Dawn in America

November 27, 2006

McCain, a militaristic conservative, has supported every U.S. military intervention of the last two decades, supported Bush's Iraq debacle, calling it a war of "good against evil", and still advocates sending more -- not fewer -- soldiers to Iraq. LA Times

December 1, 2006

Bush had his fantasyland meeting with the Iraq puppet president (in Jordan because it wouldn't be safe in Iraq) and said he's going to give the puppet the "tools" he needs to bring order to Iraq. And we know what Bush means when he talks about "tools". Get ready for death squads, torture and state terrorism in Iraq. Bush, raging Bush, is more furious than ever, a wounded bull, still bellowing that we're going to stay in Iraq "until the job is done". Bush is going to do a real job in Iraq now. The full measure of that brutal spirit is going to be unleashed on the people of Iraq.

December 3, 2006

Says Who? A spunky Keith Olbermann fires back at Newt Gingrich's smarmy comments about there being too much free speech. If that's how Newt feels, of course, he is free to speak less. MSNBC

Pretending November 7 Never Happened -- OpEdNews.com

The Worst -- Eric Foner signs on to the increasingly accepted notion that Bush is the worst president of all, and makes a good case for it. Washington Post

December 4, 2006

Bolton Is Out -- Goodbye and good riddance to the American psycho of the UN. monstersandcritics.com

Chavez Takes 61% -- Running against George W. Bush proved a winning campaign strategy beyond U.S. shores as well as inside. Chavez won a resounding victory in the presidential election in Venezuela. BBC

Olbermann Rising -- Opposing Bush eloquently and without pussyfooting around the great lies that most of the media bow to has been the fast track to success for Keith Olbermann. Since late August Olbermann's ratings have shot up 55 percent, according to The Nation. Former sportscaster Olbermann: "We are still fundamentally raised in this country to be very confident in the preservation of our freedoms. It's very tough to get yourself around the idea that there could be a mechanism being used or abused to restrict and alter the society in which we live."

December 5, 2006

Playing Both Sides -- How clever George is! Now that the Americans are tired of the U.S. presiding over a civil war in Iraq, Reuters reports that the top Shi'ite leader is telling Bush that the only way civil war can be stopped in Iraq is for the U.S. to come down harder on the Sunnis. He can get both of them to back violence against the other and he can torch them both with a sort of bogus license.

December 6, 2006

What's Wrong With Bush Sr? -- Why did George H.W. Bush break down in tears when talking about Jeb Bush to the Florida legislature? Anybody's guess. Was it the weight of the realization that Jeb, the star of the family who was groomed for a political future will never be able to become president because George W. has ruined the name for all time? Jeb was supposed to carry the political torch, but the neocons snatched up dull George Jr., the ne'er-do-well whom no one ever expected to do anything, and managed to snatch the presidency and launch an agenda so radical, crazy and ill-fated that it's not likely any Bushes will be president for a while. Or is it just that Poppy is cracking up after so many years of crime and cover-ups? Or is it just drugs? Who knows? See the performance on MSNBC

December 7, 2006

Beyond Bushworld -- On an NBC news broadcast (see ThinkProgress) Al Gore told the man he beat in the 2000 election for president that the mess in Iraq is "not about him. It's about our country and we all have to find a way to get our troops home and to prevent a regional conflagration there."

Bush at the Abyss -- Bernard Weiner discusses how Bush lost his war in Iraq: "Bush has been a loser all his life. He determined from the outset of his residency in the White House to reverse that syndrome in the post-9/11 era by engaging in an amazingly ambitious imperial adventure that, in his simplistic mind, was bound to succeed: unleashing America's enormous military might on a country ill-equipped to respond in kind, and with no Superpower that could stop the U.S."

Third World World -- "The richest 2 percent of adults still owns more than half of the world's household wealth, perpetuating a yawning global gap between rich and poor, according to research published Tuesday. The report from the Helsinki-based World Institute for Development Economics Research shows that in 2000 the richest 1 percent of adults -- most of whom live in Europe or the United States -- owned 40 percent of global assets. The richest 10 percent of adults accounted for 85 percent of assets, the report said. By contrast, the bottom 50 percent of the world's adult population owned barely 1 percent of the world's wealth." SunTimes

Friday, December 8, 2006

Lennon in Retrospect -- December 8, 1980, was on a Friday too, just like today. What a thing to remember it now in the perspective of history.

It was the ramp-up to the Reagan administration, when a radical transformation of American society would be orchestrated. At that moment dozens of Americans were being held in Iran waiting till the actual moment of Reagan's inauguration to be released with great fanfare by an arrangement between the Reagan-Bush camp and the Iranians. The Iranians later reappeared in the Reagan history when it came out that the administration had sold weapons to Iran secretly and used the money to finance a war in Nicaragua, a war explicitly forbidden by Congress. But that's getting ahead of things.

In December 1980, Reagan had just defeated Jimmy Carter, in large measure because of the hostages that Carter couldn't get released but Bush could. The right wing corporatists were preparing for the fascistification of America that would begin in earnest under Reagan. Lennon was making a comeback. He'd beaten the Nixon deportation efforts and was ready to become visible again, musically and politically. Here was a man who could get 100,000 people on the street just by saying he was showing up. And he was a declared enemy of the war establishment. He had to be removed. So Mark David Chapman, a young man trained by World Vision, the organization headed by Bush ally John Hinckley Sr., tailed John Lennon, cornered him, dropped to a military position and fired several rounds with dead accuracy into Lennon.

December 9, 2006

Pedophilia Is No Vice in the defense of liberty --

PHOENIX, Arizona -- Funny, the Arizona Republic that I found on my doorstep here in Phoenix today ran a front page story saying "GOP cleared in Foley Scandal". Looking more closely it says, "Republican lawmakers broke no rules in their handling of salacious e-mails sent by former Rep. Mark Foley, but they did fail to protect male pages from the 'ticking time bomb,' the House ethics committee said Friday." This is saying, hyperlegalistically, that no explicit rules were broken by the Republican leadership who knew that Foley routinely came on to 16-year-old boys but thought better to keep a Republican pedophile in place than risk losing the seat to a Democrat. These moral superiors, as they portray themselves, who castigate others for not being as holy as they in the case of Clinton's affair with Monica Lewinsky, in the case of Terrry Schiavo and down the line, were not so concerned with the fate of some boys who serve as congressional pages if it might threaten the political balance of power. Other reports were a little more objective. See Google.

Monday, December 11, 2006

At long last, Pinochet is dead. The butcher of Santiago, the friend of Nixon and Kissinger, the monster who killed so many Chileans so brutally in service of U.S. corporations, has gone on to meet his maker. Calgary Sun Detroit News

December 12, 2006

Bush Plays On -- On Google News today I see that Bush is going to "unveil Iraq changes in 2007". Unveil? Excuse me while I wretch! Bush is going to unveil a new plan? After the New Year? Bush is going to sit there waiting for the anticipation to build and then pull aside the curtain and UNVEIL his great new plan, which no one has any expectation of being any more enlightened than the last. He's going to unveil it like the 2007 Ford. Still, after all this time, all this death, destruction, despair, disgrace, it's just showbiz to Bush. Just PR. Just as they waited till fall to "sell" their war -- they used that word!! -- now they're going to unveil their latest product, a machine of the latest design. How can Americans put up with such an utter insult to human existence, to creation itself? While Bush and Rove prepare the January photo op, the unveiling of his new old plan to stay the course in different words, soldiers are dying and being maimed every day. The Iraqi men, women and children whom these liars told us they were going to liberate are dying in droves. Living in Hell. There is little in history that you can point to that is any lower than the men who continue to perpetrate this catastrophe.

The good news is that in answer to the question: How can Americans put up with it? is the answer of last November's election in America. Americans are not putting up with it, and Bush's little dance about Iraq is not going to fly. Those days are over, little boy! Bush has another think coming, methinks. One month after the great event, it is clear that the world has changed. In spite of the efforts of the corporate media to roll back the change, to nullify it, to give it the same treatment they give everything, to stomp it out of the minds of the people, it is a new world. Democracy reared its magnificent head, and like a great natural force wiped away all their bluster and bravado, all their phony showbiz politics. Sure, they are still in power to an extent that is shameful to America, but this now-waking giant is not finished yet. Not by a long shot.

If the corporatocracy -- in the face of Bush-Cheney -- believes that it can remake society in the image of itself, into a world of autocratic fiefdoms divided into the owners and the owned, it is indeed in for some lessons in democracy, in history. The regime is clearly a counterhistorical force. They started by trying to reverse history to the first Gulf War and replay it, to undo Clinton, to wipe away "the Vietnam syndrome", the historical fact of the war establishment's failure to make the people swallow that godawful war. Then they tried to push America back to the pre-slavery days, back to before the Declaration of Independence, to nullify the Geneva Conventions, and finally even to wipe away the Magna Carta with their declared nullification of habeus corpus. They had that much audacity, to try to wipe away every advance in human freedom and self-determination and push the world back to the days of kings ("as long as I'm the dictator," Bush said. There seems to be no limit to how far backwards they want to push the historical aspiration of human freedom. They are pushing technology backwards with their refusal to let innovation lift the country out of its reliance on the oil monopolies. They push back technology and culture backwards with their medieval dictates to banish ideas like evolution from the so-called educational system. They want to teach our children to be dolts.

YOU MUST CHECK THIS OUT! This is a great laugh, and brilliant! "I'm the Decider"

December 15, 2006

How the world can turn on the life of a single human being! The strange fate of South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson -- God save us all... Montreal Gazette

December 17, 2006

Majority wants Congress to Investigate Iraq War -- A poll released by the Washington Post and ABC News shows 53% of Americans polled think "Congress should hold hearings on how the Bush administration handled pre-war intelligence, war planning, and related issues in the war in Iraq." Angus Reid

Fighting Class -- Matt Damon said the Bush twins should go fight in Iraq. Crooks & Liars

December 18, 2006

Entertain this Notion -- There is a kind of awakening that people go through in regard to their belief in the legitimate authority of the government, and a lot of people in America have been going through that change lately. When one experiences that metanoia -- that sudden conversion in the way one sees the world -- it is the very model of the phrase "rude awakening". It is rude and rancorous. It is deeply horrifying and shakes one to the foundations. Nevertheless, there is life on the other side.

This is a kind of mind change that more and more people are going to go through when presented with a fraudulent, criminal power structure holding the reins of the government that they have been trained to revere all their lives.

Regarding the events known as 9/11, I never bought the whole show. Of course we were all terrified, it was the most spectacular act of terrorism in history, certainly the consummate media package of terror. But it never added up, from the first day, the fact that the building just collapsed into rubble. That airplane crash would not have caused that. I saw the gash in the World Trade Center from my window. It was horrifying, massive, monstrous. But it could not have been the cause of the obliteration of that whole massive city in the sky into a neat pile of rubble. It's not possible.

But the officials, after much solemn deliberation -- and such very very important men! -- insist that indeed it was the plane crashes that turned the buildings to dust. And perhaps they are to be trusted, because they hold such important positions of power and status in society. But what if they are not?

To suggest that those who hold the reins of power may themselves be criminal runs against 20, 30, 40, 50 years of indoctrination. But anyone who even casually observes The News could see that the administration lies and changes its story constantly, and gets caught over and over.

Why would we ever want to assume that these people who have lied so much in matters large and small would be telling the truth about the strange series of incidents known collectively as 9/11?

Noam Chomsky is correct in maintaining that the administration's fraudulent manipulation of 9/11 in the aftermath is criminal enough in itself, and one does not have to even delve into its behavior before 9/11 to indict these guys as war criminals in the highest degree.

But rather than trying to convert anyone to any overall conclusion about those terrifying and complex events, I would rather suggest people just examine their own stance toward the information, and consider whether it needs tweaking. In particular, our stance toward authority.

Let's just reverse the conditioning for a minute. Passing the threshold to a meaningful inquiry into 9/11 requires a rethinking and a challenge to our fundamental conception of authority and power. Only by examining our stance toward power, can we approach the confusing data about 9/11 with clear minds.

Leaving behind for a moment how things should be -- what if one is confronted in real life with a criminal element that has seized the reins of government power? What if the seizure of power includes an effective control of the principal channels of information so that the criminal activity is not reported as such by the official corporate state media?

What if the government is run by criminals?

Most of the commentary on 9/11 in the establishment media approaches the subject from the supposition that the government tells the truth and its official word is to be trusted, if not in fact revered. This is an unfortunate position given the history of the administration and its shaky relationship to reality.

Even many who are well aware of the administration's tendency to lie immediately classify anyone who disbelieves the official story of 9/11 as a crazy, fringey conspiracy theorist. For many who still trust their government, this is the starting point.

But for those who have staunchly opposed any dissent from the official story of 9/11, I urge just a small adjustment in approach. Not that you accept wholesale anyone's far-out conclusions of what happened on 9/11, but just a neutral starting point. Just start from the standpoint that the official story, like so many other official stories, might be untrue. Then just take a look at the evidence with an open mind.

Here are some 9/11 links to start your investigation.

December 19, 2006

And you may ask yourself, "How did I get here?" Let's see, in November we had an election in which the Republicans were roundly trounced, many of them sent home to their Bible-thumping homegrounds where their consituents have had enough gay-bashing and abortion attacks and want the killing in Iraq to stop. Even before the election, polls made it clear that Bush's Iraq war was causing his whole party to have to fight for their political lives. Now the election is done, the new government comes in in January, a "bi-partisan" committee of well-entrenched old timer insiders has come up with a regarded opinion about the disastrous state of the Iraq commitment, and today's headline is about the Democratic leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, saying that he will consent to sending more troops to Iraq. I think I know why it's called "Congress" because it is populated with consummate con artists. Now we've moved around the circle and returned to square one -- "getting the job done". Now when the Democrats lose their hold on the Senate, the powers that be will tell us it's because they were "too liberal", they tried to force the agenda too far "to the left," that is, toward the will of the people. How cleverly they substitute black for white, up for down, getting deeper in for getting out. These are smooth criminals.

Calamity for Whom? Bush's new Defense czar is preaching that "failure" in Iraq "would" be a calamity. (see Newsday) I got news for you, Jack, it's been a calamity from the beginning. Being there is a calamity. Disengaging from there is step one toward a moderately sane future. Bush wants to keep U.S. soldiers in the bloodbath a few more years to camouflage the utter failure of the enterprise, which was based on lies and bad faith from the beginning and could never hope to be anything but a failure in terms of its stated intentions. But it could be quite lucrative for the likes of Dick Cheney. For that set, those who invest in war, the longer it lasts, the more money they make, oh joy! The "calamity" from the Bush camp's point of view is the perception of failure. They want to reinforce their intended message that the U.S. is the baddest ass country on the planet and you'd better not defy its wishes or you will be burned badly. Instead they've shown the opposite: utter failure and ineptitude. The calamity is manifest. It is not something that would be. It always was from the beginning of this fraudulent, misbegotten adventure of idiots.

Bush's Dwindling Base -- Meanwhile according to a CNN poll, a record 70% disapproved of Bush's war management, up from 64% in the October poll.

A New Progressive Era? Could this be the beginning of a new turn of the 30-year cycle of progressive movements? beyondchron.org

Griffin's Unmasking: The Film -- Prof. David Ray Griffin Video - "9-11: Myth Or Reality?"

December 20, 2006

FAA Man Sounds Off -- According to (Alex Jones' Prison Planet), "A former Boston Center air traffic controller has gone public with his assertion that 9/11 was an inside job and that Donald Rumsfeld and the Pentagon tracked three of the four flights from the point of their hijacking to hitting their targets. In an astounding telephone interview, Robin Hordon claims air traffic controllers have been ignored or silenced to protect the true perpetrators of 9/11." According to Hordon, "I knew that it was an inside job I think within about four or five o'clock that afternoon and the reason that I knew is because when those aircraft did collide and then we got the news and information on where the aircraft were and where they went....if they knew where the aircraft were and were talking to them at a certain time then normal protocol is to get fighter jet aircraft up assist," said Hordon.

December 21, 2006

Winter Solstice

Doubts from High Places -- This site -- patriotsquestion911.com/ -- posts statements of about 50 senior government officials voicing objections about the 9/11 Report. Quite a powerful grouping of comments by authoritative people.

December 23, 2006

Cocaine and Enlistments -- Army and Marine recruiting offices in Tucson were also used by recruiters for running drugs. The corruption is so ubiquitous at this point, the institution of government is so rotten through and through under this regime that promised to bring "honor" back to the White House, what incentive is there for anyone to play it straight? Arizona Star

Blair's Lies Laid Bare -- According to The Independent, "The Government's case for going to war in Iraq has been torn apart by the publication of previously suppressed evidence that Tony Blair lied over Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act."

Bush Administration Tests Military Call Up -- According to The Guardian, "The Bush administration is planning a test run of America's emergency military call-up, stoking speculation about a return to a draft at a time when the White House is considering sending more troops to Iraq."

Nothing Succeeds Like Failure -- Bill McDonald, writing on Portland Freelancer, speaks eloquently about Bush's strange psychological makeup. "Apparently, nothing focuses this man like failure. He seemed energized by the gigantic mess he's made, and eager to make the mess worse. There's clearly something psychological at work here. He's spent his life trying to talk himself out of bad situations of his own making, so maybe this has put him in a comfort zone. He finally has the conflict in Iraq on his own terms, which means it is all screwed up. He seemed defiant and almost happy as he sparred with the reporters about this fiasco. The war isn't wearing him down - he seemed invigorated and joyfully alive ... So what's my theory? Okay, the reason the President seems so animated right now - the reason he is focused and alert - is that the Iraq War has given him something that his sadistic, sociopathic personality craved from the first time he was called mediocre, and teased for being who he is. The Iraq War is his adult version of torturing little animals. He has finally made it to the Super Bowl of Cruelty, and it's really working for him. The reason he's sleeping so well, and talking so energetically, is precisely because - in his twisted way - he is happy right now. Why? Because he's using the Iraq War to torture us all."

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

December 25, 2006

James Brown exits on Christmas Day. Goodbye James. Reuters

What Are They Smoking? At the White House, in particular. Robert Scheer

Ominous Signs of Climate Change -- Bears have stopped hibernating in the mountains of Spain. The Independent

Ms. Cheney's Pronouncement -- The deeply sick Lynn Cheney went on TV and said the trial of Scooter Libby "does not reflect well on our judicial system." Actually the charges were brought by the Department of Justice in the executive branch, not the judicial system. It's actually one of the few actions of the executive branch in the Bush years in which the department was able to act with integrity in spite of pressure from the regime to serve the Bush agenda rather than do its job. Think Progress

December 27, 2006

Bush in a Vice -- An interesting speculative scenario about what might play out in Congress in regard to Bush and Cheney's many crimes by Robert Krall.

I Miss Ike -- Robert Sheer talks about why the military industrial complex is why the U.S. is in Iraq.

Ford's Tarnished Legacy -- Ford pardoned Nixon in advance of any legal action to investigate his crimes. By doing so he effectively put the lid on the wide network of crime underneath Richard Nixon. Many of the criminals who may have been apprehended if the legal processes had been allowed to run their course instead endure to plague America till this day. (Yahoo) Ford also sat on the Warren Commission, which put the lid on the Kennedy assassination. With supreme irony Ford, who helped cover up the crime of Kennedy's murder, received the John F. Kennedy Profiles in Courage award in 2001.

December 29, 2006

9/11 for Dinner -- At a business dinner recently with about 10 associates I was pulled into a conversation about 9/11. There were a few different conversations going on around the table so when someone invited me into a conversation about 9/11, I had to decide whether to abandon the conversation I was in to get into a conversation that would be hard to finish.

I heard some groans across the table, someone said "conspiracy theory", and then someone pointed a question to me: "What do you think? Do you think Bush did it?"

Hmmm. That's a big leap to start a conversation with. Better to start more conservatively, so I addressed the admonitions about conspiracy theory.

"Well, in this case there's no getting away from conspiracy theory because the official story is a conspiracy theory," I said, to blank stares and dangling jaws. "The official story is that the whole fantastic operation was masterminded by some guy on a cell phone in a cave in Afghanistan, right?" More blank stares.

"The problem with entering into a discussion on this subject is that you have to counter 20, 30, 40 years of conditioning," I said. "We were trained from grade school to honor our leaders, to believe in them and trust them. So if someone suggests that they are criminal, there is a lot of inertia working against that idea. I personally don't see any reason to believe anything our leaders ever say. They lie so much and change their stories about everything constantly. I don't see why anyone would choose to believe they are telling the truth about this one particular incident.

"To discuss the subject intelligently you would have to shift the starting point from where it is in the mass media. I don't see why the official story should be the starting point. The starting point should be neutral, nothing, no assumptions.

"We know that Bush and Cheney dug their heels into the sand and did everything politically possible to prevent any inquiry into the attacks. That alone is astonishing, unprecedented. We know the cable news stations started floating the Osama bin Laden theory while the incident was still ongoing and the government unveiled the complete theory within hours, a theory which has never been seriously questioned. In fact, anyone who asks a simple question about any weak point in the official theory is immediately attacked as unpatriotic or simply a nut.

"So I wouldn't ask you to jump to the conclusion that Bush did it. But I would say just start from a neutral position and ask what really did happen. Really look at the evidence. Don't just assume that any deviation from the package that was presented during the catastrophe is some sort of heresy. I see no justification for clinging to the assumption that the political bosses are benevolent and trustworthy in spite of evidence to the contrary. It may make you feel more comfortable, but it has no justification in logic."

December 30, 2006

Fiddling While the Earth Burns -- Since the Bush administration took over the U.S. government, pulled out of the Kyoto protocol and enacted environmentally destructive policies across the board, the U.S. has been a target of scorn and derision internationally, so now many are seizing on the obvious contradiction in the Department of the Interior recognizing that polar bears are now an endangered species, because the melting of polar ice is destroying their habitat. See the Globe & Mail story, "U.S. admits that polar bears are at risk".

December 31, 2006

Troops Losing Heart, Confidence -- According to the Army Times, "When the military was feeling most optimistic about the war ? in 2004 ? 83 percent of poll respondents thought success in Iraq was likely. This year, that number has shrunk to 50 percent. Only 35 percent of the military members polled this year said they approve of the way President Bush is handling the war."

Stilled -- Saddam is dead. Bush finally got the man who "tried to kill my dad." And he is silenced forever, so he can't spill any beans on his former collaborators, the Bush and Reagan administrations. There will be few tears for Saddam, another dictator made and the broken by the United States. As veteran Middle East reporter Robert Fisk says, "Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980, which was the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls? And who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam's weird trial, forbad any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability." When your leadership is so corrupted to the highest levels, when it has proven to the world the bad faith of its policies, you can't even claim credit for bringing a tyrant to justice. There is no credibility, no moral authority. Iraq's puppet government snuffing out Saddam Hussein hurriedly, after a bizarre legal process drenched with blood. Fisk: "But his execution will go down - correctly - as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this - that the West destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington."

9/11: Possible Motives Of The Bush Administration -- By David Ray Griffin. See Global Research

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