The Onion can be a little hit and miss, but when they hit, they hit hard. This made me laugh really, really hard.
New Live Poll Allows Pundits To Pander To Viewers In Real Time
I take no credit for the following, but post it in its entirety and with credit given.
( Know, O prince... )
(taken from http://www.poe-news.com/forums/sp.php?p
Oh! And I would be remiss if I did not also mention THIS:
http://www.newsarama.com/comics/030
It seems that Devil's Due Publishing is producing a very similar comic book series, hillariously entitled "BARACK THE BARBARIAN: QUEST FOR THE TREASURE OF STIMULI", which I fully intend to procure when it's released. It sounds so amazingly, balls-to-the-wall crazy that it HAS to be worth at least a look.
There's a comic book series currently being published by Vertigo entitled "Fables" which my friend Colin introduced me to last year. Pretty good. Pretty good. The premise, in the broadest terms, is that all the old fables and fairy-tales and legends and such of all the cultures of earth are in some sense true; the characters are all real people who call themselves "fables", and their stories play themselves out in parallel worlds and realities. They're as resilient as their stories are, and as such, the more popular and/or well-known of them, like Snow White and the Big Bad Wolf, are all but unkillable and have been alive for many centuries. It hasn't been made explicitly clear whether they're created by these stories, or if the stories just reflect things which already happened or what. I suspect that's something we'll learn somewhere towards the end of the series.
Anyways. Some centuries ago, there was a great war which engulfed the various worlds of the fables, with some great looming "Adversary" gradually conquering these worlds and either killing or banishing anyone who dared to resist. This list comprises most of the "good guy" characters from many dozens of stories, and no small number of "bad guy" characters as well. They were driven back, ultimately, to real-world Earth, where they've been hiding in exile for centuries now, using their magic and such to keep themselves hidden and secret from the world at large.
I've quite enjoyed it, in spite of the writer. Now, I know this may sound odd, but it does happen; the personal politics and such of a given writer may be loathsome to me, but their works themselves continue to entertain. Orson Scott Card, for example, is apparently a Mormon whack-job and homophobe, but this doesn't really infect his novels and comics, and so I can enjoy them in spite of disliking the man who wrote them. So it is with Fables, too. The guy who writes it, Bill Willingham, has apparently said that the book is broadly meant to be a commentary upon the Israel/Palestinian conflict, and once this has been said, it's difficult to see the book in any other terms. I think I see how all the parallels work, and I'm going to spell them out here, but be warned: It's kind of revelatory of an ugliness of spirit and indicative of the sort of paranoid anti-Semitic Zionist-crazy nutjobbery which is a little off-putting. Naturally, I'm going to spoil quite a few major plot points in this analysis, and so if you haven't read the book but think you might like to, you may want to take a pass here.
The primary antagonist of the series is Geppetto, of Pinocchio fame. Over the course of centuries, he carved more and more living puppet people, and - having learned from Pinocchio’s rebellious nature - made sure each and every one of them were by their very nature slavishly devoted to him. He had them infiltrate the governments of his neighboring lands and replace their rulers with these expertly-crafted puppet people, brought to life by the Blue Fairy like Pinocchio before them, so as to secure his own safe little patch of earth in his enchanted forest. Geppetto appears the very stereotypical image of the sinister, malign old Jew, with his hook nose, stooped shoulders and scheming, shifty eyes. He creates puppet governments all around him, spreading out his Zionist conspiracy, murdering those who stand in his way and putting one country at war with one another in order to protect and insulate his one isolated little patch of land (Israel), having no care about the suffering he brings to the world around him as long as his personal peace is maintained. Eventually, he gains the use of vast foreign armies of goblins and ogres and such which he uses to enforce his will. These represent the American and British militaries whose support Israel needs to continue to exist, all of whom appear as slavering, nearly-mindless brutes.
Geppetto, the scheming old Jew.
The protagonists find their homes gradually taken from them, one by one, as they are driven ever back by the vast might of these foreign armies arrayed against them. They represent the Palestinian people, being driven into the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Eventually, they're pushed into the real world of Earth, a land far from their homes where they're forced, like the Palestinians, to live in what amounts to a crowded ghetto where their traditional and ancestral ways are denied them by the grim realities of their existence.
Eventually, these fables make contact with the fables of Baghdad (Aladdin, Ali-Baba, etc), with whom they find they have common cause against this "Zionist entity", and they conspire together to overthrow them. The leader of these Iraqi fables – Sinbad - who is quite distastefully used as a stand-in for Saddam Hussein, is enlisted in providing material aid in a bombing campaign against Geppetto's empire. This part of the story ultimately culminates in Prince Charming winning the jihad against Geppetto in one final "heroic" act of suicide bombing with the aid and support of the leader of the Iraqi fables, who praises him posthumously as a hero and a martyr to the cause.
Sinbad, the Iraqi Fables' leader. Is he not a dashing military figure?
Ultimately (and here, I suppose, we enter the realm of wishful thinking on the part of the author), Geppetto is brought to heel and is forced at knife-point to sign a treaty with the protagonist "Palestinian" fables which gives them their lands back, with Gepetto made a subservient subject of the "heroic" fables.
It's a compelling and exciting story, and not EVERYTHING in it is a political allegory of this conflict, but it's central enough that it can be occasionally uncomfortable reading, especially for someone like myself who does sympathize with the Palestinians and views the actions of the Israeli establishment as generally-monstrous, while at the same time viewing the Palestinian suicide bombing tactics as morally-repugnant results of a hideous religious fundamentalism; I kind of feel like saying "stop agreeing with me, you're making my side of the argument look bad!" as he employs anti-Semitic racial stereotypes, glorifies suicide bombing tactics and pushes the most extreme form of anti-Zionist hysteria in his story. It is definitely an entertaining story, but not one which I can read without some degree of inner conflict and occasional moments of embarrassment for the writer.
PS: I will note that, in the past, Willingham has publically described his stance on the topic in slightly different terms…
"Politically, I'm just rabidly pro-Israel and so that, as a metaphor, was intended from the beginning." He adds, however, "as much as politics are going to intrude in Fables, that's as far as I think I'm willing to go. It's impossible to keep them out entirely. We're all political creatures whether we cop to it or not. [...] Yeah, it's not going to be a political tract. It never will be, but at the same time, it's not going to shy away from the fact that there are characters who have real moral and ethical centers, and we're not going to apologize for it."
…but the pro-Palestinian analogy which runs throughout the book is too strong to take such claims or even outright statements of intent on his part very seriously. I suspect that this is just another manifestation of his primal dread of the Elders of Zion; so motivated by his dread of their influence in the media that he needed to construct this preposterous claim that his book was actually PRO-Israel just in order to mollify and appease them, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding
PPS: It’s also possible that I’m putting my own spin on things in direct and intentional contradiction of his own stated intentions because I think doing so is really, really funny.
I've always had a problem with the enthusiasm of christians of colour, if you will, in the United States. And not merely the same problems that I have with christians of other races down there, though those certainly apply as well. No, my problem is one of a certain logical disconnect. One stemming from their point of origin, one might say. And here I refer primarily to those who are descended from slaves; though I'm quite aware that there are many black christians down in the states who either immigrated on their own or whose ancestors did, my quandary with them is a different one.
When I think about those blacks descended from slaves and who are now vigorous and impassioned christians, it outrages my sensibilities a little bit when I think about how christianity was introduced to their people. Their ancestors, who were kidnapped, tortured, and pressed into invoulentary service (or, if you will, "enslaved") by white christians were brought to the United States, and there told that they were to abandon their old cultural and religious beliefs and embrace those of their captors. I imagine myself in this situation, and I imagine myself saying "Yes, of course. You people who kidnap us, torture us, enslave us, rape us and murder us plainly have a pretty good handle on this 'morality' thing. Your god, who apparently condones and dictates the terms by which we're stripped of our humanity and treated as less than beasts is obviously a fine dispenser of virtue and morality. You guys totally deserve to be emulated, and your god is obviously the one we should be looking to for ethical behaviour. Oh, wait, no. You and your entire culture sicken me, your god, if indeed he exists is plainly a monster unworthy of my attention or adulation if he permits this behaviour among his followers, and your religion makes me sick to my stomach."
And then, I suppose I would be publicly and horribly murdered by these followers of christ for failing to see the innate goodness and superiority of their moral creed, so as to make an example to anyone else who got the idea in their heads that American christians are anything less than paragons of love, mercy, and virtue.
And I suppose it's insufferably smug of me to try to project myself into this situation; I've had terrible times in my life that nearly broke and ruined me, and the very worst days I had during these days can't possibly compare with the very best days that these slaves must have had, especially in those early days before they had "settled in" to their nightmarish new lives. How can I presume to know how I would react in that sort of situation, much less judge those who were there? But even so...
I wonder if part of it is that the most dissenting and proud among them were killed off, leaving only the most meek and compliant. I wonder if there was a certain horrible natural selection going on here, where the only ones who survived long enough to breed were the ones who had the good sense or lack of pride necessary to hang their heads and obediently repeat the empty platitudes required of them until their own children were old enough to never have lived in a time when they remembered any other religious views being observed?
I've heard tales of groups of black slaves in that time and place who cunningly disguised their own cultural beliefs by pretending they were worshiping christian saints and angels when instead they were continuing to revere their old tribal gods and spirits. While I have no less contempt for such practices than I do for christianity as a whole, in that day and age, one must have seemed as plausible as the other, and I admit to a certain admiration for their guile and nerve in pulling off such a ruse on their credulous "masters" until such a time as they were able to once again become the masters of their own destiny. It is in this way that practices like Voodoo (or vodun, if you prefer) first came into existence.
But today, in this day and age, in an age of rationality and readily-available science and historical perspective, the continued enthusiasm of black American christians offends my sensibilities. I realize that these are people who were raised in this faith. I realize that the church has long served as a centre of community from which they have drawn strength of unity as a peoples in very hard times. But even so... The very fact that this religion was pushed upon their people by the monstrous and savage culture of the southern United States, and is in a very real and ongoing sense a yoke around their collective cultural neck which was placed there by their oppressors, and which they don't seem to have the strength of character to cast off just kind of baffles me. For a people so demonstrably eager to be free in so many other ways, how can they be so eager to maintain their servitude and servility to the white man's god?
Even the emergence of groups like the so-called Nation of Islam, which seem to exist purely as a reaction against this history only partially address this historical inequity, in that they simply move their bondage to the irrational from one source to another. And these people remain a vanishingly small minority among the population. Upon consideration (and here I know I tread on very delicate ground indeed), I wonder if the poverty and poor educational opportunities which are all-too-often afforded them as a people is in part to blame for this? Both poverty and poor education have a statistical correlation with religiosity, and all three are well-represented within the American black population.
I don't claim any special insight or personal experience here, but I would like to learn more. Is anyone in a position to shed some further light on the matter?
cross-posted to the atheism community
Edited to add: The discussion in the above-linked community is actually really good and heated in places. Worth checking out if you're interested in this post.
America, I am just blown away today.
Living in a border town like Vancouver, and having bothe friends and family living in the United States - not least of all my brother in Arizona - I take what is perhaps an inordinate interest in the goings-on down south of the border. For essentially all of my adult life, this interest has yielded a combination of horror, consternation, outrage and extreme disappointment. For the past eight years, I have seen the American people fall victim to those who appeal to the very worst in their natures: Hatred, cynicism, xenophobia, greed, and terror. For such a long time, I have thought that the very best of America was merely apathetic towards evil, and the rest were active if unwitting participants.
But yesterday, by gum, you proved me wrong. And I have seldom been so very, very happy to be proven wrong.
At long last, you embraced hope, and peace, and love and joy instead of fear and anger and chauvinism and rage. At long last, you showed - in vast, overwhelming numbers, that when you are given a genuine and clear choice between the two, you made the right choice. You lived up to your highest ideals instead of giving in to your worst vices. You chose to embrace muticulturalism instead of sneering with contempt at the rest of the world. You chose no longer to be the villains that the political establishment you've had for the past thirty years or so have tried to make you; you chose to actually, genuinely be the good people that you always hoped and wanted to be.
You have no idea how my heart soars at it. There are and have been such powerful, well-placed and deeply-entrenched forces who have worked so hard to make you nothing but indifferent creatures of the military-industrial complex that you were warned about by your president Eisenhower. They have deployed such tactics of fear and agression and ego-stroking and distraction to keep you where they wanted you. And it would have been SO easy for you to just keep letting them make you what they needed you to be. But this time, you guys looked hard at these people, and what they wanted you to be, and you said "No. No more. That's not who we are. That's not who we choose to be." I had wondered if you even had it in you anymore, but this - this SWEEPING repudiation of the past eight years - shows me that, YES, you do. And I just love you for it.
You folks have so much to be proud of today. I'm sure that you've heard about the celebrations which have broken out across the world, and know that we are celebrating all of YOU as much as - if not more than - President-Elect Obama.
Congratulations, America. And from the very bottom of my heart, thank you for proving me wrong.
(cross-posted to atheistofftopic)
- Mood:
ecstatic
And now for my American friends and readers:
I have an unhealthy fixation upon American politics. It fascinates me. The spectacle of it. And besides which, there's a wealth of engaging and entertaining political talk radio down south of the border.
A few years past, there was a radio show called "Morning Sedition", which I listened to each and every weekday morning when I got home from work. It was a three hour block of my daily life which brought me profound pleasure and joy, not least of all because it was hosted by stand-up comedian Marc Maron. He has this sort of furious, desperate earnestness which I find pleasing on such a personal level that I cannot fully articulate fully without gesticulating about with my hands and shouting excitedly.
Well. He's got a new show.
it's available in audio or video, and when it's not live, it continuously streams reruns of recent material. I suggest that those of you who have an interest in American politics and those funny jew comedians, go have a look.
The show co-stars Sam Seder, who is also great, and though he is less completely hillarious to me, he is, it must be said, more informed and more informative. More professional, you know? A good anchor to the whirling tornado of wit and rage which is Marc Maron.
While at work, I frequently listen to KGO on the radio - a San Fransisco-based AM radio station - and during their 10:00 to 1:00 slot there's a sort of rotating cast of hosts. This week, the slot is occupied by the extremely partisan Clinton-supporter Christine Craft.
I have taken exception to her approach to the Clinton/Obama race for some time now; I have likened listening to her speak on the topic of Obama to "wandering, lost, through a cornfield comprised entirely of strawmen". Last night, I sort of reached a boiling point. As anyone who has the stomach and inclination to watch the news knows, Clinton eked out a single-digit 9% victory over Obama in the Pennsylvania primary. Not a statistically significant victory; she's basically reduced his lead from 180-odd candidates to 170-odd candidates. His lead is more secure now than it was before, in that she has very little opportunity to make up that difference in the few primaries that remain.
But that's all secondary to my point. Christine Craft immediately came on the air at 10:00 PM and started talking about how Clinton won a "double digit" victory over Obama. The facts don't bear her up here, and what's more, I seemed to recall her having yesterday said that if she didn't win by double digits, the race was essentially over and done with. I could be wrong, and I'll be checking the audio archives in just a minute or so, but regardless, the fact remained that Clinton did not win by "double digits", unless - as I would later say - one counts the first decimal place. To say she did is not only dishonest but manipulative, since it gives the impression that her candidate accomplished more than she did. And so I e-mailed her with a link to a news story which pointed this out. What followed was a conversation which tested my patience to the limit...
And at the end, I'm forced to wonder if she even knew what the hell we were talking about. All I wanted - and I think this should be clear, reading these e-mails - is for her to stop lying over the air and claiming that Clinton won by "double digits". Somehow this woman just couldn't seem to grasp that. I pride myself on being a fairly erudite individual; a good and clear communicator. I have grown so used to Ms. Craft distorting the truth over the air that I went through the night listening to her continue to triumphantly crow about "double digits" with increasing frustration and contempt, shouting "liar!" at the radio. I wonder, though... is it possible that Christine is so dense that she literally just didn't know what the hell was going on?
Bah. I need to learn to just change the channel.
Are you familliar with Dada artwork?
It was this art movement in the early 20th century, created in part by a french artist named Marcel Duchamp. I won't go into great detail as to the history and origins of the art movement; if you want to know more, just click some of the above links. What I'm more interested in here is the spirit of Dada.
Dada is basically all about taking substanceless crap and - through subverting and corrupting it, either in presentation or in form - create some new peice of artwork out of it. Probably the first example of Dada artwork came in the form of Duchamp's "The Fountain", in which he yanked a urinal out of the wall of an art show he was judging, signed the name "R. Mutt" onto it, named it "The Fountain", and declared it the winner of the show, saying "Whether Mr Mutt made the fountain with his own hands or not has no importance. He CHOSE it. He took an article of life, placed it so that its useful significance disappeared under the new title and point of view – created a new thought for that object.".
Dada took on a lot of different forms over the years; it was never about the specific medium so much as it was about the gesture of contempt for a genre or body of work. One of the questions about almost any Dada artwork that inevitably comes up is "Are we supposed to like the actual creation, or the mere act of corruption and subversion?" The great thing about dada is that that question is meaningless; the two concepts are inseperable and indistinguishable.
Today, the spirit of Dada lives on. I've seen two videos on Youtube which I feel are worthy successors to the legacy of Dada. The first is Japanese...
The second is an actual, honest-to-goodness American presidential campaign video from former senator Mike Gravel...
...which I feel shows the appropriate contempt and subversion of the medium and substanceless crap of American campaign videos.
It is in light of this that I decided to take a quiz this morning on how closely my politics align with various candidates currently (or in some cases recently) running for the US presidency.
100% Dennis Kucinich
98% Mike Gravel
84% John Edwards
80% Chris Dodd
80% Barack Obama
78% Joe Biden
76% Hillary Clinton
73% Bill Richardson
30% Rudy Giuliani
26% Ron Paul
19% John McCain
13% Mike Huckabee
13% Mitt Romney
13% Tom Tancredo
5% Fred Thompson
2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz
The only thing which surprises me is how high Mike Gravel rated.
And, I guess, that Huckabee made it into double digits.
While I'm a huge, huge fan of Kucinich, I know full well that he's not going to win this thing, and so I've been saying for some time now that Edwards is my personal pick. I still see this as a realistic possibility, but I'm prepared to abandon that dream within the next month or so if the race doesn't soon cease to be the Hillary & Obama show. A more realistic possibility, and one which I have been touting for quite some time now, is an Obama/Edwards ticket, which seems essentially unbeatable to me. Note that I do not suggest Obama/Clinton or Clinton/Obama just because the real and growing antipathy between them is such that I just don't see either, as a winner of the nomination, naming the other as their running mate.
Various stories are filtering through to me which have pushed my vague sense of disquiet past the point of inaction. I've been hearing about this more and more, from various sources, these past few weeks, and it's beginning to become deafening in my ears.
First, there were those concentration camps being built in the US by Haliburton for "Immigration Emergencies, or OTHER NEW PROGRAMS". I wrote about it at the time, and though it hasn't received much mainstream media coverage, it has been documented extensively elsewhere, and the construction of these facilities has quietly gone forth.
Next, there was Presidential Directive #51. This directive from George W. Bush states that in the event of anything he personally deems a national emergency, he can dissolve the US government, take control of industry, and then proceed essentially as a dictator. The legality of this document is extremely debatable, but the thing is, if he enacts it, legality becomes a moot point. Only enforcability is an issue. More on that in a bit.
Finally, there's this:
Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared
http://www.ksla.com/Global/story.as
Feds Train Clergy To "Quell Dissent" During Martial Law
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/au
Clergy Response Teams' Pave The Way For Martial Law By Collecting Weapons In Church
http://www.thought-criminal.org/200
The US religious community is being told to get the population ready for martial law, and to accept absolute government authority as a matter of religious faith. What's more, they've been told to prepare to do so soon.
When you tie this together with the US's recent determination that the army of Iran is a terrorist organization, thus enabling Bush to attack Iran and thus launch what could very quickly become a global conflict, there is cause for significant dread.
I sincerely believe the time is coming soon when Bush and his cabal will be entering endgame mode. Everything they've done up to this point has been mere prelude. I believe they will create a global conflict, and tamp down dissent at home by means of the various mechanisms they've put in place for this sort of event. History teaches us that when authorities of any stripe grant themselves - or have granted to them - exceptional powers in a time of crisis, they seldom relinquish these powers when the crisis has passed. I believe this will be the case again here.
The democrats who now control the US congress will make a bit of a stink about it, but they've spent the last six years practicing being pushovers and ineffectual yes-men to the Bush administration. This is going to be like going to the Super-Bowl for them. The big game. The main event. After wowing the crowds at home and in preparation for this, they'll finally be able to show the world just how incapable they REALLY are when it all comes down to it.
I have family down in the States, and I'm terribly concerned for them. I've spoken to them just now and told them "Fucking pack your bags and be ready to go. When you hear that the US has illegally invaded Iran, that's your signal; the countdown to Marshall Law has begun, nad you have THAT LONG to get out of the US."
They agreed, and are currently preparing their bags and such with all they'll need for the trip, and looking into liquidating some assets.
I told them, "This isn't something on the TV we're talking about anymore. This isn't something on the radio, or something we read about on a website. That's not the conversation we're having anymore. We're now talking about what to do in the here and now".
It really has gotten to this point.
Christian terrorists, you ask? Why, yes! The point he was making is essentially this: Osama bin Laden and company are always referred to as 'Muslim Terrorists', because their religious identity is wrapped up with their unprovoked acts of agression against their political enemies. George W. Bush and company are just as guilty of wrapping up their religious identity in their unprovoked acts of agression against their political enemies (such as, for example, Iraq). See, for example, Bush claiming that his god told him to invade Iraq.
If this is the case, then Bush and company ought to be referred to as 'Christian Terrorists', so as to put their actions in the proper perspective compared to their stated enemies.
Needless to say, he got some really FUN callers last night, between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM.
The entire show can be listened-to, one hour at a time, here here here and here. Get 'em quick, though; they'll get over-written at 1:00 AM, so if you're interested in listening to them later, you might want to download them now for later perusal.
Ray is always a lot of fun, but never more so when he's baiting and annoying the religious types.
If you want to save them for later listening, use these links:
http://abcrad.vo.llnwd.net/o1/kgo/kgo-0
http://abcrad.vo.llnwd.net/o1/kgo/kgo-0
http://abcrad.vo.llnwd.net/o1/kgo/kgo-0
http://abcrad.vo.llnwd.net/o1/kgo/kgo-0
x-posted to
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small}
atheism here.
Thisi s pretty interesting.
It's no secret that this October has been a pretty bad month for the US Occupation forces in Iraq. It's also no secret that they low-ball their fatality figures by a significant margin. This, though, seems like it might be a rather exceptional case of both.
Apparantly, on ctober 10th, there was a major, major attack on a US army base near Baghdad, called Camp Falcon. A number of international news agencies reported on it, but the US media scarcely touched it at all. And when I say major, I mean major. Apparantly this was the US forces' most important ammunition depot in Iraq, and a location where literally thousands of troops were stationed. While the US military doesn't deny the attack took place, it claims there were "no injuries or deaths", and that it was "of no tactical importance".
Watch the following video and tell me if either of these claims seem likely.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjEnTlN7c
That massive, blinding flash of white light which illuminates the entire sky for many miles around... what was that? There are reports that the US forces were keeping a nuclear device in there, and that what we're seeing is the detonation of this device. Certainly, the staggering magnitude of the explosion would seem to indicate this is a possibility.
In the hours after the attack, there were reports of plane loads of casualties being removed from the area. And then... nothing. No reports of any injuries or deaths. No coverage of any kind. No downplaying it as a few isolated casualties. Just... nothing. A blanket denial that it had any impact whatsoever.
I've found quite a ew sites out there asking questions; what the hell happened that day? Here's a good archive I located : http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?c
Now, if this was as bad and as important a hit as it looked, I can't honestly say I blame the US occupational forces for keeping it quiet; they don't want their enemies to know that the Iraqi resistance has scored a major hit. Also, more cynically, I'm betting the Republican party really, really doesn't want their public to know about this, so close to a major national election.
Still, it is cause to wonder. The video is chilling to watch, and the dead silence on the topic from the US establishment is fucking chilling.
I'm really spending a lot of time on this topic lately, aren't I? Hopefully, this will be my last post on it for a while. Nevertheless, I promised I would explain what I actually think happened on September 11th, 2001, and so I do.
Hopefully now I can get back with the happy-making posts. It's been a bit dire here lately.
Persuant to some posts made in reply to a post I made yesterday, I prepared the following. It's a bit lengthy, but I think by the end, you'll see where I'm going with all of this.
***
There are those who say that the US government could never get away with a conspiracy to perpetrate the acts of terror which occurred on September 11th, 2001 and get away with it, because - they say - the people involved would eventually talk. There would be leaks, there would be whistleblowers, and the word would eventually get out. I understand that there is truth to the old saying "Three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead". Certainly I do. The problem with this theory is this: The sorts of people who would be capable of pulling off a covert op like September 11th would also by necessity be so remarkably ruthless and influential that the consequences they could bring down on any would-be whistleblower would be devastating. Moreover, they would make the threat of such consequences painfully clear beforehand.
In all likelihood, you are aware of the name Valerie Plame-Wilson. Up until a couple of years ago, she was a spy working for the US government, under the CIA. She was what was referred to as a NOC, or "Non-Official Cover". In layman’s terms, this is the "if you are captured, we will deny all knowledge of your existence" routine. She got in so deep, so thoroughly, so far behind enemy lines that the US government could never admit to the sorts of operations she was in on. She had been doing so for years, and was a huge tactical asset to the US government. She had, in the course of her operations, accumulated any number of enemies around the world. Horrible enemies. The sorts of enemies the CIA needs to send NOCs to deal with.
Now, how do I know all of this? How on earth could any of this be public knowledge? I’ll tell you how.
Her husband is a man by the name of Joe Wilson. He was the US ambassador to Niger. In the leadup to the Iraq invasion, the US government used, as part of their line that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, the idea that he had been acquiring yellowcake Uranium from Niger. Now, Joe Wilson, he knew this sounded pretty fishy. He used his many contacts with the Nigerian government to look into this, and found that it was a baseless, fraudulent claim. Then he made a decision he will likely regret for the rest of his life: He told the truth.
When Joe Wilson told the American media that one of the principle justifications for invading Iraq was based on a lie, the US government – various elements of the President’s and Vice President’s offices, in particular, began to contact a number of prominent media figures, and informed them that this Joe Wilson was married to an undercover CIA operative, and if they wanted to include that in their stories about the subject, they should go right ahead. This was a concerted and deliberate effort to get that information out there. Some journalists outright refused to publish this information, while others would be happy to do the White House this little favour. What was the issue? What was the big deal? Simple: Once this information was out there, Valerie Wilson’s career as a spy was instantly at an end. She could never do this work again. Her many years of loyal service and dedication, in the face of extreme peril was rewarded by betrayal by her own government. What was worse, all of her enemies now knew where she lived, who her family was, and how to get them. For the rest of their lives they would need to live in constant fear of some foreign visitor in the middle of the night.
And to what end? Simply, it was to send a message: Joe Wilson, you made us look bad, so we’re going to attack your family. Anyone else who wants to make us look bad, remember what we did to Joe Wilson. Remember, and shut. The fuck. Up.
In the years since then, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame-Wilson have had their names dragged through the mud and defamed by the mainstream media, who, for a period of years, refused to acknowledge the fact that she was ever a spy to begin with. Just some low-level clerk, they said, whining about her little job being mucked up, and now using it to attack President Bush, because of her left-wing agenda. To this day, there are many who still believe this story, even after the official story came out.
And this was a relatively minor thing. Joe Wilson didn’t even reveal a crime that the Bush administration had already committed; he was just pointing out that the plan to attack Iraq had a logical flaw in it. And for that, he and his family were destroyed. This is how the Bush administration operates.
Now, imagine for a moment that you’re one of the co-conspirators who helped set up 9/11 on behalf of the Bush administration. You’re thinking of speaking up. And then you hear what happened to the Wilson family. Imagine what goes through your mind.
Loose Change, 2nd Edition.
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"As the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks approaches, Loose Change has become a magnet for those who have come to believe the worst about their government. Originally posted in April 2005 and already updated in a "second edition," the entire project cost about $6,000 to produce -- a sum that wouldn't cover a day's catering on the set of Oliver Stone's straightforward drama World Trade Center, which opens Wednesday." |
"Loose Change 2nd Edition" is the follow-up to the most provocative 9-11 documentary on the market today. IT IS EVERYONE'S DUTY TO VIEW THIS FILM! |
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By far the best film I have seen on the topic, I have, today alone, heard it spoken of on the radio and read references to it in the newspapers. not one person who I have gotten to watch this film has not walked away with their impressions either confirmed by, or shaken by, this film's contents. What's more, you can watch the entire thing online, for free. The producers aren't out to make a buck; they have a mission, and I view it as a noble one. I personally ordered a DVD of it, partly because I wanted to reward these truthseekers, and partly so I could loan it out to people so they could watch it even without Internet access. Check it out, and then let me know what you think.
I was going to write a new post to this effect, but then I thought, fuck it. I got it down last September 11th, and everything I said then remains pertinent now. So: repost.
***
Once again, like clockwork, September 11th rolls around. Once again, we're compelled to reflect upon the horrific events of September 11th, in which the proponents of a hateful philosophy, acting without mercy or conscience, struck out against a free and democratic nation in the hopes of crushing that freedom and imposing their ideology of intolerance and repression upon that nation.
I speak, of course, of the September 11th, 1973 military coup against the democratically-elected President of Chile, Salvador Allende, by thugs and murderers sent by the United States government, under the Republican rule of Richard Millhouse Nixon.Thank you.
I know that by day's end, we'll all have had our fill of having heard the media droning on about "remembering the tragedy of September 11th" and "remembering the victims", and that indeed, by now, it's easy to have grown jaded about these events, which seem so far in the past. But it's important, not only for the sakes of our own consciences, but for the sakes of future victims of this hateful ideology called The Republican Party of the United States" to remember that this group is still alive and active in the world today.
Their indifference to the consequences of their actions remains unabated. Their greed and avarice remain unchecked. Their contempt for the free will of people around the world remains intact. Their will, their desire, and their ability to enact this hideous drive to stamp out any example of freedom from their ideology is as fierce today as it was those thirty-two years ago today.
And so I say, we must not only remember the tragedy itself, but also remember what it was that allowed this tragedy to occur. The indifference of a people to the evil in their very midst. The ability of a people to tell themselves that blind and empty ideology trumped actual human suffering. The will of a people to turn their eyes from the consequences of empowering such a regime.
It is all too easy to lose sight of the significance of a phrase like "bearing this in mind", but I ask you today to think about it. I ask you to bear in mind these facts. I ask you to hold it within your mind, and never let it slip loose from your thoughts. I ask you to clutch these facts to your heart, because by allowing ourselves to forget the tragedy of September 11th, 1973, we allow those who perpetrated this evil act and their spiritual successors free license to do its like again and again, repeating this tragedy at their leisure.
We must stand firm against the indifference of a people to the callousness of those who would lead them. We must be resolute in our opposition to the tenancy of a people to look the other way as the power they have vested in their leaders is used in ways that these selfsame people would never approve of. We must loudly proclaim that we have learned the lessons of September 11th, and that we will not allow the events of that dark day ever occur again.
I recently saw a documentary entitled The Road to
When I was a kid, growing up in Southern Ontario, I always, always had a problem with the
I was an unpopular kid, growing up in my little shit-town of
It gave me a kind of unvarnished look at American chauvinism and nationalism, and coloured every glimpse of American culture I saw from that point on. All the flag-waving, all the imperialism, all the shady political manipulations, and crowing about being the “greatest nation on earth”, I saw it all in that same light. These folks were the bullies and braggarts of the playground of the world, so secure in their self-image that they could see no wrong in anything that they did. There was a bigotry and racism which seemed inherent in the way the Americans dealt with the rest of the world.
When I saw this documentary (he said, bringing the topic back around to the original point), it gave a really raw look at the ugliness and viciousness which lurks just beneath the surface of American culture. Essentially, it’s about these three kids who were falsely-accused of being members of Al Queda, and who were subsequently caged and tortured by the Americans in
This is the
It’s said that a polite man who is rude to his waiter is not a polite man. Similarly, a good and just society which is barbaric and cruel towards those who cannot resist it is not a good and just society. This movie details, to chilling effect, how very true this is of the
It is also no secret that the US government has made attempts to oust Chavez, which have thus far been unsuccessfull, and that the primary motivating factor behind this is two-fold:
First, Venezuala controls a large supply of oil. Dick Cheney, as an evil robot from the future, uses oil for blood, and consumes an estimated 3000 gallons of oil a day in the process of killing babies and blighting the earth. Consequentially, the US's foreign policy in the past six years has hinged upon receiving a steady flow of oil into the US. Okay, not really, but you know. Many a truth spoken in jest and all that.
Second, Venezuala's oil supplies are all controlled by the government-owned firm, Citgo. This means that no amount of foreign investment will ever yield control of these oil wells to US-friendly interests peacefully.
Therefore, the US has had a fairly unfriendly attitude towards Hugo Chavez lately, doing their usual smear campaign against him; calling him an evil dictator (apparantly without irony, in that Chavez was voted in democratically, and enjoys the popular support of his people; neither of which are claims that Bush can make).
Chavez is a realist. He can see that, at some point in the next few years, he may come under attack either by US forces, or by forces which are funded and organized by the US (such as what happened in Chile, on September 11th, 1973). He can also see that Iraq has held US forces at bay for three years by means of Geurilla tactics. Therefore, he is basing his national defence policy upon this notion.
This Guardian article details this somewhat
500,000 citizens are beginning training in Guerilla warfare tactics, in order to defend their nation against a US invasion, and 1,500,000 more are slated to begin this training in the next little while. The Venezuelan government is even considering military training mandatory for all adults.
To which I say, kudos, and good thinking, Mr. Chavez.
No? Okay, really quick and dirty: It's the company which is run by Dick Cheney; the evil, baby-eating, robotic vice president of the United States. Granted, he claims to have severed ties with it when he became VP, but this is a known lie. Ever since Bush came into power, Halliburton has been given contracts for every disaster from Iraq to the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. No-bid contracts, that is: No other company would ever be considered, because job #1 of the United states government, since Cheney got into the White house, has been making Halliburton money. Terrible stuff.
So, this morning, I learned that Halliburton has been given a $385,000,000 contract to build special "Detention Facilities" throughout the US, in preparation for the "support the rapid development of new programs". What new programs might require detention centres built all over the country by a private company which is owned by the Vice President? The contract, unsurprisingly, does not stipulate.
Anyone wo's familliar with Halliburton knows that these are extremely shady characters, and that Cheney, in addition to being a nightmare given flesh, is probably the worst thing to have happened to american democracy in living memory. The idea of them setting up these centres with such ambiguously-worded intent ought to give people some very serious pause.
I want my brother to come home from Arizona, and bring his family with him. I want him to do it now. That country is scaring the piss out of me. I'm not kidding in the slightest.
Here, read up on it yourselves:
http://news.google.com/news?num=20&hl=en&spell=1&tab=wn&ie=UTF-8&q=KBR+detention+facilities
Now, I've made no secret of my absolute loathing of the Bush administration up to this point. Indeed, I have spoken, at length, about it elsewhere. As such, it should come as little or no surprise that am one of the proponents of the theory that they played an active part in the destruction of the World Trade Centre.
I've done a lot of reading on the topic, and seen a few documentaries. This past weekend, I saw what is, hands down, the most comprehensive, scientific, and persuasive documentary on the issue I have ever seen. It's called "Loose Change", and I strongly suggest you watch the entire thing here.
I've noticed I have a lot of lurkers reading my journal. I don't object in the slightest to this. I think it's pretty cool. Still, I would be very happy to hear from some of you folks, as to what you think of this. Too seldom is there any discussion in my journal, owing, I think, mostly to the fact that you folks are mostly strangers to me. Let's change that. Let's get to know each other. Let's talk.
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