Archive for category Citizenship
I believe in goodness, and I hope that good will prevail. Deep within this ironical and disappointed being of mine there is a child hidden — a frank, sad, simple creature, who believes in the ideal, in love, in holiness, and all heavenly superstitions. A whole millennium of idylls sleeps in my heart; I am a pseudo-skeptic, a pseudo-scoffer. - Henri Frederic Amiel
Oh people, there are things afoot.
Due to the proximity of the October 7 events, starting today I would suggest:
Printing off your bank and investment records onto a printer so you have a snapshot of all your financial records
Make offsite back-ups of all critical data on non-magnetic media (e.g. DVD’s)
Have enough cash on hand to live an uninterrupted lifestyle for one week without a bank card working.
October 7th area events are not guaranteed, but if you do these things, you have no downside and only upside if the wheels come off the economy in this patch of time.
Apparently a 90-day extension was given for U.S. banks to get their books in order. That extension expires on Sept. 30th so by Oct. 1st U.S. banks MUST be compliant or they CAN’T DO BUSINESS WITH COMPLIANT (more honest) BANKS. I would guess that the REAL REASON for the sudden big PANIC and RUSH has to do with these deadlines. Nothing else makes sense. And the blaming of “bad mortgages” for the whole mess is totally disingenuous.
IT’S ABOUT THE CRIMINALITY, STUPID!
Basel-II has been a long time coming, and NOW is the due date.
If we consider C. Story’s reports we realize that major U.S. banks have been involved for years in illegal off-the-books hanky panky involving vast sums (trillions) from various trusts. I think Basel-II would put an end to that.
Take a look at Story’s report about this at:
http://www.worldreports.org/news/112_bush_criminal_operation_to_sabotage_basel_iiBUSH CRIMINAL OPERATION TO SABOTAGE BASEL II
U.S. CRIMINAL OPERATION TO SABOTAGE BASEL II
The US Dark Forces led by Godfather Bush Sr., George Bush 43, Mk-Ultra (’Himmler’) Cheney, the ‘late’ Henry M. Paulson, the late Robert M. Kimmitt, and their collaborators and partners in High Crimes and Misdemeanours, former President William Jefferson Clinton and Hillary Rodomski Clinton, have been desperately seeking, with the enthusiastic assistance of their co-conspirator Robert Rubin at Citibank, and the other US criminal financial institutions led by the CIA’s Bank of America, to torpedo the implementation of Basel II, since it defangs their corruption at the source, causing the criminal kleptocracy immense problems for the future.
CLICK HERE FOR MORE OF STORY RE: BASEL-II
Summary: the panic of Paulson, Bernanke, Bush, Cheney is because their crimes are close to being exposed. Those congressmen who have been bribed to ignore these crimes are also in a panic.
I don’t know about all of this, but if you click through these links you will surely get an eyefull. When one ponders the magnitude of current events, and the world-wide scope of the players involved, and their monstrous greed…well, one almost doesn’t know what to say anymore.
But I will say this. I hope and pray that the good people in the world outnumber the bad people in the world, and that God is merciful and just, and He will give us courage to do the right thing at the appointed hour, which could be very soon. And if we expect foreign peoples to give a crap about our lives and our futures, perhaps we had best show them that we’re worth saving.
This is about Trust
Sep 29
In the long run, truth is aided by nothing so much as by opposition, and by the opposition of those who can give the full strength of the argument on the side of error. In an age of authority and spiritual bondage, the opinions of an individual are often important, — sometimes decisive. One voice may determine the judgment of a country. But in an age of free discussion, little is to be feared from great names, on whatever side arrayed. When I hear a man complaining that some cause which he has at heart will be put back for years by a speech of a book, I suspect that his attachment to it is prejudice, that he has no consciousness of standing on a rock. The more discussion the better, if passion and personality be eschewed; and discussion, even if stormy, often winnows truth from error, a good never to be expected in an uninquiring age. — William Ellery Channing, American preacher and religious reformer, 1780-1842, on the slavery question
The proposed bailout will not work because it does not address the problem. In fact, it makes the problem worse.
The problem is trust. It doesn’t exist. It has been actively, purposely eroded by people in all positions of power, whether in Congress, the White House, or the panelled boardrooms of corporate America. Greedy, powerful people erased trust by refusing to deal with the American people in good faith. Republicans did it, and Democrats did it, and corporations did it. And we have been well aware of that for many years. But as it turns out, they don’t deal with each other in good faith, either. Whoever could have predicted such a thing?!?!?!?!
Now ’suddenly’, ‘without warning’, ’surprising them no end’, ‘we’ have a ‘crisis’. Oh boo hoo hoo they cry. Give us lots of money so we can have more confidence.
No. These are junkies and dealers, addicted to money and power. It’s time to go to detox and rehab.
Poor planning on your part does not make a crisis on my part.
Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay: Princes and lords may flourish or may fade; A breath can make them, as a breath has made; But a bold peasantry, their country’s pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied. — Oliver Goldsmith, Irish poet, dramatist and novelist, 1728-1774, from The Deserted Village
If you have not made any phone calls yet, what the sam-hell are you waiting for?
The phone calls are working. At long last, Americans have been aroused from their stupor, praise God.
Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yoke from us! Psalm 2:3
Understand the Stakes
Sep 26
Original here. I thank God for Americans like this man. Please, if you haven’t started making phone calls and applying pressure to our elected representatives, now is the time. It is working. Stand up for yourself and be counted. m
The headline’s oscillate between proclamations of bailout success and dark forebodings–the visual representation of this is conveniently graphed for us on the stock indexes for the day. “See?” they taunt. “See how the market gets better when we say the bailout is at hand? See how it gets worse when word of your stonewalling gets out?
“We cannot let up on the Congress, and, frankly, at this point we should be calling our state representatives as well. We must accept the reality of this situation: This bailout has minimal impact on the American people; it is primarily about paying off foreign interests before the collapse, even if that process is to be heavily veiled and masked by transactions. The $700 billion dollars is nothing in the face of the problem at hand. It is enough to save a few prominent corporations, leaving them in position to sweep up the remnants at fire-sale prices. The great rush to get this bailout through isn’t about saving the markets. It’s about sucking in as much capital as possible before the market collapses. As quickly as the Treasury writes the check, the recipient corporations will retrench and shift their money out of the U.S. Dollar. Foreign funds will buy stock rapidly, in companies that hold solid assets, because they need to buy something fast with those dollars.
It is the collapse of the derivitives market that looms, trillions of dollars in “credit default swaps” (62 trillion in the Unites States alone, according to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association), basically insurance bonds against losses in other credit instruments, bundled and sold over and over again, like some kind of world-wide Ponzi scheme. It’s not just the taxpayers holding the bag here; it is mutual funds and pension plans and savers from here and other nations who are all about to get flattened. So far, every time the true market price of these bonds rears its ugly head, it is pennies on the dollar, and this unveiling is what they have been fighting off since Bear Sterns.
The great lie is that this bail out will ‘unclog’ the credit pipes–as if other people are sitting around with trillions of dollars ready to buy out junk bonds at above-market prices. This is an almost laughable theory being presented to the people of the United States. “If we buy $700,000,000,000 of these bad, severely overvalued bonds at above-market prices, then others will buy the remaining $61.3 trillion of bad, severely overvalued bonds at above market-prices.” Right. Come on, kids..Follow the piper down to the river…
But this isn’t the dialogue that is happening in the public forum (yeah, I use that loosely). President Bush all but confessed that the sins of the world market seizure are borne by the USA, though he makes it sound like an unforeseen consequence, like all gamblers do when the pot goes the other way. And he did a great job of redirecting attention towards mortgages as the entirety of the problem, instead of merely the first crack in a dam made of cheap clay. What he cannot say is this: “It is the derivatives market that has created hundreds of trillions in false wealth, and it is this market that is imploding. We are entering a severe recession that will result in the collapse and restructuring of the economy in ways you cannot imagine, though many people have imagined it and you probably should have listened more.
As far as the bailout, if you knew what we know, you’d be looting, too…”President Bush met with McCain and Senator Obama today. This isn’t about negotiating the bailout; this is about negotiating with the voters. I wish it was different on either front. By the way, President Bush, if you ever wanted to have your Anakin Skywalker moment, veto the bill no matter what and tell people what’s really going on. Your father would become a footnote…
There is not enough money in the world to circumvent a massive correction in the market. Literally. That’s the problem. There is not a lot of money, actual wealth, at all. There are just a lot of people saying they have money. They hold up a bond that’s worth six cents and declare, “This is worth a dollar.” You think it is a damnable offense that some family lies on a mortgage application, exaggerating assets, to get a loan? Corporations like Lehman, Fannie and Freddie, AIG, and the whole line up yet to come all did this to the tune of hundreds of billions. But with every default, more of these toxic bonds get found out. You see, the corporations aren’t really losing money; they are just being forced to reveal that they didn’t have the money in the first place. This is why “the credit” has come to a standstill. That is the usual consequence of lying to your creditors…
Your friends and family must understand these things and take action. We need whatever flimsy credit we have left to help our fellow taxpayers when misfortune lands upon them above and beyond the sum of their choices. That’s why we pool our money, that’s why we hire these people to manage the People’s operations. We, as a nation, need to seriously review our hiring practices…
Keep calling your Senator, your representatives, your Governor, your mayor. Hammer them with this message: You’ve bailed out enough. Near a trillion dollars already. We will reinstate the value of the dollar by working our way out of this mess, as a people who all seek the same liberty, regardless of how we often differ in the application of that liberty. We will not bail you out, and if the fall of these corporations results in the bought-and-sold members of Congress and members of the administration losing their revenue streams, so be it. Maybe, if there is no damn money to be made in D.C., we can get some people in there who actually want to fulfill their oaths.
Listen to what Bush said and shake your head free of the patter of hyperbole. You already can’t get credit, and frankly you shouldn’t go anymore into debt anyway. You already can’t find a good job, or at least a job that feels like you contributed something at the end of the day. You already are paying escalating prices for everything, and this new addition of debt will dilute the dollar further, and you will pay more–inflation is simply a form of taxation. It’s called monetizing the debt. Either way, we lose. We can’t convert our paychecks overnight into Swiss Francs. We won’t know when to sell that gold we hoarded, and then it will be confiscated. And we, unlike the rest of the world, have no savings.
Let’s just get on with it. Eight years of this administration dangling the Sword of Damocles over our heads, the constant threat of disaster used to provoke our acceptance of the erosion of our Constitution and Bill of Rights, has grown old. We’ve given up habeas corpus, we’ve given up the right to peaceful protest, we given up privacy in our homes. We give up a free press. We’re okay with torture, now? When I joined the Marines at 17, I thought we were the good guys. Now, we’ve got an Army brigade with active orders on U.S. soil, the first time since the Civil War, moving to Colorado, having been trained to enforce martial law. Now, just to bring it home, they would have us give up a trillion dollars.
So, let’s just get on with it, then. Bring the damn crisis. Bring your shock and awe. We’ll show you what we got. We’ll show you that for all of your divisiveness, we are not a mass of ignorant people incapable of adaptation, courage, unity and faith. Get on with it already. Get on with your master plan so we can plan for our tomorrow.
Yeah, history does repeat itself, and at the end, the empire always loses. It loses because people who require such obscene advantage in life in order to secure success are weak, and they build weak structures, in such a hurry to reach the heavens. But we are more than commerce, or a marketplace. And we are not a nation of people with a Constitution and Bill of Rights–We are a Nation because of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. That is the agreement that binds us. We are sovereign individuals who consent to be a Nation, through agreed upon rules of law and truthful representation. There is no royalty or papacy that dare lay claim to our free will–that is what our founders recognized, that is the experiment of our democratic republic crafted from their humility, and that is the experiment still left undone. That we would choose to avoid for a short time discomfort rather than secure the integrity of that great experiment is baffling. It renders the acts and sacrifices of those before us as lesser deeds, and resigns the promise of those who will follow to the ambitions of empty men.
John Caelan Say no to this bailout. Save the bailout for us. We are going to need it.
UPDATE: Bush’s speech last night was like some kind of terrible fire insurance offered by the mafia–”Pay us or else…” Look, and see: This is a scam, the greatest transfer of wealth in our times from the poor to the select rich. The derivitives market represents 45 trillion in potentially bad debt alone. The bail out will postpone, for weeks only, the inevitable collapse of this house of cards, and the dollar will be broken. THIS NATION IS BANKRUPT and the rest of the world is running out of self-serving reasons to augment our audacious spending. We require well over 2 billion a day in debt-financing just to keep the lights on. That is dissolving before our eyes.
This bailout is Meat..on a rope. Animals see the meat hanging there and lunge, excited by the instant gratification. Sentient beings stop and think, “Meat…but on a rope..” The animal is trapped, the sentient being either steers clear or outsmarts the trap. What are we? Do you not see the rope attached to this putrid chunk of meat dangling in front of you?
An entire army brigade reports to NORTHCOM in October, the first active duty unit to EVER be permanently assigned to our home soil. They have been retrained in crowd control, tasers, and other law enforcement actions, in violation of more laws than you can shake a stick at. Come on, people. When it walks like a duck, its’s a duck, and we know a thing or two about ducks. This is the end of our republic and the scenario is something like this:
1. The bail out is passed, buying them the time they need to distract through the next few weeks.
2. An “incident” takes place in early October, civil unrest is amplified, a national emergency is implemented.
3. The dollar tanks, the nation suspends servicing debt.
4. Three days later, the country decends into martial law.
5. McCain and Pailin win the election, an outcome of amplified fraud.
6. McCain will die (the actuaries on his skin cancer predict this), and Pailin becomes the president, exactly what they want, a zealot to control the police state, without questioning other policy (does she know enough to question?)
7. War is widened to ramp up the only production we have left, the military-industrial complex, with the subsequent redirecting of the worker base towards defense and military service.
8. A draft is reinstated as part of that redirection.
9. Your kid dies.
10. Their kids die.
THIS IS THE LAST STAND. If they get control of this money, mark your calendar as this being the date the Republic folded. Do not choose promises of security over liberty! Everytime that promise is made throughout history, it is a great deception. Self-determination is the grant of providence, the root of all conflict through the ages. If you sacrifice your free will, your time in this experience is for naught. Too long have we been distanced from cause and effect, too long have we suffered in the throws of cognitive dissonance, too long have we ignored the face of the lie. Trust your instincts–you are more than the sum of your experiences. You know what is happening. React accordingly, or lose the right to react.
John Caelan
REPOST AS YOU WISH
This Bailout is Bullshit!
Sep 24
OK, look. I’m no economist. This is the situation as best I can tell. We can pick Door #1: No bailout, severe recession; or Door #2: Bailout, greedy bankers happy, hyperinflationary depression follows, martial law, new currency (Amero) forced on Americans, NWO victory.
If you are not outraged yet, you need to pay closer attention. These Wall Street people have been screwing us every way to Sunday. These high rollers, these are the people ordering the 100 foot yachts and having to get on a waiting list because the demand is so high and there aren’t enough crewmen! to service their amazing lifestyles, these are the people you are being asked — nay THREATENED by Hank Paulson and other White House goons — to bail out. Or else our economy will go in to a severe recession and credit will be tightened.
Is that right? A severe recession? In the unforgettable words of GWB, bring it on.
We can survive a severe recession people. It’s the ‘Rescue Plan’ we need to avoid.
WAKE UP!!!
Well here we are again. The seventh anniversary of the day of infamy. What can one say about today? Well, that really depends on where your mind has gone over the past seven years. I am going to keep this personal, and tell you how 9/11 has changed my life.
I used to be a happy person. When George Bush stole the 2000 election, I knew he was stealing and I knew things were bad. What the hell was the matter with people? How come they could not see through this man? Real men did not need to strut around like roosters and talk with an affected phony accent, but millions found this act charming. The destruction of the American mind, the withering away of our ability to discern reality, had already been sufficiently advanced to allow a complete and obvious impostor like GWB to be taken seriously. Of course, the corporate media shills moved mountains to make this happen. None of this could have happened without their constant facilitation, an unforgivable betrayal that will land many of them in the ninth circle of hell, where they belong.
Of course I believed that terrorists attacked us on 9/11, but I couldn’t bring myself to support Bush even then. He always creeped me out. Somehow I was immune to his wiles and knew we had to get rid of this guy in 2004. People were digging up the truth about his National Guard service and other lies, like the ones used to get us into Iraq; and many blatant lies were documented. But no. The cancer had spread. Republicans refused to hear the truth, and they became vicious in Bush’s defense.
Around that time I also began doing a little research into 9/11. Questions had been bubbling, but the commission had people that we thought we could trust, like John McCain. Surely, after being eviscerated by Rove’s machine, he would sidle up close to Bush and stick the shiv in. Wasn’t that what he was doing? How could he let these treacherous liars get away with it — all these dead Americans? McCain was a war hero. He would save us from Bush using his position on the 9/11 commission. Ha! Wrong again. He never did anything of the sort. On the contrary, he overlooked everything and tucked in nice and cozy.
One thing led to another, and I became hooked on finding out why nothing makes sense in this country. And I found out enough. Do I have the answers to every question? Certainly not, but I found out enough to know that we are ruined, and how, and by whom. I found out enough to know that I brought three children into this world and their future is bleak, and my heart is broken. I found out enough to understand why this country constantly talks about Israel, and Israel’s security, and what’s good for Israel. I found out enough to know that for just two or three percent of our population, Jewish people hold a truly amazing number of key government and corporate media jobs from which they shape both policy and narrative. I found out enough to know that this whole war on terror is a big cock-up designed to keep us at war because some people profit handsomely from death and destruction. I found out enough to know why the vast majority of Americans have to work harder and harder to maintain a declining standard of living. I found out enough to know that the official story of 9/11 makes no sense, and even if the truth movement has been littered with misinformation designed to discredit honest people, the official story still makes no sense and they obviously have much to hide. I found out enough to know that our Constitution no longer protects us, but our government doesn’t even have the balls to admit that we live in a dictatorship because they’re so greedy and cowardly they want everything for free, even unlimited power over the American people. And I found out enough to know that all these things are connected.
That’s what I did since 9/11/01. And now I am no longer happy. I ceased to be happy five years ago, and in fact, I live in a state of grim depression. But that is the sacrifice I made to understand, in an imperfect way, what has happened to our country. It is the price of living in reality. I am depressed, but I am sane. I am depressed because I am sane. And I encourage every American to start somewhere, and to start to apprehend the truth in all its depressing darkness, because that is the only way to honor all the people, and there are so many, who have been murdered as a result of this day seven years ago. It is the only way out of the growing insanity that we have become. The entire world watches in horror, wondering if we will emerge from the swoon in time or take the entire planet down in a final fit of insane delusion.
Sick minds make sick weapons
Sep 10
Remember when Benazir Bhutto was killed? I wrote a little theory about that assassination, and at the time it made me very nervous because I got some…shall we say…powerful visitors to my blog. The government does not like people poking around their black ops weapons technology. But they want to use the weapons, see, because they are just so sick!, so it’s such a damned if you do/damned if you don’t kind of problem for them. They have to be totally on their toes to provide alternative explanations and plenty of spin if anyone notices anything amiss.
These weapons have been in use, but they’ve been used on poor people far away for years. Few reporters have written about these dark things, and surely those that could expose them wouldn’t for fear of losing their jobs (or worse). Now we have the ‘intrepid’ Bob Woodward ‘breaking the story’ in truly titillating fashion through CNN and Larry King. (link via s o s)
Bob says:
“The top secret operations will “some day in history … be described to people’s amazement,†Woodward told King.
Amazement, eh? Try horror, you fucking asshole. Pardon me, but it is not amazing “in a good way” that our government has used billions of dollars, most likely laundered drug money which wrecked a few million American lives along the way to the Pentagon black ops budget, to develop secret laser weapons that have been used to kill innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon.
That sick bastard Donald Rumsfeld was rubbing his hands together back in 2002 about zapping people, and the predictions then were that the weapons would be ready in less than five years. So now it’s 2008, and lo and behold, Bob Woodward deigns to inform us through Larry King that our military is using some amazing shit against the ‘terrorists.’
Yeah, well. Terrorists like this, murdered by Israelis with our cool technology in 2006? Maybe it was still experimental back then.
Or was this little child just murdered with boring old traditional weapons like tank shells, bullets, or bombs? Was he suffocated and crushed to death under rubble? Such a boring death.
Well, there are always the mysterious chemical weapons…
Dear all ,Ok , I have to admit the attached pictures are hideously gruesome, but you have to look at them . Help me find out what kind of weapons cause this kind of dismemberment and mutation. What kind of weapons cause this kind of damage? Do you know? Could you find out?
None of this is confirmed, or could be here and now. However, there are growing doubts that Israel might be using internationally forbidden weapons in its current aggression against Lebanon. News from “Southern Medical Center”, a hospital in Saida( in South Lebanon) are not good.
Dr. Bashir Sham, member of “French Association of Cardiovascular Surgeons”, explains that the way the corps [sic] look when they reach the hospital , especially those of the air strikes in Doueir and Rmayleih, is very abnormal. One might think they were burnt , but their colour is dark , they’re inflated, and they have a terrible smell. All this , and the hair is not burnt nor do the bodies bleed.
Eight of the victims of an air strike on Rmayleih bridge, near Saida, on the 15th of July, were transferred to Sham’s hospital.
Sham says that only chemical poisonous substances “lead to instant death without bleeding”. And what indicates the power of these substances, is the high and unusual of number of dead victimes, compared to the number of injuries.
Sham thinks that whatever abnormal substance causing these features might penetrate through the skin, or another explanation would be that the missiles contained toxic gas that stopped the proper functioning of the nervous system, and led to blood clotting.
These toxic materials cause immediate death, within two to thirty minutes, according to Sham, who admits that these doubts can’t be proven, not even by an autopsy.
The director of the same medical center, Ali Mansour, says that due to the strong smell of the corps, he couldn’t breath properly for at least 12 hours after the corps were handled.
He explains that the center received eight bodies from Rmeileh last Monday, and none of them was bleeding. Mansour tells us the hospital wrote to both the commissioner of the European Union for Foreign Affaires Javier Solana, and the United Nations Secretary general Kofi Anan. He said that dr Sham will communicate his doubts to the Doctors Order in Lebanon.
CAN YOU HELP US , PLEASE!
I wish I could help. All I can do is point out the LIES of our government and the INCESSANT LYING of the corporate media. All I can do is point out to my fellow Americans that these technologies will be used against us in the name of Homeland Security. And that you will be instructed to like it and be supportive because you are to believe that only bad people will ever come to know these things intimately, and while you’re smoking that crack pipe please remember that all the people in the US military are truly and surely boyscouts who walk old ladies across the street and carry their groceries and would never, ever do anything to hurt an innocent person. So you can trust them completely with any kind of weapon, no matter how diabolical it may seem, because this is America. And I am just as qualified to be Vice President as Sarah Palin because my son plays hockey and I make my kids’ own damned sandwiches, too. And that’s all it takes. Right? RIGHT????
The Lie of the Century
Aug 2
Reprinted in full from What Really HappenedÂ
“All war is based on deception.” — Sun Tzu, The Art of War
There is nothing new in a government lying to their people to start a war. Indeed because most people prefer living in peace to bloody and horrific death in war, any government that desires to initiate a war usually lies to their people to create the illusion that support for the war is the only possible choice they can make.President McKinley told the American people that the USS Maine had been sunk in Havana Harbor by a Spanish mine. The American people, outraged by this apparent unprovoked attack, supported the Spanish American War. The Captain of the USS Maine had insisted the ship was sunk by a coal bin explosion, investigations after the war proved that such had indeed been the case. There had been no mine.
Hitler used this principle of lying to his own people to initiate an invasion. He told the people of Germany that Poland had attacked first. The Germans, convinced they were being threatened, followed Hitler into Poland and into World War 2.
FDR claimed Pearl Harbor was a surprise attack. It wasn’t. The United States saw war with Japan as the means to get into war with Germany, which Americans opposed. So Roosevelt needed Japan to appear to strike first. Following an 8-step plan devised by the Office of Naval Intelligence, Roosevelt intentionally provoked Japan into the attack. Contrary to the official story, the fleet did not maintain radio silence, but sent messages intercepted and decoded by US intercept stations. Tricked by the lie of a surprise attack, Americans marched off to war.
President Johnson lied about the Gulf of Tonkin to send Americans off to fight in Vietnam. There were no torpedoes in the water in the Gulf. LBJ took advantage of an inexperienced sonar man’s report to goad Congress into escalating the Vietnam
It is inescapable historical reality that leaders of nations will lie to their people to trick them into wars they otherwise would have refused. It is not “conspiracy theory” to suggest that leaders of nations lie to trick their people into wars. It is undeniable fact.
This brings us to the present case.
Did the government of the United States lie to the American people, more to the point, did President Bush and his Neocon associates lie to Congress, to initiate a war of conquest in Iraq?
This question has been given currency by a memo leaked from inside the British Government which clearly indicates a decision to go to war followed by the “fixing” of information around that policy. This is, as they say, a smoking gun.
But the fact is that long before this memo surfaced, it had become obvious that the US Government, aided by that of Great Britain, was lying to create the public support for a war in Iraq.
First off is Tony Blair’s “Dodgy Dossier“, a document released by the Prime Minister that made many of the claims used to support the push for war. The dossier soon collapsed when it was revealed that much of it had been plagiarized from a student thesis paper that was 12 years old!
The contents of the dossier, however much they seemed to create a good case for invasion, were obsolete and outdated.
This use of material that could not possibly be relevant at the time is clear proof of a deliberate attempt to deceive.
Then there was the claim about the “Mobile biological weapons laboratories”. Proffered in the absence of any real laboratories in the wake of the invasion, photos of these trailers were shown on all the US Mainstream Media, with the claim they while seeming to lack anything suggesting biological processing, these were part of a much larger assembly of multiple trailers that churned out biological weapons of mass destruction.
The chief proponent of this hoax was Colin Powell, who presented illustrations to the United Nations on February 5th, 2003.
This claim fell apart when it was revealed that these trailers were nothing more than hydrogen gas generators used to inflate weather balloons. This fact was already known to both the US and UK, as a British company manufactured the units and sold them to Iraq.
Colin Powell’s speech to the UN was itself one misstatement after another. Powell claimed that Iraq had purchased special aluminum tubes whose only possible use was in uranium enrichment centrifuges. Both CIA and Powell’s own State Department confirmed that the tubes were parts for missiles Saddam was legally allowed to have. Following the invasion, no centrifuges, aluminum or otherwise were found.
Powell also claimed to the United Nations that photos showed “Decontamination Vehicles”. But when United Nations inspectors visited the site after the invasion, they located the vehicles and discovered they were just firefighting equipment.
Powell claimed the Iraqis had illegal rockets and launchers hidden in the palm trees of Western Iraq. None were ever found.
Powell claimed that the Iraqis had 8,500 liters (2245 gallons) of Anthrax. None was ever found.
Powell claimed that Iraq had four tons of VX nerve gas. The UN had already confirmed that it was destroyed. The only VX ever found were samples the US had left as “standards” for testing. When the UN suspected that the US samples had been used to contaminate Iraqi warheads, the US moved quickly to destroy the samples before comparison tests could be carried out.
Powell claimed that Iraq was building long-range remote drones specifically designed to carry biological weapons. The only drones found were short-range reconnaissance drones.
Powell claimed that Iraq had an aggregate of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical and biological warfare agents. Powell gave no basis for that claim at all, and a DIA report issued the same time directly contradicted the claim. No biological or chemical weapons were found in Iraq following the invasion.
Powell claimed that “unnamed sources” confirmed that Saddam had authorized his field commanders to use biological weapons. No such weapons were ever used by the Iraqis to defend against the invasion and, of course, none were ever found in Iraq.
Powell claimed that 122mm warheads found by the UN inspectors were chemical weapons. The warheads were empty, and showed no signs of ever having contained chemical weapons.
Powell claimed that Iraq had a secret force of illegal long-range Scud missiles. None were ever found.
Powell claimed to have an audio tape proving that Saddam was supporting Osama Bin Laden. But independent translation of the tape revealed Osama’s wish for Saddam’s death.
Colin Powell’s UN debacle also included spy photos taken from high flying aircraft and spacecraft. On the photos were circles and arrows and labels pointing to various fuzzy white blobs and identifying them as laboratories and storage areas for Saddam’s massive weapons of mass destruction program. Nothing in the photos actually suggested what the blobby shapes were and inspections which followed the invasion, all of them turned out to be rather benign. In at least one case, the satellite Powell claimed had taken one of the pictures had actually been out of operation at the time. And many questioned why Powell was showing black and white photos when the satellites in use at the time over Iraq took color images.
Another piece of evidence consists of documents which President Bush referenced as in his 2003 State of the Union Speech. According to Bush, these documents proved that Iraq was buying tons of uranium oxide, called “Yellow Cake” from Niger. Since Israel had bombed Iraq’s nuclear power plant years before, it was claimed that the only reason Saddam would have for buying uranium oxide was to build bombs.
This hoax fell apart fast when it was pointed out that Iraq has a great deal of uranium ore inside their own borders and no need to import any from Niger or anywhere else. The I.A.E.A. then blew the cover off the fraud by announcing that the documents Bush had used were not only forgeries, but too obvious to believe that anyone in the Bush administration did not know they were forgeries!
In the end, the real proof that we were lied to about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction is that no weapons of mass destruction were ever found. That means that every single piece of paper that purported to prove that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction was by default a fraud, a hoax, and a lie. There could be no evidence that supported the claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction. In a way, the existence of any faked documents about Iraq’s WMDs is actually an admission of guilt. If one is taking the time to create fake documents, the implication is that the faker is already aware that there are no genuine documents.
What the US Government had, ALL that they had, were copied student papers, forged “Yellow Cake” documents, balloon inflators posing as bioweapons labs, and photos with misleading labels on them. And somewhere along the line, someone decided to put those misleading labels on those photos, to pretend that balloon inflators are portable bioweapons labs, and to pass off stolen student papers as contemporary analysis.
And THAT shows an intention to deceive.
Lawyers call this “Mens Rea”, which means “Guilty Mind”. TV lawyer shows call it “Malice aforethought”. This means that not only did the Bush Administration lie to the people and to the US Congress, but knew they were doing something illegal at the time that they did it.
All the talk about “Intelligence failure” is just another lie. There was no failure. Indeed the Army agents who erroneously claimed that missile tubes were parts for a uranium centrifuge received bonuses, while the Pentagon smeared Hans Blix, and John Bolton orchestrated the firing of Jose Bustani, the director of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, because Bustani was trying to send chemical weapons inspectors to Baghdad.
The President of the United States and his Neocon associates lied to the people of the United States to send them off on a war of conquest.
Defenders of the government will point to the cases listed at the top of the page as proof that lying to the people is a normal part of the leader’s job and we should all get used to it. And because “Everybody does it” that we should not single out the present administration. But this is madness. We do not catch all the murderers, yet when we catch a murderer, we deal with them as harshly as possible, in order to deter more murderers.
Right now, we have the criminals at hand. and, while other leaders in history have lied to start wars, for the first time in history, the lie stands exposed while the war started with the lies still rages on, to the death and detriment of our young men and women in uniform. We cannot in good moral conscience ignore this lie, this crime, lest we encourage future leaders to continue to lie to use to send our kids off to pointless wars. Lying to start a war is more than an impeachable offence; it the highest possible crime a government can commit against their own people. Lying to start a war is not only misappropriation of the nation’s military and the nation’s money under false pretenses, but it is outright murder committed on a massive scale. Lying to start a war is a betrayal of the trust each and every person who serves in the military places in their civilian leadership. By lying to start a war, the Bush administration has told the military fatalities and their families that they have no right to know why they were sent to their deaths. It’s none of their business.
Our nation is founded on the principle of rule with the consent of the governed. Because We The People do not consent to be lied to, a government that lies rules without the consent of the governed, and ruling without the consent of the governed is slavery.
You should be more than angry. You should be in a rage. You should be in a rage no less than that of the families of those young men and women who have been killed and maimed in this war started with a lie.You need to be in a rage and you need to act on that rage because even as I type these words, the same government that lied about Iraq’s nuclear weapons is telling the exact same lies about Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The writing is on the wall; having gotten away with lying to start the war in Iraq, the US Government will lie to start a war in Iran, and after that another, and after that another, and another and another and another because as long as you remain silent, and as long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop.
As long as you remain inactive, the liars have no reason to stop.
None.
It is time to fire the liars.
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is
for good men to do nothing” .
–Edmund Burke
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U.S.C. TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 47 � 1001.
(a) Except as otherwise provided in this section, WHOEVER, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States, knowingly and willfully�
(1) falsifies, conceals, or covers up by ANY trick, scheme, or device a material fact;
(2) makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation; or
(3) makes or USES any false writing or document knowing the same to contain any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or entry; shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than 5 years, or both.
(b) Subsection (a) does not apply to a party to a judicial proceeding, or that party’s counsel, for statements, representations, writings or documents submitted by such party or counsel to a judge or magistrate in that proceeding.
(c) With respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the legislative branch, subsection (a) shall apply only to�
(1) administrative matters, including a claim for payment, a matter related to the procurement of property or services, personnel or employment practices, or support services, or a document required by law, rule, or regulation to be submitted to the Congress or any office or officer within the legislative branch; or
(2) any investigation or review, conducted pursuant to the authority of any committee, subcommittee, commission or office of the Congress, consistent with applicable rules of the House or Senate.
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SO HERE IS WHAT WE ARE GOING TO DO
The Bush administration and their friends in the media want this story to go away. More than want it to go away, they are in a panic, and will do everything they can to stop it. They will use every dirty trick, every paid shill, every presstitute that they can. Already there is a report that the Michael Jackson jury is “expected” to reach a verdict just before the Conyers hearings.
So, I want YOU to copy this article off, post it everywhere. This article is placed in the public domain. Mail it to your friends. Then send it to your local media and your Congresscritters and have everyone you know do the same. Get on the phones. Flood their offices.
The term is “Viral Marketing” where you get the people who need a product to market it for you. Well, this nation NEEDS this “product”. It needs to know that this war was started with lies. INTENTIONAL lies. And they need to know there is something they can do about it, and that is to start pounding on the doors of power.
Because when a flood of such messages reaches the Congress and the media, what they will hear is that there is no more time. Either they will deal with these lies and the liars, in full, or they will lose all credibility as a government and as media.
A government that lies to the people cannot be the legal government of this land. Make sure that they understand that YOU understand that the Constitution does not allow the government to lie to the people. Calling themselves the government does not make it so if they act unconstitutionally and illegally. The Constitution is the original “Contract with America” and a government that lies stands in clear breach of that contract.
MORE MEDIA CONTACTS Â Â Â MORE CONGRESSIONAL CONTACTS
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But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
– “The Declaration of Independence“
