Twelfth Bough

i run my own damn think tank

Archive for category Civil Rights

controlling the message

Jan 22

Posted by A. Peasant in CIA, Censorship, China, Civil Rights, Clinton, Corruption & Crime, Gatekeeping, Iran, Israel, Language & Meaning, Lebanon, Media, Mind-fucking, NWO, Obama/Biden, Psychology, Surveillance, Terrorism, Unreality | No Comments

1. the PROBLEM of US hegemony and abuse of the internet … definitely a problem. BUT what should be done about this problem??

Concerns about the US monopoly of the domain name server (DNS) system grew among other nations as much as their reliance on the Internet for issues ranging from politics and the economy to defense and the general society. Years ago, there was a proposal that the Internet be administered by the United Nations or under international cooperation. The European Union insisted that the World Wide Web is an international resource that should be jointly managed by all nations. Some developing countries pointed out that at the early stage of Internet development, developed countries seized large amounts of domain names, leaving a limited few for them, and demanded a share with the US over Internet administration. American officials opposed the suggestion.

…US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Twitter and other social networking sites are “strategic assets of great importance” because “these new technologies make it harder for the ‘dictator regimes’ to control information”. A former intelligence official said the channeling of US ideology via the Internet is much easier than sending spies to target countries or training local agents in target countries who identify with US ideology. The move the US government made in June 2009 — when it dissented over the Chinese government’s order to install the filtering software Green Dam and pressured China’s government for interfering in the freedom on the ‘Net and the freedom of information flow — is probably related to its intention to infiltrate China.

According to a Hong Kong media agency, the CIA invests tens of millions of US dollars every year to aid “Chinese net traitors” to infiltrate Chinese net users with US ideology. They haunt major Chinese forums and portals. A website called “Wazhe Online” (Chinese Pinyin) is a secret mission with the cooperation of US government institutions and overseas “Tibetan splittist organizations” with the tasks of agitating, deluding, infiltrating and instigating Chinese net users, making up rumors to initiate riots and collecting information via the Internet. A Tibetan youth who once worked with one organization said it is an online spy agency which is supported by the US financially, controlled by the Americans and serves the Americans. A commentary on Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao said those who publish stories sensitive to China’s policies on the net have complex backgrounds and are hired by US and Japanese spy agencies.

much more @ chinaview

2. Hillary Clinton: would everybody PLEASE condemn people who engage in cyber attacks???

WASHINGTON - UNITED States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton yesterday called for global condemnation for those who carry out cyber attacks, as China sought to contain tension with the United States over online censorship and hacking.

In what was flagged as a major policy speech on Internet freedom, she said: ‘Countries or individuals that engage in cyber attacks should face consequences and international condemnation. In an interconnected world, an attack on one nation’s networks can be an attack on all.’…The Internet has already been a source of tremendous progress in China, and it’s great that so many people there are now online,’ she said. ‘But countries that restrict free access to information or violate the basic rights of Internet users risk walling themselves off from the progress of the next century.’

more @ straits times

3. FOR INSTANCE, let’s talk about Hezbollah’s news outlet al Manar. now as we all know Hezbollah is designated a “terrorist” operation, so the fact that they have a pretty decent news outlet is of NO CONSEQUENCE! they refer to israel as “the zionist entity.” that is so hurtful. it is practically hate speech! you better not be getting any news from al Manar tv or next thing you know the US govt will conflate you will aiding and abetting terrorists. capice? especially if any weapons happen to fall into Hezbollah’s hands, as bibi keeps predicting over and over and over again, and something happens to an israeli who is only acting in self-defense, and some Iranian weapons hurt a hair on his head via Hezbollah, and Hezbollah has a news channel…. you see where this is going right? if you read al Manar tv you might as well just fly to Iran and get a weapon and use it on an innocent israeli yourself. SAME THING. so shield your eyes. be innocent of knowledge.

The U.S. Embassy said Friday that a bill passed by the U.S. House of Representatives calling for punitive measures against Hizbullah’s al-Manar TV was not a measure taken against freedom of expression.

…The U.S. government believes

there is no difference

between a terrorist organization

and a media outlet run by it, Gliha said.

more @ naharnet

4. google’s deep CIA connections

Google is, in fact, is a key participant in U.S. military and CIA intelligence operations involving torture; subversion of foreign governments; illegal wars of aggression; and military occupations of countries which have never attacked the U.S. and which have cost hundreds of thousands of lives in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere.

To begin with, Google is the supplier of the core search technology for ‘Intellipedia, a highly-secured online system where 37,000 U.S. spies and related personnel share information and collaborate on their devious errands.

Agencies such as the so-called ‘National Security Agency’ have also purchased servers using Google-supplied search technology which processes information gathered by U.S. spies operating all over the planet.

In addition, Google is linked to the U.S. spy and military systems through its Google Earth software venture. The technology behind this software was originally developed by Keyhole Inc., a company funded by Q-Tel http://www.iqt.org/ , a venture capital firm which is in turn openly funded and operated on behalf of the CIA.

more @ pravda

5. US state dept ‘not the foreign policy arm of google’ — that’s right. it’s the CIA.

Speaking of the cyberattacks which Internet giant Google said last week originated in China, Ross said: “I think it is important to emphasize the private nature of some of this.” “This is primarily an issue between Google and 30 plus other private entities and the Chinese government,” he said at the start of a panel discussion sponsored by the New America Foundation and Slate magazine. “But we have responded with what I think is justifiable concern,” Ross said. “We’ve asked for an explanation.”

Ross added that the United States and China “have had conversations over the years where we’ve made clear our opinions both about the freedom of expression as well as cybersecurity. “So we’re taking this very seriously,” he said. “But all of that said, the State Department is not the foreign policy arm of Google,” he said.

more @ inquirer

6. other managed messages:

no need to worry about the safety of the World Cup in South Africa. this little incident here is nothing to worry about - just a little operant conditioning.

The two men were wielding guns and preparing to unleash terror on the nation. With their faces obscured, they were apparently loading their guns in preparation to rob tourists and cause mayhem during the forthcoming World Cup in South Africa. This was the image a controversial television channel, E.tv, beamed to South Africa and probably the world when they broadcast a documentary about criminals trying to upset the progress made by South Africa to host the international football tournament.  But the image is causing a huge controversy among South Africans and journalists for what they term irresponsible journalism, and the media house has now been subpoenaed under Section 205 of the South African (SA) constitution, to reveal the identities of the two men shown in the video.

the departing US envoy to the Philippines, Kristie Kenney, is very very very grateful to the Malacanang Press

She thanked the Malacañang Press Corps for the “kind” treatment of US officials. “You’ve been meeting me with wonderful kindness but I see you’ve been wonderful to all of our official visitors and I appreciate that so deeply—Cabinet members, members of the US Congress have all found Malacañang Press Corps, you know, very kind and even and fair-tempered to people. I know how hard all of you work everyday, so thank you very much,” she said.

and i’m sure we all agree that people like this don’t know the difference between fantasy and reality and it’s a good thing he’s not in power anymore he could have caused a serious diplomatic incident. !!! !!!!! !!!!! boy, show some respect for the dead. sheesh.

‘Conspiracy theories aside, people actually died in that suicide attack. Dr Mahathir’s statement is disrespectful to the victims for it to be described that way, with reference to a Hollywood movie,’ he said on Thursday. Mr Ibrahim said that as the founder of the Perdana Global Peace Organisation, Dr Mahathir should know the root causes of terrorism and point out what led him to draw such conclusions. DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang in a statement said that Dr Mahathir would have created ‘an international incident’ between Malaysia and the United States if he was still the Prime Minister.

7. well in any case you have NOTHING to worry about because We Are Ready

The president of the United States has always had the constitutional authority, and duty, to protect the American people and direct the national response to any emergency that threatens the security and safety of the United States. The Rockefeller-Snowe Cybersecurity bill makes it clear that the president’s authority includes securing our national cyber infrastructure from attack. The section of the bill that addresses this issue, applies specifically to the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster. This particular legislative language is based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks.

OK that seems pretty clear that the president can secure (control) the national infrastructure from attack as part of the national response to a severe attack or natural disaster based on statutory authorities for wartime use of communication networks. Right?

WRONG! THAT’S NOT WHAT IT SAYS CAN’T YOU READ?????

To be very clear, the Rockefeller-Snowe bill will not empower a “government shutdown or takeover of the Internet” and any suggestion otherwise is misleading and false.

Oh wow, that’s so confusing. The statement says one thing, and then it says the complete opposite! Yes you will allow the president to secure the private infrastructure based on the Rockefeller-Snowe bill based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks, but no you will not suggest that the Rockefeller-Snowe bill empowered the president to shutdown or take over the internet. That would make you a LIAR.

So here’s the instruction: “Securing the private infrastructure based on longstanding statutory authorities for wartime use of communications networks” IS NOT “shutting down or taking over the internet.”

YES IT IS.
NO IT’S NOT.
YES IT IS.

Mind-fucking.

The purpose of this language is to clarify how the president directs the public-private response to a crisis, secure our economy and safeguard our financial networks, protect the American people, their privacy and civil liberties, and coordinate the government’s response.

No. The purpose of this language is mind-fucking people into supporting the government takeover of the internet after a false-flag terrorist attack. You will support President Obama. You will listen to whatever he says. Turn on the teevee.

ambitious plans for recruiting informants

Oct 20

Posted by A. Peasant in Citizenship, Civil Rights, FBI, Surveillance, Terrorism | No Comments

Hey, the The Nazi Gestapo started out as a volunteer neighborhood informant organization for the government, too. This goes back to 2003:

In a recent telephone interview, Licata said he wants to use CAT Eyes to create what he calls “a modern civil defense network,” converting neighborhood watch groups into anti-terrorist informant cells. These groups, constantly watching for signs of terrorist activity in their neighborhoods and workplaces, would report suspicious activities directly to the FBI. Said Licata: “I envision 100 million Americans looking for indicators of terrorism and promptly reporting it to a central database where it would get analyzed.”. . .

Licata has few qualms about the prospect of CAT Eyes-trained citizens spying on their neighbors. “If I felt that my neighbor of 10 years was doing fund-raising for a group, I’d turn ‘em in,” says Licata. After all, he says, the FBI will “just investigate them — and if you’re wrong, you’re wrong. And if you’re right, that’s a big thing!”. . .

Even communist East Germany, a tightly controlled society with more informants per capita than either Stalinist Russia or Nazi Germany, was not as ambitious about citizen surveillance as CAT Eyes. In its heyday, the EastGerman secret police, or Stasi, is generally believed to have had about 2 million informers, or about one-eighth of the East German population.

Oh but that would never happen here, right? Americans are freedom-loving people. This goes back to 2002:

In order to sell the community on this program, its creators probably equipped it with convincing propaganda, which is delivered by professionals. Although there has been no official admission that the following federal resources function as recruitment programs for public harassment, they are similar to ones used in German and Russian dictatorships.

The Terrorism Information and Prevention System (TIPS), appears to be a bulked-up version of a community-policing program. Even though TIPS was officially rejected by congress, the American Civil Liberty Union contends that it and similar programs are being used aggressively across the nation. Other programs must have sprung up around the planet because the reported tactics of Gang Stalking in other countries are similar.

But who is the threat? According to some of these documents at www.citizencorps.gov, the targets are criminals and terrorists. However, the definition of a terrorist in section 802 of the US Patriot Act is frighteningly vague. Basically it defines terrorism as any action that endangers human life or that violates state or federal law.

An article entitled, US Planning to Recruit One in 24 Americans as Citizen Spies, which appeared in the Sunday Morning Herald on July 15, 2002, provided us with another clue. It stated, “The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police.”

The articled revealed that the system is poised to recruit those whose work provides access to homes, businesses, and public transportation systems. Postal workers, utility employees, truck drivers, train conductors and others are to be recruited. On “state and local” levels these informants are to be directed by FEMA. This provides a motive for the reports of people being stalked by 18-wheelers, busses, city, postal, and utility vehicles.

Oh, hey, the CAKE IS FINALLY DONE! HERE THEY ARE NOW!!!

If you really think there’s a difference between iWATCH and Stasi, you’re a Good American. And I don’t mean that in the “nice” way.

The Stasi created a widespread network of civilian informants. These informants were citizens who cooperated with Stasi agents, sometimes in exchange for money or goods. These unofficial informants used their jobs, social influence, and family networks to spy on fellow citizens. Informants were required to report suspicious or anti-government behavior to Stasi authorities. Tips from informants were followed by further agent surveillance or immediate arrest. The Stasi maintained its own network of detention camps and prisons, the most notorious of which was Bauden II. The Stasi garnered a reputation for its use of brutality, torture, and blackmail as routine methods of extracting information and coercing cooperation.

Understand the Stakes

Sep 26

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Corruption & Crime, Economy, Injustice, McCain/Palin, Military, Stupidity | 2 Comments

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 A TRAP

Sep 25

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Civil Rights, Corruption & Crime, Economy, Injustice, Military | No Comments

If you can stand it, watch the video of Bush delivering his little pep talk to the nation last night. When he delivers his vicious lies, cleverly honed though they may be by his writers, the truth flickers across his face. You can see it in his eye area and around his mouth, the ripples of astonishment, the fleeting smirks, the lips pursed in disgust, the arched brow as he delivers what he absolutely, positively knows are LIES to the American people. The expressions go by very quickly, in fractions of seconds, but they are there. I’m sure somewhere our government has this super technology that they use in airports to analyze our faces for terrorist intent, and if they have that trained on GWB they must be laughing their asses off right now, as he leads the charge to rape our country one more time for the road. It’s as if he almost can’t believe we’re going to fall for it again, but he’ll give it the old college try. Rah rah.

This bailout plan is a trap, of that I am convinced. Bush and Paulson keep talking about what will happen if we don’t do it, but nobody talks about what will happen if we do do it. They don’t want you to know about that. They don’t want you to know what this bailout will do to the economy.

What it can do is provide a one-time transfer of wealth to insiders who already have been playing the debt-credit system and siphoning off its predatory financial proceeds to themselves. The Wall Street bankers, brokers and fund managers to whom I’ve been speaking for many decades all know this. That is why they pay themselves such large annual bonuses and large salaries each year. The idea is to take as much as you can. As the saying goes: “You only have to make a fortune once in a lifetime.” They have been salting away their fortunes year after year, mainly in hard assets: real estate (free of mortgages), fine furniture, boats and trophy art.

Their plan now is for icing on the cake – to take Mr. Paulson’s $700 billion and run. It’s not a “bailout of the financial system.” It’s as giveaway – to insiders, to sell out all their bad bets. Companies across the board will get rid of their bad mortgages, and also their bad car loans, furniture time payments, credit-card loans, student loans – all the debts that any competent actuary could have told them never could have been paid in the first place.

…Promises that “taxpayers” will be able to recover a large part of this money are a fiction. If there were a hope of recovering this money, then investors abroad – foreign buyout funds, foreign banks, foreign sovereign wealth funds – would have been willing to buy Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, A.I.G. and other companies at some price. But they wouldn’t touch this at any price.

…For the government to even begin to recover some of the value of the $700 billion in junk mortgages it has bought would force new homebuyers to pay even more of their income to the banks. And if they do that, they will have less income to spend on goods and services. The domestic market will shrink, and tax revenues will fall at the state, local and federal levels. The debt overhead will deflate the economy, causing shrinkage all down the line.

So here’s where the cognitive dissonance comes in: It is necessary, even inevitable, for the volume of debt to come down – not up – to restore equilibrium. The economy was well on its way to preparing the ground for this last week. As Alan Meltzer of the American Enterprise Institute (of all places!) explained on McNeill-Lehrer, Merrill Lynch was able to be sold at 22 cents on the dollar; and the economy survived Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns being wiped out.

Such debt writes-offs are a precondition for writing down America’s mortgage debts to levels that are affordable. But Mr. Paulson’s plan is to fight against this tide. He wants the Wall Street to keep on raking in money at the expense of the economy at large. These are the big banks who lobbied Congress to appoint de-regulators, the banks whose officers paid themselves enormous bonuses and gave themselves enormous golden parachutes. They were the leaders in the great disinformation campaign about the magic of compound interest. And now they are to get their payoff.

The pretense is that not to pay them off would threaten “the economy.” The reality is that it only would stop their predatory behavior. Worse than that, for the economy at large a government take-over of these bad loans would prevent the debt write-down that the economy needs!

It gets worse. If Congress should be so destructive as to buy out $700 billion of bad loans (for starters), the sellers will do just what Russia’s kleptocrats did. They will take their money and move it abroad to a “hard” currency country. This will help collapse the dollar. Up will go gasoline costs and prices for other imports. America will be turned into a Russian-style post-Soviet economy, having endowed a new domestic kleptocracy of insiders, who use some of their gains to finance the campaigns of American Yeltsins such as McCain.

Do not believe these people. They lie ALL THE TIME. They don’t care about Americans. They only care about themselves. They set this up, knowing it would come to this, and now they will force us at gunpoint to bail them out, lying the whole time that we will be made whole. We never will. Our dollar will collapse, chaos will break out, and then they will clamp down with Martial Law and begin the oppression in earnest. It’s no coincidence that the Army will install an active duty unit on October 1st, within the US, to handle ‘civil unrest’ and ‘crowd control,’ using the latest ‘non-lethal’ weapons. That would be in 6 days.

Keep calling your congresspeople. Here you can see one, DeFazio D-Oregon, actually show some courage as he speaks the Truth on the House floor. We need more of this, much more. We need many more people to have courage and to stand against this plan. There should be NO bailout. As DeFazio says, let them write off the bad debt first. If they need help after that, let them take a loan under stiff terms. Is that not what would be expected of any one of us? Of course it is. Good enough then, for them who already have so much.

A wolf never can so badly enslave a fellow-wolf as a man can enslave a fellow-man. It is not easier to live in freedom than to fight for freedom. One must fight for freedom like an archangel, but one must live in freedom as a saint. When you fight for freedom you are helping every slave of the world, not only yourself. - Nicholai Velimirovic, Wisdom of the Serbians

This Bailout is Bullshit!

Sep 24

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Corruption & Crime, Economy, Injustice | No Comments

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!!!

Wow. Just like an Arab dictatorship.

Aug 28

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Civil Rights | No Comments

Hey, just so you know, today GWB extended the national emergency he declared on 9/14/01 for one more year.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2008/08/20080828-7.html

Consistent with section 202(d) of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622(d)), I am continuing for 1 year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, in Proclamation 7463, with respect to the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, New York, New York, the Pentagon, and aboard United Airlines flight 93, and the continuing and immediate threat of further attacks on the United States.

Because the terrorist threat continues, the national emergency declared on September 14, 2001, and the powers and authorities adopted to deal with that emergency, must continue in effect beyond September 14, 2008. Therefore, I am continuing in effect for an additional year the national emergency I declared on September 14, 2001, with respect to the terrorist threat.

This notice shall be published in the Federal Register and transmitted to the Congress.

GEORGE W. BUSH

THE WHITE HOUSE,

August 28, 2008.

In Egypt, Hosni Mubarak has kept the emergency laws in effect for something like 25 years. Pretty cool, huh? That’s what we call a dick-TATER-ship. Everybody there hates his guts, too.

“If this were a dictatorship, it’d be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I’m the dictator.” — GWB, Washington, D.C., Dec. 19, 2000

Well, I think George is consistently exceeding his goal in that regard.

Kill the Bloggers, C….I….L…..L

Aug 20

Posted by Marlena in Civil Rights, Surveillance | No Comments

I remember seeing something a while back, but unfortunately I can’t put my hands on it now, and it said that many patriotic Americans worked in the NSA. These people are very, very intelligent types and they will not sit by and let the US become taken over by the goon squad currently in charge. If I recall correctly, this was part of a comment thread.

Now that may all be true, and I hope it is, but apparently there are others in the NSA who carry a different attitude.

Wayne Madsen, always spoiling for a fight with Bush and Cheney, or the chance to show off his undies to minimum wage airport TSA workers, has an executive level NSA staff person on record saying that significant sentiment exists within the NSA to kill troublesome bloggers and journalists.
The NSA executive staffer was, apparently, not the source of the sentiment, but this individual did pass along the context and the precise wording of the “junior G-man” working in the NSA. Prominent names listed in the NSA database of troublemakers?
1. Bill Gertz

2. James Bamford

3. Vernon Loeb

4. Jim Risen

5. Dr. John C. K. Daly

6. Wayne Madsen

7. Seymour Hersh

These were all the names Madsen published, but there are, of course, many others. Possibly you, gentle reader.

At moments like this I like to recall the military guy who called me a ‘paranoid delusionist.’ Oh geez yeah.

Police State 2008?

Jun 24

Posted by Marlena in 9-11, Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Media, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Stupidity | No Comments

You don’t have to take my word for it. I’m nobody.

Paul Craig Roberts, on the other hand, has qualifications.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury during President Reagan’s first term. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. He has held numerous academic appointments, including the William E. Simon Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Georgetown University, and Senior Research Fellow, Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He was awarded the Legion of Honor by French President Francois Mitterrand. He is the author of Supply-Side Revolution : An Insider’s Account of Policymaking in Washington, Alienation and the Soviet Economy and Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy and is the co-author with Lawrence M. Stratton of The Tyranny of Good Intentions : How Prosecutors and Bureaucrats Are Trampling the Constitution in the Name of Justice . Click here for Peter Brimelow’s interview with Roberts about the recent epidemic of prosecutorial misconduct.

And when you’re done watching that, please read The Coming Catastrophe? by David DeBatto, former U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent and Iraqi war veteran.

I may be shrill from time to time.

OK OK… I’m shrill every day. But this is why. Should these things come to pass, they won’t be easily undone.

The Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism

Jun 12

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Surveillance | No Comments

In a recently exchange with someone who vehemently disagreed with me, the person said, “It’s just baffling to me how anyone could misconstrue something like this.” Well, it is equally baffling to me how some people can still fail to suspect our government’s motives. Let us borrow this phrase to describe it: The Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism.

Just in today’s news over at Global Research, you can read two pieces from established scholars that should bring a shadow across even the most trusting brow. My challenge to anyone who persists in believing that our government will not do horrible things to us, the American people, is this: show me what would prevent them? If it’s true that we have been operating under a Continuity of Government (COG) plan since 9/11, then our Constitution has been effectively suspended. Who is then capable of stopping NSPD 51 and the latest, NSPD 59? And even if that isn’t true, what has stopped them from doing anything we don’t like?

(crickets)

The national security crowd considers themselves sophisticated and tough, and they remind us that our government has to do certain dirty things to keep us safe. It’s the ‘real world’, the world Jack Nicholson screamed about when he said, “You can’t handle the truth!!” Some of those things are described here.

But in the next breath they insist that the government would never do anything to hurt us. This is where the Fallacy of Insufficient Cynicism kicks in. They admit conspiracies happen and are necessary, but they accuse the conspiracy theorists of being naive for thinking that some of the conspiracies are directed against the American people.

Now a quick observation on the state of the American people should confirm who is truly being naive here. Have our wages increased? No. Has our security increased? No. Do we enjoy greater leisure time and a safe food supply and better jobs? No. No. No. Is it all a coincidence or else the fault of brown people and/or liberals and/or terrorists? No. Those are the scapegoats. The people responsible for these giant problems are the people actually running the government. If things suck on a grand scale, and they do, it’s Washington’s fault. Remember all that talk about the ownership society we heard from the right? How about some ownership that the Bush Regime and it’s congressional enablers and Israeli handlers have run the USA into the ground?

Here is George Bush’s latest disgusting terrorist attack on the American people: NSPD 59. There is nothing here to prevent the executive branch from classifying Americans critical of the government as threats to national security. It is just another nail in the coffin of our Bill of Rights. And if Bush/Cheney/Israel decide to rustle up some new war with Iran, you can be sure that we will find out why Bush passed NSPD 51 and NSPD 59 — so they can come out of the authoritarian closet once and for all.

Our government clearly holds us in utter contempt. It is ultimately naive to refuse to recognize this.

Message Control

Jun 3

Posted by Marlena in Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Civil Rights, Media, Military, Torture | 2 Comments

Welcome to America. Is there anything I can help you find, like a detention facility perhaps?

60 Minutes did a story on Raytheon’s ray gun back in March, and now they just had to do another story on it. Now why would that be necessary, one might ask. Well, the Pentagon really needs this ray gun technology to enjoy the Walmart smiley face seal-of-approval with the American public. Because some people (cough) have suggested that this technology can be abused, and before that suggestion gets around, the DOD had better make sure that everybody knows that the US military is just a bunch of boy scouts who would never do anything to harm innocent civilians, and they only want to save lives, and…well…let’s see what they say.

The Pentagon has been developing a raygun which can harmlessly repel enemies by causing a burning sensation in the top layer of the skin. However, according to CBS’s 60 Minutes, the military is unwilling to actually trust this weapon enough to deploy it in Iraq.

It can ‘harmlessly repel enemies’, but the military is concerned about using this in Iraq. Mind you, over 1.2 million people have already been killed in Iraq, a fact which somewhat belies this grave concern about Iraqis.

Hymes demonstrated the weapon by staging what CBS somewhat oddly called “a scenario soldiers might encounter in Iraq” — a handful of military volunteers, dressed as civilian protesters, who carried signs saying “peace not war” and threw objects at a small group of soldiers. A series of raygun blasts from half a mile away disrupted their chants and finally sent them running.

It doesn’t get much more obvious than this. Watch the video. The gun is going to be used on protesters. American protesters. Anti-war protesters. Because the ray gun can ‘harmlessly repel enemies’. Enemies…protesters…same difference.

Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisiton Sue Payton calls the Active Denial System a “huge game-changer” which “would save huge numbers of lives.” She told CBS, “It could be used to read someone’s mind, in effect. … If they continue to come at you, then you’re fairly sure … they’re probably a terrorist or an adversary who wants to do you harm.”

The Active Denial System was developed in secret for ten years before being unveiled by the Pentagon in 2001. As of 2004, it was being described as ready for use in Iraq within the next 12 months. This has still not occurred, and according to Secretary Payton, use of the weapon in Iraq is now “not politically tenable” because after Abu Ghraib “you don’t ever, ever, ever want a system like this to be thought of as a torture weapon.”

These links contain a lot of information, and this technology has been around for some time. The Pentagon would like us all to believe that they would really love to use this technology because it’s totally safe and would save lives, but unfortunately it carries dangerous political risks. People can claim that they have been tortured.

But, you know, torture is in the eye of the beholder. It’s whatever George Bush says it is. You might think you’re being tortured, but if George W Bush says you have not been tortured, well then you haven’t. And anyway, we don’t torture people. We might ‘torture’ them, but we don’t actually torture them. Do you follow me?

If you click through the ‘in secret’ link, Wired did a story on this in December 2006. The technology had already been tested extensively. Some subjects did suffer burns, but the effects were not ‘long lasting’.

The ADS was developed in complete secrecy for 10 years at a cost of $40 million. Its existence was revealed in 2001 by news reports, but most details of ADS human testing remain classified. There has been no independent checking of the military’s claims.

The ADS technology is ready to deploy, and the Army requested ADS-armed Strykers for Iraq last year. But the military is well aware that any adverse publicity could finish the program, and it does not want to risk distressed victims wailing about evil new weapons on CNN.

You see, it’s all ready to go, all except for the PR angle. It’s been ready to go since 2006. Actually, if you click the ‘described’ link to a Boston Business Journal story in December 2004, the technology was even then set to be deployed in Iraq.

With U.S. casualties in Iraq rising, expectations are growing that Raytheon’s weapon, called the Active Denial System, could be sent to Iraq in the next year, according to Charles “Sid” Heal, commander of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. A former Marine, Heal headed nonlethal-weapons training for the U.S. military in Somalia in 1995 and advised Raytheon on the beam’s development.

“It’s there, it’s ready,” said Heal, who has felt the weapon’s beam and compares it to having a hot iron placed on the skin. “It will likely be in Iraq in the next 12 months. They are very, very close.”

If you click on the ‘unveiled’ link, the NYT reported the weapon’s debut back in March 2001.

Known in Pentagon patois as an “active denial system,” the weapon is the fruit of 10 years of research and is intended to help American soldiers in the quasi-military roles they have increasingly been asked to play as peacekeepers or police in places like Kosovo and Ethiopia.

But now, June 2008, you are being asked to believe that the US military fears using this weapon in Iraq and has withheld using this weapon to avoid the possible backlash of the international community. And all this time it could have been saving lives. Obviously this is a tragedy caused by silly political correctness, so this is what we’re gonna do. We’re going to make sure that Americans demand that our military use this weapon to save lives in Iraq, even if we have to let them use it on us first. That’s right. Because we are a decent and upright people, and if we have to fork over billions of taxpayer dollars for secret weapons technology and destroy countries around the world to bring them democracy, well, dammit, we can take a little martial law practice. That will be our sacrifice. In fact, we’re going to volunteer those lefties over there for ray gun target practice.

However, the failure to deploy the weapon as planned has raised suspicions that the real intention is to use it for domestic crowd control.

In 2006, Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne was quoted as saying that the device should be used first on Americans, because “if we’re not willing to use it here against our fellow citizens, then we should not be willing to use it in a wartime situation. … If I hit somebody with a nonlethal weapon and they claim that it injured them in a way that was not intended, I think that I would be vilified in the world press.”

And now for the final touch…a little cry of poor-mouth from the Air Force.

Raytheon, which developed the system for the Pentagon, is currently selling a more limited-range civilian version of the system, under the name “Silent Guardian,” which it promotes as being suitable for “law enforcement, checkpoint security, facility protection, force protection and peacekeeping missions.”

Commander Charles “Sid” Heal of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, who advised Raytheon in developing the raygun, told CBS that the real reason the system has not been deployed in Iraq is “cowardice.” Heal, a former Marine, took a variety of non-lethal weapons to Somalia in 1995 and was dismayed to find that his superiors felt their supposedly humanitarian mission was better accomplished by killing. He would love to have the Pentagon’s raygun available for such purposes as controlling prison riots.

The Pentagon is spending just $13.1 million on the raygun this year. Secretary Payton agrees this is “absolutely peanuts … chump change,” but she explained to CBS that with only a $475 billion annual budget, “we don’t have enough money to do things that are the here and now.” The raygun is seen as unproven because it has never been deployed in the field, and it has not been deployed in the field because it is unproven.

“Lethal weapons have an easier time getting into our system,” acknowledges Colonel Hymes.

So do you feel guilty yet? Are you ready to volunteer so that this wonderful, non-lethal weapon can be used to save lives? Do you trust that it will always and everywhere be used properly? Will you demand that more of your tax dollars be given to the DOD to resolve their horrible budget shortfalls?

Me either.