NOTES
September 3, 2003
The Worst Outrage of All -- How can this go on? With major evidence of voter fraud and system dysfunction on federally mandated voting machines with no paper trail, the president of the major voting machine company has proclaimed his commitment to get Bush and Cheney elected! What kind of third world banana republic has the U.S. become? See Cleveland.com. More on the Diebold crisis of democracy from the University of Iowa and also here. Coca Cola is pushing hard to keep its influence in public schools and keep its opportunity to brainwash kids to use its products within the educational environment. See the New York Times. Check out Free Speech News to see how Herr Ashcroft's Gestapo FBI is using the Patriot Act to stifle dissent. Click on MoveOn.org to join the fight against the right wing attempt to undermine democracy in California. Sterilizing Drug Addicts -- what a concept! BBC The vote on Bush's attempts to roll back workers' rights to overtime pay is soon. Let your congressional representatives hear your voice! For more information, click Union Voice. Movie Time -- What Bush did while the WTC and the Pentagon burned. See Take Back the Media. Washington Monthly says "Thanks to White House policy, police departments are understaffed, cops are overwhelmed, murders are up, and killers are getting away." Psychologist Oliver James analyzes the behavior of Mad George in The Guardian Wayne Madsen has some interesting insights into the similarity of methods of the Bushistas and the Nazis on The News Insider. Herr Rumsfeld versus the army. See Boston.com. Maureen Dowd on the Empire of Novices. Making it up as they go along. In the Empire of Corporate Greed, stress and job burnout are on the rise. See MSNBC Harrison Ford chimes in against Bush.
NOTES FROM LIMA
September 4, 2003
The long arm of Clear Channel, the owner of more radio stations in the U.S. than any other company (owned by a Texas crony of GW Bush), reaches all the way to Lima, Peru. The city is now dotted with grungy outdoor advertising signs owned by Clear Channel Outdoor. Since so many of the billboards now only advertise Clear Channel, it appears that they are new, and represent a recent incursion by Clear Channel. Let's talk about something else. Tony Blair, the prime minister who led Britain down a hole into a catastrophic blunder designed by American neoconservative oil industry fanatics, is now trying desperately to change the subject to his "domestic agenda." Good luck, Tony. As Britain tumbles into the Vietnam-style "quagmire" that it had the luxury of avoiding in the 1960s, Blair is going to have a hard time convincing enraged Britons that Iraq is not the major issue of their domestic situation. New information on the Diebold voting machine fraud: "What happened at 3:31 p.m. on election day in San Luis Obispo County California? A file from the Diebold stash examined by Jim March, of Alameda County California, turns out to be from a real election, and it contains real votes. And it also contains a real problem for Diebold, because it is illegal to count the votes before the polls close. Even more interesting: What mechanism was used to get votes to migrate from 57 polling places into a central tally in the middle of the afternoon?" See BlackboxVoting.com, equalccw.com, "Why Diebold Is Not Going to Sue Me", and Diebold Test Notes. This remains the biggest bombshell that has failed to blow in the establishment media. Mark Morford, in "Watching BushCo Crumble" describes the collapse of the whole house of cards that is the Bush administration, but says, "It is not yet time for delicious plates of schadenfreude." If you haven't seen this, take a look at "The World Trade Center Demolition and the So-Called War on Terrorism". It presents a very compelling case, though obviously hugely different from what is commonly believed and from the official story of what happened on September 11. But now that it has been publicly established that the Environmental Protection Agency lied under pressure from the White House about the extent of the carcinogenic pollution caused by the destruction, people who like to imagine that the White House tells the truth may want to think again about what happened that gruesome day. A few facts are worthy of attention. The buildings' collapse looked perfectly smooth and symmetrical, exactly like demolitions conducted with explosives. A third building of the WTC complex collapsed in exactly the same way, and it wasn't hit by anything. The first tower that was hit was the second tower to fall, and by then the fires in both towers had died down from blazes to smoldering. This page is worth considering, or reconsidering. George Bush says, "Bring 'em on" and gets his wish. See TakeBackTheMedia.com. Good news, a break in the momentum of media consolidation by a right wing cartel. A judge has blocked the implementation of new FCC rulings allowing the big media corporations to take over an even greater part of the public airways. See Reuters. Christy says she wasn't told to lie, she did it willingly. Under questioning by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Representative Jerrold Nadler over her allowing EPA statements to be filtered through the White House, which took out information about the extent of the danger of pollution at the WTC site, Christy said, "We didn't want to scare people." Apparently according to Whitman logic it is better to kill them quietly than frighten them. She said she believed the public was not harmed by the White House decision to use reassurances about the level of air quality after the attack. "We were not told to lie," she said. Schwarzenegger's admission in print that he participated in a gangbang (see Buzzflash), has some people angry. See LA Weekly. The Edinburgh News reports that the quick evacuation of the Bin Laden family while U.S. airspace was closed on September 11 was approved by Former White House counter-terrorism tsar Richard Clarke. Clarke, in typical Bush fashion, shifted the blame to the FBI. Welcome to the Third World. Vermont Congressman Bernie Sanders lays out the facts on Buzzflash on the collapse of the American middle class.
CATCHING UP
September 7, 2003
Good Link: WarFolly.com. Calling a Spade a Spade, Michael Meacher, British minister of the environment for six years who quit three months ago, published an article in the Guardian that goes farther than probably any mainstream politician to date in condemning the U.S. and U.K. governments for the war in Iraq, which he says is motivated by desire to dominate the oil-rich Gulf region and the world. In "This war on terrorism is bogus" Meacher says the U.S. government knew about the 911 attacks in advance but did not respond for strategic reasons. And, he says, no serious attempt has been made to capture Bush family friend Osama bin Laden. For an overview and comment on the article, see the Guardian. Here's the MSNBC report of how the White House covered up the extent of the environmental danger after 911, telling people it was safe to move back to their homes in Manhattan when it wasn't really. Is it better to be pleasantly poisoned than alarmed? Retired Marine Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, former U.S. commander for the Middle East who still consults for the State Department, said he fears the US is back in a Vietnam-type of conflict and is in danger of failing. See MSNBC. The Troops Don't Like It. They want Rumsfeld to send them home. Even after earlier public complaints by troops led to harsh disciplinary action, soldiers are coming out against the war and the administration and they are using their names. See Reuters. See also the Chicago Tribune's "Guerrilla war sapping troops". "I'm not here for George Bush's foreign policy," said Sgt. J.J. Chapa, a National Guardsman from Austin, Texas. "I'm here because they sent me. We all have wives and children and we do what we have to do to get back alive." Rove in Hot Water? Ambassador Joseph Wilson revealed that it was Karl Rove who revealed Wilson's wife as an undercover CIA agent. Revealing a CIA agent is a crime that carries a mandatory sentence of 10 years to life. According to Al Marin Raw, "Wilson has announced that he will have his private attorneys petition the Department of Justice demanding that Roverer a/k/a Karl Rove be prosecuted under the 1982 Intelligence Identity Protection Act." Dr. Mohammed Daud Miraki, director of the Afghan DU & Recovery Fund, offers an intriguing analysis of the current structure of power in the world in his piece "The New Paradigm of Forced Socioeconomic Underdevelopment" on Rense.com. According to Miraki, "The collapse of the former Soviet Union ended the post-WW II bipolar dichotomy and gave way to a new mode of economic subjugation that I choose to call the new paradigm of forced socioeconomic underdevelopment. The factors that characterize this new era consist of the absolute power of the United States and its instrument of legitimacy, the post-WW II institutions, especially the United Nations. Cultural imperialism characterizes this era and justifies disregards to the values and traditions of the underdeveloped countries under the umbrella of democracy and human rights." The FCC is moving in on brave Brattleboro, Vermont, radio station Radio Free Brattleboro. See The Brattleboro Reformer. A German public TV station has likened the US to the Roman Empire, and tells why. See the Baltimore Chronicle. Bush to New Yorkers: Drop Dead, writes Harvey Wasserman. On active duty in Iraq, Tim Predmore writes that "This looks like a modern-day crusade not to free an oppressed people or to rid the world of a demonic dictator relentless in his pursuit of conquest and domination but a crusade to control another nation's natural resource. At least for us here, oil seems to be the reason for our presence." See PJStar.com. Bush poll numbers reach new low, 45% job performance approval now, below his 50% rating in August 2001, approaching his 42% rating in January 2001. Fifty two percent say it's time for someone else in the White House. See Zogby. The latest piece by John Kaminski is circulating the Internet. It's called "When The Big Lie prevails, crime pays: The 9/11 murderers were Americans, and they likely won't be caught" It clearly enumerates some of the major questions that Americans now need answers for. See Rense.com, or Serendipity.li. Kaminski: "the claims that Osama bin Laden bombed the World Trade Center have never been proven. And the people who clamor for his hanging stole the 2000 election by preventing tens of thousands from voting, rigged the entire U.S. election system by using secret computer software, stole billions from people in California by manipulating energy markets, used nuclear weapons on Afghanistan and Iraq, continue to go to war over what are later learned to be complete fabrications, continue to cynically kill their own soldiers with various poisons, and have completely changed the character of their country by imprisoning and killing people without trial and passing sham laws that destroyed the U.S. Constitution. These are the criminals the American people continue to believe when they say that Muslim terrorists perpetrated the attacks of 9/11."
USA
September 8, 2003
Re-examinations of the 911 Attacks
Perhaps it is time to clear the mind of the fear that causes one to accept nonsequiturs as truth, and to examine openly the much-obscured events of 911, which have yet to be examined thoroughly in a public forum because of resistance from the White House. While public officials cower before the administration, many in the private sector are moving ahead with their own investigations.In "September 11th And The Bush Administration" Walter E. Davis, PhD, gives his analysis of the inconsistencies and untruths of official explanations of 911. Davis: "Newspapers across the country call for an investigation into Bush’s lies about the reasons for war on Iraq. Many people may accept the fact of Bush’s false pretext for a war on Arab people in a distant place, especially after the fact. However, few people will be as accepting if it is shown that this Administration was complicit in acts of atrocities against its own people. The magnitude of the crisis is readily apparent by noting that 9/11 serves as a pretext for a never-ending war against the world, including preemptive strikes against defenseless, but resource-rich countries. It also serves as a pretext for draconian measures of repression at home, including the cabinet level Department of Homeland Security and Patriot Act I, and its sequel. September 11th has become the cause for numerous other acts from massive increases in military spending and to a Fast Track Trade Agreement for the President."
For those reluctant to entertain the notion that the official explanation is false, here is a section that may serve as a Cliff Notes introduction to the issues:
According to Davis, "Andrews Air Force Base is a huge military installation about 10 miles from the Pentagon. On September 11th there were two entire squadrons of combat-ready fighter jets at Andrews. They failed to do their job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C. Despite over one hour’s advance warning of a terrorist attack in progress, not a single Andrews fighter tried to protect the city. The FAA, NORAD and the military have cooperative procedures enabling fighter jets to automatically intercept commercial aircraft under emergency conditions. They do not need instructions from the White House to carry out these procedures, yet they were not followed.
"American Airline Flight 11 departed from Boston Logan Airport at 7:45 a.m. Between 8:13 and 8:20 a.m. Flight 11 became unresponsive to ground control and radar indicated that the plane had deviated from its assigned path of flight. Two Flight 11 airline attendants had separately called American Airlines reporting a hijacking, the presence of weapons, and the infliction of injuries on passengers and crew. At this point an emergency was undeniably clear. Yet, according to NORAD's official timeline, NORAD was not contacted until 20 minutes later at 8:40 a.m. Tragically the fighter jets were not deployed until 8:52 a.m., a full 32 minutes after the loss of contact with Flight 11."
"Flights 175, 77 and 93 all had this same pattern of delays in notification and delays in scrambling fighter jets. Delays that are difficult to imagine considering a plane had, by this time, already hit the WTC. The plane striking the pentagon is particularly spectacular. After it was known that the plane had a problem, it was nevertheless able to change course and fly towards Washington, for about 45 minutes, fly past the White House, and crash into the Pentagon, without any attempt at interception. All the while two squadrons of fighter aircraft were stationed just 10 miles from the eventual target. Unless one is prepared to allege collusion, such a scenario is not possible by any stretch of the imagination."
"Operation Pearl" by Professor A.K. Dewdney offers an intriguing alternate explanation to the events of 911. Dewdney says, "Under the Operation Pearl scenario, the passengers of all four flights died in an aerial explosion over Shanksville, PA and the remaining three airliners are at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean." Fascinating reading. See Physics911.org
The news (not the corporate TV news of course, but the real news that surfaces selectively in newspapers and online publications) is getting better. The Bush administration had to inflict nearly cataclysmic damage before enough Americans began to wake up and take action to create meaningful resistance to the insane policies of these madmen who have designated themselves our leaders. But it appears to be happening. Some momentum seems to be developing. The Bush administration has now clearly exposed its vulnerabilities. Its inability to cope with the disasters it has created is becoming clearer every day. The Bushistas are beginning to reap the fruits of policies that are driven by the requirements of an ongoing PR campaign which is mounted for the purpose of covering the deals they make with the cronies they reward so well at our expense. With policies made strictly for an ongoing political campaign, there is no capacity to follow through. Its lies are catching up to it. The Bush machine, with all its demonstrably massive power, is looking more and more out of control. The political machine that so deftly exercised what appeared to be nearly perfect autocratic power, is coming apart at the seams.
The appearance of significant resistance to the Death Party is little more than a trace of hope at the moment, but the possibilities are glorious. Do I dare hope for great moments? Yes! We are already in a cataclysmic moment in history. That is established and undeniable. Is it out of the question that it could become one of those times that occur periodically in history when democratic power asserts itself once again and a corrupt regime is toppled? No. It is not out of the question.
The weaknesses of this corporate regime have now been revealed, awesome as its exercise of power has been since 2000. The regime I refer to includes not just the Bush mob, but Fox, Lockheed, most of congress, etc., etc., etc. But there is a power that is much greater in magnitude than this corporate elite, and when that human force is aroused it is volcanic. There is some very powerful energy developing in the US right now. There are chains of events in process which no one on earth can turn back, not even the apparently all-powerful Bush regime. And changes brought about by those events are going to force attention onto some of these areas of corruption that are at the heart of the Bush operation. It's going to be a demanding job of putting out one fire after another for the Bushes. It's hard to imagine how they can put it all in place. The very question is frightening because the thought of the Bush administration feeling forced to engage in desperate acts is too much to contemplate.
But on the bright side, there are some hopeful developments in the news:
According to CNN, "41% of all registered voters say they will definitely vote AGAINST Bush; just 29% say they will definitely vote FOR him. So Bush must woo about seven in ten swing voters..."pollingreport.com The American Civil Liberties Union versus the ironically named Patriot Act. In an extremely encouraging development, Maryland Governor Robert Erhlich ordered an audit on Diebold Election Systems' touch-screen voting machines and the audit is now complete. Wired reports that "Gov. Erhlich charged Science Applications International in San Diego with conducting the audit, after a report (PDF) by researchers at Johns Hopkins University and Rice University discovered serious security flaws in the code for the AccuVote-TS voting terminals." If in this case the truth is outing, it is very likely some appropriate action will be taken before the 2004 elections. Even Republicans -- those worthy of the name in any sense -- are not likely to approve of the idea of black boxes with secret workings controlling the elections of the future. READINGS
September 10, 2003
Business Week on outsourcing war, through Halliburton. Policy as an expression of presidential character. A New York Times editorial. CBS poll: Bush is an economic failure, just like daddy. Bush puts on his union cap. Tries to pretend he can relate to the working man. See the Kansas City Star. An AP staffer does a fact checking job on Colin Powell. Editor & Publisher. Remember Weapons of Mass Destruction? Now that attempts to find such things have come to nothing, U.S. and U.K. war hucksters are concocting new justifications and pretending the other issue was never really an issue. See the Independent.UNTHINKABLE
September 11, 2003
Dr. Carol Rosin, former president of Fairchild Industries and colleague of Wernher Von Braun, tells of how his deathbed wish was to get the idea out that the weaponization of space is a bad idea. See Galactic-server.net. For a great series of articles creating a perspective on 911, see Buzzflash Perspectives. From 6-10 p.m. at the Riverside Church in New York City, there will be a "9-11 International Investigative Film Exhibition & Roundtable" featuring lots of amazing people, including Cynthia McKinney, John Judge, Greg Palast and many more. Fight climate change. actionnetwork.org. , MediaLab merged a map of the 9/11 planes' flightpaths with a map of military bases in those areas. "The flights went through some of the most heavily militarized parts of the country, yet nothing could be done to stop them?" asks The Memory Hole? Corporate baron Ruppert Murdoch, owner of Fox, the New York Post and plenty more, is now on record in favor of authoritarian governments. Regarding his loving relationship with the Chinese government, Murdoch said, "The truth is - and we Americans don't like to admit it - that authoritarian countries can work." See pilger.carlton.com. The strange mind of Schwarzenegger: "How many times do you get away with this -- to take a woman, grab her upside down, and bury her face in a toilet bowl?" See SFGate.
September 12, 2003
It was a gorgeous day in the world's city, New York, which came out in all its glory on September 11. Who would have known by looking that this was a date that signified such horror? There were smiles on people's faces. The women were arrayed in their greatest splendor, all the diversity of the world in one city, a million variations on the theme of beauty. September 11 was a good day.Here are some things to read.
Brian Eno -- yes that Brian Eno, who produced the Talking Heads' Remain In Light, ("And you may ask yourself: How did I get here?"), recordings of David Bowie, Devo, U2 and his own series of Ambient Music -- wrote about propaganda and mind control in The Guardian. He says, "How exactly did it come about that, in a world of Aids, global warming, 30-plus active wars, several famines, cloning, genetic engineering, and two billion people in poverty, practically the only thing we all talked about for a year was Iraq and Saddam Hussein? Was it really that big a problem? Or were we somehow manipulated into believing the Iraq issue was important and had to be fixed right now - even though a few months before few had mentioned it, and nothing had changed in the interim." Mincing Words -- The British parliament released a report exonerating the government of the charge of "sexing up" the intelligence dossier, whatever that means exactly. I don't think there was a definition of terms provided. But the report acknowledged that the not-sexed up dossier did have information that wasn't true, such as the claim that Iraq could strike with a chemical weapons attack within 45 minutes. This was untrue. It could be called a lie, but the report preferred kinder terms such as "unhelpful and potentially misleading." Parliament's report said the bit about the 45 minute attack, which was repeated four times in the government's dossier, "was always likely to attract attention because it was arresting detail that the public had not seen before." And, incidentally, a lie. So while the report did not "sex up" the information, it did not give a "balanced view." Or you could say, it told lies that were used to manipulate the public into going along with a war of aggression, which they never would have accepted if presented to them in those terms. But, it wasn't "sexed up." See dw-world.de/english. Paul Krugman, Princeton economics professor and columnist for the New York Times was interviewed by Buzzflash. Says Mr. K: "There is no economic policy. That's really important to say. The general modus operandi of the Bushies is that they don't make policies to deal with problems. They use problems to justify things they wanted to do anyway. So there is no policy to deal with the lack of jobs. There really isn't even a policy to deal with terrorism. It's all about how can we spin what's happening out there to do what we want to do. Now if you ask what do the people who keep pushing for one tax cut after another want to accomplish, the answer is they are basically aiming to create a fiscal crisis which will provide the environment in which they can basically eliminate the welfare state." The September 8 showing of [Pat] Buchanan and Press on MSNBC included the following quote from recently retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, who spent the four and a half years working at the Pentagon.
BUCHANAN: Do the neo conservative cadres in the special planning unit hype or sex up the intelligent or collate it and cherry pick it and send over to the White House only those things that pointed toward the necessity for war?
KWIATKOWSKI: I think they did. As far as selective use of bits of data, I can’t tell what you they sent to the White House, what they sent to Dick Cheney’s office. I don’t know exactly what they sent. Certainly I could watch Dick Cheney’s speeches and I could draw a conclusion to what I had seen coming out-off those special plans (UNINTELLIGIBLE) similar stuff.
The decision to go after Iraq, as we know, had been discussed even before 9/11...
(CROSSTALK)
KWIATKOWSKI: ... prior before 9/11. I mean...
BUCHANAN: It was a precooked meal.
KWIATKOWSKI: Yes, it certainly was the main course on a meal that they were hoping to eat. And given that, it colored everything that they looked for. The professional intelligence system produces-DIA produces intelligence, CIA produces intelligence. The State Department has intelligence professionals that produce intelligence. That information comes up. If it wasn’t what they wanted, they look for other things...
PRESS: Should Secretary Rumsfeld resign?
KWIATKOWSKI: I think that he should be fired. I don’t think he should resign. To resign and if he and Wolfowitz and Feith resign, that will not send the proper message. That message will be...
BUCHANAN: Do you-are you saying they deceived the president of the United States as to the threat from Iraq and as to the intelligence?
KWIATKOWSKI: I think when you cherry pick intelligence, when you exaggerate linkages that don’t happen to be there, when you mix timeframes -- they would refer to things from 15 years ago with things from yesterday, and this is not the correct way to do it. The intelligence system doesn’t produce it that way. They should have presented it to the president the way the intelligence community produces it. They did not do that. They certainly misled Congress. Did they mislead the president? I can’t say.
An organization of families of victims of 911 have presented a statement on the second anniversary of the tragedy. It says, "Two years ago today our loved ones were tragically murdered in an act of terror that shook the United States and the world. In the time since their deaths, as we continue our personal paths of grieving, we are comforted by the thoughtful and compassionate response of people all over the world who have offered sympathy and support to the victims of these terrible attacks. But much about the US government’s approach to responding to our loved ones’ deaths stands in stark contrast to the common sense words and comforting actions of ordinary people. On this two-year anniversary, we stop to reflect on the dangerous course of current policies and to call for a new approach to 9/11 that is focused on bringing about true security and justice." See peacefultomorrows.org. Senator Tom Harkin led a successful drive to block Bush's attempt to cut out overtime pay protections for 8 million workers.