posted November 22, 2005 01:26 PM            

It's the American government that really sucks though!

Everything that we have ever seen in the last 55 years or so, has been shot to hELL in this country over the shotty ways that our government has provided to the people of the United States and abroad! These last two elections were rigged and they will be rigged again! The only people that benefit from this government are the ones that are either already from the upper middle classes, all the way up to the concidered Rich statis!

You show me one person in this country that is benefiting from anything that has been going on in the last six years that is from a poor class family or is working class poor, that lives on a McPaycheck income and I can tell you that person must have one hELL of a spirit with the little that he/she has! But nobody that is involved in anykind of special interest group that lobbies over in the halls of Washington DC that ever utters a word in our name, really give a damn about us!

Anybody that is paying 3 bucks on a tank of gas right now must know that the oil companies are getting more and more wealthier each and everyday off our misery, just like Adelphia is, Wochovia and all the rest of them that is doing nothing but ripping the people off in this country with each and every scheme that they can think up within they're boardroom meetings, thinking of bigger and better ways to screw us out of our money for nothing that we get anyway, just to even pay more for the "war", the drugs that come into this country to pay more for the "war", even after Hurricane Katrina, do you think that the oil companies that is ran in the United States lost any revenue? I don't think so! They made a killing from it and I even believe that was just another setup from the administration and all of the Bush buddies made absolute sure that those oil refineries would be destroyed and if their is a loss of life, "Oh well", I guess that they think that we all "have to go sometime" anyway, just to pay into that oil plot in IRAQ!

I'll tell you what, once May 2008 comes around you bet your ass that we will be paying up the nose once all of our information is being used by chinese people in some corporation that is being ran from an American office somewhere! You'll see, you'll learn! And we're going to have to pay even more big bucks just to get it stopped! These are your real enemies from within that someone here liked to use Cicero to blame the things that go on in this country on people like us and call us "Leftists, Liberals, Communists, etc..." BULLSHYTE!

So long as we stand up for ourselves, we will always be concidered enemies to this government and to the supposable "people" of America!

posted November 22, 2005 02:23 PM              

The Government is public enemy #1

we are a big soul family, we can overcome this BS, we can make a difference

posted November 22, 2005 02:53 PM            

You missed!

--------------------------------------------

Dirty Bomb Suspect Jose Padilla Indicted

Tuesday, November 22, 2005
WASHINGTON - Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held without charges for more than three years on suspicion of plotting a "dirty bomb" attack in this country, has been indicted on three counts alleging he conspired to "murder, maim and kidnap" people overseas.

The indictment naming Padilla and four others was unsealed Tuesday after being returned last week by a federal grand jury in Miami. While the charges allege Padilla was part of a U.S.-based terrorism conspiracy, they do not include the government's earlier allegations that he planned to carry out attacks in America.

"The indictment alleges that Padilla traveled overseas to train as a terrorist with the intention of fighting a violent jihad," Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said at a news conference. Gonzales declined to comment on why none of the allegations involving attacks in America were included in the indictment.

Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert, had been held as an "enemy combatant" in Defense Department custody. The Bush administration had resisted calls to charge and try him in civilian courts.

With the indictment, Padilla will be transferred from military custody to the Justice Department. Gonzales said the case would go to trial in September of 2006. Padilla faces life in prison if convicted on the three charges - one count each of conspiracy to murder, maim and kidnap people overseas, providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy.

The indictment avoids a Supreme Court showdown over how long the government may hold a U.S. citizen without charges.

"They're avoiding what the Supreme Court would say about American citizens. That's an issue the administration did not want to face," said Scott Silliman, a Duke University law professor who specializes in national security. "There's no way that the Supreme Court would have ducked this issue."

Padilla's lawyers had asked justices to review his case last month, and the Bush administration was facing a deadline next Monday for filing its legal arguments.

"The 'evidence' the government has offered against Padilla over the past three years consists of double and triple hearsay from secret witnesses, along with information allegedly obtained from Padilla himself during his two years of incommunicado interrogation," his lawyers said in their earlier appeal.

The Bush administration earlier said Padilla, a former Chicago gang member, sought to blow up hotels and apartment buildings in the United States and planned an attack with a "dirty bomb" radiological device.

Gonzales sidestepped the question of why those allegations were not included in the indictment, saying he would only talk about the specific charges.

Padilla was arrested at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in 2002 after returning from Pakistan. The federal government has said he was trained in weapons and explosives by members of al-Qaida.

The charges against him and four others allege they were part of a North American support cell that sent money, assets and recruits overseas "for the purpose of fighting violent jihad."

The others indicted are: Adham Amin Hassoun a Lebanese-born Palestinian who lived in Broward County, Fla.;, Mohammed Hesham Youssef, an Egyptian who lived in Broward County; Kifah Wael Jayyousi, a Jordanian national and U.S. citizen who lived in San Diego; and Kassem Daher, a Lebanese citizen with Canadian residency status.

Hassoun also was indicted on eight additional charges, including perjury, obstruction of justice and illegal firearm possession.

Hassoun, a Palestinian computer programmer who moved to Florida in 1989, was arrested in June 2002 for allegedly overstaying his student visa. Prosecutors previously described him as a former associate of Padilla.

Padilla has been held at a Navy brig in South Carolina. Following the indictment, which was handed up last Thursday, President Bush sent a memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordering Padilla transferred to the federal detention facility in Miami.

---

On the Net:

Read the Padilla indictment:
http://wid.ap.org/documents/051122padilla_indictment.pdf

--------------------------------------------

So why wasn't Padella charged with the "Dirty Bomb" allegation from the administration?

posted November 23, 2005 05:32 PM              

------------------
Gemini sun, Cancer rising, mercury in Gemini, moon in Taurus *29, venus in Taurus, mars in Libra

posted November 24, 2005 09:56 PM              

i never said saddam was a great guy. he was a mass murderer and all the muslims knew that way before US did. but do u want to hear about the atrocities in the other countries? do you want to hear about the millions oppressed in iran, the women stoned to death? do you want to hear about the saudis letting women burn to death in a factory because they werent wearing their hejabs at that time, and could not be let out under this law? do you want to hear about a pakistani villager girl being hunted down by her own brothers, and killed, for eloping with a man other than who she was promised to in marriage? and then her sister in laws being raped?

do you want to hear all the atrocities????? there are too many to count. that is not the POINT. the point is that the change must come from within. there IS a resistance building up. there IS a democratic grassroots movement emerging in tehran and karachi. saudia is still too backwards in my opinion, but even in those circumstances they dont need to be 'liberated' by the US but EDUCATED. dont forget that it was the muslim scholars who came up with the foundations for modern medicine, astronomy, geography, and preserved the texts of socrates and plato to further the philosophical movement, which the church was planning on burning and doing away with.

muslims are not backwards people. the tyrannical governments in place in a handful of oil rich countries have taken over and are abusing the system and resources to manipulate the people. but dont be naive enough to think that the people wont take a stand for themselves. they are and they should. intellectually, they need to revolt, and revolution can be the only lasting democratic government. you cant hand someone a country and expect them to run it right. that is the way pakistan was created--a leftover handed to jinnah from the british government, happy birthday jinnah, heres ur present. it is a corrupt country running amuck because people never FOUGHT for it truly. yes there was a lot of raping and pillaging, emotions ran high, but there was no cause.

america is trying to fight battles for people it doesnt know, by assuming their cause. let them develop their causes, and dont impose ur western value system on their society, and then fight their battles for them. let them do it themselves, and if they ask for help, then it would be very gracious of the US to help. even then it is not a duty. it is a duty to help in times of humanitarian need, but it is dirty to turn politics into a humanitarian cause and establish a presence based on assumed circumstances.

secondly, who exactly would you be to decide who is a true american and who isnt? people who keep their old cultural perspectives? is that so 'bad'? everyone keeps some cultural perspective. according to the US census the italians are the most 'tightly knit' ethnic community, as the numbers of immigrants identifying themselves as 'european' or 'asian' is going down (because they are identifying themselves as 'american'), yet the numbers of immigrants identifying themselves as 'italian' is going up. so are u going to grab an ax and go after the italians now? did you know that Arab american immigration started in 1890, with the majority of arabs immigrating being syrian and lebanese christian and druze populations, not even muslims. besides which, they did not assimilate as much but were welcome. not everyone has to 'assimilate' and become a homogeneous glob of americanism. you can retain cultural roots and still be appreciative of the new culture, and accept and promote its values. but that doesnt mean u have to ABANDON the old one. and that is NO measure of loyalism. how would you rate timothy mcveigh, whiter than snow in russia, for the bombings in OK in 95? he was born in the US, and had all the american cultural things inside him. or the klebold and harris nightmare in columbine? is culture really ur yardstick of condemnation?

70% of iraqis were brave enough to vote and my hats off to them too. thats not the point once again. OF COURSE they wanted a new government. but both they and the US are not being wise by assuming that they will be able to keep this thing going. it will collapse in their faces. until they can overcome it themselves like i said al qaeda and the arab mafia will crush the weak govt the US will institute. dont underestimate their power, i know the power of al qaeda from personal experience from the wrath of the arab mob. the only way to overcome it is to rebel from within, to crush the mob from within by instituting a truly strong government, which the US really cant do there. and ur comment about no one thinking the US is going to stay there is wholly untrue. a LOT of people think the US is going to establish a permanent small presence there with troops bases like it has in so many other countries. it may not 'monitor' the government but it does produce enough intimidation to let everyone know they are being 'watched'.

my statement does make sense in that like i said, both US and saddam need to leave the country, with a leader coming from the masses, but not necessarily elected BY the masses. the trouble with the population is that except for a few key cities where literacy rates are super high, most of the other people are stuck in the uneducated allure of the misinterpreted version of Islam which is not Islam at all. if given the right to vote are these people really going to make the right choices? there was a reason Aristotle was against democracy, its mob rule, even the US has a representative system, where those who are most educated and qualified, who are chosen by the masses, then go on to choose the government, it is a two tiered system to help prevent mobocracy.

america was only trying to hit the terrorists? i would certainly not expect a statement like that from someone who knows so much about politics. Have u ever watched Geo or Al jazeera or read Al ahram or dawn? ok then sit down and lets go through this one step at a time. I saw with my own eyes on Geo the iraqi peoples interviews, iraqi women crying about being raped by US soldiers, iraqi civilians lost in weaponed attacks by the US troops, at random, because they were supposedly harboring terrorists, but they really werent. it was REAL LIVE footage on two middle eastern channels, NOT fabricated. if you are going to accept osama bin ladens videos from those channels, then u shud accept these videos too shouldnt u? and also lets not forget that Geo is one of the most reputable TV channels in the middle east, with neither pro nor anti america sentiment, altho it is anti-paki government, and it had aired an interview with one of osamas right hand men, which the US government acknowledged so much that it hounded the Geo journalists to tell the US govt where it had gotten a hold of the guy. of course they refused becoz all of their interviews are confidential. the interview was aired on Al jazeera as well, u can check in their article on the website 'osama bin laden is alive and well' from june 2004.

trashing america is not the point. like i said earlier, america turned its back on citizens like me, i didnt turn my back on it. i would love to continue to live here, and contribute to this economy, my family has paid more taxes than anyone i know, yes we are AFFLUENT americans, educated , with everyone in my immediate family having a masters degree or higher. we are not terrorists and do not support terrorist activities, but PARDON us if we seem to be seeing the faults with the government. a strange time indeed has come in american history where, instead of listening to and addressing the concerns of citizens who see the government at fault, (citizens who are CONCERNED that the US government will lose its power because of its misuses of this power), are put to silence or deported instead of responded to. thats always the thing to do--when u dont have a response, kill the person or make them disappear.

Love
SG

posted November 24, 2005 10:08 PM              

Wow!, I'm impressed, I like the wide lens
the big picture

posted December 09, 2005 03:42 PM              

quote:

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At the moment, we're just wonderfully powerful

---

And power comes with great responsibilty - something that Britain has had to learn the hard way after the empire dissolved.

To quote myself from a post I put up in another thread... "The British Empire crashed and burned even though it managed to introduce a few positive things such as better educational opportunities and health care to some of the countries it claimed as it's own, not to mention the concept of democracy itself. We've reaped a great deal of karma however from that arrogant 'global muscle flexing' exercise, so perhaps Mr Bush's administration should take note and learn from our past mistakes?"

Power is very much a double edged sword - if you use it wisely and justly, people will ask your advice and will usually follow it. If you don't, they will turn on you and the very 'power' that you weild will become your worst enemy.

quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
We aim to make the case and rally support for American global leadership
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That was a direct quote from this website (http://www.newamericancentury.org/statementofprinciples.htm) which is a group made up of several prominent members of the Bush administration and those who have provided campaign funding/support etc.

This is a direct quote from myself from eleswhere on this forum...

"To return to the New American Century's statement of principles, it brings up the age old 'when does democracy become fascism?' question - surely it occurs when it's forced upon you because someone else thinks they know what's best for you. Just my humble opinion."

posted December 09, 2005 03:52 PM              

quote:

---

the point is that the change must come from within

---

posted December 09, 2005 07:35 PM            

Who said Muslims are backward?

Who brought Iran into this conversation..not me. The situation is Iran has to be laid squarely in the lap of the totally incompetent boob, Jimmy Carter. Not only the radical fundamentalist regime in Iran but the spread of the poisonous doctrine throughout the middle east. Carter set that train of events in motion by withdrawing support for the Shah. One wonders exactly who Carter thought was going to step in to fill the void?

posted December 09, 2005 09:51 PM              

The Idaho Observer has intentionally maintained an editorial policy that avoided comparisons of the U.S. government to Hitler and Nazi Germany. Such comparisons evoke vivid images of an ugly period in recent history and people have a tendency to deny, rather than learn from them. By March, 2003, the parallels are undeniable. If people don't like the images of entire cities burning and millions of naked emaciated people being buried in mass graves, then they should do something to prevent the U.S. government from repeating the horrors that have been attributed to Hitler's Nazis.

by Hari Heath

British Prime Minister Tony Blair recently said, “opponents of military action against Iraq are as misguided as the appeasers who refused to stand up to Adolph Hitler in the 1930s.”

Isn't this classic doublespeak from the Bush regime's partner in war? As Hitler's propagandist Joseph Goebbles stated, “a lie told often enough eventually becomes the truth.”

Is the truth much closer to this statement: “Proponents of military action against Iraq are as misguided as the appeasers who refused to stand up to Adolph Hitler in the 1930s.”

Can those of you who remember the history of 1930s Germany see the parallels to our current times? Are we witnessing the rapid Nazification of America?

The German leadership in the later 1930s thought it was quite appropriate to invade other countries to get what Germany wanted. The Bush regime's plan to invade Iraq by force, impose a regime change and make Iraq's oil safe for western corporations seems to be a rather Hitlerian mindset.

How can otherwise sane people be convinced that invading another country is a good idea? The German people were whipped into a frenzy of support for Hitler and the Nazis by systematic programming. A media blitz from the Nazi propaganda machine fomented a blind pro-Aryan patriotic pride.

What is the difference today? During World War II, the U.S. government realized the value of propaganda. Beginning in the late 1940s, U.S. Military Intelligence and the various clandestine agencies that eventually formed the CIA, gave millions of dollars in research grants to American universities for the research and development of propaganda techniques. Joseph Goebble's societal mind controlling propaganda machine came to America under Project Paperclip and was transformed into an academic genre that is now euphemistically known as the “science of communications.”

The result? Every journalism student is trained in this now exact science. Polished to a fine art and potentized by modern technology, our minds are pumped on every channel, bandwidth and frequency, 24/7. There's no room left for independent thinking. Our thoughts are provided for us, so slick and conveniently, that the average American doesn't even know what hit 'em.

Mental conformity is accomplished with up-to-the-minute news pumps. Room for alternatives or debate? Only if its going in the direction the doctors of spin have prescribed for us. Just as in Hitler's time, we've been whipped into a frenzy of blind pro-American patriotic pride.

And don't forget the fear factor. Nothing pulls people together better than a perceived threat and the promise of protection from evil. The evil Jews of Hitler's era are not much different than the evil Arabs of today. The ruse of terrorism and the Bush regime's “Homeland Security” are simply a modern (and more technologically-advanced) reinvention of Hitler's Jews and SS troops.

Moving Toward a police State?

One of the more ridiculous phrases in modern usage is “We are moving towards a police state.” We are not “moving” toward anything -- we are already living in a police state.

After years in the public indoctrination system (school), followed by the many forms social conditioning that adapt us to accepting government's various administrative regimes, most Americans can't even imagine what true freedom would be like.

In America today it's a crime to leave your house without your “papers” on you. You can be pulled over for as little as a dirty license plate. If you don't do just as you're told, the infraction can jump to a felony for “resisting an officer.

Bristle-headed, hog-jeweled policemen in dark glasses are on alert everywhere with a steroid attitude. With their K-9 friends, they're ready to sniff you out for any non-compliant activities. Forget everything you ever thought the Bill of Rights meant. There's terrorists out there.

Privacy? Forget it. Between bank records, “voluntary” tax filing and your “paper or plastic” purchasing methods, your every financial move is an open book. Carrying enough cash in your pocket to buy a used car is also a crime.

A police state isn't just about police. Bureaucrats of every persuasion form a lawless horde to “police” your every move by administrating their self-written rules and regulations. Crime creation no longer requires a Congress.

Are we only moving “towards” a police state or jumping farther off the deep end into a sea of totalitarianism? The PATRIOT Act was bad; the Homeland Security Bill was worse and now, along comes the Patriot II nightmare. How far will government go to protect itself from us?

Alex Jones recently provided a summary of the American Nazi's latest fascist effort for total control (The Idaho Observer, Feb., 2003). Highlights of his report on the Patriot Act II include:

* A Terrorist Identification Database” of “suspected terrorists” and any one associated with suspected terrorists or having supported any group designated as “terrorist.”

* Makes it a crime to release information about the incarceration or whereabouts of “detainees.”

* Gives law enforcement immunity for spying on the American people.

* Designates individual terrorists as foreign powers and strips them of all rights under the “enemy combatant” designation.

* Considers information gathering, whether legal or not, to be clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign power -- an end to news gathering and a free press.

* Allows the use of wartime martial law powers without a congressional declaration of war.

* Grants immunity for government agents who conduct searches without prior court approval and authorizes surveillance without a court order.

* Allows contempt charges for anyone who refuses to incriminate themselves or others.

* Removes sunset clauses from the original Patriot Act.

* Expands the definition of “enemy combatant” designation.

* Authorizes giant, warrantless, dragnet style “investigations.”

* Grants the government the power to snoop into your public and private sector information, including bank records, educational records and medical records.

* Allows the federal take-over of Coroner and Medical Examiner operations.

* Disallows the quashing of federal subpoenas and allows the feds to enforce gag orders and take over state grand jury proceedings.

* Ends federal whistle blower protections.

* Allows corporations to keep their use of toxic biological, chemical or radiological materials secret.

* Allows top federal officials to keep their financial dealings secret.

* Sets up a national DNA database of “suspected” terrorists.

* Federalizes local police department information sharing.

* Provides liability protection for businesses that spy on their customers or violate privacy agreements.

* Authorizes foreign governments to spy on the American people.

* Allows Homeland Security officials to extradite American citizens anywhere they wish or secretly take individuals out of foreign countries.

* Expands the definition of weapons of mass destruction to include any activity that effects interstate or foreign commerce.

* Creates “lifetime parole” for a host of crimes.

* Expands the list of capital crimes.

* Sets up asset forfeiture provisions for anyone engaging in “terrorist” activities.

The Nazification of America? Moving towards a police state? How much farther is there left to go? The only thing missing from Patriot II is the concentration camps and gas chambers for “enemy combatants” (and rumors have abounded for years that those facilities already exist in the former land of the free).

And what do the leaders of Nazi America busy themselves with when they're not proposing fascist legislation?

North Korea has nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missile delivery systems, but der fuhrer Bush only considers this a “regional” problem that can be handled by regional diplomacy. Der fuhrer says other nations must step up to the plate and assume responsibility for the North Korean problem. Bush is dragging his feet and doesn't want to bother engaging this “rogue” nuclear-weapon possessing nation in direct dialog.

But Iraq is another story. Billions of dollars have been spent deploying over 300,000 troops. They're still on ships or camped in the sand waiting for the Bush/Blair blitz of Baghdad. Why? To seize Saddam's weapons of mass destruction -- WMD's the UN can't find and the Bush regime can't evidence, even with our U2 spy planes and other state of the art surveillance technologies.

Absent actual evidence, how do we know Iraq has WMD's? Because Bush Regime I delivered them to Iraq in the 1980s, largely through the efforts of its then private-sector emissary Donald Rumsfeld -- The same man who is now the Secretary of Defense. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld wants to attack and then occupy Iraq with a new regime because he believes Saddam still has the WMDs private sector emissary Rumsfeld sold him 20 years ago.

So how can we tell which country is housing the real terrorists? Which country needs a regime change -- the one led by George Dubya or the one led by Saddam Scudya?

So What Is an American Nazi?

Hitler's “Nazi” party was the National Socialist Party. A party of federal socialists. Do we really have a two-party system in America? There's so many “moderates” engaged in political “compromise” that its hard to tell the Republicans and Democrats apart. It's really two sides of one party.

But what two sides of our one-party system are obvious? There's the bleeding-heart socialists with their give-away, benevolent, benefit programs and the federal fascists groping for absolute dictatorial powers. Under the sway of bleeding heart benevolence we are “appeased” so that we “refuse to stand up” to the Hitlerian conduct of the federal government.

And it's even hard to tell the bleeding-hearts from the fascists. The “Comprehensive Homeland Security Act of 2003” (SB 6) and the “Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act of 2003" (SB 22), are yet further fascist federal power grabs, primarily sponsored by “liberal” Senate Democrats, Daschle, Kennedy, Biden, Leahy, Murray, Durbin, Schumer and Mrs. Clinton.

Slick as a wet Willie in the White House, we don't have to beat around the Bush about it anymore. Let's just call it what it really is, the American Nazi Party.

Doesn't their conduct evidence their true identity? But who are the American Nazis that should cause liberty-loving Americans the greatest concern?

Your neighbors -- the spoon-fed, brain-dead political zombies that have fully absorbed the Fed/Nazi mass mantra.

Media personalities who pump American Nazi rhetoric into our brains 24/7.

People who pay a tax they do not owe which funds the further and continued Nazification of America.

Anyone who thinks security comes from the government.

A Congress that has no concept that the American Constitution exists.

Those who demand benefits and handouts and those who provide them.

Bureaucrats and regulators who issue permits and licenses that have no place in a free society -- and those who apply for and accept them.

The misguided appeasers who refuse to stand up to our own Nazification.

There are no “innocent civilians” here. There's nowhere for an innocent bystander to stand. You must either stand an ever treacherous and shrinking ground for freedom or capitulate and roll over until you are doing somersaults for socialism. The fascist, federal socialists haven't left us any middle ground.

Our former land of the free and home of the brave cannot co-exist with our now Nazi-occupied country. We've been Nazified.

There is one more question those who intend to stand unwaveringly for freedom must ask themselves: Where will we go, this time, to flee the Nazis?

posted December 09, 2005 10:00 PM              

by Butler Shaffer
http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer46.html

Like a lynch mob fueled by a fear of the unknown and a willingness to see strangers as threats to be quickly dispatched, the herd impulse has, since 9/11, become mobilized on behalf of a war against shadows. Even beyond the violent and repressive reactions of the American government, the most unsettling consequence of the WTC attacks has been the nearly total collapse of the minds of most Americans.

For the duration of the war – which government officials tell us will go on forever! – men and women have rationed their intelligence and allowed what they would have heretofore regarded as their "fundamental principles" to be conscripted into the service of the state.

Americans who, five years ago, were so incensed at Bill Clinton’s perjured testimony that impeachment proceedings were brought, now exhibit a willingness to be lied to about matters of far greater concern than oval office shenanigans. As the Bush administration continues to pile lie upon lie, it is evident that most Americans are completely indifferent to the purposes for the attack upon Iraq. I suspect that, if Bush and his fellow war conspirators were to publicly announce that the Iraqi invasion was deigned for no other purpose than to put money into their pockets, most Americans – led by their electronic cheerleaders on talk-radio and cable television – would praise them for showing "ambition" and "leadership!"

America is becoming the Nazi Germany we feared in my childhood. For those who were not around during those years, you can get a flavor for the anti-tyrannical sentiments of the time by watching any number of movies depicting the Nazi police-state. The constant presence of police; the insistence upon showing "your papers" to whichever government underling demanded them; the awareness that neither your person nor home was immune from state searches or seizures; the disappearance of people into unknown prison camps; neighbors spying upon neighbors, and children betraying their parents to the state; and the domination of society by a military and bureaucratic arrogance, arbitrariness, and absolutism, were constantly chilling examples of the dangers of state power.

How did we manage to reverse our thinking? When did appeals to the lessons of history become treasonous? How did philosophic principles collapse into patriotic slogans? The answers to such questions underlie explanations for the much broader phenomenon of the collapse of Western civilization itself. This is a topic around which my articles revolve, and has been addressed by numerous historians, as well as Carl Jung, whose psychological explanations add a depth to the inquiry unmatched by others.

A preoccupation with war has long been symptomatic of the decline of societies that practice it. Wars are essentially conducted by governments against their own people – with "others" being held up as fear-objects around which to enlist the obedience and submission of their own citizenry. Any nation in wartime is telling us what George Bush, John Ashcroft, Tom Ridge, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, et al., are now telling us – if we will suspend our indifference to truth long enough to observe – namely, that society can only be held together by armed force, threats, imprisonment, and death. When coercion supplants cooperation; when the inviolability of the individual is sacrificed to some alleged collective security; and when violence is equated with "patriotism" and peace with "un-Americanism," the days of such a society are numbered.

For those who desire to understand the attraction that this violent, destructive system has for most of us, a new book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges, offers one of the most powerful critiques of the war system since Randolph Bourne. Not content to moralize against war or to call it names, Hedges analyzes the topic from an historical, psychological, and institutional perspective, drawing upon literary and mythological works to illustrate his observations. At the same time, his book is quite critical of war, not the kind of read that flag-waving, "United We Stand" jingoists will find comforting.

Hedges has been a foreign correspondent for some fifteen years for such news organizations as the Christian Science Monitor and the New York Times. You may be more familiar with him as the recent commencement speaker at Rockford College, where he was hooted, heckled, and air-horned by war-lovers in the audience. Intellectual bankruptcy is another symptom of a dying culture, wherein discomforting ideas and criticisms can only be met with the kind of unfocused, thoughtless rage that is becoming increasingly evident in radio and television programming. For the herd-oriented, a new idea can only be countered not by clear thinking, but by blasts from an air-horn!

Hedges’ reporting has put him in the line of fire in El Salvador, Bosnia, the Persian Gulf War, and the Israeli-Palestinian abattoir. He has drawn upon such experiences, as well as his studies in history, Greek and Shakespearean literature, and religion, to present a view of the war system that must not be ignored if we choose to survive.

Hedges observes that "[s]tates at war silence their own authentic and humane culture" and, in so doing, "erode the moral fabric" of a society. He adds: "[w]ar breaks down long-established prohibitions against violence, destruction, and murder," and leads to a situation in which "the domination and brutality of the battlefield is carried into personal life." "War," he goes on, "fills our spiritual void," and helps to erase "unsettling undercurrents of alienation and dislocation" in our lives. In words that reflect the disquieting climate in which we live, Hedges observes "a growing fusion between those in the state who wage war...and those who believe they understand and can act as agents for God."

I cannot exaggerate the importance of this book. It forces us, as do the writings of Jung, Krishnamurti, and others, to confront the "dark side" forces that reside within each of us no less than they did within tyrants and their supporters in other times and places. It also compels us to reconsider our thinking. The idea of creating systems designed to threaten, coerce, and kill, and to imbue such agencies with principled legitimacy, and not expect them to lead to wars, genocides, and other tyrannical practices, expresses an innocence we can no longer afford to indulge.

Hedges reminds us of the culture of war, which "is peddled by mythmakers" throughout society, including the modern media. You can observe such mythmaking as the media struggles to find evidence of "heroism" in a "war" that is more realistically described as a campaign of brutish bullying. A truckload of soldiers take a wrong turn on a road, are captured by Iraqi forces and later released, then brought back to America as "POW heroes;" the irresponsibility of single mothers leaving their infant children at home to go fight in a war; and the Hollywood-like staging of the "rescue" of Private Lynch, who is then brought back to America as a "heroine," are among the more apparent examples of the war system playing with smoke and mirrors in an effort to convince Boobus Americanus of the nobility of the cause.

While the institutionalized butchery of the war system makes it difficult for me to equate it with heroism, one does, on occasion, find individual acts of a heroic quality even in battle. My favorite candidate for this role is Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War who came upon the scene of what we now know as the "My Lai Massacre." After becoming aware that what he was observing was not the ordinary combat of warfare, but a calculated slaughter of Vietnamese civilians by troops led by Lt. Calley, Thompson set his helicopter down between the civilians and the American troops. He then ordered his own crew to turn their machine guns on the American soldiers and, if they persisted in the slaughter, to fire on them. Thompson then took the civilians to safety and reported the incident, which led to the prosecution of Calley.

I doubt that there will be any statues of Hugh Thompson erected anywhere soon, or that he will be leading any Memorial Day parades. His actions were too heroic, for he stood up to the very excesses of butchery that Hedges informs us destroys our sense of humanity and, with it, our civilization. I would much rather have Hugh Thompson as my neighbor than I would any of the myriad of retired generals who became television network fixtures in the mythmaking to which we have become accustomed these past many months.

Our very survival – both as individuals and as a civilization – depends upon a radical transformation of our thinking, one that compels us to confront those silent voices within us that can so easily erupt into bloodbaths. While most of us continue to focus on the "Nazi holocaust" as the epitome of statist butchery, we must recall that the 20th century was the "holocaust century." Some 200,000,000 of our fellow human beings were slaughtered in various wars and genocides, and tens of millions more were wounded, both physically and spiritually, in ways that never heal.

Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor" not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us. The poet, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, declared: "I am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy." While I share his sentiment, it is nonetheless evident that wars only bring up from the depths of our dark side the kinds of moral flotsam and jetsam that have surfaced in Washington, D.C. In the process, they destroy those qualities of peace, liberty, spiritual centeredness, mutual respect, and sense of individual responsibility which, alone, make for the greatness of any civilization.

June 9, 2003

posted December 09, 2005 11:18 PM            

Where in the hell do you people get this trash.

OK goatgirl and all the other leftists who are inching their way towards calling Bush, the Bush Administration or the United States government Nazis.

For more than 60 years, the American left has been running as hard as they could from the fact that Hitler was a socialist, a leftist. We know he was because he said so and the name of Hitler's party in Germany was the National Socialist German Workers' Party. In no way, was Hitler the far right wing conservative the leftists have attempted to label him to give themselves cover and distance themselves from Hitler. The only difference between Hitler and Stalin were the methods they used to attempt conquering other nations. Stalin by internal subversion and revolutionary overthrow of the government and Hitler by direct military conquest.

Oh how the American communists and other collectivists cheered Hitler when he signed the mutual cooperation and nonaggression pact with Stalin. What a wonderful fellow Hitler was then. Not long thereafter, Hitler attacked Russia. What a sonofabitch Hitler was then.

The methods of governance Hitler and Stalin used were identical. Nothing of any importance happened in either country that Hitler or Stalin didn't personally OK and to take the initiative in either country was to court death. They both engaged in ethnic cleansing, Stalin by gulag labor and forced starvation and Hitler with concentration camps..forced labor, starvation and executions by chemical gas.

Hitler was a national socialist and Stalin was an international communist. The only real problem they had with each other was who was going to be top thug. They both had aspirations of conquering the world.

The word Fascist didn't come out of Germany, it was the name of Benito Mussolini's political party in Italy...and ally of Hitler's in WWII...The National Fascist Party....another state socialist dictatorship.

So, how about we hear no more about the conservative right being fascists or Nazis. They couldn't be further apart politically.

Hitler Stalin and Mussolini were your kind of guys, leftist dictator guys, not mine.

BTW, so is Saddam Hussein and that's the reason the left is so up in arms. Another of their little leftist dictators has been taken out.

posted December 09, 2005 11:31 PM              

Love,

Goatgirl

posted December 09, 2005 11:31 PM              

quote:

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....internal subversion and ....... direct military conquest.-jwhop

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nah that doesnt sound like the u.s.

**********

Said K. Aburish, former Iraqi government official, stated the following to PBS' "Frontline: The Survival of Saddam" program, broadcast on January 25, 2000 :

"The U.S. involvement in the coup against Kassem [General Abdel Karim Kassem] in Iraq in 1963 was substantial. There is evidence that CIA agents were in touch with army officials who were involved in the coup."

"There is evidence that they [CIA] supplied the conspirators with lists of people who had to be eliminated immediately in order to ensure success. The relationship between the Americans and the Ba'ath Party at that moment in time was very close indeed. And that continued for some time after the coup."

"I have documented over 700 people who were eliminated, mostly on an individual basis, after the 1963 coup. And they were eliminated based on lists supplied by the CIA to the Ba'ath Party. So the CIA and the Ba'ath were in the business of eliminating communists and leftists who were dangerous to the Ba'ath's takeover."

"And what gave the whole program of acquiring unconventional weapons an impetus was in the 1970s. The main aim of the West was to pry Saddam away from Russia. And in order to do that , they were bribing him. They were giving him everything he wanted. In the 1980s, the reasons changed [for helping Saddam]. ...Khomeini appeared on the scene and the West decided that Saddam was the lesser of two evils. And they continued to support him and give him what he wanted. In this case, including credit."
01/25/00 S.K.ABURISH

******

Roger Morris, a journalist, stated in his article "A Tyrant 40 Years in the Making", published in the New York Times on March 14, 2003 :

*

"Forty years ago the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), under President John F. Kennedy, conducted its own regime change in Baghdad, carried out in collaboration with Saddam Hussein.

As its instrument the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-Communist Ba'ath Party, in 1963 still a relatively small political faction influential in the Iraqi army. According to the former Ba'athist leader Hani Fkaiki, among party members colluding with the CIA in 1962 and 1963 was Saddam Hussein, then a 25-year-old who had fled to Cairo after taking part in a failed assassination of Kassem in 1958."
03/14/03 R.MORRIS

http://www.usiraqprocon.org/?gclid=COe_-4mN34ECFQuDOAodelWOmg

posted December 10, 2005 12:50 AM              

quote:

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Good God, what absolute swine swill you've posted goatgirl

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This was my favorite part! I am still giggling over it.

Jwhop,

You do have such a way with words. I thank you heartily for lightening my evening as it was greatly needed.

posted December 10, 2005 06:39 PM              

quote:

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The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes strong than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.--Franklin D. Roosevelt

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quote:

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You should take note acoustic that there is a Republican President, a Republican Senate and a Republican House of Representatives.--jwhop

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posted December 10, 2005 06:46 PM              

walks away shaking head

posted December 10, 2005 07:02 PM              

Wow,, that NY state force is starting to look more and more like the SS depictations of my history books, and hollywood even.

posted December 12, 2005 07:10 PM            

quote:

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Oh how the American communists and other collectivists cheered Hitler when he signed the mutual cooperation and nonaggression pact with Stalin. What a wonderful fellow Hitler was then. Not long thereafter, Hitler attacked Russia. What a sonofabitch Hitler was then.

---

Well I guess that our president's gran-dad(Prescott Bush)was a big supporter of the leftists of Germany then too!
--------------------------------------------

Harriman Bank was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, who had been an early financial backer of the Nazi party until 1938, but who by 1939 had fled Germany and was bitterly denouncing Hitler. Dealing with Nazi Germany wasn't illegal when Hitler declared war, but, six days after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt activated the Trading With the Enemy Act. On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City.

Prescott Bush's business interests seized under the act in October and November 1942 included:

Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (for Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman)
Holland-American Trading Corporation (with Harriman)
the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (with Harriman)
Silesian-American Corporation (with Walker)
Bush's interest in UBC consisted of one share. For it, he was reimbursed $1,500,000. These assets were later used to launch Bush family investments in the Texas energy industry. There is some question as to the amount paid for the 1 share out of 4,000 in the bank, with some suggesting the $1.5 million figure is simple fiction, as the Union Bank was definitely not sold for $6 billion after WW II.

The New York Herald-Tribune referred to the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, as "Hitler's Angel" and mentioned Bush only as an employee of the investment banking firm Thyssen used in the USA. The label was ironic, since by the time the Tribune article appeared, Hitler had turned on Thyssen and imprisoned him. Shortly after George W. Bush's election as U.S. president, Canadian bloggers, apparently affiliated with perennial presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, began a determined effort to circulate reports that Prescott Bush himself had been known as "Hitler's Angel".

It could be argued that Prescott Bush's motivations with regard to the Nazis were strictly financial and not philosophical in nature. There have been accusations that Prescott Bush was a eugenicist, dating back to a political attack leveled against him during his sons' 1980 campaign. Bush was an acquaintance of Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood and herself an avowed eugenicist. Margaret Sanger is on record favoring infanticide, compulsory sterilization, and (arguably) genocide. These accusations have been denounced by the Bush family, who indicate that Prescott Bush's acquaintance with Sanger were a result of his pro-choice beliefs. In fact, Prescott Bush served as Treasurer for Planned Parenthood's first national fund raising campaign in 1947

posted December 12, 2005 07:45 PM            

Alex Jones recently provided a summary of the American Nazi's latest fascist effort for total control (The Idaho Observer, Feb., 2003). Highlights of his report on the Patriot Act II include:

* A Terrorist Identification Database” of “suspected terrorists” and any one associated with suspected terrorists or having supported any group designated as “terrorist.”

* Makes it a crime to release information about the incarceration or whereabouts of “detainees.”

* Gives law enforcement immunity for spying on the American people.

* Designates individual terrorists as foreign powers and strips them of all rights under the “enemy combatant” designation.

* Considers information gathering, whether legal or not, to be clandestine intelligence activities for a foreign power -- an end to news gathering and a free press.

* Allows the use of wartime martial law powers without a congressional declaration of war.

* Grants immunity for government agents who conduct searches without prior court approval and authorizes surveillance without a court order.

* Allows contempt charges for anyone who refuses to incriminate themselves or others.

* Removes sunset clauses from the original Patriot Act.

* Expands the definition of “enemy combatant” designation.

* Authorizes giant, warrantless, dragnet style “investigations.”

* Grants the government the power to snoop into your public and private sector information, including bank records, educational records and medical records.

* Allows the federal take-over of Coroner and Medical Examiner operations.

* Disallows the quashing of federal subpoenas and allows the feds to enforce gag orders and take over state grand jury proceedings.

* Ends federal whistle blower protections.

* Allows corporations to keep their use of toxic biological, chemical or radiological materials secret.

* Allows top federal officials to keep their financial dealings secret.

* Sets up a national DNA database of “suspected” terrorists.

* Federalizes local police department information sharing.

* Provides liability protection for businesses that spy on their customers or violate privacy agreements.

* Authorizes foreign governments to spy on the American people.

* Allows Homeland Security officials to extradite American citizens anywhere they wish or secretly take individuals out of foreign countries.

* Expands the definition of weapons of mass destruction to include any activity that effects interstate or foreign commerce.

* Creates “lifetime parole” for a host of crimes.

* Expands the list of capital crimes.

* Sets up asset forfeiture provisions for anyone engaging in “terrorist” activities.

Anyone care to actually dissect this? On the right or on the left or in the middle ... what do these things mean to you and to the U.S.?

posted December 12, 2005 07:52 PM              

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
I was not a Jew.