fluff victories about identity politics and other class lite issues that have little or nothing to do with the basic economic interests of the vast majority of Americans. In the process it has become what would be considered in any other Western democracy an oxymoronic joke: a Left without a defining class consciousness.
Go HERE to read the whole thing. Then share it with someone.

30 September 2009

Alan Grayson Rocks!

A Democrat with a spine. What a concept!
Here's Rep. Alan Grayson, explaining the GOP's health care plan.



Then, when the Repubs demand an apology, he gives them this:



Which got him an appearance on the situation room where he took on Wolf and a pair of indignant Repubs...


How refreshing to see a Democrat who'll stand up and tell it like it is. I suggest he stay out of small airplanes.

24 September 2009

9/11 Commission Rejects own Report as Based on Government Lies




The 9/11 Commission now tells us that the official version of 9/11 was based on false testimony and documents and is almost entirely untrue. The details of this massive cover-up are carefully outlined in a book by John Farmer, who was the Senior Counsel for the 9/11 Commission.
Continue reading HERE

22 September 2009

Honesty in Amerika - R.I.P.





Truthout.org has published a most insightful essay by Henry Giroux entitled: The Politics of Lying and the Culture of Deceit in Obama's America: The Rule of Damaged Politics.

It begins: In the current American political landscape, truth is not merely misrepresented or falsified; it is overtly mocked.

Continue reading HERE. Do it now.

[image lifted from toonpool.com]

21 September 2009

McChrystal Wants More Troops for Afghanistan

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure."
From WAPO

Since more troops means more $ for his corporate masters, I predict Obama will go for it.




Happy Peace Day

The International Day of Peace ("Peace Day") provides an opportunity for individuals, organizations and nations to create practical acts of peace on a shared date. It was established by a United Nations resolution in 1981 to coincide with the opening of the General Assembly. The first Peace Day was celebrated in September 1982.
Visit: internationaldayofpeace.org




20 September 2009

Did Blackwater Kill Benazir Bhutto?

Pakistan’s former chief of army staff, General Mirza Aslam Beg (ret.), has said the U.S. private security company Blackwater was directly involved in the assassinations of former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto and former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri.
Read on...

17 September 2009

2009 9/11 Truth Statement


We STILL Want Real Answers About 9/11
September 11, 2009
Click here to read and sign the original

On August 31, 2004, Zogby International, the official North American political polling agency for Reuters, released a poll that found nearly half (49.3%) of New York City residents and 41% of those in New York state believed US leaders had foreknowledge of impending 9/11 attacks and "consciously failed" to act. Of the New York City residents, 66% called for a new probe of unanswered questions by Congress or the New York Attorney General. Since that time, multiple professional polling organizations have obtained similar results in polls conducted nationally and internationally.

In 2004, 911truth.org assembled a list of notable Americans and family members of those who died who signed a 9/11 Statement, calling for "immediate public attention to unanswered questions that suggest that people within the current administration may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."

On the eighth anniversary of 9/11, we find ourselves asking these same questions and encountering the same resistance to transparency. The ensuing wars have destroyed countless lives, our civil liberties (including habeas corpus) are in tatters, posse comitatus is history, and our economy lies essentially in ruin. Meanwhile, thousands of 9/11 responders who rushed to stand with America in its time of need are now sick -- many dying -- from the exposure to toxins at Ground Zero, receiving inadequate medical help or compensation in return. Because this issue is as relevant as the day we issued this Statement in 2004, we now offer again the opportunity to endorse this call for answers, and join with those who have already taken a stand.

Within the last month, one of these original 12 questions has finally been answered:

Why has Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI translator who claims to have knowledge of advance warnings, been publicly silenced with a gag order requested by Attorney General Ashcroft and granted by a Bush-appointed judge?
Only now do we know why. Where is the national outcry we would expect had it been top story reported by the media, "liberal"or "conservative"?

We still want truthful answers to the remaining 11 questions asked originally on our Statement in 2004:
  1. Why were standard operating procedures for dealing with hijacked airliners not followed that day?

    An essay by Paul Thompson, The Failure to Defend the Skies on 9/11, provides a thorough and detailed background to address this question.
    To learn more about NORAD's mission, see The NORAD papers articles by Dean Jackson.

  2. Why were the extensive missile batteries and air defenses reportedly deployed around the Pentagon not activated during the attack?

    April Gallop: http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/07/interview-with-april-gallop.html
    See Mineta's testimony, also listed below
    Air Defense on 9/11

  3. Why did the Secret Service allow Bush to complete his elementary school visit, apparently unconcerned about his safety or that of the schoolchildren?

    Another great essay by Paul Thompson and Allan Wood, An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11, raises vital questions that still remain unanswered.

  4. Why hasn't a single person been fired, penalized, or reprimanded for the gross incompetence we witnessed that day?

    Whitewash

  5. Why haven't authorities in the U.S. and abroad published the results of multiple investigations into trading that strongly suggested foreknowledge of specific details of the 9/11 attacks, resulting in tens of millions of dollars of traceable gains?

    The History Commons timeline of entries related to insider trading
    9/11 Commission documents relating to insider trading allegations

  6. How could Flight 77, which reportedly hit the Pentagon, have flown back towards Washington D.C. for 40 minutes without being detected by the FAA's radar or the even superior radar possessed by the US military?

    Mineta's testimony about what the Vice President knew of Flight 77

  7. How were the FBI and CIA able to release the names and photos of the alleged hijackers within hours, as well as to visit houses, restaurants, and flight schools they were known to frequent?

    An overwhelming collection of information about the alleged hijackers from the Complete 9/11 Timeline
    How the FBI protected Al Qaeda 's 9/11 Hijacking Trainer
    Hijacker had post-9/11 flights scheduled, files say

  8. What happened to the over 20 documented warnings given our government by 14 foreign intelligence agencies or heads of state?

    They Tried to Warn Us: Foreign Intelligence Warnings Before 9/11

  9. Why did the Bush administration cover up the fact that the head of the Pakistani intelligence agency was in Washington the week of 9/11 and reportedly had $100,000 wired to Mohamed Atta, considered the ringleader of the hijackers?
    From the November, 2004, complaint and petition filed with AG Spitzer on the possible ISI role in providing funding to the plotters:

    Allegations of bribes to 9/11 Commission
    S Sheikh, the ISI and wire transfers

  10. Why did the 911 Commission fail to address most of the questions posed by the families of the victims, in addition to almost all of the questions posed here?

    Family Steering Committee Review of Commission Report

    Press for Truth
    Deconstructing Deceit

  11. Why was Philip Zelikow chosen to be the Executive Director of the ostensibly independent 911 Commission although he had co-authored a book with Condoleezza Rice?

    Who is Zelikow?
    9/11 Commission's findings cite intelligence garnered by torture



Those who favor a thorough and unbiased accounting of the facts now number in the millions, from countries around the world and from across the political spectrum. 9/11 Truth is not and never has been a partisan issue and only by standing together can we approach truth and achieve the reconciliation that is necessary to our common good.

In closing, we pray and hope for the strength to approach this subject with wisdom and compassion so that we may heal from the wounds inflicted on that terrible day.

To sign this 9/11 truth petition, click here.

16 September 2009

Obama Wants to Keep Police State Powers


The Obama administration is urging lawmakers to extend three provisions of the controversial domestic surveillance law known as the USA Patriot Act.
from VOA News


31 August 2009

U.S. OUT of Pakistan!

Shit!

US Hummers Enter Pakistan, Undercover American Soldiers In Islamabad

Multiple Eyewitness Testimony Exposes Official Lies About Pentagon Attack


In 2006 Citizen Investigation Team launched an independent investigation into the act of terrorism which took place at the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. This exhaustive three-year inquest involved multiple trips to the scene of the crime in Arlington, Virginia, close scrutiny of all official and unofficial data related to the event, and, most importantly, first-person interviews with dozens of eyewitnesses, many of which were conducted and filmed in the exact locations from which they witnessed the plane that allegedly struck the building that day.

Be forewarned: Our findings are extraordinarily shocking and frightening. They are also deadly serious, and deserving of your immediate attention. This is not about a conspiracy theory or any theory at all. This is about independent, verifiable evidence which unfortunately happens to conclusively establish as a historical fact that the violence which took place in Arlington that day was not the result of a surprise attack by suicide hijackers, but rather a false flag "black operation" involving a carefully planned and skillfully executed deception.
http://www.citizeninvestigationteam.com/



If youtube's feed is hinky or if they remove the video, watch it here.



08 August 2009

Who's Driving?

Imagine you don't know who is President. You don't know who is in the administration. You know only what's been done and not done.

Could you tell whether the Democrats or Republicans were in charge?

"A difference which makes no difference is no difference."
- Spock

29 July 2009

The American Road to Fascism



-Whatever you're doing right now, stop. Click HERE and go read Richard Clark's synopsis of Chris Hedges' new book, Empire of Illusion - The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle. Then buzz it, digg it, tweet it etc.

24 July 2009

01 July 2009

Ted Rall says: "Sorry, Mr. Bush"


Ted Rall nails it again!

Stop the presses and shut off the RSS feeds: the bashiest of the Bush-bashers is starting to appreciate the Exile of Crawford.

I haven't forgiven George W. Bush for stealing two elections, starting two wars, bankrupting the treasury and doing his damnedest to turn the U.S. into a fascist state. He deserves one of hell's hottest picnic spots for refusing to lift a finger to bring the 9/11 murderers to justice. Bush was stupid. He was vicious. He should be in prison.

He was the worst president the U.S. had ever had. Until this one.

Continue reading HERE.

28 June 2009

I've been saying this for years..

"The human species is radically, ontologically, spiritually, existentially defective."
- W. Cristopher Epler

CLICK to read the entire essay.

17 June 2009

Quote of the Day


"The individual is handicapped by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot beleive it exists."
- J Edgar Hoover

21 May 2009

Liberal Media? My Ass!


The riveting excerpts below are from the revealing accounts of 20 award-winning journalists in the highly acclaimed book Into the Buzzsaw. These courageous writers were prevented by corporate media ownership from reporting major news stories. Some were even fired or laid off. They have won numerous awards, including several Emmys and a Pulitzer. Join in building a better world by helping to spread this news across the land.


Jane Akre—Fox News. After our struggle to air an honest report [on hormones in milk], Fox fired the general manager [of our station]. The new GM said that if we didn’t agree to changes that the lawyers were insisting upon, we’d be fired for insubordination in 48 hours. We pleaded with [him] to look at the facts we’d uncovered. His reply: “We paid $3 billion dollars for these stations. We’ll tell you what the news is. The news is what we say it is!” [After we refused] Fox’s GM presented us an agreement that would give us a full year of salary, and benefits worth close to $200,000, but with strings attached: no mention of how Fox covered up the story and no opportunity to ever expose the facts. [After declining] we were fired. (click for more, revealing video clip)

Dan Rather—CBS, Multiple Emmy Awards. What's going on is a belief that you can manipulate communicable trust between the leadership and the led. The way you do that is you don't let the press in anywhere. Access to war is extremely limited. The fiercer the combat, the more the access is limited, [including] access to information. This is a direct contradiction of the stated policy of maximum access to information consistent with national security. There was a time in South Africa when people would put flaming tires around people's necks if they dissented. In some ways the fear [now in the U.S.] is that you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. That fear keeps journalists from asking the tough questions. I am humbled to say, I do not except myself from this criticism. (click for more)

Monika Jensen-Stevenson—Emmy-winning producer for 60 minutes. Robert R. Garwood—14 years a prisoner of the Vietnamese—was found guilty in the longest court-martial in US history. At the end of the court-martial, there seemed no question that Garwood was a monstrous traitor. Several years later in 1985, Garwood was speaking publicly about something that had never made the news during his court-martial. He knew of other American prisoners in Vietnam long after the war was over. He was supported by Vietnam veterans whose war records were impeccable. My sources included outstanding experts like former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency General Tighe and returned POWs like Captain McDaniel, who held the Navy’s top award for bravery. With such advocates, it was hard not to consider the possibility that prisoners (some 3,500) had in fact been kept by the Vietnamese as hostages to make sure the US would pay the more than $3 billion in war reparations. [After the war] American POWs had become worthless pawns. The US had not paid the promised monies and had no intention of paying in the future. (click for more)

Kristina Borjesson—CBS, Emmy award winner. Pierre Salinger announced to the world on Nov. 8, 1996, that he’d received documents proving that a US Navy missile had accidentally downed [TWA flight 800]. That same day, FBI’s Jim Kallstrom called a press conference. A man raised his hand and asked why the Navy was involved in the recovery and investigation while a possible suspect. “Remove him!” [Kallstrom] yelled. Two men leapt over to the questioner and grabbed him by the arms. There was a momentary chill in the air after the guy had been dragged out of the room. Kallstrom and entourage acted as if nothing had happened. [Kallstrom was later hired by CBS.] (click for more)

Greg Palast—BBC. In the months leading up to the November [2000] balloting, Gov. Jeb Bush ordered elections supervisors to purge 58,000 voters on the grounds they were felons not entitled to vote. As it turns out, only a handful of these voters were felons. This extraordinary news ran on page one of the country’s leading paper. Unfortunately, it was the wrong country: Britain. In the USA, it was not covered. The office of the governor [also] illegally ordered the removal of felons from voter rolls—real felons—but with the right to vote under law. As a result, 50,000 of these voters could not vote. The fact that 90% of these were Democrats should have made it news as this alone more than accounted for Bush’s victory. (click for more)

Michael Levine—25-year veteran of DEA, writer for New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today. The Chang Mai “factory” that the CIA prevented me from destroying was the source of massive amounts of heroin being smuggled into the US in the bodies and body bags of GIs killed in Vietnam. Case after case was killed by CIA and State Department intervention and there wasn’t a thing we could do about it. ... In 1980, CIA-recruited mercenaries and drug traffickers unseated Bolivia’s democratically elected president. Immediately after the coup, cocaine production increased massively. Bolivia [became] the source of virtually 100% of the cocaine entering the US. This was the beginning of the crack “plague.” … The CIA along with State and Justice Departments had to protect their drug-dealing assets by destroying a DEA investigation. How do I know? I was the inside source. ... I sat down at my desk in the American embassy and wrote evidence of my charges. I addressed it to Newsweek. Three weeks later DEA’s internal security [called] to notify me that I was under investigation. ... The highlight of the 60 Minutes piece is when the administrator of the DEA, Federal Judge Robert Bonner, tells Mike Wallace, “There is no other way to put it, Mike, [what the CIA did] is drug smuggling. It’s illegal.” (click for more)

Gary WebbSan Jose Mercury News, Pulitzer Prize winner. In 1996, I wrote a series of stories that began this way: For the better part of a decade, a Bay Area drug ring sold tons of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods gangs of LA and funneled millions in drug profits to a guerilla army run by the CIA. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America. ... The story was developing a momentum all of its own, despite a virtual news blackout from the major media. Ultimately, it was public pressure that forced the national newspapers into the fray. The Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times published stories, but spent little time exploring the CIA’s activities. Instead, my reporting and I became the focus of their scrutiny. It was remarkable [Mercury News editor] Ceppos wrote, that the four Washington Post reporters assigned to debunk the series “could not find a single significant factual error.” A few months later, the Mercury News [due to intense CIA pressure] backed away from the story, publishing a long column by Ceppos apologizing for “shortcomings.” The New York Times hailed Ceppos for “setting a brave new standard,” and splashed his apology on their front page, the first time the series had ever been mentioned there. I quit the Mercury News not long after that. ... Do we have a free press today? Sure. It’s free to report all the sex scandals, all the stock market news, [and] every new health fad that comes down the pike. But when it comes to the real down and dirty stuff—such stories are not even open for discussion. (click for more)

John Kelly—Author, ABC producer. ABC hired me to help produce a story about an investment firm that was heavily involved with the CIA. Part of the ABC report charged that the CIA had plotted to assassinate an American, Ron Rewald, the president of [the investment firm]. Scott Barnes said on camera that the CIA had asked him to kill Rewald. After the show aired, CIA officials met with ABC executive David Burke, [who] was sufficiently impressed “by the vigor with which they made their case” to order an on-air “clarification.” But that was not enough. [CIA Director] Casey called ABC Chairman Goldenson. [Thus] despite all the documented evidence presented in the program, despite ABC standing by the program in a second broadcast, Peter Jennings reported that ABC could no longer substantiate the charges. That same day, the CIA filed a formal complaint with the FCC charging that ABC had “deliberately distorted” the news. In the complaint, Casey asked that ABC be stripped of its TV and radio licenses. During this time, Capital Cities Communications was maneuvering to buy ABC. [CIA Director] Casey was one of the founders of Cap Cities. Cap Cities bought ABC. Within months, the entire investigative unit was dispersed. (click for more)

Robert McChesney—500 radio & TV appearances. [There has been a] striking consolidation of the media from hundreds of firms to an industry dominated by less than ten enormous transnational conglomerates. The largest ten media firms own all US TV networks, most TV stations, all major film studios, all major music companies, nearly all cable TV channels, much of the book and magazine publishing [industry], and much, much more. Expensive investigative journalism—especially that which goes after national security or powerful corporate interests—is discouraged. Largely irrelevant human interest/tragedy stories get extensive coverage. ... A few weeks after the war began in Afghanistan, CNN president Isaacson authorized CNN to provide two different versions of the war: a more critical one for the global audience and a sugarcoated one for Americans. ... It is nearly impossible to conceive of a better world without some changes in the media status quo. We have no time to waste. (click for more)




For a powerful 10-page summary of this material: www.WantToKnow.info/massmedia

15 May 2009

Change? Fat Chance! The Beat Goes On.



From today's news:

President Barack Obama was today accused of a major U-turn after he decided to keep the controversial military commissions set up by George Bush to prosecute terror suspects.

The surprise White House announcement reversed Mr Obama’s campaign pledge to rely on America’s conventional criminal court system.

It was the president’s second U-turn this week after he changed his mind and pledged to try and block the court-ordered release of damning photographs showing US soldiers abusing prisoners. LINK

Obama is controlled by the same cabal which has controlled every president since Kennedy. Either that, or we've got another fucking liar in the White House.
Pick one.

12 May 2009

U.S. Constitution - R.I.P.



"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag carrying the cross."
--- Sinclair Lewis


10 May 2009

Mothers Love Babies



Happy Mothers Day to all you mothers out there, biological and adoptive.




09 May 2009

Fox News Reveals Rove's Triumph Before Vote is Over


Though the votes have not all been counted, someone at Fox announced the victor early.
Florida in 2000 redux?


click pic



Thanks and a hat tip to Zach Beane for his free image macro generator, one of many cool tools and toys at wigflip.