sent to me by Jason Miller
According to Fox News “Animal Rights Terrorism” is on the rise in North America.
Is it rather animal abuse awareness that’s on the rise?
From The North American Animal Liberation Press Office
http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/
Says Jason Miller; "One of the primary reasons the North American Animal Liberation Press Office exists is to counter-balance mainstream media distortions like this one."
Fox News (Fair and Balanced???)
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,525039,00.html
So who are the terrorists here?
Answers provided by Jason Miller
Julie Leyva recently submitted some questions to the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. Jason Miller wrote the reply:
5/26/09
What is your occupation and for how long?
There are four of us serving as press officers for NAALPO:
Jerry Vlasak is a board certified trauma surgeon, a former vivisector, and a seasoned animal liberation activist who speaks, writes and debates on behalf of nonhuman animals. Jerry co-founded NAALPO and has been a board member of Sea Shepherd and the spokesman for the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.
Camille Hankins has over 20 years of corporate marketing and management experience; co-founded Win Animal Rights (WAR), a group dedicated to shutting down Huntingdon Life Sciences, in 2004; founded the New York Animal Liberation Front Supporters in 2003; and is heavily involved in outreach to educate the public about the underground animal liberation movement.
Lin Bingham works as a writer and graphic designer. He is a vehement advocate of total liberation, including humans, nonhuman animals and the Earth. He specializes in “propaganda and agitation” and is willing and available to speak anytime one or more persons are willing to listen.
Jason Miller started with NAALPO about two months ago and is the newest press officer. I have worked as a supervisor in a call center for nine years where I've cultivated respectable problem-solving, conflict resolution, and communication skills. An ardent and seasoned animal liberation activist, I also founded the notoriously radical blog, Thomas Paine's Corner, in 2004. TPC has become a popular site for activists to go for education and inspiration and to interact via comment threads. Like Lin, I too am a writer who specializes in “propaganda and agitation.”
What is the Animal Liberation Front all about?
I'll begin with NAALPO's disclaimer:
Disclaimer: The Animal Liberation Press Officers do not engage in illegal activities, nor do they know any individuals who do. Neither does this website or the Press Office intend to encourage illegal actions. Rather, the Press Office receives and posts communiqués from anonymous parties and provides comment to the media.
Since there isn't a way to contact individuals working underground (their identity is not known to anyone in the aboveground movement), the use of communiques is one way the underground communicates with the public at large. Communiques can be sent directly to anyone including the press, underground support groups, aboveground animal rights groups, etc.
Because the individuals who engage in underground actions cannot reveal their identities to anyone, a North American Animal Liberation Press Office has been created to try to answer some of the questions as to why these actions may have been carried out, and to place the actions in a historical and philosophical context. Since we do not engage in illegal activities ourselves, we do not know the details of these actions, but we can try to the best of our ability to give you a better understanding of why a particular action may have been carried out.
Now, about the ALF:
The Animal Liberation Front is a grass-root, underground, militant direct action group that frees nonhuman animals from laboratories, fur farms, factory farms and other places in which they are imprisoned and tortured. Besides rescues, the ALF also engages in the destruction of equipment and property used in the oppression and exploitation of other animals.
Rooted in the UK's hunt saboteur movement in the mid-1970s, the ALF is anarchist in structure, meaning there is no conventional leadership or central organization. Anyone who is a vegan and commits an act of sabotage against animal exploiters or frees other animals (while taking the necessary precautions to avoid taking a human life) can rightfully consider themselves a member of the ALF.
In the tradition of the Underground Railroad, John Brown, and the Jewish anti-Nazi resistance, the courageous members of the ALF are freedom fighters, fighting for those who cannot fight for themselves.
And they have been effective, as evidenced by the fact that they've cost the animal exploitation complex hundreds of millions of dollars since their inception and by our corporatist government's foaming-at-the-mouth response to their actions. The FBI has labeled the freedom fighters of the ALF, who are engaged in extensional self-defense of nonhuman animals—sentient beings whom are being holocausted at the rate of billions per year— the “number one domestic terrorist threat.” So who are the terrorists here? Animal-defending members of the ALF or ruthless animal-slaughtering corporations and their government protectors?
Why do scientists test on animals?
There are four principal reasons that scientists continue to test on nonhuman animals, despite the availability of other means of conducting research and testing. These include:
— Money : Like most aspects of the pernicious socioeconomic paradigm of capitalism, the number one driving force behind vivisection is money. Vivisection (nonhuman animal testing) is big business for the companies that supply nonhuman animal research subjects (by capturing them or by breeding them in captivity); manufacture and supply cages, food, lab equipment and other accessories; and that do the actual research and testing. Researchers (vivisectors) who work for public institutions (like universities) and perform vivisection, can obtain federal grant money much more readily than those who don't do animal testing. Institutions and universities have also grown dependent on the large grants they receive for vivisection.
– Careerism : Because grant money is readily available and because institutions rely so heavily on that grant money, researchers who pursue nonhuman animal advance their careers much more readily than those who don't. Also, in the “publish or perish” environment of academia, employing the widely accepted practice of vivisection greatly enhances a researcher's chances of getting published.
— Inertia : Nonhuman animal testing is a practice dating back to the nineteenth century. While an immediate conversion to other means of research and testing may be unrealistic, there are many viable avenues scientists could pursue to eventually eliminate the abjectly immoral practice of torturing nonhuman animals in the interest of “science.” However, as is the case in most instances, there is a tremendous amount of resistance to radically changing the status quo. Vivisection has been the prevailing method of drug, procedure, and product testing for over a century and as new scientists are educated and trained, they are indoctrinated to believe that animal testing is both necessary and morally acceptable. Vivisection has become dogma. Therefore convincing scientists to embrace other means of research will be no easy task.
– Corporate cowardice : Corporations continue to employ nonhuman animal testing on their products to shield themselves from tort liability. If a human consumer of their products is harmed, injured, or killed, a corporation hides behind the defense that it tested the product on nonhuman animals and “determined it was safe.” Also, the FDA requires pharmaceutical manufacturers to rigorously test their drugs on other animals before beginning human clinical trials. Thus as is usually the case, the corporate-state complex sacrifices life to protect property and profit.
If we do not test on animals then what should we test on?
There are a host of research methods and technologies, both extant and developing, that do not involve vivisection and which have proven to be effective or potentially effective. These include but are not limited to: clinical and epidemiological studies (which revealed the cause and effect relationship between smoking and lung cancer after years of animal testing did not); human autopsies, biopsies, and post-mortem studies; post-marketing studies of drugs and other products; imaging scans (that have produced significant anatomical and physiological discoveries); in vitro and tissue culture tests; computer models; biochips containing human enzymes and cells, which can be used to predict how a human body will respond to a drug; specific types of human cells cultivated from embryonic stem cells; and tissue models to replicate human organs. While it is true that there is no ideal means of testing new drugs, medical procedures, foods, or consumer goods, vivisection is a barbaric practice that needs to end on moral grounds and can, from a pragmatic standpoint, be replaced by equally efficacious techniques.
Who/what do companies that do not test on animals test on?
I covered this in my answer to number four. Your question raises a valid point though. The fact that there are companies that do not employ animal testing ( http://search.caringconsumer.com/ offers a search feature which identifies companies that DO and companies that DO NOT test on other animals) provides further evidence that vivisection is an unnecessary and malevolent practice that can and should end.
Is there anything out on the market that has been tested on animals that is safe for humans?
Sure, there are plenty of products which have been tested on other animals that have proven to be safe for humans. However, in addition to the fact that nonhuman animals feel pain and experience suffering like humans, thus making vivisection abjectly immoral, there are vast physiological, genetic and behavioral differences between humans and other animals, making nonhuman animal testing very unreliable in terms of predicting the effect a product will have on people. Thus there are also many products that were tested on nonhuman animals which have proven to be highly detrimental or lethal to humans. For instance, adverse prescription drug reactions are the fourth leading cause of death in the United States.
What are alternatives to animal testing?
Please see my response to question 4. Again, let me emphasize that the transition from the prevailing paradigm of vivisection will not be simple, and may not happen immediately, but it is morally imperative that we end the torment and murder of other animals for money, career advancement, those who fear change, and corporate protection from lawsuits.
I also recommend that you read “Alternative Methods To What?” by Prof Pietro Croce at http://www.animalliberationfront.com/Philosophy/Animal%20Testing/Vivisection/AlternativetoWhat.htm
Jason Miller is a relentless anti-capitalist, vegan straight edge, animal liberationist, and press officer for the North American Animal Liberation Press Office. He is also the senior editor and founder of Thomas Paine's Corner.
http://www.animalliberationpressoffice.org/essays/2009-05-25_whoaretheterrorists.htm
06 June, 2009
help I'm alive!
To Devin LaRue,
Welcome Home after three months in the hospital getting new heart valves!
Here's to many happy years, even though you say it beats too loud . . .
This song is for you!
Welcome Home after three months in the hospital getting new heart valves!
Here's to many happy years, even though you say it beats too loud . . .
This song is for you!
04 June, 2009
Econocide: A Silent (and Violent) Epidemic
by Nick Turse
After David B. Kellermann, the chief financial officer of beleaguered mortgage giant Freddie Mac, tied a noose and hanged himself in the basement of his Vienna, Virginia, home, The New York Times made it a front-page story. The stresses of the job in economic tough times, its reporters implied, had driven him to this extreme act.
"Binghamton Shooter" Jiverly Wong also garnered front-page headlines nationwide and set off a cable news frenzy when, "bitter over job loss," he massacred 13 people at an immigration center in upstate New York. Similarly, coverage was brisk after Pittsburgh resident Richard Poplawski, "upset about recently losing a job," shot four local police officers, killing three of them.
But where was the front-page treatment when, in January, Betty Lipply, a 72-year-old resident of East Palestine, Ohio, "who feared she'd lose her home to foreclosure hanged herself to death" shortly after "receiving her second summons and foreclosure complaint from her mortgage lender"? And where was the up-to-the-minute cable news reporting on the two California dairy farmers who "killed themselves ... out of despair over finances, according to associates"?
Last summer, in the pages of the Nation magazine, Barbara Ehrenreich called attention to people turning to "the suicide solution" in response to the burgeoning financial crisis. Months later, major news outlets started to examine the same phenomenon. Last fall, a TomDispatch report on suicides and a range of other extreme acts - including self-inflicted injury, murder, arson, and armed self-defense - in response to foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, and layoffs, was followed, months later, by mainstream media attention to the notion of "econo-cide" - prompted, in large part, by a spate of familicides (murder/suicides in which both parents and their children die).
While it's impossible to know the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones, that contribute to people resorting to drastic measures, violent or otherwise, many press reports suggest that the global economic crisis has played no small part in a range of extreme acts.
An analysis by TomDispatch of national, regional, and local news reports in 2008 and early 2009 indicates that a silent, nationwide epidemic of drastic measures may be underway. News of such acts linked to economic woes - from armed robberies to pay the rent to financially-motivated suicides - has filtered out of cities and towns in no less than 30 states, many of which have seen multiple incidents. And since only a fraction of such acts ever receives media coverage, what is being reported, even if mostly in local newspapers, qualifies as startling.
Continue this sad story here
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175079
After David B. Kellermann, the chief financial officer of beleaguered mortgage giant Freddie Mac, tied a noose and hanged himself in the basement of his Vienna, Virginia, home, The New York Times made it a front-page story. The stresses of the job in economic tough times, its reporters implied, had driven him to this extreme act.
"Binghamton Shooter" Jiverly Wong also garnered front-page headlines nationwide and set off a cable news frenzy when, "bitter over job loss," he massacred 13 people at an immigration center in upstate New York. Similarly, coverage was brisk after Pittsburgh resident Richard Poplawski, "upset about recently losing a job," shot four local police officers, killing three of them.
But where was the front-page treatment when, in January, Betty Lipply, a 72-year-old resident of East Palestine, Ohio, "who feared she'd lose her home to foreclosure hanged herself to death" shortly after "receiving her second summons and foreclosure complaint from her mortgage lender"? And where was the up-to-the-minute cable news reporting on the two California dairy farmers who "killed themselves ... out of despair over finances, according to associates"?
Last summer, in the pages of the Nation magazine, Barbara Ehrenreich called attention to people turning to "the suicide solution" in response to the burgeoning financial crisis. Months later, major news outlets started to examine the same phenomenon. Last fall, a TomDispatch report on suicides and a range of other extreme acts - including self-inflicted injury, murder, arson, and armed self-defense - in response to foreclosures, evictions, bankruptcies, and layoffs, was followed, months later, by mainstream media attention to the notion of "econo-cide" - prompted, in large part, by a spate of familicides (murder/suicides in which both parents and their children die).
While it's impossible to know the myriad factors, including deeply personal ones, that contribute to people resorting to drastic measures, violent or otherwise, many press reports suggest that the global economic crisis has played no small part in a range of extreme acts.
An analysis by TomDispatch of national, regional, and local news reports in 2008 and early 2009 indicates that a silent, nationwide epidemic of drastic measures may be underway. News of such acts linked to economic woes - from armed robberies to pay the rent to financially-motivated suicides - has filtered out of cities and towns in no less than 30 states, many of which have seen multiple incidents. And since only a fraction of such acts ever receives media coverage, what is being reported, even if mostly in local newspapers, qualifies as startling.
Continue this sad story here
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175079
03 June, 2009
9/11 STRANGE COINCIDENCES
1: Unknown to JFK on 3/13/62, the US Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on Lyman Lemnitzer's Operation Northwoods, a plan to blow up a US airplane, committing terrorist murders against U.S. citizens on American soil, and blaming it on Cuba to justify an invasion there. Kennedy demoted Lemnitzer 11/'62, and was assassinated 11/22/'63 (ABC News 05/1/'01)
2: In 1975, President Ford appointed Lemnitzer to the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (aka the Rockefeller Commission) to investigate whether the Central Intelligence Agency had committed acts that violated American laws.
3: 2/3/'64: WTC Engineer John Skilling issued white paper analysis stating WTC would survive Boeing 707 hitting it at at 600mph. (Seattle Times 2/27/'93)
4: Design of the structural framing of the 1,350-ft high Twin Towers gave the exterior columns great reserve strength, > 2,000% increase before failure (Engineering News Record 4/2/64)
5: John Hinckley, George HW Bush's associate who shot President Reagan in 3/30/'81, is the 'black sheep' of the family
6: The technology to fly a Boeing 720 remotely-controlled existed in 1984 (NASA)
7: Saddam, then a recipient of massive US military aid, said frigate USS Stark was mistaken as Iranian and refused a US request to interview the Iraqi pilot after a 17/5/1987 missile attack killed more than a sixth of the crew and almost sunk it. (Robert Fisk 12/31/'06)
8: From 1987 to 2000, Dov Zakheim was CEO of System Planning Corp (SPC). Through subsidiary Tridata Corp, oversaw the investigation after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He had access to the buildings blueprints
9: SPC sells the Command Transmitter System, a remote control system for planes, which allow an operator to control a pilotless aircraft or drone within about 40 miles of the active transmitter (SPC)
10: SPC sells a radar simulator for target acquisition used by US Navy, the Ballistic Missile Defense Org (BMDO) Countermeasure Group, and DARPA (SPC)
11: SPC sells the Flight Termination System, a system used to destroy target drones in the event of malfunction or "misses" (SPC)
12: George H W Bush gave his speech calling for a New World Order on 9/11/90, eleven years before 9/11/01
13: George Bush succeeded in business only after the investment of reputed al Qaeda financiers Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz. The bin Ladens and Bushes are family friends; Osama is the 'black sheep' of the family. (Forbes 3/18/'02)
14: 5/24/95: Only 150 lbs of explosives leveled the OK City Murrah Building's significant remains as planned, leaving the adjacent parking structure intact (AP, 5/24/95)
15: Unocal rep testified before congress in Feb 98 that an Afghan pipeline needed a stable Afghan gov't and asks the US to use its influence to end conflicts there (Washington Post 10/5/98)
16: 2/20/'98: Project for New American Century (PNAC) called for a war in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein (Wikipedia)
17: On 2/23/98 bin Laden proclaimed from his Afghan redoubt, "To kill Americans ... is an individual duty of every Muslim", to this day his strongest link to 9/11. (Al-Quds al-'Arabi, 2/23/98)
18: Left-handed Osama bin Laden was declared the US taxpayer's No. 1 fugitive. On 8/20/98 you wrecked just thousands of dollars' worth of his obstacle courses, field barracks, and tents with $79 million in cruise missiles, voiding any US claim that 9-11 was unprovoked (New Yorker, 1/24/'00)
19: In the 11/98 issue of Foreign Affairs, Philip Zelikow, part of President Bush's transition team in 2000-2001, speculated in an article, Catastrophic Terrorism that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, "an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history [involving] loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America's fundamental sense of security ... The United States might respond with ... scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow ... Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently." (Wikipedia)
20: Bin Laden was a CIA asset, with al Qaeda cells fighting alongside the US in the Balkan conflict as recently as 1999
21: Unocal suspended Afghan pipeline work in Aug '98 due to political instability (Unocal)
22: Filming began in March 2000 for The Lone Gunmen's 'pilot' episode that depicts a US plot to crash an electronically hijacked Boeing 727 into WTC and blame foreign terrorists to provoke war and increase military's budget (Kansas City Star, 3/'01)
23: PNAC, 2000: need for a 'new Pearl Harbor' to advance militaristic plans, by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Dov Zakheim, Feith, Bill Kristol and others (Rebuilding America's Defenses, p. 51 (2000))
Continue at
http://www.nc911truth.org/911_Coincidences.html
2: In 1975, President Ford appointed Lemnitzer to the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States (aka the Rockefeller Commission) to investigate whether the Central Intelligence Agency had committed acts that violated American laws.
3: 2/3/'64: WTC Engineer John Skilling issued white paper analysis stating WTC would survive Boeing 707 hitting it at at 600mph. (Seattle Times 2/27/'93)
4: Design of the structural framing of the 1,350-ft high Twin Towers gave the exterior columns great reserve strength, > 2,000% increase before failure (Engineering News Record 4/2/64)
5: John Hinckley, George HW Bush's associate who shot President Reagan in 3/30/'81, is the 'black sheep' of the family
6: The technology to fly a Boeing 720 remotely-controlled existed in 1984 (NASA)
7: Saddam, then a recipient of massive US military aid, said frigate USS Stark was mistaken as Iranian and refused a US request to interview the Iraqi pilot after a 17/5/1987 missile attack killed more than a sixth of the crew and almost sunk it. (Robert Fisk 12/31/'06)
8: From 1987 to 2000, Dov Zakheim was CEO of System Planning Corp (SPC). Through subsidiary Tridata Corp, oversaw the investigation after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in 1993. He had access to the buildings blueprints
9: SPC sells the Command Transmitter System, a remote control system for planes, which allow an operator to control a pilotless aircraft or drone within about 40 miles of the active transmitter (SPC)
10: SPC sells a radar simulator for target acquisition used by US Navy, the Ballistic Missile Defense Org (BMDO) Countermeasure Group, and DARPA (SPC)
11: SPC sells the Flight Termination System, a system used to destroy target drones in the event of malfunction or "misses" (SPC)
12: George H W Bush gave his speech calling for a New World Order on 9/11/90, eleven years before 9/11/01
13: George Bush succeeded in business only after the investment of reputed al Qaeda financiers Salem bin Laden and Khalid bin Mahfouz. The bin Ladens and Bushes are family friends; Osama is the 'black sheep' of the family. (Forbes 3/18/'02)
14: 5/24/95: Only 150 lbs of explosives leveled the OK City Murrah Building's significant remains as planned, leaving the adjacent parking structure intact (AP, 5/24/95)
15: Unocal rep testified before congress in Feb 98 that an Afghan pipeline needed a stable Afghan gov't and asks the US to use its influence to end conflicts there (Washington Post 10/5/98)
16: 2/20/'98: Project for New American Century (PNAC) called for a war in Iraq to oust Saddam Hussein (Wikipedia)
17: On 2/23/98 bin Laden proclaimed from his Afghan redoubt, "To kill Americans ... is an individual duty of every Muslim", to this day his strongest link to 9/11. (Al-Quds al-'Arabi, 2/23/98)
18: Left-handed Osama bin Laden was declared the US taxpayer's No. 1 fugitive. On 8/20/98 you wrecked just thousands of dollars' worth of his obstacle courses, field barracks, and tents with $79 million in cruise missiles, voiding any US claim that 9-11 was unprovoked (New Yorker, 1/24/'00)
19: In the 11/98 issue of Foreign Affairs, Philip Zelikow, part of President Bush's transition team in 2000-2001, speculated in an article, Catastrophic Terrorism that if the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center had succeeded, "an act of catastrophic terrorism would be a watershed event in American history [involving] loss of life and property unprecedented in peacetime and undermine America's fundamental sense of security ... The United States might respond with ... scaling back civil liberties, allowing wider surveillance of citizens, detention of suspects and use of deadly force. More violence could follow ... Belatedly, Americans would judge their leaders negligent for not addressing terrorism more urgently." (Wikipedia)
20: Bin Laden was a CIA asset, with al Qaeda cells fighting alongside the US in the Balkan conflict as recently as 1999
21: Unocal suspended Afghan pipeline work in Aug '98 due to political instability (Unocal)
22: Filming began in March 2000 for The Lone Gunmen's 'pilot' episode that depicts a US plot to crash an electronically hijacked Boeing 727 into WTC and blame foreign terrorists to provoke war and increase military's budget (Kansas City Star, 3/'01)
23: PNAC, 2000: need for a 'new Pearl Harbor' to advance militaristic plans, by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Dov Zakheim, Feith, Bill Kristol and others (Rebuilding America's Defenses, p. 51 (2000))
Continue at
http://www.nc911truth.org/911_Coincidences.html
02 June, 2009
Popery
Sotomayor would be 6th Catholic on Supreme Court
NEW YORK-If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed to the U.S Supreme Court, she will be the sixth Roman Catholic of the nine justices. On the high court, Sotomayor would join a group of regular Mass attendees: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justice Anthony Kennedy regularly attends the annual Red Mass, a worship service for Catholics in the legal field, in the Archdiocese of Washington. Two other justices--Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer--are Jewish. When Justice David Souter, an Episcopalian, soon retires, Justice John Paul Stevens will be the lone Protestant.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_rel_sotomayor_catholics
A little known period of mid-19th century American history concerns the "Know Nothing" movement, or American Party, which popularized the notion of a Roman Catholic or Vatican conspiracy directed against WASP America. Samuel Morse (1791-1872), the inventor of the single-wire telegraph and Morse code, even wrote a book called: "Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States", describing the plot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing_Party
NEW YORK-If Judge Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed to the U.S Supreme Court, she will be the sixth Roman Catholic of the nine justices. On the high court, Sotomayor would join a group of regular Mass attendees: Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. Justice Anthony Kennedy regularly attends the annual Red Mass, a worship service for Catholics in the legal field, in the Archdiocese of Washington. Two other justices--Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer--are Jewish. When Justice David Souter, an Episcopalian, soon retires, Justice John Paul Stevens will be the lone Protestant.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_rel_sotomayor_catholics
A little known period of mid-19th century American history concerns the "Know Nothing" movement, or American Party, which popularized the notion of a Roman Catholic or Vatican conspiracy directed against WASP America. Samuel Morse (1791-1872), the inventor of the single-wire telegraph and Morse code, even wrote a book called: "Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States", describing the plot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing_Party
War is Sin
By Chris Hedges
The crisis faced by combat veterans returning from war is not simply a profound struggle with trauma and alienation. It is often, for those who can slice through the suffering to self-awareness, an existential crisis. War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.
Those who return to speak this truth, such as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, are our contemporary prophets. But like all prophets they are condemned and ignored for their courage. They struggle, in a culture awash in lies, to tell what few have the fortitude to digest. They know that what we are taught in school, in worship, by the press, through the entertainment industry and at home, that the melding of the state’s rhetoric with the rhetoric of religion, is empty and false.
The words these prophets speak are painful. We, as a nation, prefer to listen to those who speak from the patriotic script. We prefer to hear ourselves exalted. If veterans speak of terrible wounds visible and invisible, of lies told to make them kill, of evil committed in our name, we fill our ears with wax. Not our boys, we say, not them, bred in our homes, endowed with goodness and decency. For if it is easy for them to murder, what about us? And so it is simpler and more comfortable not to hear. We do not listen to the angry words that cascade forth from their lips, wishing only that they would calm down, be reasonable, get some help, and go away. We, the deformed, brand our prophets as madmen. We cast them into the desert. And this is why so many veterans are estranged and enraged. This is why so many succumb to suicide or addictions.
War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. War, from a distance, seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a small bit in the great drama of history. It promises to give us an identity as a warrior, a patriot, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.
But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion and pain, an unchecked orgy of death. Human decency and tenderness are crushed. Those who make war work overtime to reduce love to smut, and all human beings become objects, pawns to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded, all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naively blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, come unglued. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It lets us see, although the cost is tremendous.
Continue reading
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090601_war_is_sin/
The crisis faced by combat veterans returning from war is not simply a profound struggle with trauma and alienation. It is often, for those who can slice through the suffering to self-awareness, an existential crisis. War exposes the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves. It rips open the hypocrisy of our religions and secular institutions. Those who return from war have learned something which is often incomprehensible to those who have stayed home. We are not a virtuous nation. God and fate have not blessed us above others. Victory is not assured. War is neither glorious nor noble. And we carry within us the capacity for evil we ascribe to those we fight.
Those who return to speak this truth, such as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, are our contemporary prophets. But like all prophets they are condemned and ignored for their courage. They struggle, in a culture awash in lies, to tell what few have the fortitude to digest. They know that what we are taught in school, in worship, by the press, through the entertainment industry and at home, that the melding of the state’s rhetoric with the rhetoric of religion, is empty and false.
The words these prophets speak are painful. We, as a nation, prefer to listen to those who speak from the patriotic script. We prefer to hear ourselves exalted. If veterans speak of terrible wounds visible and invisible, of lies told to make them kill, of evil committed in our name, we fill our ears with wax. Not our boys, we say, not them, bred in our homes, endowed with goodness and decency. For if it is easy for them to murder, what about us? And so it is simpler and more comfortable not to hear. We do not listen to the angry words that cascade forth from their lips, wishing only that they would calm down, be reasonable, get some help, and go away. We, the deformed, brand our prophets as madmen. We cast them into the desert. And this is why so many veterans are estranged and enraged. This is why so many succumb to suicide or addictions.
War comes wrapped in patriotic slogans, calls for sacrifice, honor and heroism and promises of glory. It comes wrapped in the claims of divine providence. It is what a grateful nation asks of its children. It is what is right and just. It is waged to make the nation and the world a better place, to cleanse evil. War is touted as the ultimate test of manhood, where the young can find out what they are made of. War, from a distance, seems noble. It gives us comrades and power and a chance to play a small bit in the great drama of history. It promises to give us an identity as a warrior, a patriot, as long as we go along with the myth, the one the war-makers need to wage wars and the defense contractors need to increase their profits.
But up close war is a soulless void. War is about barbarity, perversion and pain, an unchecked orgy of death. Human decency and tenderness are crushed. Those who make war work overtime to reduce love to smut, and all human beings become objects, pawns to use or kill. The noise, the stench, the fear, the scenes of eviscerated bodies and bloated corpses, the cries of the wounded, all combine to spin those in combat into another universe. In this moral void, naively blessed by secular and religious institutions at home, the hypocrisy of our social conventions, our strict adherence to moral precepts, come unglued. War, for all its horror, has the power to strip away the trivial and the banal, the empty chatter and foolish obsessions that fill our days. It lets us see, although the cost is tremendous.
Continue reading
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090601_war_is_sin/
Selling War
And the facebook account was free!
I saw this on CNN this morning. CNN was pushing it. The program had propaganda written all over it.
U.S. military takes Afghanistan mission online
(CNN) — The U.S. military is taking its Afghanistan mission into cyberspace, launching social-networking efforts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It’s the “first-ever effort by the military in Afghanistan to engage nontraditional audiences directly with news, videos, pictures and other information from Operation Enduring Freedom,” according to a news release from the military.
As of early Tuesday, the Facebook page had drawn nearly 5,000 followers, following about two weeks of testing and its official launch on Monday. Messages of appreciation poured in, along with well wishes for service members’ safety. The multimedia effort is aimed at "rapidly delivering an unfiltered view of the war from troops on the ground, and opening a two-way dialogue with people around the world interested in the Afghanistan mission," the military said.
http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/02/u-s-military-takes-afghanistan-mission-online/
I saw this on CNN this morning. CNN was pushing it. The program had propaganda written all over it.
U.S. military takes Afghanistan mission online
(CNN) — The U.S. military is taking its Afghanistan mission into cyberspace, launching social-networking efforts on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. It’s the “first-ever effort by the military in Afghanistan to engage nontraditional audiences directly with news, videos, pictures and other information from Operation Enduring Freedom,” according to a news release from the military.
As of early Tuesday, the Facebook page had drawn nearly 5,000 followers, following about two weeks of testing and its official launch on Monday. Messages of appreciation poured in, along with well wishes for service members’ safety. The multimedia effort is aimed at "rapidly delivering an unfiltered view of the war from troops on the ground, and opening a two-way dialogue with people around the world interested in the Afghanistan mission," the military said.
http://cnnwire.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/02/u-s-military-takes-afghanistan-mission-online/
$100 Billion for War
Democrats agree on $100 billion for war funding
02 June 2009
WASHINGTON-A House Democrat aide says top House and Senate Democrats have reached a tentative agreement on a nearly $100 billion war funding bill, with a generous new line of credit for the International Monetary Fund. At the core of the measure is President Barack Obama's war spending request, which included $76 billion for Pentagon operations.
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_12498971
The Managing Director of the IMF is Dominique Strauss-Kahn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn
Remember all that pretentious dissimulating nonsense during the 2008 campaign about the Democrats being "anti-war"? But as long as the masses are absorbed with childish millionaire pro-sports players, "The Apprentice", "Dancing With the Stars", "The Bachelor", "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!", Twitter and BlackBerries you can do anything. Where have all those phony anti-war Hollywood actors and actresses gone?
02 June 2009
WASHINGTON-A House Democrat aide says top House and Senate Democrats have reached a tentative agreement on a nearly $100 billion war funding bill, with a generous new line of credit for the International Monetary Fund. At the core of the measure is President Barack Obama's war spending request, which included $76 billion for Pentagon operations.
http://www.denverpost.com/nationworld/ci_12498971
The Managing Director of the IMF is Dominique Strauss-Kahn
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominique_Strauss-Kahn
Remember all that pretentious dissimulating nonsense during the 2008 campaign about the Democrats being "anti-war"? But as long as the masses are absorbed with childish millionaire pro-sports players, "The Apprentice", "Dancing With the Stars", "The Bachelor", "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!", Twitter and BlackBerries you can do anything. Where have all those phony anti-war Hollywood actors and actresses gone?
01 June, 2009
PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book
Dear Paranoia Reader, Advertiser, Author, Subscriber:
In 2008, 525 magazines ceased publication; in 2007, about 590 closed shop. In addition, the largest magazine distributor in the U.S. filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 27, 2009:
http://www.mediafinder.com/public.cfm?page=pressReleases/525MagazinesCeasedPublicationIn2008
http://delawarebankruptcy.foxrothschild.com/tags/source-interlink-bankruptcy/
In truth, the magazine is not a viable format in a shrinking economy, since the unsold copies are destroyed by the retailers and never returned to the publisher. Although we pay to print all of them, in this economy more than half are destroyed. It’s paper waste on a grand scale. As a result of this downward trend, the next issue of PARANOIA (August 2009, #51) is the last issue we will publish in the magazine format.
But Don’t Worry - Be Happy!
In response to the shifting horizon, Paranoia is changing to a more sustainable “print-on-demand” book format. It will be just as easy, if not easier, to obtain PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book.
It will be available from paranoiamagazine.com, or by mail at P.O. Box 1041, Providence, RI 02901. It will also be available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and any book store. Book stores or book catalogs may purchase the book from Ingram or Baker & Taylor.
At this time, we have the following information:
· PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book will contain the same cutting edge political commentary, interviews, paranormal and UFO articles, fringe ideas and Paranotes. Each volume will be like a double issue of the magazine.
· Planned publication date: April 2010 (Volume 1). Size: 7.5 X 9.25, approx. 140 pages, frequency 1X per year. No subscriptions available. Price per volume: $14, plus $2 shipping. (ISBN 978-0-615-29995-2)
· There will be no ads in the book. Advertisers, please contact devinlarue@gmail.com for very affordable web ad rates.
· Please expect the August issue of Paranoia (Issue 51) by late August. In the meantime, our back issues are available as usual, and we have some very nice package deals here: http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/backissues.html
· You can pre-order issue 51 at www.paranoiamagazine.com by paypal, or send $7 to Paranoia, PO Box 1041, Providence, RI 02901-1041, specifying issue 51.
If you’re a current subscriber, you will be informed in the August issue of PARANOIA on how to convert your subscription to PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book. If you’re not a subscriber, advertiser, author or illustrator in this issue, please send $7 for issue 51 to the above address. Otherwise, you won’t receive a copy of the magazine.
Please spread the word! Got any questions? You can ask here.
The next issue of Paranoia will explain how to convert your subscription to the new Conspiracy Reader Book. Also check the website in a few days for an update on that.
Thanks!
In 2008, 525 magazines ceased publication; in 2007, about 590 closed shop. In addition, the largest magazine distributor in the U.S. filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy on April 27, 2009:
http://www.mediafinder.com/public.cfm?page=pressReleases/525MagazinesCeasedPublicationIn2008
http://delawarebankruptcy.foxrothschild.com/tags/source-interlink-bankruptcy/
In truth, the magazine is not a viable format in a shrinking economy, since the unsold copies are destroyed by the retailers and never returned to the publisher. Although we pay to print all of them, in this economy more than half are destroyed. It’s paper waste on a grand scale. As a result of this downward trend, the next issue of PARANOIA (August 2009, #51) is the last issue we will publish in the magazine format.
But Don’t Worry - Be Happy!
In response to the shifting horizon, Paranoia is changing to a more sustainable “print-on-demand” book format. It will be just as easy, if not easier, to obtain PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book.
It will be available from paranoiamagazine.com, or by mail at P.O. Box 1041, Providence, RI 02901. It will also be available from amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and any book store. Book stores or book catalogs may purchase the book from Ingram or Baker & Taylor.
At this time, we have the following information:
· PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book will contain the same cutting edge political commentary, interviews, paranormal and UFO articles, fringe ideas and Paranotes. Each volume will be like a double issue of the magazine.
· Planned publication date: April 2010 (Volume 1). Size: 7.5 X 9.25, approx. 140 pages, frequency 1X per year. No subscriptions available. Price per volume: $14, plus $2 shipping. (ISBN 978-0-615-29995-2)
· There will be no ads in the book. Advertisers, please contact devinlarue@gmail.com for very affordable web ad rates.
· Please expect the August issue of Paranoia (Issue 51) by late August. In the meantime, our back issues are available as usual, and we have some very nice package deals here: http://www.paranoiamagazine.com/backissues.html
· You can pre-order issue 51 at www.paranoiamagazine.com by paypal, or send $7 to Paranoia, PO Box 1041, Providence, RI 02901-1041, specifying issue 51.
If you’re a current subscriber, you will be informed in the August issue of PARANOIA on how to convert your subscription to PARANOIA: The Conspiracy Reader Book. If you’re not a subscriber, advertiser, author or illustrator in this issue, please send $7 for issue 51 to the above address. Otherwise, you won’t receive a copy of the magazine.
Please spread the word! Got any questions? You can ask here.
The next issue of Paranoia will explain how to convert your subscription to the new Conspiracy Reader Book. Also check the website in a few days for an update on that.
Thanks!
Goodbye GM, by Michael Moore
http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/message/index.php?id=248
I write this on the morning of the end of the once-mighty General Motors. By high noon, the President of the United States will have made it official: General Motors, as we know it, has been totaled.
As I sit here in GM's birthplace, Flint, Michigan, I am surrounded by friends and family who are filled with anxiety about what will happen to them and to the town. Forty percent of the homes and businesses in the city have been abandoned. Imagine what it would be like if you lived in a city where almost every other house is empty. What would be your state of mind?
It is with sad irony that the company which invented "planned obsolescence" -- the decision to build cars that would fall apart after a few years so that the customer would then have to buy a new one -- has now made itself obsolete. It refused to build automobiles that the public wanted, cars that got great gas mileage, were as safe as they could be, and were exceedingly comfortable to drive. Oh -- and that wouldn't start falling apart after two years. GM stubbornly fought environmental and safety regulations. Its executives arrogantly ignored the "inferior" Japanese and German cars, cars which would become the gold standard for automobile buyers. And it was hell-bent on punishing its unionized workforce, lopping off thousands of workers for no good reason other than to "improve" the short-term bottom line of the corporation. Beginning in the 1980s, when GM was posting record profits, it moved countless jobs to Mexico and elsewhere, thus destroying the lives of tens of thousands of hard-working Americans. The glaring stupidity of this policy was that, when they eliminated the income of so many middle class families, who did they think was going to be able to afford to buy their cars? History will record this blunder in the same way it now writes about the French building the Maginot Line or how the Romans cluelessly poisoned their own water system with lethal lead in its pipes.
So here we are at the deathbed of General Motors. The company's body not yet cold, and I find myself filled with -- dare I say it -- joy. It is not the joy of revenge against a corporation that ruined my hometown and brought misery, divorce, alcoholism, homelessness, physical and mental debilitation, and drug addiction to the people I grew up with. Nor do I, obviously, claim any joy in knowing that 21,000 more GM workers will be told that they, too, are without a job.
But you and I and the rest of America now own a car company! I know, I know -- who on earth wants to run a car company? Who among us wants $50 billion of our tax dollars thrown down the rat hole of still trying to save GM? Let's be clear about this: The only way to save GM is to kill GM. Saving our precious industrial infrastructure, though, is another matter and must be a top priority. If we allow the shutting down and tearing down of our auto plants, we will sorely wish we still had them when we realize that those factories could have built the alternative energy systems we now desperately need. And when we realize that the best way to transport ourselves is on light rail and bullet trains and cleaner buses, how will we do this if we've allowed our industrial capacity and its skilled workforce to disappear?
Thus, as GM is "reorganized" by the federal government and the bankruptcy court, here is the plan I am asking President Obama to implement for the good of the workers, the GM communities, and the nation as a whole. Twenty years ago when I made "Roger & Me," I tried to warn people about what was ahead for General Motors. Had the power structure and the punditocracy listened, maybe much of this could have been avoided. Based on my track record, I request an honest and sincere consideration of the following suggestions:
1. Just as President Roosevelt did after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the President must tell the nation that we are at war and we must immediately convert our auto factories to factories that build mass transit vehicles and alternative energy devices. Within months in Flint in 1942, GM halted all car production and immediately used the assembly lines to build planes, tanks and machine guns. The conversion took no time at all. Everyone pitched in. The fascists were defeated.
We are now in a different kind of war -- a war that we have conducted against the ecosystem and has been conducted by our very own corporate leaders. This current war has two fronts. One is headquartered in Detroit. The products built in the factories of GM, Ford and Chrysler are some of the greatest weapons of mass destruction responsible for global warming and the melting of our polar icecaps. The things we call "cars" may have been fun to drive, but they are like a million daggers into the heart of Mother Nature. To continue to build them would only lead to the ruin of our species and much of the planet.
The other front in this war is being waged by the oil companies against you and me. They are committed to fleecing us whenever they can, and they have been reckless stewards of the finite amount of oil that is located under the surface of the earth. They know they are sucking it bone dry. And like the lumber tycoons of the early 20th century who didn't give a damn about future generations as they tore down every forest they could get their hands on, these oil barons are not telling the public what they know to be true -- that there are only a few more decades of useable oil on this planet. And as the end days of oil approach us, get ready for some very desperate people willing to kill and be killed just to get their hands on a gallon can of gasoline.
President Obama, now that he has taken control of GM, needs to convert the factories to new and needed uses immediately.
2. Don't put another $30 billion into the coffers of GM to build cars. Instead, use that money to keep the current workforce -- and most of those who have been laid off -- employed so that they can build the new modes of 21st century transportation. Let them start the conversion work now.
3. Announce that we will have bullet trains criss-crossing this country in the next five years. Japan is celebrating the 45th anniversary of its first bullet train this year. Now they have dozens of them. Average speed: 165 mph. Average time a train is late: under 30 seconds. They have had these high speed trains for nearly five decades -- and we don't even have one! The fact that the technology already exists for us to go from New York to L.A. in 17 hours by train, and that we haven't used it, is criminal. Let's hire the unemployed to build the new high speed lines all over the country. Chicago to Detroit in less than two hours. Miami to DC in under 7 hours. Denver to Dallas in five and a half. This can be done and done now.
4. Initiate a program to put light rail mass transit lines in all our large and medium-sized cities. Build those trains in the GM factories. And hire local people everywhere to install and run this system.
5. For people in rural areas not served by the train lines, have the GM plants produce energy efficient clean buses.
6. For the time being, have some factories build hybrid or all-electric cars (and batteries). It will take a few years for people to get used to the new ways to transport ourselves, so if we're going to have automobiles, let's have kinder, gentler ones. We can be building these next month (do not believe anyone who tells you it will take years to retool the factories -- that simply isn't true).
7. Transform some of the empty GM factories to facilities that build windmills, solar panels and other means of alternate forms of energy. We need tens of millions of solar panels right now. And there is an eager and skilled workforce who can build them.
8. Provide tax incentives for those who travel by hybrid car or bus or train. Also, credits for those who convert their home to alternative energy.
9. To help pay for this, impose a two-dollar tax on every gallon of gasoline. This will get people to switch to more energy saving cars or to use the new rail lines and rail cars the former autoworkers have built for them.
Well, that's a start. Please, please, please don't save GM so that a smaller version of it will simply do nothing more than build Chevys or Cadillacs. This is not a long-term solution. Don't throw bad money into a company whose tailpipe is malfunctioning, causing a strange odor to fill the car.
100 years ago this year, the founders of General Motors convinced the world to give up their horses and saddles and buggy whips to try a new form of transportation. Now it is time for us to say goodbye to the internal combustion engine. It seemed to serve us well for so long. We enjoyed the car hops at the A&W. We made out in the front -- and the back -- seat. We watched movies on large outdoor screens, went to the races at NASCAR tracks across the country, and saw the Pacific Ocean for the first time through the window down Hwy. 1. And now it's over. It's a new day and a new century. The President -- and the UAW -- must seize this moment and create a big batch of lemonade from this very sour and sad lemon.
Yesterday, the last surviving person from the Titanic disaster passed away. She escaped certain death that night and went on to live another 97 years.
So can we survive our own Titanic in all the Flint Michigans of this country. 60% of GM is ours. I think we can do a better job.
Yours,
Michael Moore
MMFlint@aol.com
MichaelMoore.com
Argentina: "Invasores" (Invaders) - Alejandro Agostinelli's New Book
Source: Los Andes On-Line
Date: May 31, 2009
Argentina: “Invasores” (Invaders) - Alejandro Agostinelli’s New Book
By Mariana Guzzante
Journalist Alejandro Agostinelli has published a book that reopens the legendary UFO case that bewildered Mendoza in 1968. It is being displayed today in our province. This documentary history is a review of Argentinean sightings that involve Chupacabras, little green dwarves and spiritism. There is a revival of alien culture: “V” is returning to television, and the Star Trek remake is on top of the box office. The invaders are among us once more.
It isn’t hard to picture Alejandro Agostinelli – an interesting journalist, a tracker of mysteries – scouring through the X-Files of this part of the world.
His book is somewhere between the pleasure of the chronicle and the flashback of an archive. That’s how this project should have started. Editorial Sudamericana has recently published it under the name “Invasores”, and that’s how it ended. Over 300 pages written with the perfect excuse of narrating Argentina’s most startling extraterrestrial sightings, including the famous case involving “little green men” that caused an uproar in local ufology in ’68.
A journalist may delight in sleuthing across the paranormal landscape; for he protagonists of these events – the contactees – it is an exhumation of an extreme experience.
For that reason, both Agostinelli and the voices of the protagonists of the close encounter that shook the region in the late ‘60s will be here tonight, journalist Miguel Titiro among them.
A Contactee Event In the Heartland
A couple vanishes in Chascomús and appears instantaneously in Mexico, as though written in the script for the movie “Jumper”. Two employees of the Casino de Mendoza encounter little green men and have a telepathic experience with them; a team of Buenos Aires spiritists makes contact with an “engineer” from Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter. A woman named Silvia Perez founds the “Museo del Ovni” in Victoria, Entre Rios.
The stories told in “Invasores” appear to avoid falling into ufological fervor, but nonetheless insert a disquieting description: “true stories”, as stated on the cover. You mean they’re real? “Yes,” says the author, “because these are documented stories. The reader may enjoy the recollections and experiences of their protagonists while having solid historical data at hand. None of the stories is unreal. All of these have appeared in the press, in newscasts and eventually in books on the subject.”
Thus, with several first-person accounts that are sheer narrative gold, Agostinelli chose 11 invasions. What will be the outcome of reading this book, now that the subject of aliens feels slightly retro? “No idea, that’s another mystery,” says the author. It may be, perhaps, a fine opportunity for taking out the folding chair and watching the skies again.
Che Ovni
It is clear that this is a work charged with comparative paranoia, hallucination and longing.
Furthermore, these accounts include the Chupacabras, [the subterranean city of] Erks, tours of Mount Uritorco and strange abductions like that of Zulma Fayad. There is even a translation of “Martin Fierro” (Argentina’s national epic – ed.) into “Varkulets”, an unusual alien lingo. And a constant appears. Unlike other countries, which point to Mars or Venus as the alien homeland, Argentineans connect more closely with visitors from Ganymede, one of the Jovian satellites.
“UFOs, the stories woven around them, and their effect upon culture. Those are the subjects to which I devoted the greatest time and passion throughout my life, “ Agostinelli says frankly.
And how did you come to choose the cases? How did you know that these were the stories, and not others?
”These were the ones that had the greatest impact on me while I studied the subject of UFOs. Furthermore, by having worked on TV documentaries, I have a rather visual training. I know which stories are the most attractive, involving and suggestive. My criteria for selection were double. Moreover, all of the stories had to reveal unknown aspects in the lives of their protagonists. On the other hand, each story should be worthy of a motion picture. If for any reason (a lack of information, the inability to access direct witnesses, that sort of thing) they didn’t click, they went right back to the inkwell.”
It’s hard not to ask which case affected you the most.
“There are two open-ended adventures that contain the hardest mysteries to digest. One of them is the so-called Vidal Case, which began with a news item published in June 1968. It told the story of a couple driving along the road from Chascomus, Province of Buenos Aires, when they drove into a fog bank and lost consciousness. Later, the couple and their car reappeared in Mexico City. In this case I learned that the motion picture “Che Ovni” had been shot almost a year earlier. This film, directed by Anibal Uset, starts with a couple teleported by a flying saucer from Buenos Aires to Madrid, car and all. It opened two months after the Vidal Case. This couple was never found and it’s unlikely they ever existed. But as with all legends, the controversy endures. Anibal uset cannot categorically prove that he created the case to promote his movie. In any event, my book contains hints that support his claim. It is followed, no doubt by the Mendozan question involving the Casino workers.
How did you trace the route to be followed?
“Like I said, once I chose the stories, I arranged them in a more or less chronological order. At other times, I added stories according to geographic proximity. I went to Mendoza in an effort to locate Juan Carlos Peccinetti and Fernando Villegas, the Casino workers, but also other possible protagonists of what appears to have been a prank, based on a clue I was given in Mar del Plata.
Then I visited Chile, where I interviewed physicist and mathematician Pablo Kittl Duclout, the nephew of brothers Jorge and Napy Duclout, who is the only surviving relative of the first Argentinean contactees.
“In the early Fifties, Jorge and Napy were spiritists. During their séances, a spirit they identified as a “talented engineer” would talk to them about life on Ganymede, the planet Jupiter’s largest satellite. I was delighted to find out who was the engineer who contacted them, but I won’t tell you. That’s the end of the story and it would ruin it. The first trip involved climbing to the roof of the Kavanagh Building, where they were summoned to appear by the commander of a saucer that was supposed to arrive from Jupiter. I also visited Santa Rosa, because La Pampa is the homeland of the wave of cattle mutilations that unleashed in 2002, and the city of Victoria, Entre Rios, where Siliva Pérez Simondini’s Museo OVNI operates.”
The fact is that Alejandro found the Earthlings to be infinitely more complex and fascinating than the aliens.
Parenthesis one: “AnÃbal Uset was the first Argentinean filmmaker who toured the world to shoot a comedy based on the extraterrestrial rumors of the Sixties, and even more with Martin Rappalini, who was a the time a young writer accused of “concealing the truth” about the legendary marital abduction. These stories merited another chapter.
El Muñeco Mateyko, Pipo Mancera, Javier Portales, Cuchuflito, Jorge Sobral, Marcela López Rey, Erika Wallner and Perla Caron starred in the movie version of the story. A relic? Yes indeed. The odyssey had a musty smell to it until I learned that Catherine Fulop had starred in a Nineties remake of the movie. In Spain, she was also convinced that she’d been transported by aliens.”
Parenthesis two: Pablo Kittl Duclout, the physicist from the Andean foothills, informed the researcher to the fascinating destiny that awaited his uncles, the protagonists of the first announced UFO sighting from the rooftop of the Kavanagh Bulding in 1954). Apparently, an advanced spirit had revealed to them the existence of a higher technology. “Those disclosures were so extraordinary that they inspired Napy to film Argentina’s first 3D motion picture, “Buenos Aires en Relieve (1954),” notes Alejandro.
Three: “I also visited the nursing home where Martha Green now lives. A lovely old lady who was whisked away from Earth in the 1950s by Enis, her interdimensional lover, while her husband, a military man in the Perón regime, was embattled by the Aramburu dictatorship.”
How distant is “Invasores” from ufology?
“I wouldn’t say “light years away” because that would be a wisecrack. But I don’t think that I could’ve written a book like this while I was an ufologist. Or when I was a militant skeptic. I believe that the right distance is having realized that the protagonists were the people I was interviewing. And I chose the first person to take over my own subjective approach.
What about Fabio Zerpa?
Zerpa is convinced that the ones that appear in his stories are aliens. I’m convinced of the existence of human beings, and some of them claim having had experiences involving extraterrestrials.
So, do you or don’t you believe in alien life?
It’s not whether I believe or don’t. It may exist. But in that case, I imagine them as being too smart. To the extent that I doubt they’d bother visiting Earth. Perhaps, if they read “Invasores” they’ll find we’re a very interesting species.
(Translation (c) 2009, Scott Corrales IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)
Date: May 31, 2009
Argentina: “Invasores” (Invaders) - Alejandro Agostinelli’s New Book
By Mariana Guzzante
Journalist Alejandro Agostinelli has published a book that reopens the legendary UFO case that bewildered Mendoza in 1968. It is being displayed today in our province. This documentary history is a review of Argentinean sightings that involve Chupacabras, little green dwarves and spiritism. There is a revival of alien culture: “V” is returning to television, and the Star Trek remake is on top of the box office. The invaders are among us once more.
It isn’t hard to picture Alejandro Agostinelli – an interesting journalist, a tracker of mysteries – scouring through the X-Files of this part of the world.
His book is somewhere between the pleasure of the chronicle and the flashback of an archive. That’s how this project should have started. Editorial Sudamericana has recently published it under the name “Invasores”, and that’s how it ended. Over 300 pages written with the perfect excuse of narrating Argentina’s most startling extraterrestrial sightings, including the famous case involving “little green men” that caused an uproar in local ufology in ’68.
A journalist may delight in sleuthing across the paranormal landscape; for he protagonists of these events – the contactees – it is an exhumation of an extreme experience.
For that reason, both Agostinelli and the voices of the protagonists of the close encounter that shook the region in the late ‘60s will be here tonight, journalist Miguel Titiro among them.
A Contactee Event In the Heartland
A couple vanishes in Chascomús and appears instantaneously in Mexico, as though written in the script for the movie “Jumper”. Two employees of the Casino de Mendoza encounter little green men and have a telepathic experience with them; a team of Buenos Aires spiritists makes contact with an “engineer” from Ganymede, the largest moon of Jupiter. A woman named Silvia Perez founds the “Museo del Ovni” in Victoria, Entre Rios.
The stories told in “Invasores” appear to avoid falling into ufological fervor, but nonetheless insert a disquieting description: “true stories”, as stated on the cover. You mean they’re real? “Yes,” says the author, “because these are documented stories. The reader may enjoy the recollections and experiences of their protagonists while having solid historical data at hand. None of the stories is unreal. All of these have appeared in the press, in newscasts and eventually in books on the subject.”
Thus, with several first-person accounts that are sheer narrative gold, Agostinelli chose 11 invasions. What will be the outcome of reading this book, now that the subject of aliens feels slightly retro? “No idea, that’s another mystery,” says the author. It may be, perhaps, a fine opportunity for taking out the folding chair and watching the skies again.
Che Ovni
It is clear that this is a work charged with comparative paranoia, hallucination and longing.
Furthermore, these accounts include the Chupacabras, [the subterranean city of] Erks, tours of Mount Uritorco and strange abductions like that of Zulma Fayad. There is even a translation of “Martin Fierro” (Argentina’s national epic – ed.) into “Varkulets”, an unusual alien lingo. And a constant appears. Unlike other countries, which point to Mars or Venus as the alien homeland, Argentineans connect more closely with visitors from Ganymede, one of the Jovian satellites.
“UFOs, the stories woven around them, and their effect upon culture. Those are the subjects to which I devoted the greatest time and passion throughout my life, “ Agostinelli says frankly.
And how did you come to choose the cases? How did you know that these were the stories, and not others?
”These were the ones that had the greatest impact on me while I studied the subject of UFOs. Furthermore, by having worked on TV documentaries, I have a rather visual training. I know which stories are the most attractive, involving and suggestive. My criteria for selection were double. Moreover, all of the stories had to reveal unknown aspects in the lives of their protagonists. On the other hand, each story should be worthy of a motion picture. If for any reason (a lack of information, the inability to access direct witnesses, that sort of thing) they didn’t click, they went right back to the inkwell.”
It’s hard not to ask which case affected you the most.
“There are two open-ended adventures that contain the hardest mysteries to digest. One of them is the so-called Vidal Case, which began with a news item published in June 1968. It told the story of a couple driving along the road from Chascomus, Province of Buenos Aires, when they drove into a fog bank and lost consciousness. Later, the couple and their car reappeared in Mexico City. In this case I learned that the motion picture “Che Ovni” had been shot almost a year earlier. This film, directed by Anibal Uset, starts with a couple teleported by a flying saucer from Buenos Aires to Madrid, car and all. It opened two months after the Vidal Case. This couple was never found and it’s unlikely they ever existed. But as with all legends, the controversy endures. Anibal uset cannot categorically prove that he created the case to promote his movie. In any event, my book contains hints that support his claim. It is followed, no doubt by the Mendozan question involving the Casino workers.
How did you trace the route to be followed?
“Like I said, once I chose the stories, I arranged them in a more or less chronological order. At other times, I added stories according to geographic proximity. I went to Mendoza in an effort to locate Juan Carlos Peccinetti and Fernando Villegas, the Casino workers, but also other possible protagonists of what appears to have been a prank, based on a clue I was given in Mar del Plata.
Then I visited Chile, where I interviewed physicist and mathematician Pablo Kittl Duclout, the nephew of brothers Jorge and Napy Duclout, who is the only surviving relative of the first Argentinean contactees.
“In the early Fifties, Jorge and Napy were spiritists. During their séances, a spirit they identified as a “talented engineer” would talk to them about life on Ganymede, the planet Jupiter’s largest satellite. I was delighted to find out who was the engineer who contacted them, but I won’t tell you. That’s the end of the story and it would ruin it. The first trip involved climbing to the roof of the Kavanagh Building, where they were summoned to appear by the commander of a saucer that was supposed to arrive from Jupiter. I also visited Santa Rosa, because La Pampa is the homeland of the wave of cattle mutilations that unleashed in 2002, and the city of Victoria, Entre Rios, where Siliva Pérez Simondini’s Museo OVNI operates.”
The fact is that Alejandro found the Earthlings to be infinitely more complex and fascinating than the aliens.
Parenthesis one: “AnÃbal Uset was the first Argentinean filmmaker who toured the world to shoot a comedy based on the extraterrestrial rumors of the Sixties, and even more with Martin Rappalini, who was a the time a young writer accused of “concealing the truth” about the legendary marital abduction. These stories merited another chapter.
El Muñeco Mateyko, Pipo Mancera, Javier Portales, Cuchuflito, Jorge Sobral, Marcela López Rey, Erika Wallner and Perla Caron starred in the movie version of the story. A relic? Yes indeed. The odyssey had a musty smell to it until I learned that Catherine Fulop had starred in a Nineties remake of the movie. In Spain, she was also convinced that she’d been transported by aliens.”
Parenthesis two: Pablo Kittl Duclout, the physicist from the Andean foothills, informed the researcher to the fascinating destiny that awaited his uncles, the protagonists of the first announced UFO sighting from the rooftop of the Kavanagh Bulding in 1954). Apparently, an advanced spirit had revealed to them the existence of a higher technology. “Those disclosures were so extraordinary that they inspired Napy to film Argentina’s first 3D motion picture, “Buenos Aires en Relieve (1954),” notes Alejandro.
Three: “I also visited the nursing home where Martha Green now lives. A lovely old lady who was whisked away from Earth in the 1950s by Enis, her interdimensional lover, while her husband, a military man in the Perón regime, was embattled by the Aramburu dictatorship.”
How distant is “Invasores” from ufology?
“I wouldn’t say “light years away” because that would be a wisecrack. But I don’t think that I could’ve written a book like this while I was an ufologist. Or when I was a militant skeptic. I believe that the right distance is having realized that the protagonists were the people I was interviewing. And I chose the first person to take over my own subjective approach.
What about Fabio Zerpa?
Zerpa is convinced that the ones that appear in his stories are aliens. I’m convinced of the existence of human beings, and some of them claim having had experiences involving extraterrestrials.
So, do you or don’t you believe in alien life?
It’s not whether I believe or don’t. It may exist. But in that case, I imagine them as being too smart. To the extent that I doubt they’d bother visiting Earth. Perhaps, if they read “Invasores” they’ll find we’re a very interesting species.
(Translation (c) 2009, Scott Corrales IHU. Special thanks to Guillermo Gimenez, Planeta UFO)
31 May, 2009
CIA Subsidizes Terrorist Groups
Iran blames U.S. for attacks, including bombing that slays 23
30 May 2009, TEHRAN-Pre-election tensions rose in Iran's religiously and ethnically mixed southeast Friday as gunmen opened fire on the president's campaign office and a radical group claimed responsibility for killing up to 23 people in the bombing of a mosque the previous night. Iranian authorities blamed Washington for the violence.
"The hands of America and Israel were undoubtedly involved in this incident. Although Wahhabis and the infidel and evil Salafists were an accomplice to the crime, they were being led from somewhere else," prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told supporters in Tehran. The group Jundollah, which is linked to al-Qaida and draws support from Iran's ethnic Baluch minority, earlier claimed responsibility for the bombing at the mosque. Iranian authorities frequently claim the U.S. backs Jundollah."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-tc-nw-iran-bombs-0529-0530may30,0,1467117.story
US funds terror groups to sow chaos in Iran
06 January 2009-America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear programme. CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias among the numerous ethnic minority groups clustered in Iran's border regions. Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA's classified budget but is now "no great secret", according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington. His claims were backed by Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agents who said: "The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime."
A row has also broken out in Washington over whether to "unleash" the military wing of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), and Iraq-based Iranian opposition group with a long and bloody history of armed opposition to the Iranian regime. The group is currently listed by the US state department as a terrorist organisation, but Mr. Pike said: "A faction in the Defence Department wants to unleash them."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1543798/US-funds-terror-groups-to-sow-chaos-in-Iran.html
U.S. Is Said to Expand Covert Operations in Iran
Plan Allows Up to $400 million for Activities Aimed at Destabilizing Government
30 June 2008-The Bush Administration told Congress last year of a secret plan to dramatically expand covert operations inside Iran as part of a long-running effort to destabilize the country's ruling regime, according to a report published yesterday. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from spying on Iran's nuclear program to supporting rebel groups opposed to the country's ruling clerics, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901881_pf.html
CIA covert efforts to destabilize Iran
24 May 2007-The disclosure of the United States sabotage plot against Iran coincides with the arrest of Washington-based academic Haleh Esfandiari who has been working as the Soros Foundation representative. Esfandiari has admitted that the Soros Foundation has established an unofficial connection network inside Iran under the pretext of promoting democracy and human rights but with the covert aim of overthrowing the Iranian government.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=10839§ionid=351020101
30 May 2009, TEHRAN-Pre-election tensions rose in Iran's religiously and ethnically mixed southeast Friday as gunmen opened fire on the president's campaign office and a radical group claimed responsibility for killing up to 23 people in the bombing of a mosque the previous night. Iranian authorities blamed Washington for the violence.
"The hands of America and Israel were undoubtedly involved in this incident. Although Wahhabis and the infidel and evil Salafists were an accomplice to the crime, they were being led from somewhere else," prayer leader Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami told supporters in Tehran. The group Jundollah, which is linked to al-Qaida and draws support from Iran's ethnic Baluch minority, earlier claimed responsibility for the bombing at the mosque. Iranian authorities frequently claim the U.S. backs Jundollah."
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-tc-nw-iran-bombs-0529-0530may30,0,1467117.story
US funds terror groups to sow chaos in Iran
06 January 2009-America is secretly funding militant ethnic separatist groups in Iran in an attempt to pile pressure on the Islamic regime to give up its nuclear programme. CIA officials are understood to be helping opposition militias among the numerous ethnic minority groups clustered in Iran's border regions. Funding for their separatist causes comes directly from the CIA's classified budget but is now "no great secret", according to one former high-ranking CIA official in Washington. His claims were backed by Fred Burton, a former US state department counter-terrorism agents who said: "The latest attacks inside Iran fall in line with US efforts to supply and train Iran's ethnic minorities to destabilise the Iranian regime."
A row has also broken out in Washington over whether to "unleash" the military wing of the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (MEK), and Iraq-based Iranian opposition group with a long and bloody history of armed opposition to the Iranian regime. The group is currently listed by the US state department as a terrorist organisation, but Mr. Pike said: "A faction in the Defence Department wants to unleash them."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/1543798/US-funds-terror-groups-to-sow-chaos-in-Iran.html
U.S. Is Said to Expand Covert Operations in Iran
Plan Allows Up to $400 million for Activities Aimed at Destabilizing Government
30 June 2008-The Bush Administration told Congress last year of a secret plan to dramatically expand covert operations inside Iran as part of a long-running effort to destabilize the country's ruling regime, according to a report published yesterday. The plan allowed up to $400 million in covert spending for activities ranging from spying on Iran's nuclear program to supporting rebel groups opposed to the country's ruling clerics, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker magazine.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/29/AR2008062901881_pf.html
CIA covert efforts to destabilize Iran
24 May 2007-The disclosure of the United States sabotage plot against Iran coincides with the arrest of Washington-based academic Haleh Esfandiari who has been working as the Soros Foundation representative. Esfandiari has admitted that the Soros Foundation has established an unofficial connection network inside Iran under the pretext of promoting democracy and human rights but with the covert aim of overthrowing the Iranian government.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=10839§ionid=351020101
30 May, 2009
Throw us all in prison? There's the solution!
Go U.S.! Go Democracy! Go Imperialism! Whatever it is we think we’ve got, let’s spread it! Get those loser countries up to par! Woohoo!
And this report came out LAST YEAR, before the Great Depression of 2009!
I think the answer is to all go out and get ourselves arrested and have them go broke feeding us all!
“Despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/shocking-new-us-report-reveals-american-nightmare-of-inequality-869736.html
The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday.
The American Human Development Index has applied to the US an aid agency approach to measuring well-being – more familiar to observers of the Third World – with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world's prisoners.
Despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities.
"The report shows that although America is one of the richest nations in the world, it is woefully behind when it comes to providing opportunity and choices to all Americans to build a better life," the authors said.
Some of its more shocking findings reveal that, in parts of Texas, the percentage of adults who pass through high school has not improved since the 1970s. Asian-American males have the best quality of life and black Americans the lowest, with a staggering 50-year life expectancy gap between the two groups.
Despite the fact that the US spends roughly $5.2bn (£2.6bn) every day on health care, more per capita than any other nation in the world, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of every western European and Nordic country, bar Denmark.
Using official government statistics, the study points out that because American schools are funded primarily from local property taxes, rich districts get the best state education. The US has no federally mandated sick pay, paternity leave or annual paid vacation.
"Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living," said Sarah Burd-Sharps co-author of the report.
Although the US is one of the most powerful and rich nations in the world, the study concludes it is "woefully behind when it comes to providing opportunity and choices to all Americans to build a better life". According to a United Nations human development report, the US is in 12th place in a league table of wealthy developed nations. Britain is ranked 16th.
And this report came out LAST YEAR, before the Great Depression of 2009!
I think the answer is to all go out and get ourselves arrested and have them go broke feeding us all!
“Despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities.”
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/shocking-new-us-report-reveals-american-nightmare-of-inequality-869736.html
The United States of America is becoming less united by the day. A 30-year gap now exists in the average life expectancy between Mississippi, in the Deep South, and Connecticut, in prosperous New England. Huge disparities have also opened up in income, health and education depending on where people live in the US, according to a report published yesterday.
The American Human Development Index has applied to the US an aid agency approach to measuring well-being – more familiar to observers of the Third World – with shocking results. The US finds itself ranked 42nd in global life expectancy and 34th in survival of infants to age. Suicide and murder are among the top 15 causes of death and although the US is home to just 5 per cent of the global population it accounts for 24 per cent of the world's prisoners.
Despite an almost cult-like devotion to the belief that unfettered free enterprise is the best way to lift Americans out of poverty, the report points to a rigged system that does little to lessen inequalities.
"The report shows that although America is one of the richest nations in the world, it is woefully behind when it comes to providing opportunity and choices to all Americans to build a better life," the authors said.
Some of its more shocking findings reveal that, in parts of Texas, the percentage of adults who pass through high school has not improved since the 1970s. Asian-American males have the best quality of life and black Americans the lowest, with a staggering 50-year life expectancy gap between the two groups.
Despite the fact that the US spends roughly $5.2bn (£2.6bn) every day on health care, more per capita than any other nation in the world, Americans live shorter lives than citizens of every western European and Nordic country, bar Denmark.
Using official government statistics, the study points out that because American schools are funded primarily from local property taxes, rich districts get the best state education. The US has no federally mandated sick pay, paternity leave or annual paid vacation.
"Some Americans are living anywhere from 30 to 50 years behind others when it comes to issues we all care about: health, education and standard of living," said Sarah Burd-Sharps co-author of the report.
Although the US is one of the most powerful and rich nations in the world, the study concludes it is "woefully behind when it comes to providing opportunity and choices to all Americans to build a better life". According to a United Nations human development report, the US is in 12th place in a league table of wealthy developed nations. Britain is ranked 16th.
29 May, 2009
Idiocracy
Oregon man calls 9-1-1 over botched fast-food order
ALOHA- For most folks it's not a dilemma. Given a choice between "a day without sunshine" and a day without jail time, most people will skip the orange juice and stay out of jail. But Raibin Raof Osman isn't most people. The 20-year-old Aloha man had a sleep-over at the Washington County Jail on Memorial Day after calling 9-1-1 to complain that McDonald's left out a box of orange juice from his drive-thru order.
http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/05/aloha_man_calls_911_over_botch.html
Description of the film 'Idiocracy':
"In modern society, natural selection has become indifferent toward intelligence, so that in a society in which intelligence is systematically debased, stupid people easily out-breed the intelligent, creating...an irredeemable dysfunctional society. Demographic superiority favors those least likely to advance society. Consequently, the children of the educated elites are drowned in a sea of sexually promiscuous, illiterate, alcoholic, degenerate peers." : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
The main difference between reality and the movie, (besides being projected too far in the future), is that this present regressive society has been intentionally achieved by one's own government to occur. This is exactly the type of society or population the ruling plutocratic oligarchy desires, so as to perpetually reign supreme over a mass of moronic slaves.
ALOHA- For most folks it's not a dilemma. Given a choice between "a day without sunshine" and a day without jail time, most people will skip the orange juice and stay out of jail. But Raibin Raof Osman isn't most people. The 20-year-old Aloha man had a sleep-over at the Washington County Jail on Memorial Day after calling 9-1-1 to complain that McDonald's left out a box of orange juice from his drive-thru order.
http://www.oregonlive.com/washingtoncounty/index.ssf/2009/05/aloha_man_calls_911_over_botch.html
Description of the film 'Idiocracy':
"In modern society, natural selection has become indifferent toward intelligence, so that in a society in which intelligence is systematically debased, stupid people easily out-breed the intelligent, creating...an irredeemable dysfunctional society. Demographic superiority favors those least likely to advance society. Consequently, the children of the educated elites are drowned in a sea of sexually promiscuous, illiterate, alcoholic, degenerate peers." : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiocracy
The main difference between reality and the movie, (besides being projected too far in the future), is that this present regressive society has been intentionally achieved by one's own government to occur. This is exactly the type of society or population the ruling plutocratic oligarchy desires, so as to perpetually reign supreme over a mass of moronic slaves.
Torture and Truth
Barack O’Bomber, you cannot move forward while ignoring the past. You cannot sweep these demons under the rug. Do what’s right! Call for the immediate arrest of George W. Bush, Richard (Dickwad) Cheney, et. al. NOW!
Torture and Truth
By Jonathan Schell
From The Nation
It has fallen to President Obama to deal with the policies and practices of torture inaugurated by the Bush administration. He started boldly, ordering an end to the abuses, announcing the closing in one year of the detention camp at Guantanamo and releasing the Bush-era Justice Department memos authorizing torture. Subsequently, he seemed to grow cautious. He discouraged formation of an independent commission to investigate the torture and reversed a previous position in favor of releasing Pentagon photos of abuses and instead opposed release. In his May 21 speech at the National Archives, he seemed to try to create a framework for understanding his policies, but they remained very much a work in progress. He surprisingly embraced a number of Bush policies, including military commissions for trying detainees, the use of the State Secrets privilege to protect information in court and the indefinite use of preventive detention--all to be revised in ways that were left vague or unspecified.
Yet among these reversals and improvisations, one very general preference has remained steady. Throughout, Obama has expressed a desire to concentrate on the "future" rather than the "past." As he put it a while back, he is bent on "getting things right in the future, as opposed [to] looking at what we got wrong in the past." Or as he said in the National Archives speech, "We need to focus on the future" while resisting those "with a strong desire to focus on the past."
But can the United States really get things right in the future by turning away from the past? For one thing, the factual record is still incomplete. For another, the reasons for what went wrong aren't as clear as they might at first seem. Why did the United States make the decision for torture? What changes does it portend for American life? It seems likely that getting things right will depend on having answers to these questions.
When the full history of the Bush administration is finally told, one event may prove iconic: the torture of the Al Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who recently died, allegedly by his own hand, in a prison in Libya, where he was sent by the United States. Libi was captured in Pakistan in late 2001. At first, he was interrogated by the FBI, and he provided useful information on the inner workings of Al Qaeda. But more was wanted from him. The Bush administration, hellbent on justifying its forthcoming invasion of Iraq, was ransacking the intelligence bureaucracy to find or produce two things that, it turns out, did not exist: weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq and cooperation between Al Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein. Pressure to find evidence of both intensified in 2002.
At the same time, the practice of torture--authorized by the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon--was spreading throughout the intelligence and military establishments. Soon, prisoners were being tortured to provide evidence of the Al Qaeda-Saddam link. As Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, has stated, the "harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002...was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and Al Qaeda." And according to the recent Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of detainees, a former Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, has confirmed the charge.
"A large part of the time," he told Army investigators, "we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful.... The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." The CIA took custody of Libi and began to expose him to abuse. Next, it "rendered" him to Egypt, where he was subjected to, among other torments, severe beatings and confinement in a tiny cage for more than eighty hours. He then produced the desired false statements linking Al Qaeda with the Iraqi government.
Continue reading at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/schell
Torture and Truth
By Jonathan Schell
From The Nation
It has fallen to President Obama to deal with the policies and practices of torture inaugurated by the Bush administration. He started boldly, ordering an end to the abuses, announcing the closing in one year of the detention camp at Guantanamo and releasing the Bush-era Justice Department memos authorizing torture. Subsequently, he seemed to grow cautious. He discouraged formation of an independent commission to investigate the torture and reversed a previous position in favor of releasing Pentagon photos of abuses and instead opposed release. In his May 21 speech at the National Archives, he seemed to try to create a framework for understanding his policies, but they remained very much a work in progress. He surprisingly embraced a number of Bush policies, including military commissions for trying detainees, the use of the State Secrets privilege to protect information in court and the indefinite use of preventive detention--all to be revised in ways that were left vague or unspecified.
Yet among these reversals and improvisations, one very general preference has remained steady. Throughout, Obama has expressed a desire to concentrate on the "future" rather than the "past." As he put it a while back, he is bent on "getting things right in the future, as opposed [to] looking at what we got wrong in the past." Or as he said in the National Archives speech, "We need to focus on the future" while resisting those "with a strong desire to focus on the past."
But can the United States really get things right in the future by turning away from the past? For one thing, the factual record is still incomplete. For another, the reasons for what went wrong aren't as clear as they might at first seem. Why did the United States make the decision for torture? What changes does it portend for American life? It seems likely that getting things right will depend on having answers to these questions.
When the full history of the Bush administration is finally told, one event may prove iconic: the torture of the Al Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who recently died, allegedly by his own hand, in a prison in Libya, where he was sent by the United States. Libi was captured in Pakistan in late 2001. At first, he was interrogated by the FBI, and he provided useful information on the inner workings of Al Qaeda. But more was wanted from him. The Bush administration, hellbent on justifying its forthcoming invasion of Iraq, was ransacking the intelligence bureaucracy to find or produce two things that, it turns out, did not exist: weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq and cooperation between Al Qaeda and the regime of Saddam Hussein. Pressure to find evidence of both intensified in 2002.
At the same time, the practice of torture--authorized by the White House, the Justice Department and the Pentagon--was spreading throughout the intelligence and military establishments. Soon, prisoners were being tortured to provide evidence of the Al Qaeda-Saddam link. As Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, former Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, has stated, the "harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002...was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and Al Qaeda." And according to the recent Senate Armed Services Committee report on the treatment of detainees, a former Army psychiatrist, Maj. Charles Burney, has confirmed the charge.
"A large part of the time," he told Army investigators, "we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful.... The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link...there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results." The CIA took custody of Libi and began to expose him to abuse. Next, it "rendered" him to Egypt, where he was subjected to, among other torments, severe beatings and confinement in a tiny cage for more than eighty hours. He then produced the desired false statements linking Al Qaeda with the Iraqi government.
Continue reading at
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090615/schell
28 May, 2009
Don't get the Flu Shot - Don't drink the Kool-Aid!
Even mainstream admits uselessness and danger of flu shots!
Flu Shot Makes Children Three Times as Likely to End up in Hospital
By Carolyn Dean, M.D.
http://drcarolyndean.com/2009/05/28/flu-shot-makes-children-three-times-as-likely-to-end-up-in-the-hospital/
In a new study by the Mayo Clinic, reported by Science Daily, Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests, we finally see some honest mainstream news reporting about flu vaccines.
This study involved 263 children covering ten years of their lives. Undeniably the kids who received the annual mercury cocktails were three times more likely to end up in the hospital with the flu.
We aren’t even talking side-effects here. It’s not like it actually helped protect them from the flu and simply put them in hospital for other reasons. It’s not even that the flu shot proved useless, as all the data I’ve reviewed over the years has been confirming.
It’s even more ridiculous… The flu shot actually made the children more likely to come down with such a bad case of the flu that they were checked into the children’s ward.
Yesterday, I promised I’d give you some sound advice on how to avoid the flu. Well, based on the results of this study… a great way to avoid the flu would be to avoid the flu shot.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519172045.htm
Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — The inactivated flu vaccine does not appear to be effective in preventing influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma. In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to new research that will be presented on May 19, at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.
Flu Shot Makes Children Three Times as Likely to End up in Hospital
By Carolyn Dean, M.D.
http://drcarolyndean.com/2009/05/28/flu-shot-makes-children-three-times-as-likely-to-end-up-in-the-hospital/
In a new study by the Mayo Clinic, reported by Science Daily, Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests, we finally see some honest mainstream news reporting about flu vaccines.
This study involved 263 children covering ten years of their lives. Undeniably the kids who received the annual mercury cocktails were three times more likely to end up in the hospital with the flu.
We aren’t even talking side-effects here. It’s not like it actually helped protect them from the flu and simply put them in hospital for other reasons. It’s not even that the flu shot proved useless, as all the data I’ve reviewed over the years has been confirming.
It’s even more ridiculous… The flu shot actually made the children more likely to come down with such a bad case of the flu that they were checked into the children’s ward.
Yesterday, I promised I’d give you some sound advice on how to avoid the flu. Well, based on the results of this study… a great way to avoid the flu would be to avoid the flu shot.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090519172045.htm
Children Who Get Flu Vaccine Have Three Times Risk Of Hospitalization For Flu, Study Suggests
ScienceDaily (May 20, 2009) — The inactivated flu vaccine does not appear to be effective in preventing influenza-related hospitalizations in children, especially the ones with asthma. In fact, children who get the flu vaccine are more at risk for hospitalization than their peers who do not get the vaccine, according to new research that will be presented on May 19, at the 105th International Conference of the American Thoracic Society in San Diego.
The main purpose of a cloudbuster is to remove DOR
Letter written in response to:
http://www.orgone.org/requipment/cbuster/ax-cb-plans2002-jo1.htm
by Joel Carlinsky
Dear Mysterious New Owner of Galactic Orgonomy Exchange:
I took a look today at the website you recently took over from Jamie Ogg, and the first thing I noticed was the new article on how to build a cloudbuster. I do not know who wrote that unsigned article, but it contains a glaring error in the very first line.
A cloudbuster is NOT "a device to facilitate, modify or change weather". It is a device that CAN have these effects as a side effect, but that is NOT the purpose of a properly done cloudbusting operation.
There is a very serious transformation underway in the atmosphere of this planet. It is a build-up of DOR all over the earth. DOR is a stagnant, highly toxic form of orgone, caused by the irritation of the global energy field by nuclear technologies, and it is responsible for an ongoing global breakdown in weather patterns.
The main purpose of a cloudbuster is to remove DOR, to drain it off, or ground it, and permit new, fresh orgone to flow into an area, revitalizing the area and restoring the normal pulsation of the energetic environment. One of the side effects of this process is that weather patterns tend to return to normal, including more-or-less regular, recurrent rainfalls at the historically normal season and in the historically normal amounts.
Of equal or greater importance, the biochemical and metabolic condition of all organisms in the affected area tend to stabilize and return to an optimum state, restoring health to entire populations of all species. This, not "modifying weather", is the goal of any properly done cloudbusting operation.
To introduce people who are unfamiliar with the underlying concepts to cloudbusting by telling them cloudbusters are a "device to facilitate, modify, or change weather" is to mislead them.
It is this very misconception, that cloudbusting can be done without regard to biological factors, that has made cloudbusting an environmental menace instead of the boon to the earth it could have been if it had not fallen into the hands of control-freaks who want to misuse it to "control weather" instead of to restore an ecological balance that has been disrupted by human interference already. Additional interference by humans, in the form of cloudbusting to " modify weather" will only make things worse.
I think it is highly irresponsible of you to post instructions on how to build a cloudbuster on a public website without including a long, detailed explanation of errors to avoid and explaining what the atmospheric situation is today and why, and what the true function of cloudbusting should be. Encouraging misguided people to think of cloudbusting as a way to change weather instead of a way to practice atmospheric medicine on a damaged environment, is only another form of vandalism of this planet.
And if cloudbusting is used with the goal of modifying weather instead of removing DOR and restoring atmospheric self-regulation, cloudbusting is only another form of pollution.
Joel Carlinsky
http://www.orgone.org/requipment/cbuster/ax-cb-plans2002-jo1.htm
by Joel Carlinsky
Dear Mysterious New Owner of Galactic Orgonomy Exchange:
I took a look today at the website you recently took over from Jamie Ogg, and the first thing I noticed was the new article on how to build a cloudbuster. I do not know who wrote that unsigned article, but it contains a glaring error in the very first line.
A cloudbuster is NOT "a device to facilitate, modify or change weather". It is a device that CAN have these effects as a side effect, but that is NOT the purpose of a properly done cloudbusting operation.
There is a very serious transformation underway in the atmosphere of this planet. It is a build-up of DOR all over the earth. DOR is a stagnant, highly toxic form of orgone, caused by the irritation of the global energy field by nuclear technologies, and it is responsible for an ongoing global breakdown in weather patterns.
The main purpose of a cloudbuster is to remove DOR, to drain it off, or ground it, and permit new, fresh orgone to flow into an area, revitalizing the area and restoring the normal pulsation of the energetic environment. One of the side effects of this process is that weather patterns tend to return to normal, including more-or-less regular, recurrent rainfalls at the historically normal season and in the historically normal amounts.
Of equal or greater importance, the biochemical and metabolic condition of all organisms in the affected area tend to stabilize and return to an optimum state, restoring health to entire populations of all species. This, not "modifying weather", is the goal of any properly done cloudbusting operation.
To introduce people who are unfamiliar with the underlying concepts to cloudbusting by telling them cloudbusters are a "device to facilitate, modify, or change weather" is to mislead them.
It is this very misconception, that cloudbusting can be done without regard to biological factors, that has made cloudbusting an environmental menace instead of the boon to the earth it could have been if it had not fallen into the hands of control-freaks who want to misuse it to "control weather" instead of to restore an ecological balance that has been disrupted by human interference already. Additional interference by humans, in the form of cloudbusting to " modify weather" will only make things worse.
I think it is highly irresponsible of you to post instructions on how to build a cloudbuster on a public website without including a long, detailed explanation of errors to avoid and explaining what the atmospheric situation is today and why, and what the true function of cloudbusting should be. Encouraging misguided people to think of cloudbusting as a way to change weather instead of a way to practice atmospheric medicine on a damaged environment, is only another form of vandalism of this planet.
And if cloudbusting is used with the goal of modifying weather instead of removing DOR and restoring atmospheric self-regulation, cloudbusting is only another form of pollution.
Joel Carlinsky
The Word/"Myth" is Real and Makes the Market...
... as long as the Mythic Stage/"Ground" lasts - as shown in my Formulaic charts.
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
[Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
By Felix Salmon
Wired Magazine
Vol.17, #3
Feb.23/09
A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that a math wizard like David X. Li might someday earn a Nobel Prize. After all, financial economists—even Wall Street quants—have received the Nobel in economics before, and Li's work on measuring risk has had more impact, more quickly, than previous Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the field. Today, though, as dazed bankers, politicians, regulators, and investors survey the wreckage of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, Li is probably thankful he still has a job in finance at all. Not that his achievement should be dismissed. He took a notoriously tough nut—determining correlation, or how seemingly disparate events are related—and cracked it wide open with a simple and elegant mathematical formula, one that would become ubiquitous in finance worldwide.
For five years, Li's formula, known as a Gaussian copula function, looked like an unambiguously positive breakthrough, a piece of financial technology that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with more ease and accuracy than ever before. With his brilliant spark of mathematical legerdemain, Li made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities, expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels.
His method was adopted by everybody from bond investors and Wall Street banks to ratings agencies and regulators. And it became so deeply entrenched—and was making people so much money—that warnings about its limitations were largely ignored.
Then the model fell apart. Cracks started appearing early on, when financial markets began behaving in ways that users of Li's formula hadn't expected. The cracks became full-fledged canyons in 2008—when ruptures in the financial system's foundation swallowed up trillions of dollars and put the survival of the global banking system in serious peril.
David X. Li, it's safe to say, won't be getting that Nobel anytime soon. One result of the collapse has been the end of financial economics as something to be celebrated rather than feared. And Li's Gaussian copula formula will go down in history as instrumental in causing the unfathomable losses that brought the world financial system to its knees.
Continue reading at:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
]
Bob Dobbs
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
[Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street
By Felix Salmon
Wired Magazine
Vol.17, #3
Feb.23/09
A year ago, it was hardly unthinkable that a math wizard like David X. Li might someday earn a Nobel Prize. After all, financial economists—even Wall Street quants—have received the Nobel in economics before, and Li's work on measuring risk has had more impact, more quickly, than previous Nobel Prize-winning contributions to the field. Today, though, as dazed bankers, politicians, regulators, and investors survey the wreckage of the biggest financial meltdown since the Great Depression, Li is probably thankful he still has a job in finance at all. Not that his achievement should be dismissed. He took a notoriously tough nut—determining correlation, or how seemingly disparate events are related—and cracked it wide open with a simple and elegant mathematical formula, one that would become ubiquitous in finance worldwide.
For five years, Li's formula, known as a Gaussian copula function, looked like an unambiguously positive breakthrough, a piece of financial technology that allowed hugely complex risks to be modeled with more ease and accuracy than ever before. With his brilliant spark of mathematical legerdemain, Li made it possible for traders to sell vast quantities of new securities, expanding financial markets to unimaginable levels.
His method was adopted by everybody from bond investors and Wall Street banks to ratings agencies and regulators. And it became so deeply entrenched—and was making people so much money—that warnings about its limitations were largely ignored.
Then the model fell apart. Cracks started appearing early on, when financial markets began behaving in ways that users of Li's formula hadn't expected. The cracks became full-fledged canyons in 2008—when ruptures in the financial system's foundation swallowed up trillions of dollars and put the survival of the global banking system in serious peril.
David X. Li, it's safe to say, won't be getting that Nobel anytime soon. One result of the collapse has been the end of financial economics as something to be celebrated rather than feared. And Li's Gaussian copula formula will go down in history as instrumental in causing the unfathomable losses that brought the world financial system to its knees.
Continue reading at:
http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/17-03/wp_quant?currentPage=all
]
Bob Dobbs
Abu Ghraib abuse photos 'show rape'
OK here it is. It’s true! And we’re supposed to be “above” the Muslims who behead their enemies, when we rape them? I am beyond shock and awe. The American military-industrial complex is a cesspool of ignorance, hatefulness and decrepitude.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
By Duncan Gardham,
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President's attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President's decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
"The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."
Read more here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html
Photographs of alleged prisoner abuse which Barack Obama is attempting to censor include images of apparent rape and sexual abuse, it has emerged.
By Duncan Gardham,
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He has now confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph.
The graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President's attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.
Maj Gen Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President's decision, adding: "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
"I am not sure what purpose their release would serve other than a legal one and the consequence would be to imperil our troops, the only protectors of our foreign policy, when we most need them, and British troops who are trying to build security in Afghanistan.
"The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it."
Read more here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/5395830/Abu-Ghraib-abuse-photos-show-rape.html
Dobbstown goes to China
"On the chip body level, no one's in control."
Bob Dobbs on China’s Four Bodies
The Chinese go out to be social (Americans go out to be alone and stay home to be social – Marshall McLuhan)
Thanks for your non-stop work, Bob.
Bob Dobbs on China’s Four Bodies
The Chinese go out to be social (Americans go out to be alone and stay home to be social – Marshall McLuhan)
Thanks for your non-stop work, Bob.
27 May, 2009
The Return of Agriculture
YES! The only good news I’ve heard all day!
Its’ got MY enthusiastic attention!
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is my honor and privilege to break some good news to you: the ideas of one era may die; its dogmas may be overturned. Consequently, I have the immense pleasure of informing you that in these times of mental and political stagnation we can create a million jobs in Europe, five hundred thousand in France - family farmer jobs.
Please erase that hint of an ironic smile that's taking shape on your lips and listen. Between 1950 and 2007, agricultural labor productivity multiplied by 26: that means a farmer produces 26 times more today than sixty years ago. Can that continue? Obviously not. And still less so, when one considers that this calculation leaves out the "externalities" of that mind-boggling development: soil erosion, groundwater pollution, the drop in bio-diversity, the use of enormous quantities of pesticides and antibiotics.
In reality, it is becoming essential to reduce those externalities which involve a significant hidden cost to society. That means working the earth differently, devoting more care and fewer machines to that process; and, consequently, reducing the apparent productivity of agriculture; and, consequently, increasing farmer jobs.
A further point: do you really believe you're going to reduce the number of unemployed - now resuming its upward curve - by manufacturing still more cars, planes and packaging? To ask the question is to answer it.
We need to move our mental furniture around: agriculture is a sector of the future. In a text that you may read on the Internet, entitled, "Agriculture: a European Plan to Emerge from the Crises," associations call on citizens and political leaders. What they say is that it's possible to create a million new family farmers, as long as we change agricultural policy, favor the installation of young people, put the brakes on urban sprawl, control real estate speculation and support new ecological modes of production.
Thank you for your enthusiastic attention.
This article first appeared in the 17-18 May 2009 edition of Le Monde. The [French] text of "Agriculture: a European Plan to Emerge from the Crises," is posted here.
http://www.truthout.org/052709F
Its’ got MY enthusiastic attention!
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It is my honor and privilege to break some good news to you: the ideas of one era may die; its dogmas may be overturned. Consequently, I have the immense pleasure of informing you that in these times of mental and political stagnation we can create a million jobs in Europe, five hundred thousand in France - family farmer jobs.
Please erase that hint of an ironic smile that's taking shape on your lips and listen. Between 1950 and 2007, agricultural labor productivity multiplied by 26: that means a farmer produces 26 times more today than sixty years ago. Can that continue? Obviously not. And still less so, when one considers that this calculation leaves out the "externalities" of that mind-boggling development: soil erosion, groundwater pollution, the drop in bio-diversity, the use of enormous quantities of pesticides and antibiotics.
In reality, it is becoming essential to reduce those externalities which involve a significant hidden cost to society. That means working the earth differently, devoting more care and fewer machines to that process; and, consequently, reducing the apparent productivity of agriculture; and, consequently, increasing farmer jobs.
A further point: do you really believe you're going to reduce the number of unemployed - now resuming its upward curve - by manufacturing still more cars, planes and packaging? To ask the question is to answer it.
We need to move our mental furniture around: agriculture is a sector of the future. In a text that you may read on the Internet, entitled, "Agriculture: a European Plan to Emerge from the Crises," associations call on citizens and political leaders. What they say is that it's possible to create a million new family farmers, as long as we change agricultural policy, favor the installation of young people, put the brakes on urban sprawl, control real estate speculation and support new ecological modes of production.
Thank you for your enthusiastic attention.
This article first appeared in the 17-18 May 2009 edition of Le Monde. The [French] text of "Agriculture: a European Plan to Emerge from the Crises," is posted here.
http://www.truthout.org/052709F
Source Interlink's Top Unsecured Claims Total About $733 Million
Court docs reveal a who’s who of creditors.
According to court documents detailing Source Interlink's petition for a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company has debt of about $1.9 billion against assets of about $2.4 billion as of April 24. Its top 30 unsecured claims total about $733 million and include most of the country’s biggest publishers and national distributors.
Source's bankruptcy filing effectively wipes away about $1 billion in debt and allows the company to go private.
The anonymously authored blog Dead Tree Edition points out that publisher clients and national distributors in aggregate are owed $200 million in trade debt. Listed among them are Bonnier ($2.4 million), Harris Publications ($1.8 million), American Media ($1.7 million), Future Publishing ($1.6 million), Playboy ($960,000), Meredith ($881,000), Time Warner Retail ($75.5 million), Comag ($53.2 million), Curtis ($42.7 million), Kable ($23 million) and Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island.
The largest creditor is HSBC Bank, holding $455 million in note debt, according to the documents. Behind that are the four national distributors and Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island.
In the statement announcing the filing, Source CEO Greg Mays said Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island will be paid what they’re owed. “Importantly, all of our vendors and Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island will be paid in full for both pre-petition and on going charges according to our terms of trade. It's business as usual at Source Interlink."
Earlier this year, Source was at the center of a massive magazine distribution lawsuit, claiming rival wholesalers as well as publishers—like Time Inc., Hachette and American Media Inc. and Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island — were attempting to force the company out of business.
Bauer, which Source has yet to settle with, is not listed among the top unsecured claims, as is Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island.
For more information on what the hell is going on:
http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2009/source+interlink+files+bankruptcy+will+go+private
http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2009/source+interlinks+top+unsecured+claims+total+about+733+million
According to court documents detailing Source Interlink's petition for a prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company has debt of about $1.9 billion against assets of about $2.4 billion as of April 24. Its top 30 unsecured claims total about $733 million and include most of the country’s biggest publishers and national distributors.
Source's bankruptcy filing effectively wipes away about $1 billion in debt and allows the company to go private.
The anonymously authored blog Dead Tree Edition points out that publisher clients and national distributors in aggregate are owed $200 million in trade debt. Listed among them are Bonnier ($2.4 million), Harris Publications ($1.8 million), American Media ($1.7 million), Future Publishing ($1.6 million), Playboy ($960,000), Meredith ($881,000), Time Warner Retail ($75.5 million), Comag ($53.2 million), Curtis ($42.7 million), Kable ($23 million) and Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island.
The largest creditor is HSBC Bank, holding $455 million in note debt, according to the documents. Behind that are the four national distributors and Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island.
In the statement announcing the filing, Source CEO Greg Mays said Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island will be paid what they’re owed. “Importantly, all of our vendors and Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island will be paid in full for both pre-petition and on going charges according to our terms of trade. It's business as usual at Source Interlink."
Earlier this year, Source was at the center of a massive magazine distribution lawsuit, claiming rival wholesalers as well as publishers—like Time Inc., Hachette and American Media Inc. and Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island — were attempting to force the company out of business.
Bauer, which Source has yet to settle with, is not listed among the top unsecured claims, as is Paranoia Publishing of Providence Rhode Island.
For more information on what the hell is going on:
http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2009/source+interlink+files+bankruptcy+will+go+private
http://www.audiencedevelopment.com/2009/source+interlinks+top+unsecured+claims+total+about+733+million
26 May, 2009
Why we Fight
From the documentary Why We Fight
This film contains a quote by Eisenhower to the effect: "God bless this country when someone sits behind this desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do."
In fact, no president since has known as much about the military as Eisenhower did when he warned, on his way out, about the unguarded power of the military-industrial complex. Two other parties to the complex were left out: The bankers and the politicians.
This film contains a quote by Eisenhower to the effect: "God bless this country when someone sits behind this desk who doesn't know as much about the military as I do."
In fact, no president since has known as much about the military as Eisenhower did when he warned, on his way out, about the unguarded power of the military-industrial complex. Two other parties to the complex were left out: The bankers and the politicians.
The Greatest Swindle Ever Sold
By Andy Kroll
The $700 billion bailout has since grown into a more than $12 trillion commitment by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve. About $1.1 trillion of that is taxpayer money - the TARP money and an additional $400 billion rescue of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The TARP now includes 12 separate programs, and recipients range from megabanks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to automakers Chrysler and General Motors.
Seven months in, the bailout's impact is unclear. The Treasury Department has used the recent "stress test" results it applied to 19 of the nation's largest banks to suggest that the worst might be over; yet the International Monetary Fund as well as economists like New York University professor and economist Nouriel Roubini and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman predict greater losses in U.S. markets, rising unemployment, and generally tougher economic times ahead.
What cannot be disputed, however, is the financial bailout's biggest loser: the American taxpayer. The U.S. government, led by the Treasury Department, has done little, if anything, to maximize returns on its trillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded investment. So far, the bailout has favored rescued financial institutions by subsidizing their losses to the tune of $356 billion, shying away from much-needed management changes and - with the exception of the automakers - letting companies take taxpayer money without a coherent plan for how they might return to viability.
The bailout's perks have been no less favorable for private investors who are now picking over the economy's still-smoking rubble at the taxpayers' expense. The newer bailout programs rolled out by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner give private equity firms, hedge funds, and other private investors significant leverage to buy "toxic" or distressed assets, while leaving taxpayers stuck with the lion's share of the risk and potential losses. [. . .]
Here, then, based on the most definitive data and analyses available, are six of the most blatant and alarming ways taxpayers have been scammed by the government's $1.1-trillion, publicly-funded bailout.
1. By overpaying for its TARP investments, the Treasury Department provided bailout recipients with generous subsidies at the taxpayer's expense.
2. As the government has no real oversight over bailout funds, taxpayers remain in the dark about how their money has been used and if it has made any difference.
3. The bailout's newer programs heavily favor the private sector, giving investors an opportunity to earn lucrative profits and leaving taxpayers with most of the risk.
4. The government has no coherent plan for returning failing financial institutions to profitability and maximizing returns on taxpayers' investments.
5. The bailout's focus on Wall Street mega-banks ignores smaller banks serving millions of American taxpayers that face an equally uncertain future.
6. The bailout encourages the very behaviors that created the economic crisis in the first place instead of overhauling our broken financial system and helping the individuals most affected by the crisis.
Of even greater concern is the message the bailout sends to banks and lenders - namely, that the risky investments that crippled the economy are fair game in the future. After all, if banks fail and teeter at the edge of collapse, the government promises to be there with a taxpayer-funded, potentially profitable safety net.
The handling of the bailout makes at least one thing clear, however: It's not your health that the government is focused on, it's theirs - the very banks and lenders whose convoluted financial systems provided the underpinnings for staggering salaries and bonuses while bringing our economy to the brink of another Great Depression.
Excerpted from:
http://www.truthout.org/052609E
The $700 billion bailout has since grown into a more than $12 trillion commitment by the U.S. government and the Federal Reserve. About $1.1 trillion of that is taxpayer money - the TARP money and an additional $400 billion rescue of mortgage companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The TARP now includes 12 separate programs, and recipients range from megabanks like Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase to automakers Chrysler and General Motors.
Seven months in, the bailout's impact is unclear. The Treasury Department has used the recent "stress test" results it applied to 19 of the nation's largest banks to suggest that the worst might be over; yet the International Monetary Fund as well as economists like New York University professor and economist Nouriel Roubini and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman predict greater losses in U.S. markets, rising unemployment, and generally tougher economic times ahead.
What cannot be disputed, however, is the financial bailout's biggest loser: the American taxpayer. The U.S. government, led by the Treasury Department, has done little, if anything, to maximize returns on its trillion-dollar, taxpayer-funded investment. So far, the bailout has favored rescued financial institutions by subsidizing their losses to the tune of $356 billion, shying away from much-needed management changes and - with the exception of the automakers - letting companies take taxpayer money without a coherent plan for how they might return to viability.
The bailout's perks have been no less favorable for private investors who are now picking over the economy's still-smoking rubble at the taxpayers' expense. The newer bailout programs rolled out by Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner give private equity firms, hedge funds, and other private investors significant leverage to buy "toxic" or distressed assets, while leaving taxpayers stuck with the lion's share of the risk and potential losses. [. . .]
Here, then, based on the most definitive data and analyses available, are six of the most blatant and alarming ways taxpayers have been scammed by the government's $1.1-trillion, publicly-funded bailout.
1. By overpaying for its TARP investments, the Treasury Department provided bailout recipients with generous subsidies at the taxpayer's expense.
2. As the government has no real oversight over bailout funds, taxpayers remain in the dark about how their money has been used and if it has made any difference.
3. The bailout's newer programs heavily favor the private sector, giving investors an opportunity to earn lucrative profits and leaving taxpayers with most of the risk.
4. The government has no coherent plan for returning failing financial institutions to profitability and maximizing returns on taxpayers' investments.
5. The bailout's focus on Wall Street mega-banks ignores smaller banks serving millions of American taxpayers that face an equally uncertain future.
6. The bailout encourages the very behaviors that created the economic crisis in the first place instead of overhauling our broken financial system and helping the individuals most affected by the crisis.
Of even greater concern is the message the bailout sends to banks and lenders - namely, that the risky investments that crippled the economy are fair game in the future. After all, if banks fail and teeter at the edge of collapse, the government promises to be there with a taxpayer-funded, potentially profitable safety net.
The handling of the bailout makes at least one thing clear, however: It's not your health that the government is focused on, it's theirs - the very banks and lenders whose convoluted financial systems provided the underpinnings for staggering salaries and bonuses while bringing our economy to the brink of another Great Depression.
Excerpted from:
http://www.truthout.org/052609E
Torturing Saves Lives According to Tricky Dicky
Dick Cheney says that torturing detainees has saved American lives. That claim is patently false. Cheney's torture policy was directly responsible for the deaths of hundreds if not thousands of American servicemen and women.
Matthew Alexander was the senior military interrogator for the task force that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "Torture does not save lives. Torture costs us lives," says Alexander. "And the reason why is that our enemies use it, number one, as a recruiting tool...These same foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight because of torture and abuse....literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives."
Matthew Alexander was the senior military interrogator for the task force that tracked down Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "Torture does not save lives. Torture costs us lives," says Alexander. "And the reason why is that our enemies use it, number one, as a recruiting tool...These same foreign fighters who came to Iraq to fight because of torture and abuse....literally cost us hundreds if not thousands of American lives."
25 May, 2009
Day of the Dead
By Cindy Sheehan
Just another day that glorifies the military industrial complex . . .
. . .
Here in America we are definitely not freer because my son died, as a matter of fact, our nation can spy on us and our communications without a warrant or just cause, and we can't even bring a 3.6 ounce bottle of hand cream into an airport, or walk through a metal detector with our shoes on. Even if we do want to exercise our Bill of Rights, we are shoved into pre-designated "free speech" zones (NewSpeak for; STFU, unless you are well out of the way of what you want to protest and shoved into pens like cattle being led to slaughter), and oftentimes brutally treated if we decide we are entitled to "free speech" on every inch of American soil.
If you watch any one of the cable news networks this weekend between doing holiday weekend things, you will be subjected to images of row upon row of white headstones of dead US military lined up in perfect formation in the afterlife as they were in life. Patriotic music will swell and we will be reminded in script font to "Remember our heroes," or some such BS as that.
Before Casey was killed, a message like that would barely register in my consciousness as I rushed around preparing for Casey's birthday bar-be-que that became a family tradition since he was born on Memorial Day in 1979. If I had a vision of how Memorial Day and Casey's birthday would change for my family, I would have fled these violent shores to protect what was mine, not this murderous country's. Be my guest; look at those headstones with pride or indifference. I look at them now with horror, regret, pain and a longing for justice.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/05/day-of-dead-may-25-2009-by-cindy.html
Just another day that glorifies the military industrial complex . . .
. . .
Here in America we are definitely not freer because my son died, as a matter of fact, our nation can spy on us and our communications without a warrant or just cause, and we can't even bring a 3.6 ounce bottle of hand cream into an airport, or walk through a metal detector with our shoes on. Even if we do want to exercise our Bill of Rights, we are shoved into pre-designated "free speech" zones (NewSpeak for; STFU, unless you are well out of the way of what you want to protest and shoved into pens like cattle being led to slaughter), and oftentimes brutally treated if we decide we are entitled to "free speech" on every inch of American soil.
If you watch any one of the cable news networks this weekend between doing holiday weekend things, you will be subjected to images of row upon row of white headstones of dead US military lined up in perfect formation in the afterlife as they were in life. Patriotic music will swell and we will be reminded in script font to "Remember our heroes," or some such BS as that.
Before Casey was killed, a message like that would barely register in my consciousness as I rushed around preparing for Casey's birthday bar-be-que that became a family tradition since he was born on Memorial Day in 1979. If I had a vision of how Memorial Day and Casey's birthday would change for my family, I would have fled these violent shores to protect what was mine, not this murderous country's. Be my guest; look at those headstones with pride or indifference. I look at them now with horror, regret, pain and a longing for justice.
http://cindysheehanssoapbox.blogspot.com/2009/05/day-of-dead-may-25-2009-by-cindy.html
America's Nightmare: The Obama Dystopia
Manipulation, propaganda, imagery & PR wizardry
By Andrew Hughes
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13716
May 24, 2009 - After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the "Great Black Hope" in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.
Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. "Change" was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic nightmare.
Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.
The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, nevermind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sherrifs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.
The "War on terrorism" has mutated in to a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.
Homeland Security now defines "Terrorists" as those who believe in the Constitution, the first, second and fourth amendments. Returning veterans are being targeted for a denial of their second amendment rights. A "Terrorist Watchlist" of more than a million and rapidly growing, is being used as the basis for denying citizens the rights to travel and to work.
Obama is now mulling over the idea of indefinite detention without trial for U.S. citizens. This, from a teacher of the Constitution! Bills are in congress to criminalize free speech on the Internet via the Cyberbullying Act which will make hurting somebody's feelings a felony. Just like the Patriot Act this will morph in to a criminalization of political free speech and any criticism of the Government.
"Cyberterrorism" is being used as a pretext to bring government regulation to the the last stronghold of unbiased information. Washington has realized that it's getting harder to get away with their Fascist agenda and are moving to control the field. The populace have become more aware of just what kind of "Change" Obama intended to deliver.
There has been a growing resistance on a state level with several invoking their 9th and 10th Amendment rights in a valiant attempt to stop the Federal Vampire from draining the last drops of blood, the last vestiges of Freedom and Hope.
This is the Dystopic Nightmare that America finds itself in today and each day brings new assaults on Freedom and Sanity. The framework for total control of the citizenry, the economy and the media is being built upon in a relentless aggrandization of Govermental power. Obama sits atop his new Empire still smiling that sickeningly disingenuous smile surrounded by his seasoned courtiers who have worked for decades to bring America into this new era of the New World Order.
© Copyright Andrew Hughes, Global Research, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13716
By Andrew Hughes
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13716
May 24, 2009 - After 8 years of the Bush-Cheney nightmare during which we saw the wanton destruction of Afghanistan and Iraq, the cynical negation of centuries of Law designed to protect the most basic human rights and a foreign policy worthy of Genghis Khan, there came along the "Great Black Hope" in the persona of Barack Obama. The collective world consciousness turned uncritically to what was presented as a new era for peace, change and trust in Government.
Never before had one witnessed such an accomplished use of manipulation, propaganda, imagery and public relations wizardry to sell the public a man who was to take the baton from Bush and run with it in the race to destroy the economy, the rights of the people and help birth a nation totally controlled by those who have always lurked in the shadows of power. "Change" was promised and was delivered in the form of a deepening of the already Dystopic nightmare.
Promises were broken with no apology, the same creative legalese that infested the Bush administration, in the form of John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez, was again used to deny justice to the inmates of Guantanamo, It was used to justify more torture, more destruction of the Constitution and more illegal surveillance of U.S. citizens.
The President that extended the hand of peace to the Muslim world has murdered hundreds of Pakistani men, women and children. The President who promised accountability in Government has filled his staff with lobbyists, banksters and warmongers. His Attorney General refuses to prosecute some of the worst war crimes committed in modern history and continues to give legal cover to criminals who tortured with impunity.
The country has been further bankrupted by the continuing theft of taxpayer money as the Wall St. campaign donors receive their quid pro quo. Obama has stood by idly as Bernancke states that the private Federal Reserve is not answerable to either Congress of the American public. The U.S. taxpayer is now on the hook for $14.3 Trillion and rising. Foreclosures and unemployment are rising with no meaningful efforts by the administration to alleviate the symptoms, nevermind the cause. The new image of America is one of tent cities, lengthening soup kitchen lines, sherrifs evicting countless thousands of young and old from their homes, once prosperous towns descending in to an eerie stillness and an increasingly disillusioned populace.
The "War on terrorism" has mutated in to a control grid for an increasingly aware population. The foundation for this had already been put in place by Bush with the Patriot Act, Patriot Act 2, Military commissions act and numerous executive orders that strangled what was left of Posse Comitatus and the Constitution.
Homeland Security now defines "Terrorists" as those who believe in the Constitution, the first, second and fourth amendments. Returning veterans are being targeted for a denial of their second amendment rights. A "Terrorist Watchlist" of more than a million and rapidly growing, is being used as the basis for denying citizens the rights to travel and to work.
Obama is now mulling over the idea of indefinite detention without trial for U.S. citizens. This, from a teacher of the Constitution! Bills are in congress to criminalize free speech on the Internet via the Cyberbullying Act which will make hurting somebody's feelings a felony. Just like the Patriot Act this will morph in to a criminalization of political free speech and any criticism of the Government.
"Cyberterrorism" is being used as a pretext to bring government regulation to the the last stronghold of unbiased information. Washington has realized that it's getting harder to get away with their Fascist agenda and are moving to control the field. The populace have become more aware of just what kind of "Change" Obama intended to deliver.
There has been a growing resistance on a state level with several invoking their 9th and 10th Amendment rights in a valiant attempt to stop the Federal Vampire from draining the last drops of blood, the last vestiges of Freedom and Hope.
This is the Dystopic Nightmare that America finds itself in today and each day brings new assaults on Freedom and Sanity. The framework for total control of the citizenry, the economy and the media is being built upon in a relentless aggrandization of Govermental power. Obama sits atop his new Empire still smiling that sickeningly disingenuous smile surrounded by his seasoned courtiers who have worked for decades to bring America into this new era of the New World Order.
© Copyright Andrew Hughes, Global Research, 2009
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=13716
24 May, 2009
Crowley and Flight 93
September 13, 2001--
Investigators locate 'black box' from Flight 93. Pittsburgh FBI spokesman Bill Crowley said the flight data recovered was found about 4:50 p.m. Crowley said he didn't know whether the recorder was operable, or whether officials would be able to gather information from it. Crowley emphasized that the still elusive data might show "what everyone desperately wants to know: what was happening on that plane."
The number 93, or what it represents, constitutes the spiritual basis of the religion of Thelema--founded by Aleister Crowley.
"As it is written in The Book of the Law, the Law of Thelema is stated as "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law." It is further said, "Love is the law, love under will." The two primary terms in these statements are Will and Love, respectively. In the Greek language, they are Thelema (Will) and Agape (Love). Using the Greek technique of isopsephy, which applies a numerical value to letters, the letters of both of these words when added together equal 93. The relevance of this technique is found in the art of correspondence. When two words have the same value, they are said to have a meaningful connection." --
On February 26, 1993 the World Trade Center was the scene of a "terrorist" attack, serving as a prelude to 9-11-2001. On that date at 9:03 a.m. Flight 175 struck the south tower. At 9:37 Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon. Flight 11 smashed into the North Tower cutting through floors 93 to 99. All four planes are singularly and conspicuously connected to 93.
Either these are just peculiar coincidences or they are prearranged synchronicities embedded by the covert conspiratorial cabal governing America and which stealthfully conducted 9/11, thus furtively revealing their occult allegiance or faith. 'Faith without works is dead.'
Global Hawk and 9/11
April 24, 2001--
The United States' Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) Global Hawk made international aviation history Monday when it completed the first non-stop flight across the Pacific Ocean by an autonomous aircraft, flying from Edwards Air Force Base on the west coast of the U.S. to RAAF Base South Australia. Global Hawk is jet powered, has a wing span approximately equivalent to a Boeing 737: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/uav-01d.html
Evidence supporting claims that the "hijacked" planes on 9/11 were remote-controlled by Global Hawk technology:
Strange revelation from the Sept. 10th 2001 edition of The Washington Post in Rowan Scarborough's article: "Of the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, the SAMS [U.S. Army's School of Advanced Military Studies] officers say: 'Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.'
Jordan Maxell on the Illuminati
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8394844811105390386
"When god moves people die" – Jordan Maxwell
This is kind of long but worth watching. Isn't he really saying there is no god? it seems he doesn't want to say that because he doesn't want to be pegged as an atheist.
I find his point of view on that a little confusing. His website states clearly that he certainly believes in God. Again, it seems he’s going out of his way to not be pegged as an atheist, which is also what D.M. Murdock (Acharya S) does. They don’t want to cut off their potential Christian readership?
What do you think?
http://www.jordanmaxwell.com/bio/index.html
Here's my answer. Thank you, George!
"When god moves people die" – Jordan Maxwell
This is kind of long but worth watching. Isn't he really saying there is no god? it seems he doesn't want to say that because he doesn't want to be pegged as an atheist.
I find his point of view on that a little confusing. His website states clearly that he certainly believes in God. Again, it seems he’s going out of his way to not be pegged as an atheist, which is also what D.M. Murdock (Acharya S) does. They don’t want to cut off their potential Christian readership?
What do you think?
http://www.jordanmaxwell.com/bio/index.html
Here's my answer. Thank you, George!
23 May, 2009
Hello World War III
Congress rushes $110 million to Pakistani refugees of the U.S. “War on Terror” as Barack O'Bomber forces Pakistan into a civil war:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-clinton-pakistan20-2009may20,0,1555718.story
It's very strange that he didn't look that stupid when he was "running" for president. "That guy" fooled us all. Which begs the question, does anyone really "run" for president? Or are they all just controlled by the man behind the curtain?
Wait. Am I reading the below article correctly? Does it really say "wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan"?
Senate O.K.'s $91 Billion in War Funds
http://www.truthout.org/052209J
The Senate approved $91 billion in funding for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan yesterday, with all senators but three voting for the bill. This, along with a House vote last week in favor of $97 billion, seals the deal for the Obama administration's first supplemental war spending request. The no-strings-attached legislation comes as a deep disappointment to progressive members of Congress, as well as to antiwar voters, many of whom hoped the Obama administration would mark a significant break with Bush-style war funding.
"If this were another Bush supplemental, progressives would definitely call it a blank check," Travis Sharp, military policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told Truthout. "There are no benchmarks for progress in either the House or Senate bills. I found the House Appropriations Committee's justification for not including benchmarks to be comical: 'so-called benchmarks ... if they are too tough will bind the President's hands.' That's precisely the same language Republicans used to use to argue against Democratic attempts to place restrictions on Bush-era supplementals."
With yesterday's vote, Congress has approved more than $900 billion in funding for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq since the wars began.
Though President Obama has provided a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, his plan could leave 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, according to a statement by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), one of the three dissenting votes.
The hefty supplemental also indicates that the US occupation of Afghanistan will drag on for quite some time, according to Jeff Leys, co-coordinator for Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Leys notes the allocation of funds for mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles specific to the terrain of Afghanistan, and a boost in spending for the Afghanistan Security forces and Afghanistan base construction.
"All of these point to a long-term expansion of US military operations in Afghanistan," Leys told Truthout.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-clinton-pakistan20-2009may20,0,1555718.story
It's very strange that he didn't look that stupid when he was "running" for president. "That guy" fooled us all. Which begs the question, does anyone really "run" for president? Or are they all just controlled by the man behind the curtain?
Wait. Am I reading the below article correctly? Does it really say "wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan"?
Senate O.K.'s $91 Billion in War Funds
http://www.truthout.org/052209J
The Senate approved $91 billion in funding for the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan yesterday, with all senators but three voting for the bill. This, along with a House vote last week in favor of $97 billion, seals the deal for the Obama administration's first supplemental war spending request. The no-strings-attached legislation comes as a deep disappointment to progressive members of Congress, as well as to antiwar voters, many of whom hoped the Obama administration would mark a significant break with Bush-style war funding.
"If this were another Bush supplemental, progressives would definitely call it a blank check," Travis Sharp, military policy analyst for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, told Truthout. "There are no benchmarks for progress in either the House or Senate bills. I found the House Appropriations Committee's justification for not including benchmarks to be comical: 'so-called benchmarks ... if they are too tough will bind the President's hands.' That's precisely the same language Republicans used to use to argue against Democratic attempts to place restrictions on Bush-era supplementals."
With yesterday's vote, Congress has approved more than $900 billion in funding for military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq since the wars began.
Though President Obama has provided a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, his plan could leave 50,000 troops in Iraq indefinitely, according to a statement by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin), one of the three dissenting votes.
The hefty supplemental also indicates that the US occupation of Afghanistan will drag on for quite some time, according to Jeff Leys, co-coordinator for Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Leys notes the allocation of funds for mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles specific to the terrain of Afghanistan, and a boost in spending for the Afghanistan Security forces and Afghanistan base construction.
"All of these point to a long-term expansion of US military operations in Afghanistan," Leys told Truthout.
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