MEDIA ROULETTE
April 4, 2009
Unconundrum -- Josh Mitteldorf, a senior editor at OpEdNews, who was educated as an astrophysicist has worked with mathematical modeling in a variety of areas and taught mathematics, statistics, and physics at several universities, wrote an article at OpEdNews reporting that "new article in the Open Chemical Physics Journal details chemical evidence from the 9/11 dust of thermite cutting charges." Many find the persistence of these suspicions to be annoying, prefering not to "dwell on the past," rather to move on, get over it. Let the crime go unsolved. It is inevitable, however, that the parts of the official explanation of the collapse of the three WTC towers that day -- or non-explanation, to be more accurate -- that don't stand up to scientific reasoning will eventually be exposed. It is not possible to stop scientific thinking from progressing. Scientists give you "just the facts, ma'am" and it is up to the politicians, pundits, and others to determine what the implications are in terms of their own frames of reference. Those three buildings did not fall because of fire. They fell because of thermite reactions that cut the steel beams into uniform pieces and allowed the towers to fall neatly into themselves. Now that the Bush administration is losing its grip on power, perhaps science will once again be able to progress in an unhindered way. The US may again become a progressive country.
April 14, 2009
Disillusionment and Beyond -- Rob Kall at opednews.com sums up well the precipice at which we the people stand: "It's drizzling this morning, here in Bucks County PA, perhaps representative of the state of America-- so many out of work, the hope for change Obama promised splashed in puddles, with no sign of the clear skys of justice and fairness in sight. Roosevelt said that it was the people who forced him to do the right things. Well, we're at that point now. Obama's lousy appointees are maintaining the status quo that Obama told us would be unacceptable. We-- you, me, your family, friends and neighbors have to get active-- more active than ever. Electing a Democrat did not do the job. It set the stage so the job could be done, but the democrats need to be pushed and shoved or they will sit on their fat, comfortable, well-insured with government health care asses until we make them get off them and do what is right, what America desperately needs to have done."Officials Take Heed -- You can be held responsible for abuses of power while sitting in seats of power. In "The Bush Six" Jane Mayer discusses the improbabile fact that a Spanish court took the first steps toward starting a criminal investigation of six former Bush Administration officials on charges that they had enabled and abetted torture by justifying the abuse of terrorism suspects. Among those whom the court singled out was Douglas Feith, the former under-secretary of defense for policy, along with former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales; John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer; and David Addington, the chief of staff and the principal legal adviser to former Vice-President Dick Cheney. See The New Yorker Loss of Faith -- In a Rasmussen poll, only 53 percent of Americans say they believe capitalism is better than socialism. (rasmussenreports.com). The New York Times Opinionator ran a blog on the subject, pointing out that the terms were not defined in the poll, but then, are they ever? It's quite significant that the word "capitalism" no longer inspires much faith or enthusiasm in Americans. The big capitalists have reason for concern. McVeigh Rises -- At the same time that progressives are disappointed at the continuity by the Obama administration of many of the most outrageous policies of the Bush administration, the whacky fringe right is itching for armed revolution against what they see as a socialist dictatorship under Obama. It is leading to a disturbing rise of violent incidents fueled by right wing maniacs in the mainstream media like Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly. truthout.org.
HEADBLENDER May 4, 2009
A Date with Destiny -- Bruce Fein, former deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan and chairman of the American Freedom Agenda: "The President of the United States, the Attorney General, when I was in office, I took an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States. Meaning, to enforce it. And there's a way out of that. You can issue pardons. You don't have a right to consult the political forces, say, 'I'll just ignore the law.' And in fact, in 2004, we confronted the same problem we had with Nixon. He wasn't going investigate Watergate and the obstruction of himself. That's why I had a special prosecutor, and ultimately an independent counsel. That hasn't been done in this case. But now, the President and the Vice President who authorized this are gone. So, there's no obstacle. If President Obama didn't want to be President and faithfully enforce the laws, he shouldn't be there. . . . This is the whole idea of who we are as a country. If you think the law is handcuffing you, you change the law. The President can't say, 'I just flout the law.' That's what banana republics and tyrannies do." Bill Moyers Journal.Inescapable -- "'We need to look forward,' Obama said. These are the words of someone who doesn't know how to deal with the past." Thomas Darnstädt writing in Der Speigel, a German perspective on the American torture dilemma. Wondering -- Mike Connell's sisters want answers about his death. Shannon Connell: "At first, it was really hard for me to believe Mike was dead because somebody wanted him dead. But as time goes on, it's hard for me not to believe there was something deliberate about it." His death was very convenient for Rove, Bush et. al. Isthmus.com
May 10, 2009
Free at Last
DURBAN, South Africa -- I've been coming here a while now, following the progress of this fledgling democracy, marveling at the flowering of Nelson Mandela's Rainbow Nation, and it continues to amaze me. Yesterday I attended the opening ceremony of Indaba, the travel trade show of Africa. Of course Saturday, May 9, was inauguration day for the new president, Jacob Zuma, but the big buzz here is that the FIFA World Cup is going to take place in South Africa next year. At the opening ceremony of Indaba they threw and extravaganza at which many teenagers were singing and dancing in celebration of their country and its coming out ceremony in the form of the World Cup. I didn't go to the opening thinking I was going to be moved, but in fact I spent much of it holding back the tears of joy as I saw these young kids of a multitude of ethnicities, who have grown up in the post-apartheid era, expressing the joy of their freedom and their young democracy. This country boosts my faith in the future. These kids represent the hope that we old folks have not totally destroyed our world beyond redemption. Thank God for them.The acting CEO of South Africa Tourism, Didi Moyle, represented that same exuberance from a more mature point of view. She told the audience, "We are a very fortunate generation of South Africans. We just completed our fourth election. We were led to democracy by a giant among world leaders..." And to these people, as with China with the Olympics, the World Cup will be its coming out party for the world. It is different from China, in that China entered the community of capitalist nations, but did not become a democracy. In South Africa we see the unleashing not only of economic power, but of all human power when unleashed from the bonds of oppression. It is a deeply spiritual country and its spiritual resources are strengthened by the cross-pollination of cultures, the same ethnic and cultural diversity that apartheid was designed to suppress. It's a joy to behold. Free at last, free at last, good God Almighty, I'm free at last!
It's also nice to experience this place in the post-Bush/Cheney era. It was so painful to be an American during that ghastly occupation. At that time I looked to South Africa as one of the few places that was going through a positive political progression, one of the few places that seemed immune to the Bush/Cheney affliction. Now that Americans have thrown off that particular yoke of oppression, imperfect as things may be, an American can hold one's head up again when traveling in the rest of the world. We have something to be proud of. They tried to turn us into a medieval state and we finally succeeded in throwing them off, notwithstanding their election fraud and their abuse of all channels of power. We have a long way to go, but at least we have begun. If we don't get destroyed by global warming or the utter failure of the world capitalist system we may yet overcome corporatist tyranny. Those young dancers and singers give me new hope. Great Godalmighty!
May 11, 2009
What is with Dick Cheney? Was there ever a more evil, horrible man in politics? I predict that the depth of his evil is yet to be made public. He can't shut up. He can't stand having to give up the role of being the most powerful man in the world, able to wreak havoc behind the curtain while he props up the dunce puppet. Word is that he and Bush are not on speaking terms. What vice president ever stayed on the public stage, casting judgment on every issue after leaving office like Cheney has? Bush has faded into the customary silence of ex-presidents for at least a year or two after leaving office. You rarely hear of them in the early part of a new president's term. But Cheney the madman, in this as in other things, breaks the rules, shatters convention. The Darth Vader force of ultimate evil cannot relent, cannot stop. Now he is spitting his venom at Colin Powell, pronouncing the superiority of obese drug addict bigmouth Rush Limbaugh over Powell -- Oh God! (New York Times) How disgustingly vile can this man be? He is actively campaigning in support of torture. Oh yes, it worked, he said, though no one was ever apprehended or punished for 9/11. And, speaking of that, what did he really mean when he confirmed that the order still stands to leave the hijacked airliner alone as it speeded toward the Pentagon?
May 22, 2009
Cheney on the Run -- I came back from two weeks in Africa where I had taken the opportunity to ignore the American news, and I wasn't eager to re-immerse myself when I came back. I did pick up on some news without really trying and it was demoralizing. I get a lot of e-mails that keep me up on events if I merely bother to go online and check my e-mail. I saw reports of Obama seemingly taking on more and more of the Bush administration's most egregious policies. I find it so demoralizing I don't really want to hear the news. And then I think to myself, have they -- the big powers, whoever they are -- finally succeeded in breaking me, forcing me to submit myself entirely, to become inert politically.The commercials alone on the news are too much to handle. They really grate on me. Some are clever and funny, but most are desperate lies, told hysterically, manipulatively. Noise, brain-scrambling signals, gut poisoning. But somehow I ended up in front of a television and Keith Olbermann was playing on MSNBC. There is Obama arguing against the vast majority of the Senate who voted against providing the funds required to close Guantanamo. And there is Cheney arguing the opposite position, that torture was a good thing, it kept America safe, and people who falsely turn it into a moral issue are treasonous. Cheney, who barely appeared in public when he was the vice president running the show while manipulating Baby Bush, is now one of the most visible political figures in America. Olbermann played some pieces from his speech Thursday after Obama gave his speech to the Senate to persuade them and the American people to his cause.
Obama performed well, made a good case for a good position. He used his capacities as a communicator and analyst for a worthy cause: shaming the entire senate into dropping their opposition to the closing of Guantanamo. His arguments were right, and were forceful. There were some extremely onerous compromises to the right wing fanatics, his statement that the imprisonment of people for years without trial would continue. In any case, it's a compelling drama about real issues. As much as I would fault him for compromising to the Cheneyites' medieval ways in regard to pre-Magna Carta laws about detention without trial, he is still far to the left of nearly all the senate, who apparently don't want to close Guantanamo.
Cheney, on the other hand. Now there is a study. Cheney looks really like a deer in headlights. He looks really scared when he's talking. Much of the demeanor is still there, but he is stripped of the power of his hands on the levers of the most powerful office in the world. His attempts to look tough now come off like fright.
It seems unlikely the man will live very much longer. He was in terrible shape when he took office in 2001. Now he lives in fear. That's very hard on the health. But he apparently is not going to die without making it very clear who he is, what he was, and who was responsible for the most horrendous acts of the Bush administration. He no longer has the Bush puppet to hold up in front of him. Now he has come out into the open. He's pathetic. He has already admitted to his culpability in the administration of torture. Now all he can do is argue to justify it. Call it, as senior Bush did of Iran Contra, "the politicization of policy." But his face, when he attempts to feign eye contact with the audience, looks terrified.
Meanwhile, check out these comments:
Glen Greenwald: "Obama repeatedly invoked the paradigm of The War on Terror to justify some extreme policies ... beginning with his rather startling declaration that he will work to create a system of 'preventive detention' for accused Terrorists without a trial, in order to keep locked up indefinitely people who, in his words, 'cannot be prosecuted yet who pose a clear danger to the American people.' In other words, even as he paid repeated homage to 'our values' and 'our timeless ideals,' he demanded the power (albeit with unspecified judicial and Congressional oversight) to keep people in prison with no charges or proof of any crime having been committed, all while emphasizing that this 'war' will continue for at least ten years. " Salon "This is what fascism looks like ... these policies are now no longer just right-wing dogma but also the ideas that many defenders of his -- Democrats, liberals, progressives -- will defend as well. The more Obama embraces core Bush terrorism policies and assumptions... the more those premises are transformed from right-wing dogma into the prongs of bipartisan consensus, no longer just advocated by Bush followers but by many Obama defenders as well. And that's how fascism happens." Salon Letters Obama was a Constitutional Law Professor -- "I would like to hear some of those lectures: 'You see class, the President gets to decide when the Constitution is applied. This of course is based on the political climate and the President's interpretation of this climate. For the President is our benevolent father who knows what is good for all. Trust in him, especially if he is Harvard educated.' Man it has to be good to be the King." CypressTree8, Salon Letters Bemused Contempt -- "Obama has the air of a man who holds those who stand by the Constitutional order in bemused contempt, so long as we don't cross him; when we do he will denounce us, as he did in this speech, holding us as the equivalents of the 'anything goes' crowd on the margins as 'extremists'. While, I'm sure, SERIOUS journalists just want the president to have the power to secretly break the law (i.e. torture, kill, and preventatively detain human beings) so they won't have to go through the bother of covering it up or arguing that it isn't so bad. Well, if the President believes that those who take for granted that all men and women have inalienable rights are extremist, then the President can go fuck himself." James Levy, Salon Letters Indefinite Detention with No Charges -- is "a standard policy in a totalitarian society in which those in power decide who has what rights according to their whim. In a democracy it would not only be a radical idea but a monstrous idea, being sure to note that the USA is no longer a democracy in any substantial sense." Salon Letters
May 24, 2009
Much Disturbing News -- As the new government morphs into the old one in many of its ugliest features. Frank Rich in The New York Times, writes, "To paraphrase Al Pacino in Godfather III, just when we thought we were out, the Bush mob keeps pulling us back in. And will keep doing so. No matter how hard President Obama tries to turn the page on the previous administration, he can't. Until there is true transparency and true accountability, revelations of that unresolved eight-year nightmare will keep raining down drip by drip, disrupting the new administration's high ambitions. That's why the president's flip-flop on the release of detainee abuse photos - whatever his motivation - is a fool's errand. The pictures will eventually emerge anyway, either because of leaks (if they haven't started already) or because the federal appeals court decision upholding their release remains in force. And here's a bet: These images will not prove the most shocking evidence of Bush administration sins still to come." According to Robert Draper, a Texas journalist who wrote an authorized Bush biography, Rumsfeld gave Bush misleading reports with triumphal photos of war and Biblical quotations, such as: "Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go." Crossing the Line -- Chris Cillizza of The Washington Post's "The Fix", reports how the liberal left is starting to rebel against Obama. He quotes Jane Hamsher, the founder of the Fire Dog Lake blog, saying, "Since he's been inaugurated, Barack Obama has demonstrated a remarkable desire to keep evidence of Bush crimes generally, and Bush's torture regime specifically, concealed. Some of his supporters won't care. But others believe he is betraying promises he made on the campaign trail about transparency, and there is a growing sense that he is becoming complicit in the crimes he is attempting desperately to shield from public scrutiny." Bait and Switch? Sibel Edmonds, former FBI agent who was squashed when she tried to report to her FBI superiors about matters that became central to the 9/11 inquiry, lays out on Bradblog.com how vigorously the Obama administration has moved to keep the crimes of the government secret. What gives? "Despite all the promises Mr. Obama made during his campaign, especially on those issues that were absolutely central to those whose support he garnered, so far the President of Change has followed in the footsteps of his predecessor," writes Edmonds. "Not only that, his administration has made it clear that they intend to continue this trend. Some call it a major betrayal. Can we go so far as to call it a 'swindling of the voters'?" The criminal activity of the previous administration that Obama now seeks to keep covered up, include NSA Warrantless Wiretapping and torture. Meanwhile Obama is apparently considering reviving the military commission fiasco and as Edmonds says, bodies are still piling up in the wars of the Bush administration that are now gradually becoming the Obama wars. Language and Power -- Andrew Sullivan: "What does [Obama] offer? First and foremost: his face. Think of it as the most effective potential re-branding of the United States since Reagan. Such a re-branding is not trivial—it's central to an effective war strategy." And Sullivan now: "The [mainstream media] cannot see the question of torture and violation of the Geneva Conventions as a matter of right and wrong, of law and lawlessness. They see it as a matter of right and left. And so an attempt to hold Bush administration officials accountable for the war crimes they proudly admit to committing is 'left-wing.' And those of us who actually want to uphold the rule of law ... are now the equivalent of rappers urging the murder of white people. And the authorization of torture is reduced, in David's words, to 'controversial Bush-era issues such as interrogation.'" correntewire.com Becoming Complicit -- "As Barack Obama continues his efforts to codify what he has described as the Bush administration's ad hoc responses to terrorism, one particular category of people proves especially nettlesome: "those we cannot try or release." In other words the presumed guilty. In other verbal mood and tense, those who, if we were to try them, we would have to release. By and large, it would seem that the evidence against this class of prisoners is so scanty and, where it does exist, so questionably obtained, that it wouldn't even be possible to obtain an indictment. In the past week, Dick Cheney, our erstwhile Nosferatuan Vice President, has taken to the airwaves to denounce Barack Obama for . . . continuing the policies put into place by Dick Cheney. Liberals are of course outraged, and the manufacturing of consent rolls right along. Cheney's omnipresence gives Obama's prevarication an air of valedictory thoughtfulness, and it certainly appears to be working, as even many of the President's critics on the left seem to believe that he is trying to figure out what to do rather than figure out how to sell what he is already doing." whoisioz.blogspot.
May 28, 2009
General Says Prisoners Were Raped -- In the twisted mind of archvillain Dick (Uriah Heep) Cheney, the "enhanced interrogation" methods "kept America safe." I will give the man credit for really believing this to be true, though he seems so hideously cynical in his every action. So we now know unequivocably that the Bush administration set up an environment so driven by fear and hatred that it led to the lowest forms of abuse in the repertoire of human behavior. Do you feel safer now? Some one said to me today, "You don't think it was sanctioned rape, do you?" Of course I can only speculate. I don't suppose the administration specifically authorized rape. But they opened the door to "enhanced interrogation" methods, which are torture by another name. Waterboarding was specifically recognized as torture in the Nuremburg Nazi war crimes trials. And then there was the great variety of abuse that was revealed at Abu Ghraib, some of which surely qualifies as torture. And of course once events were in motion along that track, they went to the obvious inevitable conclusion of such behavior. The Bush administration set up a frame of mind in which the prisoners were seen as "bad people", terrorists who were attacking the United States, if not the actual perpetrators of 9/11, then people who wanted to plan new attacks like 9/11. The restrictions on torture were lifted and of course it went to the limit. Now we have specific testimony from a general that rape took place under the heading of enhanced interrogations. Is it really such a surprise? Is it so far from what we already knew? No doubt some people have been tortured to death. What we are seeing laid bare now is the very extreme absurd conclusion reached by the flawed thinking of the dinosaur minds of the Bush administration.
May 30, 2009
Obama Sides With Cheney Against Plame -- I guess it should have stopped being bewildering by now as we see Obama morph into Bush-Cheney, but it is still strange to see the Obama administration side with Cheney in the case against him by Valerie Plame, who was a casualty of Cheney's rampage against any who opposed his fraudulent claims to justify war with Iraq. It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers to see in case after case the Obama administration lining up in support of the most egregious offenses of the Bush administration. For details on this most recent demoralizing development, see Citizens for Ethics.The Honeymoon is Over. It was nice, pleasant to have such a cool young president, with a good walk and soaring oratory. Meanwhile, he's sticking uncannily close to the Bush-Cheney script, notwithstanding Dick Cheney's howls. Back to reality. Ted Rall has issued "An Early Call for Obama's Resignation." (see Commondreams.org) "We expected broken promises," writes Rall. "But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory." Rall zeroes in on one of the uglier of President Obama's reversals of Senator Obama's commitment to alter the disastrous course of the Bush administration. Particularly offensive is Constitutional scholar Obama's attempt to extend the Bush policy of claiming the authority of the state to lock you up, hold you indefinitely and deny you due process, which of course the Constitution guarantees. They euphemistically call this "preventive detention". "If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in 'prolonged detention,'" says Rall. "Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK. In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street. Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship... Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence.... In democracies with functioning legal systems, it is assumed that people against whom there is a "lack of evidence" are innocent." That's about it.
June 3, 2009
Obeney -- In "Watching Obama Morph Into Dick Cheney" Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan, discusses Obama's change from his advocacy of change. Remember the scene in The Shining when Jack Nicholson hugs the woman who has just emerged from the bathtub looking elegant and beautiful and all the sudden he sees that she has changed into something horrible. Why is Obama so diligently carrying out the National Security State policies of Bush/Cheney? Who is in charge?
June 24, 2009
Resonating Theme -- In the last month and a half I've been in South Africa, Tanzania, Morocco and Rhode Island. Little time to keep up on things or post to this site, but I saw a very good article a day or two ago to pass on: "Hoping for Audacity" at Huffington Post. Here's another on the same subject at legalschnauzer.blogspot.com, "Is Obama Squandering His Opportunity for Change?". And one more, " Obama's promise of a new beginning now hollow" by Joseph Galloway at McClatchy. Here's a quote: "Oh, he can still talk the talk and he does that incessantly. But he seemingly can't walk the walk. He may still sound like a revolutionary but more and more he looks and acts like George W. Bush, albeit a George W. Bush who can speak a complete sentence in the English language. Obama's approval ratings are beginning to unwind and begin a long downward spiral among those who had believed in the promises of change. There was a golden moment when change was possible, but it is gone now. There was one thing Obama absolutely had to do, even before tackling an economic meltdown and the Wall Street and big bank rip-offs: He had to reassure Americans that we all live under the rule of law; that no one by virtue of holding the highest offices in the land, or having the biggest bank account, is above the law. It was incumbent on new President Obama to step back and let justice be done. Let the investigators do their job, Not only to let justice be done but let justice be seen to be done. But no. He said he wanted to focus on the future, not revisit the past..."
June 25, 2009
The Kettle is Black -- As I listened to Obama's speech about Iran at a press conference a couple of days ago it was encouraging to hear him speaking about universal human rights and so forth in connection with the crackdown on demonstrators in Iran, encouraging because I wasn't sure the American government recognized any universal human rights anymore. But after all the tearing down of human rights during the Bush administration and Obama's refusal to address those constitutional issues, saying he prefers to "look forward" instead, I wonder if those words don't just fall flat in the presence of deeds that contradict them.After Guantanamo, torture, government spying, and so forth, the American government has no moral high ground to lecture other countries about the rights America used to stand for. What is Obama supposed to say to Korea about unfair detentions? And after the way the U.S. has treated demonstrators during the last eight years, what can he say about the right of assembly? As Juan Cole points out, "The number of demonstrators arrested in Tehran on Saturday is estimated at 550 or so, which is less than those arrested by the NYPD for protesting Bush policies in 2004." (See Alternet).
Cole says, "The kind of unlicensed, city-wide demonstrations being held in Tehran last week would not be allowed to be held in the United States. Senator John McCain led the charge against Obama for not having sufficiently intervened in Iran. At the Republican National Committee convention in St. Paul, 250 protesters were arrested shortly before John McCain took the podium. Most were innocent activists and even journalists. Amy Goodman and her staff were assaulted. In New York in 2004, 'protest zones' were assigned, and 1800 protesters were arrested, who have now been awarded civil damages by the courts. Spontaneous, city-wide demonstrations outside designated 'protest zones' would be illegal in New York City, apparently." By not standing up for human rights and constitutional law, including accountability of political leaders who break these laws and "international norms", Obama has undermined his own authority to speak out against abuses in Iran, Korea or anywhere else.
Languishing -- Bob Herbert laments how many of the worst Bush abuses of constitutional rights are continuing under Obama. Why? NYT Festering -- Lawyers for families of victims of the 9/11 attacks say that the Saudi Royals funded 9/11. (See Press TV) for the details. There are 7,630 petitioners in a lawsuit against the Saudi royals, but the Justice Department is standing by a claim that the Saudis have "sovereign immunity". The article says that "The Justice department though is said to have destroyed the critically compromising documents, which had leaked to the lawyers." Isn't there something fundamentally wrong with a so-called department of justice destroying evidence? Isn't the law supposed to be impartial and isn't the court system supposed to be charged with finding the truth, not furthering someone's agenda? It seems that some day, somehow this case has to break open, the suppression of it will have to give way. How long can a story stand that relies on altering the laws of physics to make it legitimate? And this is not just a riddle, this is an incident with far-reaching effects not just on the thousands who lost loved ones in the crime, but on millions who were affected by policies based on the incident. And years later, still very little is really known about the incident. Stuck -- Meanwhile, the WTC site is still a big hole nearly eight years after the collapse. Politicians, the Port Authority and the creepy leaseholder Larry Silverstein, who told TV interviewers that "We decided to pull it," when WTC 7 came down and then collected double on a terrorism insurance policy he took out a month before the collapse, are feuding and tussling over the bucks to rebuild something in the hole that is as large as some cities. What gives? Why the deep dysfunctionality? Can't New Yorkers build a building anymore? What evil lurks in the hearts of men? NY Observer Population Control -- Here's one in the category of "This is so bad I can't even think of it." So don't think of it. You're dead in a few years anyway. According to Natural News, "An Austrian investigative journalist is warning the world that the greatest crime in the history of humanity is underway. Jane Burgermeister has recently filed criminal charges with the FBI against the World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations (UN), and several of the highest ranking government and corporate officials concerning bioterrorism and attempts to commit mass murder. She has also prepared an injunction against forced vaccination which is being filed in America. These actions follow her charges filed in April against Baxter AG and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of Austria for producing contaminated bird flu vaccine, alleging this was a deliberate act to cause and profit from a pandemic." Okay, I may be one of those people who says, "I don't care, kill me, just leave me my peace of mind." Who the hell knows what's going to kill you? There are more possibilities every day. We're lucky the whole mangy species didn't just give up and die long ago. We're piling up so much shit every day, it's got to kill us, and sooner, not later. Still -- forced vaccinations? Thanks anyway, I'd just as soon not. They all thought Karen Silkwood was crazy, too, and Erin Brokovich. Ever read Night by Elie Wiesel? No one believed that guy when he said the Nazis were throwing babies into the air and using them for target practice. Boy they got a big surprise. Not saying there's any connection to this. No one could be that evil now. Of course.
-- David Cogswell