Mr. David Corn,

Great post.

Maybe we need a "new" press corps to grill the current press corps about why they never ask any of the questions that matter or report the obvious?

There are times when is seems like you are the one man army against the pathetically prosaic, point parroting press.

Thanks

Kirk

9/11 took place while the Bush administration watched.

We raised $4ooo.oo at our latest Strickland for Governor of Ohio fund/friendraiser. Every little bit helps. If we are ever going to flip the Republicans out of office this is the time.

On Sept 11 I spent the day on the campus of Urbana college in Urbana Ohio. Friends Bev and John Titus who lost their daughter Alicia Titus on 9/11 on United Flight 175 spoke along with Marianne Williamson yesterday. They are loving individuals and an amazing couple. They have turned any feelings or thoughts of anger, hatred, revenge into a push for more understanding and compassion. ( they have been working with Williamson, and Kucinich on the DEPARTMENT OF PEACE.

Go check out SWEET ALICIA'S WEBSITE.

Carol King was in Urbana,Ohio stumping for Congressman Sherrod Brown who is running against (R) Senator Dewine. Brown and Dewine's first debate will be on Meet the Press in early October.

David I thought Russert's interview was weak at best. As a citizen I appreciate Russert's review of what Cheney said before the invasion, but when Cheney repeated the claims about Iran's "alleged" pursuit of nuclear weapons Russert rolled over.

Instead of challenging these repeated claims by the Bush administration and the same folks who "cakewalked" our nation into Iraq. Russert responded to Cheney's claims about Iran by asking "How can we stop them?" "HOW CAN WE STOP THEM?" IS THIS ALL WE CAN EXPECT FROM RUSSERT?

As a citizen I expect more from journalist/reporter/commentators. After what the we witnessed in the run up to the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, it would be logical for a journalist to ask Cheney "WHERE IS THE VERIFIABLE EVIDENCE TO BACK UP THESE CLAIMS ABOUT IRAN"?

"How can we stop them"? This is Russert playing hardball? Heaven help us if this is all we can expect from Russert and other news organizations.

Russert rolled over...I REPEAT RUSSERT ROLLED OVER giving Cheney every opportunity to move forward with the plan to strike Iran, to continue to set the stage for a pre-emptive strike in Iran....UNCHALLENGED.

DEJA VU FOLKS DEJA VU

I have this way about the Bush presidency for at least a few years. They don't seem to care about lying to US citizens on the biggest issues of our day and then they seem suprised when the public is completely cynical about the bullshit they're flinging.

They have debased our government.

Robert from previous thread. Questioning the behavior of the Israeli govt. is only anti-semite if the person is someone you don't like. Everyone else, carry on. spy, the chicken thing was funny.

David Corn, it is, as you well know, the technique of "the big lie". Repeated often. First to state this method was ...?

Who had exactly what relationship with Grandpa Bush?

WASHINGTON - After 60 years of inattention and even denial by the U.S. media, newly-uncovered government documents in The National Archives and Library of Congress reveal that Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, served as a business partner of and U.S. banking operative for the financial architect of the Nazi war machine from 1926 until 1942, when Congress took aggressive action against Bush and his "enemy national" partners.

The documents also show that Bush and his colleagues, according to reports from the U.S. Department of the Treasury and FBI, tried to conceal their financial alliance with German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, a steel and coal baron who, beginning in the mid-1920s, personally funded Adolf Hitler's rise to power by the subversion of democratic principle and German law.

Furthermore, the declassified records demonstrate that Bush and his associates, who included E. Roland Harriman, younger brother of American icon W. Averell Harriman, and George Herbert Walker, President Bush's maternal great-grandfather, continued their dealings with the German industrial baron for nearly eight months after the U.S. entered the war. - From Bush - Nazi Link Confirmed
By by John Buchanan
from The New Hampshire Gazette Vol. 248, No. 1, October 10, 2003

Scoop.com NZ
Four Iraq War Vets Detained at Pentagon
Monday, 11 September 2006, 11:23 am
Press Release: Camp Democracy
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Online at: http://www.campdemocracy.org
Speakers available for interviews: http://www.campdemocracy.org/speakers Four Iraq War Vets Detained at Pentagon
What:
Press Conference with veterans who have been detained, and possibly arrested, at the Pentagon When: 9:30 a.m., Sunday, Sept. 10, 2006 Where: Camp Democracy on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., near Fourth Street.

Four veterans of the current war in Iraq and one supporter (a total of five young men) were detained at the Pentagon today after they attended an open house and left behind flyers providing information about the lethal effects of depleted uranium.
The five (if released) and leaders of Iraq Veterans Against the War and of Veterans for Peace will hold a press conference at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Sunday, September 10, at Camp Democracy, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., near Fourth Street.
The veterans observed literature available in the Pentagon's chapel, which is at the site of the 9-11 plane crash. This literature, produced at tax-payer expense, included copies of the New Testament in camouflage covers.
They left behind flyers explaining the effects of depleted uranium. Some of the vets detained currently suffer from depleted uranium poisoning.
The four vets are Steve Mortillo of Pennington, N.J.; Joe Hatcher of San Diego, Calif.; Geoff Millard of Buffalo, N.Y.; and Toby Hartbarger of Indiana. Also detained was Gregory "Tristan" Watson of Chicago, Ill.
Retired Col. Ann Wright said, "Iraq vets who have suffered the effects of depleted uranium have every right to educate others about the terrible effects of this illegal substance used in weapons produced by the United States government."
============
I can just picture Jesus in camouflage! Was this in any US media?

NRDC Alert in my email

Dear NRDC Member,

Enough is enough.
Last month, yet another corroding pipeline in Alaska spewed oil on the tundra ecosystem. The spill came just four months after a different BP pipeline dumped 200,000 gallons of hot crude at a caribou crossing in northern Alaska.
The lesson couldn't be clearer: Oil drilling is a dirty business that has no place in America's most sensitive wildlife habitats.
That's why the NRDC Action Fund is racing to put a hard-hitting TV ad on the air that will sound the alarm and stop the Bush White House and Senate leaders from sacrificing the Arctic Refuge as early as this month.
The ad is ready. But we need to raise $300,000 this week to run the ad for a full seven days in all 50 states -- and generate overwhelming pressure on all 100 Senators.
You can make it happen. If just 6,000 of our supporters donate $50 each, we will be on the air next week -- all week -- from coast to coast!
The leaking crude from last month's spill wasn't even dry before Senate leaders began calling for even more drilling in sensitive wildlife habitats.
The House has already passed a bill that would destroy the Arctic Refuge. The Senate may try to rush through a similar bill this month. That would enable President Bush to hand the Arctic Refuge to the oil industry before Election Day.
We've got to stop them!
And we can, if you'll help us reach millions of Americans with the truth! They need to know that the oil industry is causing 500 spills per year on the North Slope of Alaska. They need to know that Arctic oil will save consumers a grand total of one penny per gallon at the pump, starting in 20 years.
Our TV ad will broadcast these damning facts across the nation . . . and light up the switchboard of every single Senator before the next make-or-break vote.
Your donation is critical. I can't think of a better way for you to defend America's greatest birthing ground for Arctic wildlife in its hour of danger.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
Frances Beinecke
President
NRDC Action Fund
===========
Or, if 300,000 people sent only 1 dollar.

NEW POLL: Americans View Bolton As Symbol Of Foreign Policy Failures
Today the New York Sun reports that a new poll commissioned by the conservative Hudson Institute finds a majority of Americans believe if the United Nations is Үo longer effective,Ӡand if it cannot be reformed, it should be ҳcrapped altogether.ӠFrank Luntz, whose polling firm conducted the survey, said the results show Americans are үne scandal away from washing their handsӠof the United Nations.

But an Aug. 25 Mellman Group poll obtained by ThinkProgress shows that Americans do support a strong United Nations, which has been consistently weakened by Bush’≥ foreign policy. Some highlights from the poll:

–†60 percent of Americans think it is better to work through the United Nations to share burdens and risks. (Compared with 31 percent who believe it is better to act decisively and alone.)

–†49 percent believe President Bush’≥ foreign policy has made the United States weaker. (Compared with just 28 percent who believe it has made us stronger.)

–†52 percent believe Bush’≥ foreign policy has made relationships with our allies weaker. (Compared with just 23 percent who believe it has made them stronger.)

–†61 percent believe that over the past few years, other countries’†images of the United States have become more negative. (Compared with just 15 percent who believe it has become more positive.)

–†55 percent believe it is time to change the course of Bush’≥ foreign policy. (Compared with 39 percent who want to stay the course.)

Luntz’≥ poll is an effort to boost Bolton’≥ prospects for confirmation in the Senate. But 64 percent of the American public view Bolton as a symbol of America’≥ foreign policy.

Free Market News Polls

Is it possible that some in the U.S. government, or its affiliates, covertly facilitated the plans of those involved in the 9/11 attack?
Yes 80%
No 20%

A court order has stayed the shredding of Ohio's 2004 presidential-election voting records. The GOP is reportedly upset. Was there large-scale vote fraud in Ohio?
Yes 78%
No 22%

DISPUTED LINK
President Bush defended the decision to invade Iraq Monday, despite a Senate Committee’≥ findings that Iraqi defectors misled the United States about the link between Iraq and al Qaeda. The NewsHour’≥ Congressional Correspondent Kwame Holman reports on the disputed link. Then, Margaret Warner speaks to two members of the committee: Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Senator Kit Bond (R-Mo.)

FACT OR FICTION
Following ABC’≥ airing of a docudrama about 9-11 Sunday and Monday, Jeffrey Brown reports on the fact and fiction in television docudrama. Then, Brown and guests discuss the purpose of and problems with this type of presentation.

Looks like NewsHour is on the story. I wonder if MSM considers this an important story. It may get some traction.

Its fairly easy to understand: Bush keeps saying things about war rationale that congress says there is no basis in fact. It works because this is an unpopular war going poorly and there is no indication the president's plans include fixing this disaster.

The final word here on 9/11 conspiracies:

"I won't argue that the U.S. government does not engage in brutal, murderous skulduggery from time to time. But the notion that the U.S. government either detected the attacks but allowed them to occur, or, worse, conspired to kill thousands of Americans to launch a war-for-oil in Afghanistan is absurd. Still, each week emails passing on such tripe arrive. This crap is probably not worth a rational rebuttal, but I'm irritated enough to try..."

"When 9/11 Conspiracy Theories Go Bad"
By David Corn, AlterNet. Posted March 1, 2002.

Full article here: http://www.alternet.org/story/12536/

#2
no offense meant towards ms. titus who was listed as a flight attendant on ua175, but i wonder if she was on the ua175 that approached the wtc2 from the SSE or the ua175 that approached the wtc2 from the SW?
video fakery in evidence on 9/11!
i can't help but further wonder if ms. titus was aware of the odd protuberance that appeared to be adhered to the underside of ua175:
pod!
or the fact that it emitted a flash,:
flash!
just before ua175 slipped thru the side of wtc2 like casper the ghost without even the wingtips breaking off:
ghost!

to continue to ignore these and the many many other anomalies that we were presented with by the govt/mcmedia on 9/11 is to dishonor the memory of ms. titus and the rest of the 9/11 victims.

Saladin,

There you go again with your unscientific polls, which are basically worthless.

Let's have a source and please state the margin of error.

Put up or shut up.

an explosion is not a collapse! poof!

Interesting how we got the new pearl harbor that PNAC was looking for during George Bush's first term. PNAC is cheney, rumsfeld, wolfowitz, libby, kristol. . . The new world order. . . how many people have to die?

Saladin, If Tim can't ask you to link to sources respectfully, tell him to bugger off.

Mr. Corn also does not believe the overwhelming evidence of vote fraud. He is not an expert in everything and if you don't believe our govt. would not sacrifice the lives of a few thousand people to gain their desires you have not been paying attention to what is happening in Iraq. Put your head back in the sand.

#4 Saladin last week at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) website there were two "breaking news" stories having to do with the reaction in the U.s. to Olmerts announcemnet that Israel would be expanding one of the illegal West Bank Settlements with 700 new homes.

One article was about the U.s. Department of Defense not being supportive of this an "illegal" expansion.

The other article was about the possibility that this announcement of a new "illegal" expansion of settlements was a real problem for John Bolton at the Un and his appointment as the UN representative.

I can not track these articles and they are not posted at the JTA website any longer. Do you have any suggestions for tracking these articles. I am so sorry I did not post them when I read them.

O'Reilly, I have already admitted that these are not scientific, (whatever THAT means) polls, that's why I like them, there's no reason to tweak them. Free Market News is a Libertarian website that I really like, he knows how to google I assume.

Saladin,

You are one sick chick. I can only wonder at what must have happened to you as a child to produce such a person.

Maybe there's hope for you yet, but it's looking kinda doubtful.

Kathleen, I saw that article, it was linked at WRH. Let me see what I can find. Why anyone would ever believe they intended to give up ground they had already taken is beyond me. But, beware, caroline is likely to show up and accuse you of anti-semitism if she doesn't like you. uncledad is on her shit list for speaking on my behalf.

Thermite demonstration that was posted here before, showing it being lit by a common fuse like a firecracker.

Saladin,

If you do not know what a scientific poll is, then you should definitely not be posting poll results here!

Good Lord!!!

The Bush Way

Tim, let me make this perfectly clear, I couldn't care less what you think of me, why the hell are you even addressing me you little Nazi? Don't you have some Arabs to slaughter? Or do you just like to be the cheerleader like your precious fascist leader?

Kathleen, here is something from the Guardian. Israel expands West Bank settlements Aerial photos reveal extent of land grab, say peace groups Chris McGreal in Jerusalem Tuesday July 27, 2004 The Guardian

Possible two scenarios here.

1.Bush and Co. are mere puppets of corporatists wishing they could get their hands on the worlds largest OIL supply. Nothing to stand in their way now that congress has been bought and paid for.

2.Bush is a sociopath bent on world domination through intimidation and will use all the power at his disposal to achieve that goal. 9/11 was an event meant to strike fear into the USA populous to allow TBC (The Bush Cabal) free reign to do as they wish, a true "Pearl Harbor event".

Do not be fooled by these people, they are NOT your or anyones friends. These people are criminals in need of incarceration.

The Bush Way Continues

Saladin,

Ooooohhh, now you're talking!

Actually, it's really quite simple. I am taking you to task because I am in complete opposition to everything you believe.

Further, I have already shown that you don't even know what you are talking about most of the time.

If you are going to post stuff that purports to support a viewpoint you have, then be prepared to defend it.

The "polls you cite don't mean shyt. The American people don't think like you would like to believe they do.

As I say: put up or shut up.

Tim the little nazi. That's great.

Saladin,

Further, you wouldn't know a fascist if he bit you in the ass.

Just keep spewing your vitriol about the President, the Israelis, etc.. Thinking people see you for what you are.

O'Reilly,

Who pulled your chain?

Have folks seen this piece at Think Progress? (D) Lee Hamilton (vice chair of the 9/11 commission) states "that calling the program a docu-drama is troublesome. It is a documentary or a drama."

Would someone link this for me?

THINK PROGRESS
9/11 Commission Vice Chair: Path to 9/11 Is ‘éot Good For the Country’†
In his first public comments about the matter, former Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Lee Hamilton, said he was not asked to participate in the production of ABC’≥ The Path to 9/11, noting it is one of the few instances that he has not been asked to participate with Kean on a project related to the Commission’≥ work. He condemned the docudrama, saying that to fudge the distinction between news and entertainment is not good for the country.Watch it:

Jeanne/Saladin. I wonder if Micheal Ledeen is in or near Syria as of late?

Saladin,

You reveal your (deliberate?) ignorance yet again when you said, "Why anyone would ever believe they intended to give up ground they had already taken is beyond me."

In fact, Israel has given back LARGE AMOUNTS of territory.

I'm beginning to think your aversion to the truth is pathological...

Tim, the little nazi, decided to have it out with Saladin. You go Tim.

Can anybody do anything with vitriol but spew it? He shouted his vitriol. He lambasted with vitriol. He kept spewing his vitriol about blaa blaa. Yeah, I guess you can use other helping verbs but it just doesn't sound so cliched, metaphorically speaking.

Fatal Vision - The Strategy Of Chaos And Ethnic Cleansing Chris Floyd

A positively Shigalovian plan for global re-ordering - a brutal vision of national dismemberment, forced migration, and ethnic cleansing on a gargantuan scale - was recently published in Armed Forces Journal, throwing a stark light on the mindset of the "full spectrum dominance" gang now in power in Washington. The article could perhaps be dismissed as a typical neo-con fantasy - but it has already provoked a diplomatic firestorm from the plan's intended targets, requiring a State Department intervention to dampen the flames.
Ralph Peters, "Terror War" analyst and ex-military intelligence officer, is the author of the Journal piece. He has recently joined with the bold visionaries of the Project for a New American Century crowd. That's the group made up of Bush Faction heavy hitters - Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby, Elliot Abrams, Brother Jeb and others - who in September 2000 laid out the blueprint that George W. followed faithfully once he acquired the presidency.
This plan, long pre-dating 9/11, included astronomical hikes in the military budget; invading Iraq and establishing a "permanent role" for a "substantial American force presence in the Gulf"; planting a "worldwide network of forward operating bases"; gutting arms control treaties; and making "regime change" a primary focus of American policy. The PNAC plan did note that it could take decades to get the American people to accept these "revolutionary" changes; unless, of course, the United States was struck by "some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor."
Peters was not involved with this remarkably prophetic document, but he recently hitched up with PNAC and its demands for adding at least 25,000 new soldiers to US forces each year. However, in his AFJ article - aptly named "Blood Borders" - he surpasses his new compatriots. Where they were content merely to usurp existing regimes, Peters has produced a detailed plan for re-ordering whole regions - ruthlessly chopping up Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, and creating new countries such as Greater Kurdistan, a Vatican-like "Islamic Sacred State" out of Mecca and Medina, and a "Free Baluchistan," tearing the oil-rich province away from Pakistan. He'd also lighten Islamabad of its troublesome Waziristan provinces and give them to Afghanistan.
To be sure, Peters acknowledges that "correcting" these borders "may be impossible. For now." Nevertheless, he assures us that his admittedly draconian adjustments are the only way we will ever see "a more peaceful Middle East." And in any case, he says, "given time - and the inevitable attendant bloodshed - new and natural borders will emerge." Why? Because of a "dirty little secret from 5,000 years of history: Ethnic cleansing works."
=============
The lunatics have escaped the asylum and are now running the world.

Thanks Saladin. But these articles were focused on the reaction from U.s. government officials. These articles were clear evidence that the influence of the Israeli lobby is shifting.

DEN, from the previous blog! There is so much hatred in this world that good people are prime targets for evil deeds. Here are some names - Gandhi, Jesus, and the attempted assassination of John Paul II. There are probably thousands of names that can be added to the list.

According to the government, 9/11 is "the pivotal event of the 21st century", which changed everything. So it obviously deserves to be studied. College and universities are the institutions that undertake the study of significant historical events. The very idea that faculty should not be studying the events of 9/11 verges on the absurd.

Scholars For 9/11 Truth Assailed

O'Reilly, if Tim is what is considered a "thinking person" God help us! I've noticed the mis-spelling of "shit" seems prevalent among these thinking people. Or are they just shy? He can't take me on, I won't allow it because he is not worth it, I just like to prod him once in a blue moon, I promise, I'm done now

Kathleen, If any govt. officials are bitching you can bet it is just so much hot air. Israel has a lot of dirt on these people and you know why. A little dissent will be permitted, but just wait, it will never go too far, they have WAY too much invested. I will keep looking for the articles, I thought the Guardian one was good.

Mr. Corn, thank you for the appropriate comments on Bush. Who can believe and trust a mass murderer and a war criminal?

Saladin, I neither like nor dislike you.

My comments, that are related to you, are based on what you post. I repeat. I have opinions on what you post.

I have no opinion on the person known as Saladin.

Carry on, as you are wont to say.

BTW Kathleen, I read that h. clinton wants to move the US Embassy back to Jerusalem, have you read that?

then stop lying about me.

Gerald, I try to picture being a visitor to this blue planet and observe the behavior of the inhabitants.

I see starvation while others feast wildly.

I see new life while others give up their lives to violence and hate.

I see plants and animals helping humanities existence while the rain forests are eliminated and creatures driven to extinction.

I see the struggling masses strive for a future only to have it dashed on the rocks.

I see gifts given to humanity being destroyed both in body and mind.

I see the deciet, the poverty, the injustice.

I wonder what will change the world, then I think, the world has been here for millions of years as a host for many lifeforms from primordial soup to the present and in each case all but the sturdiest among them have perished.

Where will we be in even a thousand years?

Have you heard that Bush got what he wanted to never leave the WH? That's right! Americans overwhelmingly believe in Bush and his deeds and tactics!!! Al Qaeda and terrorist cells are expanding prolifically to keep Americans in fear and to keep Bush in the WH. Don't you just love Bush's psychotic mentality!!!

Saladin,

Don't flatter yourself. Not too many threads back you let everyone know that you didn't stoop to discussing issues with folks who can actually think.

I got your goat (#26), but don't worry - I'm not holding my breath that you'd ever admit it!

BTW, if you can't figure out why I purposefully mis-spell curse words here than I can't help you.

TRUCE!!!! PLEASE!!!

O'Really,

Final comment to you: you wouldn't know vitriol if it snuck into bed and cozyed up next to you.

Kathleen, this seems to be the only commentary left at JTA on this subject.

Breaking News
State to Israel: Stop settlement expansion

Israel should not expand West Bank settlements, the U.S. State Department said.
Spokesman Sean McCormack commented Thursday on Israeli government plans announced earlier in the week to build 690 new homes in existing settlements near Jerusalem.
There should not be expansion of settlements, and outposts should be removed, McCormack said, adding that U.S. diplomats have "quietly" raised the issue of settlements in their discussions with their Israeli counterparts.

#48 DEN, thank you for a awesome post!!! I can make one definitive prediction. My body will be dead in 1,000 years. Hopefully, my soul will be alive with Jesus!!!

When Bush speaks, we hear only psycho babble!!!

Don't worry DEN, I am done. It takes two to tango, right?

52 Final comment to you: you wouldn't know vitriol if it snuck into bed and cozyed up next to you.
Posted by: Tim at September 12, 2006 06:13 PM

Sure little nazi boy, whatever that means.

Be a good example Rich Lowry and Bill Kristol put on those uniforms or send your own children to Iraq.

Prominent Conservatives Call for More Troops to Iraq
In news on Iraq, a group of prominent conservatives are calling for President Bush to send more troops. In a column in today’≥ Washington Post, William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, and Rich Lowry, editor of National Review urged a substantial surge in overall troop levels in Iraq. They write there is now no good argument for not sending more troops.

I love momma's message to you and me! If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!!!

Thanks folks, keep in mind, no one here is better than anyone else, we just share differing opinions.

This is an excellent forum with many excellent participants!

Did Kristol and/or Lowry ever serve in the military? It's easy to send someone else's son or daughter to war while Kristol and Lowry sit on their wide bottoms.

WAR IS OUTMODED!!!!! WAR SERVES NO PURPOSE!!!!! WAR CREATES MORE PROBLEMS THAN IT RESOLVES PROBLEMS!!!!! NO MATURE PERSON WOULD CHOOSE WAR OVER PEACE!!!!! BUSH IS AN IMMATURE PSYCHOTIC BEAST!!!!!

forgive me

September 12, 2006

The Moral Bankruptcy of Israel's Founding Idea
The Coming Collapse of Zionism
By KATHLEEN CHRISTISON
Former CIA Analyst

Is it only observers outside the conventional mainstream who have noticed that by its murderous assault on Lebanon and simultaneously on Gaza, Israel finally exposed, for even the most deluded to see, the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea?

Can it be that the deluded are still deluded? Can it truly still be that Israel's bankruptcy is evident only to those who already knew it, those who already recognized Zionism as illegitimate for the racist principle that underlies it?

Can it be therefore that only the already converted can see coming the ultimate collapse of Zionism and, with it, of Israel itself as the exclusivist state of Jews?

Racism has always been the lifeblood of Israel. Zionism rests on the fundamental belief that Jews have superior national, human, and natural rights in the land, an inherently racist foundation that excludes any possibility of true democracy or equality of peoples. Israel's destructive rampage in Lebanon and Gaza is merely the natural next step in the evolution of such a founding ideology. Precisely because that ideology posits the exclusivity and superiority of one people's rights, it can accept no legal or moral restraints on its behavior and no territorial limits, for it needs an ever-expanding geography to accommodate those unlimited rights.

Zionism cannot abide encroachment or even the slightest challenge to its total domination over its own space -- not merely of the space within Israel's 1967 borders, but of the surrounding space as well, extending outward to geographical limits that Zionism has not yet seen fit to set for itself. Total domination means no physical threat and no demographic threat: Jews reign, Jews are totally secure, Jews always outnumber, Jews hold all military power, Jews control all natural resources, all neighbors are powerless and totally subservient. This was the message Israel tried to send with its attack on Lebanon: that neither Hizbullah nor anything in Lebanon that nurtures Hizbullah should continue to exist, for the sole reason that Hizbullah challenges Israel's supreme authority in the region and Israel cannot abide this effrontery. Zionism cannot coexist with any other ideology or ethnicity except in the preeminent position, for everyone and every ideology that is not Zionist is a potential threat.

In Lebanon, Israel attempted by its wildly reckless violence to destroy the nation, to make of it a killing zone where only Zionism would reign, where non-Jews would die or flee or prostrate themselves, as they had during the nearly quarter-century of Israel's last occupation, from 1978 to 2000. Observing the war in Beirut after the first week of bombing, describing the murder in an Israeli bombing raid of four Lebanese army logistics techs who had been mending power and water lines "to keep Beirut alive," British correspondent Robert Fisk wrote that it dawned on him that what Israel intended was that "Beirut is to die . . . . No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive." Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz (the man who four years ago when he headed the Israeli Air Force said he felt no psychological discomfort after one of his F-16s had dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza in the middle of the night, killing 14 civilians, mostly children) pledged at the start of the Lebanon assault to take Lebanon back 20 years; 20 years ago Lebanon was not alive, its southern third occupied by Israel, the remainder a decade into a hopelessly destructive civil war.

The cluster bombs are a certain sign of Israel's intent to remake Lebanon, at least southern Lebanon, into a region cleansed of its Arab population and unable to function except at Israel's mercy. Cluster bombs, of which Israel's U.S. provider is the world's leading manufacturer (and user, in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq), explode in mid-flight and scatter hundreds of small bombs over a several-acre area. Up to one-quarter of the bomblets fail to explode on impact and are left to be found by unsuspecting civilians returning to their homes. UN surveyors estimate that there are as many as 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets strewn around in 400 bomb-strike sites in southern Lebanon. Scores of Lebanese children and adults have been killed and injured by this unexploded ordnance since the cease-fire last month.

Laying anti-personnel munitions in heavily populated civilian areas is not the surgical targeting of a military force in pursuit of military objectives; it is ethnic cleansing. Fully 90 percent of Israel's cluster-bomb strikes were conducted, according to UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egelund, in the last 72 hours before the cease-fire took effect, when it was apparent that a UN cease-fire resolution was in the works. This can only have been a further effort, no doubt intended to be more or less a coup de grace, to depopulate the area. Added to the preceding month of bombing attacks that destroyed as much as 50 or in some cases 80 percent of the homes in many villages, that did vast damage to the nation's entire civilian infrastructure, that crippled a coastal power plant that continues to spill tons of oil and benzene-laden toxins along the Lebanese and part of the Syrian coastlines, and that killed over 1,000 civilians in residential apartment blocks, being transported in ambulances, and fleeing in cars flying white flags, Israel's war can only be interpreted as a massiv act of ethnic cleansing, to keep the region safe for Jewish dominion.

In fact, approximately 250,000 people, by UN estimate, are unable to return to their homes because either the homes have been leveled or unexploded cluster bomblets and other ordnance have not yet been cleared by demining teams. This was not a war against Hizbullah, except incidentally. It was not a war against terror, as Israel and its U.S. acolytes would have us believe (indeed, Hizbullah was not conducting terrorist acts, but had been engaged in a sporadic series of military exchanges with Israeli forces along the border, usually initiated by Israel). This was a war for Israeli breathing space, for the absolute certainty that Israel would dominate the neighborhood. It was a war against a population that was not totally subservient, that had the audacity to harbor a force like Hizbullah that does not bow to Israel's will. It was a war on people and their way of thinking, people who are not Jewish and who do not act to promote Zionism and Jewish hegemony.

Israel has been doing this to its neighbors in one form or another since its creation. Palestinians have obviously been Zionism's longest suffering victims, and its most persistent opponents. The Zionists thought they had rid themselves of their most immediate problem, the problem at the very core of Zionism, in 1948 when they forced the flight of nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian population that stood in the way of a establishing Israel as an exclusive Jewish-majority state. You can't have a Jewish state if most of your population is not Jewish. Nineteen years later, when Israel began to expand its borders with the capture of the West Bank and Gaza, those Palestinians who it thought had disappeared turned out to be still around after all, threatening the Zionists' Jewish hegemony.

In the nearly 40 years since then, Israeli policy has been largely directed -- with periodic time-outs for attacks on Lebanon -- toward making the Palestinians disappear for certain. The methods of ethnic cleansing are myriad: land theft, destruction of agricultural land and resources, economic strangulation, crippling restrictions on commerce, home demolition, residency permit revocation, outright deportation, arrest, assassination, family separation, movement restriction, destruction of census and land ownership records, theft of tax monies, starvation. Israel wants all of the land of Palestine, including all of the West Bank and Gaza, but it cannot have a majority Jewish state in all of this land as long as the Palestinians are there. Hence the slow strangulation. In Gaza, where almost a million and a half people are crammed into an area less than one-tenth the size of Rhode Island, Israel is doing on a continuing basis what it did in Lebanon in a month's time -- killing civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, making the place uninhabitable. Palestinians in Gaza are being murdered at the rate of eight a day. Maimings come at a higher rate. Such is the value of non-Jewish life in the Zionist scheme of things.

Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe calls it a slow genocide (ElectronicIntifada, September 2, 2006). Since 1948, every Palestinian act of resistance to Israeli oppression has been a further excuse for Israel to implement an ethnic cleansing policy, a phenomenon so inevitable and accepted in Israel that Pappe says "the daily business of slaying Palestinians, mainly children, is now reported in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts." His prediction is that continued killing at this level either will produce a mass eviction or, if the Palestinians remain steadfast and continue to resist, as is far more likely, will result in an increasing level of killing. Pappe recalls that the world absolved Israel of responsibility and any accountability for its 1948 act of ethnic cleansing, allowing Israel to turn this policy "into a legitimate tool for its national security agenda." If the world remains silent again in response to the current round of ethnic cleansing, the policy will only escalate, "even more drastically."

And here is the crux of the situation today. Will anyone notice this horror? Has Israel, as proposed at the beginning, truly exposed by its wild summer campaign of ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and Gaza the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea, the essential illegitimacy of the Zionist principle of Jewish exclusivity? Can even the most deluded see this, or will they continue to be deluded and the world continue to turn away, excusing atrocity because it is committed by Israel in the name of keeping the neighborhood safe for Jews?

Since Israel's crazed run through Lebanon began, numerous clear-eyed observers in the alternative and the European and Arab media have noted the new moral nudity of Israel, and of its U.S. backer, with an unusual degree of bluntness. Also on many tongues is a new awareness of growing Arab and Muslim resistance to the staggering viciousness of Israeli-U.S. actions. Palestinian-British scholar Karma Nabulsi, writing in the Guardian in early August, laments the "indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that cannot be assuaged, only stopped." American scholar Virginia Tilley (Counterpunch, August 5, 2006) observes that any kind of normal, peaceful existence is anathema to Israel, for it "must see and treat its neighbors as an existential threat in order to justify . . . its ethnic/racial character." Even before the Lebanon war, but after Gaza had begun to be starved, political economist Edward Herman (Z Magazine, March 2006)condemned Israel's "long-term ethnic cleansing and institutionalized racism" and the hypocritical way in which the West and the western media accept and underwrite these policies "in violation of all purported enlightenment values."

Racism underlies the Israeli-U.S. neocon axis that is currently running amok in the Middle East. The inherent racism of Zionism has found a natural ally in the racist imperial philosophy espoused by the neoconservatives of the Bush administration. The ultimate logic of the Israeli-U.S. global war, writes Israeli activist Michel Warschawski of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem (July 30, 2006) is the "full ethnicization" of all conflicts, "in which one is not fighting a policy, a government or specific targets, but a 'threat' identified with a community" -- or, in Israel's case, with all non-Jewish communities.

The basically racist notion of a clash of civilizations, being promoted both by the Bush administration and by Israel, provides the rationale for the assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. As Azmi Bishara, a leading Palestinian member of Israel's Knesset, has observed (al-Ahram, August 10-16, 2006), if the Israeli-U.S. argument that the world is divided into two distinct and incompatible cultures, us vs. them, is accurate, then the notion that "we" operate by a double standard loses all moral opprobrium, for it becomes the natural order of things. This has always been Israel's natural order of things: in Israel's world and that of its U.S. supporters, the idea that Jews and the Jewish culture are superior to and incompatible with surrounding peoples and cultures is the very basis of the state.

In the wake of Israel's failure in Lebanon, Arabs and Muslims have a sense, for the first time since Israel's implantation in the heart of the Arab Middle East almost 60 years ago, that Israel in its arrogance has badly overreached and that its power and its reach can be limited. The "ethnicization" of the global conflict that Michel Warschawski speaks of -- the arrogant colonial approach of old, now in a new high-tech guise backed by F-16s and nuclear weapons, that assumes Western and Israeli superiority and posits a kind of apocalyptic clash between the "civilized" West and a backward, enraged East -- has been seen for what it is because of Israel's mad assault on Lebanon. What it is is a crude racist assertion of power by a Zionist regime pursuing absolute, unchallenged regional hegemony and a neoconservative regime in the United States pursuing absolute, unchallenged global hegemony. As Palestinian commentator Rami Khouri observed in an interview with Charlie Rose a week into the Lebanon war, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, having both grown out of earlier Israeli wars of hegemony, are the political response of populations "that have been degraded and occupied and bombed and killed and humiliated repeatedly by the Israelis, and often with the direct or indirect acquiescence, or, as we see now, the direct support of the United States."

Those oppressed populations are now fighting back. No matter how much Arab leaders in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia may bow to the U.S. and Israel, the Arab people now recognize the fundamental weakness of Israel's race-based culture and polity and have a growing confidence that they can ultimately defeat it. The Palestinians in particular have been at this for 60 years, never disappearing despite Israel's best designs, never failing to remind Israel and the world of their existence. They will not succumb now, and the rest of the Arab world is taking heart from their endurance and Hizbullah's.

Something in the way Israel operates, and in the way the United States supports Israel's method of operating, must change. More and more commentators, inside the Arab world and outside, have begun to notice this, and a striking number are audacious enough to predict some sort of end to Zionism in the racist, exclusivist form in which it now exists and functions. This does not mean throwing the Jews into the sea. Israel will not be defeated militarily. But it can be defeated psychologically, which means putting limits on its hegemony, stopping its marauding advance through its neighborhood, ending Jewish racial/religious domination over other peoples.

Rami Khouri contends that the much greater public support throughout the Arab world for Hizbullah and Hamas is "a catastrophe" both for Israel and for the United States because it means resistance to their imperial designs. Khouri does not go further in his predictions, but others do, seeing at least in vague outline the vision of a future in which Israel no longer enjoys ultimate dominion. Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli living in Britain, a jazz musician and thinker, sees Hizbullah's victory in Lebanon as signaling the defeat of what he calls global Zionism, by which he means the Israeli/U.S. neocon axis. It is the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani, and Iranian people, he says, who are "at the vanguard of the war for humanity and humanism," while Israel and the U.S. spread destruction and death, and more and more Europeans and Americans, recognizing this, are falling off the Zionist/neocon bandwagon. Atzmon talks about Israel as, ultimately, "an historic event" and a "dead entity."

Many others see similar visions. Commentators increasingly discuss the possibility of Israel, its myth of invincibility having been deflated, going through a South Africa-like epiphany, in which its leadership somehow recognizes the error of its racist ways and in a surge of humanitarian feeling renounces Zionism's inequities and agrees that Jews and Palestinians should live in equality in a unitary state. British MP George Galloway (Guardian, August 31, 2006) foresees the possibility of "an FW de Klerk moment" emerging in Israel and among its international backers when, as occurred in South Africa, a "critical mass of opposition" overwhelms the position of the previously invincible minority and the leadership is able to justify transferring power on the basis that doing so later under duress will be far less favorable. Short of such peaceful transition, along with a move to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Galloway ­ along with many others -- sees only "war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state down on their heads."

This increasingly appears to be the shape of the future: either Israel and its neocon supporters in the United States can dismantle Zionism's most egregious aspects by agreeing to establish a unitary state in Palestine inhabited by the Palestinians and Jews whose land this is, or the world will face a conflagration of a scale not fully imaginable now.

Just as Hizbullah is an integral part of Lebanon, not to be destroyed by the bombing of bridges and power plants, the Palestinians before their expulsion in 1948 were Palestine and still are Palestine. By hitting the Palestinians where they lived, in the literal and the colloquial sense, Israel left them with only a goal and a vision. That vision is justice and redress in some form, whether redress means ultimately defeating Zionism and taking back Palestine, or reconciling with Israel on the condition that it act like a decent neighbor and not a conqueror, or finally joining with Israeli Jews to form a single state in which no people has superior rights . In Lebanon, Israel again seemed bent on imposing its will, its dominion, its culture and ethnicity on another Arab country. It never worked in Palestine, it has not worked in Lebanon, and it will not work anywhere in the Arab world.

We have reached a moral crossroads. In the "new Middle East" defined by Israel, Bush, and the neocons, only Israel and the U.S. may dominate, only they may be strong, only they may be secure. But in the just world that lies on the other side of that crossroads, this is unacceptable. Justice can ultimately prevail.

Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.

Gandhi's Favorite Hymn

Gerald, the RICH start the wars but the POOR do the fighting and dying.

I believe if the ones that start the wars would have to fight them too, it would shorten the length of them considerably.

Alan --- My computer program runs rapidly on a modest PC, one about 6 times slower than the modern ones on the market. No super-computing around here!

BUSH FAMILY VALUES PHOTO ALBUM
including grandpa bush

Gerald, If only humanity could follow the guide set out by Ghandi. Easy to say but much more difficult to do in todays world where injustice is the order of the day.

Someday......maybe.

DEN out!

18 sal
pretending to be the opposition is no doubt much more expedient than actually being the opposition.

Geez, kathleen, wouldn't a link have done just as well?

Re #65: 'spy', finally a good post from you. I hadn't realized they ALL were like that! It did leave out one: Melvin or Marvin or something like that. Maybe he is the only decent Bush?

The Discovery of Global Warming

For Dr. Benson and others who are interested in this topic...

#61 Forgive what? That you posted such a screed? Or that you still refuse to learn to link?

what do you mean finally?
you know damn well that i am the only one in this cornfield that refuses to allow the single most definitive moment of our time to be swept under the rug. right or wrong i will not go quietly.

marvin. he was (is?) one of the controllers for stratasec - the company responsible for security of the wtc as well as either united or american airlines and logan airport as well. i'm doubtful that marvin is the good bush.
however, there is a billy bush who is one of those gad-fly entertainment tonight MTV types - maybe he is the good bush.

after all, every family has it's black sheep, ya?

According to the US dept of energy Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, the second largest in the world (behind Saudi Arabia) along with roughly 220 billion barrels of probable and possible resources. Iraq's true potential may be far greater than this, however, as the country is relatively unexplored due to years of war and sanctions. Deep oil-bearing formations located mainly in the vast Western Desert region, for instance, could yield large additional oil resources (possibly another 100 billion barrels), but have not been explored.

That makes 432 billion barrels times todays oil price per barrel, 67 dollars - something like 29 trillion dollars

Trillions in oil revenues is not the only money to be made from the invasion of iraq - the cost of the Iraq war to the taxpayerswas is budgeted at over 318 billion dollars . All of the weapons, uniforms, bases, vehicles, fuels, food and its preparation - all are purchased from private corporations. According to the national priorities project, an non proit that analyzes where federal dollars are spent - more than 28 billion of the total will be paid by the people of New York State - that 28 billion is enough to convert 93,743,138 homes to renewable electricity - according to the 2000 census, there were 105,480,101 occupied housinf units in the united states - just the money paid for the Iraq war by the people of New York state in enough to convert around 90 percent of American homes to renewable energy.

F**K YOU bushco!

#63 DEN, You are absolutely right!

#65 spy on this, great photos of many questionable characters!

#66 DEN, we are born into original sin and so sin is part of our life and nature. We will always have to be on guard against our sinful ways.

Re #70: Thank you, caroline.

Love is the answer

Caroline and David Benson I have tried to link, truely I have. I am inadequate, you are better than me, what can I say? I asked for your forgiveness.

What do I need to do kiss your ass? Geez.

What did you think about what the article had to say?

Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter: African proverb

=
Recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world: Preamble, Universal Declaration of Human Rights
http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

=
Should I keep back my opinions at such a time, through fear of giving offense, I should consider myself as guilty of treason towards my country, and of an act of disloyalty toward the Majesty of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly kings: Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775.

=
"The test of every religious, political, or educational system is the man that it forms.": -- Henri-Fr?d?ric Amiel - (1821-1881) Swiss philosopher, Poet

===
Thanks ICH Newsletter!

Re #78: kathleen, if you carefully follow capt's instructions it ought to work. But if you have been carefully foloowing capt's instructions and it STILL doesn't work, then your browser is broken. Try re-installing it.

If the point of the article was that Zionism will fade away, then I have yet to observe any fading. It seemed vastly over-optimistic...

Kathleen, you don't need to learn to link. You know how to copy/paste. Just click on http://www address above, right click to copy the address. Voila. You paste that in here and we can copy it and paste it above and go to your site. With Firefox I just have to right click to open it in a new tab.

Oh, am I going to have fun watching you cornnuts go ballistic!

More and more evidence is now being uncovered concerning Saddam's involvement in supporting Al Qaida and other terrorist activities prior to 9/11. The evidence is slow in coming because of the monumental task of translating and deciphering the treasure trove of documents, computers, etc. we captured when we routed Saddam's forces.

I will start excerpting and linking the material in the very near future. Suffice it to say for now that the President, the Vice-President, The Secretary of Defense, etc. are telling the truth when it comes to Iraq.

How do I make a hyperlink?

A link is done with something called the Anchor tag.

The anchor tag looks like this:

 <A HREF="pagename.html">Link Here</A>

Anything that appears between the begin and end anchor tags will take you to the specified destination when clicked.

Format tags are as follows

 <B>BOLD TEXT</B>

 <I>ITALIC TEXT</I>

If you use "preview" you can see your formats and test your links by a "right click" then "open in new window". If it works the new window will open with your linked page.

*****

If any of the above gives you a hard time or if you cannot get the results you want, drop me an email. I will help where I can.

capt

While there are people who are anti-Jew anti-black, anti-gay, anti anti etc.

Kristol continually twists criticism about right wing radical Israeli policy with anti-semitism.

I seriously want to see Kristol in a U.s. military uniform and sent to Iraq to fight his war.

Jews are under attack. And no one seems much concerned.
by William Kristol
09/11/2006 12:00:00 AM

"How odd / Of God / To choose / The Jews." Thus the British journalist (and communist) William Norman Ewer, in the early part of the last century. The reply came from Cecil Browne: "But not so odd / As those who choose / A Jewish God / But spurn the Jews."

Browne's riposte may have won the poetic exchange. But Ewer's anti-Judaism prevailed in the next decades in Europe. Buried there after World War II, hatred of the Jews flourished for the rest of the 20th century in the Middle East. Is anti-Judaism now enjoying a broader revival? It would seem so.

at Weekly Standard

On Tompaine.com today, there is a report stating that the GAO has issued a rather pessimistic document regarding Iraq and democracy there.

They ain't agonna...

It appears to me that w-a-a-y too many people are spending way too much time sniping at each other .
I'll check back when we grow up.
Not the Tim that's at the heart of the problem

Some Windows updates are available for downloading - in case anybody is not set to automatically update.

capt

spy 72, come on now, I think you know there are quite a few of us who expend considerable time on this topic. We are not letting it get swept under the carpet. The tide is turning because people are getting the truth, or at least questioning the lies, that is progress compared to 4 years ago, have a little faith! ;-)

carol, let's not give up without trying!

For example, I suppose you have RFD five or six times a week. Also, school buses come by for school children. Why not combine these? Indeed, why not let anybody ride? That is the Swiss way. The bus system is called the Postal Buses, so I suppose the Swiss Post Office runs it. School kids get free passes and the bus driver is the mailman. Everybody else pays something, but not much.

In Scotland it is somewhat similar. There the buses have regular stops, but also way stations where you flag down a bus to get on. Nobody lives more than a short walk (by Scottish standards) from a way station.

It does take some effort to reorganize along such energy efficient lines. But only some if you obtain supporters for such ideas.

And also if we can get the Republicants out!

Dr. Benson, those are all fine ideas but the people at the top who have the power to change things aren't interested. This society will continue along its merry path until it's too late to change anything.

On TomDipatch.com today, Mr. Engelhardt thoroughly lets bushco have it. Yes, they crashed the plane of state into Iraq!

The Coming Collapse of Zionism

Is it only observers outside the conventional mainstream who have noticed that by its murderous assault on Lebanon and simultaneously on Gaza, Israel finally exposed, for even the most deluded to see, the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea?

Can it be that the deluded are still deluded? Can it truly still be that Israel's bankruptcy is evident only to those who already knew it, those who already recognized Zionism as illegitimate for the racist principle that underlies it?

Can it be therefore that only the already converted can see coming the ultimate collapse of Zionism and, with it, of Israel itself as the exclusivist state of Jews?

Racism has always been the lifeblood of Israel. Zionism rests on the fundamental belief that Jews have superior national, human, and natural rights in the land, an inherently racist foundation that excludes any possibility of true democracy or equality of peoples. Israel's destructive rampage in Lebanon and Gaza is merely the natural next step in the evolution of such a founding ideology. Precisely because that ideology posits the exclusivity and superiority of one people's rights, it can accept no legal or moral restraints on its behavior and no territorial limits, for it needs an ever-expanding geography to accommodate those unlimited rights.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

An interesting take. Like the death of the GOP I think it is a little premature to start to write the obituary.

capt

America's warrior nation - The legacy of 9/11

The shortcomings of the American leader were alarmingly exposed on the day the terrorists struck. He and his acolytes are now leading their empire towards permanent conflict with lslam

What a difference five years have made! The greatest nation in the country, as an American statesman once termed us, was attacked by a dozen or so Saudi Arabians who had, with astonishing ease, hijacked several airliners and flew two of them into a pair of New York skyscrapers as well as another into one of the five sides of the Pentagon at Washington, the heart of the greatest, most expensive military machine the world has ever known. I watched all this on CNN; in Italy where I then lived. The visual shock was great, of course. Particularly when our little president was discovered by the ubiquitous TV camera in a Florida school where he was reading to his peers from "The Pet Goat", an inspirational tale calculated to encourage small Americans to stand tall: "like", as he would put it, "they should." An aide interrupts the reading; murmurs something in the presidential ear: the presidential eyes widen. A moment akin to the Confederacy firing on Fort Sumter, or the Japanese sinking the US Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor. Two tall presidents were, happily for us, in office at those times. Lincoln acted with characteristic guile while Roosevelt, thundering anathema as Pontifex Maximus, flung open the doors of the temple of Janus and so the war that would bring us a global empire began while that of the Japanese sun goddess ended. What then did our very own Romulus Augustulus do during the rest of September 11th? He read some more of "The Pet Goat", knowing that his puppet-meister, vice president Cheney, was safely embedded in some secret spot. Then the little emperor was hustled away in Air Force One for a tour of our most luxurious bunkers where he might avoid the attentions of new attackers, should they come.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Yeah, the secret service was so worried about Bunnypants and the safety of those children that they did nothing until he was done with the photo op. His location and schedule were published for anybody to see on the WH website. Things that make you go Hmmmmm, eh?

capt

93) Things that make you go Hmmmmm, eh?

you would think so, ya?
comfort is complacency.

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.
~~martin luther king

Kathleen (and everyone else),
Please limit your comments in length. Do not post a 3000-word article here. It disturbs the flow. Feel free to post an excerpt and to link.

My computer program runs rapidly on a modest PC

K, I was just curious. So, how long does a run take?

74
According to the US dept of energy Iraq contains 112 billion barrels of proven oil reserves,...... makes 432 billion barrels times todays oil price per barrel, 67 dollars - something like 29 trillion dollars.

.....28 billion is enough to convert 93,743,138 homes to renewable electricity....

Posted by: spy on this! at September 12, 2006 07:34 PM
==============================================
Quite a streeeeeetch to go from 112 to 432 billion barrels! Even IF true, the last 350 bb ain't worth much.....My prediction is the Age of Oil will peak fairly soon! Before my time on this earth comes to an end, Oil will be downright cheap, say $40 in 2006 money!

Not that Oil won't be a major fuel, it's just that many alternative & competitive non-subsidized fuels will be in use....compounded by: work/life changes......replacement of older, inefficient housing stock with newer efficient ones....lighter vehicles.....higher efficiency engines of all types.......less mileage driven per capita.....blah, blah, blah...

$28 billion for 94 million home conversions? That's $300 per house! What have you been sniffing? some of that WTC powdered concrete?

BTW, Oil is much less than $67 today! Continued drop now for 7 straight trading days! Even I am a bit taken back by the pace of drop! Looks like Hedge Funds are unloading leveraged contracts before it gets downright painful! Like housing preconstruction `buy-and-flip' speculation that eventually goes awry!

David:

I got my book late today but haven't opened the package yet! What 2 or 3 chapters should definitely be read by someone, ahem, on the opposite side of the aisle from you? (pssst: chapters that discomfit the Dems/Libs!)

Secret Unit Expands Rumsfeld's Domain

New Espionage Branch Delving Into CIA Territory

The Pentagon, expanding into the CIA's historic bailiwick, has created a new espionage arm and is reinterpreting U.S. law to give Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld broad authority over clandestine operations abroad, according to interviews with participants and documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The previously undisclosed organization, called the Strategic Support Branch, arose from Rumsfeld's written order to end his "near total dependence on CIA" for what is known as human intelligence. Designed to operate without detection and under the defense secretary's direct control, the Strategic Support Branch deploys small teams of case officers, linguists, interrogators and technical specialists alongside newly empowered special operations forces.

Military and civilian participants said in interviews that the new unit has been operating in secret for two years -- in Iraq, Afghanistan and other places they declined to name. According to an early planning memorandum to Rumsfeld from Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the focus of the intelligence initiative is on "emerging target countries such as Somalia, Yemen, Indonesia, Philippines and Georgia." Myers and his staff declined to be interviewed.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

As I was reading this all I could think of is IF they are secretive enough the CIA and the SSB can end up fighting each other in some remote place nobody even cares about. This is a bad idea on so many levels.

capt

David Corn:

My "book club" group has picked HUBRIS as our book of the month for discussion. We agreed to this today via email, so each of us is honor bound to buy a copy. (Or hope to get it from the library.)

I lobbied on your behalf! Thank goodness my lobbying paid off because I had ALREADY purchased my copy in anticipation that I would prevail.

Millions of Afghans face hunger as crops fail

Millions of Afghans are facing hunger after a complete failure of the harvest in parts of the country, according to an emergency Christian Aid assessment.

The field survey in 66 villages in the west and northwest of the country has revealed that in the worst affected areas, farmers have lost 100 per cent of their crops, after a failure of the main rains last winter and spring.

People are already going hungry, while farmers and agricultural labourers are migrating out of drought-affected areas in search of work. Livestock farmers are either selling their animals or moving them to areas with pasture and water, which is exacerbating existing food shortages. Children, pregnant women, landless families and the elderly are the groups whose health is most at risk, according to the assessment.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Maybe cultivating opium poppies was not such a smart move? I think we should pay the farmers what they could get for opium to grow grain, corn, rice or soy? Something productive. We buy at the opium cost then sell at their market price. Share the loss with European countries (where most of the opium is sold).

Such a thing would reduce the opium and after a few seasons more farmers would feel confident and join.

One of the biggest problems with black markets and contraband goods is it bleeds money from the official economy. The money in black markets just disappears.

capt

I noticed today that HUBRIS: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War

Is Also Available in:

Audio CD (Unabridged)

Audio Cassette (Unabridged)

MP3 CD (Unab MP3)

The Audio and MP3 are available for pre-order.

capt

And with tears and emotion, Jon Stewart spoke for so many of us. So, instead of my own lame words, here are the words of Jon Stewart in the first The Daily Show broadcast after 9/11.

*tissue warning

Iran offers Iraq 'full support'

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has offered Iraq full support in stabilising the security situation in the country.

He made the remarks in Tehran after talks with the Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

Speaking to reporters after their meeting, Mr Ahmadinejad said "Iraq's security is Iran's security".

Mr Maliki is making his first official visit to Iran since he took office in May.

"Iran supports the Iraqi government that has been created by the Iraqi people's votes, and strengthening a united and independent Iraq is in the interest of all the region", Mr Ahmadinejad said.

More HERE

*****end of clip*****

Here is something that crossed my mind:

What if Iran backs off on Nuclear enrichment then create a coalition with Iraq?

capt

I have recently heard that the definition of a neoconservative is liberal who has been mugged.

Has anyone heard whether or not warmongers Kristol and Lowry have ever served in the military armed forces??? Thank you for any information!!!

Conscientious Objection

History is full of thousands of people who have cooperated in morally-reprehensible activities when so ordered by their government or employer. One has only to look at the large complicity needed in World War II’s Holocaust, a carefully-planned and exectuted extermination of millions of Jews, Gypsies and other “undesireables.” Closer to home, one can look at the American pilots aboard the Enola Gay who unleashed the world’s first atomic bomb on the citizens of Hiroshima.

Not everyone cooperates in the face of such violence. There is a long tradition of conscientious objectors, those whose hearts and minds refuse to follow orders they deem to be immoral. Many are motivated by religious concerns, and consider any participation in killing or war to be against God’s commandments. Others resist government policies out of a sense of justice.

The United States formally recognizes the right of conscientious objection to physical participation in war when it is deemed a religious objection to war in general. Some people of conscience ojbect only to particular wars (for example, they might fight in a purely defensive war) and their C.O. status of these political objectors is something of a gray area, as is the status of non-religious and atheist objectors.

Vow of Nonviolence

Recognizing the violence in my own heart, yet trusting in the goodness and mercy of God, I vow for one year to practice the nonviolence of Jesus who taught us in the Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called children of God. You have learned how it was said, "You must love your neighbor and hate your enemy"; but I say to you, "Love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you. In this way, you will be daughters and sons of your Creator in heaven."

Before God the Creator and the Sanctifying Spirit, I vow to carry out in my life the love and example of Jesus
·â±. By striving for peace within myself and seeking to be a peacemaker in my daily life;
·â≤. By accepting suffering rather than inflicting it;
·â≥. By refusing to retaliate in the face of provocation and violence;
ቴ. By persevering in nonviolence of tongue and heart;
·âµ. By living conscientiously and simply so that I do not deprive others of the means to live;
·â∂. By actively resisting evil and working nonviolently to abolish war and the causes of war from my own heart and from the face of the earth.

God, I trust in Your sustaining love and believe that just as You gave me the grace and desire to offer this, so You will also bestow abundant grace to fulfill it.

David I have not read Phase II of the SSCI yet, although I will read all of it as soon as I find the time.

Is it true that the Office of Special Plans was "off limits" to this investigation and all other investigations of pre-war intelligence?

I apoligize again.

#101 Capt I have been spending time with several students from Afghanistan who are attending Ohio. U on Fulbright's. The one gentleman (30) has 4 children,wife and large family in Afghanistan. Due to all of the CIA and other checks that one has to go through ( he completely understands the need to do so) his family is unable to come here while he is in school. It will be difficult for him emotionally to be away from his family for 3 years which is the length of his stay. ( he can not return during his stay due to the new restrictions).

He talks with his family several times a week and shares insights with me about the situation in Afghanistan that I do not read or here in the media. He repeats over and over again that the U.S. is not spending enough money on the infrastructure in Afghanistan. He is working on a masters in communications.

When he returns he will be in the upper echelon of the Afghanistan communications systems (both T.V. and radio).

David would you be willing to have this fellow contact you for your suggesstions and insights? He is going to try to get a internship at the BBc or NPR.

#Went to check my spelling for echelon..check out this telecommunications system.

ECHELON is thought to be the largest Signals intelligence and analysis network for intercepting electronic communications in history. Run by the UKUSA community, ECHELON can capture radio and satellite communications, telephone calls, faxes and e-mails nearly anywhere in the world and includes computer automated analysis and sorting of intercepts. ECHELON is estimated to intercept up to 3 billion communications every day.

Last week a retired Marine colonel was interviewed on CBS. He has a brother, a son ,and a nephew in Iraq. He cut straight to the heart of the matter when he said that George W. went into Iraq his way. If he had succeeded they would've beent tripping over themselves to take the credit, and justifiably so. But they did it their way and they failed. How do they respond? By trying to shift the blame to Democrats and all anti-war, anti-Bush elements. They just won't look in the mirror and face the fact that they have failed us all miserably. The colonel ended by saying that although he had rarely voted Democratic in the past he hoped that every single Republican running for Congress loses big.
Contrary to Republican claims, most people truly understan how much is at stake here. This is not the time for arrogant, incompetent cowards to be in charge. That goes for Congress and their continued porking and earmarking and denying the workers of America a minimum wage closer to what someone can actually live on. The GOP defenders (there are enough of them where I live) say that well, it's always been like that. Perhaps, but there's one difference now. We're at war, remember? If they can't lift their snouts out of the trough now, they never will. I've been called a traitor several times in the last month or two by people in my very red, military town. Bring it on. I understand who really has betrayed their country and no Bush Pravda (aka Fox)swilling clown is going to cloud my vision.

Today is Your favorite Bush quote day. Here are two of mine:

"Laura makes our toast in a bread toastin’ machine, what I like to call a toaster….."

"These people are trained to disassemble, that means they lie….. "

No Bush Pravda (aka Fox)swilling clown is going to cloud my vision.

Posted by: Mygoodness at September 13, 2006 09:19 AM

#111...The polls report that 20% of Republicans in Ohio will be voting for Congressman Strickland for Governor of Ohio.

The issue you brought up about the Bush administration being in denial in regard to the consequences of their pre-emtive measures being used and then blaming the Democrats for these decisions is a sure sign of a group of addicts.

War Pusher Bill Kristol is projecting that it would be a good thing if the Democrats win the house, so that the Democrats could be blamed even more for the Bush administrations "Culture of Corruption". He claims that this could help the Republicans win in the 2008 Presidential election.

go check it out

ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance Network
Copyright 1999/2000 Patrick S. Poole

Executive Summary

In the greatest surveillance effort ever established, the US National Security Agency (NSA) has created a global spy system, codename ECHELON, which captures and analyzes virtually every phone call, fax, email and telex message sent anywhere in the world. ECHELON is controlled by the NSA and is operated in conjunction with the Government Communications Head Quarters (GCHQ) of England, the Communications Security Establishment (CSE) of Canada, the Australian Defense Security Directorate (DSD), and the General Communications Security Bureau (GCSB) of New Zealand. These organizations are bound together under a secret 1948 agreement, UKUSA, whose terms and text remain under wraps even today.

The ECHELON system is fairly simple in design: position intercept stations all over the world to capture all satellite, microwave, cellular and fiber-optic communications traffic, and then process this information through the massive computer capabilities of the NSA, including advanced voice recognition and optical character recognition (OCR) programs, and look for code words or phrases (known as the ECHELON “Dictionary”) that will prompt the computers to flag the message for recording and transcribing for future analysis. Intelligence analysts at each of the respective “listening stations” maintain separate keyword lists for them to analyze any conversation or document flagged by the system, which is then forwarded to the respective intelligence agency headquarters that requested the intercept.

Echelon

I just LOVE waking up to THIS CRAP

_____________________
Air Force chief: Test weapons on testy U.S. mobs

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Nonlethal weapons such as high-power microwave devices should be used on American citizens in crowd-control situations before being used on the battlefield, the Air Force secretary said Tuesday.

The object is basically public relations. Domestic use would make it easier to avoid questions from others about possible safety considerations, said Secretary Michael Wynne.

"If we're not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation," said Wynne. "(Because) if I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press."

The Air Force has paid for research into nonlethal weapons, but he said the service is unlikely to spend more money on development until injury problems are reviewed by medical experts and resolved.

Nonlethal weapons generally can weaken people if they are hit with the beam. Some of t