Plagiarize This!

Sub-Human Rights

2006-12-01T10:18:00.001-08:00

The single biggest reason "why they hate us" -- at least until we invaded Iraq -- was the U.S.'s FINANCING of Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, which has been going on more or less continuously since 1948.

We're supposed to believe that there is some kind of inherent "anti-semitism" (anti-Jewishness) in the Islamic world. But "anti-semitism" over the centuries was a CHRISTIAN phenomena, not Arabic. There was virtually no Arabic anti-semitism UNTIL Israel was created and proceeded to systematically murder, displace, starve, and imprison the Palestinians who had been there for many centuries. They now have effectively been driven into the equivalent of American Indian Reservations, where even there they are not safe.

Or, if you prefer, they've been herded into "Bantustans," the phrase used in the infamously racist South African regime for the ghettoes into which the native Africans were herded and kept.

Anyway, note from the article copied below (and linked) that recently the U.S. for the THIRTY EIGHTH TIME:

" used its veto in the UN Security Council to protect Israel from condemnation for murdering Palestinian civilians in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun."

This topic has been almost literally taboo in the U.S. press. Recently Jimmy Carter, of all people, had the courage to try and break it. ("Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid," 2006). When Carter writes a book about, say, fly fishing, it's big news. But guess what? THIS book, as of yesterday, has NOT BEEN MENTIONED by the NY Times, LA Times, or Washington Post. What are the odds?

Anyway, check this out:

U.S. WON’T CONDEMN MASS MURDER (http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/u_s__won_t_condemn.html)

AMERICA SUPPORTS ISRAEL’S GENOCIDE OF PALESTINIANS

By Richard Walker

On Nov. 11, the United States for the 38th time since 1972 used its veto in the UN Security Council to protect Israel from condemnation for murdering Palestinian civilians in the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun.

The deaths of the 19 civilians, who included nine children, four women and six men, all from one family, and the injuring of 40 others came at the end of a five-day Israeli military operation in which a total of 50 Palestinians were killed. The 19 who died were asleep in adjoining homes when Israeli artillery shells blew apart their dwellings.

The UN resolution condemning Israel for the atrocity had the support of nine members of the 15-member Security Council. Britain, Denmark, Japan and Slovakia abstained, but the United States used its veto power to prevent the resolution’s passage.

Aside from a condemnation of Israel, the resolution called for the withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Gaza.

There had been several drafts of the resolution offered. The final one also condemned Hamas, calling for an end to the firing of rockets into Israeli territory.

Still, U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton (right) claimed the last
draft was “one-sided and politically motivated.” He complained that it did not use the term “terrorism” to describe the Palestinian government of Hamas.

French Ambassador to the UN Jean Mar de Sabliere said he was disappointed by America’s decision because the final draft resolution was a balanced one. Even the word “massacre” had been removed to make it more palatable to the United States and Israel.

Arab observers were quick to assail Bolton’s use of the veto, describing it as a deliberate attempt to protect Israel. In their view, it sent the wrong message to the Arab world. Moderate Palestinians, who are opposed to Hamas, viewed the U.S. move as yet another example of its lack of concern for the killing of innocent Palestinians and its acquiesence to the Israeli government.

Within the corridors of the UN, America’s heavy use of its veto power to give cover to Israel is regarded as nothing new. Some recent vetoes included a U.S. refusal to pass a resolution condemning Israel for the building of a massive barrier wall. The International Criminal Court in The Hague and major human rights organizations worldwide have described the wall as a criminal act because it splits Palestinian villages and forces some Palestinians off their property.

In 2002, a resolution condemning Israel for the killing of three UN staff in Gaza and the West Bank was blocked by then U.S. Ambassador John Negroponte. In language now familiar in American vetoes he described the resolution as “one-sided and politically motivated” and added that its backers, especially Syria, were more intent on condemning Israeli occupation than protecting UN staff. Negroponte unsuccessfully lobbied Syria to remove a reference to Israel in the resolution and to use generalizations to describe the deaths of the UN staffers.

Most members of the Security Council felt Israel also deserved criticism for blowing up a World Food warehouse containing 500 tons of food in Beit Lahiya in the Gaza Strip. Only five permanent members of the Security Council have a right of vetoBritain, France, China, Russia and the United Statesand while Britain has recently abstained on resolutions condemning Israel the United States has taken the lead in blocking resolutions.

Between 1972 and 1997, for example, the United States vetoed 29 resolutions critical of Israel. Had U.S. officials not done so the total number of resolutions condemning Israel throughout that period would have risen to 95.

The 66 resolutions that were passed in that time frame represented a unique number in UN history. As a rule, Israel has ignored the UN, always certain in the knowledge that its vassal state, the United States of America, will manage somehow to block any resolution that would require Israel to concede territory to the Palestinians or to negotiate on other disputes with neighbors like Syria or Lebanon.

The first U.S. veto in Israel’s favor was cast in 1972 by the then-U.S. Ambassador to the UN George H. W. Bush. A year later, America again blocked a resolution that would have called for Israel to withdraw from Palestinian territories as part of previously recommended UN General Assembly proposal for a Palestinian-Israeli settlement.

Henry Kissinger, as secretary of state, was fond of using America’s veto power, but his record in no way matched that of his successor, George Schultz, during the Reagan years. In fact, the Reagan administration, until this present one, stands alone in blocking 18 UN resolutions critical of Israel. In 1982 alone, Schultz promoted the use of the veto nine times to prevent the UN Security Council from condemning Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, its killing of civilians and its unwillingness to give up parts of south Lebanon that were at the center of the recent conflict.

(Issue #48, November 27, 2006)

"THESE GUYS ARE NUTS"

2006-05-12T09:47:00.000-07:00

by Jim Glover

When Clinton relentlessly bombed the former Yugoslavia (Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovar) throughout much of the 90s, it was, of course, a "humanitarian" intervention.

By pure coincidence, the U.S. also gained a couple of large military bases in a very strategic location just in case there might ever be a war for oil and gas.

Anyway, it turns out our presence there also offers another great opportunity -- to smuggle 200,000 machine guns into Iraq. Or maybe not Iraq, since the 200,000 Kalishnikovs have disappeared. see http://www.guardian.co.uk/armstrade/story/0,,1773106,00.html

It's hard to tell the U.S. from the official terrorists in stuff like this. The "complex web" of firms used includes an air company that was reportedly engaged in diamond smuggling, and others that "were also engaged in illegal arms shipments from Serbia and Bosnia to Liberia and to Saddam Hussein four years ago."

It's also interesting to note that, while the new and improved "international government" of Serbia has tried to disarm the place after its bloody civil wars, none other than the U.S. -- peacekeeper to the world -- has BLOCKED the effort.(see paragraphs 6-8)

Two questions present themselves: where did the guns go, and why? And two answers, I think, are equally likely. One is that they are going to the mysterious Iraqi "death squads" we've heard about. If an occupation is not going well, the fall-back position is to get the occupied people to fight among themselves. The U.S. was so good at this in Central America that it has come to be called the "Salvador Option." It's been talked about for a couple of years now. (see, for example: "John Pilger Detects the Salvador Option," http://www.newstatesman.com/200605080016)

The other possibility is that they are going to the officially-designated terrorist organization that the U.S. has employed in the first phase of our Iran invasion. That would be the "MEK," an acronym for Mujahedeen-e Khalq (see http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/US_military_seen_ready_for_Iran_0511.html ; http://regimechangeiran.blogspot.com/2006/04/tehran-insider-tells-of-us-black-ops.html ; http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/US_outsourcing_special_operations_intelligence_gathering_0413.html).

The last story has an interesting quote regarding the U.S. use of the kind of terror group we're supposedly fighting. An unnamed intelligence source says: "These guys are nuts."

But you can't tell if he's talking about the terrorist group or the Americans employing them.

Bomb, Bomb, Bomb. Bomb Bomb Iran

2006-04-15T16:33:00.000-07:00

In case anyone needs any more examples of the insanity and hypocrisy around the trumped-up “crisis” of Iran enriching uranium, you might enjoy these tidbits:

1. An “Iran-Syria Operations Group (ISOG),” has been set up by Dick Cheney's daughter to engineer regime change in Iran ~ with a direct line to Dick Cheney. Lizzie’s little group is apparently the sister to the infamous “Office of Special Plans” that created the reasons for invading Iraq.

(No word on Lizzie Cheney’s regime change credentials beyond the obvious one.)
(http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_allen_l__060412_cheney_s_secret_iran.htm)

2. When Cheney was Sec Def, he seems to have managed to LOSE several nuke Warheads INTO IRAN. Hey, you can’t make this stuff up. http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn07302005.html

3. Read all about “How the US Supplied Iran with Nuclear Know-How,” By SAUL LANDAU here: http://www.counterpunch.org/landau09092005.html
4. The war on Iran is already underway. Rumsfeld is using a known terrorist group, the “MEK,” as his advance guard. Seehttp: //kurtnimmo.com/?p=333:

5. And finally, our old friends the Brits, loving profits above all, couldn’t resist selling Iran nuke bomb material in 2001.

As the BBC reported:

“British officials have approved the export of key components needed to make nuclear weapons to Iran and other countries known to be developing such weapons.”
“…the Department of Trade and Industry allowed a quantity of the metal, Beryllium, to be sold to Iran last year.”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2275249.stm

Qoute of the Day

2006-04-11T09:56:00.000-07:00

"This is indeed strange history in the making: Western officials who invaded a country, wiped out its mechanisms of order, unleashed pent-up ethnic furies, and indirectly rule it with their military divisions are advising the natives to speed up their grasp of democracy..."

---Rami G. Khouri , editor-at-large of the Beirut-based Daily Star

(see http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/04/06/iraqs_transformation.php)

It's Official: We'll Bomb Iran

2006-04-10T10:09:00.000-07:00

Well, it's now official: the smirking chimps in the White House are seriously considering not just bombing Iran but NUCLEAR bombing Iran. (see http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060417fa_fact )

This has been rather widely known for a couple of years but as usual the "journalists" at the corporate news shops have ignored it. But now it's official because Seymour Hersh wrote it in the most recent NEW YORKER.

And so the Bomb Iran question has changed. It's no longer, Will we? It's, Will we use nukes or "conventional" bombs (that are nearly as destructive as nukes)?

This seems to pass for sane, rational discussion in the New Millennium USA.

Aside from the obvious irony of nuking a country because they MIGHT be going nuclear,a couple of other points ought to be made:

One is that Iran has every right to develop nuclear energy if it cares to. That right is recognized in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that Bush, Condoleeza, and others love to cite. Yet the U.S. is trying to stop Iran from doing so because nuclear energy might, conceivably, some day, lead to nuclear weapons.

Second is that the evidence of Iran actually working on nuclear weapons is exactly as strong as that famous "WMD" evidence in Iraq was.

Third is that if Iran does indeed want nuclear weapons (and I would guess they do), they want those weapons AS A DETERRENT from invasion by the U.S. They have seen that the U.S. likes to invade weakly defended countries like Panama, Afghanistan, and Iraq, but shies away form those, like North Korea or China or Pakistan, who could retaliate in spades.

Fourth is that one (but ONLY one)country in the Middle East is allowed to have nukes. That is Israel, which sports (by the most common estimate) some 200 atomic missiles and bombs. If Israel would disarm, its Middle Eastern neighbors would be MUCH more likely to slow down their own military shopping sprees.

Finally, of course, there's the absolute hypocrisy of the U.S. deciding not only which countries should have what kinds of bombs but what kind of energy as well. For as the moral midgets left in charge of the U.S. make such decisions, they also go on their own merry way at home, subsidizing the domestic nuclear industry, improving our own nuclear weapons, and (let's not forget) forging ahead on the development of chemical and biological weapons as well.

This is an empire out of control, out of touch with reality, out of touch with any kind of humane moral system. And just think, we all get to contribute by doing what we've been taught to do best: go along meekly and pay those taxes.

EXTRA! MAN QUESTIONS GOVERNMENT!

2006-04-06T11:18:00.000-07:00

By Jim Glover

EXTRA! EXTRA! READ ALL ABOUT IT!!!

DECORATED VETERAN, NUCLEAR ENGINEER GOES WIGGY

Once-Proud American Questions Government, Tosses Away Reputation!!!

Dr. Robert Bowman is not the kind of guy you'd expect to engage in whacky conspiracy theories. In fact, he's "a man so decorated with medals and honors they could fill a patriotic Christmas tree."[1]

But he apparently has gone off the deep end. He's been saying that the official government story of NINE-ELEVEN is sheep dip.

Here are a few items from whacko Bowman's resume:

-former head of the strategic missile defense program ("Star Wars") under Presidents Ford and Carter

-Lt. Col., USAF, retired.

-flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam.

-recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal (twice), six Air Medals

-Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech.

-chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security.

That's right. He's a whacko!

Bowman finds it hard to believe that a small gang of anti-modernist, religion-crazed malcontents, using laptops in remote mountain caves in Afghanistan, got 19 non-Afghan religious nuts to hijack three planes in the U.S., then perform aerial stunts worthy of the Blue Angels as they flew said planes into three buildings, including the heaviest guarded building in the world, (the Pentagon), while the entire system of U.S. attack protection stood around doing nothing, followed shortly thereafter by the complete collapse of three industrial-grade steel-reinforced buildings because their steel must have melted, even though steel does not begin to melt at anywhere near as low a temperature as smoldering plane fuel does and even though one of the buildings was hit by no plane at all and even though no such building has ever before or since collapsed in such a manner (including several that burned at much hotter temperatures) and even though all three buildings collapsed right into their own footprints in a manner that looked and sounded remarkably like controlled demolitions and even though these attacks resulted in two already-planned invasions of countries that have critical "strategic" interest to the energy and war industries.

This guy's a NUT! What's not to believe? More importantly, who's not to trust? Didn't the White House TELL us who did it, almost immediately? And how? And why?

Are we supposed to suspect our government might not be telling the truth, when their record of truth-telling has been so clearly established in the years since 9/11?

Hey Bowman! What do you take us for? Gullible fools?

Anyway, here's a link to a story about Bowman's whacky theories, and also to another recent article that WOULD be extremely convincing IF -- fortunately -- our government had not already told us what to believe:

And hey! Enjoy World War Three!

[1]http://www.choicechanges.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=521

[2] http://georgewashington.blogspot.com/2006/04/911-7-man-job.html

King's Murder, Like His Message, is Largely Forgotten

2006-04-05T08:24:00.000-07:00

by Jim Glover

The anniversary of Martin Luther King’s murder came and went recently without much notice. It was April 4.

King’s advocacy for black civil rights was tolerated (barely) for many years. But when he came out against the U.S.’s immoral war in southeast Asia, his doom was sealed.

In announcing his war opposition, King said one especially interesting thing. “My own government,” he observed, “is the biggest purveyor of violence in the world.” That fact has since become obvious to most people around the world. Here in the “homeland” (as our government absurdly likes to call the U.S.), we prefer to remain in denial.

The Bush administration has raised the ante with its various war crimes against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan. But we should recall that Clinton bombed Iraq incessantly for eight straight years and imposed sanctions that resulted – by U.N. estimates – in the death by starvation and disease of half a million Iraqi children.

Clinton also signed off on the saturation bombing of Kosovo (part of the former Yugoslavia) that went on for 72 straight days. Over 20,000 tons of explosives were used. That’s more than were used by the Nazis in all of World War II.

We may, and no doubt will, continue to pretend that our government bombs and invades for peace. Some continue to believe that 9/11 justifies everything. But, as King also observed (echoing the voices of such radicals as Jesus of Nazareth and Mahatma Ghandi), “returning violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.”

Jim Glover
202 N. Parrish Lane
Carbondale, IL 62901
618-549-4385

Quote This!

2006-03-29T10:16:00.000-08:00

It's been about two years since the Plagiarize This staff sent out its last "quote of the day." So, okay, we're behind.

But we're inspired by two quotes from our new hero, V (as in the great new Time-Warner film, "V for Vendetta.") So we're sending out a little package of really great quotes. Here they are:

"People should not be afraid of their governments. The governments should be afraid of their people." -- V

"A revolution without dancing is not worth having." -- V

"They've got the guns but we've got the numbers." Jim Morrison

"The only just war is a revolution." Ed Abbey

"A patriot if one who is always ready to defend his country against its government." Ed Abbey

“A very few … serve the state with their consciences..., and so necessarily resist it " Thoreau

“Since when have we Americans been expected to bow submissively to authority and speak with awe and reverence to those who represent us?” William O. Douglas (Supreme Court Justice

"Hierarchical institutions are like giant bulldozers--obedient to the whim of any fool who takes the controls." -- Abbey again

The Constitution's Obsolete

2006-03-27T08:33:00.000-08:00

By Jim Glover

I was surprised to learn today that the Constitution no longer applies at the local level. Apparently Carbondale, Illinois’s City Manager, Jeff Doherty, now has the power to tell city employees who they may speak with, and on what topics. (He recently ordered them all not to talk with DAILY EGYPTIAN reporters.)

I would have thought this would conflict with a certain Constitutional amendment having to do with the right to free speech. But apparently not.

It may be that Doherty is merely trying to keep up with trends. After all, on the Federal level, the Constitution is clearly no longer of any relevance whatever. U.S. citizens such as Jose Padilla may be imprisoned for three years (and counting) without being told what they are charged with. Congress no longer decides when the nation will go to war, but abdicates that decision to one person. And the President, through an innovative approach to legislative “signing statements,” decides for himself which parts of laws he will bother abiding by.

At the State level, we find that government secrecy is all the rage. SIUC recently had no obligation to account for how it spent a nice chunk of cash searching for a President. This was okay, we were told, because such secrecy has become “common practice” at many state universities.

I remember using the “common practice” argument once with me dear Mum. The issue was inhaling smoke from some kind of rolled-up leaves. She then impressed upon me the flaw in my argument. I mistakenly assumed that most others had learned a similar lesson by seventh grade or so.

But complainers should offer solutions. Here’s mine. Let’s stop wasting time and resources teaching the Constitution in schools and colleges. It is no longer relevant, and even if it was, few citizens seem to have the courage to disobey those who abuse it.

We could retrain Constitutional teachers and scholars to teach more important job skills, like predatory capitalism, concentration camp management, and hostile interrogation. We’re going to need a lot more of that.

Jim Glover
202 N. Parrish Lane
Carbondale, IL 62901
618-549-4385 (home)
618-453-4331 (work)

No Surviving Indonesian Left Behind

2006-03-16T10:29:00.000-08:00

By Jim Glover

In case you missed it, the U.S. is giving Indonesia $157 million to improve education there. [1]

This in itself may seem ironic, in light of the condition of our own educational system. But it’s not ironic at all, at least by comparison with the overall U.S. – Indonesia story.

Ever since the Gerald Ford days, when Henry Kissinger brought them a large sack of money and a green light to mass-murder, Indonesia has been hard at work killing, torturing, and rendering homeless several hundred thousand of its own citizens. Or possibly millions, depending on whose estimates you prefer. The carnage has been especially severe on the islands of East Timor, Aceh, and Papua. [3]

According to Condi Rice, however, that’s all over now. Indonesia is well on the road toward – how’d you guess? – DEMOCRACY!

Condi must have missed a report, published just this year, from Human Rights Watch. Here’s what HRW said about Indonesia:

1. Armed forces there “continue to violate international human rights and humanitarian law with impunity.”
2. On Papua, “undisciplined and unaccountable troops [are] committing widespread abuses against civilians, including extrajudicial executions, torture, forced disappearances, beatings, arbitrary arrests and detentions, and drastic limits on freedom of movement
3. Torture by the government is widespread across the country.”;
4. “some of the detainees tortured are children.
5. The country’s executive and judicial branches “regularly fail to address such abuses.” [4]

Final Irony

And now for the final irony. Eight and a half million of the U.S.’s education grant will be for the development of an Indonesian version of “Sesame Street.”
Apparently the Indonesians, though “ready” for democracy (and for plenty of more military hardware), aren’t considered smart enough to develop their own TV puppet shows. Far better to indoctrinate their children with good, quality U.S.-style characters.

But Condi’s optimistic that Elmo (who was right there with her when she announced the grant) and his friends can get them up to speed on puppet character creation. After seeing enough of Burt and Ernie, Condi told an assembled crowd of grade-schoolers, “I'll bet you'll find that you'll start creating some other characters, maybe some characters that would live here in Indonesia.” [5]

What a concept.

[1] http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-english&y=2006&m=March&x=20060314115518tjkcollub0.5414698&t=livefeeds/wf-latest.html

[2] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB62/

[3] http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/indone12273.htm

[4] http://hrw.org/english/docs/2006/01/18/indone12273.htm

[5] http://www.noticias.info/asp/aspComunicados.asp?nid=155112&src=0

Sharks Can Always be Improved

2006-03-02T09:47:00.000-08:00

In a world gone mad, it's nice to know that some good, rational science is taking place that is sure to benefit humankind and the entire planet.I refer of course to the Pentagon's program of improving shark's brains so they can be better spies.

Sure, it costs a few million dollars to improve sharks. And yes, there may be a few slackers in New Orleans going hungry and maybe a few grade schools in places like East St. Louis that might have been able to use that money to buy a furnace or fix their broken windows.

But hey, I've always said, Teach a man to fish and he can eat for a day, but teach a shark to spy and a hundred Pentagon bureaucrats can eat caviar for many days.

Besides that, it's important to remember that while all other human endeavors, like artistic expression, need to be curtailed and controlled, technological research needs to be absolutely unlimited and uncontrolled. It's good for us!

Enjoy the article, from THE INDEPENDENT ON LINE, posted below:

Pentagon develops brain implants to turn sharks into military spies http://www.myantiwar.org/view/74448.html

By Steve Connor, Science Editor

Published: 02 March 2006
Military scientists in the United States are developing a way of manipulating sharks by remote control to turn them into underwater spies or weapons.

Engineers funded by the Pentagon have created electronic brain implants for fish that they hope will be able to influence the movements of sharks and perhaps even decode what they are sensing.

Although both Cold War superpowers have trained sea mammals such as dolphins and killer whales to carry out quasi-military duties, this is probably the first time the military have seriously considered using fish.

The Pentagon hopes to exploit the ability of sharks to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails, according to New Scientist magazine.

"These researchers hope such implants will improve our understanding of how the animals interact with their environment, as well as boosting research into tackling human paralysis," says New Scientist.

But the research also has a military objective. "By remotely guiding sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted," the magazine says.

The neural implants consist of electrodes buried in the fish's brain which can then be triggered by remote control to stimulate specific areas of the animal's central nervous system.

New Scientist says that the project is funded by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Virginia, which is also involved in a number of other research studies investigating the use of electronic implants to monitor or control the movements or behaviour of animals.

Scientists at Boston University have already developed brain implants that can influence the movements of dogfish - members of the shark family - by "steering" them with a phantom odour.

The electrodes are attached to the region of the dogfish brain associated with scent detection. When the stimulus is to the right side of the olfactory centre the fish turn right, when it is left, the fish swim left.

The stronger the signal, the more sharply it turns.

The shark study is also designed to investigate the possibility of monitoring the brain activity of a shark to decipher different patterns of activity that indicate whether the fish has detected an ocean current, a scent or an electrical field.

Military scientists in the United States are developing a way of manipulating sharks by remote control to turn them into underwater spies or weapons.

Engineers funded by the Pentagon have created electronic brain implants for fish that they hope will be able to influence the movements of sharks and perhaps even decode what they are sensing.

Although both Cold War superpowers have trained sea mammals such as dolphins and killer whales to carry out quasi-military duties, this is probably the first time the military have seriously considered using fish.

The Pentagon hopes to exploit the ability of sharks to glide quietly through the water, sense delicate electrical gradients and follow chemical trails, according to New Scientist magazine.

"These researchers hope such implants will improve our understanding of how the animals interact with their environment, as well as boosting research into tackling human paralysis," says New Scientist.

But the research also has a military objective. "By remotely guiding sharks' movements, they hope to transform the animals into stealth spies, perhaps capable of following vessels without being spotted," the magazine says.

The neural implants consist of electrodes buried in the fish's brain which can then be triggered by remote control to stimulate specific areas of the animal's central nervous system.

New Scientist says that the project is funded by the US Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency in Arlington, Virginia, which is also involved in a number of other research studies investigating the use of electronic implants to monitor or control the movements or behaviour of animals.

Scientists at Boston University have already developed brain implants that can influence the movements of dogfish - members of the shark family - by "steering" them with a phantom odour.

The electrodes are attached to the region of the dogfish brain associated with scent detection. When the stimulus is to the right side of the olfactory centre the fish turn right, when it is left, the fish swim left.

The stronger the signal, the more sharply it turns.

The shark study is also designed to investigate the possibility of monitoring the brain activity of a shark to decipher different patterns of activity that indicate whether the fish has detected an ocean current, a scent or an electrical field.

Iraqis Help in U.S. Troop Reduction! -- and Other Absurdities

2006-01-06T10:14:00.000-08:00

by Jim Glover

Looks like Bush's plan for U.S. Troop Reduction in Iraq is working really well. The "insurgents" reduced us by eleven in just one recent day (Thursday) : http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060106/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq;_ylt=ArxTBRnIrVbbbthstxKcoWOs0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTA2Z2szazkxBHNlYwN0bQ--

But we're bringing Democracy and human rights to the region. Except in the Northern third of Iraq that is controlled by the Kurds, where a journalist recently got THIRTY YEARS for criticizing the President:http://electroniciraq.net/news/2245.shtml

Finally, in case you missed it, Pat Robertson is an equal-opportunity lunatic. He said yesterday that Ariel Sharon, who had a massive stroke and may be near death, was being punished by God for being soft on the Palestinians. Sharon once supervised the cold-blooded execution of 2,000 unarmed Palestinian refugees (men, women, and children) in Lebanon [see http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/feb2002/sab-f22.shtml]. But that was way back in 1982. And as you know , with God it's always "What have you done for me lately?"

There's also the fact that Sharon is, I think, pushing 80, and elderly gentlemen have been known to have strokes. But who are we to argue with someone who talks to God?

Pat's story: http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/01/05/robertson.sharon/

Iraqis Don't Count

2006-01-05T08:11:00.000-08:00

by Jim Glover

The recent death of twelve coal miners in West Virginia became an enormous news story. The very day they were dying (January 3), an equally tragic story went virtually unnoticed. That was the death by American bombs of at least nine members of an Iraqi family, and the serious wounding of three more, in the town of Beiji.

Several of the Beiji casualties were women and children. The family’s residence was purposefully targeted because three men who MAY have planted a roadside bomb MAY have gone into it.

I’m not all that sensitive of a guy (you could ask my wife). But for the life of me I do not understand why the continued slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis by American bombs is not much of a story. I can only conclude that it’s because Iraqis don’t really matter – which is ironic considering our stated purpose to “liberate” them from tyranny.

I wonder how we’d feel about the Iraq war if CNN and the others gave just one such bombing as much coverage as they gave to the West Virginia mining disaster. By not providing such coverage, our news agencies help sustain the fiction that the enormous suffering we have caused in Iraq will somehow, some day, have a humanitarian end.

The West Virginia miners died the way they did because they happened to be born on top of a mountain of coal. Tens of thousands of Iraqis are dying violently for a similar reason. They had the misfortune of being born over an ocean of oil.

What’s the difference?

An Open Letter to WSIU Radio Managers:

2005-12-14T13:40:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter to WSIU Radio Managers:

Candis and Lisa,

The article pasted below, titled "NPR Swallows Bush Guestimate on Iraqi Dead," expresses beautifully one reason why I can no longer support so-called public radio, including my local station.

It's not so much the question of how many Iraqis we have slaughtered or caused to be slaughtered. It's NPR's ongoing willingness to accept official stories at face value without doing any real investigating, thus making a joke out of journalism.

It's noteworthy, I think, that the author is not a journalist or professional writer. And her last sentence is worth re-repeating::

"We are an internet-literate audience; we won't tolerate being brainwashed by our own public airwaves. And the drivel you choose to distract us with at these critical times will serve to secure your indictment."

Yours,

Jim Glover

NPR Swallows Bush Guestimate on Iraqi Dead
(http://www.counterpunch.org/hurley12142005.html)

By APRIL HURLEY, M.D.

To: Scott Inskeep
National Public Radio

Dear Mr. Inskeep:

Yesterday, on your National Public Radio Show, Morning Edition, you asked an "expert" to comment on G.W. Bush's evident ignorance. Your stooge pundit, Michael O'Hanlon, was satisfied with George's guestimate that 30,000 Iraqi civilians and combatants have been killed during 32 months of invasion and occupation. He suggested that G.W's figure doesn't include Iraqi crime victims. This proposes a mortality rate for Iraqis from combat alone that is lower than Washington D.C.'s homicide rate during the year of the latest stats, 2002. A war zone also safer than Baltimore, Detroit and New Orleans before Katrina. Perhaps a paid professional at NPR, who isn't busy doing the bidding of a White House propagandist, would wonder what's wrong with this picture and do some minimal investigation. Such as the most globally respected survey, an independent and heroic study on the casualties in Iraq, peer reviewed and published in The Lancet. A curious child could get those US city homicide figures and do the math!

I witnessed Shock and Awe in Baghdad and the tsunami of lies discounting those deaths. The bombing then was brutal and the occupation since has been a serial massacre. Iraq today is our massive Guernica. It is obscene that this war president continues in denial that he has, conservatively, caused the death of 150,000-200,000 Iraqi men, women and kids. And this after, conservatively again, more than 500,000 died under Clinton's promoting of UN sanctions. How can you National Public Radio people live with your complicity in hustling such horrific crimes and distortions about them.

The tangled web of deception spun by NPR must feel like a cocoon for you by now! I am another outraged listener reminding all of you. We are an internet-literate audience; we won't tolerate being brainwashed by our own public airwaves. And the drivel you choose to distract us with at these critical times will serve to secure your indictment.

Increasingly outraged,
April Hurley, MD

The New American Plebians: A letter to the Southern Illinois U. Newspaper, the "Daily Egyptian"

2005-12-01T10:16:00.000-08:00

Dear Daily Egyptian Editor:

Thank you and congratulations for the editorial about decreased federal support for higher education ("Our Word,"Nov. 29). [1]

As you point out, the expensive Iraq War and tax cuts for millionaires are a big factor in this. But you only scratch the surface of what is going on. I'd like to point out just one (of many) profound consequences of our increased militarization and wealth concentration.

As funding for higher education continues to drop, at both federal and state levels, it's more and more difficult for people of modest means to attend college. That leaves the military as virtually their only alternative. And so we have the further entrenchment of a class system. The lower class of ethnic minorities and poor whites increasingly has the job of killing and dying in foreign lands for the further enrichment of the most affluent class -- the CEOs and large stockholders of the oil and "defense" industry. The middle class does not share much of the wealth, but they do get to dodge out of the fighting, and are thus encouraged not to worry much about it.

It's a neat little system, unless you're in that lower, military class, whom we might call the Plebians. That's what they called them during the Roman Empire, which, you might recall, collapsed under the weight of corruption at the top and the high cost of trying to dominate the world.

Jim Glover
202 N. Parrish Lane
Carbondale, IL 62901

[1] http://newshound.de.siu.edu/voices05/stories/storyReader$1215

It's Close, but Rumsfeld Was Most Valuable Liar

2005-11-18T09:34:00.000-08:00

by Jim Glover

It's already been a year and a half since Representative Henry Waxman produced and posted "Iraq on the Record: The Bush Administration's Public Statements on Iraq." [1]

The report documented, among other things, a grand total of 237 different "misleading statements" by the administration's five major dissemblers in their successful campaign to lie the U.S. into the Iraq war and to rationalize the first months of that war.

Many of the lies are directly quoted, such as Dick Cheney's assertion, on March 17, 2002, that "we know they have biological and chemical weapons," and George W. Bush's claim, on October 2,2002, that "the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency."

I thought it might be instructive to analyze the five major liars a bit further, to establish, one might say, the admistration's Most Valuable Liar, or, of course, MVL . Thus the two tables you see below.

In my interpretation, the data do not establish an absolute clear winner. But if I had to cast an MVL vote, I'd have to go with Rumsfeld. As you can see, he was the most effcient liar, averaging 2.26 misleading statements per appearance. That put him nearly a full lie ahead of the least efficient tall tale teller, Colin Powell (1.47 Lies Per Appearance).

Powell's rate of only one and a half lies per appearance might even be inflated, if we take into account his famous speech before the United Nations, in which he was more or less forced to pack a large number of whoppers into that one event. Powell also later reportedly referred to his UN speech as the low point of his career. That would seem to indicate a generally poor attitude toward team lying. Moreover, Powell has since left the team, demonstrating questionable willingness to "stay the course."

To return to Rumsfeld, he also comes through as the most versatile, or perhaps complete, liar. Whereas Rice, for example, nearly specialized in lies about Iraq's nuclear threat, Rumsfeld was strong in all categories of lying. Whatever kind of particular lie was called for, Rumsfeld came through.

In any case, I'll now leave you to peruse and enjoy the tables on your own. As you review them I hope you will appreciate that you are examining the data of greatness. This is some of the most intensive government-team lying ever seen.

Table One: Lies Per Speech:

Bush: 2.04
Cheney: 2.04
Rumsfeld: 2.26
Powell: 1.47
Rice: 1.81

Table Two: Number of Lies Referring to Iraq as an Urgent Threat:

Bush: 4
Cheney: 1
Rumsfeld: 5
Powell: 1
Rice: 0

Table Three: Number of Lies Exaggerating
Iraq's Nuclear Capacity:

Bush: 14
Cheney: 22
Rumsfeld: 18
Powell: 10
Rice: 17

Table Four: Number of Lies Overstating
Iraq's Chemical/Bio Weapons:

Bush: 18
Cheney: 7
Rumsfeld: 21
Powell: 32
Rice: 6

Table Five: Number of Lies Trumping up
Iraq/Al Qaeda Connection:

Bush: 19
Cheney: 21
Rumsfeld: 8
Powell: 7
Rice: 6

Reference:

[1] WWW.REFORM.HOUSE.GOV/MIN
UNITED STATES HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM — MINORITY STAFF
SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS DIVISION
MARCH 16, 2004

An Open Letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

2005-11-14T13:51:00.000-08:00

An Open Letter to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch

By Jim Glover

Dear SLPD:

In your editorial of November 12, you continue to beat up on military whistle-blower Jimmy Massey, who had the temerity to point out that our brave men and women in uniform in Iraq might not be acting as humanely as our mythology would have them do. You conclude by congratulating yourself as follows: “Absolute truth is hard to come by, but as the bloggers bloviate and the blowhards blow, good reporters and good newspapers are out there digging.”

Really?

Perhaps, then, you could answer a few questions that have been bothering me about good newspapers:

1. Why has the Post-Dispatch done more digging into one former Marine’s allegations – which are actually quite consistent with many other stories reported in non-U.S. newspapers – than it did into the far more important allegations that our government was making in the build-up to the illegal Iraq invasion?

2. Why was the Post-Dispatch, for example, not “out there digging” into those statements by Bush, Cheney, Rice at al. about “WMDs” and “stockpiles” of anthrax and “dual purpose” aluminum tubes and “yellow cake” from Niger?

3. Where were your “good reporters” when you acted as if you were nothing more than Tony Blair’s stenographer by passing along his ridiculous fairy tale of Iraq needing just 45 minutes to wreak unspeakable havoc on England?

4. Why did you virtually ignore statements by well-informed dissenters like former weapons inspector Scott Ritter?

5. Why did you never even mention the (well documented) story, reported by Newsweek on February 24, 2003, that Gen. Hussein Kamel, a key Iraqi dissident source used by the Bush war promoters to scare everyone, had also said that all the weapons he told our CIA about had been destroyed? [1] A web search of your archives shows that you were aware of Newsweek’s existence because you passed along other Newsweek stories from that time, such as one about actor Nick Nolte’s drug problem [2], which, it would seem, was more important.

6. Why did you not “dig into” an explanation for why statements about Iraq’s threat to the U.S. changed dramatically soon after 9/11, even before there was a chance of any real new intelligence? (For example, Colin Powell told “Face the Nation” in February 2001 that “We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq….it's been quite a success for ten years.” [3] And Tenet, also in February 2001, told Congress that although Iraq should be always be under suspicion, “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since (Operation) Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs.” [4]

7. Why do you find it appropriate to say in two different articles that Massey outright lied about his alleged U.S. war crimes, yet you never use the L-word in relation to the clearly much bigger and clearly more deliberate lies by our government that led to the destruction of an entire country?

8. Why have you been so reluctant to “dig into” the many other war crimes we have more recently committed and continue to commit every day? Why, for example, did you find it unnecessary to even mention the recent showing on Italian television of a film called “Fallujah: The Hidden Massacre,” which depicts, among other crimes, the burning away of Iraqi civilians’ skin by internationally-banned weapons used by the U.S., and contains damning testimony from other U.S. combatants that sound a lot like what Massey said? [5]

9. Why have you not “dug into” the reports of our troops isolating entire Iraqi cities from the outside world – cutting off their electricity, for example -- and then occupying their hospitals, killing civilians, and destroying as many as two-thirds of residents’ homes, making refugees of hundreds of thousands at a time? [6]

10. Have you decided that the literally thousands of reports of U.S. war crimes in reputable newspapers around the world are ALL merely “bloggers bloviating and blowhards blowing.”

11. Your bashing of Massey has mainly been done by an “embedded” reporter named Ron Harris. [7] Do you honestly feel that government-sanctioned and –censored writers constitute an honorable and trustworthy system of “good reporting” and “good newspaper” work?

12. Your publisher, the once-widely renowned Pulitzer Inc., was gobbled up last June by Lee Enterprises, a Delaware-based corporation that now owns 58 daily papers in 23 states, and nearly 300 other “shoppers” and businesses. According to its web site, five of its six top priorities for 2006 do not include any reference to “good reporting” or “quality journalism.” The exception is the priority of “strong local news.” The priorities do include, however, “grow[ing] revenue creatively and rapidly,” and “exercising careful cost controls.” [8]

May we assume, then, that the purpose of the Post-Dispatch is officially no longer actual journalism, but rather the selling of advertising in the most efficient way possible in order to best enrich the shareholders and upper-level managers of Lee Enterprises?

13. Any thoughts on why so many American readers have indeed lost confidence in their newspapers, and turn instead to bloviating bloggers and on line papers from other, less “developed” countries?

[1] http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1845

[2] http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=list&p_topdoc=31

[3] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5680.htm

[4] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5680.htm;
http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/CIA/CIA-2-23-01.htm.

[5] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10907.htm

[6] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7298.htm; http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m17796&date=14-nov-2005_00:39_ECT

[7] http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/politics/story/51DC19D72A063D2F862570B00067A5B7?OpenDocument&highlight=2%2C%22massey%22

[8] http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/22303156BE628EB2862570AF0079F15D?OpenDocument; http://www.lee.net/index.shtml

Science to the Rescue!

2005-11-09T19:19:00.000-08:00

by Jim Glover

Good news.

A microwave weapon has been developed to curb unruly crowds in Iraq. The invention will enable our brave men and women in uniform to herd unpleasant crowds in whatever direction is deemed to be in their best interests by American generals. And this is crucial, as “concern mounts over the growing number of civilians killed in fighting.”

It seems the weapon shoots a microwave –or “high-powered electromagnetic beam” – that quickly heats the water in the target’s skin. It is true that this causes “intolerable pain.” But as soon as the microwave stops, “the pain disappears.”

This does raise, for me at least, a few questions. The first is, “What if the microwave doesn’t stop?” What if one of our brave men and women in uniform decides to keep training that beam onto the face or arm or chest or genitals of some unfortunate bystander? How long would it take before the boiling of skin water causes real damage? How long until the pain doesn’t stop even when the microwave does?

Here’s another question: will inflicting unendurable pain on civilians – even if briefly – really “prevent further damage to relations between American troops and the Iraqi population”? According to the Telegraph, it will, because said civilians will be thankful they are not dead.

I also wonder about the potential use of such weapons against peaceful demonstrators right here at home or in other “allied” countries. The “Telegraph” article says the Pentagon “believes that the weapons will be particularly useful in urban conflict.” No doubt.

In any case, as America’s greatest songwriting team, Sonny and Cher, once observed, the beat goes on. Drums keep pounding rhythm to the brain. Men still keep on marchin’ off to war. Nation-states keep finding better ways to control the pesky people.

And scientists keep avoiding inconvenient questions about the fruits of their labor.

(all quotes from: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/09/19/wirq319.xml)

He's Sick and Tired (Re-posting: Don't Plagiarize!)

2005-11-04T07:40:00.000-08:00

DON'T plagiarize this one! Just appreciate it. It's a great excerpt from a recent speech by Paul Street. It was given at Northern Illinois University on November 2.

Read the whole thing at: http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=1&ItemID=9046

"An Anti-War Speech in Martin Luther King Commons [excerpt]"
by Paul Street

I'm sick and tired of being lied to by my own government.

I'm sick of being told that our government lacks the money for quality publc education, for college tuition assistance, for health care (for all), for ending child poverty, for affordable housing, for job-training, for environmental protection, for flood control, and so on. I tired of being told we can't really afford all that when we know damn well that federal officials have granted hundreds of billions of dollars of deficit-generating tax relief primarily to the super-rich here in the most unequal and wealth-top-heavy nation in the industrialized world.

I'm tired of hearing that we can't provide basic social services when we know that "our" government spends $500 billion each year on an exorbitant armed forces budget that accounts for nearly half the military spending in the world and which transfers enormous taxpayer resources to rich and powerful corporations like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed-Martin.

I'm sick of that armed forces budget being called "defense" when we know that it pays for a remarkable and aggressive empire project that includes more than 700 overseas US military bases spread across nearly every country on the planet.

I got tired real fast of being told that the $300 (or more) billion invasion of Iraq was about defending America from 9/11 terror atacks and Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) when we know damn well that Iraq had no serious WMD capacity and no connection to Al Qaeda or 9/11.

I'm tired of the subsequent and equally deceptive Buch line that the invasion is really about exporting democracy when we know that democracy is the last thing US policymakers want to see in Iraq and when we observe that the administration has been using 9/11 and the subsequent so-called "war on terror" to roll back our own cherished democratic liberties here at home.

I'm sick of hearing about the prisoner-abuse crimes of low-level soldiers like Lynndie England when we know that the decision to ignore human rights law and conduct Gestapo-like torture operations in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantanamo Bay (and elsewhere) came by explicit order from the top --- from the real war criminals in the White House and the Pentagon.

I'm tired of being told that it's un- or even anti-American to exercise my quintessentially American right to oppose an illegal war of aggression being conducted by my government.

I'm sick of being told that I can "support the troops" only by backing an immoral and bungled invasion that has so far killed more than 2000 American soliders along with tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

I'm tired of being told that we can't militarily disengange because "all Hell will break loose" in Iraq. American Empire is the Hell that broke loose on Iraq and that bloody conflict will continue until the U.S. renounces its imperial military ambitions in that nation.

I'm sick of being told that war opponents were given their chance to be heard during the 2004 presidential election when we know that John F. Kerry and other leading Democrats defied their own voting base by refusing to oppose the occupation. If anything, Kerry and the Democrats claimed that they were more qualified than the Republicans to competently manage the imperial domination of Iraq.

Along the way, the aristocratic Kerrry expressed close identification with wealth and power by announcing that he was "not a redistribution Democrat," meaning that he had no interest in more fairly sructuring the allotment of economic resources in the "advanced" world's most unequal state.

I don't know what sort of candidate the Democrats are going to put up next time and I really don't care right now. Richly encouraged by the corporate-imperial Democrats, the messianically militarist policies of Bush-Cheney cabal are too dangerous and evil to be tolerated for 3 more years or 3 more months. The first Tuesday in November 2008 is too late for our voices to (only possibly) be heard.

It's fun to have big staged national corporate election extravaganzas every four years, but democracy is a daily affair and its battles are fought in workplaces, local communities, schools, and on the streets. It's up to us, the people in whose name this government serves, to do everything we can at various levels and in different settings to stop the imperial war pigs who have hijacked our government in the name of protecting us from evil.

It's up to us to force withdrawal from Iraq NOW and not 3 or 5 or 10 years down the road when maybe 10 or 20 thousand GIs will have died for nothing along with God knows how many Iraqi children.

And its up to us to build a movement for a social order that is dedicated to changing what Martin King called the "perverse policy priorities" of our nation from empire and inequality to peace and justice.

Paul Street (pstreet@niu.edu) is a Visiting Professor in United States History at Northern Illinois University. His publications include Empire and Inequality: America and the World Since 9/11 (Boulder, CO:
Paradigm Publishers, 2004) and Segregated Schools: Educational Apartheid in Post-Civil Rights America (New York, NY: Routledge, 2005).

Rummy Hits Bird Flu Jackpot

2005-11-02T10:54:00.000-08:00

By Jim Glover

George Bush recently (and suddenly) "read a book," and it told him to start buying millions of doses of a drug that will make Don Rumsfeld even more obscenely rich.

Turns out the company Rumsfeld once ran, and is still heavily invested in, developed "Tamiflu" the ant-bird -flu stuff that is now the most sought-after drug in the world. (see http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/31/news/newsmakers/fortune_rumsfeld/)

You've gotta ask yerself: WHAT ARE THE ODDS?

Congress is also pitching in to help Don out. They're working on legislation that will make it REQUIRED that we all take a shot of Don's magic potient . (see http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette179.html)

Runaway Corruption Corrupts Everybody

2005-10-28T08:21:00.000-07:00

When your government gets corrupt enough, every profession is affected. Consider my own field of Park and Recreation Management, and more specifically,
the National Park Police mentioned in the article re-posted below.

The Park Police's bosses ordered them, first, to follow Cindy Sheehan around wherever she went on federal property. Then, later, to arrest her for laying on the ground in front of the white house.

The purpose, of course, is to suppress dissent. To make everyone see that if you practice any kind of civil disobedience, however peaceful and harmless, you'll have to pay a big price.

Sheehan, as you know, is a peaceful protester whose son was killed in Iraq.
She hung around Bush's Crawford ranch all last summer, asking for one simple thing: for Bush to spend five minutes explaining to her WHY her son died.

Anyway, Sheehan refers to the Park Police as follows:

"As usual, the Park Police were very polite and efficient and many whisper words of support and encouragement to us."

Which is nice, and reflects a lot more favorably on the Park Police than the criminals they work for.
But isn't it rather tragic that the Park Police are reduced to doing this in order to keep their jobs?

Most of them, I have no doubt, went into the work because they like parks, or being outdoors, or nature. They found out that having police training is a way into the Park Service, and now here they are, arresting the mother of a boy who died because power-lust and corruption have reached critical mass in your country.

To me, this all begs the question, how corrupt and immoral must our government get before a profession such as mine -- or anyone's-- stops thinking about its own interests and makes a simple statement of protest?

And if we are not willing to lodge a simple protest even when people in our own profession have to protect their jobs by sacrificing their personal integrity, what's the point of a a professions?

I really would like to know.

Here's the artilce, by Cindy Sheehan:

If You Believe in What You Are Doing, Give Me Your Stiffest Sentence. If You Don't, Then Resign

by Cindy Sheehan

Published on Thursday, October 27, 2005 by CommonDreams.org
(http://www.commondreams.org/views05/1027-20.htm)

"If you believe in what you are doing, give me your stiffest sentence. If you don't, then resign."
-- Gandhi

Yesterday, started off with a "bang" when we went to Arlington Cemetery to lay a wreath in the section where the Iraq War dead are buried. In our group yesterday morning were 3 other members of Gold Star Families for Peace. Juan Torres was with us and his son, Juan, was murdered in Afghanistan.

First of all, I was followed all morning by the Park Police. I guess because I am a very dangerous subversive. I would never hurt a flea, but what I am dangerous to is the lies and corruption of our government.

Secondly, Juan, Beatriz Saldivar, and Julie Cuniglio who have all had loved ones killed in this war had brought pictures of their dead loved ones with them to Arlington. We were told by the administration of the cemetery that they couldn't take the pictures into the cemetery because they were "political statements!!" We were stunned that pictures of our children that have been killed for lies and betrayals and for purely political reasons can't be shown in a cemetery that supposedly honors those who have served, some making the ultimate sacrifice in war. We are living in a state that kills our children then calls them political statements. That speaks volumes to the chicken hawks who we are allowing to ruin our country.

After Arlington, I met with Sen. Carl Levin from Michigan who has been a strong and outspoken critic against the war. The mess that George Bush has unleashed on our country and on the innocent world weighs heavily on his shoulders. He knows something needs to be done. Let's support him in doing so. Today, I will meet with Sen. Stabenow from the same state.

We headed to the vigil at the White House for our hours long wait in the freezing cold. There was a man there who had several signs which among them said: "Saddam loves Cindy." This man didn't care that Rumsfeld (or Rumsfailed as I accidentally called him on an interview yesterday) was buddy, buddy with Saddam and gave him or sold him tons of WMDs before he became our enemy. I told this man that he didn't bother me, and he told me I don't bother him either. Well, if I don't bother him, why did he come down and make signs and march for hours screaming that I kill our soldiers? We found out why. He was making 60 dollars an hour to do so from some non-profit, right wing group. He said he would switch signs if we gave him more money.

At 7:30 PM about 100 patriots symbolically died in front of the White House. Then 26 of us refused to get up and were arrested. As usual, the Park Police were very polite and efficient and many whisper words of support and encouragement to us. We are planning another die-in tonight at 7 PM. We need more Americans to come out and symbolically die with us here in DC…or do it in your own communities at relevant places, like a federal building, congressperson or senator's office.

When I was being processed out the Lieutenant warned me if I got arrested again that I may have to stay in jail until January since this was my second arrest and I already have one under my belt that hasn't been resolved (which I plan on going to court for anyway). The Lt went to bat for me, he said, so the judge wouldn't keep me until my November court date this time.

I appreciate the warning of the Lt., but I plan on doing Civil Disobedience again this evening. I cannot live freely in a country where people are allowed to commit murder and roam free to commit more mayhem while other people who are exercising their first amendment rights to free speech are locked up in jail. I cannot live freely in a country where others are allowed to lie to retaliate against a person who had the temerity to challenge previous lies. I cannot live freely in a country where bereaved family members aren't allowed to carry pictures of their murdered loved ones into a national cemetery.

If I go before a magistrate tonight or tomorrow after my next arrest, I will tell him/her: If you believe in what you are doing, give me the stiffest sentence possible. If you don't, then resign.

Peace soon.

Capital Punishment (Briefly) Revisited

2005-10-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

By Jim Glover

The Bush Crime Syndicate has me rethinking the death penalty..

Bush himself, as you know, is a big fan of it. During his relatively short stint as Texas Governor, he denied 152 clemencies, which is to say 152 people were killed by the state under his "leaderhsip." That made him the nation’s all-time leading politician-executioner [1].

Bush even seemed to get enjoyment from at least one execution, that of Faye Tucker. Her case came up in a Bush interview for “TALK” magazine. Bush, it was reported, riffed into an imitation of Tucker begging for mercy. He pursed his lips in mock desperation. Then, “please don’t kill me,” he said, in a put-on whiney voice[2].

Bush was aided in all this by the now U.S. Attorney General, Alberto (the Geneva Conventions are “quaint”) Gonzales. Gonzales served as Bush’s legal counsel in Texas. He wrote confidential memos for Bush regarding clemency appeal cases. Journalist Alan Berlow gained access to 57 of these memos. In a 2003 article for the “Atlantic Monthly”, Berlow said that “the memoranda suggest that Gonzales repeatedly failed to apprise Bush of some of the most salient issues in the cases at hand [3]”.

Thus, working together, George and Alberto made state-sponsored death happen. And now, just a few years later, we clearly have a federal administration that endorses liberal applications of capital punishment.

All this makes me wonder if we should not indeed have a death penalty, but only for one especially heinous kind of act. That, of course, would be war crimes. War criminals, after all, make those whom we call serial killers look inconsequential. Our most famous ones, to the best of our knowledge, committed murders whose numbers read as follows:

Ted Bundy: Confessed to 30, MAY have killed up to 100 [4]

Green River Killer Gary Ridgeway: Estimated killed 50 [5]

Jeffrey Dahmer: 17 [6]

By comparison, an absolute minimum of 24,865 civilians were killed in the first two years of our illegal Iraq invasion. That’s a minimum because it’s a number carefully compiled by “Iraq Body Count,” which only includes known individuals whose deaths are reported in at least two independent news reports [7].

Like to get more specific? IBC also reports that U.S. led forces accounted for 37 percent of the 24,865 civilians killed. That works out to a DIRECT serial murdering of 9,200 civilians by the U.S. in two years [8]

And that, of course, does not count the several thousand civilians killed by U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Nor the hundreds of thousands (including a disproportionate number of children) who have died from illnesses directly related to our so-called sanctions and deliberate destroying of Iraqi agriculture, plumbing, sewage treatment facilities, and other key infrastructure[9].

The above-mentioned mass murder, furthermore, was done for bogus reasons. Even the New York Times and Washington Post are finally having to admit it. And so it easily follows that the usual suspects – Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, at al – are mass murderers of the worst kind. If a death penalty is NOT imposed for their kind of murder, then surely it should never be for any crime.

There are several models for implementing this. One of course is the Nuremburg Trials, where the criminals were hung virtually on the spot as soon as the trials finished.

The trouble there was that it was mainly the Americans, British, and Russians who tried the Germans. This was hypocritical, of course, in light of the crimes the Allied forces had themselves committed. Also, it denied the German people the chance to make their own decisions, get their own revenge even, on a few of the men who brought such darkness upon them.

Far better, I think, for the criminals’ own countrymen to make the call. The Italians, for example, addressed the matter most directly. According to the official story, their chief war criminal, Mussolini, was captured by an armed group of Communist Italian “Partisans” (resistors). He was promptly executed by gun shot, then hung upside down along with several other Fascist leaders for the enjoyment of the rest of the Italian people to whom he had caused so much disgrace, suffering, and loss of life [10].

I’m not recommending such vigilantism. But you might be surprised at some famous ethicists who hinted at it. Thoreau, for example, in Walden, refers to the exploited workers who built the Great Pyramids. He finds it remarkable

“that so many men could be found degraded enough to spend their lives constructing a tomb for some ambitious booby, whom it would have been wiser and manlier to have drowned in the Nile, and then given his body to the dogs [11]”.

Henry is not exactly advocating such mob-driven capital punishment. But he sure seems to have, at some level, a sympathy toward it.

Then there’s the Enlightenment giant, Voltaire. His most famous novel, “Candide,” rings rather familiar today. It was a kind of protest against the Catholic Church’s response to the death of several thousand Spaniards in an earthquake in Lisbon.

The Bishops had decided that it was the victims' own fault -- for sinning so much.

And Voltaire’s most famous line, perhaps, is that humans will never be free until
“the last king is strangled with the guts of the last priest [12]”. Much like Thoreau, he’s not exactly endorsing such violent rebellion, but he does wonder if it might not sometimes be justified.

Having said all that, I find myself still unable favor a death penalty even for war crimes. Killing is bad karma, whether it’s state sponsored mass killing (war), mob enforced revenge (making dog meat out of the bastard), or the endgame of a judicial contest (capital punishment).

We should, however, do what needs to be done. We need to get these mass murderers off the street, and lock them away some place where they cannot do any more harm.

[1] http://www.bushkills.com/facts.html
[2] http://www.bushkills.com/record.html

[3] http://weblinks1.epnet.com/citation.asp?tb=1&_ua=bt+TD++%22ATL%22+shn+1+db+aphjnh+bo+B%5F+BDB9&_ug=sid+0EA4B4EF%2D69B7%2D4FB1%2DB2B1%2DA3DAF57E21C4%40sessionmgr2+dbs+aph+cp+1+59D7&_us=frn+21+hd+False+or+Date+fh+False+ss+SO+sm+ES+sl+%2D1+dstb+ES+ri+KAAACBZD00011428+1FAF&_uh=btn+N+6C9C&_uso=%5F1&fn=21&rn=22

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ted_Bundy

[5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_River_Killer

[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_dahmer

[7] http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php

[8] http://www.iraqbodycount.net/press/pr12.php

[9] http://www.unicef.org/emerg/media_9419.html ; http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6616.htm

[10] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini

[11] http://www.vcu.edu/engweb/transcendentalism/authors/thoreau/walden/chapter01c.html

[12] http://www.parkeriters.com/voltaire.htm

Iraq War is Long Lost but Mayhem,Torture, and Profiteering Carry On

2005-10-24T17:42:00.000-07:00

Reality keeps intruding on the fairy tales still being told by the Bush Crime Syndicate about Iraq. Consider:

ONE: THEY DON'T LOVE US

A recent Iraq "Ministry of Defense" survey [1] found that:

--FORTY-FIVE percent of ALL Iraqis SUPPORT attacks against occupying troops

-- ONE PERCENT (yes, that's one of every hundred) of Iraqis think the Allied military presence is helping improve security

-- EIGHTY-TWO percent are "STRONGLY opposed" to our troops being there.

TWO: VIOLENCE IS EVER INCREASING, NEVER DECLINING

The violence is so common that a lot of local newspapers do not have the space -- or the inclination -- to report most of it. Yesterday (Sunday, Oct. 23) was fairly typical. Forty four non-combatants died [2]. Today, 20 were killed in Bghdad alone [3].

THREE: TORTURE CONTINUES

A brand new report by the ACLU came out today.It provides details of systematic torture, leading, in several cases, to death, by American or British forces [4].

FOUR: PROFITEERING THROUGH MERENARIES CONTINUES

The Times of London today reported on how the U.S. and Britain milk the taxpayers and commit war crimes by using "security contractors. Says the Times:

"The American government is hiring private security firms to stabilise Iraq — and paying them a fortune to do it. But many of them are unregulated and operate outside the law. Jon Swain joins the hired guns on the streets of Baghdad — and assesses the real cost of privatising war" [5]

References:

[1] http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=8985

[2] http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/6520C0C4-02AE-4854-92A6-3EB8E80C6C24.htm

[3]http://www.startribune.com/stories/722/5686207.html

[4] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10740.htm

[5] http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-531-1824220-531,00.html

Those Iraqis Better 'Get Their Act Together'

2005-10-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

There's a good web site called "Antiwar.com" that I recommend. But even there, one often finds an amazing American arrogance that it seems to me is a big part of our problem.

A columnist there called Alan Bock, for example, writes eloquently about his hope for something in Iraq to go right. But Block's analyses are fatally flawed by certain implied assumptions. They include, that the U.S. invasion of Iraq had something to do with American interest in helping Iraq improve its government. And that the U.S. actually COULD make it better if it wanted to.

On October 14, Bock wrote "I suspect [the Iraqis]are ready now [to run their own country]." This single statement presumes four important falsehoods: (1)as noted already, that the U.S. ever had any real interest in Iraqis truly running their country; (2)that the American presence is in any real way preparing them to better run a country; (3) that we Americans have the wisdom to decide when they are "ready"; and, (4) that they ever actually needed our help.

Then Bock, on October 21, says the Iraqis have "a few weeks to get their act together" if things are to work out well there. If that's not blaming the victim, then at best it's arrogant and condescending.

Call me crazy, but it might be that a few people in the world would like to see the U.S. get ITS act together. Or that the Iraqis, having had their country stage-managed from England or the U.S. for ninety years (which included our greatest gift to them, Saddam Hussein), finally deserve the right to see if they are "ready" to "get their act together."

And it might be that if the U.S. and every other foreign invader walked out of Iraq this afternoon, the Iraqis could not possibly do any worse for themselves than 90 years of arrogant Western-style long-distance-government has done for them.

Articles Referenced:

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=7630

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=7708

Condi Lies with the Great Ones

2005-10-20T11:53:00.000-07:00

Man, that Condi Rice is one great improvisational liar. If she were a drummer, she’d be Buddy Rich. If she played a horn, she’d be Charlie Parker.

We all knew Condi had arrived as a trickster when she stood calmly in front of the Nine-Eleven Commission and said nobody in national security ever dreamed hijackers might fly planes into buildings.

But she really stepped into her own at her recent testimony before Congress. With a face fairly beaming with sincerity and honesty, she told some major league whoppers. My favorite was that the key to success in Iraq is to follow the Afghanistan Model

In many ways, it appeared the U.S. was already applying the Afghan model in Iraq. The basic model is this:

1. Invade as violently as possible, using the most destructive weapons ever manufactured short of nuclear bombs. To make the point, kill thousands of civilians. Be sure to bomb at least one wedding.

2. Drive the existing government into hiding.

3. Declare victory and install a CIA asset as the new national leader.

4. Sit back and watch increasing chaos, murder, and civil war ensue.

5. Build an economy based on the opium trade

6. Start looking around for the next country to ruin

But that’s not Condi’s model. Instead, she sees the U.S. military helping rebuild the Iraqi homes, hospitals, schools, factories, and plumbing that they spent the past fourteen years demolishing. That, along with democracy and security-training would be the keys to “decisive victory.” [1]

And it might well be, though it is news to me that it’s being done in Afghanistan. The physical reconstruction there is nothing to brag about, at least according to Margaret Coker and Ann Usher. The title of their recent article for the Austin-American Statesman sums it up well: “Four years later, much U.S. aid in Afghanistan has had little impact.”
Their article cites such examples as an American re-built school that is already crumbling apart. And they quote a July ’05 Government Accounting Office report as follows: “U.S. agencies fell short of most of their own [construction] targets and misrepresented their progress to decision-makers in Washington.” [2]

Democracy is taking its lumps there, too. The day before Rice recommended the “Afghanistan Model,” a Berlin-based group called Transparency International released its “2005 Corruption Perceptions Index.” Afghanistan scored 2.5 out of 10, putting it “among the most corrupt countries in the world” and the single most corrupt of all the former Soviet Republics [3].

The very same day, a human rights group warned that Afghan warlords were rapidly infiltrating the country’s government. Afghanistan officially bans “anyone with links to armed groups” [4] from running for office. And yet – get this:

"More than 80 percent of winning candidates in provinces and more than 60 percent in the capital Kabul have links to armed groups." [4]

On the other hand, Condi may have figured that some of the bad news about Afghanistan is in the past and no longer relevant. Heck, it has been a full two months since we learned that more American soldiers had already been killed in Afganistan in 2005 than in any year since the 2001 invasion [5].

In any event, the “Afghanistan Model” sums up everything new that Condi had to offer. But she said it as if she really meant it, and for all we know, maybe she really did.

[1] http://www.voanews.com/english/2005-10-19-voa54.cfm

[2] ] http://www.myantiwar.org/view/62378.html

[3] http://www.myantiwar.org/view/62567.html

[4] http://www.myantiwar.org/view/62515.html

[5]http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F30617FD3A5A0C718EDDA10894DD404482

Another Great Week!

2005-10-18T09:13:00.000-07:00

Looks like another great week for the empire:

1.U.S. planes dropped bombs killing about 40 civilians in Iraq. These strikes are known as "collective punishment" in the War Crimes business. Some kind of explosion had kiilled 5 US soldiers in Ramadi. So we killled 25 civilians there in return.

This is yet another breach of various international laws. The Nazis practiced it in Occupied France, killing at least 10 French civilians for every Nazi killed by the resistance. Stalin, too, was big on it. So we're in historic company.

2. The so-called vote for an Iraqi constitution was, of course, a sham. Millions of voters never had a chance to read the entire constitution. There were NO international monitors. Official "results" defied logical expectations. etc. etc.

3. On the home front, New York Times reporter Judith Miller, who wrote important articles parroting the government lies about why we needed to invade Iraq, admitted (albeit indirectly) that she was WORKING FOR the criminals making up the lies. In her recent article, she notes casually that she had "security clearance" in Iraq when she was there with the American weapons inspectors/spies when they were concocting their story. You don't get "security clearance" as a journalist unless you are also working for an "intelligence"service. This is not just a "breach" of journalistic ethics. It's making a joke of them. It's the equivalent of having a government press. It's the governing administration paying someone to write their lies in the largest selling newspaper in the world.

Sources (by numbered item):

1. http://www.myantiwar.org/view/62481.html
http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000302.php

2. http://dahrjamailiraq.com/weblog/archives/dispatches/000302.php

3. http://www.myantiwar.org/view/62482.html

That’s no Nazi, That’s my President!

2005-10-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

The Atlantic Monthly recently ran a review of a new book called “The Third Reich in Power.” The reviewer, one Benjamin Schwarz, says the book helps answer a question that will nag us into the next millennium: “What accounts for the German people’s support – at times passive, at times fervent – for the vicious and often ridiculous thugs who ruled them for nearly twelve years?” [1]

I used to wonder that myself. But I no longer do. A bigger mystery to me is how so many Benjamin Schwarzes aren’t at least worried that it might be happening right here in the good old U. S. of A.

I know it’s patriotically incorrect to suggest that recent events in the U.S. are anything like what happened in 1930s Germany. I heard Christopher Hitchens himself, on “Book TV,” proclaim such comparisons “obscene.”

I also heard Jon Stewart, on “The Daily Show,” say that just because a few prisoners were allowed to “poop in their pants” at Gitmo, any talk of Nazis was going a bit far. That was right after Senator Richard Durban visited the Rumsfeldian summer camp in Cuba and dropped the N-word by way of reaction. Durbin was, of course, made to apologize for even hinting that the U.S. – a Democracy! – could be compared in any way to everyone’s all-time demon dictatorship.

Like most Americans, I felt pride and relief when Durbin assured us that our country was still clearly superior to Nazi Germany. As the guy said in Caddy Shack, we had that going for us.

Still, that Nazi thing lingers in the back of my brain. I mean, who would have thought the U.S. population – descendents of Thomas Paine and other Enlightenment guys whose warnings could not have been clearer – would be too busy watching “Entertainment Tonight” to even lodge a polite complaint about the Patriot Act. Or the Gonzalez torture memos. Or the recruitment of teenagers into the military, the rounding up of hundreds of citizens in construction-grade plastic webbing during political conventions, or the invasion of two sovereign countries under a pretense no more believable than Hitler’s rationale for invading Poland?

There’s also that little unpleasantness on the east coast in September of 2001. Some irresponsible bloggers have noted similarities between what we now call “9/11” and a mysterious fire that erupted at the German Reichstag in February of 1933. In the Reichstag fire, for example, it was clear almost immediately that some enemies of German freedom – communists – had been the perpetrators. And even though Hitler had nothing to do with the fire (he said so himself), it proved exceptionally convenient in his consolidation of power.

In the U.S., seventy-some years later, we also knew right away who hijacked our planes and flew them into buildings. Or at least we were told who did it by the administration that, like Hitler, turned it into one of the great power-grabbing opportunities in history. It was Islamic extremists, operating out of caves in Afghanistan. They used religious martyrs who partied at strip clubs.

The martyrs had been quickly taught to fly small piper cubs at American flight schools, including the mysterious Huffman Aviation School at Venice, Florida , which disappeared right after 9/11 [2]. Then they flew jumbo jets into buildings. In one case the party animal/hijacker/neophyte jet pilot performed a tight loop and dive that would have challenged the skill of any veteran commercial pilot [3].

The extremists were lucky, too. On that very day, training drills were taking place on our east coast involving scenarios much like what actually occurred. So planes were out of position to prevent the actual disaster. Air traffic controllers were confused. The entire NORAD safety system broke down. [4] What are the odds?

And who would have predicted that steel-structured buildings hit by planes would collapse right into their own footprints from the heat of the burning jet fuel? Especially since the black smoke everyone saw would seem to indicate more of a smoldering, choking fire than a white-hot one [5]. And especially since no fire had ever brought down a steel-framed building before, nor has one since. [6]

And then, remarkably, a third steel-framed building --WTC-7 -- did the same thing, even though no plane hit it. [7]

These were some unlikely events. But the explanations of those who gained enormously from them were consistent. So what kind of country-hating reptile would argue otherwise?

Thankfully, there’s at least one Nazi comparison that absolutely does not work. That’s the one between our new emperor, George W. Bush, and Adolph Hitler. After all, as one smart aleck pointed out, Hitler fought in combat for his country. And Hitler was a great speaker, even if his message was a tad lacking in universal humanitarian values.

Also, Hitler seems to have actually been the guy in charge, as opposed to, say, Goebbels or Himmler. With Bush, we only know who’s NOT the one calling the shots. It might be Rove, or Cheney, or Rumsfeld, or even Momma Bush. But it’s not George W.

And finally, as our book reviewer notes, the Germans put up with Hitler for twelve years, whereas Bush will be our official leader for only two thirds that long. That is, of course, unless some new unpleasantness occurs that forces him to declare martial law. Then we’d have him for probably around twelve years, same as Hitler. I doubt his liver would hang on much longer than that.

If martial law fails to kick in, we’ll have another election in 2008. And THIS time it won’t be rigged. The ballots in Florida will be easy to understand. The poor black precincts in Ohio will get as many voting machines as everyone else. And without doubt the Diebold machines will have paper trails by then.

So in 2008, we’ll probably have a new President. Most likely, it’ll be Hillary Clinton, John McCain, or some younger guy with a really great haircut. Trouble is, Clinton, McCain,
and – I’ve no doubt -- Haircut all support the war. They’re for the Patriot Act. They’re for doing what it takes to ensure that, hey, sure we’re a fascist country, but we’re by God the BEST darn fascist country there ever was.

In other words, I fear the Nazification will continue. I’m trying not to think that way because I know it’s a thought crime. It’s negative thinking. Poor team playing. But I can’t seem to help it.

A couple of years ago, I read a book called “Explaining Hitler,” then loaned it to a friend. He read it, too, and returned it to me with a handwritten note. In the note, he said he supposed Hitler and his loyal companions were “really just a bunch of criminals who got control of the government.”

I’d say he was about right. Those Germans just sat back and let it happen. What were THEY thinking?

[1] Benjamin Schwarz. “War Without End,” THE ATLANTIC, November 2005, 149-150.

[2] Walter E. Davis, PhD, “September 11th and The Bush Administration: Compelling Evidence for Complicity.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4582.htm

[3] “Hani Hanjour: 9/11 Pilot Extraordinaire.” http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/hanjour.html

[4] Walter E. Davis, PhD, September 11th and The Bush Administration: Compelling Evidence for Complicity.” http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4582.htm

[5] “WTC 1: There Was No Inferno,” http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc_fire.html; “So What Happens When World Trade Center Type Trusses are Heated?” http://globalresearch.ca.myforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=835
[6] “WTC 1: There Was No Inferno,” http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/wtc1_fire.html

[7] “So What Happens When World Trade Center Type Trusses are Heated?” http://globalresearch.ca.myforums.net/viewtopic.php?t=835; “The Madrid Skyscraper Fire,” http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/spain_fire_2005.html;
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Jim Glover lives in Southern Illinois. He is trying to stop reading THE ATLANTIC, but he has an old subscription and they keep sending it to him. He can be reached at jglover@siu.edu or rbglover1951@hotmail.com

Cable News Nitwit: Former Saluki Spreads Standard Sheep Dip on Afghanistan

2005-10-13T09:51:00.000-07:00

SIU-Carbondale hosted a celebrity speaker recently. He was one Walter Rogers, an SIU alumnus who made the big time as a CNN “embedded” reporter. The school paper, the “Daily Egyptian,” made quite a fuss. (Hey, Rogers had been on TEE-VEE!! He’d been on CNN!!)

I myself had not realized that becoming a CNN “embedded reporter” was much to be proud of. True, Rogers had risen to the top. But what had he risen to the top OF?

To me, listening to a CNN embedded reporter seemed a bit like hearing a lecture from Jack Horner, the sleazy but successful porn producer played by Burt Reynolds in “Boogie Nights.” They both rose to the top. The main difference would be that the porn industry is honest. They don’t pretend to be anything they’re not.

In any event, Rogers declared (according to the “Daily Egyptian”) that “We had no choice but to go to war in Afghanistan in 2001.”

My first reaction to that was what Tonto once said to the Lone Ranger: “What do you mean, ‘WE,’ White Man?” But I had no chance to say that to Rogers. So I wrote a letter of dissent to the DE. The letter went like this:

“Dear DE Editor:

“Rogers’s endorsement of the Afghan invasion is mainstream media malarkey. Here are just a few reasons why.

“First, none of the alleged 9/11 hijackers were Afghan. Most were said to be Saudis.

“Second, the official story of anti-modernist religious nuts stage-managing the incredibly sophisticated September 11 attacks from remote mountain caves has always been implausible -- at least without a lot more explanation than has ever been given. Let’s not forget that the rationale for blaming Afghanistan for 9/11 came from the exact same people who, just a few months later, constructed a mountain of lies about needing to invade Iraq. So why we should believe them about 9/11 is beyond me.

“Third, nothing was accomplished in Afghanistan except that some extraordinarily destructive weapons were tested on human guinea pigs. Our government directly killed three to four thousand innocents. Then it ran a sham election in which the Presidential winner was a former shill for Unocal Oil whom the American CIA had chosen to run the country even before 9/11/05. (see Tommy Franks’s book, “American Soldier,” or this UPI report: http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040817-031840-8736r.htm)

“The Afghan people, though, are no freer than ever. Women there have no more rights than before. The economy is a disaster, with one exception. Afghanistan is back to being the world’s largest opium provider, after the supposedly evil Taliban had nearly eliminated poppy growth and opium export.

“Yours truly, [etc. etc.]”

I stopped there because newspapers don’t publish long letters. As it turned out, they didn’t publish my shorter one either. Well, news space is at a premium.

And so the fiction that Afghanistan was a GOOD invasion got another repetition. More importantly, the impression was reinforced that everyone agrees.

All thanks to the American Free Press and the college newspapers who emulate them.