Note: This
article first appeared as a post written by myself
(Michael Rivero) at Free Republic in late 2000. I was
surprised to learn that it was copied re-posted at
dozens of sites around the world. So, it seems only
fitting that the article (with some updating) should
re-appear here on our own forum; Re:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/
FAKE TERROR -
THE ROAD TO WAR AND DICTATORSHIP
By Michael Rivero
It's the oldest trick in the book, dating back to
Roman times; creating the enemies you need.
In 70 BC, an ambitious minor politician and extremely
wealthy man, Marcus Licineus Crassus, wanted to rule
Rome. Just to give you an idea of what sort of man
Crassus really was, he is credited with invention of
the fire brigade. But in Crassus' version, his
fire-fighting slaves would race to the scene of a
burning building whereupon Crassus would offer to buy
it on the spot for a tiny fraction of it's worth. If
the owner sold, Crassus' slaves would put out the
fire. If the owner refused to sell, Crassus allowed
the building to burn to the ground. By means of this
device, Crassus eventually came to be the largest
single private land holder in Rome, and used some of
his wealth to help back Julius Caesar against Cicero.
In 70 BC Rome was still a Republic, which placed very
strict limits on what Rulers could do, and more
importantly NOT do. But Crassus had no intentions of
enduring such limits to his personal power, and
contrived a plan.
Crassus seized upon the slave revolt led by Spartacus
in order to strike terror into the hearts of Rome,
whose garrison Spartacus had already defeated in
battle. But Spartacus had no intention of marching on
Rome itself, a move he knew to be suicidal. Spartacus
and his band wanted nothing to do with the Roman
empire and had planned from the start merely to loot
enough money from their former owners in the Italian
countryside to hire a mercenary fleet in which to sail
to freedom.
Sailing away was the last thing Crassus wanted
Spartacus to do. He needed a convenient enemy with
which to terrorize Rome itself for his personal
political gain. So Crassus bribed the mercenary fleet
to sail without Spartacus, then positioned two Roman
legions in such a way that Spartacus had no choice but
to march on Rome.
Terrified of the impending arrival of the much-feared
army of gladiators, Rome declared Crassus Praetor.
Crassus then crushed Spartacus' army and even though
Pompey took the credit, Crassus was elected Consul of
Rome the following year.
With this maneuver, the Romans surrendered their
Republican form of government. Soon would follow the
first Triumvirate, consisting of Crassus, Pompeii, and
Julius Caesar, followed by the reign of the god-like
Emperors of Rome.
The Romans were hoaxed into surrendering their
Republic, and accepting the rule of Emperors.
Julius Caesar's political opponent, Cicero, for all
his literary accomplishments, played the same games in
his campaign against Julius Caesar, claiming that Rome
was falling victim to an internal "vast right wing"
conspiracy in which any expressed desire for
legislative limits on government was treated as
suspicious behavior. Cicero, in order to demonstrate
to the Romans just how unsafe Rome has become hired
thugs to cause as much disturbance as possible, and
campaigned on a promise to end the internal strife if
elected and granted extraordinary powers.
What Cicero only dreamed of, Adolph Hitler succeeded
in doing. Elected Chancellor of Germany, Hitler, like
Crassus, had no intention of living with the strict
limits to his power imposed by German law. Unlike
Cicero, Hitler's thugs were easy to recognize; they
all wore the same brown shirts. But their actions were
no different than those of their Roman predecessors.
They staged beatings, set fires, caused as much
trouble as they could, while Hitler made speeches
promising that he could end the crime wave of
subversives and terrorism if he was granted
extraordinary powers.
Then the Reichstag burned down; a staged terrorist
attack.
The Germans were hoaxed into surrendering their
Republic, and accepting the total rule of Der Fuhrer.
The state-sponsored schools will never tell you this,
but governments routinely rely on hoaxes to sell their
agendas to an otherwise reluctant public. The Romans
accepted the Emperors and the Germans accepted Hitler
not because they wanted to, but because the carefully
crafted illusions of threat appeared to leave no other
choice.
Our government too uses hoaxes to create the illusion
that We The People have no choice but the direction
the government wishes us to go in.
In 1898, Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William
Randolph Hearst's New York Journal were arguing for
American intervention in Cuba. Hearst is reported to
have dispatched a photographer to Cuba to photograph
the coming war with Spain. When the photographer asked
just what war that might be, Hearst is reported to
have replied, "You take the photographs, and I will
provide the war". Hearst was true to his word, as his
newspaper published stories of great atrocities being
committed against the Cuban people, most of which
turned out to be complete fabrications.
On the night of February 15, 1898, the USS Maine,
lying in Havana harbor in a show of US resolve to
protect her interests, exploded violently. Captain
Sigsbee, the commander of the Maine, urged that no
assumptions of enemy attack be made until there was a
full investigation of the cause of the explosion. For
this, Captain Sigsbee was excoriated in the press for
"refusing to see the obvious". The Atlantic Monthly
declared flat out that to suppose the explosion to be
anything other than a deliberate act by Spain was
"completely at defiance of the laws of probability".
Under the slogan "Remember
the Maine", Americans went to war with Spain,
eventually winning the Philippines (and annexing
Hawaii [Re:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/HAWAII/hawaii.html
]along the way).
In 1975, an investigation led by Admiral Hyman
Rickover examined the data recovered from a 1911
examination of the wreck and concluded that there had
been no evidence of an external explosion. The most
likely cause of the sinking was a coal dust explosion
in a coal bunker imprudently located next to the
ship's magazines. Captain Sigsbee's caution had been
well founded.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt needed a war. He
needed the fever of a major war to mask the symptoms
of a still deathly ill economy struggling back from
the Great Depression (and mutating towards Socialism
at the same time). Roosevelt wanted a war with Germany
to stop Hitler, but despite several provocations in
the Atlantic, the American people, still struggling
with that troublesome economy, were opposed to any
wars. Roosevelt violated neutrality with lend lease,
and even ordered the sinking of several German ships
in the Atlantic, but Hitler refused to be provoked.
Roosevelt needed an enemy, and if America would not
willingly attack that enemy, then one would have to be
maneuvered into attacking America, much as Marcus
Licinius Crassus has maneuvered Spartacus into
attacking Rome.
The way open to war was created when Japan signed the
tripartite agreement with Italy and Germany, with all
parties pledging mutual defense to each other. Whereas
Hitler would never declare war on the United States no
matter the provocation, the means to force Japan to do
so were readily at hand.
The first step was to place oil and steel embargoes on
Japan, using Japan's wars on the Asian mainland as a
reason. This forced Japan to consider seizing the oil
and mineral rich regions in Indonesia. With the
European powers militarily exhausted by the war in
Europe, the United States was the only power in the
Pacific able to stop Japan from invading the Dutch
East Indies, and by moving the Pacific fleet from San
Diego to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Roosevelt made a
pre-emptive strike on that fleet the mandatory first
step in any Japanese plan to extend it's empire into
the "southern resource area".
Roosevelt boxed in Japan just as completely as Crassus
had boxed in Spartacus. Japan needed oil. They had to
invade Indonesia to get it, and to do that they first
had to remove the threat of the American fleet at
Pearl Harbor. There never really was any other course
open to them.
To enrage the American people as much as possible,
Roosevelt needed the first overt attack by Japan to be
as bloody as possible, appearing as a sneak attack
much as the Japanese had done to the Russians. From
that moment up until the attack on Pearl Harbor
itself, Roosevelt and his associates made sure that
the commanders in Hawaii, General Short and Admiral
Kimmel, were kept in the dark as much as possible
about the location of the Japanese fleet and it's
intentions, then later scapegoated for the attack.
(Congress recently exonerated both Short and Kimmel,
posthumously restoring them to their former ranks).
But as the Army board had concluded at the time, and
subsequent de-classified documents confirmed,
Washington DC knew the attack was coming, knew exactly
where the Japanese fleet was, and knew where it was
headed (Re:
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html
)
Note: Dusko
Popov was actually a Serb who worked as a double agent
for both Germany and Britain. Popov's true sympathies,
however, were with the Allies. Popov, had in early
1940 been approached by the ABWEHR, the German high
command's espionage service, and asked to become a
spy. He immediately reported the overture to British
counterintelligence, MI-6. Following intensive
training by both the Germans and the British...Popov
became one of Britain's most successful double
agents...In the summer of 1941, the ABWEHR arranged
for Popov to go to the United States. Supplied with
the ABWEHR's latest paraphernalia, including the
'MICRODOT' – a process whereby a page of text was
photographically reduced to the size of a period or
comma, then inserted into an innocuous communication -
Popov was given two assignments. He was to set up a
large-scale espionage ring; and he was to carry out a
VERY IMPORTANT MISSION FOR THE JAPANESE. The latter,
Popov had been told, was 'of the HIGHEST PRIORITY.'
Before leaving for the United States, Popov reported
to MI-6. His British handlers were especially
interested in the Japanese questionnaire, which was
one of the microdot documents he'd been given. Popov
was also a notorious playboy, who was code-named "Tricycle"
because of his proclivity for bedding two women
simultaneously. It is reputed that Popov was
Ian Fleming's
model for James Bond
(Dusko Popov, “Spy/Counterspy:
The Autobiography of Dusko Popov”, [New York:
Grosset and Dunlap, 1974]).
"J. C. MASTERMAN, chief of the BRITISH XX (Double
Cross) COMMITTEE, received a copy of the Questionnaire
on August 16, 1941. Carefully examining it, Masterman
noted that one-third of the questions dealt with
HAWAII and, particularly, PEARL HARBOR. He also
observed that whereas all the other questions were
general or statistical, those regarding Pearl Harbor
were SPECIFIC. For example, the questionnaire asked
for 'Details about naval ammunition and mine depot on
ISLE OF KUSHUA [Pearl Harbor]. If possible,
sketch...Where is the station for mine search
formations? How far has the dredger work progressed at
the entrance and in the east and southeast lock?
Depths of water?...Exact details and sketch about the
situation of the state wharf, of the pier
installations, workshops, petrol installations,
situation of dry dock No. 1 and of the new dry dock
which is being built.' The questionnaire also asked
for sketches showing the exact locations of
installations at 'Wickam' (HICKAM), WHEELER, LUKE, and
'Kaneche' (KANEOHE) airfields. Masterman concluded,
'It is therefore surely a fair deduction that the
questionnaire indicated very clearly that in the event
of the United States being at war, PEARL HARBOR WOULD
BE THE VERY FIRST POINT TO BE ATTACKED, and that plans
for this attack had reached an ADVANCED state by
August 1941.'
"Popov and the British also had other information
which not only supported this conclusion, but
indicated HOW the attack might be carried out.
Another
double agent, a
friend of Popov's accompanied by the German air
attache in Tokyo, had recently escorted a group of
JAPANESE NAVAL OFFICIALS to Taranto, Italy. Their
primary interest, Popov had been told, was in
determining exactly how, in one sneak attack, using
torpedo planes launched from an aircraft carrier, the
British had nearly obliterated the Italian fleet.Onhis
arrival in the United States, Popov was met by PERCY
FOXWORTH of the FBI's NewYork office, to whom he
explained the secret of the microdot and turned over
the Japanese questionnaire and other materials. Popov
then waited for FBI permission to setup his bogus
espionage network...The meeting was brief. The FBI
didn't NEED the help of foreign spies, the director
told him: 'I can catch spies without your or anyone
else's help'...There was no mention of the Japanese
questionnaire or of the microdot..."
Popov made this information known to his British
handlers, and the British had him provide this
information to the FBI when he came to America in
August 1941 (Toland, "Infamy", pp. 258-60; Mintz, pp.
97-9.
It has been argued that the FBI did not trust Popov's
information and the microdots, and did not fully
transmit it to the White House. One explanation is
that the prudish J. Edgar Hoover gave little
credibility to Popov's information because of his
distaste for his playboy lifestyle (John F. Bratzel
and Leslie B. Rout, Jr., "Pearl
Harbor, Microdots, and J. Edgar Hoover,"
American Historical Review 87 [Dec. 1982]: pp.
1342-1351). However, documents the FBI released in
1983 show that it assigned considerable importance to
Popov's information and that this information was
passed on to high ranking officers in Army and Naval
intelligence. In Frank Paul Mintz's analysis of the
FBI material on Popov, he found that much of the
information had been blackened out, so it would be
impossible to know that the important parts were not
transmitted to the military intelligence and the White
House (Telephone interview with Frank P. Mintz on July
31, 2001. Mintz reviewed the Popov documents at the
FBI building). As Mintz concludes:
"It passes credibility to assume that the microdot
questionnaire remained effectively dead to the world
in 1941. English intelligence knew about it; the FBI
knew; and so did the intelligence services of U.S.
armed forces. Most likely both Churchill and Roosevelt
became familiar with the full contents of Popov's
microdots during the last quarter of the year." (Mintz,
p. 100. In a telephone conversation with the author on
July 29, 2001, Mintz said that most of the FBI
documents dealing with Popov that are available to the
public have large segments blacked out.)
See also: Curt Gentry, “J.
Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets”, pp
269-273.
Summers, Anthony. “Official
and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover”,
New York: GP Putnam's Sons, 1993. 528 pages
End note.
On November 29th, Secretary of State Hull showed
United Press reporter Joe Leib a message with the time
and place of the attack, and the New York Times in
it's special 12/8/41 Pearl Harbor edition, on page 13,
reported that the time and place of the attack had
been known in advance!
The much repeated claim that the Japanese fleet
maintained radio silence on it's way to Hawaii was a
lie. Among other intercepts still held in the Archives
of the NSA is the UNCODED message sent by the Japanese
tanker Shirya stating, "proceeding to a position 30.00
N, 154.20 E. Expect to arrive at that point on 3
December." (near HI)
President Lyndon Johnson wanted a war in Vietnam. He
wanted it to help his friends who owned defense
companies to do a little business. He needed it to get
the Pentagon and CIA to quit trying to invade Cuba.
And most of all, he needed a provocation to convince
the American people that there was really "no other
choice".
On August 5, 1964, newspapers across America reported
"renewed attacks" against American destroyers
operating in Vietnamese waters, specifically the Gulf
of Tonkin. The official story was that North
Vietnamese torpedo boats launched an "unprovoked
attack" on the USS Maddox while it was on "routine
patrol".
The truth is that USS Maddox was involved in
aggressive intelligence gathering in coordination with
actual attacks by South Vietnam and the Laotian Air
Force against targets in North Vietnam. The truth is
also that there was no attack by torpedo boats against
the USS Maddox. Captain John J. Herrick, the task
force commander in the Gulf, cabled Washington DC that
the report was the result of an "over-eager" sonar man
who had picked up the sounds of his own ship's screws
and panicked. But even with this knowledge that the
report was false, Lyndon Johnson went on national TV
that night to announce the commencement of air strikes
against North Vietnam, "retaliation" for an attack
that had never occurred.
President George Bush wanted a war in Iraq. Like
Crassus, George Bush is motivated by money.
Specifically oil money. But with the OPEC alliance
failing to keep limits on oil production in the
Mideast, the market was being glutted with oil pumped
from underneath Iraq, which sat over roughly 1/3 of
the oil reserves of the entire region.
George wanted a war to stop that flow of oil, to keep
prices (and profits) from falling any further than
they already had. But like Roosevelt, he needed the
"other side" to make the first move.
Iraq had long been trying to acquire greater access to
the Persian Gulf, and felt limited confined a narrow
strip of land along Kuwait's northern border, which
placed Iraqi interests in close proximity with hostile
Iran. George Bush, who had been covertly arming Iraq
during its war with Iran, sent word via April Glaspie
(Re:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/ARTICLE5/april.html
) that the United States would not intervene if Saddam
Hussein grabbed a larger part of Kuwait. Saddam fell
for the bait and invaded.
Of course, Americans were not about to send their sons
and daughters to risk their lives for petroleum
products. So George Bush arranged a hoax, using a
public relations firm which has grown rich on taxpayer
money by being most industrious and creative liars!
The PR firm concocted a monumental fraud in which the
daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the United
States, went on TV pretending to be a nurse, and
related a horror story in which Iraqi troops looted
the incubators from a Kuwaiti hospital, leaving the
premature babies on the cold floor to die. The media,
part of the swindle from the start, never bothered
asking why the "nurse" didn't just pick the babies up
and wrap them in blankets or something.
Enraged by the incubator story, Americans supported
operation Desert Storm, which never removed Saddam
Hussein from power but which did take Kuwait's oil off
of the market for almost 2 years and limited Iraq's
oil exports to this very day. That our sons and
daughters came home with serious and lingering medical
illnesses was apparently not too great a price to pay
for increased oil profits.
Following the victory in Iraq, yet another war
appeared to be in the offering in the mineral rich
regions of Bosnia. Yet again, a hoax was used to
create support for military action.
The photo (Re:
) of Fikret Alic staring through a barbed wire fence,
was used to "prove" the existence of modern day
"Concentration Camps". As the headline of "Belsen 92"
indicates, all possible associations with the Nazi
horrors were made to sell the necessity of sending yet
more American troops into someone else's nation.
But when German Journalists went to Trnopolje, the
site of the supposed Concentration Camp to film a
documentary, they discovered that the photo was a
fake! The camp at Trnopolje was not a concentration
camp but a refugee center. Nor was it surrounded by
barbed wire. Careful examination of the original photo
revealed that the photographer had shot the photo
through a broken section of fence surrounding a tool
shed. It was the photographer who was on the inside,
shooting out at the refugees.
Once again, Americans had been hoaxed into support of
actions they might otherwise not have agreed with.
While several American Presidents have willingly
started wars for personal purposes, perhaps no
President has ever carried it to the extreme that Bill
Clinton has.
Coincident with the expected public statement of
Monica Lewinsky following her testimony, Bill Clinton
ordered a cruise missile attack on Sudan and
Afghanistan, claiming to have had irrefutable proof
that bogeyman extraordinaire (and former Afghani ally)
Osama Bin Ladin was creating terrorist chemical
weapons there.
Examination of the photos of the debris (Re:
) revealed none of the expected structures one would
find in a laboratory that handled lethal weapons-grade
materials. Assurances from the CIA that they had a
positive soil test for biological weapons fell on
their face when it was revealed that there had been no
open soil anywhere near the pre-bombed facility. Sudan
requested that international observers come test the
remains of the factory for any signs of the nerve gas
Clinton had insisted was there. None was found. The
Sudanese plant was a harmless aspirin factory, and the
owner has sued for damages.
Later examination of the site hit in Afghanistan
revealed it to be a mosque.
Re:
Meanwhile, back in Kosovo, stories about genocide and
atrocities were flooding the media (in time to
distract from the Sudanese embarrassments), just as
lurid and sensational and as it turns out often just
as fictional as most of William Randolph Hearst's
stories of atrocities against the Cubans.
Again, the government and the media were hoaxing
Americans. The above photo was shown on all the
American networks, claiming to be one of Slobodan
Milosovic's Migs, shot down while attacking civilians.
Closer examination (click on the photo) shows it to be
stenciled in English!
Like Germany under Chancellor Hitler, there have been
events in our nation which strike fear into the hearts
of the citizens, such as the New York World Trade
Tower bombing, the OK City Federal Building, and the
Olympic Park bomb (nicely timed to divert the media
from witnesses to the TWA 800 shoot down). The media
has been very quick to blame such events on
"radicals", "subversives", "vast right wing
conspiracies", and other "enemies in our midst", no
different than the lies used by Cicero and Hitler.
But on closer examination, such "domestic terrorist"
events do not appear to be what they are made out to
be. The FBI had an informant inside the World Trade
Tower bombers, Emad Salam, who offered to sabotage the
bomb. The FBI told him "no".
(Re:
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/RANCHO/POLITICS/OK/wtcbomb.html
) The so-called "hot bed" of white separatism at
Elohim City, occasional home to Tim McVeigh in the
weeks prior to the OK City bombing, was founded and is
being run by an FBI informant!
EDITORS NOTE: Please also see:
Before McVeigh was released from the
Army, McVeigh was invited to join the top notch program of Special
Forces, in 1991. The Training Complex was done at ...
www.greatdreams.com/mcveigh-patsy.htm |
John Doe #1 has been identified as
Timothy McVeigh and is in custody. ... McVeigh, a dead ringer for the
John Doe No. 1 sketch, had been captured, ...
www.greatdreams.com/john-doe-2.htm |
Article continues:
And nobody has ever really explained what this second
Ryder truck was doing in a secret camp half way from
Elohim City to Oklahoma City two weeks before the
bombing.
So, here we are today. Like the Romans of Crassus' and
Cicero's time, or the Germans under a newly elected
Hitler, we are being warned that a dangerous enemy
threatens us, implacable, invisible, omnipresent, and
invulnerable as long as our government is hamstrung by
that silly old Bill of Rights. Already there have
appeared articles debating whether or not
"extraordinary measures" (i.e. torture) are not fully
justified under certain circumstances such as those we
are purported to face.
As was the case in Rome and Germany, the government
continues to plead with the public for an expansion of
its power and authority, to "deal with the crisis".
However, as Casio watch timers are paraded before the
cameras, to the stentorian tones of the talking heads'
constant dire warnings, it is legitimate to question
just how real the crises is, and how much is the
result of political machinations by our own leaders.
Are the terrorists really a threat, or just hired
actors with bombs and Casio watches, paid for by
Cicero and given brown shirts to wear by Hitler?
Is terrorism inside the United States really from
outside, or is it a stage managed production, designed
to cause Americans to believe they have no choice but
to surrender the Republic and accept the totalitarian
rule of a new emperor, or a new Fuhrer?
Once lost, the Romans
never got their Republic back. Once lost, the Germans
never got their Republic back.
In both cases, the nation had to totally collapse
before freedom was restored to the people.
Remember that when
Crassus tells you that Spartacus approaches.
Remember that when thugs in the streets act in a
manner clearly designed to provoke the public fear.
Remember that when the Reichstag burns down.
Last edited by TwilightWatcher on Sun Apr 09, 2006
|
|
Posted: Thu
Jan 12, 2006 9:51 am
Post
subject: When Democracy Failed - The Warnings of History - 2005
by Thom Hartmann
The url for this article is:
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0222-22.htm
This weekend - February 27th - is the 72nd
anniversary, but the corporate media most likely
won't cover it. The generation that experienced
this history firsthand is now largely dead, and
only a few of us dare hear their ghosts.
It started when the government, in the midst of an
economic crisis, received reports of an imminent
terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched
feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the
media largely ignored his relatively small efforts.
The intelligence services knew, however, that the
odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians
are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in
the intelligence service helped the terrorist.
Some, like Sefton Delmer - a London Daily Express
reporter on the scene - say they certainly did not,
while others, like William Shirer, suggest they
did.)
But the warnings of investigators were ignored at
the highest levels, in part because the government
was distracted; the man who claimed to be the
nation's leader had not been elected by a majority
vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no
right to the powers he coveted.
He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character
of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms
and didn't have the intellect to understand the
subtleties of running a nation in a complex and
internationalist world.
His coarse use of language - reflecting his
political roots in a southernmost state - and his
simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic
rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders,
and the well-educated elite in the government and
media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret
society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre
initiation rituals that involved skulls and human
bones.
Nonetheless, he knew the terrorist was going to
strike (although he didn't know where or when), and
he had already considered his response. When an
aide brought him word that the nation's most
prestigious building was ablaze, he verified it was
the terrorist who had struck and then rushed to the
scene and called a press conference.
"You
are now witnessing the beginning of a great epoch
in history," he proclaimed, standing in
front of the burned-out building, surrounded by
national media. "This
fire," he said, his voice trembling with
emotion, "is the
beginning." He used the occasion - "a
sign from God," he called it - to declare an
all-out war on terrorism and its ideological
sponsors, a people, he said, who traced their
origins to the Middle East and found motivation for
their evil deeds in their religion.
Two weeks later, the first detention center for
terrorists was built in Oranianberg to hold the
first suspected allies of the infamous terrorist.
In a national outburst of patriotism, the leader's
flag was everywhere, even printed large in
newspapers suitable for window display.
Within four weeks of the terrorist attack, the
nation's now-popular leader had pushed through
legislation - in the name of combating terrorism
and fighting the philosophy he said spawned it -
that suspended constitutional guarantees of free
speech, privacy, and habeas corpus. Police could
now intercept mail and wiretap phones; suspected
terrorists could be imprisoned without specific
charges and without access to their lawyers; police
could sneak into people's homes without warrants if
the cases involved terrorism.
To get his patriotic "Decree
on the Protection of People and State"
passed over the objections of concerned legislators
and civil libertarians, he agreed to put a 4-year
sunset provision on it: if the national emergency
provoked by the terrorist attack was over by then,
the freedoms and rights would be returned to the
people, and the police agencies would be
re-restrained. Legislators would later say they
hadn't had time to read the bill before voting on
it.
Immediately after passage of the anti-terrorism
act, his federal police agencies stepped up their
program of arresting suspicious persons and holding
them without access to lawyers or courts. In the
first year only a few hundred were interred, and
those who objected were largely ignored by the
mainstream press, which was afraid to offend and
thus lose access to a leader with such high
popularity ratings. Citizens who protested the
leader in public - and there were many - quickly
found themselves confronting the newly empowered
police's batons, gas, and jail cells, or fenced off
in protest zones safely out of earshot of the
leader's public speeches. (In the meantime, he was
taking almost daily lessons in public speaking,
learning to control his tonality, gestures, and
facial expressions. He became a very competent
orator.)
Within the first months after that terrorist
attack, at the suggestion of a political advisor,
he brought a formerly obscure word into common
usage. He wanted to stir a "racial pride" among his
countrymen, so, instead of referring to the nation
by its name, he began to refer to it as "The
Homeland," a phrase publicly promoted in the
introduction to a 1934 speech recorded in Leni
Riefenstahl's famous propaganda movie "Triumph Of
The Will." As hoped, people's hearts swelled with
pride, and the beginning of an us-versus-them
mentality was sewn. Our land was "the" homeland,
citizens thought: all others were simply foreign
lands. We are the "true people," he suggested, the
only ones worthy of our nation's concern; if bombs
fall on others, or human rights are violated in
other nations and it makes our lives better, it's
of little concern to us.
Playing on this new implicitly racial nationalism,
and exploiting a disagreement with the French over
his increasing militarism, he argued that any
international body that didn't act first and
foremost in the best interest of his own nation was
neither relevant nor useful. He thus withdrew his
country from the League Of Nations in October,
1933, and then negotiated a separate naval
armaments agreement with Anthony Eden of The United
Kingdom to create a worldwide military ruling
elite.
His propaganda minister orchestrated a campaign to
ensure the people that he was a deeply religious
man and that his motivations were rooted in
Christianity. He even proclaimed the need for a
revival of the Christian faith across his nation,
what he called a "New Christianity." Every man in
his rapidly growing army wore a belt buckle that
declared "Gott Mit Uns" - God Is With Us - and most
of them fervently believed it was true.
Within a year of the terrorist attack, the nation's
leader determined that the various local police and
federal agencies around the nation were lacking the
clear communication and overall coordinated
administration necessary to deal with the terrorist
threat facing the nation, particularly those
citizens who were of Middle Eastern ancestry and
thus probably terrorist and communist sympathizers,
and various troublesome "intellectuals" and
"liberals." He proposed a single new national
agency to protect the security of the homeland,
consolidating the actions of dozens of previously
independent police, border, and investigative
agencies under a single leader.
He appointed one of his most trusted associates to
be leader of this new agency, the Central Security
Office for the homeland, and gave it a role in the
government equal to the other major departments.
His assistant who dealt with the press noted that,
since the terrorist attack, "Radio and press are at
out disposal." Those voices questioning the
legitimacy of their nation's leader, or raising
questions about his checkered past, had by now
faded from the public's recollection as his central
security office began advertising a program
encouraging people to phone in tips about
suspicious neighbors. This program was so
successful that the names of some of the people
"denounced" were soon being broadcast on radio
stations. Those denounced often included opposition
politicians and news reporters who dared speak out
- a favorite target of his regime and the media he
now controlled through intimidation and ownership
by corporate allies.
To consolidate his power, he concluded that
government alone wasn't enough. He reached out to
industry and forged an alliance, bringing former
executives of the nation's largest corporations
into high government positions. A flood of
government money poured into corporate coffers to
fight the war against the Middle Eastern ancestry
terrorists lurking within the homeland, and to
prepare for wars overseas. He encouraged large
corporations friendly to him to acquire media
outlets and other industrial concerns across the
nation, particularly those previously owned by
suspicious people of Middle Eastern ancestry. He
built powerful alliances with industry; one
corporate ally got the lucrative contract worth
millions to build the first large-scale detention
center for enemies of the state. Soon more would
follow. Industry flourished.
He also reached out to the churches, declaring that
the nation had clear Christian roots, that any
nation that didn't openly support religion was
morally bankrupt, and that his administration would
openly and proudly provide both moral and financial
support to initiatives based on faith to provide
social services.
In this, he was reaching back to his own embrace of
Christianity, which he noted in an April 12, 1922
speech:
"My feeling as a
Christian points me to my Lord and Savior as a
fighter. It points me to the man who once in
loneliness, surrounded only by a few followers ...
was greatest not as a sufferer but as a fighter.
"In boundless love as a Christian and as a man I
read through the passage which tells us how the
Lord at last rose in His might and seized the
scourge to drive out of the Temple the brood of
vipers and adders...
"As a Christian ... I have the duty to be a fighter
for truth and justice..."
When he later survived an assassination attempt, he
said, "Now I am
completely content. The fact that I left the
Burgerbraukeller earlier than usual is a
corroboration of Providence's intention to let me
reach my goal."
Many government functions started with prayer.
Every school day started with prayer and every
child heard the wonders of Christianity and -
especially - the Ten Commandments in school. The
leader even ended many of his speeches with a
prayer, as he did in a February 20, 1938 speech
before Parliament:
"In this hour I
would ask of the Lord God only this: that, as in
the past, so in the years to come He would give His
blessing to our work and our action, to our
judgment and our resolution, that He will safeguard
us from all false pride and from all cowardly
servility, that He may grant us to find the
straight path which His Providence has ordained for
the German people, and that He may ever give us the
courage to do the right, never to falter, never to
yield before any violence, before any danger."
But after an interval of peace following the
terrorist attack, voices of dissent again arose
within and without the government. Students had
started an active program opposing him (later known
as the White Rose Society), and leaders of nearby
nations were speaking out against his bellicose
rhetoric. He needed a diversion, something to
direct people away from the corporate cronyism
being exposed in his own government, questions of
his possibly illegitimate rise to power, his
corruption of religious leaders, and the oft-voiced
concerns of civil libertarians about the people
being held in detention without due process or
access to attorneys or family.
With his number two man - a master at manipulating
the media - he began a campaign to convince the
people of the nation that a small, limited war was
necessary. Another nation was harboring many of the
suspicious Middle Eastern people, and even though
its connection with the terrorist who had set afire
the nation's most important building was tenuous at
best, it held resources their nation badly needed
if they were to have room to live and maintain
their prosperity.
He called a press conference and publicly delivered
an ultimatum to the leader of the other nation,
provoking an international uproar. He claimed the
right to strike preemptively in self-defense, and
nations across Europe - at first - denounced him
for it, pointing out that it was a doctrine only
claimed in the past by nations seeking worldwide
empire, like Caesar's Rome or Alexander's Greece.
It took a few months, and intense international
debate and lobbying with European nations, but,
after he personally met with the leader of the
United Kingdom, finally a deal was struck. After
the military action began, Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain told the nervous British people that
giving in to this leader's new first-strike
doctrine would bring "peace for our time." Thus
Hitler annexed Austria in a lightning move, riding
a wave of popular support as leaders so often do in
times of war. The Austrian government was unseated
and replaced by a new leadership friendly to
Germany, and German corporations began to take over
Austrian resources.
In a speech responding to critics of the invasion,
Hitler said, "Certain foreign newspapers have said
that we fell on Austria with brutal methods. I can
only say; even in death they cannot stop lying. I
have in the course of my political struggle won
much love from my people, but when I crossed the
former frontier [into Austria] there met me such a
stream of love as I have never experienced. Not as
tyrants have we come, but as liberators."
To deal with those who dissented from his policies,
at the advice of his politically savvy advisors, he
and his handmaidens in the press began a campaign
to equate him and his policies with patriotism and
the nation itself. National unity was essential,
they said, to ensure that the terrorists or their
sponsors didn't think they'd succeeded in splitting
the nation or weakening its will.
Rather than the government being run by multiple
parties in a pluralistic, democratic fashion, one
single party sought total control. Emulating a
technique also used by Stalin, but as ancient as
Rome, the Party used the power of its influence on
the government to take over all government
functions, hand out government favors, and reward
Party contributors with government positions and
contracts.
In times of war, they said, there could be only
"one people, one nation, and one
commander-in-chief" ("Ein
Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuhrer"), and so his
advocates in the media began a nationwide campaign
charging that critics of his policies were
attacking the nation itself. You were either with
us, or you were with the terrorists.
It was a simplistic perspective, but that was what
would work, he was told by his Propaganda Minister,
Joseph Goebbels: "The
most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no
success unless one fundamental principle is borne
in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a
few points and repeat them over and over."
Those questioning him were labeled "anti-German" or
"not good Germans," and it was suggested they were
aiding the enemies of the state by failing in the
patriotic necessity of supporting the nation's
valiant men in uniform. It was one of his most
effective ways to stifle dissent and pit
wage-earning people (from whom most of the army
came) against the "intellectuals and liberals" who
were critical of his policies.
Another technique was to "manufacture news,"
through the use of paid shills posing as reporters,
seducing real reporters with promises of access to
the leader in exchange for favorable coverage, and
thinly veiled threats to those who exposed his
lies. As his Propaganda Minister said, "It is the
absolute right of the State to supervise the
formation of public opinion."
Nonetheless, once the "small war" annexation of
Austria was successfully and quickly completed, and
peace returned, voices of opposition were again
raised in the Homeland. The almost-daily release of
news bulletins about the dangers of terrorist
communist cells wasn't enough to rouse the populace
and totally suppress dissent. A full-out war was
necessary to divert public attention from the
growing rumbles within the country about
disappearing dissidents; violence against liberals,
Jews, and union leaders; and the epidemic of crony
capitalism that was producing empires of wealth in
the corporate sector but threatening the middle
class's way of life.
A year later, to
the week, Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia.
In the months after that, he claimed that Poland
had weapons of mass destruction (poison gas) and
was supporting terrorists against Germany. Those
who doubted that Poland represented a threat were
shouted down or branded as ignorant. Elections were
rigged, run by party hacks. Only loyal Party
members were given passes for admission to public
events with the leader, so there would never be a
single newsreel of a heckler, and no doubt in the
minds of the people that the leader enjoyed vast
support.
And his support did grow, as
Propaganda
Minister Goebbels'
dictum bore fruit:
"If
you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,
people will eventually come to believe it. The lie
can be maintained only for such time as the State
can shield the people from the political, economic
and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus
becomes vitally important for the State to use all
of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is
the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension,
the truth is the greatest enemy of the State."
Within a few months Poland, too, was invaded in a "defensive,
pre-emptive" action.
The nation was now
fully at war, and all internal dissent was
suppressed in the name of national security; it was
the end of Germany's first experiment with
democracy.
As we conclude this review of history,
there are a few
milestones worth remembering.
February 27, 2005, is the 72nd anniversary of Dutch
terrorist Marinus van der Lubbe's successful
firebombing of the German Parliament (Reichstag)
building, the terrorist act that catapulted Hitler
to legitimacy and reshaped the German constitution.
By the time of his successful and brief action to
seize Austria, in which almost no German blood was
shed,
Hitler was
the most beloved and popular leader in the history
of his nation.
Hailed around the
world, he was later
Time Magazine's
"Man Of The Year."
(*See Below)
Most Americans
remember his office for the "security of the
homeland", known as the
Reichssicherheitshauptamt and its
SchutzStaffel,
simply by its most famous agency's initials:
The SS.
We also remember that the Germans developed a new
form of highly violent warfare they named "lightning
war" or
blitzkrieg, which, while generating
devastating civilian losses, also produced a highly
desirable "shock
and awe" among the nation's leadership
according to the authors of the 1996 book "Shock
And Awe" published by the
National Defense
University Press.
Reflecting on that time,
The American
Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1983)
left us
this definition of the form of government the
German democracy had become through Hitler's close
alliance with the largest German corporations and
his policy of using religion and war as tools to
keep power: "fas-cism
(fâsh'iz'em) n.
A system of government that exercises a
dictatorship of the extreme right, typically
through the merging of state and business
leadership, together with belligerent nationalism."
Today, as we face financial and political crises,
it's useful to remember that the ravages of the
Great Depression hit Germany and the United States
alike. Through the 1930s, however, Hitler and
Roosevelt chose very different courses to bring
their nations back to power and prosperity.
Germany's response was to use government to empower
corporations and reward the society's richest
individuals, privatize much of the commons, stifle
dissent, strip people of constitutional rights,
bust up unions, and create an illusion of
prosperity through government debt and continual
and ever-expanding war spending.
America passed minimum wage laws to raise the
middle class, enforced anti-trust laws to diminish
the power of corporations, increased taxes on
corporations and the wealthiest individuals,
created Social Security, and became the employer of
last resort through programs to build national
infrastructure, promote the arts, and replant
forests.
To the extent that our Constitution is still
intact,
the choice is again ours...
....."Time Man Of The Year 1938"............."Time
Man Of The Year 2004".......
Thom Hartmann (
www.thomhartmann.com ) lived and worked in
Germany during the 1980s, is the
Project Censored
Award-winning, best-selling author of over a
dozen books, and is the host of a nationally
syndicated daily progressive talk radio program.
This article, in slightly altered form, was first
published in 2003 by CommonDreams.org and is now
also a chapter in Thom's book
What Would
Jefferson Do?, published in 2004 by Random
House/Harmony.
************************************************************
The following is an overview companion piece to the
above article...
The Rise Of The Fourth Reich
Everyone likes to say, "Hitler did this", and,
"Hitler did that". But the truth is Hitler did very
little. He was a world class tyrant, but the evil
actually done by the Third Reich, from the death
camps to WW2 was all done by German citizens who
were afraid to question if what they were told by
their government was the truth or not, and who
because they did not want to admit to themselves
that they were afraid to question the government,
refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire,
refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged
fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster.
The German people of the late 1930s imagined
themselves to be brave. They saw themselves as the
heroic Germans depicted by the Wagnerian Operas,
the descendants of the fierce Germanic warriors who
had hunted wild boar with nothing but spears and
who had defeated three of Rome's mightiest legions
in the Tuetenberg Forest.
But in truth, by the 1930s, the German people had
become civilized and tamed, culturally obsessed
with fine details in both science and society.
Their self-image of bravery was both salve and
slavery. Germans were required to behave as if they
were brave, even when they were not.
It's easy to look back and realize what a jerk
Hitler was. But at the time, Hitler looked pretty
good to the German people, with the help of the
media. He was TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year in
1938. The German people assumed they were safe from
a tyrant. They lived in a Republic, after all, with
strict laws regarding what the government could and
more importantly could not do. Their leader was a
devoutly religious man, and had even sung with the
boy's choir of a monastery in his youth.
The reality was that the German people, as
individuals, had lost their courage. The German
government preferred it that way as a fearful
people are easier to rule than a courageous one.
But the German people didn't wish to lose their
self-image of courage. So, when confronted with a
situation demanding individual courage, in the form
of a government gone wrong, the German people
simply pretended that the situation did not exist.
And in that simple self-deception lay the ruin of
an entire nation and the coming of the second World
War.
When the Reichstag burned down, most Germans simply
refused to believe suggestions that the fire had
been staged by Hitler himself. They were afraid to.
But so trapped were the Germans by their belief in
their own bravery that they willed themselves to be
blind to the evidence before their eyes, so that
they could nod in agreement with Der Fuhrer while
still imagining themselves to have courage, even as
they avoided the one situation which most required
real courage; to stand up to Hitler's lies and
deceptions.
When Hitler requested temporary extraordinary
powers, powers specifically banned under German
law, but powers Hitler claimed he needed to have to
deal with the "terrorists", the German people,
having already sold their souls to their
self-delusions, agreed. The temporary powers were
conferred, and once conferred lasted until Germany
itself was destroyed.
When Hitler staged a phony invasion from Poland,
the vast majority of the German people, their own
self-image dependant on continuing blindness to
Hitler's deceptions, did not question why Poland
would have done something so stupid, and found
themselves in a war.
But Hitler knew he ruled a nation of cowards, and
knew he had to spend the money to make the new war
something cowards could fight and win. He decorated
his troops with regalia to make them proud of
themselves, further trapping them in their
self-image. Hitler copied the parade regalia of
ancient Rome, to remind the Germans of the defeat
of the legions at the Tuetenberg Forest. Talismans
were added from orthodox religions and the occult
to fill the soldiers with delusions of mystical
strengths and an afterlife if they fell in battle.
Finally, knowing that it takes courage to kill the
enemy face to face, Hitler spent vast sums of money
on his wonder weapons, airplanes, submarines,
ultra-long range artillery, the world's first
cruise missile and the world's first guided
missile, weapons that could be used to kill at a
distance, so that those doing the killing need not
have to face the reality of what they were doing.
The German people were lured into WW2 not because
they were brave, but because they were cowards who
wanted to be seen as brave, and found that shooting
long range weapons at people they could not see
took less courage than standing up to Hitler. Sent
into battle by that false image of courage, the
Germans were dependent on their wonder-weapons.
When the wonder-weapons stopped working, the
Germans lost the war.
I remember as a child listening to the stories of
WW2 from my grandfather and my uncles who had
served in Europe. I wondered how the German people
could have been so stupid as to have ever elected
Hitler dog catcher, let alone leader of the nation.
Such is the clarity of historical hindsight. And
with that clarity, I see the exact same mechanism
that Hitler used at work here in this nation.
The American people imagine themselves to be brave.
They see themselves as the heroic Americans
depicted by Western Movies, the descendants of the
fierce patriot warriors who had tamed the frontier
and defeated the might of the British Empire.
But in truth, by the dawn of the third millennium,
the American people have become civilized and
tamed, culturally obsessed with fine details in
both science and society. Their self-image of
bravery is both salve and slavery. Americans are
required to behave as if they are brave, even when
they are not.
The American people assume they are safe. They live
in a Republic, after all, with strict laws
regarding what the government can and more
importantly cannot do. Their leader is a devoutly
religious man.
The reality is that the American people, as
individuals, have lost their courage. The
government prefers it that way as a fearful people
are easier to rule than a courageous one. But
Americans don't wish to lose their self-image of
courage. So, when confronted with a situation
demanding courage, in the form of a government gone
wrong, the American people simply pretend that the
situation does not exist.
When the World Trade Towers collapsed, most
Americans simply refused to believe suggestions
that the attacks had been staged by parties working
for the US Government itself. Americans were afraid
to, even as news reports surfaced proving that the
US Government had announced plans for the invasion
of Afghanistan early in the year, plans into which
the attacks on the World Trade Towers which angered
the American people into support of the
already-planned war fit entirely too conveniently.
But so trapped are Americans by their belief in
their own bravery that they will themselves to be
blind to the evidence before their eyes, so that
they can nod in agreement with the government while
still imagining themselves to have courage, even as
they avoid the one situation which most requires
real courage; to stand up to the government's lies
and deceptions. The vast majority of the American
people, their own self-image dependant on
continuing blindness to the government's
deceptions, never question why Afghanistan would
have done something so stupid as to attack the
United States, and as a result, Americans find
themselves in a war.
Now the US Government has requested temporary
extraordinary powers, powers specifically banned
under Constitutional law, but powers the government
is claiming they need to have to deal with the
"terrorists". The American people, having already
sold their souls to their self-delusions, are
agreeing. The temporary powers recently conferred
will be no more temporary in America than they were
in Germany.
The US Government knows they rule a nation of
cowards. The government has had to spend the money
to make the new war something cowards can fight.
The government has decorated the troops with
regalia to make them proud of themselves, further
trapping them in their self-image. Talismans are
added from orthodox religions and the occult to
fill the soldiers with delusions of mystical
strengths and an afterlife if they fall in battle.
Finally, knowing that it takes courage to kill the
enemy face to face, the United States government
has spent vast sums of money on wonder weapons,
airplanes, submarines, ultra-long range artillery,
cruise missiles, and guided missiles, weapons that
kill at a distance, so that those doing the killing
need not have to face the reality of what they are
doing.
As I mentioned above,
Hitler was
TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year in 1938.
Stalin was
TIME Magazine's Man Of The Year for 1939 and 1942.
Both of these men, and many others also celibrated
by the media, were unimaginable monsters. The
lesson from these facts is that it isn't easy to
spot a genocidal tyrant when you live with one,
especially one whom the press supports and
promotes.
Tyrants become obvious only when looking back,
after what they have done becomes known. The German
people did not stand up to Hitler because their
media betrayed them, just as the American media is
betraying the American people by willingly,
voluntarily, even proudly, abandoning its
traditional role as watchdog against government
abuse.
It is the very nature of power that it attracts the
sort of people who should not have it. The United
States, as the world's last superpower, is a prize
that attracts men and women willing to do
absolutely anything to win that power, and hence
are also willing to do absolutely anything with
that power once they have it. If one thinks about
it long enough, one will realize that all tyrants,
past and most especially present, MUST use
deception on their population to initiate a war.
No citizen of a modern industrialized nation will
send their children off to die in a war to grab
another nation's resources and assets, yet
resources and assets are what all wars are fought
over. The nation that wishes to initiate a war of
conquest must create the illusion of an attack or a
threat to start a war, and must always give their
population of cowards an excuse never to question
that carefully crafted illusion.
It is naive, not to mention racist to assume that
tyrants appear only in other nations and that
somehow America is immune simply because we're
Americans. America has escaped the clutches of a
dictatorship thus far only through the efforts of
those citizens who, unlike the Germans of the
1930s, have the moral courage to stand up and point
out where the government is lying to the people.
Unless more Americans are willing to have that kind
of individual courage, then future generations may
well look back on the American people with the same
harshness of judgement with which we look back on
the 1930s Germans.
###
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Last edited by TwilightWatcher on Thu Jan 12, 2006
|
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
|
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Posted:
Thu Jan 12, 2006 10:20 am
Post subject: Bush's "Christian" Blood Cult |
|
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"We
Americans have no commission from God to police the
world."
~ Benjamin Harrison
***
Bush's "Christian"
Blood Cult
Concerns Raised by the Vatican
by WAYNE MADSEN
April 22, 2003
The url for this article is:
http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen04222003.html
George W. Bush proclaims himself a born-again
Christian. However, Bush and fellow self-anointed
neo-Christians like House Majority Leader Tom
DeLay, John Ashcroft, and sports arena Book of
Revelations carnival hawker Franklin Graham appear
to wallow in a "Christian" blood lust cult when it
comes to practicing the teachings of the founder of
Christianity. This cultist form of Christianity,
with its emphasis on death rather than life, is
also worrying the leaders of mainstream Christian
religions, particularly the Pope.
One only has to check out Bush's record as Governor
of Texas to see his own preference for death over
life. During his tenure as Governor, Bush presided
over a record setting 152 executions, including the
1998 execution of fellow born-again Christian Karla
Faye Tucker, a convicted murderer who later led a
prison ministry. Forty of Bush's executions were
carried out in 2000, the year the Bush presidential
campaign was spotlighting their candidate's strong
law enforcement record. The Washington Post's
Richard Cohen reported in October 2000 that one of
the execution chamber's "tie-down team" members,
Fred Allen, had to prepare so many people for
lethal injections during 2000, he quit his job in
disgust.
Bush mocked Tucker's appeal for clemency. In an
interview with Talk magazine, Bush imitated
Tucker's appeal for him to spare her life - pursing
his lips, squinting his eyes, and in a squeaky
voice saying, "Please don't kill me." That went too
far for former GOP presidential candidate Gary
Bauer, himself an evangelical Christian. "I think
it is nothing short of unbelievable that the
governor of a major state running for president
thought it was acceptable to mock a woman he
decided to put to death," said Bauer.
A former Texas Department of Public Safety officer,
a devout Roman Catholic, told this reporter that
evidence to the contrary, Bush was more than happy
to ignore DNA data and documented cases of
prosecutorial misconduct to send innocent people to
the Huntsville, Texas lethal injection chamber. He
said the number of executed mentally retarded,
African Americans, and those who committed capital
crimes as minors was proof that Bush was
insensitive and a "phony Christian." When faced
with similar problems in Illinois, Governor George
Ryan, a Republican, commuted the death sentences of
his state's death row inmates and released others
after discovering they were wrongfully convicted.
Yet the Republican Party is pillorying Ryan and
John Ashcroft's Justice Department continues to
investigate the former Governor for political
malfeasance as if Bush and Ashcroft are without sin
in such matters. Hypocrisy certainly rules in the
Republican Party.
Bush's blood lust has been extended across the
globe. He has given the CIA authority to
assassinate those deemed a threat to U.S. national
interests. Bush has virtually suspended Executive
Orders 11905 (Gerald Ford), 12306 (Jimmy Carter),
and 12333 (Ronald Reagan) which prohibit the
assassination of foreign leaders. Bush's
determination to kill Saddam Hussein, his family,
and his top leaders with precision-guided missiles
and tactical nuclear weapon-like Massive Ordnance
Air Blast (MOAB) bombs is yet another indication of
Bush's disregard for his Republican and Democratic
predecessors. It now appears that in his zeal to
kill Hussein, innocent civilian patrons of a
Baghdad restaurant were killed by one of Bush's
precision Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMs).
Like it or not, Saddam Hussein was recognized by
over 100 nations as the leader of Iraq -- a member
state of the United Nations. Hussein, like North
Korea' Kim Jong Il, Syria's Bashir Assad, and
Iran's Mohammed Khatami, are covered by Executive
Order 12333, which the Bush mouthpieces claim is
still in effect. Bush's "Christian" blood cult sees
no other option than death for those who become his
enemies. This doctrine is found no place in
Christian theology.
Bush has not once prayed for the innocent civilians
who died as a result of the U.S. attack on Iraq. He
constantly "embeds" himself with the military at
Goebbels-like speech fests and makes constant
references to God when he refers to America's
"victory" in Iraq, as if God endorses his sordid
killing spree. He makes no mention of the children,
women, and old men killed by America's
"precision-guided" missiles and bombs and
trigger-happy U.S. troops. In fact, Bush revels in
indiscriminate blood letting. Since he never
experienced such killing in Southeast Asia, when he
was AWOL from his Texas Air National Guard unit,
Bush just does not seem to understand the horror of
a parent watching one's children having their heads
and limbs blown off in a sudden blast of shrapnel
or children witnessing their parents burning to
death with their own body fat nurturing the flames.
Bush and his advisers, previously warned that
Iraq's ancient artifacts and collection of
historical documents and books were in danger of
being looted or destroyed, instead, sat back while
the Baghdad and Mosul museums and Baghdad Library
were ransacked and destroyed. Cult leaders have
historically attempted to destroy history in order
to invent their own. The Soviets tried to
obliterate Russia's Orthodox traditions, turning a
number of churches into warehouses and animal
barns. Cambodia's Pol Pot tried to wipe out
Buddhism's famed Angkor Wat shrine in an attempt to
stamp out his country's Buddhist history. In March
2001, while they were negotiating with the Bush
administration on a natural gas pipeline,
Afghanistan's Taliban blew up two massive 1600-year
old Buddhas in Bamiyan. The Bush administration,
itself run by fanatic religious cultists, barely
made a fuss about the loss of the relics. It would
not be the first time the cultists within the Bush
administration ignored the pillaging of history's
treasures.
The ransacking of Iraq's historical treasures is
explainable when one considers what the blood cult
Christians really think about Islam. Franklin
Graham, the heir to the empire built up by his
anti-Semitic father, Billy Graham, has decided
being anti-Muslim is far more financially rewarding
than being anti-Jewish. Billy Graham, history notes
from the Nixon tapes, complained about the Jewish
stranglehold on the media and Jews being
responsible for pornography.
Franklin Graham continues to enjoy his father's
unfettered and questionable access to the White
House. But in the case of Bush, the younger Graham
has a fanatic adherent. Graham has called Islam a
"very evil and wicked" religion. He then announces
he wants to go to Iraq. Graham obviously sees an
opportunity to convert Muslims and unrepentant
Eastern Christians, who owe their allegiance to
Roman and Greek prelates, to his perverted form of
blood cult Christianity. Graham says he is ready to
send his Samaritan's Purse missionaries into Iraq
to provide assistance. Muslims and mainstream
Christians are wary that Graham wants to exchange
food, water, and medicine for the baptism of Iraqis
into his intolerant brand of Christianity. In the
last Gulf War, Graham could not get away with his
chicanery. The Desert Storm Commander, General
Norman Schwarzkopf, stopped dead in the tracks
Graham's plan to send 30,000 Arabic language Bibles
to U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. Today's Pentagon
shows no such compunction to put a rein on Graham.
It invited him to give a Good Friday sermon at the
Pentagon to the consternation of the Defense
Department's Muslim employees. To make matters
worse, under Bush's "Faith Based Initiative,"
Graham's Samaritan's Purse stands to receive U.S.
government funds for its proselytizing efforts in
Iraq, something that should be an affront to every
American taxpayer.
Bush's self-proclaimed adherence to Christianity
(during one of the presidential debates he said
Jesus Christ was his favorite "philosopher") and
his constant reference to a new international
structure bypassing the United Nations system and
long-standing international treaties are worrying
the top leadership of the Roman Catholic Church.
Well-informed sources close to the Vatican report
that Pope John Paul II is growing increasingly
concerned about Bush's ultimate intentions. The
Pope has had experience with Bush's death fetish.
Bush ignored the Pope's plea to spare the life of
Karla Faye Tucker. To show that he was similarly
ignorant of the world's mainstream religions, Bush
also rejected an appeal to spare Tucker from the
World Council of Churches - an organization that
represents over 350 of the world's Protestant and
Orthodox Churches. It did not matter that Bush's
own Methodist Church and his parents' Episcopal
Church are members of the World Council.
Bush's blood lust, his repeated commitment to
Christian beliefs, and his constant references to
"evil doers," in the eyes of many devout Catholic
leaders, bear all the hallmarks of the one warned
about in the Book of Revelations - the anti-Christ.
People close to the Pope claim that amid these
concerns, the Pontiff wishes he was younger and in
better health to confront the possibility that Bush
may represent the person prophesized in
Revelations. John Paul II has always believed the
world was on the precipice of the final
confrontation between Good and Evil as foretold in
the New Testament. Before he became Pope, Karol
Cardinal Wojtyla said, "We are now standing in the
face of the greatest historical confrontation
humanity has gone through. I do not think that wide
circles of the American society or wide circles of
the Christian community realize this fully. We are
now facing the final confrontation between the
Church and the anti-Church, of the Gospel versus
the anti-Gospel." The Pope, who grew up facing the
evils of Hitler and Stalin, knows evil when he sees
it. Although we can all endlessly argue over the
Pope's effectiveness in curtailing abuses within
his Church, his accomplishments external to
Catholicism are impressive.
According to journalists close to the Vatican, the
Pope and his closest advisers are also concerned
that the ultimate acts of evil - the September 11
terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and
Pentagon - were known in advance by senior Bush
administration officials. By permitting the attacks
to take their course, there is a perception within
the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy that a coup
d'etat was implemented, one that gave Bush and his
leadership near-dictatorial powers to carry out
their agenda.
The Pope worked tirelessly to convince leaders of
nations on the UN Security Council to oppose Bush's
war resolution on Iraq. Vatican sources claim they
had not seen the Pope more animated and determined
since he fell ill to Parkinson's Disease. In the
end, the Pope did convince the leaders of Mexico,
Chile, Cameroon, and Guinea to oppose the U.S.
resolution. If one were to believe in the Book of
Revelations, as the Pope fervently does, he can
seek solace in scoring a symbolic victory against
the Bush administration. Whether Bush represents a
dangerous right-wing ideologue who couples his
political fanaticism with a neo-Christian blood
cult (as I believe) or he is either the anti-Christ
or heralds one, the Pope should know he has fought
the good battle and has gained the respect and
admiration of many non-Catholics around the world.
Re:
http://www.counterpunch.org/madsen04222003.html
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based
investigative journalist and columnist. He wrote
the introduction to Forbidden Truth.
Re: 'Forbidden
Truth: U.S.-Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi
Arabia and the Failed Search for bin Laden',
Publisher: Nation Books; (July 10, 2002),
Paperback: 208 pages, ISBN: 1560254149
Madsen can be reached at:
WMadsen777@aol.com
--------------------------------------------
The Gospel
According to Bush
Good Christian George?
By CHARLES
SULLIVAN
The url for this article:
http://www.counterpunch.org/sullivan07082003.html
Considering the abundance of empirical evidence
that George Bush and his regime are pathological
liars, how does one come to grips with their
popularity with the multitudes? Aside from the
obvious example of the compliant corporate media as
a propaganda machine at the beck and call of
neo-conservatives, what is it about Bush that makes
him popular to so many? Why would any thinking
person believe a word that passes through this vile
man's lips? In order to illustrate a point, let us
consider a single pretext: Bush's that he is a
devout Christian. Many people accept Bush's
assertion at face value despite the preponderance
of evidence to the contrary. Ask yourself: What
kind of man was Jesus Christ? First and foremost he
was a peace maker. Is George Bush a peace maker?
No. Bush has the blood of thousands of innocent
people on his hands. Bush couldn't wait for the
weapons of mass destruction to rain down on the
innocent roofs of the Iraqi people.
It seemed as if Bush would burst out of his skin if
the world didn't allow him to have his slaughter.
Jesus shunned wealth and possessions; he wisely
knew that these things corrupt men's souls. Does
Bush shun wealth and possessions?
Hardly. He covets wealth, especially oil; none more
so than Iraqi oil. His policies have placed huge
burdens upon the working poor in America and
abroad, while simultaneously giving more wealth to
the rich. Jesus Christ spoke profound truth in the
form of parables. Does Bush speak truth? (Hell, he
barely speaks broken English).
Bush speaks with candor only occasionally at best.
He lied repeatedly about the threat posed by Iraq.
He has repeatedly lied to the world about US
imperialism and plans for world domination. In
fact, he has lied about just about everything.
Remember the mushroom clouds over Cincinnati that
Saddam Hussein was about to unleash? Bush has
publicly stated time and again that there is a
demonstrable link between the events of 9/11, Al
Qaeda, and Saddam Hussein; so has Rumsfeld, Rice
and Powell. Yet not a single shred of tangible
evidence has ever been brought forth in support of
this statement---presumably because none exists.
Even Bush's own intelligence community has stated
this, including, oddly enough, Secretary of State
Colin Powell. Jesus Christ was a socialist (before
there was such a term) whose life was given to the
needs of community; especially the outcast, the
poor and oppressed. He was a tireless advocate for
social justice. What has Bush done for the working
class people?
The answer: absolutely nothing. He steals from the
working people by inflating the military budget
(building more weapons of mass destruction), thus
denying critical social services to the neediest
Americans, including the health care that every
American is entitled to. Simultaneously, Bush
continues to give ever more welfare (tax cuts) to
his rich associates and corporate cronies, such as
Kenny Boy Lay of Enron. Bush, like all
neo-conservatives, staunchly opposes raising
America's pathetic minimum wage to an actual living
wage. Of course, this is detrimental to the family
structure and has a perverse effect on the entire
social fabric. Bush is a purveyor of class warfare;
the avowed enemy of organized labor. He is one of
the ruling classes endowed with special privileges
that ninety-nine percent of us don't have. His
policies always have a common denominator: they
disproportionately benefit the rich and harm the
poor. By now it should be apparent to all but the
clinically deceased that a clear pattern is
evident. Is there anything at all and in the least
degree Christ-like about George W. Bush (suppressed
laughter)? Are you kidding me? Bush is the
anti-Christ; the polar opposite of all the virtuous
qualities possessed by and, more importantly, lived
by Jesus of Nazareth. Indeed, the only similarity
that I can discern between the two men is that they
were/are both mammals. That's about as far as it
goes. To call Bush a Christian is to make a mockery
of all those good people who have truly devoted
their lives to real Christian moderation,
self-sacrifice and service to the poor and
politically disenfranchised. Now, Jimmy Carter is a
Christian, as evidenced by his unstinting service
to community and earth, especially the needy. Not
to mention the moral authority he derives from his
respect for the truth. Carter isn't perfect either,
but he's putting forth an honest effort. Bush is no
more than a third rate pretender at best.
Nevertheless, and much to my bemusement, people
continue to call Bush a Christian. In the beginning
of a relationship with another person it is well
and proper to accept them at their word. But when
it becomes evident that the other person isn't who
he or she claims to be, you no longer believe them;
you no longer give them the benefit of the doubt.
By fabricating lies and distortions surrounding the
invasion of Iraq, Bush has deliberately chosen to
give up his credibility_his moral authority_in the
process showing contempt for his audience, for the
truth and for the life of Christ. It is both
foolish and dim-witted to take Bush and his regime
of war criminals at their collective word. There is
abundant evidence of deceit by the entire Bush
regime. Yet too many people still think of Bush as
a compassionate man of the lord_an idea no doubt
fostered by the conservative owned mass media. But
why do otherwise seemingly intelligent and
reasonably perceptive people continue to believe
such verbose nonsense? Why aren't Bush and his ilk
held accountable for their words and their deeds
like the rest of us?
One possible explanation is that the average
American simply lacks the basic skills of critical
thinking that seems inherent in other people of the
world. Americans exist under a constant barrage of
corporate double speak and distortions (marketing)
that exists nowhere else on earth or in history in
such overwhelming profusion. Thus, our sense of
reality has been distorted beyond recognition.
After all, isn't Disney World as good as a genuine
wilderness adventure? While there may be
considerable truth to this exposition, there are
other factors at play that hold equal sway. The
blind acceptance of Bush's definition of himself as
a devout Christian must also be attributed to the
mass willful ignorance of much of the American
public. Nothing else explains this bizarre
phenomenon so satisfactorily or succinctly. Just as
we deny our own baleful national history and
supplant it with myth, lies and distortions, people
want to believe in good Christian George. It makes
us feel good about ourselves, despite all the
horrible ghosts hidden away in the dark closets of
our national psyche.
But if one extends the same logic to other people
that are applied to Bush by the neo-conservatives,
a man could claim with equal alacrity as Bush
claims to be Christian, to be Zeus himself; or
perhaps Moses or Spinoza; or Mr. Potato Head. Why
not claim to be lord of the Universe, if Bush
hasn't already staked out that title for himself?
Indeed, that man or woman would be taken as
seriously as if he were Zeus or lord of the
universe, no matter how obvious that he is really
only who he is_Bozo the clown, perhaps. Talk about
the emperor having no clothes; he has no mind and
no soul either! But let's continue pretending that
he is the second coming of Christ, a devout and
holy man of deep religious conviction. How much
more convoluted can things get than they are now?
America, I hardly recognize thee. In a land where
capitalism and marketing is king why should anyone
be surprised at the travesty now ballooning before
us? Brace yourselves; there is more tragic comedy
to come in the years ahead. But try not to laugh
out loud. You don't want to spoil the grandiose
illusion for the believers. The kids still believe
in Santa Claus and the adults believe that Bush is
Christ incarnate. And I am Lord of the
Universe---purveyor of all wisdom. You must not
ever forget that (send me all your money)!
While I have never been a supporter of Bill Clinton
(I am a member of the Green party), remember how
every thing Clinton said or did came under intense
scrutiny by the corporate media--- especially the
conservatives in Congress? There were and are
countless conservative talk show hosts acting like
huge bellows pumping hot air onto the flaming wreck
of the Clinton presidency. No remark, no split
hair, no intended action went unchallenged by the
piranhas who smelled Clinton's blood amid the foul
excrement afloat in the political septic tank. What
greater proof is there of the existence of an ultra
conservative right wing media blitz than this?
Countless millions of tax payer dollars went down
the tubes (septic tank) in an effort to bring to
light every detail of Clinton's sordid sex life.
Yet Bush can make war on the entire world, invade
any sovereign country he feels like, kill thousands
of innocent people, spit upon the constitution and
shred the bill of rights and in the process turn
the entire planet against us. Amazingly, there is
nary a word of dissent spoke of it in the corporate
media. How peculiar but typically American, in the
land of OZ. Aside from other fascist states, this
odd behavior occurs nowhere else on earth. The
American media is so under the control of those in
power that it has utterly abandoned its obligation
to the people; it is essentially as fraudulently
propagandistic as any state owned newspaper in the
world's most oppressive self appointed regimes.
What is most amazing about this weird behavior is
that Bush is getting away with it; and calling
himself a Christian in the process!
If the Bush regime were held up to the same
standard of investigation as the Clinton
administration was, the entire bunch of thugs,
Bozos and thieves wouldn't last another day in
office. They would scatter like mosquitoes at a
frog convention.
As Americans, each of us bears some responsibility
for this weird charade; this dog and pony show that
sailed into Washington on yachts full of PAC money.
The world is watching with bemused laughter our
incredible national imbecility. So Wave your flags
self-righteous citizens; March to patriotic music;
feel strong and proud that we routed those fierce
disarmed Iraqis. Ever since our defeat in Viet Nam,
like the typical school yard bully, America picks
its fights very carefully. We fight only the weak
and disarmed so that we can feel strong and mighty.
But remember, the emperor has no clothes. The rest
of the world sees us as we really are. Moreover,
deep down inside we know what we are too.
*********************************************************
Charles Sullivan
is a veteran wild forest activist, writer and
cabinetmaker who resides on twenty acres of land in
the rural countryside of West Virginia.
He can be reached at:
cesullivan@stargate.net
Re:
http://www.counterpunch.org/sullivan07082003.html
-----------------------------------------------------------------
P.S. ~ Hey George,
Did you forget a few Bible verses over the years?
I know the bible is a big book and you've been busy
for awhile
but here are a few verses from the Bible, just out
of the Book of Matthew you may want to refresh your
Christian mind with:
"Blessed
are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."
~ MATTHEW 5:9
"You
have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and
a tooth for a tooth.' But I say to you, Do not
resist one who is evil. But if any one strikes you
on the right cheek, turn to him the other also"
~ MATTHEW 5:38-39
"Give
to him who begs from you, and do not refuse him who
would borrow from you." ~
MATTHEW 5:42
"You
have heard that it was said, 'You shall love your
neighbor and hate your enemy.' But I say to you,
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute
you" ~
MATTHEW 5:43-44
"No
one can serve two masters; for either he will hate
the one and love the other, or he will be devoted
to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve
God and mammon." ~
MATTHEW 6:24
"Judge
not, that you be not judged." ~
MATTHEW 7:1
"So
whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so
to them; for this is the law and the prophets."
~ MATTHEW 7:12
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Sincerely,
Chris
Last edited by TwilightWatcher on Thu Apr 26, 2007
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
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Posted:
Fri Jan 13, 2006 12:26 am
Post subject: Presidential Quotes |
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For your
consideration, quotes from
U.S. Presidents,
past and
present (though I, like many others, still
contest that Bu$h
ain't my
prez):
"I
see in the near future a crisis approaching that
unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety
of my country. As a result of the war, corporations
have been enthroned and an era of corruption in
high places will follow, and the money power of the
country will endeavor to prolong its reign by
working upon the prejudices of the people until all
wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the
Republic is destroyed."
~ Abraham Lincoln,
21 Nov 1864 (five months before his assasination)
"To
announce that there must be no criticism of the
President, or that we are to stand by the
President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic
and servile, but is morally treasonable to the
American public. Nothing but the truth should be
spoken about him or any one else. But it is even
more important to tell the truth, pleasant or
unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
~ Teddy Roosevelt,
7 May 1918
"Politics
is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I
have come to realize that it bears a very close
resemblance to the first."
~
Ronald Reagan,
2 Mar 1977
"The
high office of President has been used to foment a
plot to destroy the Americans' freedom, and before
I leave office I must inform the citizen of his
plight."
~ John F. Kennedy,
12 Nov 1963 (10 days before his assassination)
"We
Americans have no commission from God to police the
world." ~
Benjamin Harrison
"To
waste, to destroy, our natural resources, to skin
and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to
increase its usefulness, will result in undermining
in the days of our children the very prosperity
which we ought by right to hand down to them
amplified and developed."
~
Teddy Roosevelt,
3 Dec 1907
"America
will never be destroyed from the outside. If we
falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we
destroyed ourselves." ~
Abraham Lincoln
"War
should never be entered upon until every agency of
peace has failed." ~
William McKinley,
4 Mar 1897
"Once
a government is committed to the principle of
silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one
way to go, and that is down the path of
increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes
a source of terror to all its citizens and creates
a country where everyone lives in fear." ~
Harry S. Truman
"Every
gun that is made, every warship launched, every
rocket fired, in a final sense, [is] a theft from
those who hunger and are not fed, those who are
cold and are not clothed." ~
Dwight Eisenhower,
16 Apr 1953
"You
know I could run for governor but I'm basically a
media creation. I've never done anything. I've
worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business.
But that's not the kind of profile you have to have
to get elected to public office." ~
George W. Bush,
1989
"Liberty
has never come from the government. Liberty has
always come from the subjects of government. The
history of liberty is the history of resistance.
The history of liberty is a history of the
limitation of governmental power, not the increase
of it." ~
Woodrow Wilson |
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
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Posted:
Mon Jan 30, 2006 7:59 am Post subject:
Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire |
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Colossus: The Rise and Fall of the American Empire
THE FALL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
by Niall Ferguson
How will history judge America 1,000 years from now? So much of modern
history is biased because we're writing it. To get a different
perspective on something, sometimes you need to step back and take a
look at the bigger picture. For example, the Roman Empire was massive.
For hundreds of years it WAS the civilized world. If you lived during
that period, your history was fed to you by people of that time period,
so you couldn't really grasp the enormity of the empire's influence.
Looking back now, however, we're able to see it for what it was. We're
able to see how it crumbled around the edges, and slowly collapsed from
overextension. We see how corruption slowly splintered the expansionist
machine, cutting off garrison towns one by one while barbarian hordes
filled the cracks, swelling and pushing their way into the heart of
Rome. The collapse of an empire so mighty could not have been predicted
at that time. It was simply unfathomable. Just as America's empire,
built likewise upon cultural, economic, and military supremacy, appears
unbreakable now. But not only is it breakable, it's already starting to
crumble around the edges.
To reflect back upon the fall of the American Empire, we must project
ourselves ahead a thousand years. From out here it is easy to see how
the gluttonous consumption of natural resources ultimately led to
America's demise. America NEEDED energy to protect itself, to make its
citizens happy, and to exert its influence on world politics. To feed
its culture. To feed its economy. To feed its military. Yet America
didn't possess the natural resources it needed to thrive. It was forced
to rely upon the natural resources of other countries, half way around
the world. It is here, on the fringe, where the edges of the empire are
beginning to burn.
A millennium from now, history books may very well look upon America's
foreign policy as a form of economic slavery; and terrorism not as the
work of a mischievous few who lacked an appreciation for freedom, but
rather a misunderstood rebellion. A desperate attempt on the part of
impoverished third-worlders to break free of the economic ties that bind
them. Meanwhile, the fat and lazy people of the west kept asking, "why
do they hate us?" as their governments chose to drop bombs instead of
flawed foreign policies. Why DO they hate us?
Terrorism is an uprising - a rebellion that has been slowly brewing in a
pressure cooker for decades as billions upon billions of dollars have
been poured into the coffers of a few greedy, oppressive regimes.
Oppressive governments without the economic means to retain power
crumble over time. The former Soviet Union is an example of this. But
many oppressive governments still exist, particularly in the Middle
East, because Western countries have subsidized their existence and
promoted their success through the purchase of natural resources.
Meanwhile, the citizenry of these nations are denied the same freedoms
we take for granted by the wealthy profiteers in rule. It is no wonder
they resent us - we have what we have largely at their expense. Without
their land and their resources, we cannot sustain the unprecedented
quality of life we take for granted. They watch us grow fat on their oil
while generations die on the vine, without hope. And we say their
leaders are to blame, while ours are lacing their palms with silver.
Americans are not solely to blame for this - they're merely the
ringleaders. Take the timely example of Iraq. Iraq's oppressive
dictatorship was enabled by Western money, and enforced by a military
outfitted by the Chinese, the French, and the Russians in exchange for
access to Iraq's natural resources. Saddam Hussein needed a robust
military infrastructure to keep a population that size pinned to the
ground. Where do you think he got the money to build all of those
palaces, and feed what was - prior to the Gulf War - the fourth largest
standing army in the world? When his sons were found dead, they weren't
carrying millions in Iraqi currency. They were strapped with Ben
Franklins. Western money for oil has kept Middle Eastern tyrants and
regimes in power and millions of people in poverty for decades. The
result is terrorism.
Terrorist mastermind and world's most wanted fugitive Osama Bin Laden's
primary aim, and the primary reason why he remains so popular in the
Middle East, is the removal of Western influence from the region. That's
what they want. The terrorists, the radicals, the extremists. They are
oppressed and poor. They come from long lines of oppressed and poor.
Their futures appear oppressed and poor. How can they possibly aspire to
lead a better existence while the barbarous monsters holding them down
are well fed by Western keepers?
Colossus: The Rise
and Fall of the American Empire
by Niall Ferguson
What can Cicero
teach Americans? Cal McCrystal
on an imperial power that would rather consume than conquer
16 May 2004
It may seem a touch premature to report on the collapse of an empire
before its fluctuations have ceased. Gibbon conceived the idea of
writing his Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire in 1764, 1,300 years after the
Vandals sacked Rome (he finished his task in 1787). Professor Ferguson
allows himself neither distance nor diffidence in making his
pronouncement, which is, broadly speaking, that an imperial America is a
jolly good thing, but that, alas, the Americans can't handle it properly
and are likely to make a mess.
Unlike Gibbon, Ferguson is not "treading with a lofty step the ruins of
the Forum". Indeed, he refers more familiarly and affectionately to the
late British Empire (the subject of a previous book) than to the Roman
colossus. Yet it is by studying the Roman and American hegemonies that
one discerns the most strikingly common failures: infirmities of life
and purpose in which the will is weak, opportunity barren and temper
uncertain.
HG Wells
wrote that Rome "gave
government to the rich ... It was a colossally ignorant and
unimaginative empire. It foresaw nothing. It had no strategic foresight
because it was blandly ignorant of geography and ethnology."
While Ferguson wouldn't be so harsh on Washington DC, there is no
shortage of people (Americans included) who would, especially at the
present Caesarean juncture.
I imagine the author to be in general sympathy with the right wing of
American politics: the neo-conservatives currently running George W Bush
and the Iraq adventure. But that does not preclude his embrace of the
unAmerican word "liberal". He argues for an "effective liberal empire"
in which the United States - "the best candidate for the job" - would
not only undertake regime-change in nasty countries but would hang in
there for as long as it takes to dictate democracy, enforce freedom and
extort emancipation, rather than dash in with the cudgel and dash out
again amid calls to "bring our boys home". US annexation of Cuba, Haiti,
other parts of the Caribbean and Central America, he feels, might well
have been better all round.
Instead, he says, the Americans
installed (where they could) petty tyrants with an appetite for
brutality. He quotes the frequently decorated
General Smedley D
Butler* who was involved in some of these exploits. "I
helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank
boys to collect revenues in," the general wrote in 1935. "I
helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the
benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long."
In other words, the Americans did harm
to the places they invaded by not staying long enough to curb the
excesses of their local protégés and seeing a permanent all-American
style operation in situ. I wonder if the National City Bank boys
and Wall Street racketeers would have been happy with that.
Staying in Iraq until all Iraqis are thoroughly democratised would also
be helpful for the whole region, halting "a downward spiral of hate and
spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression". Further, reviving
oil production "is a
necessary precondition for the success of the American transformation of
Iraq".
However, the author appears to contradict himself by conceding that, for
effective imperial duties, America is not really the "best candidate"
after all, seldom having demonstrated the necessary willpower for the
job.
Loss of willpower (or aboulia, as
psychiatrists would have it) was a chief cause of the fall of
Rome. The ideal sketched by Cicero in his De Republica, of a
constitutional president of a free republic, was realised only in
appearance. The special prerogatives conferred upon Octavian restored to
him in substance the autocratic authority he had resigned. Consequently,
unity could not be sustained. The development of money, the temptations
and disruptions of imperial expansion, the entanglement of electoral
methods, weakened and swamped a tradition of justice, good faith and
loyal citizenship. Rome became demoralised and aboulic. What appeared
invincible became transient. Again, some of the above repercussions may
carry a recently familiar ring.
"The question
Americans must ask themselves is just how transient they wish their
predominance to be," Ferguson says at the end of a very readable,
intelligently argued, if somewhat pessimistic book that examines US
imperial origins, military capabilities, anti-imperialist imperialism in
the Cold War years, Europe's increasingly anti-American political
culture, and Washington's contradictory policies towards the Middle
East, particularly Iraq.
He suggests that American objectives towards Iraq were "laudable
and attainable"
but unlikely
to achieve successful "nation-building".
The American people "lack the imperial
cast of mind. They would rather consume than conquer ... Consequently,
and very regrettably, it is quite conceivable that their empire could
unravel as swiftly as the equally "anti-imperial" empire that was the
Soviet Union."
*
Smedley Darlington
Butler, Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired], was
born in West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881, educated at Haverford School,
married Ethel C. Peters, of Philadelphia, June 30, 1905. He was awarded
two congressional medals of honor, for capture of Vera Cruz, Mexico,
1914, and for capture of Ft. Riviere, Haiti, 1917. He was also awarded
the Distinguished Service Medal in 1919.
He joined the Marine Corps when the Spanish American War broke out,
earned the Brevette Medal during the Boxer Rebellion in China, saw
action in Central America, and in France during World War I was promoted
to Major General. Smedley Butler served his country for 34 years, yet he
spoke against American armed intervention into the affairs of sovereign
nations. Throughout his life, Butler demonstrated that true patriotism
does not mean blind allegiance to government policies with which one
does not agree.
Unhappy with the Marine Corps bureaucracy, he took a leave of absence to
act as director of Department of Safety, Philadelphia, 1932 but
encountered much opposition from government officials who were in league
with the illegal liquor syndicates. In Oct. 1, 1931 General Butler
retired. To earn extra income he became a lecturer throughout the
1930's, was a Republican Candidate for Senate in 1932, and was asked to
head an alternative government by right-wing industrialists. He died of
cancer at Naval Hospital, Philadelphia, June 21, 1940
Throughout the years
various men of military service have spoken up and spoken out against
the actions of the American military. Some men speak up about atrocities
that have gone covered up, about discrimination, about deceptions that
have been used against the American public, and about actions that have
been taken that are contrary to what they view as American principles.
Major General Smedley Butler is one of
the most outspoken military service men who opposed the actions of the
military that he served in.
Marine Smedley Darling Butler is one of the most highly decorated
military men from the pre-World War II era. He served from 1898 to 1931
and saw action all over the world.
Marine Smedley Darling
Butler is one of the most highly decorated military men from the
pre-World War II era. He served from 1898 to 1931 and saw action
all over the world.
Butler
(second from right) in Veracruz, Mexico - 1914
Butler became a prominent political figure and was one of
America’s important leaders of the liberal movement of the
1930s. Butler advocated military isolationism and was against
American involvement in World War II. His isolationist views are
certainly unpopular today, and in fact are not compatible with
the current geopolitical situation. His views, however,
developed from 33 years of serving as what he called “a
gangster for capitalism.”
Smedley
Butler at his 1931 retirement ceremony
Smedley
Butler preparing to speak at one of his stops in the 1930s
All told Butler gave over 1,200 speeches in over 700 cities
during his speaking tour of the United States.
In 1935 Butler published
War is a
Racket, which got high praise at the time, as well as
strong criticism. The forward by
Lowell Thomas spoke of
Butler’s “moral
as well as physical courage” and noted that “Even
his opponents concede that in his stand on public questions,
General Butler has been motivated by the same fiery integrity
and loyal patriotism which has distinguished his service in
countless Marine campaigns.”
What Butler
fought so hard to do was to take the focus off of moral and
ideological arguments for war and concentrate on the
geopolitical factors that actually motivated war. He tried to
raise awareness of what the real motivating factors of war were
as well as the consequences of war. He was one of the first
Americans to really bring the economic implications of war to
the forefront of the public conscience. In
War is a Racket Butler “names
names” and lays out in wonderfully blunt detail how the
American “military
machine”
was
used to the benefit of wealthy American industrialists.
He noted how proponents of war typically call on God as a
supporter of the cause and how they embellish the mission as one
of liberation and the spreading of freedom, but that these
people tend to shy away from discussing the economic details of
military ventures.
Butler didn’t choose sides when it came to expressing his views
on war. Butler could certainly be considered a liberal but he
spoke out against the liberal FDR administration and also broke
ties with anti-fascist groups when they called for war to defend
against fascism. In 1935 he commented to a veterans meeting on
the subject of the growing interest in the FDR administration to
become involved in the conflicts of Europe that, “The
political leaders of this country are for another conflict to
cover up their blunders.”
Though most today would agree that his isolationist views would
have been harmful had they been followed by the country in
regard to American involvement in WWII
his
views on imperialism and the economic implications of war are
still as relevant today as ever.
In a few selected quotes from
War is a
Racket he writes:
WAR is a racket. It always has
been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely
the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It
is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and
the losses in lives...
In the World War a mere
handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000
new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States
during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains
in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires
falsified their tax returns no one knows...
Out of war nations acquire additional territory, if they are
victorious. They just
take it.
This
newly acquired territory promptly is exploited by the few
–
the selfsame few who wrung dollars out of blood in the war. The
general public shoulders the bill...
And what is this bill?
This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed
gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and
homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant
miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and
generations...
...a war
that might well cost us tens of billions of dollars, hundreds of
thousands of lives of Americans, and many more hundreds of
thousands of physically maimed and mentally unbalanced men.
Of course,
for this loss, there would be a compensating profit –
fortunes would be made. Millions and billions of dollars
would be piled up.
By a few.
Munitions makers. Bankers. Ship builders. Manufacturers. Meat
packers. Speculators. They would fare well.
Yes, they
are getting ready for another war. Why shouldn't they? It pays
high dividends...
The normal profits of a business concern in the United States
are six, eight, ten, and sometimes twelve percent. But war-time
profits – ah! that is another matter – twenty, sixty, one
hundred, three hundred, and even eighteen hundred per cent – the
sky is the limit. All that traffic will bear.
Uncle Sam has the money. Let's
get it...
Of course, it isn't put that crudely in war time.
It is dressed into speeches about patriotism, love of country,
and "we must
all put our shoulders to the wheel," but the profits jump
and leap and skyrocket –
and
are safely pocketed...
Butler goes on to name American companies that saw huge
increases in profits during World War I. Below is a listing of
pre-war vs. intra-war profits for American companies that are
included in Butler’s analysis as well as some additional
companies.
Company
Average profits in the last pre-war year
Average profits during the four years of war
U. S. Steel
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$105,331,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$259,653,000
Du Pont
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$6,092,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$58,076,000
Bethlehem Steel
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$6,840,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$49,427,000
Anaconda Copper
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$10,649,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$34,549,000
Utah Copper
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$5,776,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$21,622,000
American Smelting
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$11,566,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$18,602,000
Republic Iron and Steel
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$4,177,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$17,548,000
International Mercantile
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$6,690,00
Average profits during the four years of war
$14,229,000
Atlas Powder
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$485,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$2,374,000
American and British Man.
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$172,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$325,000
Canadian Car & Foundry
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$1,335,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$2,201,000
Crocker Wheeler
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$206,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$666,000
Hercules Powder
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$1,271,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$7,430,000
Niles, Bement Pond
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$656,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$6,146,000
Scovill Mfg. Co.
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$655,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$7,678,000
General Motors
Average profits in the last pre-war year
$6,954,000
Average profits during the four years of war
$21,700,000
It has been estimated by statisticians and economists and
researchers that the war cost your Uncle Sam
$52,000,000,000. Of this
sum, $39,000,000,000 was expended in the actual war itself.
This
expenditure yielded $16,000,000,000 in profits.
That is how the 21,000 billionaires and millionaires got that
way.
This
$16,000,000,000 profits is not to be sneezed at.
It is quite a tidy sum. And it went to a very few...
Who provides the profits – these nice little profits of 20, 100,
300, 1,500 and 1,800 per cent?
We
all pay them –
in taxation. We paid the
bankers their profits when we bought Liberty Bonds at $100.00
and sold them back at $84 or $86 to the bankers.
These bankers collected $100 plus.
It
was a simple manipulation.
The bankers control the security marts. It was easy for them to
depress the price of these bonds. Then all of us – the people –
got frightened and sold the bonds at $84 or $86. The bankers
bought them. Then these same bankers stimulated a boom and
government bonds went to par – and above. Then the bankers
collected their profits.
But the soldier pays the biggest part of the bill.
If you don't believe this, visit the American cemeteries on the
battlefields abroad. Or visit any of the veteran's hospitals in
the United States. On a tour of the country, in the midst of
which I am at the time of this writing, I have visited eighteen
government hospitals for veterans. In them are a total of about
50,000 destroyed men – men who were the pick of the nation
eighteen years ago. The very able chief surgeon at the
government hospital; at Milwaukee, where there are 3,800 of the
living dead, told me that mortality among veterans is three
times as great as among those who stayed at home...
Perhaps the following sounds familiar of the current Bu$h
administration as well?
Just replace
“Germans”
with “Iraqis.”
So vicious
was this war propaganda that even God was brought into it. With
few exceptions our clergymen joined in the clamor to kill, kill,
kill. To kill the Germans. God is on our side...it is His will
that the Germans be killed.
And in Germany, the good pastors called upon the Germans to kill
the allies...to please the same God. That was a part of the
general propaganda, built up to make people war conscious and
murder conscious.
Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to
die. This was the "war to end all wars." This was the "war to
make the world safe for democracy." No one mentioned to them, as
they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean
huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they
might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here.
No one told them that the ships on which they were going to
cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States
patents. They were just told it was to be a "glorious
adventure."...
Butler proposed that the only
way to actually prevent war is take the profits out of war. He
proposed several ways to achieve this. What is important to note
is that it is possible to take the profitability out of war, but
it must be done at an international level. Taking the
profitability out of war and out of the weapons industry is
really the way that is most likely to be able to achieve some
level of global peace.
Of course there has never been any effort to do this in America,
in fact the opposite is true, and right now the Bu$h
administration is making war even more profitable, only ensuring
its proliferation.
The General concludes by
proclaiming:
TO HELL WITH WAR!
Re:
http://www.rationalrevolution.net/special/library/war_is_a_racket.htm
Smedley
Butler on Interventionism
-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by
Major
General Smedley Butler, USMC.:
| Quote: |
"War is just a racket. A
racket is best described, I believe, as something that is
not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small
inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the
benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
I believe in
adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.
If a nation comes
over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble
with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent
over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get
100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the
soldiers follow the flag.
I wouldn't go to war again
as I have done to
protect some lousy investment of the bankers.
There are only two things we should fight for.
One is the defense of our homes
and the other is
the Bill of Rights.
War for any other reason is simply a racket! |
"There isn't
a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind
to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle
men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war
preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism.
It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a
comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three
years and four months in active military service as a member of
this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I
served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to
Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time
being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street
and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for
capitalism.
I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am
sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I
never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My
mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed
the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the
military service.
I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil
interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place
for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped
in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the
benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I
helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of
Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name
before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American
sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that
Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would
say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could
have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to
operate his racket in three districts.
I operated on three continents."
Last edited by TwilightWatcher on Thu Jun 01, 2006 7:07 pm;
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
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Posted:
Wed Feb 01, 2006 8:54 am Post
subject: The Undermining of OUR Country |
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Our country is being radically
undermined as THIS thread has illustrated.
These further Op/Eds
expess this...
A Clear and Present Danger to
America
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jan 27, 2006, 05:11
The url for this article is:
http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8065.shtml
George W. Bush, the out-of-control despot who thinks the
Presidency of the United States is a license to lie at will,
wage war on a whim and break the law without recrimination, put
on his “I am in charge” face Thursday and, for all practical
purposes, told anyone who thinks his powers should be subject to
review or oversight to go screw themselves.
Bush told reporters that he will assert his “presidential
prerogatives” any damn way he pleases and will do so without
apology, without question and without concern for the law, the
Constitution or the rights of Americans.
His press conference was a frightening study of a madman on a
tear, an insane, power-mad tyrant who believes he is above the
law and cannot be questioned. Sadly, it appears no one has the
balls to questions his lunacy.
“I'm going to continue do everything within my authority to
protect the American people,” Bush told reporters. That’s
Bushspeak for “I’m in charge here you dumb pukes and there ain’t
a damn thing you can do about it.”
“We'll continue our terrorist surveillance program against al
Qaeda. Congress must reauthorize the Patriot Act so that our law
enforcement and intelligence and homeland security officers have
the tools they need to route the terrorists -- terrorists who
could be planning and plotting within our borders,” he said.
Translation: “I’ll spy on Americans, I’m use the Constitution to
wipe my ass and I’ll declare marital law and run this country
like the dictator I want so desperately to be.”
On his illegal actions authorizing the National Security Agency
to spy on Americans, Bush said “If the attempt to write law …is
likely to expose the nature of the program, I'll resist it.”
What he is saying is “I’m above the law, goddamnit, and I’ll
fight every attempt to make me obey the law.
On the Iraq war, Bush declared: “there is an act passed by
Congress in 2001 which said that I must have the power to
conduct this war using the incidents of war. In other words, we
believe there's a constitutional power granted to Presidents, as
well as, this case, a statutory power. And I'm intending to use
that power -- Congress says, go ahead and conduct the war, we're
not going to tell you how to do it.”
I worked on Capitol Hill for a number of years and wrote more
than my share of legislation. I know a thing or two about how
the government is designed to work and the checks and balances
that are supposed to be built into the system. I’ve also read
what Congress passed and nothing in that act or the Constitution
gives Bush the authority he claims or the power he abuses. He’s
not just a liar. He’s a god-damned liar.
The arrogance surfaced often as he faced the press. His eyes
darted from side to side, blinking rapidly – a textbook example
of a maniac on the loose. His temper threatened to erupt more
than once because a couple of reporters actually had the gall to
actually question his motives.
After too many years watching this man destroy what once was a
great nation, I can only conclude that Bush is insane and his
insanity is protected by a brain-dead populace and a power-mad
political party that can’t possibly accept the sad fact that
they helped put a madman in charge of our government and have
kept him there.
I believe with all my soul that
George W. Bush and the Republicans who rubber-stamp his actions
represent a clear and present danger to the peace and security
of the United States and all must be removed from office
immediately if this nation is to survive.
And those are words I never, ever, thought I’d write about a
President or other elected officials of this country. And I
wish, with all my heart that I did not have to write them now.
But those who love this
country and put patriotism above politics must act. America, if
it wishes to remain America, must remove the cancer that
threatens to destroy it.
*******************************
© Copyright 2006 by Capitol Hill Blue
Who the hell is this Thompson guy anyway?...
Doug Thompson
Publisher
Blue
Doug Thompson realized the value of capturing history 46 years
ago as a 10-year-old schoolboy in Farmville, Virginia, when the
community, caught up in a fight over integration, closed the
public schools and opened an all-white private school.
Thompson wrote about his experiences and submitted his story and
photos to The Farmville Herald,the local newspaper. He developed
other photo stories for the paper and a journalism career was
born.
When his family relocated to the Blue Ridge Mountain community
of Floyd, the 14-year-old Thompson took his photographs and
stories to Pete Hallman, editor of the weekly Floyd Press.
Hallman encouraged the young man to continue writing and taking
photos, teaching him the ins and outs of the newspaper business.
Thompson went on to join the staff of The Roanoke Times where he
covered the police beat, emerging racial turmoil in the city and
tackled other tough subjects. His story about a young girl who
obtained an abortion (illegal at the time) won the top feature
writing award from the Virginia Press Association. Another,
about street racers in the city, won a feature writing award
while his coverage of the murder of a Southwest Roanoke couple
and the abduction and rape of their teenaged daughters brought
the top news writing award from the association
After moving on to The Telegraph in Alton, Illinois, Thompson
continued to win awards for writing and photography, capturing
the Illinois Associated Press Managing Editors top prizes for
news, feature and column writing as well as first place awards
from the Illinois Press Association.
Thompson took a sabbatical from newspapers in 1981 and moved to
Washington to work on Capitol Hill. He served as press secretary
for two Congressman and then Chief of Staff for another before
joining the House Committee on Science & Technology. From
1987-1992, Thompson served as Vice President for Political
Programs for The National Association of Realtors and then
joined The Eddie Mahe Company as a senior associate for
Communications. During that stint he became involved in campaign
finance issue and was a founding member of the Project for
Comprehensive Campaign Reform. He also lecturer at the American
Campaign Academy and was a sought-after spokesman on campaign
finance issues.
But journalism remained Thompson's true love and returned to his
roots as a free-lance writer and photographer. His work has
appeared in a number of publications, including Esquire, Life,
Look, National Geographic, Sports Illustrated, Paris Match, AFP,
the Associated Press and Reuters.
During his stint at the House Committee on Science and
Technology, Thompson worked on transfer of what was then
DARPANet from the Department of Defense to the National Science
Foundation, the beginnings of the Internet. Sensing the coming
growth of the Internet, he started a web hosting and design
company in 1994 and that same year launched Capitol Hill Blue as
the web's first political news site.
Besides Blue, Thompson publishes a number of other web sites,
including D.C. Darkside., American Newsreel and Blue Ridge Muse.
He also owns Blue Ridge Creative, a photography, video
production and digital imaging company in the Blue Ridge
Mountains of Virginia. In 2001, Thompson and his wife launched
the Our America project, a 10-year program to document the first
decade of the new century through videos, photography and
written essays.
The Thompsons left Washington in 2004 and moved to a hilltop
retreat in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwestern Virginia. He
returns to Washington once a year to speak to journalism
students at the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism
and still has business interests in the National Capital Region
but his deays as a Washingtonian are over. Despite his success
in new media, Thompson remains a newspaperman at heart and lives
by the creed that it is the role of a newspaperman to "comfort
the afflicted and afflict the comfortable."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Identity Theft of America!
A TvNewsLIES Indictment
Dec - 2005
An identity
is questioned only when it is menaced, as when the mighty begin
to fall, or when the wretched begin to rise ~
James Baldwin
THE CRIME
Look around. If you look really closely, you’ll see that
something is very wrong. If you look in every direction and into
every possible hiding place, you’ll become aware of the awful
truth: The United States of America, the proud nation that
existed just a few years ago, is no more.
Only five years ago, the US had a clear identity. Only five
years ago the US had a definable nature and a credible
reputation. Only five years ago we knew pretty much who we were
as Americans. But that time, that safe and comfortable time is
no more.
As 2005 comes to an end, there is nothing to be gained by
denial. At this moment in our history, our identity as a nation
and as a people has disappeared. It did not go willingly, and it
did not go peacefully. Instead, our identity as Americans was
destroyed by design and by stealth.
In essence, the people of the United States have become the
collective victims of one of the most insidious offenses in
recent times: the crime of identity theft.
No, we were never a perfect nation, or a saintly one. But we
were working at it. We had our shameful moments and we did our
share of damage. But we were a nation that cherished its
founding principles. We knew, that whatever else went amiss, the
nation was guided by the most astounding document in modern
history. In the long run, we would right the wrongs and learn
from our misdeeds. For in the end, we were a nation of laws,
guided through bad times and good by the Constitution of the
United States.
No more. This is no longer that country. We have been stripped
of the distinction we held such a short while ago as citizens of
the United States. The theft of our national identity has been
thorough and complete.
To add insult to injury, the most painful aspect of this outrage
is that we are only too well acquainted with the thieves. And at
this writing, the culprits who wronged us are safely at work in
the White House.
THE CRIMINALS
This was not an easy robbery to commit. Mugging an entire nation
called for experts, - men and women familiar with treachery and
betrayal, and capable of a highly organized crime. Several were
felons from a bygone administration and others emerged from
think tanks such as the Project for a New American Century.
Still others were well known government officials from a former
time.
And fronting them all was George W. Bush, their carefully
selected and conveniently installed President of the United
States.
To pull off their heist, members of the identity theft ‘mob’ had
to infiltrate every branch and agency of government. More
important, all would be lost if they could not totally control
the nation’s media. Once that was done, they could sit it out
and wait for the right moment to come.
And come it did, when “everything changed,” on the morning of
Sept. 11th, 2001.
Almost immediately, their well laid plans went into effect as
the theft began. In rapid succession, the Patriot Act, the war
against the Taliban, the War on Terror and the invasion of Iraq
became the orders of the day. All had been prepared in advance,
and all were thrust upon a traumatized nation too frightened and
far too uninformed to know what was happening to them.
The criminals involved in the theft were most definitely
professionals. They knew their marks well and were adept at
frightening Americans into almost grateful submission. Their
contrived color alerts and fabricated terror threats were
released unrelentingly on an already wounded public. They set
their terror traps cleverly and expertly.
And they ensnared a nation.
And then, when they were ready for the kill, they enlisted a
battalion of loyal capos: the zealots of religious right.
Together they fashioned an even broader fear package to sell to
America. The big guns had already pushed the nation’s panic
button: fear more attacks, fear terrorists, fear Islam, fear
your neighbor, fear protesters, fear critics, fear liberals,
fear anyone, so long as you remain afraid.
But now they could branch out into new fears: fear gays, fear
stem cell research, fear choice, fear separation of church and
state, fear non believers, fear anyone who has not found your
God and fear anyone who does not support your politics.
The team was unbeatable. The scam was on. And the American
people were about to pay a very high price.
THE COST
We really have lost so much at the hands of these felons. The
loss of our national identity has left us bereft of all that
made us so proud to be Americans. Like the faceless Invisible
Man, we are now destined to wander through life with no
reflection at all. We can only wonder who we really are, and
mourn what we have tragically lost.
Let’s face it. In just five short years the George W. Bush
administration has changed the very nature of this country. It
seems like only yesterday that Americans took such pride in
their country and had such faith in its integrity. We really
believed in the power of democracy and despite our diversity we
shared so many goals and dreams.
Among other things, we truly believed that:
• right made might, and war would always be a last resort
• ours was a government of and by and for the people
• our rights as Americans were protected by the Constitution
• we had the right and the responsibility to question elected
officials
• we had every right to peacefully protest the actions of our
government
• an attack on our nation would be immediately investigated
• secrecy in government was limited to security issues
• our government would always honor its international agreements
• our President would not lie about the reasons for going to war
• we would never launch a preventive war against a non
belligerent nation
• those opposed to a war of choice would never be viewed as
traitors
• our leaders sought the respect of the world community
• we were committed to the UN and global cooperation
• our elected officials would not personally profit from wars
• our government would help protect human rights everywhere
• our Constitution guaranteed a system of checks and balances
• there was a clear separation between church and state
• scientific knowledge could not be replaced by religious dogma
• our government was committed to protecting the environment
• our nation would never be placed in enormous debt for
generations
• our military would be properly armed when sent to war
• our leaders would never condone the use of torture
• our Constitution protected us from the abuses of government
• due process was an inherent right of anyone suspected of
wrongdoing
• our media could not be controlled or intimidated by the
government
• our leaders could be held accountable for their actions
• voting machines would leave a paper trail and could not be
compromised
• our government would never be permitted to spy on law abiding
citizens
• our nation would never strive for military domination of the
globe but most of all, we truly believed that
•we would never, ever be ashamed to be Americans
How
wrong we were.
THE
CONSEQUENCES
Today, the nation we
once knew is all but unrecognizable.
Our identity is non existent and lost in the fog of an endless
war and a badly weakened Constitution. It is buried under
insatiable corporate greed and deluded dreams of empire. It is
muddled by the self-righteous protestations of religious
fanatics who never understood the meaning of democracy in the
first place. And the damage may not be reversible.
In personal situations, as disturbing as it is, identity theft
is often overcome. The process may take months or years, but in
the end, the confusion has a chance of being sorted out. But
that is not the case when the victim of such a theft is a
nation.
Whatever the circumstance, the greatest damage in identity theft
occurs while the target is still unaware of the crime. And so it
was with America. For the past five years, much of the nation
has been totally oblivious to its own victimization. Smothered
by fear and misguided by propaganda and disinformation, millions
of Americans willingly participated in their own abuse.
And at this moment, far too many are still unaware of the crime.
And at this moment, the criminals are still at large. They usurp
more power every day that they are permitted to do so. They
eviscerate the Constitution at every possible opportunity, and
they use this once great nation as a tool for their own
malevolent ambitions.
Should they continue unimpeded for the next three years, the
nation will be damned for an eternity. George Bush and his
accomplices are well on their way to erasing what little is left
of the America we once knew.
The fact remains that a loss of identity can leave victims
immersed in bewilderment and devoid of direction. Their only
hope lies in facing the problem and fighting to regain what is
rightfully theirs.
This nation has been plunged into exactly that condition. Those
of us who know we’ve been taken are inexcusably hesitant and
indecisive as we struggle to find our way out of the darkness.
We don’t know which way to turn or what to do.
It seems, then, that our only hope lies in facing the problem
head on and admitting that we have been taken, big time. We have
to confront the dreadful reality of having lost our identity as
Americans.
And then we had better make up our minds to fight like hell to
regain the nation that is rightfully ours. The mother of all
battles will be fought at the polls less than a year from now.
And we have no other alternative but to win.
Anything else is far too painful to imagine.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
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Posted:
Fri Mar 24, 2006 2:28 am Post
subject: Please Take an HOUR to LISTEN To Dr. James Fetzer's... |
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...commentary on the
latest JFK assassination research news
BUT
MORE IMPORTANTLY, his commentary on the present American
Political Scene as presented on
Black Op
Radio on Thur 16 March 2006.
For anyone unfamiliar with Dr.
James H. Fetzer, here is his CV:
James H. Fetzer
Distinguished McKnight University Professor
University of Minnesota Duluth
Department of Philosophy
University of Minnesota
10 University Drive
Duluth, MN 55812
jfetzer@d.umn.edu
THINKING ABOUT "CONSPIRACY THEORIES": 9/11 and JFK
James H. Fetzer
As an expression of support for those who are attempting to
expose the truth about the events of 9/11 for the benefit of the
American people, I am posting the penultimate version (
http://www.st911.org/ ) of a chapter I have submitted to
David Ray Griffin and
Peter Dale Scott for
publication in their volume,
"9/11 AND THE AMERICAN EMPIRE" (forthcoming). I
stand with Steve Jones (
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/Why3Dec13.pdf ),
Professor of Physics at Brigham
Young, David Ray Griffin
(
http://www.911review.com/articles/griffin/nyc1.html ),
Professor Emeritus of Theology
at Claremont,
and
other students and scholars of 9/11,
who believe that extraordinary
times require extraordinary measures. Further discussion
may be found at
NIST's
Evasion (
http://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/nistevasion.html ).
James H. Fetzer was born
in Pasadena, California, on 6 December 1940. At graduation from
South Pasadena High School in 1958, he was presented The Carver
Award. He was magna cum laude in philosophy at Princeton
University in 1962, where his senior thesis for Carl G. Hempel
on the logical structure of explanations of human behavior won
The Dickinson Prize. After being commissioned a 2nd Lieutenant
in the Marine Corps, he became an artillery officer and served
in the Far East. After a tour supervising recruit training in
San Diego, he resigned his commission as a Captain to begin
graduate work in the history and philosophy of science at
Indiana in 1966. He completed his Ph.D. with a dissertation on
probability and explanation for Wesley C. Salmon in 1970.
His initial faculty appointment was at the University of
Kentucky, where he received the first Distinguished Teaching
Award presented by the Student Government to 1 of 135 assistant
professors. Since 1977, he has taught at a wide range of
institutions of higher learning, including the Universities of
Virginia (twice), Cincinnati, North Carolina at Chapel Hill, New
College of the University of South Florida, and now the Duluth
campus of the University of Minnesota, where he has been since
1987. His honors include a research fellowship from the National
Science Foundation and The Medal of the University of Helsinki.
In 1996, he became one of the first ten faculty at the
University of Minnesota to be appointed a Distinguished McKnight
University Professor.
He has published more than 100 articles and reviews and 20 books
in the philosophy of science and on the theoretical foundations
of computer science, artificial intelligence, and cognitive
science. On this web page, his publications have been divided by
area, including special vitae for computer science, artificial
intelligence, cognitive science, evolution and cognition, and
his applied philosophical research on the death of JFK. His
biographical sketch has appeared in many reference works,
including the DIRECTORY OF AMERICAN SCHOLARS, WHO'S WHO IN THE
MIDWEST, WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA, and WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD. It
may be found, for example, in the DIRECTORY OF AMERICAN
SCHOLARS, 10th edition, WHO'S WHO IN AMERICA, 55th edition
(2001), and WHO'S WHO IN THE WORLD, 18th edition (2001).
This
critical piece of commentary is archived on the
Black Op
Radio website:
http://www.blackopradio.com/inc_archives2006.html on
SHOW #262;
Part Two:
"Jim Fetzer discusses Max
Holland & Mark Lane",
AND
CAN BE ACCESSED AND LISTENED TO VIA
RealPlayer
FROM
HERE:
http://www.blackopradio.com/black262b.ram =1hr:03mins
PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO LISTEN TO THIS COMMENTARY.
Thank You. |
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
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Posted:
Wed Apr 05, 2006 3:08 am
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Commentary
Rebuilding needs, here and there
By Arnaud de Borchgrave/ Harlan
Ullman
April 3, 2006
By the end of this year, the U.S. will have spent almost half a
trillion dollars on Iraq since the 2003 invasion. This could
easily double by the time the U.S. successfully nurtures a new
Iraqi democracy to viability, including returning basic services
such as water, electricity and transport even to pre-war levels.
To paraphrase the late great Sen. Everett Dirksen of Illinois,
that is getting to be "real money."
Meanwhile, as we "rebuild" Iraq, what is happening here to our
own society and its infrastructure?
From hospitals to bridges, highways, roads and streets, mass
transit systems, power grids, drinking water systems and
hospitals and health care facilities, America is in a sad state
of disrepair. One third of all bridges are deemed "structurally
deficient" by the American Society of Civil Engineers. U.S.
infrastructure thus gets a falling "D" grade, down from D+ five
years ago. Estimated costs to put America's infrastructure back
on its feet: $1.6 trillion.
According to the U.S. Conference of Mayors, 75 percent of
America's school buildings are "inadequate" to meet the needs of
school children. Some $300 billion are needed to bring school
plants and teaching faculties up to scratch. The country's
16,000 wastewater systems face a $12 billion shortfall for
infrastructure needs, not counting funding to protect from
terrorist attack. Some sewer systems are over 100 years old. As
Katrina demonstrated, our domestic infrastructure problems are a
lot more urgent than the meritorious attempt to democratize 25
million Iraqis.
For the most part, America's managerial class does not use
public transportation and is unaware of the extent of crumbling
infrastructure, from public schools to unsafe neighborhoods.
Nor, as Congress grapples with immigration reform, has anyone
raised the social, economic and legal costs arising from this
witch's brew of failing infrastructure, illegal aliens, health
care and rampant crime.
In Los Angeles, 95 percent of outstanding homicide warrants are
for illegal aliens. The lethal 18th Street Gang has an estimated
20,000 members, over half illegal aliens, according to a ranking
member of LAPD, speaking not for attribution. The LA-based MS-13
(Mara Salvatruchka), whose membership was originally limited to
street-tough Salvadorans, now numbers 50,000 (10,000 in Los
Angeles alone). These gangs thrive where infrastructure decays.
This criminal imprint stretches from coast to coast and is
present in every major city. MS-13 arose from the defeated
Marxist FMLN in El Salvador and now has links with the Cosa
Nostra. FBI counterintelligence agents worry about al Qaeda
infiltration through Central America. MS-13 has an estimated
300,000 members in Mexico and Central America. Interestingly,
its MO is to redistribute the fruits of its crimes to a network
of corner stores owned and operated by Middle Eastern and Asian
immigrants that sell at heavily discounted prices and causes
them to think they steal from the rich to give to the poor,
uncynically pirating the Robin Hood sobriquet.
With 1 out of 4 illegals caught crossing the 1,940-mile border
with Mexico, the net illegal influx into the United States is
between 3 and 4 million each and every year. So 20 million
illegals now in the U.S. is probably a safer bet than the 12
million figure bandied about Congress. All of this adds huge
costs to the nation, especially for healthcare. Pregnant women
who deliver "anchor" babies shortly after eluding border patrols
have an instant U.S. citizen in the family. The 14th Amendment
stipulates anyone born in the U.S. is a U.S. citizen. Anchor
strains on emergency facilities have bankrupted scores of
hospitals in the Border States.
The 1985 Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act
(EMTALA), an unfunded federal mandate, requires emergency
departments to treat any uninsured emergency free of charge.
Anchor babies pull illegal mothers, fathers and siblings into
permanent residency -- and public welfare aid.
Scams are common. In one clinic, some 300 people were diagnosed
as "mildly mentally retarded." They all had the same translator,
psychiatrist, symptoms -- and similar stipends. All of these put
further pressure on a health care system whose costs are soaring
out of sight.
Iraq has been debated politically, strategically, legally and
emotionally. It must also be examined in the harsh light of "how
much is enough" and what the nation must forego to pay for Iraq.
As for America's infrastructure, no doubt it would take an event
comparable to September 11, 2001, or worse, for us to react.
Whether we can afford for that to happen or not can easily
become the dominant issue in the 2006 and 2008 elections. But
consider first the costs of failing to take action now before
the expense of "spending real money" is really unaffordable.
---------------------------------------------------
Arnaud de Borchgrave and Harlan
Ullman are senior advisers at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies. Mr. de Borchgrave is also editor at large
for The Washington Times and United Press International.
Last edited by TwilightWatcher on Wed Apr 05, 2006 |
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
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Posted:
Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:04 am Post
subject: The Dismay of Our Elders Sums Up US |
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Published on Thursday,
March 30, 2006 by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The Dismay of Our Elders Sums Up
US
The url for this article is:
http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0330-24.htm
by Jay Bookman
An eerie
sense of calm has settled over the nation's affairs — a dead
calm.
It's not merely that the Bush administration has run aground on
its own illusions. The real problem runs deeper, much deeper,
and at its core, I think, lies the fact that out of fear and
laziness we insist on trying to address new problems with old
ideologies, rhetoric and mind-sets.
To put it bluntly, we don't know what to do, and so we do
nothing.
Run through the list: We have no real idea how to address global
warming, the draining of jobs overseas, the influx of illegal
immigrants, our growing indebtedness to foreign lenders, our
addiction to petroleum, the rise of Islamic terror . . .
Those are very big problems, and if you listen to the debate in
Congress and on the airwaves, you can't help but be struck by
the smallness of the ideas proposed to address them. We have
become timid and overly protective of a status quo that cannot
be preserved and in fact must be altered significantly.
The Republicans, for example, continue to mouth a cure-all
ideology of tax cuts, deregulation and a worship of all things
corporate, an approach too archaic and romanticized to have any
relevance in the modern world, as their five years in power have
proved.
The GOP's sole claim to bold action — the decision to invade
Iraq in the wake of Sept. 11, 2001 — instead epitomizes the
problem. The issue of Islamic terrorism is complex and
difficult, and by reverting immediately to the brute force of
another era, we made the problem worse.
Unfortunately, the Democrats don't offer an alternative. They
mouth no ideology whatsoever, their imagination, ingenuity and
courage apparently having petered out 30 years ago. They can't
bring themselves to acknowledge that the modern litany of
problems will require us to invent new roles for government, and
to rework the relationships between citizens, corporations and
country.
But we can't even talk about such things. Our public discourse —
which ought to be the source of renewal and energy in a
democracy — has been stripped of meaning, with rudeness now
mistaken for eloquence and anger substituting for insight.
All that has led to a sense of helplessness atypical of the
American character. In an accurate reflection of our national
mood, only 29 percent in a recent Gallup Poll said they were
satisfied with the country's direction, a number that can't be
explained away solely by our predicament in Iraq. The Gallup
numbers haven't consistently been above 50 percent since the
spring of 2002, long before most Americans were even aware an
invasion loomed.
But more compelling to me than
numbers are the e-mails, probably dozens of them in total,
that have trickled into
my in-box over the past year or so from older Americans all
around the country.
"I am 79 . .
. I am 84 . . . I was born in 1931," they start out. "I fought
with the Eighth Army in Korea . . . We lost our oldest son in
Vietnam . . . My husband served in the Pacific . . . I taught
school for 35 years," they continue, each recounting
their personal contributions to this country and establishing
their own perspective on its history.
Then comes
the statement that breaks your heart. The words vary from author
to author, but the sentiment does not:
"This is not
the country I wanted to leave my grandchildren . . . Is this
what we sacrificed so much for all those years? . . . I really
don't understand how it has come to this. . . . We took for
granted that in America it would always be better for the next
generation, but I can't see that's the case anymore. . . . Where
did we go wrong?"
These people are concerned not
for themselves, but for what they may soon leave behind. And
that concern for the future is all the more remarkable because
it is so rare among those of us who are their children and
grandchildren.
Unlike our elders, we refuse to tax ourselves to pay for our
wars, our roads, our government. We elevate leaders who promise
us tax cuts and free services and cheap oil and the strongest
military in the world, and we shun any who dare to suggest that
sacrifice might be necessary for such things.
Of course, as a nation we have faced worse. The generation that
endured the Great Depression only to be hit with World War II
had to confront challenges that make our own pale in
significance.
But when people of that
generation express sincere dismay about where we're headed
today, it's gotta make you wonder.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jay Bookman is deputy editorial page editor. His column appears
Thursdays and Mondays.
© Atlanta Journal-Constitution
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Last edited by TwilightWatcher on Thu Jun 01, 2006 |
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TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
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Posted:
Sun Apr 09, 2006 3:58 am Post
subject: Op/Eds worth Considering... |
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Published on Tuesday,
September 28, 2004 by the Free Press (Columbus, Ohio)
Bush is History's Top Terrorist
by Harvey Wasserman
As the fourth global-warmed hurricane in two months rips through
Florida, we are reminded that George W. Bush is history's top
terrorist.
We know, of course, that Bush has slaughtered thousands of
Iraqis, imprisoned hundreds without trial or charges, and
presided over the torture and sexual abuse of many of them. He
is the world's leading recruiter for hate-America terrorists the
world over.
Bush's preemptive militarism has paved the way for countless
crusades for oil and fundamentalism in the decades to come. He
overthrew the elected government of Haiti, resulting in hundreds
of deaths. He tried to do the same in Venezuela. Other target
nations are sure to follow.
Bush is also determined to turn AIDS into a profit center for
the drug companies that help fund him. His attacks on sex
education, birth control and reproductive choice will kill girls
and women for the decades to come, especially if he
re-criminalizes abortion in a second term.
As Texas's Governor Bush executed a record 150-plus people. He
publically mocked at least one, Karla Faye Tucker, who had asked
him to spare her. His escalated war on drugs has helped stuff
2.2 million Americans into the largest gulag in world history.
Many suffer regular physical and sexual abuse. Many are also
conveniently deprived of their right to vote.
Bush's catastrophic "No Child Left Behind" program is decimating
America's once-proud educational system, vastly escalating
illiteracy and ignorance. He is barring thousands of students
who have traditionally come here from overseas. Their
disappearance will further cripple American education, as well
as America's historic role in spreading democratic values to
young people around the world.
Bush has also decimated the Bill of Rights and basic freedoms
embodied in the US Constitution, paving the way for a potential
dictatorship should he get a second term.
In short, he has done to America things no foreign terrorist
could ever imagine.
But it all pales before Bush's all-out attack on the natural
environment, which will ultimately kill hundreds of millions of
people.
Bush's eco-terror crusade has two primary roots: corporate greed
and fundamental religious extremism.
On the corporate side, Bush's entire environmental policy can be
summarized in a simple sentence: Any polluter favored by the
Bush regime can pillage and destroy any sector of the American
ecology, regardless of the consequences, with full official
sanction, including huge taxpayer handouts.
Bush's signature flip flop has been on global warming. The
scientific and insurance community is now virtually unanimous
that rising carbon dioxide levels are wrecking utter havoc with
global weather patterns, including this latest parade of
Caribbean hurricanes. The only dissenters are oil company
flacks, flat earth think tanks and fundamentalist fanatics.
Bush promised in 2000 that if elected he would endorse the Kyoto
Accords to cut CO2 emissions. But then he joined Joseph Stalin
in demanding that science fit his bizarre ideology. At the
behest of his petro-backers, including Dick Cheney's
Halliburton, Bush has scorned a global consensus that includes
his primary ally in Iraq, British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Two
of the world's biggest insurance companies, Swiss Re: and Munich
Re:, have issued strong warnings about the skyrocketing costs of
climate catastrophes. Even British Petroleum has voiced concern,
at the same time making massive investments in solar power.
Bush's fossil-nuke energy plan gives huge tax credits for gas
guzzling HumVees, but has cynically stalemated long-standing
green energy tax easements, crippling the once-booming US wind
power industry.
Three years after Bush allowed 9/11, America's 103 atomic power
reactors remain vulnerable to attacks from the air. The first
plane that flew into the World Trade Center could instead have
turned the Indian Point reactors north of New York City into
radioactive infernos. Such an apocalyptic attack could still
happen, killing millions and costing trillions, dwarfing Three
Mile Island and Chernobyl. By doing nothing significant to make
US reactors safer, Bush has painted them with a big terror
bullseye.
Bush is also reviving nuke weapons production and testing,
escalating the likelihood of nuclear war and production
disasters.
After 9/11, Bush lied to the people of New York about the toxic
fallout from the WTC collapses. His cover-up caused countless
avoidable deaths. His assaults on the air, water, food and other
regulatory responsibilities daily poison millions worldwide.
They feed the on-going plague of cancers, lung and heart
disease, childhood afflictions and too much more to catalog
here.
Acid rain and ozone destruction add to the horrors of global
warming, as do Bush's attacks on America's national parks and
public lands.
As history's most environmentally destructive human, Bush's
hate-nature crusade has been blessed by fanatic fundamentalists
who believe destruction of the planet will hasten the Messiah.
James Watt, Ronald Reagan's Interior Secretary, scorned attempts
to preserve the Earth by announcing that Jesus was coming soon
anyway.
Bush spinmeister Karl Rove bans such blunt talk. But his all-out
attacks on environmental protection, fuel efficiency, renewable
energy and much more have already guaranteed an avoidable death
toll unparalleled in human history. The evil winds of climate
chaos now blasting through the Caribbean may soon seem like mild
breezes compared to the ultimate eco-curse of George W. Bush.
Attila the Hun. Genghis Khan. The Kaiser. Hitler. Stalin.
Saddam. Bin Laden. None have killed more than those dying and
destined to die at Bush's anti-green hands. His terror attacks
have driven Mother Earth to the very brink.
Four more years and he just might finish her off---and all of us
with her.
****
Re:
http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0928-12.htm
HARVEY WASSERMAN'S HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES is available at
(
http://www.harveywasserman.com ). He is senior advisor to
Greenpeace USA and the Nuclear Information & Resource Service.
© 1970-2004 The Columbus Free Press
###
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on
this site is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information
for research and educational purposes. For more information go
to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml )
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eyes Wide Shut
by Norma Sherry
There is a very disturbing trend sweeping our nation. Americans,
at least those that are fed up with the lies, with the
manipulation of the news, with the horrors all around us, and
with the precariously dangerous position this administration has
so callously put us in, are furious. Not just frustrated. Not
just angry. But a raging distrust that is incomparable to any
time that has gone before.
Here we are on the precipice of saying adieu to all that we have
known and all that we believed was our birthright: freedom and
dignity. We found ourselves in a war despite the best efforts of
those of us that valiantly argued that it was an unjust war. Our
millions of voices fell on deaf ears and on the cold, merciless
hearts of those who obviously intended to have their way.
Helpless, we read our papers and watched our televisions as the
embedded and in-bed-reporters towed the company line.
We cried as the "compassionate conservatives" hoorayed as our
bombs exploded on helpless mothers and daughters, sons and
fathers, babies and grandparents. They thrilled to the sounds of
Shock and Awe while we bowed our heads and wiped away our tears.
Rush Limbaugh, the self-proclaimed king of conservative radio,
was downright giddy with delight. Night after night on the seven
and 11 o'clock news, they paraded their pretenses for war before
the cameras, before the hopeful parents of the young men and
young women whose lives were needlessly in danger of never
returning home.
Then came that fateful day when George W. Bush dressed in the
gear he worked so hard never to wear in real life and pranced
like a peacock-all puffery and full of fake machismo. "Mission
Accomplished" splayed across the aircraft carrier-and he stood
there beaming and proudly proclaiming we had won! It was a
despicable joke then and it is a worse joke now.
Search as they might, there were no weapons of mass destruction,
not then, not now, not ever-unless they wave that magic wand
and, with debauchery and fakery, they materialize that which was
not there.
We've lost face and we've lost faith. Our leaders, those elected
and those appointed, have betrayed what America supposedly
always stood for: defenders of the downtrodden, defenders of the
law, defenders of justice. Shamelessly, those in power ruled
autonomously with no regard for the arguments of others.
Our citizens who saw the manipulation so clearly from the
beginning are full of anger and disgust. Even now, after we
destroyed a sovereign nation on a lie, George Bush stands before
his loyal followers and says, "He was a bad man. The world is a
better place without Saddam Hussein." And, "after all, he had
the capabilities to create weapons of mass destruction."
The travesty, the sad, ridiculous horror, is that there still
remains a segment of our population that applauds this man and
his actions.
The rest of us grow more fearful, more frightened every day. We
watch, seemingly helpless, as our Bill of Rights becomes a
senseless, useless piece of paper, as our Constitution becomes
null and void. We raise our voices, we take pen in hand and
scribe as eloquently as possible our fears, and still the band
plays on, Hail to the Chief. The trepidations of intellectuals
and historians and everyday men and women grow steadily more
with each new day, with each new proclamation of arrogance by
the men and women who are single-handedly taking us down a path
of no return.
History has a way of repeating itself, we have always been told.
Those who study the past and articulate the past see the signs
of impending doom. Critics point to the depictions of Bush with
a Hitler mustache and a brown shirt as a creation by
over-the-top liberals. The truth, however, is far more
frightening. That word, the word "we," as freedom-loving
Americans, have always shuddered when we heard it, feels and is
fast becoming all too real: Fascism. Fascism is defined as a
system of government with stringent socioeconomic controls,
suppression of the opposition through terror and censorship, and
typically a policy of belligerent nationalism and racism. It is
also characterized by a centralized government ruled by a
dictator.
Does it sound eerily too close to home? If we consider that we
have more Americans out of work and under-employed, with little
or no hope of finding a livable wage-earning job than in any
time in previous history, one might wonder. If we consider this
is due to a government-controlled condition enacted into law
that gives corporations free rein to dissolve as many jobs as
they want, and giving those jobs to third-world workers willing
to work for pennies, one has to consider that there is more
going on than meets the eye, doesn't one have a right to wonder?
Shouldn't we be wondering if what we are experiencing has
something to do with socioeconomic controls?
When the president denounced anyone who wasn't behind him as
"unpatriotic," it gives cause for one to wonder, does it not?
When laws are enacted that are so far-reaching, so powerful that
there is no longer due process, or freedom not to be spied on by
our government, or freedom to have client/attorney privilege or
habeas corpus or due diligence or privacy, then clearly one has
to question what is happening to our freedoms here at home,
doesn't one? Sounds a lot like "suppression of the opposition
through terror and censorship," wouldn't you say?
And when our president stands on the White House steps, or
behind his desk, or in front of a wall of waving-in-the-wind
flags to proclaim that "Any nation that isn't with us" is our
enemy, it looks an awful lot like a policy of belligerent
nationalism and racism.
Regarding the ruling of a nation by a dictator, who doesn't
recall George Bush's comment that it would be "far easier if he
were a dictator," which of course was explained away as "just an
expression." But what an expression it was.
So here we are, frightened in a way we have never been before,
disgusted, and disillusioned. So, what should we do about this
ferocious anger eating a crater in our hearts? We need to put
our fear for own safety on the shelf, for there is no time to
sit by the wayside and pray that the tide will turn, that soon,
any day now the truth of this administration will be clear to
even those who do not see, who do not read, and do not care.
Our only hope is for each and every one of us to become soldiers
for the greater good, to stand up and make our voices heard, to
fight the fight in any way we know how. Clearly, if this
president has his way, in four more years the America of our
youth will be unrecognizable. You know it, I know it, and so
does every freedom-loving citizen of the world. For if we do
nothing, if all we do is lament what we have lost and what is
yet to come, then in the words of George W. Bush himself, "The
evil-doers will have won."
#####
©Norma Sherry 2004. Norma Sherry is co-founder of
TogetherForeverChanging.org, an organization devoted to
educating, stimulating, and igniting personal responsibility,
particularly with regards to our diminishing civil liberties.
She is also an award-winning writer/producer and host of
television program, "The Norma
Sherry Show" on WQXT-TV, Florida. Email Norma at:
norma@togetherforeverchanging.org
Re:
http://baltimorechronicle.com/071604NormaSherry.shtml
(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on
this site is distributed without profit to those who have
expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information
for research and educational purposes. For more information go
to:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml ) |
TwilightWatcher
Forum Founder
|
|
Posted:
Sun Apr 09, 2006 4:27 am Post
subject: The American Culture of Film & Television |
|
|
As part of my sociology
studies of the United States, I examine American television and
film culture with regards to history and current events.
This Maureen Farrell piece from buzzflash.com is a good example
of this type of analogizing…
Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and
the Manchurian Candidate
by Maureen Farrell
"I am
writing this from Frederick, Maryland. I've just been filming,
for Channel 4, a press conference in which the son of a CIA
officer who died in suspicious circumstances presented his
evidence that vice-president Dick Cheney and defense secretary
Donald Rumsfeld were, in 1975, when part of the Gerald Ford
administration, involved in a cover-up of the events surrounding
his father's death. The press conference was due to have been
two weeks ago, but when the son, Eric Olson, called the New York
Times to invite them, they said, "Whoa! Do you really want to
release such complex information to a bunch of journalists
who'll probably screw it up? Let us do it properly instead."
I must try this ruse sometime. It worked on Olson. He postponed
the press conference. The New York Times finally called him and
said, "We missed Watergate because we thought it was just a
small, unimportant break-in." What they seemed to mean was they
believed his evidence but they couldn't decide if it was a huge,
government-toppling White House cover-up of a murder, or a
small, unimportant White House cover-up of a murder, the kind of
stuff that doesn't mean much... "
-- Jon Ronson, The Guardian, August 17, 2002 Re:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,3605,774950,00.html
In the summer of 2003 (back when President Bush was renouncing
the use of torture [New Yorker]
Re:
http://newyorker.com/talk/content/?040517ta_talk_remnick )
author Douglas Valentine
reminded us why blind trust in any government official or agency
has historically been a bad idea. "The
war on terror, and its ‘homeland security’ counterpart are flip
sides of the same coin," he wrote. "They
are the same ideology applied to foreign and domestic policy.
But like CIA agent Alden Pyle in "The Quiet American" (*See
review below), their evil intention is wrapped in a complex
matrix of transparent lies." [CounterPunch.org Re:
http://www.counterpunch.org/valentine08112003.html ]
Drawing uncomfortable conclusions about the Bush
administration’s secret agenda, Valentine also pointed to
Miramax's Vietnam-era love story ("The
Quiet American") which
had been put on hold following Sept. 11 due to its
"anti-American" content --
a
content that wasn’t so much anti-American as anti-CIA. "Horrendous
acts were, for propaganda purposes, often made to look as if
they had been committed by the enemy,"
Valentine
wrote, of the CIA’s brutal
underhanded activities that both the
Quiet American and
history underscore.
More than 40 years ago, another film spawned similar qualms.
United Artists was nervous about releasing
The Manchurian Candidate
because, as screen writer
George Axelrod put it, "They
didn't want to make it because they thought that it was
un-American."
A wildly imaginative political thriller which sprang from
Richard Condon’s
1959 best-selling novel,
“The Manchurian Candidate”
is the story of a brainwashed military veteran who unwittingly
becomes a programmed assassin to further the political ambitions
of his cold and manipulative mother. "Ironically,"
the Washington Post revealed, "it was a phone call from
President Kennedy -- made at [Frank] Sinatra's request -- that
persuaded Arthur Krim, then head of United Artists and also the
national finance chairman of the Democratic Party, to change his
mind and start production.
(An additional irony, which may be more curious than telling but
is entirely in keeping with the tone of the film, is that it was
[director John] Frankenheimer who drove Robert Kennedy to the
hotel in California the night he was assassinated.)" [Washington
Post Re:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/manchuriancandidatehinson
]
First released in 1962, using the Cold War as a backdrop
(and
then taken out of release for decades following JFK’s 1963
assassination), the film has been remade under the
direction of Jonathan Demme
and hit theaters on July 30, 2004. Now set during the first
Gulf War era, the new
version stars Denzel Washington
as Capt./Maj. Bennett Marco
(Sinatra’s role in the original)
and Liev Schreiber as
SSgt. Raymond Shaw (this
time as a Gulf War veteran instead of the Korean war hero
original cast member Laurence
Harvey played). Meryl
Streep, cast as Mrs.
Iselinin (the role that
Angela Lansbury made
unforgettable), has disclosed that to prepare for her
role as Raymond's evil dragon mother, she watched a string of
political talk shows. "Anything with Peggy Noonan [or] Karen
Hughes," Streep told Entertainment Weekly. "It’s hard to get
more hyperbolic than that."
When you peek beneath the
Manchurian Candidate’s
fascinating plotline, however,
you learn that it is
not "just a movie," but
is based upon actual cases of government-sponsored brainwashing,
torture, Nazi collaboration, bizarre interrogation tactics,
biological warfare and cover-ups. And though such an
assessment sounds like paranoid lunacy, a quick study of CIA
operations like MK-ULTRA (mind control), Operation ARTICHOKE
(extreme interrogation) and Operation Paperclip (the Nazis’ role
in exporting both), along with their connection to the murder of
Dr. Frank Olson, reveals otherwise.
In 1950, the U.S. government established the first program to
develop human mind control techniques. Known under a variety of
codenames (most notably MK-ULTRA) throughout its 23 year
history, this program was designed to exert such control,
according to declassified documents, that an individual would do
another's bidding, "against his will and even against such
fundamental laws of nature such as self-preservation." 25 years
later, the Rockefeller Commission uncovered CIA plans for
"programmed assassins" and said that MK-ULTRA led to American
citizens being drugged, kidnapped and tortured on American soil.
[lisatrust.bogie.nl Re:
http://lisatrust.bogie.nl/Media/general-control.htm ]
In 1975, as this information was exposed, the government paid
$750,000 restitution to Army biochemist Dr. Frank Olson's
family, after admitting the CIA slipped Dr. Olson LSD days
before his 1953 fall from a New York City building. When the
Ford administration finally came clean, they promised they'd
revealed everything. Yet key officials, including White House
aides Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, pushed to continue to
conceal information. "The family has learned that the Ford
administration was keeping information from the family," the
Baltimore Sun reported in 2002. "Among those who advocated
keeping quiet were Dick Cheney and Donald H. Rumsfeld, now the
vice president and defense secretary, the Olsons learned from
memos and other papers received last year from the Gerald R.
Ford Library." [FrankOlsonProject.org Re:
http://www.frankolsonproject.org/Articles/BaltSun.html ]
Operation ARTICHOKE, a CIA program that preceded MK-ULTRA,
involved the development of "special and extreme methods of
interrogation," according to declassified documents given to the
family by the late CIA Director William Colby. The chief
architects of the program were also "very concerned with the
problem of disposing of ‘blown agents’ and with finding a way to
produce amnesia in operatives who had seen too much and could no
longer be relied upon." By the time Dr. Olson’s family uncovered
the truth about Olson’s death, the role Operation ARTICHOKE
played became clear. "In these documents the overall context for
Frank Olson’s death is related not to the infamous MK-ULTRA
program for mind and behavior control, as is generally assumed,"
the family reported. "The Colby documents locate Olson’s death
in the context of a CIA operation called ARTICHOKE." [FrankOlsonProject.org]
Both MK-ULTRA and ARTICHOKE grew out of "Operation Paperclip,"
in which Nazi scientists were smuggled into the U.S. to provide
the government with information on everything from rocket
science to germ warfare to torture and interrogation techniques.
This "assimilation of Nazis into the U.S. government," the
National Catholic Reporter explained, also spawned the now
common practice of labeling people of conscience "enemies of the
state." [Findarticles.com Re:
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1141/is_42_39/ai_108838279
]
A German documentary on Operation ARTICHOKE put it succinctly:
"The search for the circumstances surrounding the mysterious
death of Dr. Frank Olson begins in 1945, with the liberation of
the concentration camp at Dachau, Germany." [FrankOlsonProject.org]
In his book, ‘The Search for
the Manchurian Candidate’, author John Marks devoted an
entire chapter to Dr. Frank Olson, describing how Olson felt the
CIA was "out to get him." [DrugLibrary.org Re:
http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/lsd/marks5.htm ] And so,
from Nov. 28, 1953 (the night Olson plummeted from a 13th floor
window at New York’s Hotel Pennsylvania) to 1975 (when the
family was paid restitution for Dr. Olson’s guinea pig role in
the CIA’s mind control/LSD experiments) to 1994 (when Olson’s
body was exhumed), the family was haunted by questions. Finally,
in 2002, when forensic and other evidence came to light, the
Olson murder was solved. "I feel satisfied," Olson’s eldest son
Eric told the Baltimore Sun. "We're where we want to be - we
know what happened."
Reminiscent of the untiring battle the Sept. 11 widows have been
waging to try to unearth the truth about 9/11 inconsistencies
and the stand Nick Berg’s family has taken to draw attention to
the Bush administration's lies regarding Nick’s detention by
U.S. authorities, Frank Olson’s family was courageous and
tireless. Eric Olson, who earned a Ph.D. in psychology from
Harvard, became mesmerized by subjects such as brainwashing,
survivor psychology and Nazi experiments on humans, which he
rightly sensed, had something to do with his father’s demise.
In 2002, all of the pieces fell into place. Dr. Frank Olson, it
was discovered, ran the Special Operations Division at Fort
Detrick, which, in addition to dealing with anthrax and mind
control research, was involved in "assassinations materials
research," "biological warfare experiments in populated areas"
and "terminal interrogations." Dr. Olson did not commit suicide
due to a nervous breakdown, as the family was originally told,
nor did he commit suicide because of a reaction to LSD, as they
were told in 1975. Dr. Olson, who was posthumously outed as a
CIA agent, was simply a man who knew too much. During an August
2002 press conference, the family spelled it out:
1. "The death of Frank Olson on November 28, 1953 was a murder,
not a suicide.
2. This is not an LSD drug-experiment story, as it was
represented in 1975. This is a biological warfare story. Frank
Olson did not die because he was an experimental guinea pig who
experienced a "bad trip." He died because of concern that he
would divulge information concerning a highly classified CIA
interrogation program called "ARTICHOKE" in the early 1950’s,
and concerning the use of biological weapons by the United
States in the Korean War.
3. The truth concerning the death of Frank Olson was concealed
from the Olson family as well as from the public in 1953. In
1975 a cover story regarding Frank Olson’s death was
disseminated. At the same time a renewed cover-up of the truth
concerning this story was being carried out at the highest
levels of government, including the White House. The new
cover-up involved the participation of persons serving in the
current Administration."
"These documents show the lengths to which the government was
trying to cover up the truth,'' Eric Olson said, regarding memos
that uncovered Cheney and Rumsfeld’s role in perpetuating the
deceit. "For 22 years there was a cover-up. And then, under the
guise of revealing everything, there was a new cover-up.''
[Mercury News Re: ]
The London Sunday Express blared the headline: "Scientist Was
Killed to Stop Him Revealing Death Secrets; So Did Cheney and
Rumsfeld Cover Up a CIA Assassination?" [FrankOlsonProject.org]
while the Guardian picked up where other U.S. publications did
not. "This story is clearly less fun, and a lot more scary, than
a CIA-LSD suicide, and it hasn't received nearly as much
coverage," Jon Ronson wrote. "Few of the journalists who
attended yesterday's press conference are following up the
evidence Olson presented. Instead they've written about Olson's
"healing process" and his "closure".
Frank Olson’s legacy, for anyone willing to study it, goes
beyond the Manchurian Candidate and implicates the U.S.
government in crimes that surpass mind manipulation and run of
the mill assassination. In fact, Olson’s case is reportedly
included in the assassination curriculum of the Israeli Mossad
as "a successful instance of disguising a murder as a suicide."
But even still, the Olson saga reveals the underlying truth
behind the fiction. In 2000, before conclusive evidence
regarding Olson’s murder was uncovered, G.Q. explained the Frank
Olson/CIA/ Manchurian Candidate connection this way:
"By 1950 Frank Olson had begun expressing moral misgivings about
his work [at Fort Detrick] to his wife and a few of his
colleagues. Presumably, he was aware of the division’s
experiment in late 1950 to assess the efficacy of certain
bacterial strains on human beings. The group released live
bacteria over San Francisco. Several people complaining of
flulike symptoms rushed to Bay Area hospitals, and later a
number of delayed deaths were attributed to the test. . .
Experiments in mind control became a special fascination in
espionage circles in the early 1950s, when the term brainwashing
was coined. Rumors had spread that North Korea and the Soviet
Union were developing mind-control techniques that could
reprogram a person so he would betray state secrets and carry
out political assassinations-a story told in the movie "The
Manchurian Candidate." In fact, the North Koreans did
perform medical, psychological and drug experiments on 900
American prisoners of war, according to documents declassified
in 1996. After the tests, the prisoners were reportedly
executed.
Given such a grave backdrop, the CIA sought new methods of
interrogation. In 149 separate mind-control experiments,
researchers used hypnosis, electroshock treatments and drugs,
including marijuana, morphine, Benzedrine and mescaline. Test
subjects were usually people who could not easily
object-prisoners, mental patients and members of minority
groups-but the agency also performed many experiments on other
people without their knowledge or consent." [
http://www.FrankOlsonProject.org ]
A trip to the Frank Olson Legacy Project Web site unearths a
world of pertinent information. There is an article from the New
Yorker entitled "Where the
Manchurian Candidate Came From" and another from the New
York Times, asking, "What did
the CIA do to Eric Olson’s Father?" There is information
on "terminal interrogations" and "collaboration with former Nazi
scientists" as well as a 1950s-era CIA assassination manual
regarding "the contrived accident'' as "the most effective
technique" of secret assassination. [FrankOlsonProject.org]
In fact, the Web site provides one-stop shopping for anyone who
wants to know the kinds of things the government doesn’t want
you to know. But be forewarned, after reading through the
research, you won’t view the torture at Abu Ghraib, or Donald
Rumseld’s reported role in approving unorthodox interrogation
methods in quite the same way. [New Yorker Re:
http://newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact ] And,
relevant or not, news that Nick Berg once worked on a tower in
Abu Ghraib will, at the very least, raise an eyebrow. [Guardian
Re:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-4083599,00.html
]
Moreover, you’ll begin to see that some questions are not, as
some would have you believe, the result of an overactive
imagination. As the German documentary Code Name ARTICHOKE
explained in August 2002: "Eric [Olson] finds himself wondering
about a lot of things. Was the anthrax terrorist one of our own?
Is that the reason he hasn’t been caught? Because he knows
something no one else should find out about? A secret his father
knew, too?"
Certainly, after studying Olson’s case it’s clear: What was once
the province of kooky conspiracy buffs has been proven to be
grounded in fact. And, in addition to questions regarding the
Oct. 2001 anthrax attacks, others surface: Why did George W.
Bush and members of the White House staff begin taking the
antibiotic Cipro on Sept. 11, weeks before the anthrax attacks?
[Washington Post Re:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A15269-2002Jun7?language=printer4
]; How significant were Dr. David Kelly’s concerns that he'd be
"found dead in the woods"?
[BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/3170593.stm ];
Did Dr. Don Wiley’s death have anything to do with other
scientists who have died under mysterious circumstances? [Globe
and Mail
Re:
http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/ArticleNews/printarticle/gam/20020504/UMURDN
]; And why, as the Christian Science Monitor reports, is there a
"deliberate effort to kill scientists," intellectuals and human
rights activists in occupied Iraq? [Christian Science Monitor
http://csmonitor.com/2004/0430/p11s01-woiq.html]
These questions aside, once you absorb the hidden history behind
the Manchurian Candidate
and compare that with today’s headlines, you can’t help but feel
that this is one of the weirdest moments in modern history. And,
to make matters weirder,
Michael Moore’s "Fahrenheit
911" (which also hit a bump along the distribution road)
promises to draw attention to everything from Iraq-related lies
to Bush and bin Laden-related oddities. [BBC Re:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/3719261.stm ]
We’ve been through dark times, before, of course, and "Apocalypse
Now" remains the seminal cinematic record of the Vietnam
era. But though that movie was based on
Joseph Conrad’s
Heart of Darkness, it
too has a CIA-related twist. "Some
say Tony Poe (Anthony Poshepny) was the model for the Col. Kurtz
character of the film Apocalypse Now," former UPI
reporter Richard S. Ehrlich wrote in Poe’s 2003 obituary, before
revealing the horrors, the horrors of Poe’s CIA career.
(According to the obituary, Poe tossed human heads from
airplanes, offered ransom for human ears, and encouraged
fighters to stick decapitated heads on spikes. "Poshepny grew
angry at Washington's attempts to control his activities,"
Ehrlich wrote. "So he sent a bag filled with human ears to the
US embassy [in Laos] to prove his guerrillas were killing
communists"). For his troubles,
Tony Poshepny won the Central Intelligence Agency's highest
award -- a CIA Star -- from directors Allen Dulles, in 1959, and
William Colby, in 1975. [Bangkok Post Re:
http://www.geocities.com/glossograph/laos0307ciaposhepnybp.html
]
All this subtext and secret history, of course, is what adds to
the overall movie-viewing experience. Moreover, whether talking
about the Quiet American or the Manchurian Candidate,
understanding America’s seedy underside is the first step in
trying to fix it.
But uncomfortable truth is not for everyone -- and "love of
country" means different things to different people. And so, for
those who favor love that is both rigid and blind [BuzzFlash Re:
http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/2002/09/05_Stepford.html
], Frank Oz’s remake of The
Stepford Wives hit theaters a month later.
Re:
http://www.buzzflash.com/farrell/04/05/far04017.html
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Review: "The
Quiet American"...
BuzzFlash Recommendation
If you recall, this film was set
to be released by Miramax in the fall of 2001. But after 9/11,
Miramax decided that it would be "unpatriotic"
to allow Americans to see "The
Quiet American."
Why? Because this exquisitely made film, based on the
novel by Graham Greene,
reveals the futility of
American intervention in grassroots uprisings against occupying
forces.
No, it doesn't take place in
Iraq. It is a film that
lushly portrays the doomed love affair between a fading British
journalist and a Vietnamese "dance hall" girl, during the
earliest days of American intervention in Southeast Asia.
Because it ultimately reveals the treachery and corruption that
lurked just beneath American assertions that they were trying to
"save"
the Vietnamese, Miramax
thought that the film was too "anti-American"
to release in the wake of 9/11.
Nothing could be
further from the truth.
It was only due to a
resolute personal campaign waged by the film's star,
Michael Caine, that the
film finally was shown in movie theaters.
When we recently saw the film on
DVD, we were struck by its
elegant cinematography, exotic setting, masterful acting and
superb script. Led by
Caine's brilliant performance, the film is gripping and
haunting as its mystery unfolds.
Why are we offering "The Quiet
American" on BuzzFlash?
Because it is first class movie making set against the
background of America's first steps into the Vietnam War --
first steps that
metaphorically reveal the futility of the Bu$h Cartel's
undertaking in Iraq.
The details may differ, but the
fundamental hubris, dishonesty and naivete that marked our
entrance into Vietnam presaged the folly of the
Bu$h/Cheney occupation of Iraq.
This is not a didactic film,
however. It is superb
cinematic storytelling.
Re:
http://www.buzzflash.com/premiums/04/04/pre04005.html
Australian director Phillip
Noyce, best known for major Hollywood action thrillers ("Patriot
Games," "Clear and
Present Danger"), has returned to the tone of his
earlier, more human-scale works like "Heatwave"
and "Newsfront." "The
Quiet American" is a graceful, contemplative film that
gradually and artfully draws us into a world where the personal
and the political get fatally intertwined.
Shot in Saigon by Hong Kong-based Australian cinematographer
Chris Doyle, Noyce's
remake certainly looks beautiful, although
Mankiewicz had the
undoubted advantage of filming there before the Vietnamese
phoenix ("phuong") had
fallen into the furnace, or risen from the rubble. Any
Australian of Noyce's age has friends who died in Vietnam (because,
unlike Britain, Australia allowed itself to be browbeaten by LBJ
into sending troops), so there is no doubting his
commitment to the material, and to preserving Greene's baleful
vision. He has made a good-looking, intelligent stab at the
novel, mildly undermined by a tendency to seek contemporary
relevance, including a redundant montage of Fowler's supposed
dispatches between 1952, when the novel ends, and 1965, when the
U.S. Marines arrived. No doubt the American right will have a
field day disinterring then re-burying Greene and his powerful
demolition of American adventurism, but if
The Quiet American stirs
fresh debate about the unintended consequences of intervention
abroad, it will have served its purpose admirably.
Film reviewer Jeffrey Wells wrote about it in 2001: Phillip
Noyce's ("Patriot Games",
"Clear & Present Danger")
"The Quiet American",
a metaphorical, politically
charged drama about a romantic triangle in early 1950s Vietnam,
is easily one of the
best films I've seen this year, and unquestionably one of the
finest adaptations of a Graham
Greene novel ever brought to the screen — right up
there with "The Third Man"
and "Our Man in Havana."
But Miramax Films honcho Harvey
Weinstein was hedging about releasing it in '02, perhaps,
according to Noyce, over concerns that the film's purported
anti-American tone might strike an adverse chord with audiences
still smarting from the shock waves of September 11.
That's the situation in a nutshell, according to Noyce, and
that's regrettable. Actually,
it's kinda lame.
I discussed "The Quiet American"
for an hour or so with a colleague on Wednesday evening after
seeing it at Miramax headquarters, and September 11
reverberations never even occurred to us. When Noyce told me
about the September 11 factor Thursday morning, it was like ...
what? This is not a strident political drum-beater, although
politics are certainly part of it. And yet a staunchly
apolitical viewer could watch it and say it's about sex,
jealousy, and sugar daddies by way of The Scent of Green Papaya.
It's about Vietnam, yes, and the destruction that Americans like
Brendan Fraser's Alden Pyle,
guided by dogged anti-Communism
and a belief that ends justify ruthless means, visited upon it.
But the core story is about an
older man — Michael
Caine's Thomas Fowler, a London Times reporter based in
Saigon — who's in love with a young Vietnamese girl (Hai
Yen Do) and is trying to keep Pyle, his romantic rival,
from taking her from him, which Fowler believes would be "the
beginning of death."
What does this have to do with the national nightmare that
rocked our psyches over three years ago, except for the fact
that American policy has inspired hate in third-world countries?
Is there anyone out there who still has his or her head in the
sand about this?
"The Quiet American's"
obvious political metaphors —
Fraser is
arrogant America, Caine is old-world colonialism, Hai Yen Do is
Vietnam itself — work hand-in-hand with the romantic
current, and never, in my view, overwhelm the import, which is a
mix of many things. The film is
about texture as much as "meaning."
There are residues of sadness, regret, Asian sensuousity — you
can feel the Vietnamese aromas and tropical humidity in every
scene. The painterly photography by
Chris Doyle ("In
the Mood for Love") is to die for.
Christopher Hampton's
screenplay (fortified by voice-over narration written by
producer Anthony Minghella)
is concise and, at times, near-poetic.
This movie is not a commercial
slam-dunk — it's a haunting, adult, carefully measured piece —
but the caliber of the work that went into it deserves a
commercial run and a run at Oscar nominations (certainly for
Doyle
and especially for
Caine,
whose performance as
the aging, love-struck Fowler
is not only one of his best ever, but pays off in much richer
and more flavorful ways than his Oscar-winning turn in
The Cider House Rules).
A Miramax spokesperson
denied that September 11 echoes were a factor in determining the
release plans in 2002. "Our
plan is to release [The Quiet American] in the U.K. in November,
and have it play various festivals this fall, before determining
an optimal release schedule for the U.S," he said. "We
haven't made the determination yet."
"The Quiet American"
begins with
a beautiful picturesque view of Saigon at night. In the
background we see small flashes of light that grow bigger and
bigger by the minute until we realize that there is battle
raging in the distance. It is 1952 and the French are losing the
war for Indo-China. A body is found in the river.
Michael Caine
is called in to identify the
young man, a "quiet
American"
according to him. The
film then goes into flashback mode as we see how both the
American, named
Alden Pyle,
and Michael
Caine's character, Thomas Fowler, come to this point.
Thomas Fowler is a
cynical aging journalist stationed in Saigon living with a young
Vietnamese lover. He meets
Alden Pyle in a outdoor restaurant at the Continental
Paradise Hotel where Fowler regularly eats breakfast. Pyle
introduces himself as a medical doctor working with the American
Economic Ministry assisting the Vietnamese with combating eye
disease. He has an aw shucks attitude about him, and he is
reading a book called
Dangers to
Democracy. He is a fan of Fowler's writing, and manages
to gush about his book and anti-Communism.
Later on Pyle meets Fowler's lover and falls in love with her.
Fowler is married and his wife will not give him a divorce to
marry Phuong, his lover. Phuong's sister, ever the blatant gold
digger in this film, begins to see Pyle as a richer, and more
likely to marry, alternative to Fowler.
A love triangle develops between the three, and ironically, not
just between Fowler and Pyle fighting over Phuong, but also
between Phuong and either one of them. You see Fowler and Pyle
become friends in the film. Even at the most painful moments
between these two men there is some bond of kinship between
them. Double crosses, triple
crosses and truths are revealed throughout this film. I
want to avoid my usual litany of spoilers at this point because
this film doesn't fall into the category of I might as well just
tell you the whole movies and save you ten bucks.
All along, Fowler and Pyle’s pissing match over Phuong
rightfully overshadows the engaging political/military subplot
until the war works its way into the heart of Saigon with
explosive fashion. That’s when the mystery begins to unravel at
a fevered pace, and American draws us in completely. Quiet is a
strong drama. You’ll want to sing its praises loudly.
The screenplay, by Christopher Hampton and Robert Schenkkan,
downplays the heavy allegorical aspects of Graham Greene's
source novel in favor of the romantic triangle.
The Quiet American is
primarily a tragic love story set against the backdrop of the
beginnings of the turbulent conflict that would devastate much
of the small Asian country. We see the roots of the Vietnam War,
and have no trouble understanding that the United States' rabid
win-at-all-costs struggle against the Devil of Communism led to
bad alliances and shortsighted determinations.
It also works wonders with the two leads. I've been unimpressed
with Caine's recent work, but his performance here is an
absolute mindblower, invoking the same sort of daring that made
him a star in the first place. He tinges Fowler's well-worn
survivor with tattered shreds of morality, suggesting a man
who's seen the worst and hasn't quite been extinguished by it.
Fraser is effective as well, pulling a calculated turn on his
"sweet lug" persona that catches us off-guard. Both men work
very well together, and maintain good chemistry with Yen, who
exudes mystery without succumbing to the Flower of the Orient
cliché with which her character flirts.
The acting, by the male leads, is superlative. Michael Caine,
who is being mentioned as a possible Oscar nominee, brings a
sad, world-weariness to his portrayal of Thomas. The aging
newspaper writer wants nothing more than to spend the rest of
his days going through the comfortable routine of his daily life
spent in the company of the one woman he truly loves. "If
I lost her," he comments, "it
would be the beginning of death." Meanwhile, Fraser
trades in on his reputation for playing affable, somewhat
innocent characters, to trick us into thinking that Alden is
more straightforward than he actually is.
This is as fine a drama and war
film as I have seen in a long while.
Michael Caine gives one
of his best performances, and
Brendan Fraser is well juxtaposed as the naive American
to the cynical, yet worldly Brit. For
Brendan Fraser's
character, Alden Pyle,
represents America during the early days of the Cold War. Naive,
bumbling and not quite understanding the cultures in which he
has come into contact with. He spouts slogans and sees the world
through the prism of what sounds like a third grade history
book. We're ok because we're not "colonialists." In his quest
for "saving" the Vietnamese he comes to undertake great evil for
the "bigger picture." His quest to naively save
Phuong from a life with
Fowler who will never
marry her, yet causes a great deal of pain to both,
mirrors the American
experience in Vietnam.
Cain gives us every agonizing detail of
Fowler's life, and his
own uncertainty as to whether or not he has done the right thing
in the end.
Brendan Fraser gives one
of his better performances as
Pyle.
Although, I would not go giving him any gold statues for his
endeavor here. It is Michael
Cain who drives this film.
However, Fraser plays well off of Cain's Fowler, and, when it
comes to it, even in the end his naivety never lets up.
The one thing that really struck me with
Noyce's directing,
though, was the subtely with which the story unfolds. We know
when we first lay our eyes on
Pyle
that
something is just not right with this guy. And we can
begin to figure out who and what he really is as the film goes
on, but he is slowly revealed to us in little details.
Noyce never shoves it in our
face, or blatantly tip his hand too early. We start out really
liking this guy, but in the end are happy to see him get whacked.
His brand of ne'er do well comes from a sense of self
righteousness rather than maliciousness.
In many ways, this makes him
even more dangerous.
The actress who plays Phuong
is absolutely gorgeous, and she plays the character as a bit
dependent and child-like. Her greatest fear is to end up like
the other Vietnamese girls who have French boyfriends who
promise to take them home to France but then disappear at the
airport. Yet, underneath it all we never doubt that her love is
genuine.
The film itself graphically
depicts scenes of genocide and war. It doesn't pull its punches
from the atrocities of bombings. Interestingly enough,
early in the film, Fowler
finds the sounds of grenades going off as no big deal. As he
deals with the pain arising from his love triangle with
Pyle does he come to
empathize with the people around him. This is very nicely
contrasted with Pyle
when, during a bombing in the city,
Fowler is running around
trying to help people, while
Pyle just tries to wipe the blood off of his trouser leg
oblivious to the events except when to make sure they're
photographed for the
Congressional Appropriations Committee back home.
The Quiet American
strikes hardest, however, when it reminds you how pertinent its
dynamics remain. Fifty years after the fact, the world's
political situation seems little different, and Noyce brings out
the allegory with remarkable skill. Though a superfluous closing
sequence gilds the lily, the point is sharp and inescapable.
Pyle's rhetoric, half a century old, still appears every day on
CNN: Good vs. evil; right vs. wrong; the United States
determined to show the rest of the world the way. And
The Quiet American, like
its protagonist, is softly outraged by the hubris of it all.
I really recommend this film to
anyone interested in drama and war films.
The French period in Vietnam is
one that hasn't been fully explored in American cinema, and it
is a good companion piece to the other films in this genre.
It also works well as a
love story, a mystery and a spy film.
************************
Note: Another excellent
John Frankenheimer film
to check out is "Seven Days in
May".
Adapted by Rod Serling
from the best-selling novel by
Fletcher Knebel and Charles Waldo Bailey II,
Seven Days in May was
allegedly inspired by the far-right ramblings of one
General Edwin Walker.
Although dialogue-heavy for a thriller, it remains an effective
slice of cold war paranoia, with echoes of the
Cuban missile standoff
that may have been absorbed from Frankenheimer's friend,
Robert F. Kennedy.
Writer Rod Serling, who
lived for this sort of thing, presents just about every angle of
every conceivable argument with articulate fervor, creating
characters with complex, contradictory notions about loyalty,
duty and honor.
Director John Frankenheimer
is no stranger to movies about espionage and conspiracies. He
had just finished the successful "Manchurian
Candidate" when in 1964 he decided to film Fletcher
Knebel and Charles Bailey's best-selling novel, "Seven
Days in May." He assembled an all-star cast--Burt
Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Fredric March, Ava Gardner, Edmond
O'Brien, Martin Balsam--got the best screenwriter he
could find--Rod Serling--and
hired Jerry Goldsmith to
do the music. The result is the best conspiracy-theory movie
ever made.
Frankenheimer crafts wonderful, iconographic shots that set the
mood with a single image. Check out the beautifully complicated
shot in Chapter 12, where Casey (Kirk Douglas) ducks down to
hide behind a car, while we see reflected in the car’s square
window a bright rectangular doorway with a dark figure coming
through it. Jerry Goldsmith’s score is something to savor, tense
and haunting, without ever swamping the dialogue, the ambient
track or the mood.
It is quite interesting going back and watching a film such as "Seven
Days In May." As the director states on the commentary
track, this is a movie that could not be made today for several
reasons. In this age of lightning fast media, such a military
coup would be near impossible to mount, much less carry out.
This aside, it is remarkable how
well "Seven Days in May"
holds up today. The film crackles with energy and
tension. Frankenheimer's style of direction is perfect for this
film, from the deep focus, wide-angle shots to the low camera
angles that heighten impact, the film is a testament to the
abilities of this great filmmaker.
For as effective as Frankenheimer's work behind the camera is,
it is Serling's terse, taunt dialogue that lets the film soar.
Characters sound like real people, not mouthpieces, and
everyone's motivations and reasons for action are explored.
There are no cardboard cutouts here. For those of you out there
who only associate Serling with "The
Twilight Zone," & "Night
Gallery" well, you are advised to watch this film and see
what a master can really do. Taken out of context and put into
today's cynical, faster than lightning media, many of the
speeches will seem dated, but to me they ring with a core belief
in the American system of government and true sense of honor and
dignity.
"Seven Days In May" also
benefits from strong work from its "A" list cast. As the
informer, Colonel Martin "Jiggs"
Casey,
Kirk Douglas
(“There Was a Crooked Man”,
“Spartacus”, “Paths
of Glory”), shows why he was one of the most sought after
leading men of his day. This is one of his best performances.
Even when doing things he finds morally distasteful, Douglas has
his character maintain his focus and his cool. Never thinking
himself the hero, his character does what he needs to, all for
love of country and flag. It is solid, sturdy work from an actor
in his prime.
At the opposite end is
Burt
Lancaster (“Airport”,
“Field Of Dreams”, “Atlantic
City”, “Elmer Gantry”)
as America's would be savior,
General Scott. Giving a well-textured performance that
never lapses into stereotype, Lancaster convinces us that he
believes all his rhetoric. It is his own solid belief in
everything he says and his force of conviction, not to mention
the actor's own magnetism, which makes us accept the idea of so
many people blindly marching with him into a ring of treason.
Lancaster is long one of my favorite actors and the work here
only contributes to my belief in his talent.
In the middle and as the person who moved all these players into
position is
Frederic March (“Inherit
The Wind”, “The Man In
The Grey Flannel Suit”, “The
Best Years Of Our Lives”) as
President Jordan Lyman.
With having the benefit of almost 40 years of history since this
film was made, Lyman constantly reminded me of
President Jimmy Carter.
Lyman is a man of deep convictions and of high moral fiber, a
man unafraid of putting what he perceives as the best thing for
his country over the best thing for politics. More than willing
to accept the wrath of public opinion, this old lion is
unwilling to see the government he holds so dear taken by force,
and the constitution he so loves trashed in the name of
difference of opinion. In one of the last great performances of
a long and distinguished career, March is wonderful. Serling
saves his most floral and elegant prose for Lyman and March
pulls it off with all the power and dignity one could imagine.
Always human and flawed but still with that core belief of what
is right and what is wrong, March keeps his character real and
never lapses into melodrama. He provides the film with its moral
compass and does not fail to see it home.
"Seven Days in May" also
has a couple of the best character actors of the day in support.
Martin
Balsam (“All the
President's Men”, “Little
Big Man”, “Psycho”)
and Edmond
O'Brien (“The Wild Bunch”,
“The Man Who Shot Liberty
Valance”, “Fantastic
Voyage”) are great as Lyman's two top advisors. Again
taking what could be clichéd roles and making them real, both
actors help the film tremendously.
We tend to forget just how good Lancaster and Douglas were as
actors, sometimes only remembering their more superficial and
flamboyant roles. Here, working together, they are in perfect
harmony--Lancaster unflinching, cold as steel; Douglas stalwart
yet vulnerable. Frankenheimer develops edge-of-the-seat tension
as the movie progresses.
The "Seven Days" of the
title refers to the time Jiggs and the President have to foil
Scott's plan. The hours and days are marked off in virtually
every scene, just as Fred
Zinnemann kept such assiduous track of time in "High
Noon." For "Seven Days
in May" I advise you to get your popcorn ready and do
your business in the bathroom before the lights go out, because
once underway you won't want to pause the film for a second.
Incidentally, it is a measure of how far our politicians have
come that in this film, made almost forty years ago, the
nation's leader has qualms about using Scott's sexual
indiscretions against him. Today, politicians wouldn't hesitate
for a moment to use any means at their disposal to destroy an
opponent.
It is rare when a film can be thrilling without being action
packed or full of gunfire and quippy one-liners. “Seven
Days in May” is indeed one of those rare films. It
thrills with words, execution and ideas. The movie moves with a
swiftness and grace that is a testament to the skill of all
involved and it's a film that really deserves the moniker "classic."
"Seven Days in May" is
everything a good, taut, riveting conspiracy movie should be. No
matter how contrived it may seem in retrospect, during the
watching of the film every scene rings true, every character
behaves rationally, every detail seems right. With superb acting
and a minimum of political posturing, the movie has served as a
model for every film of its kind that has come after it.
Unfortunately, not many other films have measured up to the
prototype. The story was even remade for television in 1994 as "The
Enemy Within," failing to match its predecessor's
excitement or suspense. Go with the original and see what good
filmmaking is all about.FROM:
http://www.forumspring.com/americanpolitic/viewtopic.php?t=2&mforum=americanpolitic |
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