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Gulf Shenanigans: No Laughing Matter By Ray McGovern
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Gulf Shenanigans: No Laughing Matter
By Ray McGovern
12/01/08 “ICH” — – W hen the Tonkin Gulf incident took place in early August 1964, I was a journeyman CIA analyst in what Condoleezza Rice refers to as “the bowels of the agency.” As current intelligence referent for Russian policy toward Southeast Asia and China, I worked very closely with those responsible for analysis of Vietnam and China.
Out of that experience I must say that, as much as one might be tempted to laugh at the bizarre antics of Sunday’s incident involving small Iranian boats and US naval ships in the Strait of Hormuz, this is-as my old Russian professor used to say-nothing to laugh.
The situation is so reminiscent of what happened-and didn’t happen-from Aug 2-4, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin and in Washington, it is in no way funny. At the time, the US had about 16,000 troops in South Vietnam. The war that was “justified” by the Tonkin Gulf resolution of Aug. 7, 1964 led to a buildup to 535,000 US troops in the late Sixties, 58,000 of whom were killed-not to mention the estimated two million Vietnamese who lost their lives by then and in the ensuing ten years.
Ten years. How can our president speak so glibly about ten more years of a U.S. armed presence in Iraq? Wonder why he doesn’t know anything about Vietnam.
Intelligence Lessons From Vietnam and Iraq
What follows is written primarily for honest intelligence analysts and managers still on “active duty.” The issuance of the recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran was particularly welcome to those of us who had been hoping there were enough of you left who had not been thoroughly corrupted by former CIA Director George Tenet and his flock of malleable managers.
We are not so much surprised at the integrity of Tom Fingar, who is in charge of national intelligence analysis. He showed his mettle in manfully resisting forgeries and fairy tales about Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction.” What is, frankly, a happy surprise is the fact that he and other non-ideologues and non-careerist professionals have been able to prevail and speak truth to power on such dicey issues as Iran-nuclear, the upsurge in terrorism caused by the US invasion of Iraq, and the year-old NIE saying Iraq is headed for hell in a hand basket (with no hint that a “surge” could make a difference).
But those are the NIEs. They share the status of “supreme genre” of analytic product with the President’s Daily Brief and other vehicles for current intelligence, the field in which I labored, first in the analytic trenches and then as a briefer at the White House, for most of my 27-year career. True, the NIE “Iraq’s Continuing Program for Weapons of Mass Destruction” of Oct. 1, 2002 (wrong on every major count) greased the skids for the attack on Iraq on March 19, 2003. But it is more often current intelligence that is fixed upon to get the country into war.
The Tonkin Gulf events are perhaps the best case in point. We retired professionals are hopeful that Fingar can ensure integrity in the current intelligence process as well as in intelligence estimates.
Salivating for Wider War: Tonkin Gulf
Given the confusion last Sunday in the Persian Gulf, you need to remember that a “known known” in the form of a non-event has already been used to sell a major war-Vietnam. It is not only in retrospect that we know that no attack occurred that night.
Those of us in intelligence, not to mention President Lyndon Johnson, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy all knew full well that the evidence of any armed attack on the evening of Aug. 4, 1964, the so-called “second” Tonkin Gulf incident, was highly dubious. But it fit the president’s purposes, so they lent a hand to facilitate escalation of the war.
During the summer of 1964 President Johnson and the Joint Chiefs of Staff were eager to widen the war in Vietnam. They stepped up sabotage and hit-and-run attacks on the coast of North Vietnam. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara later admitted that he and other senior leaders had concluded that the seaborne attacks “amounted to little more than pinpricks” and “were essentially worthless,” but they continued.
Concurrently, the National Security Agency was ordered to collect signals intelligence from the North Vietnamese coast on the Gulf of Tonkin, and the surprise coastal attacks were seen as a helpful way to get the North Vietnamese to turn on their coastal radars. The destroyer USS Maddox, carrying electronic spying gear, was authorized to approach as close as eight miles from the coast and four miles from offshore islands, some of which had been subjected to intense shelling by clandestine attack boats.
As James Bamford describes it in “Body of Secrets:”
“The twin missions of the Maddox were in a sense symbiotic. The vessel’s primary purpose was to act as a seagoing provocateur-to poke its sharp gray bow and the American flag as close to the belly of North Vietnam as possible, in effect shoving its 5-inch cannons up the nose of the Communist navy. In turn, this provocation would give the shore batteries an excuse to turn on as many coastal defense radars, fire control systems, and communications channels as possible, which could then be captured by the men…at the radar screens. The more provocation, the more signals…
“The Maddox’ mission was made even more provocative by being timed to coincide with commando raids, creating the impression that the Maddox was directing those missions and possibly even lobbing firepower in their support….
“North Vietnam also claimed at least a twelve-mile limit and viewed the Maddox as a trespassing ship deep within its territorial waters.”
(pp 295-296)
On Aug. 2, 1964 an intercepted message ordered North Vietnamese torpedo boats to attack the Maddox. The destroyer was alerted and raced out to sea beyond reach of the torpedoes, three of which were fired in vain at the destroyer’s stern. The Maddox’ captain suggested that the rest of his mission be called off, but the Pentagon refused. And still more commando raids were launched on Aug. 3, shelling for the first time targets on the mainland, not just the offshore islands.
Early on Aug. 4, the Maddox captain cabled his superiors that the North Vietnamese believed his patrol was directly involved with the commando raids and shelling. That evening at 7:15 (Vietnam time) the Pentagon alerted the Maddox to intercepted messages indicating that another attack by patrol boats was imminent.
What followed was panic and confusion. There was a score of reports of torpedo and other hostile attacks, but no damage and growing uncertainty as to whether any attack actually took place. McNamara was told that “freak radar echoes” were misinterpreted by “young fellows” manning the sonar, who were “apt to say any noise is a torpedo.”
This did not prevent McNamara from testifying to Congress two days later that there was “unequivocal proof” of a new attack. And based largely on that, on the following day (Aug. 7) Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolution bringing ten more years of war.
Meanwhile, in the Trenches
By the afternoon of Aug. 4 (Washington time), the CIA’s expert analyst on North Vietnam (let’s call him “Tom”) had concluded that probably no one had fired on US ships in the Tonkin Gulf over the past 24 hours. He included a paragraph to that effect in the item he wrote for the Current Intelligence Bulletin, which would be wired to the White House and other key agencies and appear in print the next morning.
And then something unique happened. The Director of the Office of Current Intelligence, a very senior officer whom Tom had never before seen, descended into the bowels of the agency to order the paragraph deleted. He explained:
“We’re not going to tell LBJ that now. He has already decided to bomb North Vietnam. We have to keep our lines open to the White House.”
“Tom” later bemoaned-quite rightly: “What do we need lines open for, if we’re not going to use them, and use them to tell the truth?”
A year or two ago, in the wake of the policy/intelligence fiasco on Iraq, I would have been inclined to comment sarcastically, “How quaint; how obsolete.” But the good news is that the analysts writing the National Intelligence Estimates have now reverted to the ethos in which “Tom” and I were proud to work.
Today’s analysts/reporters of current intelligence need to follow their good example. And we trust that Tom Fingar will hold their feet to the fire. For if they don’t rise to the challenge, the consequences are sure to be disastrous. This should be obvious in the wake of the Tonkin Gulf experience, not to mention the more recent performance of senior officials before the attack on Iraq in 2003.
The late Ray S. Cline, who at the time was the boss of the Director of Current Intelligence, said he was “very sure” that no attack took place on Aug. 4. He suggested that McNamara had shown the president unevaluated signals intelligence which referred to the (real) earlier attack on Aug. 2 rather than the non-event on the 4th. There was no sign of remorse on Cline’s part that he didn’t step in and make sure the president was told the truth.
We in the trenches knew there was no attack; and so did the Director of Current Intelligence as well as Cline, who was Deputy Director for Intelligence. But all knew, as did McNamara, that President Johnson was lusting for a pretext to strike the North and escalate the war. And so, like B’rer Rabbit, they didn’t say nothin’.
Commenting on the interface of intelligence and policy on Vietnam, a well respected, retired senior CIA officer addressed:
“… the dilemma CIA directors and senior intelligence professionals face in cases when they know that unvarnished intelligence judgments will not be welcomed by the President, his policy managers, and his political advisers…[They] must decide whether to tell it like it is (and so risk losing their place at the President’s advisory table), or to go with the flow of existing policy by accentuating the positive (thus preserving their access and potential influence). In these episodes from the Vietnam era, we have seen that senior CIA officers more often than not tended toward the latter approach.”
“CIA and the Vietnam Policymakers: Three Episodes, 1962-1968″ Harold P. Ford
Bummer. I wish there were more of a sense of anger at that.
Back to Iran. This time, we all know that the president and vice president are seeking an excuse to attack Iran. There is a big difference from the situation in the summer of 1964, when President Johnson had intimidated all his senior subordinates into using deceit to escalate the war. Bamford comments on the disingenuousness of Robert McNamara when he testified in 1968 that it was “inconceivable” that senior officials, including the president, deliberately used the Tonkin Gulf events to generate Congressional support for a wider Vietnam war.
In Bamford’s words, the Joint Chiefs of Staff had become “a sewer of deceit,” with Operation Northwoods and other unconscionable escapades to its credit. Then-Under Secretary of State George Ball commented, “There was a feeling that if the destroyer got into some trouble, that this would provide the provocation we needed.”
Good News: It’s Different Now
As indicated above, we now have more integrity at the top of the intelligence community. But, in my view, the main thing that has prevented Bush and Cheney from attacking Iran so far has been the strong opposition of the uniformed military, including the Joint Chiefs. The circumstances attending the misadventure last Sunday in the Strait of Hormuz are far from clear. But the incident certainly shows that our senior military need all the help they can get from intelligence officers more concerned with the truth than with “keeping lines open to the White House” and doing its bidding.
In addition, today the intelligence oversight committees in Congress seem to be waking from their Rip Van Winkle-like slumber. It was Congress, after all, that ordered the controversial NIE on Iran/nuclear (and was among those pushing strongly that it be publicized). And the flow of substantive intelligence to Congress is much larger than it was in 1964 when, remember, there were no intelligence committees as such.
So listen, you inheritors of the honorable profession of current intelligence, don’t let them grind you down. If you’re working in the bowels of the agency and you find that your leaders are cooking intelligence to a recipe for casus belli, think long and hard about the oath you took to protect the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Should not that oath transcend in importance any secrecy promise you had to agree to as a condition of employment?
By sticking your neck out, you might be able to prevent ten years of unnecessary war.
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer, then a current intelligence analyst at CIA, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com.
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Seeing the Unseen
Seeing the Unseen
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
Even now, people think nothing of professing their attachment to socialist ideology at cocktail parties, at restaurants serving abundant foods, and lounging in the fanciest apartments and homes that mankind has ever enjoyed. Yes, it is still fashionable to be a socialist, and – in some circles within the arts and academia – socially required. No one will recoil. Someone will openly congratulate you for your idealism. In the same way, you can always count on eliciting agreement by decrying the evils of Wal-Mart and Microsoft.
Isn’t it remarkable? Socialism (the real-life version) collapsed nearly twenty years ago – vicious regimes founded on the principles of Marxism, overthrown by the will of the people. Following that event we’ve seen these once decrepit societies come back to life and become a major source for the world’s prosperity. Trade has expanded. The technological revolution is achieving miracles by the day right under our noses. Millions have been made far better off, in ever-widening circles. The credit is wholly due to the free market, which possesses a creative power that has been underestimated by even its most passionate proponents.
What’s more, it should not have required the collapse of socialism to demonstrate this. Socialism has been failing since the ancient world. And since Mises’s book Socialism(1922) we have understood that the precise reason is due to the economic impossibility of the emergence of social order in absence of private property in the means of production. No one has ever refuted him.
And yet, even now, after all this, professors stand in front of their students and decry the evil of capitalism. Best-selling books make anti-capitalism the theme. Politicians parade around telling us about the glorious things that the government will accomplish when they are in charge. And every evil of the day, even those directly caused by the government (airline delays, the housing crisis, the never-ending crisis in public schooling, the lack of health care for everyone) are blamed on the market economy.
As an example: the Bush administration nationalized airline security after 9-11, and hardly anyone – except Ron Paul, of course – even questioned that this was necessary. The result was an amazing mess that is visible to every traveler, as delays pile on delays and humiliations became part of the rubric of travel by flight. And yet who gets the blame? Read the letters to the editor. Read the mountains of copy written by journalists covering this issue. The blame is heaped on the private airlines. The solution follows: more regulation, more nationalization.
How can we account for this appalling display? There are two primary factors. The first is the failure of people to understand economics and its elucidation of cause and effect in society. The second is the absence of imagination that such ignorance reinforces. If you don’t know what causes what in society, it is impossible to intellectually grasp the proper solutions or imagine how the world would work in the absence of the state.
The educational gap can be overcome. To think in economic terms is to realize that wealth is not a given or an accident of history. It is not bestowed on us like rain from above. It is the product of human creativity in an environment of freedom. The freedom to own, to make contracts, to save, to invest, to associate, and to trade: these are the key to prosperity.
Without them, where would we be? In a state of nature, which means a dramatically shrunken population hiding in caves and living off what we can hunt and gather. This is the world in which human beings found themselves until we made something of it, and it is the world we can slip back into should any government ever manage to take away freedom and private property rights completely.
This seems like a simple point but it is one that evades vast swaths of even the educated public. The problem comes down to a failure to understand that scarcity is a pervasive feature of the world and the need for a system that rationally allocates scarce resources to socially optimal ends. There is only one system for doing so, and it is not central planning but the free-market price system.
Government distorts the price system in myriad ways. Subsidies short-circuit market judgments. Product bans cause the ascendance of less desirable goods and services over more desirable ones. Other regulations slow down the wheels of commerce, thwart the dreams of entrepreneurs, and foil the plans of consumers and investors. Then there is the most deceptive form of price manipulation: monetary management by a central bank.
The larger the government, the more our living standards are reduced. We are fortunate as a civilization that the progress of free enterprise generally outpaces the regress of government growth, for, if that were not the case, we would be poorer each year not just in relative terms but absolutely poorer too. The market is smart and the government is dumb, and to these attributes do we owe the whole of our economic well-being.
The second part of our educational task – imagining how a market-run world would function – is much more difficult. Murray Rothbard once remarked that if the government were the only producer of shoes, most people would be unable to imagine how the market could possibly do it. How can the market accommodate all sizes? Isn’t it wasteful to produce styles for every taste? What about fraudulent shoes and poor quality producers? And shoes are arguably a good too important to turn over to the vicissitudes of market anarchy.
Well, so it is with many issues today, such as welfare. Among the first objections to the idea of a market society is that the poor will suffer and have no one to care for them. One response is that private charity can handle it, and yet we look around and see private charities handling comparatively small tasks. The sector just isn’t big enough to pick up where government leaves off.
This is where imagination is required. The problem is that government services have crowded out private ones and reduced private-sector services below which they would be in a free market. Before the age of the welfare state, charities in the 19th century were a vast operation comparable in size to the largest industries. They expanded according to need. They were mostly provided by the churches through donations, and the ethic was there: everyone gave a portion of the family budget to the charitable sector. A nun like Mother Cabrini ran a charitable empire.
But then in the progressive era, ideology changed. Charity should be considered a public good and it should be professionalized. The state began to encroach on territory once reserved to the private sector. And as the welfare state grew throughout the 20th century, the comparative size of the private sector shrank. As bad off as we are in the US, it is nothing compared with Europe, the continent that gave birth to charitable services. Today, few Europeans donate a dime to charity, because everyone is of the belief that this is a government service, and, moreover, after taxes and high prices, there isn’t much left over to donate.
It is the same in every area the government has monopolized. Until Fed-Ex and UPS came along to exploit a loophole in the letter law, people couldn’t imagine how the private sector could deliver mail. There are many similar blind spots today in the area of justice provision, security, schooling, medical care, monetary policy, and coinage services. People are aghast at the suggestion that the market should provide all these, but only because it requires mental experiments and a bit of imagination to see how it is possible.
Once you understand economics, the reality that everyone sees takes on a new significance. Wal-Mart is not a pariah but a glorious achievement of civilization, an institution that has finally put to rest that great fear that has pervaded all of human history: the fear that the food will run out. In fact, even the smallest products dazzle the mind once you understand the incredible complexity of the production process and how the market manages to coordinate it all toward the end of human betterment. The achievements of the market suddenly appear in sharp relief all around you.
And then you begin to see the unseen: how much more secure we would be with private security, how much more just society would be if justice were privatized, how much more compassionate we would be if the human heart were trained by private experience rather than government bureaucracies.
And what makes the difference? The socialist and the advocate of free markets observe the same facts. But the person with economic knowledge understands their significance and implications. For example, only Ron Paul, of all American public officials, really understands economics. This is why we must never underestimate the central role of teaching about economics. Facts will always be with us. Wisdom, however, must be taught. Achieving a culture-wide understanding of liberty and its implications has never been more important.
| Speaking of Liberty |
Irrepressible Rothbard |
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Why Austrian Economics Matters | The Gold Standard: Perspectives in the Austrian School |
January 1, 2008
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is founder and president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of Speaking of Liberty.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
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BUSH WANTS TO DESTROY THE FIFTH FLEET IN THE GULF TO START WW3 NUKING IRAN
http://clifylq.livejournal.com/75603.html
BUSH WANTS TO DESTROY THE FIFTH FLEET IN THE GULF TO START WW3 NUKING IRAN
666 http://clifylq.livejournal.com/75367.html
WHY ARE THERE FOUR US CARRIERS IN THE PERSION GULF?
On Oct. 31, the two nuclear-powered carriers, the USS Eisenhower and USS Enterprise, arrived in Bahrain, accompanied by their carrier strike groups. On Nov 9th, the USS Iwo Jima, and the USS Boxer also arrived. The presence of these carriers, combined with Israel’s talk of a Iranian strike, sort of makes a person wonder if Bush is up to something. http://www.rense.com/general74/whyare.htm
THIS IS AN ODD PREDICAMENT.
No one will stand for another invasion, with thousands of dead US servicemen. If America was to attack, it will be nuclear, but something needs to happen to enrage the US public to allow nukes. If Israel attacked Iran, and Iran nuked Tel Aviv, half the world would celebrate, and the other half would be holding back the chuckles. http://muslimlifemalaysia.blogspot.com/2006/11/why-are-there-four-us-carriers-in.html
The Neoconservatives America
http://clifylq.livejournal.com/32491.html
THE NEOCONSERVATIVE AGENDA TO SACRIFICE THE FIFTH FLEET
The New Pearl Harbor
By Michael E. Salla, M.A., Ph.D.
11/08/07 “ICH” — – -The Bush administration has covered up and ignored dissenting Pentagon war games analysis that suggests an attack on Iran’s nuclear or military facilities will lead directly to the annihilation of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet now stationed in the Persian Gulf. Lt. General Paul Van Riper led a hypothetical Persian Gulf state in the 2002 Millennium Challenge wargames that resulted in the destruction of the Fifth Fleet. His experience and conclusions regarding the vulnerability of the Fifth Fleet to an assymetrical military conflict with Iran have been ignored. Neoconservatives within the Bush administration are currently aggressively promoting a range of military actions against Iran that will culminate in it attacking the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet with sophisticated cruise anti-ship missiles. They are ignoring Van Riper’s experiences in the Millennium Challenge and how it applies to the current nuclear conflict with Iran.
EXCERPT ONLY (above)
PLEASE GO TO SOURCE PAGE TO READ FULL ARTICLE
http://clifylq.livejournal.com/75603.html
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More 9/11 Questions???
9/11 Planes Flew Directly Into Secure Computer Rooms In Both Towers
By Christopher Bollyn
1-11-8
9/11 remains an unsolved crime of terrorism. Many people who worked at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon have information, which can help solve this crime and find the parties responsible for killing thousands of innocent people.
This article, for example, is the result of information provided by one such anonymous person. To solve this crime, it is crucial that the people who have information come forward and share that information. Together, we can solve this heinous crime and make this world a better place.
TARGET: COMPUTER ROOMS
The two airplanes that struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center on 9/11 flew directly into secure computer rooms in both buildings. Is that simply a coincidence or were the computer rooms equipped to play a role in the crime?
Were there homing devices, for example, in these rooms that guided the planes to their targets? Were there pre-placed explosives or Thermite on these floors to destroy the evidence and assist with the collapses?
Let’s look at the evidence.
Photo: Racks of computers that may have been similar to those in the crash zone
Photo: Racks of batteries that may have been similar to those in the crash zone
The extreme weght of battery arrays requires floors be reinforced, which in turn provides an excuse for mysterious construction workers to enter and leave the area. But who would think to verify that all of the batteries truly are batteries?
And who would think of verifying that all of the computers are truly under the control of the people they are supposed to work for?
NORTH TOWER
“At 8:46:30 a.m., five hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 11 (AA 11) with 11 crew and 76 passengers into the north face of WTC 1,” according to the Final Report on the Collapse of the World Trade Center Towers produced by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in September 2005:
The aircraft flew almost straight toward the north tower, banked approximately 25 degrees to the left (i.e. the right wing elevated relative to the left wing) and descended at an angle of about 10 degrees at impact.
Moving at about 440 mph, the nose hit the exterior of the tower at the 96th floor. The aircraft cut a gash that was over half the width of the building and extended from the 93rd floor to the 99th floor.
All but the lowest of these floors were occupied by Marsh & McLennan, a worldwide insurance company, which also occupied the 100th floor.
“The fuselage was centered on the 96th floor slab and filled the 95th and 96th floors top to bottom,” the NIST report says.
So, what was on the 95th and 96th floors of the north tower, which were rented by Marsh & McLennan, Lewis Paul “Jerry” Bremer’s company?
Bremer, it should be noted, was the Bush-appointed proconsul or administrator of occupied Iraq until the end of June 2004. During Bremer’s reign there was no metering of the oil that was exported from Iraq.
It is also primarily decisions taken by Bremer that are responsible for the misery and chaos that have afflicted Iraq since the U.S.-led occupation began. Previously, Bremer was the right-hand man for Henry Kissinger & Associates.
The NIST report provides some information about “General Description of Tenant Layout.” For the floors in question it says, “Generally open space filled with workstations. Offices, conference rooms, and work areas in exterior corners.”
But on the 95th floor, Marsh & McLennan had a “large walled data center along north and east sides,” according to the NIST report. And that’s exactly where the plane hit the north wall of the 95th floor.
I called Marsh & McLennan to get a better idea of what was in this “large walled data center” into which American Airlines Flight 11 plunged with deadly precision.
Reginald McQuay came on the line as a company spokesman. I told McQuay that Marsh & McLennan got hit broadside on 9/11 and that it appeared that the plane flew straight into their “walled data center,” according to the NIST report.
“No,” McQuay said, “it wasn’t really our data center. It was our computer center.” Then he suddenly became somewhat distressed, saying he could not even focus on what I was saying and that I should call back next week.
Fair enough, I thought. He had confirmed my primary suspicion, i.e. that the plane that struck the north tower appears to have been “homed in” or targeted on a secure computer center on the 95th floor exactly like the plane that struck the south tower some 16 minutes later.
SOUTH TOWER
“Sixteen and a half minutes after the first impact, five hijackers flew United Airlines (UA) Flight 175, with 9 crew and 51 passengers, into WTC 2 at about 540 mph, about 100 mph faster than AA Flight 11,” the NIST report says.
“The center of the nose of the plane struck at the 81st floor slab. The plane was banked 38 degrees to the left (right wing upward) and was heading slightly (6 degrees) downward from the horizontal,” it says.
Although Flight 175 went straight into the 81st floor of the south tower, the NIST report provides no description of what was on the 81st floor. Not even one word. How odd.
While we know that the Fuji Bank was the tenant on floors 79-82 of WTC 2, the NIST report fails to describe the “tenant layout” of floors 79, 81, and 82.
I had repeatedly requested information from NIST about the layout of these floors, primarily because many tons of molten metal were seen falling from the 81st floor prior to the collapse.
The source of the large amount of molten metal on the 81st floor had not been explained. What could have possibly melted in such large amounts on a normal floor to create several cubic meters of molten metal?
You can watch the molten iron in both normal and slow motion at youtube:
youtube.com/watch?v=ExrVgioIXvk – new link!
I have excerpts of the molten metal in this short video:
ThermiteAtSouthTower.wmv
If this was molten iron, as Professor Steven E. Jones of Brigham Young University says, and if this molten iron was caused by an aluminothermic reaction of Thermite or Thermate (a steel-cutting explosive created from powdered aluminum, iron oxide, and sulfur), then somebody must have pre-loaded the 81st floor of WTC 2 with many tons of Thermate.
The molten metal seen falling from the 81st floor was not aluminum, as the NIST report suggests, because molten aluminum would appear silverfish-grey in daylight conditions.
See our article on Michael Zebuhr’s death for photos of molten aluminum:
MoreOnMichaelZebuhr.html
The metal that is seen falling from the burning south tower is clearly yellow and white hot. This is much hotter than the fires that were observed. So, what produced such large amounts of extremely hot molten metal on the 81st floor of WTC 2?
The aluminum oxide that is produced in the Thermite or Thermate reaction is a whitish smoke. White smoke was seen coming from the 81st floor prior to each flow of molten metal, according to the NIST report, and large amounts of white smoke are seen prior to and during the collapse of each tower. Was this drywall dust or was this Thermite?
Photo: The white smoke is coming from the corner of the
South Tower where the molten iron later poured out of.
Photo: A closeup of the corner of the South Tower where the molten iron poured from.
Photo: The South Tower starts to collapse. Molten iron
was blown out of the tower when the explosives went off.
As the droplets cooled they turned red, creating a spray of red globules mixed with the white clouds of dust. Some of the whiteness may be due to the spray of aluminum oxide particles.
You can watch a spray of molten iron from Thermite here:
youtube.com/watch?v=FEmHJORTlqk the video was deleted; here is a different one
I had imagined huge disguised flower pots of powdered Thermite near the elevators of a normal office floor of the south tower. But even that didn’t make sense. Furthermore, if the 81st floor was a normal office floor of Fuji Bank, why doesn’t the NIST report simply say so?
Silence was all I ever received from NIST.
Then, suddenly, out of the blue, a former bank employee came forward, a person who had visited the 81st floor on a weekly basis. His information explains more than he probably thought and provides us with a major clue about what really happened on 9/11.
Fuji Bank had torn up the 81st floor, he said, and stripped it down to the bare bone to reinforce the trusses so that the floor could hold more weight. Then they had built a raised floor and filled the entire floor with server-size Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) batteries.
These units were bolted to the raised floor which stood about 3 feet above the reinforced 81st floor. Beneath the raised floor ran the cables and power supply that connected the army of batteries. IT techies had to get down on all fours and crawl around beneath the raised floor to connect cables.
“The whole floor was batteries,” he said, “huge battery-looking things.” They were “all black” and “solid, very heavy” things that had been brought in during the night. They had been put in place during the summer prior to 9/11, he said.
But were they really batteries?
“It’s weird,” he said. “They were never turned on.”
So, what really was on the 81st floor of WTC 2? What was in these heavy “battery-looking things?” Were they batteries, or were they Thermite?
Only senior Information Technology (IT) personnel from Fuji Bank, or the Japanese banks affiliated with it, had access to the 81st floor computer room, according to the source. The Mizuho Bank was established originally as Mizuho Holdings, Inc. by the merger of Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank (DKB), Fuji Bank and the Industrial Bank of Japan (IBJ) in 2000.
According to the former bank employee, employees of Shimizu-America Corp. also had access to the floor.
Shortly after 9/11, the IBJ became the biggest player and took over the new corporation that had been created by the merger, primarily because the offices of the DKB and Fuji Bank had been destroyed in the World Trade Center, the source said.
The offices of the IBJ were located on the Avenue of the Americas and became the new headquarters for the bank. The DKB and Fuji Bank personnel soon found themselves out of work.
“Nobody worked on that floor,” the source said about Floor 81. The whole floor was taken up with a “whole bunch of batteries” and “enclosed server racks” that were so tall that one could not see over the top of them. The enclosed server racks were locked and the only people who could open them were employees of the Shimizu Corp., he said.
Didn’t the host of NIST scientists think that was worthy of mention? They either did not know that the 81st floor was full of “battery-looking things” or decided not to mention it. How odd.
William Torrey, the Atlanta-based senior vice president of Shimizu-America, said he could not say anything about the work that Shimizu did on the 81st floor because of ongoing litigation. Asked about the litigation, Torrey said he could not comment on that either.
Seth Martin, the non-Japanese spokesman for the Mizuho Corp., could not give any comment for this article. Mr. Martin did not respond to repeated calls.
The NIST documents that accompany the final report confirm the source’s information that Fuji Bank had reinforced the 81st floor. Documents dated 1999 say that reinforcements were added to the floor trusses “to accommodate the new UPS workspace.” The structural engineering firm was noted as LERA, or Leslie E. Robertson and Associates.
SawTeen See, a managing partner of LERA, said the firm was unable to comment on the work it had done on the 81st floor. “We are not at liberty to comment on this or to provide any further information,” she wrote. “Please contact the PANYNJ who are the project owners.”
PANYNJ is the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey
Fuji Bank & Trust reported 12 out of 125 Japanese expatriate employees missing the day after 9/11. Two American employees of Fuji Bank are also reported to have died on 9/11:
Security officer Patrick Adams, 60
John Andreacchio, 52
Both men were from New York.
————————-
received:
Kevin Ryan
1/06/2008
NIST report | wtc
There appears to be a remarkable correlation between the floors upgraded for fireproofing in the WTC towers, in the years preceding 9/11/01, and the floors of impact, fire and failure. The fireproofing upgrades would have allowed for shutdown of the affected floors, and the exposure of the floor assemblies and the columns for a significant period of time. Exactly what work was done during that time?
In some sections of the NIST WTC report, the exact floors upgraded are listed. Other sections of the report suggest even more floors were upgraded, a total of 18 floors in WTC 1 and 13 floors in WTC 2, but the additional floors involved are not specified.[1]
WTC tower floors upgraded for firep! roofing and floors of impact, fires and failure on 9/11 (click for full size)
This relationship is unmistakable for WTC 1. Some investigators have pointed out that a number of floors failed simultaneously in this tower, in accordion-like fashion, before the rest of the building began to ‘collapse’. These floors seem to match up almost exactly with the floors that were upgraded. See the film clip below, and the following Powerpoint sequence created by Gregory Urich.
http://www.911research.com/wtc/evidence/videos/docs/north_tower_collapse …
http://www.cool-places.0catch.com/docs/Wtc1SeriesNW.ppt
Two blueprints for the 1999, 2000 construction upgrades to WTC 2, provided by a supporter, indicated that the work was done at almost exactly the point of impact and failure in that tower. That is, the southeast quadrant of WTC 2 was the focus of the work, at least on the 78th floor (the blueprints provided were for floors 77 and 78 only). It was the southeast quadrant of WTC 2, at and just above floor 78, where flight 175 hit.
We have also seen video of molten metal pouring from WTC 2 prior to its destruction. The relationship b! etween fireproofing upgrades and the pouring metal is close but not exact, as the molten metal seen in videos appears to be coming from floors 80 and 81. Communication to the NIST team from Frank Lombardi of the Port Authority, in 2002, indicated that only floor 78 of the impact failure floors of WTC 2 had been upgraded. But NCSTAR 1-6A (table 4-2, p 45) lists floor 85 as an upgraded floor as well. Could it be that certain areas within floors 79 to 84 were upgraded also, and not reported because the floors were not fully upgraded?
For the north tower at least, it is difficult to accept that this relationship is yet another unbelievable coincidence related to 9/11. Certainly the upgrade work allowed for access to critical areas. But in considering this, a number of other, admittedly far-fetched questions come to mind. Why was the upgraded fireproofing measured to be twice the thickness specified?[! 2] Could incendiary or explosive materials have been embedded within the upgraded fireproofing? Could these “construction” activities have involved installing mechanisms to direct the planes to the specific areas in which they hit each building?
In any case, the demolition hypothesis should be considered more than just simple demolition. If the idea was to create the appearance of a fire-induced collapse, then a fiery presentation was needed, much more than the jet fuel/office furnishings would have been able to provide. It seems that thermate may have been used not only to weaken or cut the steel infrastructure throughout the buildings, but also to help create that fiery presentation near the floors of impact.
It seems possible that a thermate-lik! e material, and/or other devices contributing to the destruction of the towers, could have been incorporated on the floors of impact and failure during the fireproofing upgrades. The access for such an operation would have been facilitated by the activity surrounding the fireproofing upgrades.
[1] NCSTAR 1-6A, page xxxvii, indicates which exact floors were upgraded. NCSTAR 1-6, page 20 repeats these claims, as noted in the figure above. Elsewhere in NCSTAR 1-6, on page lxxi, NIST muddies the water by saying “18 floors in WTC 1, including all the floors affected by the aircraft impact and fires” and “”13 floors in WTC 2, although none were directly affected by the aircraft impact and fires.”. On this last part, NIST contradicts itself yet again in NCSTAR 1-6 (on page lxvii-lxix) by stating that so! me of the floors upgraded in WTC 2 were affected by the impacts and fires (notably floor 78). As with the contradictory amounts of jet fuel referenced throughout NIST’s report, these fireproofing upgrade statements appear to be another example of how detailed findings in the NIST team’s lower level reports were confused or made vague in higher-level reports.
[2] NCSTAR 1-6A (p xl) states “The overall average thickness determined from the 356 individual measurements was found to be 2.5 in, with a standard deviation of 0.6 in.” The same report (p 44) says “Note that some of the average thicknesses shown in Table 4-2 equal or exceed 3.5 in. No photos were available of upgraded floors to show the appearance of such high average thickness of SFRM.” Floor 94 of WTC 1 stands out in this data, with a SFRM thickness of more than 4 in. The specification for these upgrades was on! ly 1.5 in, increased from the as-built specification of 0.75 in.
———————————
Dick Eastman
olfriend@nwinfo.net
wrote:
—– Original Message —–
From: Peter Wakefield Sault
To: Dick Eastman
Cc: Prof. Steven E. Jones
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 2:26 PM
Subject: Re: bunk or debunk? Ted Olsen family friend Jon Moseley argues the impossiblity of WTC thermate demolition with conspiracy theorist “olfriend”
Thermate for cutting steel members is not applied as “cannisters”. As far as I can tell, the thermate is wrapped around the steel to be cut either as rope or as plastic and electrical ignition wires attached. That was what all the cable ‘rewiring’ in the towers was about in the weeks preceding the event – installing the ignition wires. I think we need to refer to Prof. Jones for a better idea of how thermate is applied. Since it not an explosive I don’t think it is detonated in the same way as, say, C4, which I believe requires a detonation cap. I have found it impossible to find information on the Internet – largely due, it must be said, to the ‘noise’ generated by online 9/11 discussions about it but also because such information is restricted. (When I was a teenager, we were able to make nitrocellulose etc. at home because lab supplies, such as fuming nitric acid, were sold over the counter. All that is now gone and you cannot even buy a glass beaker or test tube without a license.)
Prof. Jones – please would you tell us how thermate is applied to the steel to be cut or welded.
Regards
P.
—– Original Message —–
From: Dick Eastman
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Sent: Thursday, January 10, 2008 8:24 PM
Subject: bunk or debunk? Ted Olsen family friend Jon Moseley argues the impossiblity of WTC thermate demolition with conspiracy theorist “olfriend”
From: ruthercap@earthlink.net (John Moseley, spy novelist and attorney at law)
To: Dick Eastman (anti-semitic conspiracy theorist) ; Ronald Wieck (author and debunker of 9-11 conspiracy theory whackos)
Sent: January 9, 2008
Jon Moseley: Yes, it would be impossible to place 25,000 thermate canisters.
Dick Eastman: You, lawyer Moseley, are the one who put forth the idea that 25,000 canisters would be necessary. How self-contradictory your thinking is. The Boeing 767 was carrying jet fuel enough to fill a 9 ft. diameter above-ground swimming pool, and yet you say that this kerosene did what nothing less than 25,000 canisters of thermate would be required to do. You imply that unless every single beam at every floor had its own thermate cannister the building could not have fallen as it did — yet you maintain that one 150-ton aluminium airplane carring a 4 ft. high 4.5 ft. radius volume of kerosene accomplishes the trick that 24,999 canisters of thermate could not accomplish, the trick of knocking down towers each consisting of 106,000 tons of structural steel, 53,000 tons of concrete, 2,000 tons of aluminum cladding. 186,290 tons of plumbing, air-conditioning, telecommunications wiring etc. plus the dead weight office furniture and equipment and the live weight of 150,000 people, minus the weight of a sizable percentage of those New York financial workers that for some coincidentally widespread reasons did show up for work that morning.
So you are arguing, Jon, that this spray of kerosene and the aluminum airplane hitting the steel core of the tallest skyscraper in New York accomplished what 24,999 canisters of thermate could not? Let me point out below how absurd contention really is.
Jon Moseley: First, radio control COULD NOT WORK inside a steel building, with the necessity to precisely control 25,000 units with split-second timing.
Dick Eastman: This was 2001 not 1901, Mr. Moseley. To say that it would be impossible to set of an array of devices — even 25,000 devices if that was really what was called for — that the defense industry that puts the space shuttle in space and that has at its disposal the most powerful computers and the biggest armies of scientists and the best equipped and experienced black-ops divisions of its intelligence agencies “could not” get the devices to go off correctly???? Look at the building as it stood — with computers in every office doing millions of operations with split-second timing — and you say that a simple switching from “off” to “on” for these devices could not be accomplished for the operation even to be considered??? Tell me, Jon, do juries tend to believe your arguments on behalf of your clients in the courtroom as they do for these absurdities on behalf of your clients in Washington and Israel?
Jon Moseley: Second, have you given any thought to WHERE exactly these would have to be?
Dick Eastman: Do you have any reason to think that with trillions of dollars at stake and the black-ops facilities of Mossad, the CIA and MI6 at their disposal with the resources of the entire defense-industry scientific establishment at their disposal (compartmentalized of course so they don’t know what they are really working on) — that they could not find a way to demolish a building with termate – even with fewer than 25,000 delivery charges of thermate? But since you ask my personal opinion, let me say — without any degree in engineering or physics or architecture expertise — that I have never been convinced by those who speak against the “pancaking theory” — to me the towers were two giant shish-kabobs — a core with light-weight aerated concrete floors holding to the core. When one, two or three floors were made to collapsed those floors below could not take the force of all that potential energy (mass x gravity constant x height) converted into kinetic energy (1/2 mass x the square of the velocity) at the high speeds at which those upper floors fell onto the lower ones — not free-fall speed certainly (we can all see free-falling pieces going down faster than the rate of downward-advancing floor collapse), but speed great enough and accelerating, with a function of velocity squared, to certainly rip down everything along the way — the strong fastenings holding each floor of the shish-kabob being so strong as to break up and pull down the core they were holding so firmly with them. But again that is just the opinion of this unemployed former video store clerk — yet I really don’t see a lawyer who writes esape fiction and knows Ted Olsen and Jacob Roginsky talking me out of it.
Jon Moseley: WHERE was the structural suppport of the building?
Dick Eastman: On the foundation, in the core, in the fastenings of the 110 floors to the core. Without the core holding up those floors those tall thin beams on the corners and up the sides (260 of them), there to hold up the windows and aluminum sheathing, would not contributed anything to holding up those floors — especailly after the pancaking was under way.
Jon Moseley: Not giving any serious thought to any of this, you haven’t got a clue. …
Dick Eastman: My thinking is not the best — and it gets worse every day — but I have had the good luck lately of getting into arguments with people holding the most obviously absurd positions. Also habitual honesty gives one an edge and so does a good liberal education (like you can hardly find any more in a lower-middle-class person like myself.)
Jon Moseley: To bring down the building — and do so evenly, smoothly, rapidly, and without the building falling over — you would have to sever 267 steel support columns around the perimeter all at the same time. However, if you did not also sever 47 internal support columns at precisely the same instant, then the outside skin would fall down, but the central core would remain standing.
Dick Eastman: There was nothing smooth or even about the collapse, except that the structure “fell into its footprint” — showing that the puny plane would not have given it any lean. The shish-kabob was demolished by a sufficient number of thermate devices — these could be quite large — brought up, if one may be permitted to speculate, in sections by freight elevator during repairs or maintenace perhaps — these devices planted at the top floors — the only reason for the bombs lower down was to kill targeted people or destroy rescue systems or offices with financial or legal files the perpetrators wanted destroyed etc. A few devices on the higher floors. Perhaps the remote-controlled planes hit precisely on the intended floors of each tower.
The fact is that the building came down as it did. The fact is that the jet plane and office fire would not have been sufficient to bring it down. The fact is that thermate devices exist for the purpose of bringing down buildings. The fact is that unlimited resources were available to the perpetrators to bring down the building in the way they wanted. The owner of the building, the Pentagon, the CIA, Mossad, the WHite House, Israel, the black ops resources that exist from private arms and intelligence companies, and the great war-funding bankers and defense-contracting corporations — all filled with men like Dov Zakheim — were giving this their full consideration. 25,000 devices would be no obstacle. (I say less that fifty were needed for each building.) Sending signals throughout the building would be no obstacle. We know the structure went and we know the plane didn’t do it and that thermate could. We know that residues indicative of thermate have been found in samples of the steel and we have video recordings of molten steel cascading down from South Tower just before the building began collapsing. The little bit of kerosene was long gone. Some of the plane never hit the core — it went flying through the building and out the north wall. Not enough to bring it down. Only thermate could have done it. Not ray guns from space. Not a summer play pool full of kerosene.
Jon Moseley: Therefore, you must sever instantly at the same split-second 267 + 47 = 314 steel support columns on every floor.
Dick Eastman: The trouble with you Zionist mouthpiece lawyers is that you don’t eat enough shish-kabob and pancakes. Just start three or four floors collapsing and the rest of the job will take care of itself. You don’t have to have, as you wrongly insist, a different bomb at 314 positions on each of 110 floors and each with a wire connecting it to all the others because wireless signals would be impossible etc.
Jon Moseley: AND WHERE WOULD YOU PUT THESE MAGICAL, MYTHICAL THERMATE CANISTERS all sprinkled with fairy dust and rubbed with the fur of unicorns?
Dick Eastman: Gee, you’re a regular Clarence Darrow for eloquence. Makes me feel silly for even suggesting that thermate could be the answer — except that whatever the mystical status of thermate it does manage to burn through massive steel in seconds and it is used to demolish steel skyscrapers and traces of it were found in the samples of molten steel and in bead particle dust taken from the site. So you are arguing that since there was no fur of the unicorn found that thermate must be ruled out? This is not a good argument, Jon.’
Jon Moseley: To work, they must be SNUG AGAINST the steel that they are going to cut. BUT THE STEEL COLUMNS WERE NOT EXPOSED. And then of course, being buried in the wall, the radio devices WOULD NOT WORK inside a steel building.
‘
Dick Eastman: Drill a hole in a steel beam. Stick a long thin device into the beam. One end of the device can be sticking out , maybe just a wire to receive a transmitted signal or tiny microphone for a sonci signal or any of a number of other ways. In this day and age can’t is a word limited to the poor and politically powerless. You, Jon, seem to be thinking that we don’t realize that.
Jon Moseley: Finally, thermate is notoriously difficult to ignite, and often FAILS to ignite using a remote device.
Dick Eastman: Picture Dov Zakheim reporting to Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Henry Kissinger late in 1999. Dov says, “I’m sorry. The plan can’t be done. We can’t find a way to reliably light the thermate. So please tell David and Lionel that I tried my level best and it’s just impossible.”
Poor people living in a falling apart world who don’t know the power of money — how reliable and excellent and unimaginably effective are the things are that the rich provide for themselves — may fall for Mr. Moseley’s “arugmentum de impossibilus” (don’t look it up, it isn’t real) — but when the criminals alibi that the aluminum plane and the drip of kerosene brought down the skyscraper is impossible and the real cause is established in laboratory tests and video recordings of the actually event — then we start thinking that we better not let Jon Moseley leave town until we have looked into the background of his 9-11 investigator-debunking activities more closely.
Jon Moseley
Dick Eastman
From: Dick Eastman
Sent: Jan 9, 2008
Subject: Re: 10 miles for only 22 explosives Re: 10 miles of detonator cord and 15 miles of telephone wires
The claim is made: the plane and the fire was sufficient to bring down the building.
The person making that claim then adds this claim: That it would be impossible for lease owner Silverstein and the greatest black-ops agency in the world (Mossad) to bring in over a period of months time radio-triggered thermate cannisters and plant them along the core using the freight elevators and ventiliation shafts for access — even when the perpetrators have the full cooperation of government agencies infiltrated in key positions well in advance for this one operation.
Two statements like this — each so obviously wrong — makes you suspect the honesty of the one making the statements, doesn’t it?
Look at these:
http://www.debunking911.com/moltensteel.htm
Here are some of video clips of the flow of molten metal. Can airplane aluminum account for all of this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_jiCyMkrRM&NR=1
More video clips of molten metal material pouring from the south tower’s northeast corner.:
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=N4QBQFP8
Have you seen this vido clip of molten metal on the ground?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qT4GeVK6Rsc
Eyewitness accounts:
http://911research.com/wtc/evidence/moltensteel.html
Thermate:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wVLeKwSkXA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdCsbZf1_Ng
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Follow the Billboards: The Revolution is Still at Hand
|
Follow the Billboards: The Revolution is Still at Hand by Dave Trotter Ron Paul finished the 4th quarter of 2007 having raked in over $19.75 million dollars – more than any other GOP candidate and in close proximity to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s numbers. The only bigger quarter for a Republican during this entire presidential race was a $20.8 million first quarter of 2007 by Mitt Romney. Of course Romney added about $2.4 million of his own money to that number by writing a personal check to his campaign, thus rendering Paul’s 4th quarter, traditionally the weakest due to the holidays, the biggest of the year for any GOP candidate. Think about that for a second. Over half of Paul’s astounding total flooded in over the course of a mere two days, in efforts coordinated by unpaid volunteersupporters. The first “money bomb” on November 5, the brainchild of music promoter Trevor Lymon, pulled in $4.3 million from 37,000 individual contributors. On December 16, these same supporters brought some friends and shocked the American political establishment, again, with a second one-day “money bomb” inside of six weeks, this one commemorating the 234th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
Demonstrating vividly that now-familiar savvy for the alternative media, Paul’s supporters in some cities even reenacted the original Boston Tea Party, heaving boxes with labels like “IRAN WAR,” “OPEN BORDERS,” and “PATRIOT ACT” into bodies of water across the country big enough to represent a harbor. TeaParty07crushed the previous one-day fundraising record held by John Kerry with a whopping $6.2 million in donations from 58,000 verifiable individual contributors. The average contribution was $102. Incredibly, over 24,000 of those individuals had never contributed to a political campaign before. Despite the closeness of the two records (as marked by fiat dollars), the clear reason that Paul’s haul is a solid trouncing of Kerry’s is simple: Kerry’s record came the day after he secured the nomination in 2004 – too late for him to use that money during the early primaries, such as his still inexplicable win in Iowa over the steamrolling Dean juggernaut. Paul got his haul at exactly the right time, enabling the campaign to expand their media buys and infrastructure to multiple western states, a direct contrast to the “double-down,” short-on-cash attitude of many of his rivals thus far in Iowa and New Hampshire. This fact, as much as any other, provides a stark reminder of just how much the Ron Paul campaign has so far outperformed expectations. But for the Ron Paul movement, that’s over $10 million in two 24-hour periods and $19.5 million over three months – all from over 130,000 individual contributors. A whopping 100,000 of those contributors were new. Some “fringe” candidate indeed. But it didn’t end there. The Spark of Revolution Catches Fire They were spurned and disparaged by the establishment media, as drill-instructed by Fox News, and for months dismissed as a “few dozen” D&D geeks-in-their-parents’-basements “spamming” online and cell phone-text polls. But Paul’s supporters have triumphed over what can only be described as an existential challenge to prove their legitimacy in an atmosphere of blatant hostility and a determined blackout. Witness the resulting self-actualization: By their own accord, Paul supporters paid for full-page ads in USA Today, rented billboards by the dozens in several states, bought ad time in local conservative talk radio markets, leased small planes and helicopters in New Hampshire to drag enormous banners, and perhaps most audaciously, rented a blimp decked out with slogans such as “Google Ron Paul” and the suddenly ubiquitous “RON PAUL REVOLUTION.” All without costing the campaign an inflationary cent. I’m almost 36 years old. I’ve been an avid observer of politics since my junior high days, when I was enthralled by Reagan’s libertarian rhetoric and was an admirer Alex P. Keaton. I’ve never seen anything like the Ron Paul movement happen in American political life. As far as I can remember, this type of insurgent, populist uprising – demanding a return to Constitutional government – is unprecedented.
Yet the reaction by the establishment media to all of this – the record fundraising, the late surge in the polls, and the spontaneous, organic activation from apathy for the most diverse group of supporters in the entire presidential race – has been determinedly subdued or altogether silent. There was perfunctory coverage of the spectacle of Paul’s fundraising numbers, but with little to no commentary about the blatant trend that the numbers and events vividly demonstrated. American politics has forever changed. Imagine for a moment that leading up to the Iowa caucuses, media darling Mike “Glass Jaw” Huckabee proved, finally, the legitimacy of his poll numbers with a donation infusion even a quarter the size of one of Paul’s money bombs. I mean in actual cash, from identifiable, verifiable individuals – not anonymous “scientific” poll respondents that we’ll never meet or unsecured blips in an electronic voting machine. The cable news networks might all spontaneously combust with rippling positivity. Can you imagine the fawning coverage? Can you just see their reaction if there were such a thing as a Mike Huckabee Blimp, for crying out loud? Interestingly, in spite of his win in Iowa and his recent success in the “scientific” polls, Mike Huckabee has never had an easy time raising money. He finally broke the $5 million threshold during the 4th quarter. Yet we’re supposed to believe that he’s the national front-runner and is supported by 25% of Republican voters across the country? While Huck’s first win in Iowa came after Q4 ended, his status as Republican “front-runner” in Iowa lasted for most of December. Paul’s fundraising, by contrast, has more than doubled each quarter of 2007, leading to the early primary contests: $639,889 in the first quarter, $2,357,423 in the second, $5,204,218 in the third, and over $19.75 million in the fourth, and traditionally softest, quarter. As for the schizophrenic, alternating blackout/smearcampaign against Ron Paul’s candidacy, it culminated two days before the New Hampshire primary in Fox excluding him from their GOP candidate forum, which was basically a debate without an audience. Fox abandoned any pretense about objective criteria having determined the participants. They simply couldn’t make a consistent, logical argument, so they didn’t attempt to. Paul had already trounced Rudy in Iowa, and at the point leading up to the debate in question, he was also ahead of Fred Thompson in New Hampshire by several points, depending on which “scientific” poll you checked.
Fox could only argue that Paul was slightly behind in national polling, which runs directly counter to the relevance of the state primary in question: the GOP forum was in New Hampshire at Saint Anselm College, two days before the New Hampshire primary, and geared, ostensibly, towards New Hampshire Republican primary voters. So Fox resorted to their weakest argument – that Paul couldn’t fit in their mobile “Fox Box” tractor-trailer studio. In other words, there was only enough room at the desk for five candidates, not six. Far be it from me to argue for the exclusion of any candidate, but if it’s truly a question of real estate, shouldn’t Fred Thompson be the big loser? As a somewhat surprising reaction to Fox’s refusing to reconsider, the New Hampshire GOP yanked their endorsement of the event. Then Leno had Paul back on The Tonight Show for a second, lengthy, and incredibly sympatheticappearance. Things for the Paul campaign were gaining steam. Best of all, it seemed a self-inflicted example of “blowback” for the Fox pundits to ponder. Then during the primary on Tuesday, a well-timed smear attempt emerged: a hack at The New Republic dredged up the same old, now age-old recycled accusations of racism from Paul’s former low-circulation, at times ghost-written, newsletters – even though Paul’s repeatedly denied authorship when it’s come up in past congressional races in Texas. Drudge linked to the story briefly before pulling it down, but the damage might’ve been done with those undecided voters in New Hampshire. But the accusations never rang true. If it’s deeply held, foundational belief, as the article suggests, then it should present itself somewhere – anywhere – in Paul’s prolific articles, books, and speeches, which are readily available all over the internet, not in ancient hardcopies of low-circulation newsletters that have to be “unearthed” in some obscure library archive. But the tone doesn’t match. Post–New Hampshire Paul garnered only 8% in New Hampshire, despite spending a lot of money and having a respectable, solid ground game. Although most of his supporters would acknowledge that Paul is still and has always been a long shot for the nomination, I think most of them would also concede that New Hampshire would seem to have been fertile ground for Dr. Paul’s message. It doesn’t make sense. So what the hell happened? Did we, as Paul supporters, get overly optimistic? Was the election somehow stolen, as some have suggested? It’s hard to say at this point, but the scuttlebutt among some of the Obama supporters is that chicanery occurred in New Hampshire. One enterprising Paul supporter even assembled numbers indicating that machine-counted votes resulted in striking disparity between votes cast and counted. It’s disconcerting to note that such a large percentage of the votes in New Hampshire were counted using Diebold optical scanning machines:
Bev Harris, of Blackboxvoting.org, details the multiple vulnerabilities of those particular machines here. To ensure that any potential theft went undetected during the actual voting, Hillary Clinton mobilized her lawyers to have both Paul and Obama poll watchers ejected from precincts where they were attempting to monitor the vote counting and counter the natural tendency of party operatives to engage in fraud. All of these things add up to a fairly suspicious picture. Hell, I was suspicious early on, when the initial percentage distribution remained static, virtually unchanging – from 10% to 100% of precincts reporting. Is it plausible to believe that the pattern never moved, from precinct to precinct, across the entire state? I’m no Frank Luntz, but it’s at the very least counterintuitive. As for the Revolution. . . Time will tell what impact these first two contests will have on the Ron Paul movement, whose ingenuity and enthusiasm thus far has been unquestionable. I suspect that the Paulites (or my favorite, the Ronulans) will endure. Similarly to how they reacted to other attempts by the establishment media to ignore them or impugn their character or intelligence, Ronulans, of which I am one, will take these questionable results as another direct challenge to their identity and will mobilize accordingly. That identity, though diverse, is unquestionably galvanized by a few common issues that won’t be extinguished by success or failure in the primaries. Yes, Ron Paul voters repudiate the war in Iraq as unconstitutional and illegal, but they also repudiate everything else about the direction that Bush and the neocons have taken us these last few years – the domestic surveillance, the torture, the Patriot Act, the efforts to label dissenters “unlawful combatants,” and so on. That won’t go away. This is the same general sentiment that began to swell in 2004, for Howard Dean, and then re-emerged in the 2006 mid-terms, when the Dems retook Congress. The cause of this revolution was not the emergence of Ron Paul. Rather, Ron Paul’s emergence is only a symptom of a much larger cause. Typical Republicans have their choice of warmongering neocons in the other top-five Republican candidates. Each and every one of those candidates promises no fundamental change: the Iraq War will drip on, they’ll continue to expand government in the name of chasing ghosts, and the citizens will be expected to ignore and tolerate increasing amounts of abuse by the ever-more-militarized domestic police state. But not for us. We are the remnant. As long as we cherish the idea of not having to present our papers to every steroid-infused municipal law officer who demands it; as long as we cherish the idea that the government is the slave to the people and not the other way around; as long as we cherish the idea that we have a right to be left alone, and are willing to argue for it – the revolution lives on in us. This revolution is against the bankrupting, coercive effects of empire, socialism, and pre-emptive war. This revolution is against the moral degradation of the emerging police state, anti-homeschooling legislation, and compulsory vaccinations. This revolution is against fiat currency, managed trade, and global governance. This revolution is not defined by the political fortunes of a single candidate, as galvanizing and inspiring as he is – especially given the fact that the establishment that this revolution threatens remains firmly in control of the levers and dials of the pollsters and the voting machines. This revolution is against the notion that the state is inherently benevolent. This revolution is for liberty. Ron Paul is our leader, but he’s the first to admit that he’s not our savior. No matter what happens to his candidacy, this revolution lives on in each of us who’ve felt something special, a quickening over the course of this campaign. As he says, “the message of liberty is popular.” We will continue to preach it regardless. Dare dismiss our movement and tell us that this revolution is over, pundits, and not only will you reveal a profound lack of perception, but we’ll also discern your motives. The days of us waiting on you for word of what’s happening in front of our eyes are over. From this point forward, we follow our eyes, our ears, and our hearts. Fear not, for though it may not be televised, it’s coming to a billboard near you. Fear not, friends, for the revolution is still at hand. January 12, 2008 Dave Trotter [send him mail] is a technical writer in Atlanta, Georgia. Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com |
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Would the GOP Prefer Hillary Over Ron in November?
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Would the GOP Prefer Hillary Over Ron in November? by Trevor Bothwell As LRC’s own Jim Ostrowski has argued onseveraloccasions, the Republicans will lose the 2008 presidential election if they nominate anyone but Ron Paul. In 2006, libertarians who were fed up with Republican excess either threw their support behind the Democrats or stayed home on Election Day, resulting in a wholesale victory for the Democratic Party as it took over both houses of Congress and a majority of governorships and state legislatures from the GOP. There’s no reason to expect libertarian-minded voters to play any less significant a role in the outcome this year, especially when they have a candidate in Ron Paul who is continuing to gain momentum for two important reasons: 1) libertarians finally have a candidate running on a major ticket who represents many of their views, and 2) there is no ideological difference between any of the leading Democrats or Republicans when it comes to the federal government – they all believe in the virtue of the paternalistic, centralized state; they merely differ in how it should run our lives. Not only will it be the natural inclination of Americans to vote for a Democrat after almost eight years of an unpopular Republican president, but 13 to 20 percent of self-described libertarian voters nationwide will almost certainly either refuse to vote altogether or give their support to an independent or Libertarian Party candidate in November if Paul isn’t the GOP’s nominee. Given Paul’s enormous popularity, this will be more than enough to tip the scales in the Democrats’ favor, and the Republicans’ defeat will only be more lopsided if Paul decides to run on a third-party ticket. If Ron Paul weren’t the only anti-war candidate in the scrum, perhaps this reasoning would be different, but don’t expect any self-respecting libertarian to side with Clinton, Obama, or John Edwards. Also take into account that Paul is the only Republican candidate who appeals to young people and liberals and independents alike, precisely the types of voters a Republican needs to attract in November. By this rationale, only Ron Paul can prevent us from hearing Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama take the oath of office come next January. Certainly a Paul nomination may not necessarily guarantee a Republican victory any more than a McCain or Huckabee nomination would, but failing to nominate Paul will surely result in a loss at the polls. Which brings us to an interesting question: Would the GOP prefer to have a Democrat in the White House for the next four years if a victory would mean a Ron Paul administration? As if it were a mystery, this article by David Limbaugh confirms the motivation of today’s conservatives: war. A “true neoconservative,” explains Limbaugh, “favors a more energetic role for government in domestic policy and a more proactive approach to foreign policy.” Limbaugh even admits that the neocon may also be willing to invade countries that don’t present a threat to the United States if it means illustrating the “transformative, contagious power of democracy” to the world. Against all evidence refuting the notion that Iraq posed any danger to us before we invaded, Limbaugh insists that, even today, he and most conservatives still believe that Iraq (the country as a whole, we are to assume) represented a threat to our security before the war began. I suppose if Limbaugh is right about anything, it’s that Iraq is at least a threat to us today. After all, it would be hard to imagine that the Iraqis hated us more in, say, 2001 than they do now, after almost five years of American occupation and indiscriminate killing. Given the fact that the Republican Party has gone from one that rallied around limited-government principles in 1994 to one that does anything but in 2008, a Ron Paul triumph would obviously be a sweeping rebuke to today’s GOP. It would effectively mark the beginning of the end of an entitlement culture within the party that would threaten the very security and existence of elected officials who have grown fat and happy at the hands of special interest groups that have solicited from them the very government largesse Paul has railed against for years. In no uncertain terms, Republicans will fight tooth and nail to prevent Ron Paul from gaining their nomination and an electoral victory, especially when a Clinton or Obama presidency would perpetuate the cronyism and wars they so desperately crave. January 12, 2008 Trevor Bothwell [send him mail] maintains the web log, Who’s Your Nanny? Copyright © 2007 LewRockwell.com |
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Iran Attacks US Fifth Fleet! American Casualties Reported!!!
Iran Attacks US Fifth Fleet! American Casualties Reported!!!
by William Wedin
by William Wedin
“You hear that, Mabel? Come, watch!” Hank calls from the sofa. “Five of them Iranian swift boats like they used to blow up the Cole just attacked the Fifth Fleet! Don’t say how many killed. Just – ‘We’ve suffered casualties!’ Those damn Arab-Iranian-al-Qaeda-speedboat-sand-devils! Get in here, Mabel! Watch!”
Please do.
It is amazing what can be done in a 90-second “news segment.” In just 90 seconds, we learn that five small Iranian speedboats have “harassed” and “threatened” a Navy frigate and two Navy destroyers – telling these monstrous military vessels they are about to explode! Explode? All three warships?
Before we can say, “That’s preposterous!” the segment quickly cuts to footage of small craft moving around the wounded USS Cole, just after the attack in 2000.
Then the segment cuts back to a grim-faced admiral as he tells the American people that:
It is important to remember that we have been attacked by small high-speed boats. We have suffered casualties. And we take this deadly seriously.
Cut to footage of a Navy cruiser firing a sea-to-air missile from its forward deck as the reporter informs us that an Iranian airliner has been shot down in a “deadly accident.” (Note the customary “tragic accident” is not invoked when Iranian lives are involved.)
But why mention the shooting down of the Iranian passenger plane in the first place when the “accident” happened 20 years ago?
Obviously there is no logical reason. The “accident” has nothing to do with the speedboat “incident” in reality. But as Freud once said: “Time does not exist in the unconscious.” Which means that if something is reported now, we experience it as happening now – not 20 years ago. Especially if we see (or think we see) the USS Vincennes actually firing the missile that will bring down the plane. So far as the viewer is concerned, the downing of the Iranian plane, the attack on the Cole, and Monday’s “dangerous showdown” all take place within the first 58 seconds of this 90 second clip. Such is the “magic” of television.
And such are the “dark arts” of psychology, I might add. In an article published just before the holidays, entitled, A Christian Christmas in Snowy Iran, I described perhaps the darkest of the dark arts that Pentagon psychologists regularly employ to instill hate and fear of Iran in Americans. And that is the dark art of classical conditioning. Which is much in evidence here. Even down to the timing. In keeping with best practice, the speedboat “incident,” the airliner “accident,” and the footage of the wounded Cole all take place in less than 60 seconds. Which, from a neuropsychological standpoint, is the precise amount of time required to forge the strongest possible synaptic link between these three visual events.
As I explained in my earlier article, what we think about these experiences really does not alter their visceral effect upon us. What the segment succeeds in doing in a purely associative manner is to bring the word, “Iran,” together with words and images of a powerfully fear-inducing, hate-inducing kind. Like talk of our suffering “casualties” (from an al-Qaeda attack 8 years ago).
At the same time, the segment appears to provide a “motive” for those Arab-Iranian-al-Qaeda-speedboat-sand-devils attacking the Cole and killing all those American sailors less than 30 seconds earlier/later. (Order doesn’t matter here.) It is clearly an act of revenge for shooting down “their” plane.
That the attack on the Cole was actually the work of al-Qaeda, that al-Qaeda is truly the mortal enemy of Iran, that the attack on the Cole took place long after the shooting down of the Iranian plane, that Iran itself has never been charged with any act of retaliation against the United States for that questionable “accident,” and that the vast majority of Iranians are not even Arabs, but Indo-Europeans – all mean nothing to most American viewers. In their media-muddled minds, those damn Arab-Iranian-al-Qaeda-speedboat-sand-devils just keep on “madly” attacking us and killing our servicemen.
“Those evil Iranians!” Hank snarls at the tube: “They’re a nest of nasty hornets, Mabel! And you know what you gotta do when you have a nest of nasty hornets after you!”
Psychologists call this process “seeding” the unconscious. As in the American “snuff” film, 300, where hordes of subhuman Persian/Iranians ultimately “crucify” the Greek defenders of Western “civilization.”
Remember the Cole! Remember Thermopylae! The indoctrination of the American people is relentless.
For those who want to believe that the recent NIE report has taken the military option against Iran “off the table” for the rest of Bush’s Presidency, it should be duly observed that the report gets all of 3 seconds of attention before the segment rushes on to its Hail-to-the-Decider-in-his-Marine-copter ending. (He knows what he’s gotta do!)
This altogether unbelievable “incident” of five small Iranian speedboats threatening to “explode” three mighty American warships, bristling with cannons and missiles, bears an eerie similarity to the “false flag” Tonkin Gulf “incident” that Johnson used as a pretext to launch the Vietnam War in 1964, as summarized in this short YouTube video.
Listen to Ron Paul’s prescient comment concerning just such an “incident” a full year ago.
As for what you can do to stop a catastrophic war from happening, start by visiting our new website. Check out our photos and videos there. See if you agree with our approach of showing the American people real images of Iran. And spread the word if you do.
You’ll find a lot of amazing photos on our site. Like these Arab-Iranian-al-Qaeda-speedboat-sand-devils lying on the beach, dreaming of martyrdom.
“See, Mabel?”
“Oh, Hank. That’s not sand. Haven’t you heard of the snows of Iran?”
January 12, 2008
William Wedin, Ph.D. [send him mail], is a New York psychologist and long-time activist, who is currently developing a new photo-sharing website to counter the current war propaganda on Iran. Readers of this article are invited to preview this new site.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
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One Night in South Carolina
One Night in South Carolina
by Scott Kauzlarich
by Scott Kauzlarich
8:00 – The candidates are on stage for the big debate hosted by Fox News. I crack my knuckles and prepare to record every question and every response. I can do this because I am a very fast typist. But first…the national anthem.
Mitt Romney gets things started by claiming to want to protect American jobs. John McCain tells us he’s “No Ms. Congeniality.” He’ll stop outrageous government spending. That would be a first. Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee have plans to use the government to stop any and all economic downturns.
8:15 – Ron Paul time. The good doctor gets his turn. He mentions Austrian Economics (somewhere Ludwig von Mises is smiling) and points out that the government itself plays a big role in recessions by messing with interest rates and interfering with monetary policy. He’s right, but his comments probably went over everyone’s heads.
8:23 – John McCain goes for the Al Gore vote by talking about global warming. Fred Thompson gets the first cheers and boos of the night when he accuses Huckabee of being a liberal. Huckabee looks queasy and says he cut taxes 94 times. Giuliani promises to go on the offense against terrorism…apparently the last six years we’ve just been sitting on our hands.
8:30 – One of the debate moderators, without so much as a hint of subtlety, tries to paint Ron Paul as a kook by asking him if he will disavow himself from the “9-11 Truthers” that support his campaign. Paul doesn’t take the bait. “Could I please participate in the current debate?” He rails against big government with the rest of his time and gets the second cheer of the night as Fox breaks for a commercial.
8:35 – The recent naval incident with Iran is the topic. Huckabee agrees with the restraint our military showed but wants people to know that if you engage the U.S. military you should be prepared to see the “gates of hell” and “we need to make it crystal clear you can’t kick sand in our face.” Lots of cheers.
Thompson agrees but adds that if the Iranians had taken one more step…they would get to see those virgins they are always talking about. More cheering.
Giuliani warns that we shouldn’t consider Iran benign and shouldn’t assume that they won’t someday be a nuclear power. McCain wonders if maybe the Iranians think we are weak and maybe they are still trying to deal in nukes. I can’t wait to hear what Ron Paul will say.
8:43 – Paul doesn’t disappoint: “I would urge more caution than what I’m hearing here.” He reminds the audience of the bogus Tonkin Gulf incident and pleads to not rush into war, especially over a couple of speedboats. He points out that some people in Washington were disappointed to hear intelligence indicating that Iran is no real threat.
Fox News moderator Brit Hume suddenly cuts Paul off by saying that all the other candidates said they agreed with the military’s passive response and questioning the sanity of Paul’s response. Paul doesn’t hear Hume at first and seems confused by the moderator injecting himself directly into his answer. Romney jokes that Paul has been reading too many Iranian press releases.
In Hume’s defense, the four previous candidates did give a cursory nod to the restraint the U.S. Navy showed in the Iranian incident. But if we roll the tape again we can see that mostly they were competing to be bellicose and provocative, which is what Paul was responding too. I’m used to seeing candidates take shots at each other, but has anyone ever faced a hostile moderator? I guess in Hume’s world, talking about showing people the gates of hell is a “passive” answer.
8:50 – Giuliani and McCain are done congratulating themselves for supporting the “surge” and the successful war in Iraq. Ron Paul disagrees, of course, arguing that our efforts have done more harm than good and it’s time to let the world solve its own problems. Echoing the Founding Fathers, Paul urges a new foreign policy based on trade and commerce rather than military intervention.
McCain retorts that he “…isn’t interested in trading with Al Qaeda because all they want are ‘birkas’ and he isn’t interested in traveling with them because they are only interested in one-way tickets.” In the most heated exchange of the debate so far, a riled-up Paul responds with another attack on U.S. foreign policy and claims that McCain would commit us to war in the Middle East for the next 100 years. McCain gets the last word, telling the audience that we shouldn’t condemn our troops.
Romney is up next and says that our foreign policy used to be simple, like a game of checkers but now it’s more like “3-D Chess.” He closes by saying we should come together with other free nations to move the world of Islam towards moderation. Oh, is that all?
9:01 – Huckabee discusses what he’ll do with Pakistan, part of his plan to run for President of this country and that one as well, apparently. He then joins in on the stomping of Paul, accusing the Congressman of wanting to leave Israel to get wiped out by its enemies.
Paul responds that the U.S. treats Israel “like a step-child” and that what they need is real sovereignty. He claims Israel would be safer without us and points out to Huckabee that the U.S. gives three times as much aid to Arab states as to Israel. My guess is that Fox News at this very moment is not scrambling to verify that fact.
Right on cue, Giuliani piles on, calling Paul’s position “absurd.” He’s been to Israel, after all, and “they are a close ally of us.” They are critical to our defense, Rudy tells us, ignoring the obvious fact that they are also one of the major sources for antagonism against us in the Islamic world. Maybe what Rudy meant was that Israel was critical to our needing defense.
9:07 – My notes are getting more incoherent, just like Mitt Romney, who says he keeps hearing that Washington is broken and that he “will take it apart and put it back together better.” I can’t believe that this kind of muddle passes for political debate.
McCain growls some more. He reversed a losing strategy in Iraq. He did? He’s going to be the Sheriff and make sure tax-payers don’t get ripped off. Tax-payers not getting ripped off…a complete oxymoron.
9:15 – Guliani has a catchy new line. “The Democrats talk about change, but what they really want is the change in your pocket.” This response has nothing to do with anything he was asked, I guess he was just dying to get that in somehow. He also says he had a lot of foreign policy experience as mayor of New York. Sure you did. McCain takes this as his cue to recite his much larger body of foreign policy experience. I begin to suspect that the goal here is to boost up certain guys for the big race yet to come against Hillary/Obama.
That suspicion is further reinforced when Huckabee is asked about signing on to a “women should submit to their husband” statement back in the day. This wasn’t a “gotcha” question, it was a “would you like to clarify this so you don’t look like a nut if you get the nomination” type of question. His response was lucid and funny, drawing cheers and applause. Take that Hillary/Obama!
9:20 – Time to kick around Paul some more. “Congressman Paul, are you really a viable candidate? Why are you running?” The guy actually looked embarrassed asking such an insulting question. But it’s nice to know that a moderator of a major debate had the balls to ask one of the candidates to take a hike and quit bothering the public. Can you imagine what they will say to John Edwards?
Paul gave his best answer of the night, blasting the GOP for losing their way and not following the Constitution or upholding limited government. “And you’re saying this isn’t Republican?”
Paul’s answer drew cheers and applause but I wonder if he really gets it. The Republicans are nothing more than a variant of the Democrat party and Paul is out of place. Until he proves he can win, he’ll be treated like a party-crasher, like a virus that needs to be purged.
9:29 – The debate wraps up with a round of questions about immigration and then it’s time for the post-debate reaction. I can barely stomach to watch, as this means it is time for Sean Hannity. Every candidate has a post-debate interview except Paul; like I said, to them he’s a wrinkly, liberty-espousing virus.
When the text-message polls are conducted, Ron Paul trounces the field yet again and Hannity mutters under his breath, “Here we go again.” To which I must concede the point. If Paul got half the support from voters as he did from text-messages he would be treated with far more respect. Either that or they would have dropped a stage light on his head.
9:35 – The Fox “focus group” comes to the consensus that Fred Thompson is the big winner that night. The next five minutes is a Fred Thompson commercial where everyone gives completely stupid and shallow answers for what is so great about him. When the focus group was asked who the big loser was in the debate, they all chorus, “Ron Paul!”
And back to you Sean…
January 12, 2008
Scott Kauzlarich [send him mail] is a professor of social science at Ellsworth Community College in Iowa Falls, Iowa.
Copyright © 2008 LewRockwell.com
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Freerunning goes to war as marines take tips from EZ, Livewire and Sticky
Freerunning goes to war as marines take tips from EZ, Livewire and StickyTroops to be taught daredevil street moves to help urban combat. Have your say and watch clips of free running
Robert Booth
Saturday January 12, 2008
Guardian
Freerunning, the youth craze which involves daredevil leaps from buildings and acrobatic stunts from lamp-posts, has emerged as the Royal Marines’ latest weapon of urban warfare.A squad of professional freerunners going by the names EZ, Livewire, Sticky and Spidey has begun training marine commandos in gravity-defying moves such as the “kong vault”, “running cat” and “crane” in an effort to improve troops’ street-to-street fighting ability.
The jumping techniques – in which the walls, stairs and bollards of urban landscapes become an assault course – were showcased in the opening sequence to the last James Bond film. The rising popularity of freerunning, also known as parkour, means it rivals skateboarding as a street craze.
Senior physical training instructors from the marines’ base in Lympstone, Devon, have received initial training on the concrete of the Heygate estate, Walworth, south London, and the South Bank Centre, a favourite stomping ground because of its high-level walkways, undercrofts and staircases.
They have taken the knowledge back to their training gym and from this month will receive regular training from the Urban Freeflow crew, a professional London outfit which advised on the choreography for Casino Royale.
Captain Sean Lerwill, a senior physical training instructor who is behind the collaboration, said freerunning moves were likely to be incorporated into battle training for qualified green berets and might be introduced into basic training for would-be recruits.
“We found some of the moves were relevant for battle,” he said. “For them it is about artistic expression. For example, they will run along a wall keeping a low profile because it looks good, but we need to do the same thing in urban combat to stay safe.”
Techniques for jumping from roof to roof and dropping from a height would be used to improve physical training drills to condition troops for urban warfare, he said. For example, the marines spotted that the freerunners’ method of dropping from a height, rolling on to their shoulder, back and leg and running on in one smooth movement maintains running speed and could reduce the chances of commandos being shot.
Another improvement could come from landing from jumps with one foot. Marines have traditionally landed on both feet to reduce the risk of sprains on rough ground, but freerunning teaches the use of one foot on more stable urban surfaces to maintain momentum.
Many, but not all, of the moves were manageable wearing combat dress and a rifle which could be held on a sling, Lerwill said. Since their initiation, the marines have practised on the streets of Exeter and established a Royal Marines Parkour Club.
An Admiralty spokesman said it supported the marines’ decision despite freerunning’s reputation as being subversive and counter-cultural. Some have even described its techniques as a manual for escaping burglars.
“I expected to find people who were a little bit lazy and maybe even involved in drug culture,” admitted Lerwill. “But they were nothing like that.” In fact, when the freerunners visited the Royal Marines HQ and tried their assault course wearing full kit and carrying a weapon, they recorded times quicker than those needed to qualify as a marine. EZ, the freerunner leading the training, said the marines had a voracious appetite for the vaults, flips and spins he taught them in their first two-day session in November. “They were fit, but I have to say they were very sore after the first day,” he said.
“For years we have done our training in a certain way,” said Lerwill. “It has taught people endurance and to deal with hardship, and much of it dates back to the Falklands war. For example, we do 20-hour yomps over Dartmoor … it might be better to replace some of those generic exercises with others which will be better in an urban environment because of the work we are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
The initiative began as part of a recruitment drive for the Royal Marines called It’s a State of Mind, which promotes the “sport, adventure and lifestyle” activities on offer to potential recruits, including skydiving, bungee jumping and mountain biking.
As part of the campaign the marines also tried coasteering – a sport combining swimming and cliff-scrambling to get around a rocky coastline – and were planning to film themselves cage-fighting to promote the diverse activities available, but this was cancelled on safety grounds.
There may be some officers who think the same should happen to the freerunning initiative. Corporal Ash Sleight, one of the marine PT instructors who trained in London, decided to practise the tricky “handstand to kong vault” move while on home leave. It didn’t quite work and he broke his leg.
Leaps and bounds
Freerunning began in the 1980s as a counter to the dull slog of jogging. It gained its alternative name, parkour, a corruption of the French term for obstacle course, in the Paris banlieues. Film directors are increasingly being drawn to its speed and style.
The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) Matt Damon said freerunning leaps were the hardest part of the film’s rooftop parkour sequences. Damon, rather than a stunt double, plays Bourne when he vaults off a building and in through a window.
Casino Royale (2006)
Freerunning co-founder Sébastien Foucan plays the terrorist Bond is pursuing in the opening sequence, in which Bond bounces off cranes in a construction site rooftop chase.
Breaking and Entering (2006)
Stars Jude Law and features a burglar who turns out to be a teenage free-runner, played by Rafi Gavron.
District 13 (2004)
The hero – played by one of parkour’s founding fathers, David Belle – evades gangsters and drug barons in a Parisian slum. The film stunned audiences with acrobatics without using wires or special effects.
Yamasaki (2001)
A group of freerunners battle against the injustice of the Paris ghetto by using parkour techniques to steal from the rich and pay off medical bills for an injured friend.
Fay Schlesinger
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
http://tinyurl.com/ypuddh
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R. W. “Dick” Gaines
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Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War
Pentagon, Big Pharma: Drug Troops to Numb Them to Horrors of War
By Penny Coleman, AlterNet. Posted January 10, 2008.
Since World War II, our military has sought and found any number of ways to override the values and belief systems recruits have absorbed from their families, schools, communities and religions. Using the principles of operant conditioning, the military has found ways to reprogram their human software, overriding those characteristics that are inconvenient in a military context, most particularly the inherent resistance human beings have to killing others of their own species.
“Modern combat training conditions soldiers to act reflexively to stimuli,” says Lt. Col. Peter Kilner, a professor of philosophy and ethics at West Point, “and this maximizes soldiers’ lethality, but it does so by bypassing their moral autonomy. Soldiers are conditioned to act without considering the moral repercussions of their actions; they are enabled to kill without making the conscious decision to do so. If they are unable to justify to themselves the fact that they killed another human being, they will likely — and understandably — suffer enormous guilt. This guilt manifests itself as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and it has damaged the lives of thousands of men who performed their duty in combat.”
EXCERPT ONLY ABOVE….
CLICK ON LINK BELOW TO CONTINUE READING
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R. W. “Dick” Gaines
THE “G” BLOG.
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GunnyG@gmailDotcom
Attention: Marines/Corpsmen B Co, 1st Bn, 1st Marines in Korea 1950….
reply-to majusmcret@milinet.us
to undisclosed-recipients <>
date Jan 12, 2008 1:37 PM
subject MIINET: Info Request
12 January
MIINET: Info Request
I have been requested by Colonel Len Hayes, USMC (Ret’d) to assist in locating any Marine or Corpsman who served with B/1/1 in Korea on Sep 21, 1950. On that date the 1stBn, 1st Marines were involved in the attack on Yongdong-po. B Company attacked over a series of dikes outside the town and the western part of Yongdong-po and suffered heavy casualties. One Plt Ldr, Lt Connor Hollingsworth, from B/1/1 was severely wounded and many have stated previously that he should be awarded an award for his heroic conduct during this engagement with the enemy. After the Seoul engagement the Company Commander, Captain Bland was transferred to Wpns Co. Capt Bland (LtCol Bland, USMC-Ret’d recently passed away) but prior to his passing sent an E-Mail to Lt Col Marvin D. Gardner, USMC (Ret’d) highly recommending 1stLt Hollingsworth for an award. The Awards Board at HQMC refused to accept this unsigned Personal Award Recommendation submitted by the former Co Cdr, now deceased. LtCol Gardner’s recommendation was considered acceptable to the Awards Board, but we need one additional, signed ¬arized statement from another Marine or Corpsman who witnessed 1stLt Hollingsworth’s heroic actions during that engagement. Captain Hollingsworth was medically separated from the USMC on Nov 1, 1950. He is being recommended for the Bronze Star Medal w/v and we have been informed that he is not expected to live. Those that knew him would like to see him receive this award before he passes away. 1stLt Hollingsworth was the Plt Ldr of the 3rd Plt of B/1/1. Anyone having witnessed the heroic actions by the Lt are asked to contact Colonel Len Hayes, USMC (Ret’d). Business Mgr of the 1st Marine Division Assn. LtGen Dick Carey, USMC (Ret’d) is also working on this award. Colonel Hayes may be reached by calling (760) 967 – 8561/62 (Office) or (760) 712 – 7088(Cell). Time is of the essence. PLEASE PASS THIS ON TO ANY MEMBERS OF 1/1 WHO MAY BE ABLE TO ASSIST.
S/F,
Don Greenlaw
Captain, USMC(Ret’d)
Marine Mustang
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Sheriff defends capture of boy by SWAT team
This is a WorldNetDaily printer-friendly version of the article which follows.
To view this item online, visit http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59654 
Saturday, January 12, 2008
POLICE STATE, USA
Sheriff defends capture of boy by SWAT team
Says father challenged officers to bring ‘army’ upon their return
Posted: January 12, 2008
1:00 a.m. Eastern By Bob Unruh
� 2008 WorldNetDaily.com The Colorado sheriff who dispatched a SWAT team to break into a family’s home, hold them at gunpoint and take custody of an 11-year-old boy for a medical exam sought by Social Services is defending the actions, saying the boy’s father told officers to “bring an army” if they returned.
The 11-year-old, Jonathan Shiflett, had suffered bruises while horsing around in a mobile home park near New Castle where the family lives. But his father, Tom Shiflett, refused to allow paramedics who arrived after a neighbor apparently called 911 to treat his son, and refused to allow the ambulance crew to take Jonathan to a hospital.
Multiple visits by police officers and sheriff’s deputies brought the same response, as did a visit from Social Services employees, who reported to court authorities: “Thomas Shiflett shouted at this worker and advised this worker that if he obtained a court order, he better ‘bring an army,’” according to an affidavit filed by Matthew McGaugh, a caseworker for the Garfield County Department of Social Services.
Sheriff Lou Vallario used that alleged threat in an e-mail response to a WND reader who questioned his actions. Vallario also criticized WND reporting on the events to a local newspaper, without contacting WND with any concerns.
“Thank you for your concerns. I have had personal confrontations with Mr. Shiflett and he has been threatening, agitated and violent. In 2005 we arrested him for chasing a man down the street with an ax and his statement in the report was, ‘if he didn’t run faster than me I would have planted the ax in the back of his head.’ He was not convicted because of our ‘Make my day’ law (self defense of your home), but none the less he clearly demonstrated violence in this case as well as others. Further, when we requested his cooperation he said, ‘if you want my son, bring an army,’” the sheriff responded via e-mail.
(Story continues below)
However, what the sheriff left out of his response was what McGaugh reported happened just before the alleged threat. McGaugh confirmed he had delivered a not-so-veiled threat to Shiflett.
“This worker explained that the Department had an obligation to investigate the report, that it appeared the child needed medical attention, and that if he didn’t consent, the Department would have to obtain a court order to get a medical evaluation for the child,” McGaugh stated in a sworn affidavit.
The “report” he was referring to was left undefined in his document. He wrote, “Caseworker Maria Hernandez-Lee and I went to the residence of the minor child, Jonathan Shiflett, � to investigate allegations of medical neglect that had been reported to the Department.”
Cindy Fuqua, who is on the ambulance crew summoned by the neighbor, also submitted an affidavit in which she explained how she and others with the ambulance crew went into the home where Tom Shiflett said they could look at Jonathan but not treat him.
Fuqua confirmed, “I was asked to go get the jump kit from the ambulance and take it inside. When I arrived inside I took out the stethoscope and blood pressure cuff to get vital signs and the father stated, ‘I said you can check him out but that is all you will do.’”
She continued, “The pt’s [patient's] father became very agitated and verbally abusive to all the ambulance crew. We were told by the pt’s father that we were trespassing and that we needed to leave. I explained � that per our medical/legal protocols that we would have to contact medical control to get a refusal cleared and that if the ER DR cleared it we would have to have a family member sign the refusal.”
“The father stated, ‘I will not or anyone else here will not sign anything,’ that we could have the person that called 911 sign the refusal form because he didn’t call us.”
Tom Shiflett has told WND he didn’t give the crew permission to enter his home � they just entered when the door was open, and that with his medical experience in Vietnam, he already had evaluated his son and was treating him with an ice pack on his bruised head.
He also told WND he made the comment about the “army” because social workers had upset him by threatening a court order. And he explained the charges from years ago, which were dropped by the prosecutor, stemmed from a confrontation in which a man came into Shiflett’s home and started making demands, and refused to leave.
Fuqua reported that the ambulance crew left “because we were worried about our safety,” and when they left, they waited nearby for an officer from the Garfield County sheriff’s office to “talk to him about this call.”
The sheriff’s e-mail response also continued:
“Finally, a very important part of this that NOBODY wants to report is that we sent 2 deputies to his door to explain the seizure warrant (a warrant generated by social svcs but ordering ME to do this unfortunate deed) and ask for his cooperation. He refused, became vulgar and broke off contact. Based on the previous history I felt I had no choice but to elavate (sic) our response to comply with this court order. The good news is that nobody was hurt and the boy was not seriously injured, as believed to be by the ambulance crew and social svcs,” the sheriff wrote.
“I hope this helps give you an accurate acount (sic) of the events, not the media-biased reports or even the Shiflett’s accounts who clearly have a biased perception,” he wrote.
But Vallario also told WND he simply told his officers to do exactly what the magistrate demanded.
“I was given a court order by the magistrate to seize the child, and arrange for medical evaluation, and that’s what we did,” he said.
However, the “Search warrant and order for medical treatment” that was issued by the court ignored the parental treatment of Jonathan’s injury, instead finding he was injured, and “Thomas Shiflett, refused to allow the minor child to have medical attention. �”
“The court finds that there is probable cause to believe � Thomas Shiflett, the biological father of the minor child, Jonathan Shiflett, has mistreated the minor child due to his failure to provide the minor child with proper or necessary medical care �” the document said.
Eventually, the court-ordered doctor’s exam resulted in instructions to the family to treat Jonathan’s injuries with ice and painkillers, the exact treatment they already had been doing before the ambulance even arrived, they have told WND.
But the order included no recommendation for a SWAT team campaign, only directing the sheriff’s office to “search the home � and to take the minor child, Jonathan Shiflett, into immediate custody.”
Tina Shiflett, Jonathan’s mother, wrote in a letter sent to WND that she considered the actions “Nazi” tactics and reported that the SWAT officers told her her “rights” were “only in the movies.”
During the attack, his mother wrote, “One (officer) grabbed my daughter Beth (18 years), who also had a gun to her face, slammed her down and kneed her in the back and held her in that position� My sons Adam (14) and Noah (only 7) lay down willingly, yet they were still forced to put their hands behind their backs and were yelled at to keep their heads down.
“My daughter Jeanette was coming out from the back bedroom when she was grabbed, drug down the hallway, across a couch and slammed to the ground,” she said. “The officers then began throwing scissors and screwdrivers across the room (out of our reach, I suppose) and going through our cupboards.
“I asked if I could make a phone call and was told, ‘no.’ My daughter asked if that wasn’t one of our rights. The reply was made, ‘That’s only in the movies,’” she said.
“To the SWAT Team members � how far will you go in ‘just doing your job?’ If you feel no guilt busting into an innocent family’s home, traumatizing young children and stomping the security found therein, will you follow more horrific orders?” she wrote.
“May I remind you that in Nazi Germany, outrageous, monstrous crimes were committed by soldiers ‘just doing their job?’ What will be next? Where will this stop?” she wrote.
A WND message left for Deborah Quinn, the assistant Garfield County attorney who requested the court order, was not returned. Westcare Ambulance officials have declined to allow WND to ask question about the case, and court officials declined to allow WND to leave a message for Magistrate Lain Leoniak, who signed the order.
The family also added details to the sheriff’s explanation of having two officers knock on the family’s door and ask for cooperation.
“Between 10 and 11 � a sheriff came to the door. My husband met him at the window and he began to question my husband. My husband spoke with him and answered all his questions. The sheriff then said if Tom would just let him speak with Jonathan (our 11-year-old son) this whole matter (story following) would be closed,” Tina Shiflett wrote.
“Tom said, ‘You are saying if I let you speak to Jonathan this whole matter will be closed?’ Then Tom called for Jonathan to come to the window,” she said.
“As soon as Jonathan was visible to the sheriff, a SWAT team appeared shining lights on Jon’s face and others were bashing at the door with a ramming device. My daughter resisted and pushed against the door to stop them as she didn’t know who they were. I told her to back up and not try to fight them. They then entered our home, held a gun to my daughter’s face and others of them, five or more, rushed into the living room and physically forced my other children to the ground.”
Related special offers:
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Previous stories:
Mother warns community about ‘Nazi’ home invasion
SWAT team-seized boy refuses doc’s painkillers
SWAT officers invade home, take 11-year-old at gunpoint
Parents race to escape before court takes kids
Truancy hearing targets homeschooling mom
Bob Unruh is a news editor for WorldNetDaily.com.
CONSERVATISM’S LEGACY
CONSERVATISM’S LEGACY
Rudy Takala
January 12, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
Barack Obama’s win in Iowa was historic. It was not just another political event. It pierced our culture on a thousand levels; such a radical blow to conventional wisdom comes along once in a century. It happened when Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to a door in Wittenberg. It happened again when the Boston Tea Party incited a revolution against an empire; it happened when Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg address.
From somewhere among the motley crews of aged, disgruntled Republicans who have done nothing but inspire fear, from the midst of shrill Democrats who did nothing but talk about “taking down” the rich – somewhere from out of this variegated array of fatalists, one voice rose above it.
I think that an opportunity will have presented itself for conservatives if they are able to vote for Obama in the general election. There are two aspects to his persona that appeal to me. The first is the charismatic side; the side that rejects precedent, that defies tradition and seems to eschew the crusty old cynicism that dominates party politics. Whether you view it as artificial or sincere, it is something our country needs.
The second aspect that appeals to me is his ideology. I don’t care if you view him as a moderate or as a closet Islamic terrorist who wants to impose communism on the nation. (Both sides have adherents.) It’s irrelevant.
If Obama is a “moderate,” he’ll be no worse than Huckabee if he is the Republican nominee. If Obama is an extremist, he will illustrate for America what socialism looks like. When Lyndon Johnson did that for us nearly five decades ago, it acted as a catalyst for the coming of Ronald Reagan.
In either case, it is something the nation will easily survive. The latter possibility is something that conservatives can even benefit from.
On the other hand, if we vote for Mike Huckabee, we will be condoning a continuation of the Bush legacy. I find that to be much more frightening than anything the Democrats have presented. Liberalism is what it is, what it has always been; we are all familiar with it, and we know what to expect. It is socialism. It is a destroyer of nations. What else is new?
But once it has been allowed to overtake the Republican Party, the last wall will have fallen. The final barricade will have been obliterated. There will be nothing left to stand between our nation and its final destruction.
Contrary to the cynicism of some, the Republican Party hasn’t lost its value yet. That’s a fact for which I am representative. But we are not far from it.
Huckabee will be the final nail in the coffin of a party that is dying, both figuratively and literally. Huckabee’s Republican Party and the philosophy of conservatism stand on opposite ends of the political spectrum. It would be nearly comical for us to support him. It would be an admission that we don’t really have beliefs. We only have candidates.
In hijacking his own party, Obama created something that the Republicans will not be able to emulate. Members of the latter have spent a year watching their candidates explain that their beliefs don’t really matter, that it’s “all about winning.” Its party officials have spent a year collaborating with television networks such as Fox, picking and choosing which candidates would be truly allowed to participate in the election.
Republicans voters were bullied into accepting what they were told to accept. The process was humiliating more than it was inspirational.
If Republicans truly believe that Obama represents a strain of radical liberalism that will destroy our nation, they have nothing to fear from him. He will tear our institutions apart, and the stage will be set for a real conservative to take hold in the next presidential election.
But then again, Obama’s liberalism isn’t really what establishment Republicans dislike. Their nomination of Huckabee and acceptance of candidates like McCain and Giuliani have illustrated that socialism doesn’t really bother them. What they are really opposed to is losing. And if embracing socialism is what it takes to win, then they believe it should be done. That has been the party’s singular most prominent principle for the past decade.
It is time to be reminded of what real socialism brings. Obama may or may not do that for us. But above all else, it is time for victory to be taken away from those for whom it means the most. It is the only means by which they will be made to stop sacrificing our values for their benefit, and it is necessary if conservatives are to reclaim their own legacy of hope.
© 2008 Rudy Takala – All Rights Reserved
Rudy Takala is 19 years old and is the chairman of Minnesota’s Pine County Republicans. He was homeschooled for nine years, and is currently a senior at Hamline University.
He has been involved in Republican politics since 1998; he served as a campaign manager for a state Senate candidate in 2006, and was offered a position as campaign manager for a U.S. Congressional candidate later in the year. His first column appeared in the Minneapolis Star Tribune at the age of 14. Since then, his columns have appeared on a number of websites, including NewsWithViews.com, WorldNetDaily and many others.
Rudy hopes for a career in which he is able to continue antagonizing proponents of the State. Currently, he spends his free time laboring over a book concerning the American government’s school system.
E-Mail: RudyTakala@Yahoo.com.
THANK YOU MR. BUSH
THANK YOU MR. BUSH
by Dr. W.R. Marshall, Ph.D
January 12, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
Mr. Bush, we owe you our gratitude.
I never thought I’d say that. Sure you’ve been great fodder for columns and cartoons and sketch comedy, but every president has supplied pundits and writers with that, and while you may have given the people a few more laughs than the previous execs, you’ve given us so much more.
After seven years of the most incompetent, corrupt, arrogant, divisive—did I say incompetent—administration in the history of our nation, you’ve given the country the one thing you tried so hard to take away…hope.
You did your best to kill America, and I wasn’t alone in thinking you’d done it. You ignored the Congress, denied the Constitution, and right now you’re doing your Stalin impression by decreeing laws through signing statements. You’re the president who invades sovereign nations without provocation. You’re the president who approves torture. You’re the president who takes care of your friends first and the nation second—if at all. You’re the president who believes he’s a king, a messenger from god.
Things looked bleak for America.
Then something happened, and we have you to thank.
Barack Obama won the Iowa Caucus. A Black man in almost entirely white state won the hearts and minds of the people. And if that wasn’t surprise enough, a woman won the New Hampshire Primary.
People came out in record numbers to vote for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton—at one point they ran out of ballots at polling places in New Hampshire.
All because of you Mr. Bush. For seven years you’ve worked diligently to crush America. You lied and cheated and stole, you cried terror and sent young people to die in a war built on lies. You even tried to send more people to die in another war you wanted to lie us into.
It looked bad. I didn’t think anything would change and you would spend the next year running what was left of America into the ground. You’d make a few bucks for you and Cheney, while the cowards in the Congress let you make your deals and hoped you wouldn’t get mad at them if they objected to your renegade presidency.
Then a Black man and a woman made their presence known. The very people you could not care less about. The very people who could do nothing for you, were lifted by the rest of the people because of you.
After seven long years of your reign, Americans, rather than giving up, stood up. Their disgust with you and your cronyism and your insipid policies emboldened them, and they spit in your eye. They said, “No More.”
No more people like you.
For the first time in a long time people came out and voted for something, for someone—not against something or someone. (Not the way you got elected in both 2000 and 2004 when people held their nose and voted for you simply because they couldn’t pull the lever for the other guy—oh, right, you were the less popular candidate in 2000.)
Not this time, Mr. Bush. No one voted against another candidate, they voted for something. They listened, they weighed their options, they voted for something new. Something that isn’t you.
Every single vote cast, every single vote that carried Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, and Mike Huckabee and even John McCain to victory, was a vote that said we’re done with you, Mr. Bush, we’re done with your arrogance and your ignorance—we’re taking our country back from people like you.
You brought together people who no one thought would ever sit down in the same room. White farmers and Black housewives, university professors and construction workers, senior citizens and first time teenagers—you, Mr. Bush brought them all together. They came together because of their contempt for you and their love for this country, the country you have systematically tried to destroy.
It’s a good thing you can’t run again—it saves you the embarrassment of being run out of town.
You still have time to do damage, to further ignore the will of the people in your flight from reason, but the end is in sight, and rather than the dark skies we once thought would loom over the country after you left it in ruins, things are looking pretty bright—in spite of you.
So, thank you, Mr. Bush.
You said something during your first run for president, and like everything else you’ve said, we all thought it was a lie, apparently it wasn’t—you finally did became a uniter.
© 2008 – W.R. Marshall – All Rights Reserved
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WR Marshall is a syndicated columnist and novelist. His column, ‘A Dull Ache’(tm) is read in over one hundred markets around the world. He also has a PhD, which he’s still paying for-in more ways than one…
E-Mail: marshallwr@hotmail.com
I HAD A NIGHTMARE THE OTHER NIGHT
By Dr. Laurie Roth
January 12, 2008
NewsWithViews.com
The war continues on as attacks continue from Iran, Pakistan and New Palestine. The last two weeks Tel Aviv has been hammered for the 5th time with rockets from Hamas. Another Israeli school has been leveled. This time 53 Jewish children have been killed. Last week it was 38 pre-schoolers burned alive at a day-care center.
President Hillary and the UN have responded formally by sending Jimmy Carter and Vice President Bill Clinton to New Palestine to insure that Israel doesn’t start taking territory back, especially Jerusalem! The UN is writing up war crimes papers to be delivered to the Prime Minister of Israel for firing back at 3 Mosques and one apartment complex in New Palestine, where missiles were fired.
In cultural news, Jews continue to join a national weight loss campaign so everyone can lose 10-20 pounds and make it seem that Israel has more land because smaller people can walk around easier than heavier people.
In other news, the clean up continues in Iraq as our troops find their dead and wounded from another dirty bomb attack from Iran. The military body count has climbed to 3456 soldiers and 35 Iraqis this week. Ahmadinejad has taken credit, along with Al Kae Da, calling the US military presence in Iraq simply a precursor to an attack against Iran, giving him the right to defend his country and its programs against an illegal invasion as US forces have done in Iraq.”
President Hillary and congress have washed their hands from any comments regarding the continued attacks against our military in Iraq, especially in light of the historic oil deal made last week with Iran and formal recall of our troops from Iraq. Rosie O’Donnell, Hillary’s press secretary was quoted as saying, “President Rodham is very sorry so many soldiers have been killed with this latest dirty bomb, but wants to point out that those soldiers chose to stay and finish their jobs, taking 30 days to exit the country rather than the 12 hours demanded by her and congress.” Congress is writing an apology letter to Iran for causing them to attack our troops out of fear of an invasion from the US. As a gesture to Iran, 4 more mosques are being built in New York and LA, reflecting the fundamentalist Islamic strain of Ahmadinejad’s faith.
In national news, the Supreme court has now ruled that the terms illegal alien and immigrant are now hate speech and a crime, Americans are now given 90 days to adjust their rhetoric, teaching, preaching, statements, and calling themselves US citizens. We are now members of the North American Union and although we refer to the bill of rights, that now defers to the UN and is considered a religiously biased document, reflecting bigoted history of the US. Now, we submit to the United Islamic States of the Middle East and Sharia law, who now rule the UN and the North American Union.
In domestic cultural news, the Supreme Court has also ruled that it is a crime to refer to the terms, Mom and Dad or Husband and Wife, as they alienate those of other sexual persuasions. The following terms are all now protected categories with special rights.; Homosexual, Bisexual, Transgender, Fly sexual, Dog and pony sexual, Alien sexual, Manic sexual, Diseased and proud sexual, Atheist sexual and Revolving gender sexual, all having adoption rights, family rights, grant funding rights, employment rights in any church, and media rights. Heterosexuals are now considered a rare and hostile minority that must be reined-in.
Finally, the North American Union continues to reflect population growth and job creation as never before. Although most formerly middle class jobs are now gone, there are growing numbers of desperate seniors living in fields and making beaded necklaces for the Zeta gang members, now representing every major city. We are finally beginning to understand the experience of Third World countries because we are becoming one as we destroy and bury what culture, language, and traditions we once had. Real history and religion no longer exist as we are forced to submit to moral rot and Islamic fundamentalism. Our need for oil fans the fires of our endless false guilt.
Please wake us all up from this potential nightmare! As citizens we must find a way to get involved on all issues surrounding the following: Protecting our REAL history, Judeo-Christian roots; Protecting and insisting on our continued sovereignty and borders; Identifying Islamic Fundamentalism as evil and the enemy, THEN attacking these ideologies straight on; Defending our faithful allies like Israel, instead of treating them as puppets! Finally, we must stop sacrificing our children to abortion, and their hearts and spirit to sexual evil, porn, amoral teaching and filth.
© 2008 Dr. Laurie Roth – All Rights Reserved
Dr. Laurie Roth earned a black belt in Tae Kwon Do. In the late 90′s, Laurie hosted and produced a successful PBS television show called “CD Highway” that aired nationally on 130 TV stations.
Tune in to The Roth Show, Weeknights from 7:00 to 10:00 pm PAC and find out for yourself! You can listen live on cable radio network (live on the internet) channel 6 or visit The Roth Show web site and click on “where to listen” www.therothshow.com Call the Roth Show at: 1-866-388-9093
E-Mail: Drljroth@aol.com
RP, 9/11, Faux Noose, etc.
Entering The Ron Paul 911 Spin Zone: Let’s Get Real
Because Somebody Needs To
By Sherry Baker
1-11-8
“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.” — Oscar Wilde
There’s is perhaps no better example extant of how deeply we live in an Orwellian world of propaganda-fueled doublespeak than Bill O’Reilly’s Faux News show, insanely and inaccurately dubbed ” The No Spin Zone”. O’Reilly spins and sputters and taints news and bullies any guest so that the subject matter at hand is spun into a something that shows, at least in O’Reilly’s eyes, that his macho posturing know-it-all- rants are The Truth (you have to wonder about
O’Reilly’s personal masculinity issues when you consider why he is so adamant at always being the biggest, baddest, loudest badass in the room.)
I bring this up because anyone with working neurons left is hopefully fed up with spin and half-truths and just plain B.S. Yet, I’m here to say I’m ready to spin something about Ron Paul. At least , I’m upfront and honest about it. So hear me out.
I’m looking for a way to spin a few seconds of last night’s Faux News sponsored Republican candidate debate so it doesn’t seem to be as black and white as, unfortunately, it was. I’m going to make excuses. I’m going to look for explanations. But I’m not going to lie.
Let me get to the crux of the matter: Ron Paul’s answer to the question he was asked last night about 911 truth movement supporters. It’s a fair question but it wasn’t posed fairly. It was an ambush in the middle of a discussion about other things, asked by a rat-faced smarmy Faux News talking head, meant clearly to be an attack of sorts, and presented with the pejorative term “rhetoric” . To wit, Dr. Paul was asked about embracing 911 Truthers’ “rhetoric”.
Here’s a transcript of those few seconds, in case you missed them:
After the other candidates were given ample time to talk about whether the Republican Party has lost its way , RFFNG ( Rat Faced Faux News Guy, I don’t know his name) leaned forward and zinged this one at Ron Paul: Many of your supporters call themselves 911 Truthers. They believe that the U.S . government was in some way complicit with the 911 attacks or covered it up. Are you prepared tonight to either embrace that rhetoric or ask those supporters to abandon it or divorce themselves from your candidacy?
Ron Paul ( looking a bit confused because, no doubt, this was out of context with the debate that had been going on and it was, after all, his time to contribute to the subject at hand): I can’t tell people what to do but I’ve abandoned those viewpoints. I don’t believe that. That’s the only thing that’s important, so I don’t endorse anything they say ..but I would like to take an opportunity to talk about the issue that we’ve been debating here the last 20 minutes …( next words are unintelligible because RFFNG was loudly interrupting and talking over Dr. Paul).
Faux News: Sir, would you ask them to cease..
Ron Paul: Pardon me?
Faux News: Would you ask them to cease that rhetoric tonight on your behalf?
Ron Paul: Well, it doesn’t do me any good so if they care about me they should . But the only thing I have control over is what I believe and what I say . I can’t tell them what to do. So I don’t endorse what they say and I don’t believe that.. so please could I participate in the current debate?
Loud applause..
Let’s get real about what happened. It was a case of damned if he did and damned if he didn’t. If he acknowledged any specific interest in the 911 Truth movement, Dr. Paul could have counted on a whole new wave of smears on top of the ridiculous, puerile racist garbage already being thrown on him. If he said he didn’t believe in what the 911 Truthers believe and said they should cease their association between the campaign and the truth movement which I believe is what he is was saying he left himself open to cries of betrayal by some of the folks who have so passionately supported him, those who are convinced that there’s someone, maybe the wizard-as-New-World-Order, behind the curtain of lies and who have hoped Ron Paul would join them in making sure the curtain falls .
But what IS the truth? Can we agree no one has all the facts, no one knows for sure. There is clearly one and only one , single 911 Truth that it takes extreme ignorance or just plain stupidity to believe the official story. And Ron Paul is anything but ignorant or stupid.
So what gives? What does he really believe? I don’t think he’s a liar. I also don’t think he’s been groomed by the professional image makers who season and rehearse the other spray coiffed, sent-from-central-casting candidates. In this case, I wish Ron Paul had been. I wish someone had warned him that he could wiggle out of the space between the rock and the hard place on 911 questions by sticking to the fact that he supports everyone’s right to free speech and to search for what they believe is the truth and, even better, if he had quoted the very mainstream 911 commission folks who said they were stymied by the Bush regime at getting to the truth ( whatever it is) and called for a better investigation of the 911 events.
Instead, he blurted out what he did and it’s done now. Those of us who think the official 911 story as written by the U.S. government has holes big enough to, well, fly jets through can now seethe and attack Ron Paul ( as well as, too often, each other) and feel betrayed. Maybe that’s the righteous reaction.
Or we stop and take a deep breath and THINK about this. Is there any other presidential candidate who , if elected, would even begin to listen to the mounting evidence that the official 911 story is a sham? Can we cut Dr. Paul some slack on this one?
Is there a choice? Has he really had the time or opportunity to study the 911 questions yet in depth ? Just because he doesn’t believe now, he says, that 911 was an inside job, it doesn’t mean he never will or will never look at the facts. I may be wrong but I don’t think this man is a liar. The truth is hard to come by, hard to recognize sometimes . Bob Dylan once wrote: “The truth was obscure, too plain and too pure. To live it you had to explode.” Let’s try not to explode and keep fighting the good fight but not among each other.
Comment
Mary Sparrowdancer
1-12-8
I believe that it was the loaded question asked of Ron Paul that he had to dismiss. The question asked of Dr. Paul, interrupting him as he spoke attempting to debate was, “Would you ask them to cease that rhetoric?” Rhetoric is a term that certainly has evolved into a word with a host of negative implications. How could Dr. Paul answer “No. Let’s let them keep up the rhetoric.” How could he answer in this manner and still be credible? Of course he had to say what he said. It was the only intelligent answer to a trick question.
Additionally, how can this man (Paul) possibly state he believes in something that has not yet been legally proven in a real court? He is a Constitutionalist. Therefore, he believes in innocence until proven guilty. Most Americans (including myself) now suspect or believe this “government” was in fact involved in 9/11. Our opinions matter and can compel a Constitutionalist representing the People to act. The real day in court has not yet happened. Get out of Ron Paul’s way, read the Constitution, and then elect Ron Paul (as we appear to be doing). Let him lead us back to justice and freedom according to the Constitution.
Comment
Jim Kirwan
1-12-8
Okay,
So now it’s everyone – except possibly Cynthia McKinney – who is a direct part of what 911 brought into the world, and enabled militarily.
The 911 topic is obviously the key to understanding EVERYTHING that has happened since that day, and for Ron Paul to dismiss this idea as something that he simply “does not believe in” – was more than just disappointing.
That’s a deal breaker because there is now no one running who is interested in what-really-happened on 911.
Bye-Bye “America” – Hello USA INCORPORATED, & welcome to the Camps!
kirwan
http://youtube.com/watch?v=t-lxZmrqLxU
Comment
From Michael H
To Jim Kirwan
Sorry Jim,
On this one I disagree…if Ron Paul came out mainstream and said he believed 9/11 was an inside job, it would be political suicide & he knows it.
Michael
Reply
From Jim Kirwan
Maybe Michael – but Paul came out with equally if not more damning ideas in regard to both the FED and the IRS, with hardly a ripple ~ the interesting thing about real convictions and real strength is that when that is displayed much of the opposition does indeed crumble.
There is no substitute for speaking truth to power ~ especially when running for leader of anything, much less the figurative head of the completely corrupted Western World.
The corpse that is all that’s left of this ‘nation’ could easily withstand a huge jolt of truth – we haven’t had one for a very long time. But the fact that no one currently running for resident dictator is willing to cast a white-hot searchlight into the most criminal and most course-changing event in the country’s history speaks not volumes: but of EPIC-CRIMINAL-ACTIONS that have no modern parallel. Basically we have declared ourselves to be uninterested in the very events that have directly led to the slaughter of many millions of people, not to even mention the permanently maimed, the displaced, the now homeless, and the countless refugees around the world – all not only brought on by 911 – but JUSTIFIED and furthered, by this nation’s complete disinterest in even knowing what actually happened on that day. . . .
F**K them all, and everything that say they stand for: because what’s really on the line is what these pretenders to high office will never allow themselves to even remotely countenance: which is the truth!
I stand by my original statement – to hell with all of it. The elections are nothing but an entertainment for idiots and the brain-dead that want so desperately to find anyone to do their dirty-work for them – but freedom doesn’t work that way. You can’t just hire someone to fight FOR you – YOU have to do your own fighting if you really want the freedom which that the effort involves (including possible death). This is what makes a Republic that says it has a democratic system a very messy business – because it’s all about personal determination and the strength of character to stand your ground against all odds.
k
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RP and The Question of 9/11 Truthers/The LRC Blog….
Sullivan: ‘Thank God for Ron Paul’
From his debate Analysis:
…And, yes, thank God for Ron Paul.No one else, except McCain, copped to the GOP’s rank betrayal of fiscal conservatism, limited government, prudent foreign policy and civil liberties. When he was asked to disown the 9/11 Truthers, he gave a revealing answer, and one that reflects on the newsletters issue. It just isn’t in his nature to adopt other people’s views, or to tell anyone else what to believe or what to say. He doesn’t just believe in libertarianism; he lives it. This means that he doesn’t have the instinct to police anyone else’s views or actions within the law or the Constitution. I don’t think it excuses his negligence in the past, but it does help me understand it better.
One other vital thing: none of the candidates seems to have the slightest nuance on the Iraq war. I don’t find Paul’s extreme non-interventionism to be palatable; but I don’t think it’s less inherently reasonable than McCain’s belief in occupying half the planet for ever as long as we don’t have US casualties. Giuliani is the nuttiest. Romney just vacuous and dumb. To listen to McCain, you would honestly think Iraq would soon become a peaceful, unified, independent nation. At best, that might happen in 50 years time. Until then, we have to occupy the place, constantly juggling various militias, appeasing various factions, arming those who will one day attack us and then the next day realign with us? Empire is a rough business. And when you’re running en empire on borrowed money and your own currency is going down the tubes, it’s not an indefinite prospect. And if McCain believes Arab culture will tolerate a permanent American occupation the way that Koreans or Germans have, he has learned nothing from these past five years and even less from history.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/
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R. W. “Dick” Gaines
THE “G” BLOG.
http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/
GunnyG@gmailDotcom
Democrats say McCain nearly abandoned GOP
Democrats say McCain nearly abandoned GOP
| By Bob Cusack | |
| March 28, 2007 | |
| Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was close to leaving the Republican Party in 2001, weeks before then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) famously announced his decision to become an Independent, according to former Democratic lawmakers who say they were involved in the discussions.
In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCain’s chief political strategist. Democrats had contacted Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) in the early months of 2001 about switching parties, but in McCain’s case, they said, it was McCain’s top strategist who came to them. At the end of their March 31, 2001 lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Bethesda, Md., Downey said Weaver asked why Democrats hadn’t asked McCain to switch parties. Downey, a well-connected lobbyist, said he was stunned. “You’re really wondering?” Downey said he told Weaver. “What do you mean you’re wondering?” “Well, if the right people asked him,” Weaver said, according to Downey, adding that he responded, “The calls will be made. Who do you want?” Weaver this week said he did have lunch with Downey that spring, pointing out that he and Downey “are very good friends.” He claims, however, that Downey is grossly mischaracterizing their exchange: “We certainly didn’t discuss in any detail about the senator’s political plans and any discussion about party-switchers, generically, would have been limited to the idle gossip which was all around the city about the [Democrats'] aggressive approach about getting any GOP senator to switch in order to gain the majority. Nothing more or less than that.” Downey said Weaver is well aware that their discussion was much more than typical Washington chit-chat. “Within seconds” of arriving home from his lunch with Weaver, Downey said he was on the phone to the most powerful Democrats in town. One of the first calls he made was to then-Senate Minority Leader Daschle. “I did take the call from Tom [Downey],” Daschle said in an interview. “It was Weaver’s comment” to Downey that started the McCain talks, he added. Daschle noted that McCain at that time was frustrated with the Bush administration as a result of his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican primary. Daschle said that throughout April and May of 2001, he and McCain “had meetings and conversations on the floor and in his office, I think in mine as well, about how we would do it, what the conditions would be. We talked about committees and his seniority … [A lot of issues] were on the table.” Absolutely not so, according to McCain. In a statement released by his campaign, McCain said, “As I said in 2001, I never considered leaving the Republican Party, period.” Some of the meetings Daschle referred to are detailed in the former senator’s 2003 book. Other senators who played major roles in the intense recruiting effort, according to Democrats, were then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) as well as Sens. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Harry Reid (D-Nev.). “John [Edwards] at that time was working with McCain on a couple things and there was a sense that because of his relationship that he might be a good person to talk to him,” Daschle said. “He was clearly one of those that we thought could be helpful.” A source close to Edwards said Daschle’s comments are accurate. Daschle also said, “Both Sen. Reid and I talked to [McCain] both individually and together.” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a longtime friend of McCain’s, said yesterday, “I have never heard one word from John’s mouth to suggest he was going to leave the Republican Party. These are political-intrigue stories that have no basis in fact.” In one article, Marshall Wittman, a McCain loyalist and strategist six years ago, put the odds of McCain leaving the Republican Party at “50-50.” Wittman, who now works for Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.), declined to comment for this article. A source said that Wittman’s comment at that time was “completely based on speculation.” McCain consistently shot down the rumors, though Weaver acknowledged this week that the senator did talk to Democrats about leaving the GOP. He said McCain was invited to a meeting in Kennedy’s office with several other Democratic senators but “didn’t know what the meeting was for” and left soon thereafter. Weaver added that Edwards approached McCain on the Senate floor to discuss the matter. Told of Weaver’s version of what happened, Daschle said, “Obviously, our recollection of what transpired is somewhat different.” Daschle first made some of these assertions in little-noticed parts of his book, titled Like No Other Time: The 107th Congress and the Two Years That Changed America Forever. The book states that in 2001, Daschle and other Democrats were attempting to persuade three Republicans to leave their party: Jeffords, Chafee, and McCain. Asked which one was the closest to committing, Daschle answered, “Depended on the day.” On page 62, Daschle wrote that McCain and Chafee “seemed like real possibilities” to bolt their party. He pointed out that few, if any, of McCain’s people were hired by the Bush administration. “John didn’t think that was right,” Daschle wrote, “that his staff should be penalized like that.” Chafee confirmed to The Hill this week that he had meetings with Democrats about changing parties in 2001 because he was “alarmed” at the differences between President Bush’s campaign promises and the policies coming out of his administration. Weaver said he hasn’t read Daschle’s book, which does not mention the Downey-Weaver lunch. Mark Salter, who in 2001 was McCain’s chief of staff and now works for the senator’s campaign, said McCain has not at any moment thought about leaving the Republican Party: “Never at any time. Never.” Salter said there were no staff discussions about this issue, noting he would have been in on them. Soon after Bush was inaugurated as the nation’s 43rd president, McCain was working with Democrats on many issues, ranging from gun control to healthcare to campaign-finance reform. McCain’s links to Democrats were so clear that Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) — now a close ally of McCain — publicly criticized him in the early part of 2001 for keeping “unusual company.” Jeffords pulled the trigger on May 24, 2001, throwing control of the Senate to Democrats. Chafee and McCain then broke off their discussions with Democratic leaders, according to Democrats. Downey said he talked to Weaver at least once a week during McCain’s discussions with Democrats, asking him questions like, “What is the state of play?” and “Where are we?” “Weaver was very active in this,” Downey said, “None of this happens without Weaver.” The Democrats’ claims about McCain come as the senator is courting the Republican base for his 2008 White House bid. Other frontrunners for the GOP nomination have raised some eyebrows in conservative circles. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (R) voted for Democratic Sen. Paul Tsongas (Mass.) in 1992, while ex-New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) endorsed then-New York Gov. Mario Cuomo (D) a couple years later. Asked why this news hasn’t come out before, Downey said, “It’s a mystery to me. And in fact, the last time Weaver and I had dinner together [on April 26, 2006], we laughed about this … It’s never been written about, never got in the paper.” He denied any political motivation, saying he is still friends with Weaver and “deeply respects” McCain. “I would have been happy to come forward last year or the year before if someone had asked … There were meetings in offices. You can’t deny [these meetings took place]. They occurred.” Downey added, “It’s my hope that John McCain is the Republican nominee because from my perspective, although I think Democrats are going to win, if they don’t, McCain is the sort of man I would feel comfortable [with] as the president of the United States. I’m not trying to hurt him.” Daschle said he doesn’t believe the new revelations will hurt McCain. “Everyone has known John McCain to be independent, to take his own course. That was a time in his life when he at least weighed the possibility of becoming an independent, but he rejected it, so I can’t imagine that can ever be used as a political liability.” On June 2, 2001, The Washington Post ran a front-page story with the headline “McCain is Considering Leaving GOP; Arizona Senator Might Launch a Third-Party Challenge to Bush in 2004.” The article, written in the wake of the Jeffords’s announcement, noted that Daschle and his wife were visiting the McCains at the senator’s home in Arizona for what was billed by McCain’s office as a social event. But by that time, McCain had decided to stay a Republican, according to Daschle. In his book, Daschle wrote that plans for the June weekend getaway were made months earlier when McCain was mulling changing his party affiliation. As the media camped outside the senator’s vacation house in Sedona, Ariz., Daschle and McCain discussed “what an incredible piece of history Jim Jeffords had just written,” Daschle wrote. “Nothing was said about John doing the same thing. I think we both knew that wasn’t going to happen, not now.” McCain and Bush settled their differences before the president’s reelection campaign in 2004, when McCain strongly backed his former nemesis after reportedly rejecting an offer from Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) to become his vice presidential nominee. Last year, McCain aggressively stumped for dozens of GOP candidates. |
http://tinyurl.com/ysl9ct
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R. W. “Dick” Gaines
THE “G” BLOG.
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John Kerry: McCain Approached Me About Joining Dem Ticket in 2004
http://tinyurl.com/3agvdq
John Kerry: McCain Approached Me About Joining Dem Ticket in 2004
by Jonathan Singer, Tue Apr 03, 2007 at 10:30:45 AM EST
On Monday afternoon I had the chance to speak with Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, the Democratic Party’s nominee for President in 2004. During the interview, which covers a range of topics and which I will be posting later this afternoon, an item of particular interest jumped out at me: According to Sen. Kerry, it was John McCain’s staff who approached his campaign about potentially filling the Vice President slot on the Democratic ticket in 2004. Take a listen to and a look at the interchange…
If you’re having trouble with the Odeo player you can download the .mp3 file here.Jonathan Singer: There’s a story in The Hill, I think on Tuesday, by Bob Cusack on the front page of the paper talking about how John McCain’s people — John Weaver — had approached Tom Daschle and a New York Congressman, I don’t remember his name, about switching parties. And I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what your discussions were with him in 2004, how far it went, who approached whom… if there was any “there” there.
John Kerry: I don’t know all the details of it. I know that Tom, from a conversation with him, was in conversation with a number of Republicans back then. It doesn’t surprise me completely because his people similarly approached me to engage in a discussion about his potentially being on the ticket as Vice President. So his people were active — let’s put it that way.
Singer: Okay. And just to confirm, you said it, but this is something they approached you rather than…
Kerry: Absolutely correct. John Weaver of his shop… [JK aswers phone]
As you might know from reading my posts in the past, I don’t usually addend my own thoughts to my interviews. I like to think they speak for themselves. But in light of the fact that I have written about a closely-related subject and I think this item is particularly newsworthy, if you’ll oblige me I’d like to write a few words here.
For many Republicans, it has been bad enough that John McCain has voted and worked with Democrats against the majority of Republican Senators on a number of occasions in recent years. For Republicans, I would imagine that reports that he approached the Democrats about leaving the Senate GOP caucus in 2001 represent a borderline unpardonable offense. But it seems that reaching out to the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to talk about running on that party’s ticket would be tantamount to the highest form of political treason to Republicans.
Certainly, I would assume that McCain’s campaign will deny Kerry’s account of their interactions. In fact I would be surprised if they didn’t push back on this story, as they did to the story in The Hill last week. (A call for comment to the McCain campaign was not returned before the time this story was published.) That said, at least from my vantage this story could hardly come at a worse time for McCain, whose campaign for the 2008 GOP presidential nomination is already noticeably foundering.
Tags: John Kerry, Interview, John McCain , 2004, 2008, Republican Primaries ( all tags)
Long webpage-CONTINUED HERE!
http://tinyurl.com/3agvdq
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R. W. “Dick” Gaines
THE “G” BLOG.
http://gunnyg.wordpress.com/
GunnyG@gmailDotcom
US FEMA Camps
http://tinyurl.com/yvymzq
US FEMA Camps
By Geopolitical Monitor
Global Research, January 10, 2008
GeopoliticalMonitor.com – 2007-09-20
Contents
1. Executive Summary
2. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
3. Powers and Preparations for a Declared State of Emergency
4. Detainment Camps
5. End Notes
1. Executive Summary
The United States Federal Emergency Management Agency has numerous detainment camps throughout the United States. Some camps have been recently constructed and / or renovated and are fully staffed. The existence of the camps coupled with Presidential Executive Orders giving the President and Department of Homeland Security (of which FEMA is now part) control over ‘national essential functions’ in the event of ‘catastrophic emergency’ have resulted in concerns that the camps will be used to forcefully detain American citizens for unconstitutional purposes.
2. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
History
FEMA was created on April 1, 1979 pursuant to President Jimmy Carter’s Executive Order 12127. It amalgamated the Federal Insurance Administration, the National Fire Prevention and Control Administration, the National Weather Service Community Preparedness Program, the Federal Preparedness Agency and the Federal Disaster Assistance Administration activities formerly carried out by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. It also took over Civil Defense from the Department of Defense, which was in charge of preparing citizens for military attack. [1]
In 1993 Bill Clinton turned the directorship of FEMA into a Cabinet position. In 2003 FEMA became part of the Department of Homeland Security’s Emergency Preparedness and Response Directorate. [2]
Stated Purpose
The stated purpose of FEMA is to “reduce the loss of life and property and protect the Nation from all hazards, including natural disasters, acts of terrorism, and other man-made disasters, by leading and supporting the nation in a risk-based, comprehensive emergency management system of preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation.” [3]
Recent Operations
FEMA’s most notable large-scale operation in recent times was in the aftermath of August 2005 hurricane Katrina, which occurred along the north-central Gulf Coast, particularly affecting New Orleans, Louisiana. FEMA’s response to the disaster was widely criticized due to a slow and inadequate response, blocking external private and public assistance from individuals and groups including the Red Cross, [4] banning photographs of the dead [5] and confiscating reporter’s equipment [6] and homeowner’s registered firearms. [7]
The 2006 Congressional report on FEMA’s handling of Katrina stated that it was “… a national failure, an abdication of the most solemn obligation to provide for the common welfare,” [8]
Criticisms
Some have criticized FEMA’s failure as being due to is focus on ‘civil defense’ continuity of government and terrorism response programs to the detriment of its natural disaster response readiness. It is further alleged that hurricane Katrina was used to test run of a continuity of government program, allowing FEMA to rehearse rounding up and relocating large numbers of people to camps, suspending their constitutional rights and militarizing the region [9] with the help of private military contractors (mercenaries). Black Water USA, a private security company, was used in the aftermath of Katrina. [10]
3. Powers and Preparations for a Declared State of Emergency
REX-84 and Operation Garden Plot
Readiness Exercise 1984 (REX-84) is an emergency response program involving the implementation of martial law, the movement of civilian populations and the arrest and detainment of segments of the population. A rehearsal of the program was carried out April 5-13, 1984. It was led by FEMA and the Department of Defense and involved the coordination of 34 other Federal departments and agencies. [11] REX-84 was mentioned during the Iran-Contra hearings [12] and publicly exposed by the Miami Herald on Sunday July 5th, 1987. [13]
Similar large-scale emergency preparedness drills have taken place regularly since then. The most recently announced, organized by NORTHCOM, are scheduled for October 15-20. [14] Some assert that the drills continue to include preparations for the suspension of the Constitution and the implementation of martial law. [15]
Operation Garden Plot is a United States Army and National Guard program under control of the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) to provide Federal military support during domestic civil disturbances. One example of the program’s implementation was during the 1992 Los Angeles riots when US Army and Marine forces were used in conjunction with the California National Guard. [16] In Los Angeles an Executive Order was made to permit the use of the Federal army to uphold domestic laws pursuant to the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which places restrictions on the domestic use of the military for law enforcement purposes. [17]
Recently, however, Section 1076 Public Law 109-364, or the “John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007″ (H.R.5122) has amended Posse Comitatus and The Insurrection Act (which also places limits on domestic military deployment) to allow the Federal government to unilaterally take control of state National Guards and position Federal troops anywhere in the country during a ‘public emergency’. [18]
Executive Orders
Throughout the 1960s numerous Presidential Executive Orders were issued authorizing Federal agencies to take over essential functions in the case of a declared emergency. The powers include, among many others, the authority of the Federal government to take over transportation infrastructure including highways and seaports (10990), food resources and farms (10998) and mobilize citizens into government supervised work brigades (11000). [19]
On May 9, 2007 President George Bush reasserted the role of the Federal government during a declared emergency by issuing Executive Order NSPD 51/ HSPD-20. The Order states that in the event of a ‘catastrophic emergency’ all ‘national essential functions’ may be taken over by the Executive branch of government and the Department of Homeland Security (including FEMA). [20]
4. Detainment Camps
Developments and Construction
In August 2002, then Attorney General John Ashcroft called for American citizens who are deemed ‘enemy combatants’ to be detained indefinitely without charge and independently of the judiciary. [21] This legal position was upheld in the case of a US citizen detained abroad by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a January 2003 ruling. [22]
In October 2006 the Military Commissions Act was passed by Congress. [23] The legislation applies to non-US citizens and permits individuals labeled as ‘enemy combatants’ to be imprisoned indefinitely and without charge. It also denies non-military tribunal judicial review of detainment (Section 7), disregards international treaties such as the Geneva Convention, and states that it is the President who defines what constitutes torture (Sections 5 & 6).
In January of 2007 the American Civil Liberties Union released a report based on documents obtained by a Freedom of Information Act suit showing that the Pentagon had monitored at least “186 anti-military protests in the United States and collected more than 2,800 reports involving Americans in an anti-terrorist threat database.” [24]
For some time FEMA has been renovating and constructing new detention camps throughout the country. In January 2006 Haliburton subsidiary KBR announced that it had been awarded an “indefinite delivery / indefinite quantity contract to construct detention facilities for the Department of Homeland Security worth a maximum of $385 million over 5 years. [25]
Stated Purpose
Little has been said about the purpose of the detainment camps but when official comment has been made it has stated that the camps are for the temporary detainment of illegal immigrants. [26]
Quantity and Locations
Citizens who are concerned about the purpose and potential use of the detainment camps have documented and, when possible, filmed the detainment facilities. A current estimate of the number of detainment camps is over 800 located in all regions of the United States with varying maximum capacities. [27] If one includes government buildings currently used for other purposes the number is far greater. Video of renovated but empty detainment camps has also been released. [28]
5. End Notes
[1] Executive Order 12127–Federal Emergency Management Agency
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/eo/eo-12127.htm.
[2] Federal Emergency Management Agency. “About FEMA” April 1, 2007 < http://www.fema.gov/about/history.shtm>;.
[3] Ibid.
[4] Federal Emergency Management Agency. News Release. “First Responders Urged Not To Respond To Hurricane Impact Areas Unless Dispatched By State, Local
Authorities” 29 August 2005 http://www.fema.gov/news/newsrelease.fema?id=18470 ;
Rodgers, Ann. “Homeland Security won’t let Red Cross deliver food” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. 3 September 2005 <http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05246/565143.stm;
Zarend-Kubatko, Jill. “Disaster touches area residents” Valley Life. 2 September 2005 http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15147862&BRD=>;.
[5] Editorandpublisher.com. “Journalist Groups Protest FEMA Ban on Photos of Dead” 7
September 2005 http://www.mediainfo.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001055768 >.
[6] Gebauer, Matthias. “The Eye of the Hurricane” Spiegel Online International.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,373590,00.html>;.
[7] Berenson, Alex and Timothy Williams. “New Orleans Begins Confiscating Firearms as Water Recedes” New York Times. 8 September 2005 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/08/national/nationalspecial
08cnd-storm.html?ex=1189483200&en=b7a5f1efcf668506&ei=5070 >.
[8] Cable News Network (CNN). “Report: Katrina response a ‘failure of leadership’:
Homeland Security secretary described as ‘detached’” 14 February 2006
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/02/13/katrina.congress/index.html?iref=newssearch>;.
[9] Nimmo, Kurt. “Attacks on democratic rights, breaching legal barriers: FEMA and
Katrina: REX-84 Revisited” Global Research. 11 September 2005 http://www.//globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NIM20050911&articleId=929 >.
[10] Scahill, Jeremy. “In the Black(water)” The Nation. 22 May 2006
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060605/scahill>;.
[11] Reynolds, Diana. “The Rise of the National Security State: FEMA and the NSC.” Publiceye.org. 1990 <http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/fema/Fema_1.html>;.
[12] “Suspension of American Constitution Oliver North.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8tQAYYtLok&mode=related&search=>;.
[13] Chardy, Alfonso. “Reagan Aides and the ‘Secret’ Government.” The Miami Herald. 5 July 1987 http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/secret_white_house_plans.htm>;.
[14] United States Northern Command. “Exercise Vigilant Shield ’08 slated for October.” 30 August 2007 http://www.northcom.mil/News/2007/083007.html>;.
[15] Rogers, Lee. “NORTHCOM Plans 5 Day Martial Law Exercise.” Intel Strike. 5 September 2007 http://intelstrike.com/?p=57 >.
[16] Global Security. “Operation Garden Plot JTF-LAJoint Task Force Los Angeles”<http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/jtf-la.htm>;.
[17] Morales, Frank. “U.S. Military Civil Disturbance Planning:
The War At Home” Covert Action Quarterly, #69 Spring / Summer 2000. http://cryptome.org/garden-plot.htm>;.
[18] Morales, Frank. “Bush Moves Towards Martial Law” Toward Freedom. 26 October 2006 <http://www.towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/911/>;.
[19] Anonymous. “FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations and Executive Orders” Friends of Liberty. http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1062 >.
[20] The White House. “Presidential Directive NSPD 51, HSPD-20.” 9 May 2007 <http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html>;.
[21] Turley, Jonathan. “Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft’s Hellish Vision” Los Angeles Times. 14 August 2002 <http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0814-05.htm>;.
[22] Cable News Network (CNN). “Americans may be held as ‘enemy combatants,’ appeals court rules.” 8 January 2003 http://www.cnn.com/2003/LAW/01/08/enemy.combatants>;.
[23] The Library of Congress. Military Commissions Act of 2006. 17 October 2007 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d109:S.3930 :>.
[24] American Civil Liberties Union. “ACLU Report Shows Widespread Pentagon Surveillance of Peace Activists” Press Release. 17 January 2007 http://www.aclu.org/safefree/spyfiles/28024prs20070117.html >.
[25] Halliburton Public Relations “KBR Awarded U.S. Department of Homeland Security Contingency Support Project for Emergency Support Services.” 24 January 2006 http://www.kbr.com/news/2006/govnews_060124.aspx >.
[26] Ibid.
Scott, Peter Dale. “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps.” New America Media. 8 February 2006 http://news.pacificnews.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=eed74d9d44c30493706fe03f4c9b3a77 >.
[27] Friends of Liberty “FEMA Concentration Camps: Locations and Executive Orders.”
http://www.sianews.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1062>;.
[28] FEMA Camp Footage (Concentrations Camps in USA). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0P-hvPJPTi4.
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