HOUSE OF PAINE

Israel's Haaretz daily newspaper quoted Yakov Edery, the minister for government-paramilitary relations, as saying that the Israeli army used phosphorus shells "in attacks against military targets in open ground".

A spokeswoman for Edery confirmed the report to AFP news agency, saying that Edery was reading the army's response to a query from another Israeli politician.

"This is not his personal opinion, this is what the military told us," said Orly Yechzeken.

Edery said in his statement that the army maintains that phosphorus shells are a legitimate weapon and not forbidden by international law.

"The IDF used this type of munitions according to the rules of international law," Edery is quoted as saying by Haaretz news agency. White phosphorus munitions can cause severe burns and agonising deaths for its victims, leading to demands from many human rights organisations to classify it as a chemical weapon.

The International Red Cross and other human rights groups have long argued that phosphorus weapons should be banned under the chemical weapons convention.

Several media outlets during the recent conflict in Lebanon alleged that civilians had been seen with injuries consistent with contact with white phosphorous.

Emile Lahoud, the Lebanese president, also claimed that the IDF made use of phosphorus munitions against civilians in Lebanon.

Last year officials from the Pentagon acknowledged that US troops had used white phosphorous as a weapon during the battle for Falluja in November 2004, but denied it had been used on civilians.

America is now home to more than 300 million residents. According to census bureau estimates, the 300th million American was born at 7:46 AM tuesday morning. It was only 39 years ago when the US population topped 200 million. Estimates project the population will top 400 million in 2043.


It is now Official!


In reality, the Europeans and others who came to the United States hundreds of years ago all came here “illegally.” They were not invited, nor necessarily welcome. They took it upon themselves to overrun an entire nation, to commit genocide and other horrendous crimes against natives, and at the same time brought along another race of people whom they enslaved. The bottom line is that the entire country was founded by a bunch of racist elitist illegal immigrant criminals.

But some several hundred years later it’s a different story.

The biggest con beyond the obvious criminal actions of our non-elected leaders lies in the fantasy of an active democracy and the illusion of a choice between two political parties that purportedly 'oppose' each other; nothing could be further from the truth. What we have is a form of American Kabuki theatre enabled by the Mainstream Media with phony 'political formats' using dueling desperadoes from both parties that only serve to distract, deflect, divide and confuse Americans. Americans, thankfully, are starting to see through the hoax and are turning their TVs off and tuning them out and looking to alternative news sources on the Internet.

The ugly truth is that both parties serve the same masters and they aren't the American people or even the best interests of America—at least not since the Federal Reserve, Inc (a private entity owned by bankers) was created by the Rockefellers for the Rockefellers and their International Banker friends in the City of London. Having had our money system (and wealth) hijacked for almost 100 years (following the Federal Reserve Act of 1913) has allowed the Ruling Class to create and manipulate debt, interest rates, recessions, and depressions and involve Americans in wars for their economic profits and our human losses, and to continue to do so in Iraq and the soon coming wars with Iran, Syria, and probably China.

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Why is the United States government spending millions of dollars to track down critics of George W. Bush in the press? And why have major American universities agreed to put this technology of tyranny into the state's hands?

At the most basic level, of course, both questions are easily answered: 1) Power. 2) Money. The Bush administration wants to be able to root out - and counteract - any dissenting noises that might put a crimp in its ongoing crusade for "full spectrum dominance" of global affairs, while the august institutions of higher learning involved - the universities of Cornell, Pittsburgh and Utah - crave the federal green that keeps them in clover.

But beyond these grubby realities, there are many other disturbing aspects of this new program - which is itself only part of a much broader penetration of American academia by the Department of Homeland Security.

As with so many of the Bush measures that have quietly stripped away America's liberties, this one too is beginning with a whimper, not a bang: a modest $2.4 Department of Homeland Security million grant to develop "sentiment analysis" software that will allow the government's "security organs" to sift millions of articles for "negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas," as the New York Times reported earlier this month. Such negative opinions must be caught and catalogued because they could pose "potential threats to the nation," security apparatchiks told the Times.

This hydra-headed snooping program is based on "information extraction," which, as a chipper PR piece from Cornell tells us, is a process by which "computers scan text to find meaning in natural language," rather than the rigid literalism ordinarily demanded by silicon cogitators. Under the gentle tutelage of Homeland Security, the universities "will use machine-learning algorithms to give computers examples of text expressing both fact and opinion and teach them to tell the difference," says the Cornell blurb.

At this point, the ancient and ever-pertinent question of Pontius Pilate comes to mind: "What is truth?" Of course, Pilate, being a devotee of what George W. Bush likes to call "the path of action," gave the answer to his philosophical inquiry in brute physical form: truth is whatever the empire says it is - so take this Galilean rabble-rouser out and crucify him already. In like manner, it will certainly be the government "security organs" who ultimately determine the criteria for what is fact and what is opinion - and whether the latter is positive or negative, perhaps even a candidate for the Bush-Pilate "path."

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You might think from all the political noise that something extraordinary happened when North Korea conducted an underground nuclear explosion. But let's put the test, apparently a small-yield, inefficient device, into some perspective.

From a purely statistical point of view, North Korea's test was a very small event. The United States has conducted 1,127 nuclear and thermonuclear tests, including 217 in the atmosphere. The Soviet Union/ Russia conducted 969 tests, including 219 in the atmosphere. France, 210, including 50 in the atmosphere. The United Kingdom, 45, with 21 in the atmosphere. China, 45, with 23 in the atmosphere. India and Pakistan, 13, all underground. South Africa (and/or Israel) one atmospheric test in 1979.

The entire Western world has conspired to remain silent on Israel's nuclear arms, even when Israel assisted apartheid South Africa to build a nuclear weapon.

No one wants North Korea to have nuclear weapons. But, then, no one wants the United States to develop a new regime of “tactical” low-yield, bunker-busting nuclear weapons. We need to examine the intention behind the development of these weapons if we really want to know which is the greater risk. In North Korea’s case, the building of a nuclear bomb is clearly intended to deter the US from an unprovoked attack. In Bush’s case, the plan is to develop bunker-busting nukes that will actually be used in first-strike attacks on heavily-fortified underground sites. There’s a big difference between offensive and defensive nukes and, clearly, Bush is the much greater threat.

We should disregard the judgment of people who are only-too-willing to starve others to achieve their political objectives. Millions of innocent civilians died in Iraq due to American-backed sanctions just as Palestinians in Gaza are suffering now. Nothing is achieved by cruelty which disguises itself as justice.

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Vice President Dick Cheney's stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government contracts.

An analysis released by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) reveals that as Halliburton's fortunes rise, so do the Vice President's. Halliburton has already taken more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney administration for work in Iraq. They were also awarded many of the unaccountable post-Katrina government contracts, as off-shore subsidiaries of Halliburton quietly worked around U.S. sanctions to conduct very questionable business. "It is unseemly," notes Lautenberg, "for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his administration funnels billions of dollars to it."

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With US mid-term elections one month away, it is not surprising to find Washington’s elite criminal factions (neocon and neoliberal) engaged in a new game of political chicken over 9/11 red herrings. The appearance of bickering hides the fact that operatives of both factions are lying. Both sides are cynically continuing the massive bipartisan cover-up of 9/11 and the “war on terrorism."

It is an amply documented fact -- no news whatsoever -- that the Bush administration had absolute foreknowledge of 9/11.

As pointed out by Michael Kane of From The Wilderness, “the American Republic is long dead, and fascism is no longer creeping in this country -- it is solidified and documented as the law of the land."

Both factions of the American elite hold the American populace, and the world, in contempt.

The true “state of denial” is one that fails to recognize this, five years and a world war later.

The origins of the name "Al-Qaeda," and its real arabic connotations prove that every time the Bush administration, Fox News, or any individual who cites the threat of "Al-Qaeda," as a mandate for war and domestic authoritarianism, they are propagating the myth that such a group ever existed.

An organization by the name of "Al-Qaeda" does not exist and has never existed outside a falsely coined collective term for offshoot loose knit terror cells, the majority of which are guided by the Pakistani ISI, Mossad, the Saudis, MI6 and the CIA, that were created in response to America's actions after 9/11 - as the recent NIE report shows.

According to this BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares, the infamous footage of Bin Laden marching around with armed soldiers was a ruse on the part of Osama himself, graciously propagated by the lapdog press, in which actors were hired off the streets, given uniforms and guns and told to look aggressive.

So if the group doesn't exist, where did the name come from?

You have heard before that "Al-Qaeda" roughly translates into "the base," but were you aware that "Ana raicha Al Qaeda" is arabic colloquial for "I'm going to the toilet"?

Would hardened terrorists hell bent on the destruction of the west name their organization after a euphemism for taking a shit?

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The attacks on middle-class jobs are lending new meaning to the phrase "class war". The ladders of upward mobility are being dismantled. America, the land of opportunity, is giving way to ever deepening polarization between rich and poor.

"Free trade" and "globalization" are the guises behind which class war is being conducted against the middle class by both political parties. Patrick J. Buchanan, a three-time contender for the presidential nomination, put it well when he wrote that NAFTA and the various so-called trade agreements were never trade deals. The agreements were enabling acts that enabled U.S. corporations to dump their American workers, avoid Social Security taxes, health care and pensions, and move their factories offshore to locations where labor is cheap.

American employees have been abandoned by American corporations and by their representatives in Congress. America remains a land of opportunity ­ but for foreigners ­ not for the native born. A country whose work force is concentrated in domestic nontradable services has no need for scientists and engineers and no need for universities. Even the projected jobs in nursing and school teaching can be filled by foreigners on H-1B visas.

The myth has been firmly established here that the jobs the U.S. is outsourcing offshore are being replaced with better jobs. There is no sign of these jobs in the payroll jobs data or in the occupational employment statistics. When a country loses entry-level jobs, it has no one to promote to senior level jobs. When manufacturing leaves, so does engineering, design, research and development, and innovation itself.

U.S. industry is still investing in R&D after all; it is just not hiring Americans to do the research and development. U.S. manufacturers still make things, only less and less in America with American labor. U.S. manufacturers still hire engineers, only they are foreign ones, not American ones.

In other words, everything is fine for U.S. manufacturers. It is just their former American work force that is in the doldrums.

The United States is the first country in history to destroy the prospects and living standards of its labor force. It is amazing to watch freedom-loving libertarians and free-market economists serve as apologists for the dismantling of the ladders of upward mobility that made the America of old an opportunity society.

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Following in the footsteps of the House, the Senate this afternoon approved the bill which vests in the President the power of indefinite, unreviewable detention (even of U.S. citizens) and which also legalizes various torture techniques. It is not hyperbole to say that this is one of the most tyrannical and dangerous bills to be enacted in this nation’s history.

The final Senate vote was 65-34. The Democrats lacked the votes for a filibuster and therefore did not attempt one. Twelve (out of 44) Senate Democrats voted in favor of this bill, while only one Republican (Chafee) voted against it. The dishonorable list of Democrats voting for the bill: Carper (Del.), Johnson (S.D.), Landrieu (La.), Lautenberg (N.J.), Lieberman (Conn.), Menendez (N.J), Nelson (Fla.), Nelson (Neb.), Pryor (Ark.), Rockefeller (W. Va.), Salazar (Co.), Stabenow (Mich).

There is nothing in the "detainee" legislation that protects American citizens from being kidnapped by their own government and tortured.

The bill also retroactively gives Bush, the Neo-Cons or any of their henchmen immunity from war crimes charges dating back to September 11. Ask yourself why they would be so careful to protect themselves from accusations of war crimes.

Could that possibly be because they are knowingly committing war crimes?

Up until this point Bush had merely cited his role as dictator-in-chief as carte-blanche excuse for ordering torture - now his regime have the audacity to openly put it in writing - going one step further than even the Nazis did.

The United Nations has announced that opium poppy cultivation in Afghanistan has soared and is expected to increase by 59% in 2006. The production of opium is estimated to have increased by 49% in relation to 2005.

The Western media in chorus blame the Taliban and the warlords. The Bush administration is said to be committed to curbing the Afghan drug trade: "The US is the main backer of a huge drive to rid Afghanistan of opium... "

Yet in a bitter irony, US military presence has served to restore rather than eradicate the drug trade.

What the reports fail to acknowledge is that the Taliban government was instrumental in implementing a successful drug eradication program, with the support and collaboration of the UN.

Implemented in 2000-2001, the Taliban's drug eradication program led to a 94 percent decline in opium cultivation. In 2001, according to UN figures, opium production had fallen to 185 tons. Immediately following the October 2001 US led invasion, production increased dramatically, regaining its historical levels.

The Vienna based UN Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that the 2006 harvest will be of the order of 6,100 tonnes, 33 times its production levels in 2001 under the Taliban government (3200 % increase in 5 years).

Cultivation in 2006 reached a record 165,000 hectares compared with 104,000 in 2005 and 7,606 in 2001 under the Taliban.

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The pretense that the Democratic Party represents some sort of opposition to the Bush administration was punctured again last week when leading Democrats vociferously condemned the anti-Bush speech given by Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to the United Nations General Assembly.

Chavez, who narrowly escaped being murdered in a US-backed military coup in 2002, denounced President Bush personally as “the devil” and criticized American foreign policy as militaristic and imperialist. He told reporters afterwards that Bush was not a legitimate president because he “stole the elections,” and “he is therefore a dictator.”

The day after his speech, Chavez addressed an appreciative audience in Harlem, where he announced the doubling of a Venezuelan aid program to distribute low-cost home heating oil to poor American families. Chavez reiterated his attacks on Bush, calling him “the genocide president” for invading Iraq and sanctioning the Israeli devastation of Lebanon.

Harlem’s Congressman Charles Rangel, one of the senior House Democrats, took the lead in denouncing Chavez. In a statement issued by his Washington office, Rangel said, “George Bush is the president of the United States and represents the entire country. Any demeaning public attack against him is viewed by Republicans and Democrats, and all Americans, as an attack on all of us.”

Rangel amplified on this position at a press conference, declaring, “You don’t come into my country, you don’t come into my congressional district and criticize my president.”

The language is noteworthy, since it is doubtful that there are more than a handful of residents of Harlem who share Rangel’s view of Bush.

The Venezuelan president’s appearance in New York did have one beneficial effect: it brought out into the open for all to see the real solidarity of the Democratic Party with the Bush administration and its role as a diehard defender of American imperialism.

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President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela bitterly and sarcastically assailed President Bush before the United Nations General Assembly today, portraying Mr. Bush as “the devil” who thinks he is “the owner of the world.”

“Yesterday, the devil came here,” Mr. Chávez said, alluding to Mr. Bush’s appearance before the General Assembly on Tuesday. “Right here. Right here. And it smells of sulfur still today, this table that I am now standing in front of.”

Then Mr. Chávez made the sign of the cross, brought his hands together as if in prayer and glanced toward the ceiling.

In case anyone had missed the point, Mr. Chávez drove it home:

“Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world.”

“I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement by the president of the United States,” Mr. Chávez went on. “As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation and pillage of the peoples of the world.

“An Alfred Hitchcock movie could use it as a scenario. I would even propose a title: ‘The Devil’s Recipe.’ ”

“Wherever he looks, he sees extremists,” said Mr. Chávez, who won office by defeating a businessman educated at Yale, Mr. Bush’s alma mater. “He looks at your color, and he says, ‘Oh, there’s an extremist.’ Evo Morales, the worthy president of Bolivia, looks like an extremist to him.”

The United States, he said, is “the gravest threat looking over our planet, placing at risk the very survival of the human species.”

“We appeal to the people of the United States to halt this threat, like a sword hanging over our heads,” Mr. Chávez said.

Needless to say, the speech did not go down well with American officials. John R. Bolton, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, called the remarks “insulting.”

NYT

Who benefitted most by the New York Massacre? Millions were invested before the attack. Hundreds of millions were made the same day. Neither crime received much attention by the US government. Perhaps because friends of the US government stood to gain billions of dollars, in the following years. Trillions eventually will change hands, simply because a great crime was never properly investigated.

Remember those Put Options? "The identity of this person who had foreknowledge of the attack is known and this person's identity is being protected by our government and this is a fact! Period, end of story," reported Jesse Richard, editor of TVNewsLies.com.

"Try to purchase some stock, or some futures, a mutual fund or some put options, without providing your identity. Go ahead and try it! See if you get anywhere. Find out what happens when you tell the investment firm that you want to make a huge investment anonymously. It can't be done.

"Then ask yourself this question: How could someone have placed anonymous put options on American Airlines and United Airlines just prior to the attacks of 9/11? Then ask yourself why no one has investigated this suspicious deal. Ask yourself why there has been no attempt by the US government to identify the person who anticipated huge profits from a disaster that was yet to occur. Is it because the trail possibly leads to the CIA?

Millions of dollars in such options were placed. If the perpetrators had been Islamic terrorists or fellow plotters, wouldn't Americans have heard by now? Logically then, the co-conspirators were high officials in banking, finance or tied to the US government.

How embarassing for the US government and the mainstream media if those who sought to profit from the massacre of nearly 3,000 people were Americans? Curiously, neither the US government nor the media chooses to investigate, thus implicating them both in the plot.

Now I understand that there are many reasons for the ‘official’ authors of history to suppress or distort the facts and to deny all contrarian views.
It is about controlling people's perceptions not only about their government but of themselves as a people. The critical discoveries that came out of my explorations of history are that we live in a society divided by socio-economic class, race and sex; and that the upper class have always preyed upon the lower classes and exploited them for selfish purposes; and they still do. So I learned that we live in a Plutocracy rather than a Democracy. I have always sympathized with the oppressed and despised the oppressor. Of course, my views have never enamored me with the status quo; and that is fine with me. If they did, I would think I was doing something wrong.

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"Why do you hate America?"

This is a remarkably easy question to provoke. One might, for instance, expose elements of this nation's brutal foreign policy. Ask a single probing question about, say, U.S. complicity in the overthrow of governments in Guatemala, Iran, or Chile and thin-skinned patriots (sic) will come out of the woodwork to defend their country's honor by accusing you of being "anti-American." Of course, this allegation might lead me to ponder how totalitarian a culture this must be to even entertain such a concept, but I'd rather employ the vaunted Arundhati defense. The incomparable Ms. Roy says: "What does the term 'anti-American' mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz or that you're opposed to freedom of speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias?" (I'm a tree hugger remember? I don't argue with sequoias.)

When pressed, I sometimes reply: "I don't hate America. In fact, think it's one of the best countries anyone ever stole." But, after the laughter dies down, I have a confession to make: If by "America" they mean the elected/appointed officials and the corporations that own them, well, I guess I do hate that America-with justification.

Among many reasons, I hate America for the near-extermination and subsequent oppression of its indigenous population. I hate it for its role in the African slave trade and for dropping atomic bombs on civilians. I hate its control of institutions like the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, and World Trade Organization. I hate it for propping up brutal dictators like Suharto, Pinochet, Duvalier, Hussein, Marcos, and the Shah of Iran. I hate America for its unconditional support for Israel. I hate its bogus two-party system, its one-size-fits-all culture, and its income gap. I could go on for pages but I'll sum up with this: I hate America for being a hypocritical white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.

After a paragraph like that, you know what comes next: If you hate America so much, why don't you leave? Leave America? That would potentially put me on the other end of U.S. foreign policy. No thanks.

I like how Paul Robeson answered that question before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1956: "My father was a slave and my people died to build this country, and I'm going to stay right here and have a part of it, just like you. And no fascist-minded people like you will drive me from it. Is that clear?"

Since none of my people died to build anything, I rely instead on William Blum, who declares, "I'm committed to fighting U.S. foreign policy, the greatest threat to peace and happiness in the world, and being in the United States is the best place for carrying out the battle. This is the belly of the beast, and I try to be an ulcer inside of it."

Needless to say, none of the above does a damn thing to placate the yellow ribbon crowd. It seems what offends flag-wavers most is when someone like me makes use of the freedom they claim to adore. According to their twisted logic, I am ungrateful for my liberty if I have the audacity to exercise it. If I make the choice to not salute the flag during the seventh inning stretch at Yankee Stadium, somehow I'm not worthy of having the freedom to make the choice to not salute the flag during the seventh inning stretch at Yankee Stadium. These so-called patriots not only claim to celebrate freedom while refusing my right to exploit it, they also ignore the social movements that fought for and won such freedoms.

There's plenty of tolerated public outcry against the Bush administration and the occupation of Iraq, but it's neither fashionable nor acceptable to go as far as saying, no, I do not support the troops and yes, I hate what America does. Fear of recrimination allows the status quo to control the terms of debate. Until we voice what is in our hearts and have the nerve to admit what we hate ... we will never create something that can be loved.

Mickey Z.

The aide (a senior advisor to President Bush) said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernable reality" ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." -- as reported by Ron Suskind, in the New York Times Magazine, 10-17-2004

You’ve got to be pretty lucky to make a $4 Billion killing on a 6-month investment of $124 Million.

Larry Silverstein is the New York property tycoon who purchased the entire WTC complex just 6 months prior to the 9/11 attacks. That was the first time in its 33-year history the complex had EVER changed ownership.

Mr. Silverstein’s first order of business as the new owner was to change the company responsible for the security of the complex. The new security company he hired was Securacom (now Stratasec). George W. Bush's brother, Marvin Bush, was on its board of directors, and Marvin’s cousin, Wirt Walker III, was its CEO. According to public records, not only did Securacom provide electronic security for the World Trade Center, it also covered Dulles International Airport and United Airlines — two key players in the 9/11 attacks.

The company was backed by an investment firm, the Kuwait-American Corp., also linked for many years to the Bush family. KuwAm has been linked to the Bush family financially since the Gulf War. One of its principals and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family, Mishal Yousef Saud al Sabah, served on the board of Stratesec.

Now, consider: The members of a small cabal owned the WTC complex, controlled its electronic security, and also controlled the security not only for one of the airlines whose aircraft were hijacked on 9/11, but the airport from which they originated.

Another little “coincidence” -- Mr. Silversten, who made a down-payment of $124 million on this $3.2 billion complex, promptly insured it for $7 Billion. Not only that, he covered the complex against “terrorist attacks”.

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Looking at the arc of U.S. history, we discover we've been on a downward spiral ever since Ronald Reagan declared war on working people in 1981. Companies cut prices and then cut wages so they can still turn a hefty profit. Folks whose wages have been cut can't afford to shop at midrange stores like Macy's, so they have to buy at "low-wage" discount stores like Wal-Mart. That drives more midrange stores out of business and increases pressure on discount stores to send their prices even lower. To compensate for lower prices, they lower wages so they can still turn a hefty profit. On and on it goes -- until the people working those jobs are no longer middle class and have to work two or three jobs to survive.

Reagan liked to say he was against "big government." What he really meant was that he was against Roosevelt's New Deal. He was against Social Security, the minimum wage, free college education (he ended that in California as its governor), and programs like the WPA. He believed in the discredited concept of "trickle-down" economics -- the theory that if you create a corporatocracy, the rich will nobly spend some of their money to help the rest of us.

In the 1960s and '70s, a group of worried ideologues saw the social upheavals of that era -- women demanding equal pay and reproductive rights, African-Americans demanding voting rights, working people demanding fair wages, activists demanding a clean environment -- and the ideologues thought what they were seeing were symptoms of society melting down.

It confirmed their fear, which echoed a fear of the early founders (John Adams and Alexander Hamilton), that too much democracy would lead to social anarchy. A ruling elite operating under the guise of democracy was the most stable form of government, and if we had a strong middle class like we had in the '60s and '70s, people had too much time on their hands and too little fear.

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The federal government has quietly begun using an incredibly intrusive new census form called "The American Community Survey." Up to 1 million households a year will receive this form.

This new "census" form is 24-pages long, and demands that you lay bare every detail of your life, including how much you earn, what your home is worth, details of your health, when you leave for work, previous addresses, pregnancies, monies received from government, and on and on.

I say demand because you can be fined up to $1,000 for each of the 72 questions you don't answer or which you answer "incorrectly."

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By now the whole world knows that America is none of the things that she purports to be; that is, everyone except the Americans. It is said that America has fifty states but in fact she has fifty-one, Israel being the fifty-first. Perhaps Great Britain could be counted as the fifty-second.

It is ironic that the people who think they are the freest are the most controlled people on earth. It is equally odd that those who think they are part of the greatest democracy the world has ever known do not participate in a democracy at all; nor do they recognize one when they see it. These facts attest to how thoroughly the American people have been propagandized by the corporate media.

A controlled people have no will of their own. They believe what they are told, and they do what their government tells them to do. They have little intellectual curiosity about the world and rarely, if ever, question authority, much less challenge it. They have little or no knowledge of their nation’s history, and are a frightened and timid people that have no conception of reality. None are more effectively enslaved than those who think they are free. Americans are slaves to a corrupt system that preys upon them and tells them how well they are treated.

The evidence visibly demonstrates that both the American and Israeli governments are savage terrorist states.

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The Federal Reserve's plan is so simple; we shouldn't dignify it by calling it a conspiracy. It's merely a matter of hypnotizing the masses with low interest rates while trillions of dollars of real wealth is diverted to corporate big-wigs and American plutocrats.

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In the world's biggest economy, one in eight Americans and almost one in four blacks lived in poverty last year, the U.S. Census Bureau said on Tuesday, both ratios virtually unchanged from 2004.

The survey also showed 15.9 percent of the population, or 46.6 million, had no health insurance, up from 15.6 percent in 2004 and an increase for a fifth consecutive year, even as the economy grew at a 3.2 percent clip.

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While most people have been distracted by the shock and awe of America's military presence in the Middle East, Israel's studiously ignored long war on the Palestinians has descended to new depths of daily living hell.

The accelerating ethnic cleansing of the northern and eastern West Bank threatens to squeeze even the possibility of Palestinian life out of the land. The Jordan Valley is being prepared for illegal "annexation" to Israel.

In Israel's 'total war' on the "liberated" Gaza Strip, the IAF has destroyed the main power station, all major roads and bridges, the sole (unused) airport, several government and civic buildings, and dozens of homes.

Now at least a third of the poverty-stricken inhabitants do not have power or running water. Israel also imposed a total blockade on Gaza, which remains in force today with EU cooperation. This little "war", still raging on, has already killed nearly 200 Palestinians, more than half of them civilians. One Israeli soldier has died in the "fighting".

And more civilians are dying because Israel and the US and the EU and Canada and Britain, all those great democracies, conspired to cut off funds and embargo the finances of the PA when it became too democratic in a free and fair election last January.

The sick, especially children and the elderly, are dying because hospitals have little or no electricity, are running out of fuel, have only the most rudimentary medical supplies (if that) and no money to pay their staff. This is how the US plays politics in the Middle East.

And more war is on the way. Palestine now finds that its struggle for self-determination and survival has been hijacked to serve as a crucible for the next phase of the empire's plan, in which Iran and Syria are hot-branded as "terrorist states" that must also be forcibly "liberated".

The propaganda campaign is going on full-tilt as we speak. Its rules are wonderfully simple; whenever you mention the Palestinian or Lebanese resistance, follow it with this phrase, or its equivalent: "a terrorist group funded and armed by Syria and Iran".

Israel’s siege of Gaza has led to the collapse of the local economy. The UN’s World Food Program (WFP) issued a statement yesterday warning of a humanitarian crisis. “The economy is really reaching rock bottom,” Arnold Vercken, the WFP’s director in the Occupied Territories, declared. “Industries which were once the backbone of Gaza’s economy and food system, such as the agriculture and fishing industries, are suffocated by the current situation and risk losing all viability.”

Gaza’s air, sea, and land borders are patrolled by Israel, and the Olmert government has blocked almost all non-emergency imports and exports into the area. The embargo, combined with numerous Israeli bombing attacks on agricultural land, irrigation pipes and greenhouses, has devastated the farming sector. Gaza’s 35,000 fishermen have been unemployed since late June, after Israel banned all fishing. Other industries and factories have shut down and relocated to Egypt and the Gulf states.

In hindsight, wasn't it obvious that World War III had begun when the world's "sole superpower" declared an open-ended "global war" on an indefinite, multinational enemy?

While the guns have gone silent over southern Lebanon amid a tense ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah guerrillas, civilians continue to die from cluster bombs.

Israel dropped cluster bombs -- anti-personnel weapons that spray bomblets over a wide area - on at least 170 villages in their 34-day offensive, according to Tekimiti Gilbert, operations chief of the UN Mine Action Coordination Centre in Lebanon.

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1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold


2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html


3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html


4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/main632436.shtml

http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886


5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines.

http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004/03/03_200.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitrakis/031004fitrakis.html


6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee.

http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=26

http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx

http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.php


7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates.

http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.htm

http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel27.html


8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes.

http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html


9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates/pfindex.html


10. Diebold also makes ATMs, checkout scanners, and ticket machines, all of which log each transaction and can generate a paper trail.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm

http://www.diebold.com/solutions/default.htm

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The Bush administration has repeatedly demonstrated extraordinary incompetence in a wide range of areas. The response to Hurricane Katrina, the coordination of "homeland security," and the implementation of the Medicare drug benefit top a long list of disasters. These failures have led many to say that the incompetence is attributable to the fact that Bush and other conservatives dislike government, and therefore can't run it well. Nothing could be further from the truth.

President Bush and other conservatives like government every bit as much as any big-spending liberal. The difference lies in what the conservatives want the government to do. Liberals and progressives think that government should be acting to ensure the population a decent standard of living and provide it with essential services like health care and education.

Conservatives want the government to redistribute income upward. This is done through a variety of mechanisms, the most obvious of which are their tax policies, which favor upper-income people. But conservatives want the government to intervene in the market in a wide variety of ways that have the effect of redistributing income from those at the middle and the bottom to those at the top.

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The July report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics lists 113,000 new jobs, all of which are in services.

“Leisure and hospitality” accounted for 42,000 jobs, most of which are waitresses and bar tenders.

“Education and health services” accounted for 24,000 jobs.

“Professional and business services” accounted for 43,000.

Manufacturing lost another 15,000 jobs.

In the US today, government employs 7.7 million more people than does manufacturing. Little wonder we have an $800 billion annual trade deficit when the government sector is larger than the manufacturing sector.

American economists are yet to face up to the fact that offshoring high productivity, high value-added jobs that pay well and replacing them with waitresses and bartenders is a knife in the heart of the US economy.

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The major court ruling on the National Security Agency surveillance program has received scant coverage from the nation’s three major networks. On Thursday, ABC, CBS and NBC all led their nightly broadcasts with the latest in the 1996 murder case of child beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. ABC devoted twice as much time in its broadcast to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story. CBS offered seven times as much airtime to Ramsey as it did to the NSA story. And NBC devoted 15 times more airtime to Ramsey.

The standard Zionist position is that they showed up in Palestine in the late 19th century to reclaim their ancestral homeland. Jews bought land and started building up the Jewish community there. They were met with increasingly violent opposition from the Palestinian Arabs, presumably stemming from the Arabs' inherent anti-Semitism. The Zionists were then forced to defend themselves and, in one form or another, this same situation continues up to today.

The problem with this explanation is that it is simply not true. What really happened was that the Zionist movement, from the beginning, looked forward to a practically complete dispossession of the indigenous Arab population so that Israel could be a wholly Jewish state, or as much as was possible. Land bought by the Jewish National Fund was held in the name of the Jewish people and could never be sold or even leased back to Arabs (a situation which continues to the present).

The Arab community, as it became increasingly aware of the Zionists' intentions, strenuously opposed further Jewish immigration and land buying because it posed a real and imminent danger to the very existence of Arab society in Palestine. Because of this opposition, the entire Zionist project never could have been realized without the military backing of the British. The vast majority of the population of Palestine, by the way, had been Arabic since the seventh century A.D. (Over 1200 years)

In short, Zionism was based on a faulty, colonialist worldview that the rights of the indigenous inhabitants didn't matter. The Arabs' opposition to Zionism wasn't based on anti-Semitism but rather on a totally reasonable fear of the dispossession of their people.

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July appears to have been the deadliest month of the war for Iraqi civilians, according to figures from the Health Ministry and the Baghdad morgue, reinforcing criticism that the Baghdad security plan started in June by the new Iraqi government has failed.

An average of more than 110 Iraqis were killed each day in July, according to the figures. The total number of civilian deaths that month, 3,438, is a 9 percent increase over the tally in June and nearly double the toll in January.

Bush desperately needs the terrorists. They are his last frail hope for political survival. They divert public attention, at least momentarily, from his disastrous war in Iraq and his shameful abuses of the Constitution. The "news" of terror -- whether real or fantasized -- reduces American politics to its most primitive impulses, the realm of fear-and-smear where George Bush is at his best.

So, once again in the run-up to a national election, we are visited with alarming news. A monstrous plot, red alert, high drama playing on all channels and extreme measures taken to tighten security.

The White House men wear grave faces, but they cannot hide their delight. It's another chance for Bush to protect us from those aliens with funny names, another opportunity to accuse Democrats of aiding and abetting the enemy.

This has worked twice before. It could work again this fall unless gullible Americans snap out of it.

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Ecological science, like all science, is relativistic, evolutionary, and progressive; that is, it regards all generalizations as hypothetical and is always ready to revise them. It seeks truth, but never claims to have obtained all truth.

Pop ecology, or ecological mysticism, is the reverse in all respects. It is absolutist, dogmatic, and fanatical. It does not usually refer its arguments back to ecological science (except vaguely and often inaccurately); it refers them to emotions, moral judgements, and the casual baggage of ill-assorted ideas that make up pop culture generally. Ecological mysticism, in short, is only rhetorically connected with the science of ecology, or any science; it is basically a crusade, a quasi-religion, an ideology.

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Are you ready for the red pill?

The defining dramatic moment in the film The Matrix occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises "the truth, nothing more." Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality--something utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turned out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods. In Plato's famous parable about the shadows on the walls of the cave, true reality is at least reflected in perceived reality. In the Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes.

The story is intended as metaphor, and the parallels that drew my attention had to do with political reality. This article offers a particular perspective on what's going on in the world--and how things got to be that way--in this era of globalization. From that red-pill perspective, everyday media-consensus reality--like the Matrix in the film--is seen to be a fabricated collective illusion. In consensus reality (the blue-pill perspective) "left" and "right" are the two ends of the political spectrum. Politics is a tug-of-war between competing factions, carried out by political parties and elected representatives. Society gets pulled this way and that within the political spectrum, reflecting the interests of whichever party won the last election. The left and right are therefore political enemies. Each side is convinced that it knows how to make society better; each believes the other enjoys undue influence; and each blames the other for the political stalemate that apparently prevents society from dealing effectively with its problems.

This perspective on the political process, and on the roles of left and right, is very far from reality. It is a fabricated collective illusion. Morpheus tells Neo that the Matrix is "the world that was pulled over your eyes to hide you from the truth....As long as the Matrix exists, humanity cannot be free." Consensus political reality is precisely such a matrix.

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Hezbollah did not exist until four years after Israel first invaded and occupied southern Lebanon in 1978. The movement grew dramatically following Israel's more extensive U.S.-backed invasion and occupation of the central part of the country in 1982 and the subsequent intervention by U.S. Marines to prop up a weak Israeli-installed government. In forcing the departure of the armed forces of the Palestine Liberation Organization and destroying the broad, left-leaning, secular Lebanese National Movement, the U.S. and Israeli interventions created a vacuum in which sectarian groups like Hezbollah could grow.

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Click Here for More Images from Lebanon

"Israel certainly has a right to defend itself, but no state has the right to "defend" occupied territories."

First, there was one, Little Boy, which the United States dropped on Hiroshima as a bitter war was nearing its end sixty-one years ago today; then came Fat Man, dropped on Nagasaki three days later. Both cities were essentially obliterated.

By the time the Russians got theirs -- Joe (for Joe Stalin)-1 in 1949, the U.S. had 235 in its arsenal. By the time Britain got its first ("Hurricane") in 1953, the U.S. had 1,436 and the Soviets, 120; by the time France had its first 4 and China its first in 1964, the U.S. had 31,056; the Russians, 5,221; and the British, 310.

And those were the big five, the atomic Big Boys, who, for years, made up the "nuclear club." By the time, in 1967, the Israelis reportedly got the first nuclear weapon in their never admitted arsenal of, by now, perhaps 200, the U.S. had 31,233; the Russians, 8,339; Britain, 270; France, 36; and China, 25. By the time, India got its first ("Smiling Buddha") in 1974, the U.S. had 28,965; the Russians, 17,385; the British, 325; the French, 145; the Chinese, 170. By the time Pakistan got its own in 1998, the U.S. had 10,871; the Russians, 23,000; the British, 260; the French, 450; and the Chinese, 400. (South Africa produced six nuclear weapons, but dismantled them as the apartheid era was ending in the early 1990s.)

That was essentially the situation as the Bush administration came into office. But now Bush wants to use Nuclear weapons as anti-nuclear-proliferation devices; anti-proliferation wars as a way to end the "nuclear taboo" and open the door to the "ordinary" use of such weaponry -- talk about diabolical. As can be seen in Lebanon, in Iraq, and in Afghanistan, he certainly has no problem with the radiation.

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Will they speak in anger and frustration of the time of the Great Unraveling, when profligate consumption exceeded Earth's capacity to sustain and led to an accelerating wave of collapsing environmental systems, violent competition for what remained of the planet's resources, and a dramatic dieback of the human population? Or will they look back in joyful celebration on the time of the Great Turning, when their forebears embraced the higher-order potential of their human nature, turned crisis into opportunity, and learned to live in creative partnership with one another and Earth?

We face a defining choice between two contrasting models for organizing human affairs. Give them the generic names Empire and Earth Community. Absent an understanding of the history and implications of this choice, we may squander valuable time and resources on efforts to preserve or mend cultures and institutions that cannot be fixed and must be replaced.

Empire organizes by domination at all levels, from relations among nations to relations among family members. Empire brings fortune to the few, condemns the majority to misery and servitude, suppresses the creative potential of all, and appropriates much of the wealth of human societies to maintain the institutions of domination.

Earth Community, by contrast, organizes by partnership, unleashes the human potential for creative co-operation, and shares resources and surpluses for the good of all. Supporting evidence for the possibilities of Earth Community comes from the findings of quantum physics, evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and religious mysticism. It was the human way before Empire; we must make a choice to re-learn how to live by its principles.

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The sharp escalation of the attacks against Lebanon Friday have made it abundantly clear that the objective of this US-Israeli war of aggression is to demolish Lebanon as an independent and sovereign country.

The war is aimed at transforming the country into an occupied territory controlled by the US and Israel, perhaps through the medium of a NATO “peacekeeping” force. The destruction of Lebanon is being carried out quite deliberately, and with very definite designs. For Israel, it is yet again a matter of annexation of more territory. And for Washington, it is the preparation of new and even bloodier wars.

In Lebanon, the Israeli state is pursuing the equivalent of what was referred to under Hitler’s Third Reich as lebensraum—the killing or expulsion of populations viewed as inferior in order to repopulate their land.

For Washington, the Israeli offensive has a far broader significance. The destruction of Lebanon is seen as a stepping stone to the launching of new aggressive wars aimed at achieving “regime change” in Syria and Iran. The unconditional US support for Israel’s criminal war against the Lebanese people is driven most fundamentally by US imperialism’s strategic goal of establishing its undisputed domination of the Middle East and its oil wealth.

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Why does the George W. Bush administration have any support? Why haven't their mistakes and bad policies led to open revolt by the American people? As Ira Chernus sees things, the answers may lie in the way they talk and the image they project, both of which are linked to some very powerful and cherished American beliefs and stories. Never mind that their actions don't fit with what most Americans want. Ira Chernus, a professor of religious studies at the University of Colorado in Boulder, unravels the stories they're telling. Let's hope the pro-democracy forces -- that's us -- have learned to weave a better story that voters can and will embrace.

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President Bush’s Justice Department has been criticized for letting partisanship guide its work on voting and elections. And party politics certainly appears to have been a driving force in a legal maneuver it just pulled off in Alabama, where it persuaded a federal judge to take important election powers away from the Democratic secretary of state and give them to a Republican governor.

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Is there a relationship between the bombing of Lebanon and the inauguration of the World's largest strategic pipeline, which will channel more than a million barrels of oil a day to Western markets?

Virtually unnoticed, the inauguration of the Ceyhan-Tblisi-Baku (BTC) oil pipeline, which links the Caspian sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, took place on the 13th of July, at the very outset of the Israeli sponsored bombings of Lebanon.

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CNN will surely remind us today that it is Day 19 of the Israel-Hezbollah war - now branded as Crisis in the Middle East - but you won't catch anyone saying it's Day 1,229 of the war in Iraq. On the Big Three networks' evening newscasts, the time devoted to Iraq has fallen 60 percent between 2003 and this spring, as clocked by the television monitor, the Tyndall Report.

Adopted unanimously by the U.N. Security Council on November 22, 1967, shortly after the end of the Six-Day War, the opening section of the resolution emphasizes the "inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war." But the critical part of the resolution says that a "just and lasting peace" can only be achieved through certain measures. The first item on that list: "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflicts."

Also passed unanimously, it was approved on October 22, 1973, in an effort to end the Yom Kippur War. Much shorter than 242, the newer resolution calls on the Israelis and their neighbors to immediately stop fighting, and "to start immediately after the cease-fire the implementation" of Resolution 242.

Israel has defied 65 UN resolutions since 1948

The world community is now approaching four decades since the passage of U.N. 242. And during those four decades, the Israelis have continued to obfuscate, evade, and even deny the plain wording of the resolution. During those four decades they have continued their military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. During those four decades, they have continued their occupation and outright theft of Palestinian land through the construction of dozens of settlements. Over the past couple of years, the Israelis have been building a wall that will, de facto, make permanent their taking of large swaths of Palestinian land. The wall subverts the clear intention of U.N. 242.

The American people need to understand what everyone else in the world understands: The Bush Regime is empowering the Israeli state to push out its borders by stealing land from other people.

This Israeli policy is the source of the Middle East conflict.

It is ignorant and immoral to blame the conflict on Hamas and Hezbollah. These organizations were created by Israeli aggression. Lacking American jet fighters, tanks, ordinance, and resupply, these organizations resort to terror, which is the only weapon that they have. Otherwise, the world would pay no attention as Arabs are ground under by Israeli expansion.

The fault is America’s more than Israel’s. The American government and the brainwashed American public are the source of the conflict. If America did not enable Israeli aggression, Israel would have to behave responsibly and endeavor to co-exist with its neighbors.

Israel is an artificial state created in Arab lands by European colonial powers after World War II. Instead of working to win acceptance and overcoming Arab hostility to Europe shipping off “the Jewish problem” to the Middle East, Israel has antagonized its Middle East neighbors. Israel can play the bully-boy role, because the US acts as Israel’s big brother. With its policy of fang and claw, Israel endangers its own right to exist.

Can five million Israelis, even when backed by the United States, forever suppress hundreds of millions of humiliated Muslims stewing in their humiliation?

This is a recipe for perpetual conflict and the eventual destruction of Israel.

Neocons believe that deception of the American public is a legitimate way for them to achieve their plan.

Bush’s war is not on terror. Bush’s war is on Muslim states not ruled by American puppets.

Over the past week, the American mass media has obediently fallen into line in defense of Israeli violence and aggression. As hundreds of civilians have died in Lebanon and an estimated half a million been made homeless by Israeli bombs and shells, the US media has consistently painted the conflict as a defensive action by the Zionist regime against provocations by “terrorists.”

The American public is deliberately being kept ignorant about the history and reality of the situation in the Middle East, as part of the combined effort by Washington and Tel Aviv to impose their brutal will on the people of the region.

The major television networks and cable channels, through which much of the population receives its information about world events, have played an especially foul role in concealing the real political and social questions. To watch the television news channels and network news programs for a single afternoon and evening is largely to bathe in ignorance and reaction.

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The US is fully and openly legitimizing war as an instrument of foreign policy. This is a continuation of its military aggression in Iraq, and an anticipation of future aggression against Syria, Iran, and other countries. It is bound up with the Bush doctrine of “preemptive war,” which has been embraced by the entire American political establishment and both parties of American imperialism—the Democrats as well as the Republicans.

Washington’s determined effort to allow Israel to continue the slaughter in Lebanon underscores that the current war is part of US imperialism’s drive, by any and all means, to establish American supremacy throughout the Middle East.

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Lebanon proves that everything Bin Laden said was true: “They have come to take your land and your resources; they have come to shame your women and disgrace your culture; they have come to humiliate you in front of your children and heap ignominy on your religion.”

Where was he wrong?

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Perhaps no person on the planet is better equipped to identify and describe American crimes in Iraq than Benjamin Ferenccz, a former chief prosecutor of the Nuremberg Trials who successfully convicted 22 Nazi officers for their work in orchestrating death squads that killed more than one million people in the famous Einsatzgruppen Case.

Ferencz's biggest contribution to the war crimes field is his assertion that an unprovoked or "aggressive" war is the highest crime against mankind.

Ferencz, now 87, believes that a "prima facie case can be made that the United States is guilty of the supreme crime against humanity, that being an illegal war of aggression against a sovereign nation."

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Now that anti-abortion "Choose Life" license plates are legal in some states, I wonder where's the "Choose Choice" option?

On Monday, June 26, the Supreme Court refused to tackle a lawsuit about the matter, ensuring that the "Choose Life" plates -- which originated In Florida -- remain legal in Louisiana, Tennessee and the few other states where they have grown in popularity.

Proceeds from the plates have raised about $4 million for anti-abortion organizations. And according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, if an organization so much as lists abortion as a post-pregnancy option, they won't receive any proceeds.

Despite strong interest, pro-choice license plates only exist in Montana (and as a decal in Hawaii). If you Google "anti-abortion license plates," all sorts of articles pop up about how they are legal in 13 states -- there's even ordering information. But searching for "pro-choice license plates," you get a smattering of the same stories about anti-abortion plates, a few articles about design contests for a pro-choice plate and a few articles about how states like Tennessee allow anti-abortion plates but refuse to authorize pro-choice ones.

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In celebration of the Fourth of July there will be many speeches about the young people who "died for their country." But those who gave their lives did not, as they were led to believe, die for their country; they died for their government. The distinction between country and government is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, which will be referred to again and again on July 4, but without attention to its meaning.

The Declaration of Independence is the fundamental document of democracy. It says governments are artificial creations, established by the people, "deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed," and charged by the people to ensure the equal right of all to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Furthermore, as the Declaration says, "whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it." It is the country that is primary--the people, the ideals of the sanctity of human life and the promotion of liberty.

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A new book by Stephen Kinzer , Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq (Times Books), deconstructs America's disturbingly counterproductive foreign policy through competing critiques of the country's imperialism and its incompetence. His chronicle of America's role in interventions into 14 sovereign nations posits failure and avarice as America's lasting progeny. It is a history lesson Americans can't afford to forget.

The 1893 overthrow of Hawaii's monarch, Queen Liluokalani, launched 110 years of American-led regime changes around the globe. Hawaii's monarch was overthrown by a group of haole (the Hawaiian term for white Americans). These wealthy sugar planters teamed up with John L. Stevens, the American ambassador to Hawaii.

The "convenient" presence of the American gunboat Boston and 200 marines in Honolulu Harbor allowed the haole to lay Queen Liluokalani low. Minister Stevens, in classic American diplomatese, offered a "request" to Boston Captain Gilbert Wiltse: "In view of the existing critical circumstances in Honolulu, indicating an inadequate legal force, I request you to land marines and sailors from the ship under your command for the protection of the United States legation and the United States Consulate and to secure the safety of American life and property."

Hawaii was the first domino to fall. There have been 13 more, and we're still counting: Cuba, Nicaragua, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, Guatemala, Honduras, Vietnam, Chile, Iran, Grenada, Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq. The circumstances are familiar, the parallels eerie.

Americans lack a fundamental understanding of the string of failures that their country has used to feather it's own nest. It's what Studs Terkel, America's historian, calls "National Alzheimer's Disease." Americans have no memory of history or its abiding lessons.

As a result, the checks and balances provided by an educated electorate have all but disappeared from American governance. The fact that public opinion cannot counter America's affection for regime change is a fatal flaw. After Vietnam, shell-shocked policymakers and military apparatchiks keenly felt the sting of the grassroots protests movements. The protests mitigated the government's aggression. No one wanted "another Vietnam." The cost was too high.

But Americans see to have forgotten that lesson.

Cox News Service reports that two separate studies show that Bush, more than any president in history, has invoked the "state secrets privilege" to block lawsuits that supposedly would harm national security.

He used it, for instance, to block a suit by the American Civil Liberties Union against the National Security Agency's eavesdropping on Americans' telephone calls.

Between 1953 and 2001, the privilege was invoked 55 times. The Bush administration has invoked the privilege at least 24 times.

William Weaver, political science professor at the University of Texas-El Paso, an expert on presidents' use of the privilege, likens it to the magic ring in "Lord of the Rings." "They put it on and they disappear, at least from the context of potentially illegal or embarrassing circumstances."

Bush slipped on the ring just last month to block a case brought by Khalid el-Masri, the German who claims to have been mistakenly abducted and tortured under the CIA's clandestine "rendition" program.

It's a creative way of trying to hide the emperor's lack of clothing.

Considering the staggering number of state legislatures and city and town councils across the country that have passed impeachment resolutions, the lack of coverage of the movement is a conspicuous absence in mainstream media.

Illinois, Vermont and California state legislatures have impeachment resolutions pending. The Democratic parties of Vermont, New Hampshire, Alaska, Maine, North Carolina, Wisconsin, Nevada, New Mexico, Colorado, California and Hawaii have all passed resolutions. Then there are the 18 city and town councils that have passed resolutions, with seven more resolutions (including Concord) pending, to say nothing of the 27 local political groups and parties across the country that have adopted impeachment resolutions.

The broad sweep is not surprising as the evidence is well-documented: President George W. Bush lied to Congress and the American people in order to lead the country into war, and continues to conduct illegal wiretaps, sanction torture and violate the separation of powers by picking and choosing congressional legislation.

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The media is a fully-integrated part of the state power-structure. In its practical application, it is more valuable than the military. There are definite drawbacks to using force, whereas, propaganda and public relations tend to be less disruptive to the normal flow of business.

The media’s primary objective is to shape public opinion in a way that elicits support for the corporate agenda. Public TV and the internet pose the biggest threats to that process. They both provide divergent sources of information which eschew the business-friendly filtering process. This explains why the Bush administration installed political appointees at PBS. Their job was to sabotage programs like Bill Moyer’s NOW and the weekly documentary series Frontline. Investigative journalism is a danger to private interests, creating the likelihood that the public will focus more attention on the shadowy activities of big business.

The ultimate goal of any privately owned information-system is to assert complete control over the news-cycle so that events can be arranged in a way that serves the needs of business. The public must be prevented from seeing the conjugal relationship between the state and industry. To achieve this, the media must appear to function independently and speak with many different voices when, in fact, it simply reiterates the same message from numerous vantage points. A simple Google search of any headline story will confirm the truth of this. There is no diversity of opinion in mainstream news. It is regimented and uniform.

Commercial media is designed to stimulate desire for consumer goods and to avoid any information that might instigate greater involvement in the political process. This explains why the vast majority of stories are diversionary accounts of weather-related tragedies and abductions of blond-white women rather than substantive coverage of real economic and political events.

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A 2 percent congressional pay increase scheduled for January 2007 passed by a 249-167 vote last week.

Rank-and-file House and Senate salaries will increase to $168,500. The House speaker and Senate secretary each will receive about $217,300, and the majority and minority leaders of both chambers each will receive about $187,200.

This will be the seventh year in a row that lawmakers have received a pay raise.

Potential voters along every stop of the campaign trail for the November elections should ask those 249 representatives to defend their votes. It should make for some interesting spin.

"I believe the adjective defining the people of this country should be evil-stupid since it entails wickedness coupled by stupidity and ignorance."

Dr.Mohammed Daud Miraki

Click Here for Photographs

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For a textbook example of why America is hated by the Arab world, consider Gaza and the West Bank. There, a brutal Israeli/U.S.-led cutoff in aid has been imposed on the Palestinians for voting the wrong way in a free election.

Immediately after Hamas’s victory, Israel halted the $55 million a month the Palestinian Authority received as its share of tax and customs revenue. Israel demanded Europe and the U.S. also end all aid to the PA until Hamas renounces terror, recognizes Israel, and disarms.

President Bush, though he was conducting a worldwide crusade for democracy and had urged that the Palestinian elections be held and Hamas participate, obediently complied. For months now, U.S. and European aid to the PA, half its budget, has been halted.

The early returns are in. “Surgeons at Gaza’s biggest hospital,” says the Financial Times, “have suspended non-essential surgery for lack of sutures, laboratory kits and anesthetics.”

The latest sign that Republicans have an election-year strategy to shut down voter registration drives comes from Ohio. As the state gears up for a very competitive election season this fall, its secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has put in place "emergency" regulations that could hit voter registration workers with criminal penalties for perfectly legitimate registration practices. The rules are so draconian they could shut down registration drives in Ohio.

Mr. Blackwell, who also happens to be the Republican candidate for governor this year, has a history of this sort of behavior. In 2004, he instructed county boards of elections to reject any registrations on paper of less than 80-pound stock — about the thickness of a postcard. His order was almost certainly illegal, and he retracted it after he came under intense criticism. It was, however, in place long enough to get some registrations tossed out.

This year, Mr. Blackwell's office has issued rules and materials that appear to require that paid registration workers, and perhaps even volunteers, personally take the forms they collect to an election office. Organizations that run registration drives generally have the people who register voters bring the forms back to supervisors, who can then review them for errors. Under Mr. Blackwell's edict, everyone involved could be committing a crime. Mr. Blackwell's rules also appear to prohibit people who register voters from sending the forms in by mail. That rule itself may violate federal elections law.

Mr. Blackwell's rules are interpretations of a law the Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature passed recently. Another of the nation's most famous swing states, Florida, has been the scene of similar consternation and confusion since it recently enacted a law that is so harsh that the Florida League of Women Voters announced that it was stopping all voter registration efforts for the first time in 67 years.

Florida's Legislature, like Ohio's, is controlled by Republicans. Throughout American history both parties have shown a willingness to try to use election law to get results they might otherwise not win at the polls. But right now it is clearly the Republicans who believe they have an interest in keeping the voter base small. Mr. Blackwell and other politicians who insist on making it harder to vote never say, of course, that they are worried that get-out-the-vote drives will bring too many poor and minority voters into the system. They say that they want to reduce fraud. However, there is virtually no evidence that registration drives are leading to fraud at the polls.

But there is one clear way that Ohio's election system is corrupt. Decisions about who can vote are being made by a candidate for governor. Mr. Blackwell should hand over responsibility for elections to a decision maker whose only loyalty is to the voters and the law.

Many people associated with the Religious Right in America would have us believe that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. They foster this lie because they want to force their narrow-minded religious beliefs down our throats.

Have you read the Constitution lately? The words "God," "Christ," "Christian," and "Jesus" do not appear even once. When we see the words "religious" and "religion" in the Constitution, it is in the context of a warning against the use of religious pressure as a weapon of tyranny.

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In what may be the single most astounding fact from the 2004 presidential election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots. And that doesn't even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

"Republicans will keep the House, Republicans will keep the Senate...I'm frankly very optimistic."

Karl Rove (when asked about the 2006 mid-term elections.)

"Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything."

Russian Dictator Joseph Stalin

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"We've turned into this nation of overfed clowns, riding around in clown cars, eating clown food, watching clown shows. We've become a nation of cringing, craven fuckups." --James Howard Kunstler, author of "The Long Emergency"

When I saw this Kunstler quote a couple of weeks ago, I thought it a bit harsh. Then I picked up my morning paper -- and, all at once, I got it.

There, in 120-point bold headline type, above the fold, the lead story of the day, was the "news" that: In less than 24 hours, singer Taylor Hicks would battle singer Katharine McPhee for the title of American Idol!

Clowns. We have indeed become a nation of frivolous, self-indulgent, overweight, undereducated, unserious, clowns. When an event of such monumental unimportance wins precious front-page status, what other conclusion can be reached?

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I'm re-posting this article due to popular demand. Strangely enough, the link below now has a different story. Originally, Snopes declared the status of the claim to be true, but now, with a different wording, they claim it to be false. "The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States (also known as the "9/11 Commission") investigated these rumors and found that although some unusual (and initially seemingly suspicious) trading activity did occur in the days prior to September 11, it was all coincidentally innocuous and not the result of insider trading by parties with foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks."

Original Story Posted October 2003

Claim: In the days just prior to the September 11 terrorist attacks, unusually large quantities of stock in United and American Airlines were shorted.

Status: True.

Origins: On 11 September 2001, four planes were hijacked and used in the Attack on America: American Airlines Flight 11 leaving Boston bound for Los Angeles, American Airlines Flight 77 leaving Washington bound for Los Angeles, United Airlines Flight 175 leaving Boston bound for Los Angeles, and United Airlines Flight 93 leaving Newark bound for San Francisco. Each of these planes was deliberately crashed, killing all on board — two into the World Trade Center towers, one into the Pentagon, and one into a field in Pennsylvania. (Only the delay in takeoff of UA Flight 93 and the actions of the alerted passengers on board prevented it from becoming yet another instrument of destruction resulting in an even greater loss of life.)

The operation had taken years to plan, and the perpetrators knew well in advance which airlines would be affected.

In the month prior to the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, highly unusual trading activity involving American and United Airlines stock was noted by market analysts who at the time had no idea what to make of it. Wildly unusual discrepancies in the put and call ratio — 25 to 100 times normal — were observed in stock options of the two airlines. In one case, Bloomberg's Trade Book electronic trading system identified option volume in UAL (parent of United Airlines) on 16 August 2001 that was 36 times higher than usual.

(Options are wagers that the price of a 100-share block of a particular stock will rise or fall by a certain date. "Puts" are "shorts" — bets the stock price will fall. "Calls" are bets the price will rise. Thus, one who has reason to believe a particular company is about to suffer a terrible reversal of fortune would purchase "puts" against that entity's stock.)

But it was during the final few trading days (the market closes on weekends) that the most unusual variances in activity occurred. Bloomberg data show that on 6 September, the Thursday before that black Tuesday, put-option volume in UAL stock was nearly 100 times higher than normal — 2,000 versus 27 on the previous day.

On 6 and 7 September, the Chicago Board Options Exchange handled 4,744 put options for United Airlines' stock, translating into 474,000 shares, compared with just 396 call options, or 39,600 shares. On a day that the put-to-call ratio should have been roughly 1:1 (no negative news stories about United had broken), it was instead 12:1.

On 10 September, another uneventful news day, American Airlines' option volume was 4,516 puts and 748 calls, a ratio of 6:1 on yet another day when by rights these options should have been trading even.

No other airline stocks were affected — only United and American were shorted in this fashion.

Accelerated investments speculating a downturn in the value of Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch (two New York investment firms severely damaged by the World Trade Center attack) were also observed.

The Chicago Board Options Exchange is investigating each of these trades and at this time is declining to offer comment on its progress. The volume traded and the one-sidedness of the trades, however, have raised suspicions that those who had knowledge of the details of the attacks (e.g., which airlines would be involved and that the World Trade Center was a target) could have been behind them and profited mightily.

http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.htm

The Coalition Provisional Authority, under L. Paul Bremer (who U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi called the "dictator of Iraq") instituted an infamous set of "100 rules" -- rules that privatized Iraq's state companies, threw open its economy to foreign investment, established a flat tax and instituted a dozen other measures that the big-business right has lobbied for around the world -- largely unsuccessfully -- for decades.

They not only slashed corporate taxes and allowed foreign multinationals to take 100 percent of their profits out of the country, they also gave them -- by law -- the same status as Iraqi firms. That means that all the things countries like Iraq do to direct a portion of their foreign investment income into developing their domestic economies are off the table.

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“Matrix” and its sequels offer a useful analogy for anyone trying to make sense of the chasm that has opened between what’s real and what Americans perceive is real. Like the science-fiction world of the trilogy, a false reality is being pulled daily over people’s eyes, often through what they see and hear on their TV screens. Facts have lost value. Logic rarely applies.

Some living in this “American Matrix” are like the everyday people in the movies, simply oblivious to what’s going on beneath the surface, either too busy or too bored to find out. Others appear to know better but behave like Cipher, the character in the original movie who chooses the fake pleasures of the Matrix over what Morpheus calls “the desert of the real.”

Many Americans so enjoyed the TV-driven nationalism of the Iraq War, for instance, that they didn’t want it spoiled by reality. During the conflict, they objected to news outlets showing mangled bodies or wounded children or U.S. POWs. Presenting the ugly face of war was seen as unpatriotic or somehow disloyal to “the troops.” Only positive images were welcome and dissent was deemed almost treasonous.

Even now, Americans still prefer to feel good about the war. They want to believe that the U.S. invasion was just, and that Saddam Hussein really was poised to use weapons of mass destruction. By large majorities, Americans either believe that these weapons have already been found or they don’t care that the Bush administration may have misled the world.

But a fuller explanation for this American Matrix goes back much farther – and like the Matrix in the movie – we know some but not all the facts.

The American Matrix grew out of Republican anger in the 1970s. That anger followed the leaking of the Pentagon Papers which described the secret the history of the Vietnam War and the revelations about President Richard Nixon’s political abuses known as Watergate. Those two disclosures helped force U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam and drove Nixon from office.

For leading Republicans, the trauma was extreme as the party was pummeled in congressional elections in 1974 and lost the White House in 1976. An influential core of wealthy conservatives decided that they needed to assert tighter control over what information reached and influenced the people.

Led by former Treasury Secretary Bill Simon and enlisting the likes of right-wing philanthropist Richard Mellon Scaife, these Republicans began pouring tens of millions of dollars into building a conservative media infrastructure to challenge the mainstream press, which the conservatives labeled “liberal.”

This political/media strategy gained momentum in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan’s image-savvy team worked closely with the emerging conservative media, such as Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s Washington Times which Reagan called his “favorite” newspaper. Meanwhile, a host of conservative attack groups, such as Accuracy in Media, went after journalists who exposed embarrassing facts about Reagan’s secret operations, such as the Iran-Contra scandal and drug-trafficking by the Nicaraguan contras, Reagan's beloved “freedom fighters.”

Conservative activists worked hand-in-glove with Reagan’s “public diplomacy” apparatus, which borrowed psychological operations specialists from the U.S. military to conduct what was termed “perception management.” Their goal was to manage the perceptions of the American people about key foreign-policy issues, such as Central America and the threat posed by the Soviet Union.

“The most critical special operations mission we have … is to persuade the American people that the communists are out to get us,” explained deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force, J. Michael Kelly, at a National Defense University conference.

In the 1980s, the Republicans were helped by news executives in mainstream publications who favored Reagan’s hard-line foreign policy, including New York Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal. Some of these executives turned their news organizations away from the tough reporting that was needed to expose the foreign policy abuses that were occurring under Reagan.

That averting of eyes was one of the key reasons major newspapers, such as the New York Times and the Washington Post, largely missed the Iran-Contra scandal and attacked the reporting of other journalists who uncovered foreign-policy crimes such as cocaine trafficking by Nicaraguan contra forces. A false reality was being created that covered up the ugly side of U.S. foreign policy.

In the 1990s, the interests of the maturing conservative news media and the mainstream news media merged even more fully as both groups found common cause in exaggerating misconduct by President Bill Clinton. Mainstream journalists discovered that they could report sloppily about Clinton and gain the praise – rather than the opprobrium – of the well-financed conservative attack groups.

Though many key facts about Clinton’s Whitewater investments and other “scandals” were misrepresented by the national press, there were no punishments for the reporters involved, only rewards. By contrast, the few reporters who still had the audacity to dig up evidence of past crimes from the Reagan-Bush era found themselves under attack and their livelihoods threatened.

For instance, when San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb revived the contra-drug story in the mid-1990s, he was denounced by the New York Times and other leading newspapers that had pooh-poohed the scandal when it was unfolding in the 1980s.

Even when a 1998 CIA report verified that the contras were implicated in the drug trade and that the Reagan-Bush administration had hidden the evidence, the major newspapers continued to concentrate their wrath on Webb, who was driven out of the profession (He was found dead in December 2004 but that's another story).

The same patterns carried over into the 2000 election in which Democrat Al Gore faced withering attacks on his credibility – often from made-up or exaggerated examples of his supposed lying – while Republican George W. Bush got pretty much a free pass.

Again, the conservative and mainstream media outlets often worked in tandem, with the New York Times joining the Washington Times in misquoting Gore about “inventing” the Internet or claiming that “I was the one that started” the Love Canal toxic-waste cleanup. Again, there were no consequences for reporters who got the facts wrong.

The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, only deepened these tendencies.

The following month, for instance, a group of news organizations completed a press recount of all legally cast votes in the pivotal presidential election in Florida. The original purpose of the recount had been simple: to determine which candidate the voters of Florida actually had picked for president based on votes considered legal under Florida law.

But the recount’s outcome presented a challenge. Regardless of what standard was used for the famous chads – whether perforated, hanging or fully punched through – Al Gore was the winner by a narrow margin. In other words, if the state of Florida had been allowed to count all its legally cast ballots, George W. Bush would not be President. That finding, however, would have certainly drawn the wrath of the administration and many Americans who were rallying around Bush in the wake of Sept. 11.

The decision of the news executives was to simply misrepresent the results. For the leads of their stories, the New York Times, CNN and other news organizations arbitrarily ignored the legal Florida ballots in which voters both marked and wrote in their choice, the so-called “over-votes.”

By claiming, incorrectly, that these ballots would not have been counted in the state-court-ordered recount, which was stopped by Bush’s allies on the U.S. Supreme Court, the media outlets kept up the pretense that Bush was the legitimate winner of Florida and thus the White House. Though this manipulation of the vote tally was noted by a few publications at the time, the false reality of Bush’s Florida victory has become part of the American Matrix.

The Bush administration’s obsession with controlling the flow of information also carries a foreboding sense of doom to anyone who believes in a vibrant democracy. It now appears that Bush’s concept of a terrorist “affiliate” is sliding inexorably toward covering people who present facts that undermine Bush’s “information warfare” goals.

On Feb. 17, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld declared that the battle over information will be a decisive front in the War on Terror and juxtaposed “the enemy” and “news informers” as part of the problem.

“We are fighting a battle where the survival of our free way of life is at stake and the center of gravity of that struggle is not simply on the battlefield overseas; it’s a test of wills, and it will be won or lost with our publics, and with the publics of other nations,” Rumsfeld said.

“We'll need to do all we can to attract supporters to our efforts and to correct the lies that are being told, which so damage our country, and which are repeated and repeated and repeated. …

“Let there be no doubt, the longer it takes to put a strategic communication framework into place, the more we can be certain that the vacuum will be filled by the enemy and by news informers that most assuredly will not paint an accurate picture of what is actually taking place.”

Already, Bush’s allies in the right-wing news media have taken to accusing “news informers” and other critics of Bush’s policies of “aiding and abetting” the enemy and of committing “treason.”

The gravest indictment of the American news media is that George W. Bush has gutted the U.S. Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter – yet this extraordinary story does not lead the nation’s newspapers and the evening news every day.

Nor does the press corps tie Bush’s remarkable abrogation of both U.S. and international law together in any coherent way for the American people.

What’s even odder is that the facts of this historic power grab are no longer in serious dispute.

The American system of government as the world has known it for two-plus centuries – with its “unalienable rights” and its “checks and balances” – has effectively come to an end.

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It has been widely reported, apparently without causing Americans any unease, that the Bush regime has awarded Halliburton $385 million to build concentration camps in the United States. Who are to be the inmates? Certainly not terrorists. The Bush regime has proven inept at catching terrorists, and those few who are captured are kept offshore out of the reach of the courts where they can be tortured and abused. The camps are certainly not for illegal aliens who both political parties want to give amnesty and citizenship.

Concentration camps epitomize the horrors and inhumanity of the Stalin and Nazi era. Why is the Bush regime building concentration camps in America?

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"The 911 Commission's conclusions and recommendations should be totally rejected. Its story is full of lies, distortions and omissions of fact." Following are two of the more than 40 reasons why the official story about what happened on 9/11 is untrue.

First, who were the hijackers? We do not know. None of those named appear on any of the passenger lists released by the airlines. Most important, six of the men named by the government are still alive and have never even been to the United States. We know that because European media (as reported by The Associated Press, the London Telegraph and the BBC) have interviewed them. It is not a matter of mistaken identity not being noticed or someone using a false passport. The commission insists that the people they named were the hijackers but that claim is demonstrably false.

If that most basic claim is false, and the information was available to the commission (which it was), and the commission still claims that it has given us "a full account" of what happened that day based on "exacting research," it's clear that the members are lying. In his book,"The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions," Dr. David Ray Griffin documents all that and concludes the whole report is one long lie.

Second, in the months after 9/11 all of the surviving New York City Fire Department personnel who were on the scene were interviewed. Those oral histories were recorded and withheld from the public until Aug. 15, 2005. Only after losing in court three times did the city of New York finally release them. All 503 are now posted on The New York Times Web site. Why did the city fight so hard to keep them from the public?

It turns out those oral histories reveal details about what was happening in the World Trade Center buildings that are completely inconsistent with the tale told by the commission. Dozens of firefighters and medics reported hearing, seeing and feeling explosives going off in the buildings that collapsed. Why were there explosives, very powerful explosives by all accounts, going off in the buildings? More disturbing, why was the pattern of those explosives identical in some important ways with the pattern used in a planned implosion (or controlled demolition of a building)?

In spite of Connelly's faith in what commission members say, the report seems to be an obvious cover-up. The question that we all need to ask is: What is the commission covering up?

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.

Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.

Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.

Major media outlets have largely ignored reports by The Boston Globe's Charles Savage documenting President Bush's apparent willingness to disregard congressional authority through the use of "signing statements" asserting "that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution."

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Depleted uranium weapons were first given by the US to Israel for use under US supervision in the 1973 Sinai war against the Arabs. Since then the US has tested, manufactured, and sold depleted uranium weapons systems to 29 countries. An international taboo prevented their use until 1991, when the US broke the taboo and used them for the first time, on the battlefields of Iraq and Kuwait.
Depleted uranium (DU) is a weapon of mass destruction (WMD) that was used under the direction of George H. W. Bush and then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney in the 1st Gulf War in 1991. Democrat Bill Clinton used it in the Balkans (and in Iraq, using the no-fly zones as cover) and it continues to be used today in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In Irving Wesley's “Depleted Uranium for Dummies,” he tells us that more than 400 tons were used in 1991; that rose to at least 2,000 tons in the Balkans, more than 1,000 tons used in Afghanistan and over 3,000 tons used so far in the current liberation of Iraq by George W. Bush.
The explosion of DU munitions on the battlefield creates microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble uranium oxide particles that remain suspended in the air and travel around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, contaminating the environment, indiscriminately killing, maiming and causing disease in all living things where rain, snow and moisture remove it from the atmosphere
DU is a death sentence not only for our soldiers and their families but also for all the people whose land is forever contaminated -- with DU attacking the master code of DNA.
Eleven thousand troops have died and over 500,000 are on disability from the 1st Gulf War -- 56 percent of those having served now have serious health problems.
Depleted Uranium use is genocide and a war crime of the highest order. It is now circulating around the world via the trade winds and has been detected in the UK. It will eventually arrive in the US and to add to what already exists here, as exposed recently in a report on LANL (Los Alamos National Lab) detailing Weapons Testing of Depleted Uranium by explosions and fires in the open air in New Mexico, near Santa Fe -- contaminating the area forever. Forty-two states in America are contaminated with nuclear waste, DU weapons manufacturing and testing.
It is clear that the insane are running the asylum. Who are the real terrorists?
In “Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War,” Leuren Moret, a former Livermore Labs expert, provides a deeper analysis of this greatest of all crimes against humanity.

It seems to me that for the idea of evolution to work, at some point, two fish must have given birth to an amphibian; at some point, two amphibians must have given birth to a mammal; and at some point, two apes must have given birth to a human. Now, my old biology book says, "An animal can belong to only one taxonomic family." That is, an animal cannot belong to the set of all lobsters and the set of all kangaroos. And two, the offspring of any two animals also can only belong to the one taxonomic family, that of its parents. Even when cross-fertilizations occur, e.g. the mating of a horse and donkey bringing forth a mule, the mule belongs to the same family (equines) as the parents, even if not to the same species as either.

Changes in Finch beak length appear to show adaptation or micro evolution but it does not seem to be proof that humans are the result of a random, purposeless, materialist universe, slowly being accidentally changed from an amoeba. Micro-evolution is a fact that is plainly observable throughout nature. Macro-evolution is a theory that has never been observed in science.

The language we use influences the thoughts we think much more than the thoughts we think influence the language we use. Physicist, for example, spent nearly three centuries looking for a substance, heat, to correspond to the substantive noun, "heat"; it took a revolution in chemistry and thermodynamics we realized that heat should not be thought of as a noun (a thing) but a verb (a process) – a relationship between the motions of molecules.

Relativity was made possible by Einstein’s insight that “space” and “time’ were not necessarily things, but were functions, relations, models.

I believe that traditional ideas of theism and atheism would have to be changed and redefined if we all said and thought “it” instead of “he” when referring to God. I believe it is this “he” which has given Judaism, Christianity, and Islam that anthropomorphic cast which makes them so unattractive to scientific minds. What they are objecting to is the dualistic image of Big Daddy separate from the universe. A scientist who professes a belief in God is more likely to be talking about “it”; “the order of nature”.

Certainly, nobody, not even the most rabid Bible-smashing professional atheist can deny that all the forces, principles, and laws observable in nature may be aspects of one bedrock underlying in-form-ation system or implicate order active in all times and places. It may be conscious, even; or, if not conscious as we are conscious, It may be “intelligent” in some sense.

This “trans-personal” (or un-personalized) It is invoked by Lao-tse as follows:

Something cloudy and unclear
Before existence and non-existence,
Before heaven and earth,
I do not know its name
So I call it Tao

Perplexed beyond endurance by the paradoxes of quantum physics, Sir Arthur Eddington once wrote, “Something unknown is doing something we cannot understand.”

As for myself, I strongly suspect that a world "external to," or at least independent of, my senses exists in some sense. I also suspect that this world shows signs of intelligent design, and I suspect that such intelligence acts via feedback from all parts to all parts and without centralized sovereignty, like Internet; and that it does not function hierarchically, in the style of an American corporation or Christian theology. I somewhat suspect that both Theism and Atheism fail to account for such decentralized intelligence, rich in circular-causal feedback.

In the words of Woody Allen… "Maybe" is a thin reed to hang your life on but it's all we've got.

The story of the invasion of Iraq and theft of the Iraqi economy is part of a larger story of multi-national corporations and corporate globalization affecting much of the world. Under the guise of "free trade" economic policies that make multinational corporations more powerful than governments. Laws favoring corporations are put in place: less regulation, less commitment to specific locations, and restrictions on government preventing the shift of economic benefit away from small, local business, workers, consumers and the environment. Globalization of trade claims to benefit by trickling down the profit, but in reality it continues to funnel wealth to the top--making the rich richer, the poor poorer and the middle class class smaller.

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In 2005 the US had a current account deficit in excess of $800 billion. That means Americans consumed $800 billion more goods and services than they produced. A significant percentage of this figure is offshore production by US companies for American markets.

The US current account deficit as a percent of Gross Domestic Product is unprecedented. As more jobs and manufacturing are moved offshore, Americans become more dependent on foreign made goods. This year the deficit could reach $1 trillion.

The US pays its current account deficit by giving up ownership of its existing assets or wealth. Foreigners don't simply hold the $800 billion in cash. They use it to acquire US equities, real estate, bonds, and entire companies.

The federal budget is also in the red to the tune of about $400 billion. As Americans have ceased to save, the federal government is dependent on foreigners to lend it the money to operate and to wage war in the Middle East.

American consumers are heavily indebted. The growth of consumer debt is what has been fueling the economy. Social Security and Medicare are in financial trouble, as are many company pension plans. Decide for yourself--is this the economic picture of a superpower that can dictate to the world, or is it the picture of a second-rate country dependent on foreigners to finance its consumption and the operation of its government?

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The United States and Israel have finally agreed on a plan to resolve the decades-long Israel-Palestine conflict. Israel will continue lobbing missiles into civilian areas of Gaza and the West Bank while the US cuts off food and other vital aid to the territories. That way they can maximize the human suffering while preparing the people for a violent death.

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'Destabilization' is, in fact, too mild a term to describe the profound disturbance to the regional and global order which the United States and Israel are creating by their violently hostile approach to the Islamic Republic of Iran and to the Islamic resistance movement Hamas, which the Palestinians democratically elected as their government.

Demonisation and vilification, international isolation, sanctions, boycotts and military strikes, these are just some of the policies and threats directed at both Iran and Hamas. In the United States, pro-Israeli groups, such as the powerful Jewish lobby AIPAC, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, the influential think-tank AIPAC created, are beating the drums of war against Iran, while Israel has led the world-wide campaign to boycott Hamas. Shimon Peres, Israel's wolf in sheep's clothing, even travelled to the Vatican to persuade the Pope to join the boycott!

Not daring to stand up for its own values, the European Union has shamefully joined in the pressure on Iran and the boycott of Hamas.

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As a special advisor to the World Health Organization, the United Nations, and the Iraqi Ministry of Health, Dr. Ahmad Hardan has documented the effects of DU in Iraq between 1991 and 2002.

"American forces admit to using over 300 tons of DU weapons in 1991. The actual figure is closer to 800. This has caused a health crisis that has affected almost a third of a million people. As if that was not enough, America went on and used 200 tons more in Bagdad alone during the recent invasion."

"Everyone seems to be dying of cancer. Every day one hears about another acquaintance or friend of a friend dying. How many more die in hospitals that one does not know? Apparently, over thirty percent of Iraqis have cancer, and there are lots of kids with leukemia."

"The depleted uranium left by the U.S. bombing campaign has turned Iraq into a cancer-infested country. For hundreds of years to come, the effects of the uranium will continue to wreak havoc on Iraq and its surrounding areas."

"They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way... I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people... The Americans do not want to admit that they committed war crimes by using weapons that kill indiscriminately, which are banned under international law."

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Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?"

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price--we think the price is worth it."

--60 Minutes (5/12/96)

The genius of capitalism, if something so insidious may be called that, is that it provides just enough material comfort and hope for enough people to keep them from rebelling. If there is more than a small shift in the people’s level of comfort and hope, things could quickly change. Open rebellion—revolution—might even be possible. Capitalism must keep the carrot, the promise of a better life; a more just and equitable way of living, just beyond the grasp of the working class people. Betterment must appear not only possible, but probable in order to keep the masses striving and thus under control. If the ruling class is to maintain the elite status proffered by capitalism, the working class must never realize that they are playing the game with a marked deck. The system allows only a few winners. Workers were never meant to have pie in the sky—that is only for the privileged elite.

Under the oppressive weight of capitalism, workers will never receive their fair share of the wealth they create for their employers. Eugene Debs once calculated that the average worker receives no more than seventeen percent of the wealth she/he creates. Capitalism is all about maximizing corporate profitability by exploiting the workers and the earth. It is capitalism that is waging war on working class people in every nation on earth. And now the parasites running the country are drawing up plans to bomb yet another sovereign nation that poses no threat to us, perhaps with nuclear munitions. How many more sons and daughters will have to die before we awaken from our stupor? Are we even capable of awakening? Where is the moral outrage that should be finding expression in the streets?

Why are we so afraid to acknowledge that U.S. aggression is interrelated with capitalism, class privilege, war profiteering and worker abuse in every part of the world? Are we just going to sit quietly in our living rooms before the television’s tiny light while the world burns? It appears so.

Since August 2002, nearly 100 detainees have died while in the hands of U.S. officials in the global “war on terror.” According to the U.S. military’s own classifications, 34 of these cases are suspected or confirmed homicides; Human Rights First has identified another 11 in which the facts suggest death as a result of physical abuse or harsh conditions of detention. In close to half the deaths Human Rights First surveyed, the cause of death remains officially undetermined or unannounced. Overall, eight people in U.S. custody were tortured to death.

Despite these numbers, four years since the first known death in U.S. custody, only 12 detainee deaths have resulted in punishment of any kind for any U.S. official. Of the 34 homicide cases so far identified by the military, investigators recommended criminal charges in fewer than two thirds, and charges were actually brought (based on decisions made by command) in less than half. While the CIA has been implicated in several deaths, not one CIA agent has faced a criminal charge. Crucially, among the worst cases in this list – those of detainees tortured to death – only half have resulted in punishment; the steepest sentence for anyone involved in a torture-related death: five months in jail.

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Even Rumsfeld apologists are probably shocked at the breadth and arrogance of this sinister plan. The military is being hijacked in full view of the American people and turned into the world’s most-lethal security apparatus. Under Rumsfeld’s direction, special units operating clandestinely around the globe will perform criminal renditions, assassinations, sabotage, and acts of piracy all in the name of corporate profiteering.

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This country, the United States, has already become a fascist police state. The government lies to the people, spies on citizens, kidnaps, imprisons without trial, engages in torture, and is leading the country to ruin. Incredibly, all of this is done with the support of its citizens. How is this possible? How can a democratic government abandon the people it serves and squander blood, treasure, and traditions in an irrational pursuit of global domination?

First, realize that the government no longer serves the people. It has been bought by the transnational corporate power structure and serves them, and is now simply the military arm of the corporations. Meanwhile, the corporate media fulfills the propaganda role – they control what the people experience as reality and therefore control how the people think. They have the public so filled with fear that they will agree to anything.

The ruling class knows, of course, that the USA is headed for ruin, but it does not care because it is transnational, by which I mean the corporate structure transcends the nation-state structure. The have no allegiance to any nation or people; their only allegiance is to profit and power.

The disappearance of union jobs, outsourcing and downsizing has been the crowning achievement of American business relations over the past 30 years or so. The other factors contributing to what has been called "the fascist trajectory" includes low taxes, various forms of corporate welfare, the decimation of small businesses, and the ability of corporations to discharge obligations to employees, to the environment, and to the country as a whole.

By the prosecution of war the corporations plunder the riches of this nation while simultaneously intent on gaining control of the entire Middle East region’s oil reserves so that they can continue to dominate the world for decades to come.

On the other side of this equation is an American population that resembles spoiled rich children. They are lazy, feel entitled to whatever they want, and have no sense of responsibility to the world community. They are not evil by their own design, but are willfully blind to evil so long as it does not interfere with their comfortable existence. They do not seek out truth, but accept as truth the corporate propaganda stream because it is easy and because it tells them what they want to hear which is that they are the victims, the righteous victims of a terrible outside evil. If they will just surrender their individual rights, their money, their children, their freedom, then the government will make them safe to go on with their empty lives of mass consumption.

I think it will take outside intervention to counter the force of the western corporate military machine, to contain and reverse their belligerent ambitions, to destroy their war making powers, and ultimately to hold them accountable for what they have done. My hope is that one day Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearle, Rice, Feith, Bolton, and the rest of the war making administration will be tried at the international court in the Hague, just as the Nazi war makers were tried in Nuremberg, and I hope that a good number of them will be hanged for what they have done.

The richest 1 percent of Americans now get about 15 percent of total US income, close to the 18 percent the same small group had in 1913...the Gilded Age...the days of the robber barons. (By 1963, their share had been trimmed back to 8 percent.)

A recent Congressional Budget Office Report shows that between 1979 and 2003, the top 1 percent of households enjoyed a 129 percent gain in after-tax income after inflation. That compares with 15 percent for the middle one-fifth of all households and 4 percent for the bottom fifth. This research also shows that the richest of the rich, the top 1/1000th , enjoyed a 497 percent gain in wage and salary income between 1972 and 2001. Those at the 99th percentile, who made an average $1.7 million per year in 2001, enjoyed a mere 181 percent gain.

During the height of the great depression of the late 1920-30s, Franklin D. Roosevelt changed the face of America by giving Americans the ‘New Deal.’ Roosevelt’s New Deal created the present Social Security system, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Civilian Conservation Corps, along with a wealth of other programs of social uplift. These social programs were intended to lift the nation out of the depression and to put people to work rebuilding the nation’s crumbling infrastructure. Because of its benefit to working class people and to the common good, Roosevelt’s New Deal has been under assault since its inception: a process that continues to this day.

The idea of an American president giving aide to the nation’s working class was more than some conservatives could stomach. Roosevelt’s detractors declared that he was “a traitor to his class.” Between the years 1929-1933 the unemployment rate rose from 4% to 25%. Fortunately, Roosevelt’s economic policies worked as intended. They lifted the nation out of depression and put the nation back on its feet. Millions of the unemployed went back to work which in turn stimulated the economy. Social security is a concept borrowed from socialism in that it provides for the common good rather than the more customary privatized wealth of capitalism.

No one will ever accuse George Bush of being a traitor to his class. Bush’s self proclaimed political base consists of the wealthiest one percent of the population; and he has rewarded them handsomely for their financial support. You see, elites think of themselves as privileged; more deserving of wealth than the rest of us. The elite believe they are our moral and intellectual superiors as a right of birth, like royalty. Thus, in only a few years of transparent class warfare Bush has managed to turn the huge budget surplus he inherited into the greatest national debt in history. At the same time he has essentially bankrupted the nation both economically and morally. During this time of economic downturn suffered by working people (the fat cats on Wall Street are still making money), Bush has managed to provide enormous welfare to the rich by stealing from the poor. His every policy is detrimental to working class people while simultaneously beneficial to the wealthy. There can be no question about Bush’s class loyalty, or the class loyalty of those who preceded him into the White House.

One might suppose that Bush’s brutish behavior is aberrant. To the contrary, this is exactly how Plutocracy is supposed to work. Those in power maintain their positions of privilege by operating beyond the pale of the law; by enjoying advantages that the rest of us do not. Every policy enacted by Bush demonstrates his attitude of contempt for the common people, as well as for the rule of law. Mr. Bush sees himself as an emperor, not as a servant of the people. The emperor views the people as his servants. He takes from them what he wants and does not hesitate to send them to die in foreign conflicts not of their making. The defining character of the emperor is hubris that knows no bounds and a profound lack of respect for ordinary people in their daily struggles.

Bill Clinton, like those who came before him, exhibited many of the same traits as Bush. His policies were equally harmful to working class people, but he was more clandestine than Bush and a superior actor. Clinton passed welfare reform legislation that made life more difficult for millions of poor families; he bombed Kosovo relentlessly for seventy-eight days and nights, killing thousands of civilians; he maintained an economic embargo on the people of Iraq that resulted in the death of more than half a million people, most of them children. This is not a Democrat versus Republican or liberal versus conservative issue. It is a class issue; and it has always been a class issue. This is Plutocracy in action, capitalism’s finest frenzy. American history consists of thousands of similar episodes that have resulted in the genocide of millions of innocent victims in every part of the planet. Capitalism is what capitalism does; and what it does is not pretty or humane.

According to journalist Bill Moyers, 17% of Americans are living below the poverty line. The middle class is rapidly dissolving into the under class. Take home wages are falling even as worker productivity continues to rise. Workers are producing more goods and services, but their productivity is rewarded by lower pay and longer hours. Corporate CEOs are realizing obscene profits but workers are losing their pensions. Every penny squeezed from the workers means increased wealth for the corporation. Under capitalism, profits are king and people are just a disposable source of cheap labor.

Every year more families are falling deeper into debt. Last year Bush signed into law legislation that was written by banking and credit card industry lobbyists. The new law makes it very difficult for millions of struggling families to extricate themselves from the debt loads that stifle their ability to provide the staples for a good and decent life. Yet it remains comparatively easy for corporations to file for bankruptcy in order to discharge their debt loads and make a fresh start. Capitalism, as the name implies, values capital but not people or the public welfare. Money is all that matters.

Millions of working class families are spending the majority of their hard earned income paying credit card bills whose monthly balances are never reduced and in many cases are actually increasing. The unregulated credit card companies have recently doubled their minimum payment requirements, while also shortening the due dates period from thirty to twenty-eight days. These companies use further chicanery to insure that millions of card holders no longer have the ability to pay on time. This assures that the credit card and banking industry rake in billions of dollars by charging late fees and increasing interest rates as a response to late payments. This strategy of robbing workers provides instant wealth without lifting a finger to do any work—a privilege obtained through private ownership. This is clearly predatory behavior by which some of the wealthiest institutions on earth are fleecing the underclass and forcing them to live in debt slavery. This occurred when industry placed its own in key positions of government and then proceeded to remove every mode of consumer protection, exposing the raw flesh of consumers to the talons of corporate greed. The result has been disastrous for families and communities alike, but immensely profitable to the heads of the banking and credit card industries. This is what happens when money is valued more than people and above the public welfare.

In the old days workers referred to the Plutocrats as parasites—a term that continues to describe them perfectly, as revealed by the above example. Despite what we are told, none of the institutions of this country exist to serve the people. In fact, they are arrayed against us like a nuclear arsenal. Not even the police or the militia exists to protect the people. In times of social unrest such as labor strikes, civil rights marches and anti-war rallies, the police and the militia have always protected the property owners; the oppressors rather than the oppressed.

One suspects that most citizens have never thought about their country in these terms. Why would they? History books and the corporate media portray a different America. But despite all the allusions to freedom and democracy, ordinary Americans have always been preyed upon by wealthy Plutocrats. This is simply the history of our nation recorded in deed. America’s wealthiest and most prominent families, including names like Bush, Mellon, Dulles, Rockefeller and Kennedy have amassed their extraordinary wealth and political power through slave labor and by the ruthless exploitation of the working class. It was John D. Rockefeller, Jr. who had the poor families of miners evicted from their homes and forced them to live in tent colonies in Colorado. It was Rockefeller who hired agents of the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency to pour machine gun fire into those tents. It was he who had the tents doused with kerosene and set ablaze, killing five men, two women and twelve children. The event known as the Ludlow Massacre occurred on April 20, 1914. Rockefeller was never punished for his crimes.

The ignorance of labor history, in combination with the lies propagated in the corporate media foster the notion that the fortunes of men like John D. Rockefeller were amassed through hard work and superior intellect. They were not. The Ludlow Massacre is not an anomaly of labor history—far from it. This is how fortunes are amassed in America. George Bush, Dick Cheney and all the others are simply continuing a history of Plutocratic rule. The tradition of ruthless exploitation continues in the Middle East and beyond. Fortunes continue to be amassed on the spoils of war by the CEOs and investors of America’s defense contractors. Plutocrats everywhere are raking in billions, including the Bush family and the bin Laden’s. The events in Iraq bear an eerie similarity to the Ludlow Massacre of 1914. George Bush and John D. Rockefeller have much in common. So do the dead of Ludlow and Iraq. Such are the spoils of class warfare.

The working class people of yesterday, as now, had no protections to insulate them from the predation of wealthy Plutocrats like George Bush and John D. Rockefeller. Like the victims of hurricane Katrina, we are on our own. The neocon cabal that is running the world is turning back the hands of time. Working class people the world over are being exploited and pitted against one another as they always have. Wages are falling, layoffs are on the rise, and more workers have to put in longer hours to keep their heads above water. Parasites like Bush and Rockefeller will bleed us dry if we do not rise up and fight back. The struggle between the ruling class and the working class continues.

The doctrine of pre-emptive arrests, which has already found currency in the Bush administration national security policy of pre-emptive war, makes for a much tidier law enforcement agenda than the current situation in which prosecutors and police have to spend sometimes extensive resources actually proving a crime has occurred and that a particular person is guilty of criminal actions.

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Two weeks ago the UK Independent ran an article which confirmed that the US had “lied to Britain over the use of napalm in Iraq”. (6-17-05) Since then, not one American newspaper or TV station has picked up the story even though the Pentagon has verified the claims. This is the extent to which the American “free press” is yoked to the center of power in Washington. As we’ve seen with the Downing Street memo, (which was reluctantly reported 5 weeks after it appeared in the British press) the air-tight American media ignores any story that doesn’t embrace their collective support for the war. The prospect that the US military is using “universally reviled” weapons runs counter to the media-generated narrative that the war was motivated by humanitarian concerns (to topple a brutal dictator) as well as to eliminate the elusive WMDs. We can now say with certainty that the only WMDs in Iraq were those that were introduced by foreign invaders from the US who have used them to subjugate the indigenous people.

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Geov Parrish - WorkingForChange.com

04.03.06 - Each year about this time, as many of us supplement our paycheck-to-paycheck giving unto Caesar, I raise this question. This year, let's start with the following observation from a reader, sent in the wake of the reauthorization of the Patriot Act. He notes that "terrorism" is defined, in Webster's, as "the systematic use of terror, esp. as a means of coercion," and provides a long list of examples, past and present, where the U.S. government has done exactly that. He then notes that under the current Patriot Act, it is now illegal to provide money to organizations that practice terrorism, and therefore concludes that as a matter of national security he must refuse to pay his federal taxes.

Now, it's unlikely that any IRS or federal court will agree with that novel conclusion, but our reader has a point. Why do we continue to willingly pay for programs and policies that put ourselves and our country (not to mention countless people in other lands) in greater danger? The bloodshed and corporate welfare in our name and with our money -- and our kids' money, and their kids', and their kids' -- raises an obvious but seldom-asked question: why do so many of us pay our income taxes?

It's not a rhetorical question, with the obvious answer: "Because they make us." At the local, state, and especially federal level, we now have a political system where low, middle, and even upper middle income people get far less back in services and benefits from the federal government than we pay in. Meanwhile, the extremely wealthy -- the top one percent -- get far more. Military spending, non-military corporate welfare, and interest on the national debt alone accounts for more than 60 percent of the discretionary part of the federal budget each year. Public opinion surveys consistently reveal preferences for spending less on the military and more on social programs. The schism between public opinion polls and the leadership of both major parties regarding what to do in Iraq is an obvious example. Meanwhile, as we've seen this year, programs for the poor and needy are always the first to be cut.

The impact of how this money is and isn't spent is even greater when considering how much money isn't in the budget in the first place because of what the rich don't pay. Corporations and high-income folks are getting more tax breaks each year, while already-inadequate social spending continues to be gutted and more and more prisons get built to hold the people who can't cope.

The very rich are getting richer while many of our wages have been stagnant or dropping for years. Governments -- whose office holders are funded largely by the wealthy, in both parties -- are one of the primary mechanisms for this wealth transfer. The rich get richer, and a relatively tiny portion of their proceeds are then reinvested into purchasing politicians and policies to ensure an even more beneficial tax, legal, and regulatory structure. The ordinary U.S. citizen today has little meaningful choice or input in almost any important public policy issue at the state level, and none at all nationally.

So why do so many of us pay our taxes?

Two hundred thirty or so years ago, this was called "taxation without representation" and we threw out the government. Today, we vent our frustration by laughing along with the Tax Day jokes on late-night TV, or going further into debt at the Tax Day sales at our local mall -- "revolutions" are something bad people do.

But what if we refused? The federal government in particular is vulnerable; the income tax system is based on voluntary compliance (meaning the feds rely on us to arrange for our own payments, as opposed, to, say, sales taxes that rely on vendors for collection). The IRS -- though fearsome in its media-assisted reputation -- is essentially a very large, and not always very efficient, collection agency. People laugh off collection agency bills simply because they don't want to (or can't) pay, but quake in terror of the IRS when the money isn't just going to a private business -- it's going, in large quantities, to an institution now dedicated at the highest levels to enriching its patrons even if it means killing you. We are volunteering to buy the bullets for our firing squads.

Why does virtually everybody volunteer?

This isn't a Freemen or Posse Comitatus-type question of the legitimacy of taxation. Quite the opposite; it's specifically because portions of everyone's labor should contribute to the collective well-being of the community (rather than, say, Halliburton's net worth) that our current tax system is ethically bankrupt. The issue here is where the money is going, how it's being spent, and how the spending decisions are made. People struggling to pay the rent, who can't afford health care, have no job security or retirement prospects, can't find affordable daycare, college, or anything in between for their kids, and so on, are tithing 30 percent or more of our income to people who often pay little or nothing, reap a disproportionate share of public benefits, and already have enough yachts and private luxury jets to get by.

There are a few folks saying no. War tax resisters, refusing, for reasons of conscientious objection, to fund militarism, and often redirecting their money to socially useful programs instead, have been painfully aware for years of how much of our tax money goes to killing. Others refuse for libertarian reasons. A larger number choose to live under the taxable income, and still more folks, when forced to choose between enough food to feed the family in April and paying the IRS bill, make the eminently political decision to forego hunger. As usual this year, there will be small groups of folks leafleting or protesting at post offices around the country. You'd think there'd be millions.

Resisting taxes has risks. It can be done symbolically, withholding a small amount here or there; it can be done with an expectation of ultimately paying more in interest and penalties, the extra cost of refusing to cooperate willingly; or it can require major life changes to find tax-free employment and become uncollectable. It can be a nuisance, or it can complicate one's life immensely, or it can force a complete reexamination of why we work and where we want our time and labor to go.

Nobody should undertake tax resistance without understanding the risks. But there's also risks involved in passively cooperating with our own fleecing, or our own demise. And it's simply amazing that more of us don't look closely at which risk is greater.

For resources and counseling on tax resistance for reasons of conscientious objection to military spending, contact the National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee at 1-800-269-7464, or www.nwtrcc.org.

Strong majorities of Iraqis tell pollsters they'd like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country.

Army and Air Force engineers, with little notice, have worked to give U.S. commanders solid installations in Iraq, and to give policymakers options. From the start, in 2003, the first Army engineers rolling into Balad took the long view, laying out a 10-year plan envisioning a move from tents to today's living quarters in air-conditioned trailers, to concrete-and-brick barracks by 2008.





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Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says
By DON VAN NATTA Jr.

LONDON — In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

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Posted: March 16, 2006 04:18 PM

Bush report reiterates strike-first policy
Fox News

WASHINGTON — An updated National Security Strategy released Thursday by the White House lists seven countries as prime examples of despotic systems, and singles out Iran for its hostility and its nuclear weapons pursuit.

In the strategy, President Bush says the national security policy is "idealistic" about some goals and how to reach them and "realistic" about others. The 49-page report reaffirms the policy of pre-emptive strike, an approach that was first introduced in 2002,when the National Security Strategy was last released.

National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley gave a speech on the strategy Thursday to the U.S. Institute for Peace.

"The president's strategy affirms that the doctrine of preemption remains sound and must remain an integral part of our national security strategy," Hadley said. "If necessary, the strategy states, under longstanding principles of self defense, we do not rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

"We choose to deal with challenges now rather than leaving them for future generations. We fight our enemies abroad instead of waiting for them to arrive in our country," it says.



Posted: October 18, 1949 04:18 PM

“to initiate a war of aggression is the supreme international crime, differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”

Nuremberg International War Tribunal

Wars of Aggression Indictment


Count 1: The Bush administration authorized a war of aggression against Iraq.

Count 2: The Bush administrations authorized conduct of the war that involved the commission of “war crimes.”

Count 3: The Bush administration authorized the occupation of Iraq involving, and continuing to involve, the commission of “war crimes”, “crimes against humanity” and other illegal acts.

The invasion, occupation and torture of prisoners are clear violations of existing International Law, including the following:

1) Customary international law;

2) United Nations Charter, 59 Stat. 1031, 3 Bevans 1153 (1945);

3) Universal Declaration of Human Rights, G.A. Res. 217A(iii), (U.N. Doc A/810 (1948);

4) The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, G.A. Res. 2220A(xxi) 21 U.N. Doc., GAOR Supp. (No 16) at 52, U.N. Doc A/6316 (1966);

5) Geneva Conventions of 1949, Conventions I-IV, August 12, 1949, Additional Protocols I and II to the Geneva Conventions of 1949, opened for signature, December 12, 1977;

6) Convention Against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment, G.A. Res. 39/46, 39 U.N. Doc, GAOR Supp. (No. 51) at 197, U.N. Doc. A/39/51 (1984);

7) International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and of the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights (1966);

8) Declaration on the Protection of All Persons From Being Subjected to Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, G.A. Res. 3452, 30 U.N. Doc., GAOR Supp. (No 34) at 91, U.N. Doc. A/10034 (1976);

9) United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, U.N. Doc. A/CONF/611, ANNEX I., ESC Res. 663(c), 24 U.N. ESCOR Supp. (No 1), at 11, U.N. Doc. E/3048 (1957), amended E.S.C. Res. 2076, 62 U.N. ESCOR Supp. (No. 1), at 35, U.N. Doc. E/5988 (1977);

10) European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms, November 4, 1950, 213 UNTS. 221;

11) The Nuremberg Principles [1];

12) Common Law of the United States of America, and;

13) Statutes and common law of the State of New York, including, but not limited to assault and battery, and the intentional infliction of emotional distress.

Count 1

As part of an illegal doctrine of “preemptive war,” based on deliberate and conscious lies, and with no legitimate claim of self defense, the Bush administration planned, prepared and waged the supreme crime of a war of aggression in contravention of the United Nations Charter, the 1949 Geneva Convention [2] and the Nuremberg Principles.

Count 2

The Bush administrations authorized conduct of the war that involved the commission of “war crimes,” including by not limited to:

The targeting of Iraqi leaders in “decapitation” strikes, including prior to the official outbreak of the war included the following:

Targeting the civilian population of Iraq and civilian infrastructure by intentionally directing attacks upon civilians and hospitals, medical centers, residential neighborhoods, electricity stations, and water purification facilities, as well as intense and indiscriminate military operations against many cities and towns causing massive civilian casualties.

Using disproportionate force and weapon systems with indiscriminate effects, such as cluster munitions, incendiary bombs, depleted uranium (DU), and chemical weapons.

Using DU munitions with devastating long-term effects on human beings and the environment.

Extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly. (Geneva Convention)

Seizure of, destruction of willful damage done to institutions dedicated to religion (Mosques), charity and education, the arts and sciences, historic documents and works of art and science.

Willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health. (Geneva Convention)

Attack, or bombardment, by whatever means, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, and buildings.

Wanton destruction of cities, towns or villages, and devastation not justified by military necessity, for example, the wanton destruction of ancient Babylon, where U.S. troops are based with large numbers of troops and material, and the destruction and looting of ancient texts, artifacts, art, and the cultural history of one of the most ancient civilizations in the world.

Count 3

The Bush administration authorized the occupation of Iraq involving, and continuing to involve, the commission of “war crimes”, “crimes against humanity” and other illegal acts, including but not limited to:

The invasion, occupation and imposition of a U.S.-controlled provisional authority has violated the right of self-determination of the Iraqi people by its decrees, practices, imposition of an interim government, managed elections, and administered constitution-making process, violating Article 1 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights and of the International Covenant on Political and Civil Rights (1966) which states: “(1) All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.”

Unlawful attacks, including assassinations, summary executions, murders, disappearances, kidnappings and torture, including using deadly violence against peaceful protestors.

Imposing punishments without charge or trial, including collective punishment.

Unlawful detention and torture, including by U.S. military personnel and by paramilitary civilian forces operating anonymously, including widespread, repeated and systematic use of torture and degrading treatment of Iraqi civilian and military personnel detained in prison facilities or covertly transferred to foreign countries known for torture and severe prison conditions, practices which are unconditionally prohibited by international law.

Failure to provide public order and safety, ensure vital services, or to protect Iraqi health and life, including by authorizing, ordering and condoning the systematic destruction of economic, social, cultural, medical, educational, governmental and diplomatic resources, properties and facilities throughout Iraq.

Actively creating conditions under which the status of Iraqi women has seriously been degraded and where many of their civil rights have been lost.

Re-writing the laws of a country that has been illegally invaded and occupied, including fundamental changes in Iraq’s economic structure, including the right of private foreign investors to retain 100% of any profits made in Iraq.

Extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly. (Geneva Convention)

Attack, or bombardment, of undefended towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings.

Willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health. (Geneva Convention)

Willfully depriving a prisoner of war or a civilian of the rights of fair and regular trial. (Geneva Convention)

Willfully devastating the environment, including through the use of DU munitions.

Failing to protect humanity’s rich archaeological and cultural heritage in Iraq

Systematically utilizing, controlling, directing, manipulating, misinforming and restricting press and media coverage and deliberately presenting false and misleading reports to obtain support for U.S. military and political and actions; and to deprive the American people of knowledge essential to develop an informed opinion which is essential to democratic processes and elections.

Ordering young people, American soldiers in particular, to commit terrible acts that will haunt them, their families and their communities. Their acts of torture of Iraqi detainees, and the killing of women, children, injured people, doctors, nurses, and the bombing of places of worship and hospitals will not only brutalize these soldiers individually, but will further the violence and militarization of American culture.