Neocon Chutzpah

Are these the sort of men we need advising the White House?

June 2004 Signs of the Times

The Pinochet Principle: Bush Defends Torture in the Name of National Security

Democracynow.com
Wednesday, June 9th, 2004

The administration has come under fire from human rights groups and military lawyers in recent days for concluding two years ago that it could ignore international and domestic laws and allow US soldiers to torture detainees.

A series of leaked memos published in the press this week outline how lawyers for the administration determined U.S. soldiers could torture detainees during interrogations by claiming it was in the interest of national security. The memos indicate that lawyers from the Defense and Justice departments as well as the White House and Vice President's office backed the policy changes.

During three hours of testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Attorney General John Ashcroft refused to provide copies of the memos in a session marked by several sharp exchanges. During the hearing Ashcroft came under questioning from Massachusetts Senator Ted Kennedy.

(Tape)
KENNEDY: In the front page of the Times, it has this quote, "A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2000 legal memorandum, President Bush was not bound either by international treaty prohibiting torture or by federal anti-torture law because he has the authority as commander in chief to approve any techniques needed to protect the nation's security." Do you agree with that conclusion?

ASHCROFT: Senator Kennedy, I'm not going to try and issue hypothetical...

KENNEDY: I'm not asking hypothetical. This is a memoranda that, again, was referred to today in the Post. "August 2002, Justice Department advised the White House that torturing Al Qaida terrorists in captivity abroad may be justified and that international laws against torture may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations." Do you agree with that?

ASHCROFT: I am not -- first of all, this administration rejects torture.

KENNEDY: I'm asking you whether this is -- these are -- there are three memoranda, January 9, 2002, signed by John Yo (ph), the August 2002 Justice Department, the (inaudible) amendment memo and the March 2000 -- the interagency working group. Those are three memoranda. Will you provide those to the committee?

ASHCROFT: No, I will not.

In July 2002, just one month before the August memo referred to by Kennedy, the U.S. had opposed a United Nations draft international treaty against torture that had taken a decade to negotiate and would have set up an international system of inspections for all sites where prisoners were held, to insure that torture was not taking place. Kennedy yesterday continued to press Ashcroft to release the memo when Delaware Senator yielded the floor to him:

(Tape)
KENNEDY: Just, General, has the president authorized you to invoke the executive privilege today on these documents?

ASHCROFT: I am not going to reveal discussions, whether I've had them or not had them, with the president. He asked me to deal with him as a matter of confidence. I have not invoked executive privilege today. I have explained to you why I'm not turning over the documents.

KENNEDY: Well, what are you invoking?

ASHCROFT: I have not invoked anything. I have just explained to you why I'm not turning over the documents.

BIDEN: Thank you very much. Well, General, that means you may be in contempt of Congress then. You got to have a reason not to answer our questions, as you know from you sitting up here. There may be a rationale for executive privilege that misses the point, but, you know, you have to have a reason. You are not allowed, under our Constitution, not to answer our questions, and that ain't constitutional.

Alan Dershowitz, Professor of Torture

By MIKE WHITNEY
June 9, 2004

"THE GENEVA Conventions are so outdated and are written so broadly that they have become a sword used by terrorists to kill civilians, rather than a shield to protect civilians from terrorists. These international laws have become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution."

This is the opening passage of Alan Dershowitz's attack on the Geneva Conventions. It sets the tone for a polemic that savages our continued commitment to the humane treatment of prisoners and endorses "varying forms of rough interrogation".

The essay, "The Rules of War Enable Terror", employs the Harvard professor's rhetorical skills to undermine the legal barriers that restrict the use of torture. It is a assault on the fundamental principles of human decency.

This is no exaggeration; Dershowitz is quite forceful in articulating his belief that treating people with dignity and humanity is anathema to the goals of the war on terror.

"The time has come to revisit the laws of war and to make them relevant to new realities," Dershowitz insists.

But what changes in the law does Dershowitz have in mind?

"The treaties against all forms of torture must begin to recognize differences in degree among varying forms of rough interrogation, ranging from trickery and humiliation, on the one hand, to lethal torture on the other. They must also recognize that any country faced with a ticking-time-bomb terrorist would resort to some forms of interrogation that are today prohibited by the treaty."[.....]

In Dershowitz's world, these constitutional protections are not only provisional, but subordinate to national security; the loftiest goal of all. It is a breathtaking departure from our professed commitment to human rights, and particularly surprising coming from an "officer of the court."

But, it is not merely torture that Dershowitz advocates, but murder; "premeditated", state sponsored murder.

"Democracies must be legally empowered to attack terrorists who hide among civilians, so long as proportional force is employed. Civilians who are killed while being used as human shields by terrorists must be deemed the victims of the terrorists who have chosen to hide among them, rather than those of the democracies who may have fired the fatal shot."

There are enormous gaps in Dershowitz's reasoning, the most prominent of which is his careless manner of excusing the killing of innocent civilians to achieve the objectives of the state. What Dershowitz blithely refers to as "proportional force" is in reality the "scattershot" justice practiced by Israel in their targeted assassination campaign. This is a policy that is so detestable, so utterly racist (it is impossible to imagine that Israel would ever fire missals into populated areas in Tel Aviv to dispatch an "alleged" terrorist; only in the enclaves of the "untermenschen") that it eschews any conceivable moral justification.

It is murder, plain and simple. [. . . .]

Bothe of these articles can be read at the Signs of the Times page.

A man of his convictions? At least Dershowitz is consistent. From today's Signs Page:

The Case Against Alan Dershowitz: Dershowitz vs. Public Committee Against Torture in Israel
- by Regan Boychuk

Alan Dershowitz is a well-known lawyer and professor at Harvard law school, a prolific author, and makes regular appearances in the media. When it comes to Israel, he is particularly outspoken and taken quite seriously within certain segments of the North American mainstream. Whether he deserves to be taken seriously is another issue altogether. In a recent talk at York University in Toronto, Canada, Professor Dershowitz repeated many of the controversial claims of his recent book,[1] but one struck me as -- even by his standard -- exceptionally far-reaching. In the course of arguing that Israeli authorities no longer torture Palestinians, Dershowitz claimed he had a long conversation with the Israeli human rights organization, Public Committee Against Torture in Israel (PCATI), in which PCATI not only conceded that there was no longer any torture for them to investigate, but that they refused to change their name because it helped them attract media attention.[2]

Although organizers of his lecture wore shirts arrogantly proclaiming, "Dersh knows more than you"I decided to check his claim. First, I visited PCATI's website (www.stoptorture.org.il) and immediately found its July 2003 report containing 48 affidavits testifying to the continued use of torture against Palestinians by Israeli authorities. More than three years after Professor Dershowitz claims torture had stopped, PCATI reported: "Each month, the ill-treatment reaching the level of torture as defined in international law is inflicted in dozens of cases, and possibly more. In other words – torture in Israel has once more become routine."[3] And after Professor Dershowitz claims PCATI conceded torture had ended, PCATI was still reporting that "Instances of torture, abuse, prisoners held incommunicado and excessive violence against [Palestinian] detainees continue to grow in both numbers and severity", while "interrogators and perpetrators of torture, their commanders and superiors enjoy impunity."[4]

These reports didn't exactly corroborate Professor Dershowitz's story so, next, I contacted PCATI to confirm his allegation. "Dershowitz's claim that he had long conversations with PCATI and that we reported that there is no longer any torture in Israel," I was told by PCATI’s Orah Maggen, "is totally false."

We never met with him or spoke with him directly. I did meet him at the Knesset [Israel’s parliament] when he spoke at the Law and Constitution Committee [but] I, and representatives of other human rights NGOs challenged most of what he said about torture, the role of human rights NGOs and other issues.”

When I reported PCATI's denial to Professor Dershowitz, he replied: "During my conversation at the Knesset I asked the representative of the committee [Orah Maggen] why they kept their name, despite their acknowledgement that torture was no longer a significant issue? She responded -- I remember clear as day -- as follows: 'You have no idea how difficult it is to get attention to any human rights issues in this country. Maintaining our organizational name, with the word torture, is essential to getting needed attention.' I had an extensive argument with her about that tactic, focusing especially on the international implications and the misleading nature of the name outside of the country. I am certain she remembers the conversation because it was quite heated. It also took place in front of numerous witnesses."

When I emailed PCATI Dershowitz's "clear as day" recollection, Ms. Maggen replied that it is true that there was a heated exchange with others present, but "All other statements made by Professor Dershowitz are blatantly false and utterly preposterous... Neither I nor any other representative of PCATI acknowledged, claimed or in any way stated that torture is no longer a significant issue. On the contrary, it is our claim that the systematic and large-scale torture and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees and prisoners continues to this day." She further stated that, "Neither I nor any other representative of PCATI ever stated that we kept our name to 'get attention' for any reason whatsoever. Considering the fact that torture is still widespread and that PCATI has its hands full struggling against the torture and ill treatment of Palestinian detainees (and others) by Israeli authorities, the claim regarding statements we supposedly made about our organization's name is totally absurd." Finally, she concluded that Dershowitz's claim was "shocking in its audacity."
In fact, however, it is on par with Dershowitz's claim in The Case for Israel, that the Israeli government has a "generally superb record on human rights," and that "Israel’s record on human rights is among the best in the world".[5]

What's "clear as day" from this little episode is that Dershowitz's every word should be taken with a mountain of salt.

*Regan Boychuk is a graduate student in political science at York University in Toronto, Canada and gets irritated when people get away with lies. reganboychuk@hotmail.com

Notes:

[1] Alan Dershowitz, The Case for Israel (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2003).

[2] Alan Dershowitz, public lecture at Osgoode Hall Law School, York University, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 14 March 2005.

[3] Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, "Back to a routine of torture: Torture and ill-treatment of Palestinian detainees during arrest, detention, and interrogation", July 2003, p. 11, .

[4] Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, "Preventing torture: Legal advocacy, legislative activism & public outreach: A narrative report", [Draft] 2004, p. 1.

[5] Dershowitz, The Case for Israel, pp. 204, 199. Despite Dershowitz's fervent attempts to prevent its publication, readers can soon find what promises to be a thorough debunking of The Case for Israel in Norman G. Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the misuse of anti-Semitism and the abuse of history (Berkeley, CA: University of California, June 2005).

Neocons, Human Rights, Torture, Dershowitz, AshCroft, Middle East, Politics, Palestine, Isreal

Only for the Brave

Few people share the truth with the passion that John does. Read and weep for us all.

Blue Ibis

***********************
Deer in the headlights

Searching for the truth is
ugly, frightening and dangerous
— and the only worthwhile choice

By John Kaminski
skylax@comcast.net

Maybe I'm already sufficiently hunkered down; safely ensconced in my leaky
trailer; barricaded against the onslaughts to come; insulated from the
contrived catastrophes that get worse with each new assault; prepared for
the biological barrage our masters have scheduled for us to cull this
feckless human herd and make their sinister existences even more
profitable; as fortified as I can be against the imminent financial
collapse about to engulf us all, at least for someone who earns his meager
coins by hurling reckless adjectives at all these endless crimes against
humanity.

After all, they haven't come for me yet. But will they come next week?

Oh, I am so prudent. I remove the magnetic antiwar sticker from my trunk in
certain rural parking lots so the rednecks won't trash my car. Mmm, such
courage. And sagacity. And always the darting eyes of man hazardously at
large in an alien world. Who the hell are all these people, and why are
practically all of them fast asleep?

Never have I heard so much talk as over the past few years about people
wanting to escape from warmongering America. I get postcards from Costa
Rica, cryptic e-mails from Thailand, letters about how nice it is in
Denmark or Portugal or Brazil, all from people who have shucked that
furtive sense of panic that still grips many people with actually
functioning souls who remain uneasily in their decaying United States.

Once I wrote that we shouldn’t run off to foreign places, that the best of
us should stay and fight for what is truly ours. But who can blame those of
us who are intimidated by the widespread lack of support for values and
actions that are truly humane. What’s the score now? About six people in
the entire Congress who are apt to tell the unvarnished truth about
anything? And not a single newspaper.

To not be afraid is to be stupid.

I have already received several notes from people who journeyed to Oklahoma
City recently especially to see me. I had volunteered to go and participate
in the group analysis of a previous disaster, now several incidents removed
from the current affront to all things decent and holy, which is of course
the continuing massacre of innocents in a faraway country whose oil America
wishes to steal.

Some of you may remember that I canceled my appearance, essentially because
of three things: extreme poverty; disenchantment with the overly respectful
(and hence, IMHO, futile) way the organizers of the event planned to
discuss this clear case of mass murder of American citizens by the American
government. And, of course, fear of flying. I love to fly. But I wish to
avoid having my orifices scrutinized by minimum wage Homeland Security goons.

More to the point in my recent field of vision were the hundreds of letters
that have recently blessed me with tokens of appreciation for my efforts at
describing how so-called humans can be so inhuman. We're talking cold hard
cash here, folks, and book orders. In between my scribbled rants that often
show up in the most unexpected places, I eke out an austere living by
selling my books, in which I have collected these very rants. I am always
uneasy about asking for support, and always humbled by the sincere ways in
which many people respond.

People (them again) always ask me, "How can you read all those horrible
stories day after day and not be affected by them; how can you keep from
slitting your wrists?" or something along those lines. It's a question I
don't usually answer.

But when I try to, I think of that series of photos taken at a checkpoint
in Iraq in which triggerhappy U.S. troops shot first and asked questions
later, later to find six terrified and bleeding children in the car that
rolled to a stop. I think of that little bleeding girl screaming over her
butchered parents, and U.S. soldiers wearing masks to hide their identities
from the photographer. That little girl is my boss. And the rage I feel at
the people who put her in that position, I'm telling you, is simply more
than you want to hear. Why do I do what I do, and how can I stand what I
have to look at? I work for that little girl, and if you don't too, then
you have a problem with me.

Because if you don't work for her, that means you're an accomplice to mass
murder (which as Americans, we all are), and that means I'm going to
seriously kick your ass if I get the chance, although as you have rightly
guessed by now, it will only be verbally and from a distance.

Likewise, I work for the souls of those kids in that Murrah building
daycare center so righteously snuffed out by all those federal employees
who were warned not to go to work that day. Which is why I got somewhat
upset by the relatively inferential (as opposed to confrontational) intent
of the organizers who had chronicled the irrefutable evidence that the OKC
attack on humanity was not about a renegade pseudopatriot with a truck
bomb, but about a government conducting an experiment on its population's
social alienation from reality. Which spectacularly continues, meaning the
experiment was a success.

I wrote a story for that group, but they didn't want it because they
already had plenty of good ones (especially by Pat Shannan and Craig
Roberts), and I know it's only a fool who quotes himself, but here's part
of what I wrote:

Your silence guarantees
more phony disasters
American cowardice triumphs as the facts
of the OKC bombing remain concealed

They come into your town, commit some unpardonable crime, then disappear
into the night.

The cops follow, explain the event in some way that absolutely does not
make sense, some luckless patsy is put on trial, convicted by a judge who
excludes most of the relevant evidence, and the patsy is executed.

Case closed, the government tells you.

The next day the ad-filled newspapers embellish the official version.
Legislation is then passed to prevent the contrived atrocities they took
such pains to explain.

But as you contemplate the blazing memory of the sight of your beloved
children exploded into little bloody pieces or crushed by fallen debris,
you wonder what you should say, what you can do.

When you attempt to express your doubts about what happened, you are looked
upon with a nervous terror by your neighbors. You receive unmistakable
messages that you really shouldn't go there, out of concern for your own
health, your own future.

The messages include newspaper reports of others who didn't heed this
advice and were discovered in some odd place after their puzzling and
unexpected suicides.

So the message gets through to most, and a brittle silence engulfs the land.

After awhile, those who continue to speak about the incompatibility of what
was written down and what they saw with their own eyes begin to be
tolerated as amusing oddities, embarrassing gadflies, whimsical conspiracy
theorists.

The voluminous dossiers of suppressed facts they have compiled are regarded
as mere evidence of their quirkiness, and can never supplant the initial
impression that the popular cover story has hazed over the general
populace, anesthetizing the consensus thought process like some warm,
familiar blanket, which most refuse to realize is permeated with a smallpox
of the mind.

"Well, we know it was those damned terrorists," is the repeated mantra.
"That's why we make war on them."

"You don't want to put yourself in a place you know you can't go," say
others, reviving a variation of the old canard that you can't fight city
hall, and thereby guaranteeing that the sudden act of vicious tragedy will
happen again in some other town, and be followed by the same process of
phony explanation, prosecuted patsy, and ultimately suppressed knowledge of
what really happened.

It is the one consistent pattern of American history. The majority don't
really know what happened, and are terrified to challenge the official
version lest they be blackballed by their cowardly neighbors, or worse,
ruined or killed by the same shadowy, unidentified forces who perpetrated
the original crime and then covered it up.

For those who disregard the obvious dangers and continue to speak the truth
as they perceive it, the rewards are bittersweet and intangible.

OK. Now, from that point on, I attempted to discuss specifics I had
learned, mostly from organizers Charles Key and Chris Emery. The story gets
pretty involved, and I had garbled some of those facts. So in the rush to
put together their program, they didn't have time to instruct me on every
point, and the story didn't get published. That's OK by me. No biggie.
Their task was humongous. The event was, according to some, a great
success, in that at least California Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is mulling over
the possibility of reopening an investigation into allegations that McVeigh
and Nichols were assisted in handling explosives by the FBI. But as I said
before, it will accomplish nothing. Too many paid-off shills in the way.
This a political sop. The OKC coverup continues.

And what is worse is that the confidence of some of us who care has been
badly shaken, mostly by the decision to invite reactionary politician Bob
Barr as the featured speaker at the OKC 10th anniversary probe and
gathering. It comes to me as a terrible shock that the very center of the
resistance movement to the government’s coverup in OKC may, in fact, be
rotten to the core.

So I, in my own way, continue on my atrocity watch, not to dabble in the
lurid and duplicitous for its own titillating sake, but to analyze the
inexplicable self-destructive behavior of humans and perhaps by talking
about it, ameliorating it. Perhaps by understanding it, detoxifying it.

I tend to link OKC and Waco together in my mind. They were both unexplained
government atrocities in the early 1990s, and some people accepted the
government's phony aspersions about the Patriot movement doing OKC in
retaliation for Waco. But just the other day, a dozen years after federal
troops incinerated all those women and children in that farmhouse, I
finally heard the most plausible story of what I think really happened.

Now, as many of you know, I tend to reject out-of-hand any contentions that
we are ruled by supernatural forces, be they angelic or alien. In my simple
mind, it just makes life too complicated. Yet, you must accept valid
information where you find it, which is sometimes in unexpected places. And
you can’t let your own paradigms and beliefs get in the way of hearing what
you need to hear. The penalty for that is the ugly world we have now.

Over time, I have received many recommendations to check out a website that
utilizes as its chief metaphorical theme communication with a group of
extraterrestrials known as Cassiopaeans. Having seriously dabbled with many
New Age subjects in the early '90s and found the genre as riddled as the
Patriot movement with creepy charlatans and egotistical psychos, I tend to
dismiss such recommendations out-of-hand. But that is not to say it can all
be dismissed in such a way. [SOTT NOTE: We do not in fact describe the Cassiopaeans as extraterrestrials, although Kaminski's misreading is understandable given the wide play given to ETs by other websites. The Cassiopaeans have described themselves to us as "We are you in the future". They may also simply be the expression of the subconscious of Laura Knight-Jadczyk. We do not know, nor do we take the information gathered from them at face value. Everything they tell us is then researched to be confirmed or refuted according to our own work on the subject. Those issues that cannot be evaluated based on our own research, such as information about things that happened thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, are treated as possibilities that may or may not be true.]

When you look at the work of Laura Knight-Jadczyk and her physicist husband
Arkadius, fast-buck operators seeking to harvest cash from seances is not what you see. I'm not sure that sending you to
http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/adventureindex.htm
is the proper way into their insightful milieu, but it's the way I went in. And I have no intention to commenting right now on the validity of the worth of their
Quantum Future School or perceptions that are beyond the grasp of my own, but what I did find in their site at this very link --
http ://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/organic_portals.htm -- was a fascinating examination of the nature of psychopathy, which in my mind bears very directly on the situation we are all facing in this messed up world today.

I know this explanation is getting a little long, but bear with me. As you
know, we all have been looking for a way to explain the behavior and the
rude and rapacious men who run our world, who are running it into the
ground. They are not like us (or, they are not like me, I don't know about
you, really).

One of the more fascinating and enigmatic explanations of what is actually
happening in the world today is put forth by British phenom David Icke,
whose many books and lectures have posited that the powers that be are
actually reptilian shapeshifters, cold blooded in the truest sense. Many
people find that assertion preposterous, and turn away. I've always related
to it in a metaphorical sense, and in any case respect Icke for being one
of the bravest men in the world for even attempting to tackle problems in
the way he does.

But given my queasy uneasiness with such fanciful interpretations, I
sometimes feel choosing to go to this level can be a distraction from the
problems themselves. Not so with Laura Knight-Jadczyk's explanation -- the
mask of sanity. And the assertion of the Quantum Future School that the
official culture in America is a natural state of psychopathy. Hey! You
only need to read a newspaper that the assertion is true. I highly
recommend this information. Go to
http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/psychopath.htm

But let me first synopsize my understanding of it, and tell you about the
event that triggered Waco, because it bears on the tragedy and disappointing drive to unearth the truth about Oklahoma City. (I know this is convoluted; thank you for your patience.)

From one of Laura's reviews of a book titled “The Mask of Sanity” by
Hervey Cleckley [click here for a free download of Cleckley's masterwork. -- B.I.]

comes this description:

... a person who is able to mimic the human personality, but who leaves the
impression that something is not there. They have a personality structure
which "functions in a manner apparently identical with that of normal, sane
functioning" and yet when all is said and done, "we are dealing here not
with a complete man at all but with something that suggests a subtly
constructed reflex machine which can mimic the human personality perfectly"
to the point that "no one who examines him in a clinical setting can point
out in scientific or objective terms why, or how, he is not real."

In my own search to identify who some have called "biorobots," I find that
when Knight-Jadczyk draws upon the work of Cleckley and the Russian exile
Boris Mouravieff and labels half the human population "organic portals," or
people without souls, she is right on target in explaining why the
newspaper headlines are the way they are these days, or have always been.

I know. It should come as no surprise to me that people don't always to the
right thing. But this line of investigation strikes me as the way to
actually fix the problem, for all you out there who frequently suggest I
complain too much and don't do enough about proposing solutions.
Understanding this concept is definitely the beginning of a solution to why
the human race seems hellbent on destroying our planet.

The Jadczyks, as I understand it, have had a hard time with a fellow named
Rick Ross, who once upon a time ran an outfit called the Cult Awareness
Network, which supposedly rescued runaway teens who had been lured away
from their parents by Moonies, Hare Krishnas and other exotic thought
processes.

Yet it was Rick Ross and the Cult Awareness Network who told Janet Reno that David Koresh was abusing children at his Waco compound. And, of course, when you get into why he would do such a thing, and what it all means, you of course get into -- you guessed it, Zionist influence, subterranean motivational activity that results in false flag operations like COINTELPRO, and worse (if there can be something worse than COINTELPRO?).

Observe, in this snippet lifted from http://www.cassiopaea.org/cass/
rickross2.htm
What a lot of people don't keep in mind is the fact that COINTELPRO also
concentrated on creating bogus organizations through which hostile actions
might be instigated and blamed on innocent third parties.

In other words, creating bogus Palestinian Terrorists to attack the World
Trade Center is entirely within the tradition of COINTELPRO - and we have
seen, over and over again, a string of incidents when purported "Islamic
Terrorists" have been noted, but the FBI and CIA just simply turn their
heads and order their agents to stand down! One then begins to wonder just
WHO initiated the COINTELPRO idea in the FBI?

We, or some of you out there, desperately need to put the pieces together
on all this. This describes Waco, Oklahoma City, and the 9/11 massacres. We
as a nation and as a species need to see who is doing what to whom, to us,
before it's too late.

Now (don't hit me!), I said all that to say this.

Or more precisely, to let someone else say this. One of the letters I
received from someone who traveled to the disappointing Oklahoma City
protest had this to say (I'm not sure if I should use his name or not,
given the nature of the subject matter):

Beam me up, Scotty! Yeah, the Cognitive Dissonance is ringing in my ears,
it's so strong. A Dallas-local NewAge-ey speaker gave a talk last year on
America's Shadow, in which he pretty accurately (but not totally
completely) laid out a list of "our" continuing atrocities, dating from the
1800s. Very interesting and informative, and right in line with what I had
already discovered that had me disparaging my parents and grandparents for
blindly and blithely ignoring in their time; going along to get along until
it gets to me and its a steaming heap of manure so high it obscures the
horizon.

By the time I've come to awareness of the depth of the problem and the real
issues, its an un-winnable situation. The media's sewn up. The voting
process is totally co-opted. Whistleblowers are regularly and severely
dealt with. The economic situation is getting ratcheted down to where the
"middle class" becomes a term applying to the 1950s through the '70s; a
historical footnote. Yet there is still so much residual inflationary
"prosperity" that anyone and their kid brother can still float a loan on a
new SUV. An economic sugar cube trail into a box canyon with debt in hot
pursuit!

But, John, I've crashed some of the Homey Land security meets and listened
to talks that will never make the cyclops tube. There is no going
back. Even your words so far, which will echo in cyberspace long after
you've made your decision to stay and slug it out or bail — those will not
be forgotten.

If you had made it to OKC to speak, you could have listened to Gen. Partin
and seen a few charts he held up. He maintains it's the same plan being
carried out here that's been done throughout the world. Cut to the chase--
when control is really consolidated, when level Red is reached, it's
round-up time. You, me, and anyone that cracked a joke at the wrong party,
you're a marked man. Know it. Everything now is just marking time.

So, what to do? I'm probably the wrong person to offer an opinion, because
I'm sitting here with two little scars on my chest ... the nearest guess I
have is from a Taser hit 10 or 11 months ago. One of the wounds would not
heal until I pulled a small piece of shirt material out with tweezers. I
still have the shirt with the holes in it. Meanwhile, I developed a nice
bruise over a vein inside my right elbow. I really wish they'd use the
left, y'know. Hard to hide the bruise when you're shaking hands, etc. I'm
missing no more than 3 to 5 hours of time I can't account for, but after
all this time I've only got a vague memory of what transpired, and one or
two faces I might recognize; nothing more. And I'm really hoping I'll
recover the whole thing, but not successful so far. So much for being an
objective journalist!

So, what was this? This is how Homeland Security develops witnesses for
their secret courts. And this is why they cannot reveal their sources. They're using you, or in this case, me, as a witness against ourselves. That's my best guess. Payback for me getting too close. Can I reasonably conclude different? If I had been involved in planning anything nefarious I am sure I wouldn't be typing this note to you now. As it is, I'm just a truth seeker who found enough to speak out
occasionally. And because I have some moral sense, no, it is not okay what
they have done and are doing to people. It is diabolical.

So, here's my challenge. Even if you decide to quit, can you, really?
After what I've been through, I can't. I'm still out there gathering
crumbs dropped by the cryptocracy, trying to make sense of it. When I
don't have "real" work, I paint houses; do deliveries; anything to keep the
bill collectors at bay til I can get back to my real work, my
passion. It's not dedication, per se.

When you truly understand what's coming, can you do anything else?
Can you?

So there I sat, and here I sit. I hear the train coming. I see the light of
Code Red blazing deadly in the dreams of my vision. I see the psychopaths
driving the train. I am not an Organic Portal, though they are. I am a deer
in the headlights. And they are the hunters.

All I ever promised was to keep pounding on this keyboard until the very
last moment.

John Kaminski is a writer who lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida, who makes
his living writing stories like this one, which are seen on hundreds of
websites around the world, and collected into anthologies which he sells on
his website, http://www.johnkaminski.com/

Opus Dei -- If It Walks Like A Cult and Quacks Like A Cult . . . . . .

Though I am a long-lapsed Catholic, the comings and goings of the Church can still engage my attention, at least, the really big stuff, like Popes. (Interesting that it is still, out of habit,"the" church, as if it was the only one. Those First Grade nuns really knew their stuff.) Things are settling down now in Rome and all the hoopla over Ratzinger/BenedictXVI. Unfortunately along with that many uncomfortable facts about the new Il Papa are being swept under the rug in the pursuit of a "united front". One aspect was his participation in the Hitler Youth and Nazi army in WWII. This has been glossed over as something forced on him. Yet perhaps those experiences still have left a mark, in the preference for strongly ordered, authoritarian structures. The Church answers this inclination. And within the Church are those groups who would take this to the extremes not seen since the Middle Ages.

Opus Dei for example. This group is over the moon that JPII's successor will continue to support it even as he did.


Today is a moment of great joy" declared Bishop Javier Echevarría, Prelate of Opus Dei, when learning of the election of Pope Benedict XVI."

But there are a growing number of others who find this relatively modern sub-set of the the Roman Catholic Church very unsettling.

Opus Dei In the United States
By James Martin, S.J.
AMERICA for February 25, 1995
Copyright America Press 1995

James Martin, S.J., is an associate editor of America.

Opus Dei is the most controversial group in the Catholic Church today. To its members it is nothing less than The Work of God, the inspiration of Blessed Josemaría Escriva, who advanced the work of Christ by promoting the sanctity of everyday life. To its critics it is a powerful, even dangerous, cult-like organization that uses secrecy and manipulation to advance its agenda. At the same time, many Catholics admit knowing little about this influential group. Moreover, because of the dichotomy of views on the group, and perhaps because of its influence in Vatican circles, it is difficult to find balanced reporting on Opus Dei.
[.....]
Some Basics

Any look at Opus Dei must begin with Msgr. Josemaría Escriva de Balaguer, the Spanish priest who founded the group on Oct. 2, 1928. On that day, according to Opus Dei’s literature, while on a retreat in Madrid, "suddenly, while bells pealed in a nearby church, it became clear: God made him see Opus Dei." Monsignor Escriva, invariably referred to as The Founder by members, envisioned Opus Dei as a way of encouraging lay people to aspire to sanctity without changing their state of life or occupation. Today Opus Dei sees itself as very much in line with the Second Vatican Council and its renewed emphasis on the laity.
[.....]
In 1982 Pope John Paul II granted Opus Dei the status of "personal prelature," a canonical term meaning that jurisdiction covers the persons in Opus Dei rather than a particular region. In other words, it operates juridically much as religious orders do, without regard for geographical boundaries. This unique recognition—it is the only personal prelature in the church—demonstrated the high regard in which it is held by John Paul II as well as Opus Dei’s standing in Vatican circles. But it also prompted critics to ask why a professedly lay organization would need such a status. Today Opus Dei counts 77,000 members (including 1,500 priests and 15 bishops) in over 80 countries.

Further evidence of Vatican favor -- and added legitimacy -- came in 1992 when Escriva was beatified in a ceremony attended by 300,000 supporters in St. Peter's Square. But coming only a few years after Escriva's death in 1975 and leapfrogging over figures like Pope John XXIII, the beatification was, to say the least, controversial. "Is Sainthood Coming Too Quickly for Founder of Influential Catholic Group?" read a January 1992 New York Times headline, echoing other critical articles appearing around the same time.

An article in The London Spectator, for example, included allegations by former close associates about Escrivá’s less than saintly behavior. "He had a filthy temper," said one, "and pro-Nazi tendencies, but they never mention that."
[.....]
Secrecy and Privacy

It is difficult to read anything about Opus Dei without running across accounts of its alleged secrecy. ("Pope Beatifies Founder of Secretive, Conservative Group" ran a New York Times headline in 1992.) Indeed, while a few members of Opus Dei are well known, like the Vatican press officer Joaquin Navarro-Valls, M.D., most are not. Critics also point out that most of Opus Dei's organizations are not clearly identified as being affiliated with Opus Dei.
[....]
Two priests I interviewed (who asked to remain anonymous) came into contact with Opus Dei while studying at Princeton in the mid-1980's. In the course of their work with campus ministry, a divisive conflict arose between an Opus Dei priest and other members of the team. "Opus Dei was rather defensive about being secretive," said one. "They’d say, 'No, we tell it like it is.' And, yes, they'd answer your questions, but it was like peeling away an onion. But if you didn’t ask the right question to peel away the next layer you simply weren't told. You just never had the full picture. And I suppose it wouldn’t have been so annoying if they hadn’t been saying all the time how open they were."

I encountered perhaps one example of this difficulty in the course of my research. Early on, I asked Bill Schmitt for a copy of Opus Dei's constitutions. I thought that by reading them I could better understand Opus Dei and lay to rest some misconceptions. He gave me a copy of the 1982 statutes. But they were in Latin, and a technical "church" Latin at that. Could I have a copy of the English translation? There was none, he said.

Why not? First he said that Opus Dei had not had sufficient time to translate
them. I replied that this seemed odd, given that the statutes had been around
for 12 years and that The Way had already been translated into 38 languages.

When I pressed him, he provided a second explanation, and I was reminded
of the comment about peeling an onion. "It's a church document," he said. "We
don’t own them. The Holy See wants them in Latin." Perhaps, he added, the
Vatican wants to prevent other groups from applying for the status of personal
prelature. But how could English-speaking members study their own statutes? The
members study them in depth, he explained. "All of it should be clear to them in
their formation." Opus Dei member James Gabriel seconded this, explaining
that the statutes were also available in Spanish. "I can look things up in a
Spanish dictionary if I want to. But you receive so much formation that I don’t
have any questions that I would want to go over."

Nevertheless, it still seemed odd, so I asked Mr. Schmitt again. I received the same answer: "The document belongs to the Holy See and the Holy See does not want it translated. I’m sure there’s a reason."

I asked three experts in canon law what that reason might be. One canon lawyer said, Another, JohnMartin, S.J., professor of canon law at Regis College in Toronto, noted thatreligious orders and lay associations as a matter of course publish their statutes in local languages, and as far as he knew, "there is no general ecclesiastic prohibition against the translation of documents of religious orders." Or of personal prelatures, for that matter. Richard Hill, S.J., of the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif., agreed, saying "there is no canonical reason" why Opus Dei should not be allowed to translate their own statutes. So it appears to be Opus Dei, not the Holy See,that is keeping the statutes from being translated. [.....]

So what is it that they need to hide? For a "laity-based" organization Opus Dei is remarkarbly regimented. Mr. Martin continues:

Critics contend that numerary life is anything but lay, particularly in what they see as its replication of religious life, with emphasis on "commitments" (Opus Dei does not use the term "vows"), life in common, a daily order and, at least for some of the men, eventual ordination. Many of those in authority are cleric -- the director of their national headquarters in New Rochelle, N.Y., is a monsignor; their prelate was recently ordained a bishop. "If this is a lay organization, I’d hate to see a clerical one," said one of the priests from Princeton.

Another common criticism is that men and women numeraries are
separated not only in housing but even in work. Numerary Jim Gabriel, who lives
in Opus Dei’s Riverside Study Center in Manhattan explained: "There is pretty
much no interaction. They do things that they have to do and we do what we have
to do."

According to two former numeraries, women numeraries are
required to clean the men's centers and cook for them. When the women arrive to
clean, they explained, the men vacate so as not to come in contact with the
women. I asked Bill Schmitt if women had a problem with this. "No. Not at all."
It is a paid work of the "family" of Opus Dei and is seen as an apostolate. The
women more often than not hire others to do the cooking and cleaning. "They like
doing it. It’s not forced on them. It’s one thing that’s open to them if they
want to do it. They don’t have to do it."

"That’s totally wrong," said Ann Schweninger when she heard that last statement. "I had no choice. When in
Opus Dei you’re asked, you're being told." According to Ms. Schweninger, it is "bad spirit" to refuse. Women are told that it is important to have a love for things of the home and domestic duties. "And since that's part of the spirit of Opus Dei, to refuse to do that when you’re asked is bad spirit. So nobody refuses."

For numeraries living in the centers, mail—incoming and
outgoin -- is read by the director. But for most numeraries this is not a problem.
"If you’re in an organization and part of the group, where you go to the priest
in confession and tell him everything that's on your mind, what could you
possibly receive in a letter that would matter?" said one. But he also admitted
that he wasn't sure if his friends knew their mail was being read. "But they
never say anything that couldn’t be read by other people." [.....]

But there is a more disturbing aspect to this. Opus Dei appears to employ the same recruiting techniques of befriendment, isolation from family and associates, information bombardment, and manipulation of emotional circumstances to bind new members to the group as many other discredited cults of the last several decades:

One man who attended Columbia University in the early 1980’s, who asked not to be named, described the process of being recruited by Opus Dei. "They had someone become my friend," he said bluntly. After Mass one day he was approached by another student, with whom he soon became good friends. Eventually he was invited to the Riverside Study Center near Columbia's campus. He was not certain exactly what it was. "I thought it was a group of students that were a think tank or something." After dinner a priest gave a short talk. He was later invited to join a "circle," which he described as a sort of an informal prayer group. Soon afterwards Opus Dei suggested that he take one of the priests at the center as his spiritual director.

After becoming more involved -- at this point meeting with the group frequently -- he decided to investigate on his own. He spoke with a few priests and professors at Columbia and was surprised at how little he really knew: "I didn't know anything about the secrecy, the numeraries, supernumeraries, any of that. And I didn't know there were people taking vows of celibacy. I felt kind of upset that I didn't know much about them. I didn't think they were honest or straightforward about who they were. I felt very indignant."

At the next circle meeting he raised some questions about issues that troubled him -- for example, women and minority presence in Opus Dei. "They really didn’t have any answers and asked me not to return." And more disturbing for him: "I never heard from my friend again. I was totally cut off."

According to two former numeraries, if this man had stayed in the circle Opus Dei would have confronted him with a decision to join. Tammy DiNicola talked about her experience. "They staged a vocation crisis for me," she said. "At the time, I didn’t realize they had staged it. But it’s standard practice. The person that's working on you is consulting with the director, and the two of them decide when is the best time to propose the question of vocation to the recruit."

Why is it a crisis? "Well, they make it a crisis for you!" said Ann Schweninger. "And it’s totally orchestrated. They tell you it's a decision you have to make now, that God is knocking on the door, and that you have to have the strength and fortitude to say yes." Tammy DiNicola was told that it was her only chance for a vocation. "Basically it's a one-shot deal -- if you don't take it, you’re not going to have God's grace for the remainder of your life."

I asked if they were surprised at hearing that the man at Columbia had been cut off by his friend. "No," said Tammy recalling her own recruiting days. "They use friendships to get people to join. They call it an apostolate of friendship and confidence, but it’s certainly not confidence -- because everything that you talk about with your recruit is discussed with your director." Even personal matters? "Especially personal matters, because those are the things that you can use so that a person would think about joining Opus Dei." She was also advised to recruit only "select" people -- intelligent and physically attractive -- since they would be more likely to attract others once they were members. [......]

Shades of the Moonies, Hari Krishnas and whacked out Jesus-freak cults.

Opus Dei Awareness Network

Dianne DiNicola, Tammy DiNicola’s mother, knows some things about Opus Dei that she would like to change. In 1991 she started the Opus Dei Awareness Network, a self-described support group concerned with outreach to families with children in Opus Dei.

A few years ago Mrs. DiNicola noticed that Tammy, then an undergraduate at Boston College, "seemed to be going through a personality change." According to Mrs. DiNicola, she became "cold and secretive," not wanting to spend time with the family -- which had not been the case before. "I just had the feeling something was wrong."

When Tammy wrote a letter saying that she would no longer return home, Mrs. DiNicola grew more worried. She eventually found out that Tammy had joined Opus Dei as a numerary, living in one of their centers in Boston. "Our daughter," she recalls, "became totally estranged from us. I can't tell you the turmoil that our family went through. We tried to keep in touch with her, but it was like she was a completely different person."

Initially trying to accept her daughter's decision, she met with Opus Dei officials and diocesan officials to obtain more information. "I was just trying to feel good about Opus Dei. I love my religion. I mean, you're not talking about the Moonies. This is something within the Catholic Church." But the situation deteriorated, and Mrs. DiNicola felt that the church either was not in a position to help or did not want to do so.

Finally, Mr. and Mrs. DiNicola enlisted the help of an "exit counsellor" and asked Tammy to come home for her graduation in 1990. They later discovered that this would have been the last time she would have come home, since she had already been told to sever contacts with her family. According to both Mrs. DiNicola and Tammy, the counselling enabled Tammy to think about Opus Dei critically for the first time.

After the 24-hour counselling session Tammy decided to leave. Mrs. DiNicola described the scene: "My husband is a very, very good man, and throughout all the turmoil, I would cry and my other daughter would cry. We were losing our daughter -- it was like she had died. For 24 hours we talked to her, without a break. When we did break early in the morning, my husband was over in the corner of our bedroom weeping softly. There was only one other time I saw him weep -- that was when his father died."

"It was pretty tumultuous," recalled Tammy, now 26. She said that since Opus Dei "shut down" all of her emotions, she experienced a flood of emotions after she left. Now Mrs. DiNicola runs the Opus Dei Awareness Network (ODAN), which she says enables her to help to spare others the pain that her family went through.

Articulated or not, knowledge is power AND protection. The awareness of the dark side of Opus Dei is growing as organization like ODAN become more widely known. Mr. Martin continues:

Whether Opus Dei will continue to grow in the United States is difficult to
predict. Its critics, including ODAN, are gaining a voice. But Opus Dei’s widely
acknowledged Vatican influence seems to provide a degree of protection, and its attraction for some, especially among college students, is a reminder of the desire for spirituality among Americans. [... ]

But their critics are equally adamant. "I think they’re very surreptitious, very ill," said the man from Columbia University. "They don’t really believe in the world," said Kenneth Woodward.

"They deceive people. They’re not straightforward," said former numerary Ann Schweninger at the end of our long interview. "I can attest to that."

It is very disturbing to know the Vatican holds Opus Dei in such high regard. Such a laity organizaiton could have the same potentials as the zionist sayanim system. Another group of highly indoctrinated members dispersed through the community. It would mesh nicely with the U.S. evangelicals, as they share the same agenda. Scary thought.

Blue Ibis

The Dogs That Didn't Bark

This famous phrase was taken from the Sherlock Holmes mystery "Silver Blaze", where the mystery is solved because the perpetrator was known to the guard dogs. They didn't raise the alarm when the murderer struck.

Now, before poor Terry Schindler is consigned to the memory hole, swept away by the never-ending flood of information we drown in every day, I want to ask why dogs that normally bark so dependably in this sordid sort of situation, didn't?

In short, WHERE WERE THE TABLOIDS?

They were perfectly happy to follow ever twist and turn in the Laci Peterson case. Jon Benet Ramsey has been dead for years, and she can still sell out a week's issues. Here was a case with every hook a sleaze rag could hope for: an attractive woman in a "coma", husband and family at odds over the fate of her very life, a mysterious mistress, two children out of wedlock (as he was still married), allegations of abuse with the wife talking divorce with a friend, a juicy insurance litigation with a big settlement, curious and unsavory connections between the local law enforcement agency (Michael worked for them), the insurance company (his mistress' mother works for them) and a cosy relationship with the local judiciary. What's not to love? What among these salacious riches of fact wouldn't be good for at least a years worth of issues?

Yet not a peep. I was watching. No reporters camped out on the doorstep of the mistress, or telephoto pictures of the kids. No breathless reporting of the connections between the insurance company, or leaked photos of Terri's brain scans that might prove abuse. Nothing at all made of the fact that as soon as the settlement came in, Schiavo stopped all therapy for his wife, instead spending it on litigation to thwart her parent's concerns. That at the end he prevented her from receiving communion, the comfort of her faith, even though Terri was a Roman Catholic. He even forbade her parents from being there for her death. Imagine dying in the presence of those who rejoice in it. Who did everything they could to ensure it.

There's even some folks around who are looking at the Nostradamus angle. Check this out:

Quatrain 6,72

Par fureur feinte d'esmotion diuine,
Sera la femme du grand fort violee:
Iuges voulans damner telle doctrine,
Victime au peuple ignorant immolee.

Through feigned fury of divine emotion
The wife of the strong one will be violated:
The judges wishing to condemn such a doctrine,
She is sacrificed a victim to the ignorant people.

Sounds like Terri to me.Her "husband" was emoting all over the place about how much he love his wife, while hypocritically living with another woman. He was certainly "strong"; determined to get his way not matter who he ran rough-shod over. Hell, he defied the whole US gov'mint and got away with it. She was sacrificed to other's purposes, petty and great. You'd think the Tabloids would be all over the Nostrodamus angle at least.

Again, not a peep.

In short, WHY DID MICHEAL SCHIAVO GET SUCH KID GLOVE TREATMENT??

Who did he know? Or, more to the point, who gained from the whole shameful mess playing out as it did?

Steel Magnolia said it better than I could:

"Buncha ball-less eunuchs, that's what Americans are nowadays.

Here you will find this:They have done it. They have executed someone via a war crime banned by the Geneva convention right in front of our faces.

Michael Schiavo can now go home to the woman he left Terri for all those years ago and marry her.

Michael Schiavo even had the temerity to deny Terri's parents from being by her bedside right before she died.O'Donnell, one of the family's spiritual advisers, said that her parents and siblings were "begging to be at her bedside..." but are being denied.

Michael Schiavo was Terri's guardian and controlled who may visit her and when.

How obvious now is it to everybody just how much of a monster Michael Schiavo is? I tell ya, if those folks that were standing around praying and crying don't get up a posse and go after that guy then all is lost.

Jeff Rense wrote about one of the most insightful pieces about this case that I have read so far. He said:

Why is the torture and execution of Terri Schiavo being covered so thoroughly by so many
'alternative media,' mainstream media, and web logs?

Why is this case so different? Why is this case so important?

YES - Killing a single Iraqi or Afghani is every bit as heinous as killing Terri Schiavo and we've covered that issue - and made the point that a life is a life thousands of times.

...And killing a million and a half Iraqis is a million and a half times worse than killing one.

Terri Schindler Schiavo embodies and represents those countless other innocents that
the oil-soaked NWO/neocon/globalists have tortured and slaughtered.

However, this is a *public* execution being carried out at HOME here in
the United States of America - and it is the nwo/globalist/neocon illuminati
telling Americans - and the entire US Congress - that LIFE, liberty and the
pursuit of Happiness is no longer guaranteed under their version of the US
Constitution.

This is murder as a gross instrument of desensitization - not unlike 911 to some degree - also designed to strike the fear into Americans - fear that their very LIVES are no longer sacrosanct.

This murder - and ignoring of what may be multiple correlated felonies - is being staged to shock
Americans to the core and prepare them to accept local, regional and state
decreed death and widespread euthanasia as the new norm. Americans have lost enormous Freedom and Liberty in the last 15 years but they always felt their lives, at least, were secure. That is no longer the case.

If you think George W. Bush's daughters would get the same treatment by the courts, you have
completely disconnected from reality.

No podunk judge, local or Federal would ever DARE stand up to the President, the Congress, the Governor, the various state agencies without knowing he/she was being fully protected.

Too many Americans have been so dumbed down that they cannot connect the dots that it was 8 years AFTER Terri's 'collapse' that her husband remembered that she supposedly said she would never want to live like this.

Many Americans cannot figure out that there might be
something strange with the fact that Mike cut OFF all of Terri's therapy a few
months AFTER he won the $700,000 settlement for TERRI (plus $300,000 for Mike)
that was to have taken the best possible care and rehabilitation of Terri for
the rest of her life - which the jury felt would be at least 50 years.

Many forget that Terri, with therapy, was able to swallow and drink -
until Mike forced a feeding tube to be installed and stopped all therapy.Many
forget that Mike has not even allowed his wife to be taken outside into the
sunshine in over 5 years. The list of other outrages is a long one and has been
amply covered on the internet.

Americans must keep in mind, nothing is done on this scale by accident or happenstance. This is a planned, public execution which is blatantly intended to put the fear of death by the government
into Americans from this day forth.

The public's reaction - your reaction - is being closely watched, tracked and analyzed by the masters of social engineering and mass mind control on their supercomputer models at Tavistock and here in the U.S.

Did you get that most important remark? "No podunk judge, local or Federal would ever DARE stand up to the President, the Congress, the Governor, the various state agencies without knowing he/she was being fully protected."

Think about it. And then think about the consequences - how many of the Far Right Fundies will back George Bush when he seeks absolute power?

Do you really think he couldn't have saved Terri if he had wanted to?

Remember, this is the guy who got as many judges as he needed to help him steal the election, and was able to conspire with his Jewish buddies to kill thousands of people on 9-11, executing a coup d'etat via "legal" means, who has taken this country into bankruptcy, sold us out to the Israelis, and he couldn't save Terri Schiavo?

Remember Paul Wellstone? How do you suppose he died?

Do we really think that George and the Neocons had nothing to do with that? So, certainly, George could have saved Terri if there had been any political capital in her life. But he didn't.

Why?

Because there is political capital in her death. Because his hands, and his brother Jeb's hands "were tied by the legal process," it will come about rather soon that the legal process will be subsumed into dictatorial powers.

You can bet on that!"

***********************

Well, I wish I didn't have to, but it seems we are careening down that path. Watch for more criticism of the Judiciary branch of the U.S. government, leading to a "restructuring" that allows GB to stack the legal system at every level with more cooperative, "right-thinking" candidates. Or maybe the provision to ignore anything that doesn't suit the White House agenda. Any permutation of this future is a scary one. But hiding your head in the sand won't help. Knowledge is protection. One source is the Signs of the Times. I check it daily as an antidotes to Faux News, CNN and the rest.

What will you do??

Blue Ibis

Terri Schiavo, Nostrodamus, Politics, Sherlock Holmes, NWO, Neocons, Paul Wellstone, Laci Peterson, Jonbenet Ramsey

The (Oily) Worms Escape the Can

I thought I'd head out back into Peak Oil land just to see what was going on. Apparently things have been busy. Especially those who want to make THIS this big focus rather than, oh, the fact that the U.S. is busy levelling a country based on lies, or that the Constitution as it was known for over two centuries is now gone. No, the Peak Oil debate is even more important than the murder and cover-up that was 9-11 and the Pentagon Strike.

Found this, for example, from a blog called Catalytic Converter (great name!):

An Email from COINTELPRO and Shocking 9/11 Revelations

It is bound to happen eventually.Search for the truth long enough, post a little about it, and you will be contacted. Apparently no blog is small enough to avoid attention.I started a blog, 9.11 Soundbytes, to post quotes from the memory hole on the terrorist attack as I found them.

I received an interesting email from Mark Robinowitz of oilempire.us regarding the blog, and I will share a small fraction of it with you.My guess is that he regularly sends something similar to all sites that link to The Pentagon Strike Video. The email makes him appear more like a paid COINTELPRO agent, or so I think.

Stumbled upon your site -
the "Pentagon Strike" video has been debunked by many of the bestwriters on 9/11 complicity issues - such as the author of the911research site you list. [...]

If you haven't seen the Pentagon Strike video mentioned above, you really must. I found it when the Washington Post did an article about it last year. CC goes on:

Now for a bit of context. The Pentagon has all but announced that they are using propaganda

U.S. government planting propaganda and misleading stories in the international media
BBC News
By Tom Carver
Wednesday, 20 February, 2002
Washington correspondent

The Pentagon is toying with the idea of black propaganda.As part of George Bush's war on terrorism, the military is thinking ofplanting propaganda and misleading stories in the international media.A new department has been set up inside the Pentagon with the Orwelliantitle of the Office of Strategic Influence.

It is well funded, is being run by a general and its aim is to influencepublic opinion abroad.Black and whiteIt has been canvassing opinion within the Pentagon on what it should do. [...]

I have written briefly here about psyop operations, and have posted an image of a propaganda wheel from a 1950's government sponsored research paper demonstrating methods used. There is plenty of evidence that such activities have never stopped, and US citizens are a primary target of propaganda or psyops as it is now called.

There's more. What'es even more interesting (and the great fun of the internet) is another blog he found when searching for more about the (Mike) Ruppert- (Mark) Robinowitz connections, since Mike is a strong Peak Oil promoter too.

From Perfect Infidel:

David Beckham and Flight 77 in Paris

[...] The dinner itself was "normal" in every respect, and MOST of the conversation was also "normal." It only got strange when politics - including the subject of George Bush and 9-11 - was brought up.

Our friends who circulate socially among various government officials brought out some photos to show of a recent private party. Among the attendees of said party - which I reiterate, was private and not an "official function," was the brother of Vladimir Putin! There was the usual grouping of various ministers, AND one of the most powerful men in the Financial World (and here I don't mean America, I mean the GLOBAL Financial world!)

What was interesting about these photos was the obvious camaraderie of these individuals depicted in the photographs. There was Vlad's brother whooping it up with what were obviously close pals in France.

Hmmmm...

So, of course I asked about this. What came next was, in a sense, quite shocking. It seems that it is common knowledge in these circles that Russian satellites photographed a ship-launched craft (seems to have been a drone type plane rather than a missle) that ended up impacting the Pentagon on Sept 11, 2001, and that, for various reasons this information has been withheld from the public.

I was naturally startled to hear this even though I have long held the opinion that it was NOT a commercial jetliner that hit the Pentagon. I think the thing that startled me was the fact that, if Russia (and perhaps other countries with satellites?) had proof that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, why weren't they revealing this?

It was explained to me that during part of the time George Bush was "incommunicado" on September 11, 2001, he was on the phone to Putin "negotiating." That was a polite way of saying "blackmailing." Apparently, Bush, by way of MOSSAD and/or the CIA had enough goods on Vlad to keep him silent.

Now THAT explains why Putin has not responded publicly to the rather obnoxious criticisms of Russia made by Bush and Condi Rice.

In any event, it was explained to me further that these satellite photos HAD been revealed to Thierry Meyssan who was asked by either French or Russian intell to write his book "Pentagate" to "leak" the info that Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon. His instructions were, apparently, that he had to "make the case" without recourse to official backing; he couldn't refer to the satellite photos.

Well, suddenly, a LOT of things began to make sense. [...]

A lot of pieces begin to fall into place if we begin to consider that the above has some validity (and I do). The above post from Perfect Infidel, goes on to discuss the author of the email sent to me, Mark Rabinowitz:

Another interesting event in this timeline was the creation of a website with the domain name oilempire.us. This site lists what it calls "Bogus 9-11 Websites" saying:

The three biggest stories used to alienate the public from 9/11 truth

1. No Planes on 9/11 (Pentagon, North Tower WTC, "pod plane" at SouthTower, Pennsylvania)

2. The Jews Did It (Israel had foreknowledge and possibly played a role,but that doesn't justify anti-semitism and Holocaust Denial)

3. The Victims' Phone Calls Were Faked (a way to keep the 9/11 families and the skeptics from working together)

why are there bogus 9/11 websites? a mix of malice and incompetence, but both make real evidence harder to find

Perfect Infidel goes on:

Considering the very good case for the involvement of MOSSAD in 9-11, the very good case that the victims phone calls WERE faked, not to mention what I have discovered about satellite photos on 9-11, it sure does look like the Oil Empire Website is a "plant," so to say. So I did a whois lookup. Here's what I found: [...]

[catalytic: I cut out the whois information]

The site is claimed by a Mark Rabinowitz even if it was "prepared for use" as early as February of 2003. That, in itself, is rather suspicious. Seems that this was right about the time that the Meyssan book was making a splash.

Robinowitz was posting on usenet as far back as 1994 in regards to an auto free DC. He's on a few dc.biking threads on usenet.

Rabinowitz then did some reporting for the Institute of Global Communications based in MD.[See: http://www.igc.apc.org/]

He then moved to Eugene, Oregon by the looks of things and is into permaculture. He appears to be coming from a "green" perspective. He got into the Y2K hysteria for a bit and now it appears he's onto the "Peak Oil deal" via Ruppert.

Do a Ruppert- Robinowitz search on google and you'll see what I mean in regards to the Ruppert promotion.

So it DOES look like Ruppert - who has been quoted as promoting the "no plane theory" but has now advised everybody to just "forget 9-11 and concentrate on Peak Oil" - has a strange bedfellow with Rabinowitz.

Shades of COINTELPRO!

You really need to read the whole post. PF also interviews another COINTELPRO researcher, Laura Knight-Jadczyk, who had a great deal to say about the Pentagon Strike too. This got my attention because she was one of the names in the Washington Post article about the video. She tells a creepy story about GWBII visiting her podunk little Florida town (New Port Richey) just after the Post article came out, causing a sharp resurgance in interest in the Pentagon attack. NPR had absolutely no importance to the the Florida campaign, so why take precious time out of a PRESIDENTIAL campaign to go there? She thinks that a point was being made.

What would you think?

Weird Convergences

I have a lot of different interests. Metaphysics, which can range all over the map from bible history, yoga, different healing philosophies, tarot/ I Ching, UFO/psychic phenomena etc. Dance (ballet for me, highland for one of my kids), with the subset of technical and rehabilitation coaching, costume construction and general entertainment gossip. Politics, and their traveling companions, the economic theories, especially the contrarian ones. Contrarians are more fun to read than the average practioner of the "dismal science". Try Bill Murphy at Le Metropole Cafe. I blame it on a funky Mercury placement (did I mention I'm interested in astrology too?) Or maybe it's just ADD.

Whatever. In any case, sometimes these can come together in the most unexpected way. For instance, here's politics, economics and bible prophecy colliding. Check it out:

Patriot Act Being Used To Implement Currency Controls

Although found here, the following exchange of letters appears on the Gold Eagle board in the
Gold Forum on April 11, 2005.

[http://www.gold-eagle.com/cgi-bin/gn/get/forum.html]

A letter to and reponse from Jim Sinclair:

Dear Jim:

My Bank in London called me today to inform me that in order to comply with
new US laws, they are halting all new services to American residents
(citizens?).

I can keep my accounts for the moment, but I cannot add any new currency
accounts or any other investment products to my portfolio. They will not
allow any US residents to open accounts in the future.
Just my thoughts but:

1. New bankruptcy law (last week)
2. Announcement that travel to other parts of North America will require a
passport (papers please)
3. New compliance standards for foreign banks (this past year)
4. Elimination of foreign accounts for US residents (one by one)

Currency controls have been initiated.

Regards,
Your "Anonymous Pal"

******************************************

Dear "Anonymous Pal:"

I have cautioned the Community that financial privacy is all but a chapter
of history - with the exception of bullion coins.

Anyone attempting to open international bank accounts at major and reputable
non-US banks will run into the difficulties you have outlined, making it all
but impossible to accomplish even with the best of intentions.

The net result is an effective form of currency control as part of Patriot
Act II. This covert method of currency control is a preemptive strike at
what is coming when it is realized - as the Economist put it - that there is
no constituent support and therefore no real political will to reduce the US
Budget Deficit.

As a result, the dollar must decline. The result of a declining dollar is
logically a move towards other currencies which in itself is a form of
Gresham’s law.

Of all the possibilities you outline, there is only one that is in the
black: Patriot II will be just as effective as any currency control put into
law. This has significant implications for gold once all of this hits the
proverbial fan.

Regards,
Jim

Just on it's own, that should give you the shivers wherever you live. Land of the "free", home of the "brave", so long as your papers are in order, and you have the right currency in your wallet. Or maybe no currency?

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. [Revelation 13:16, 17]

Ain't no place it looks like this is happenin' but here folks. But, maybe we're already there.
Try this link for a different view of our love affair with credit cards. It's long, but worth reading with attention.

If you like really meaty biblical analysis try this. NO fundie pap here.

Blue Ibis

Bible Prophecy, Economics, U.S. Politics, Currency controls, Gold, Banking,

Paranoia in the Great White North

"Nothing in politics EVER happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." Franklin Roosevelt

Folks we have ourselves a SCAN--DAL!! A rip-roaring, kick-back, nepotistic, influence peddling (but not bodies thank g-d, we'll leave that to the PTB south of the 49th, see Jeff Gannon), money-passed-under-tables-in-manila-envelopes cause celebre. (Gotta use some French there because it's centred in Quebec.) Welcome to ADSCAM..

Ok, so what's the uproar all about? Bare-bones version: about ten years ago, Quebec up and decided to have another vote about whether they still wanted to be in Canada. It was barely defeated. The national identity thing was pretty shaky. So, the Liberal party starts quietly funnelling lots of money into Quebec for "advertising" to promote the idea of Canadian unity. Problem was, the contracts weren't openly tendered, but given to Liberal friendly organizations, and many of the politicians' family members got "jobs" with these companies. There was "encouragement" to donate fees received back to the Liberals, etc. The cozy little arrangement lasted for the last six or seven years. Check here, and some of the latest here if you want an outline of the gory details. Here is a good rundown on the principle players.

Things started to get really freaky when Justice Gomery, who is overseeing the inquiry into this mess, slapped a publication ban on testimony in Canada, but the US reporters in attendance were blogging their little hearts out producing daily summaries of the sessions, so anyone with an internet connection could find out what was going on anyway.

Bizarre . . . .

Anywho, the ban was lifted yesterday, so all the testimony of one Jean Brault is now on display. After months of admirably tenacious stonewalling by such worthies as Charles Guite ("I don't recall.")and Alphonso Gagliano ("It was so long ago"), Mr. Brault has been singing like the proverbial canary. Today my local rag had the whole front page in black and red, with mug shots and 72 point type screaming "Extorsion!" And the feeding frenzy is on.

But this smelly little sinkhole has been simmering for at least five years. Why, oh why, is it coming out now?

"Nothing in politics EVER happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."

I think there's a lot more going on here than just another (yawn) government embarrassment. For starters, see the previous entry "It's Like We're Gettin' Set Up, Eh?" regarding the quiet alignment of the US/Cnd militaries despite government protests to the contrary. Then consider this gem gathered from my favorite news site:

Time to tame corporate power

by Murray Dobbin
April 7, 2005

As I was scanning the latest documents describing WTO negotiations on its services agreement (the GATS - General Agreement on Trade in Services) I came across a quote that reinforced for me how much corporations have come to dominate our political life - in other words, how much power has been transferred from citizens and democracy to CEOs and corporate boards. The quote was from Thailand's Supachai Panitchpakdi, the Director General of the WTO. He was taking questions from a gathering of CEOs of global service companies and one asked him what it took it "get things going."

While he acknowledged that governments and politicians had to "manage" the process, it was corporations who had to design and drive it. According to Panitchpakdi: "I think we need consistent pressure coming from the private-sector side. We need governments who understand what kind of interests you have in the round [of negotiations] ... So I would say ... when you have active participation from the private sector, the political agenda will be always more balanced."

Needless to say the WTO head said this with a completely straight face because he absolutely believes it. But he revealed in his remarks that what he thought needed balancing was the apparently undue influence of government. In designing a world trading system - but particularly corporate access to and privatization of vital public services - it is the corporations that count. Governments, who are supposedly mandated to look after their citizens' interests, the public interest, are just there to manage the process.

Panitchpakdi's remarks in such private settings are rarely reported so the public is just as rarely made aware of how the world's health care, education and municipal services are in the process of being handed over to global corporations. The parallel at the national level is more transparent, as we saw recently with the signing of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America by the leaders of Mexico, Canada and the U.S. The title of the accord - which sets the tone and structure for virtual annexation - was lifted almost word for word from a report by the most powerful corporate organization in Canada.

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives, founded back in 1974, consists of the CEOs of the 150 richest companies in Canada. This extraordinarily influential organization is not a lobby group in the normal sense of the word. They have been dictating fiscal, trade and economic policy to governments since the early 1980s. Moving beyond the old-fashioned approach of lobbying government each time their interests seemed threatened, the CCCE (formerly the Business Council on National Issues) sought to anticipate governments' moves and strike before government could.

They were stunningly successful with the Mulroney government and in some cases - such as competition law - actually wrote the legislation they wanted and presented it to the federal government. In this example, Mulroney passed the legislation virtually unchanged.

In the spring of 1994 the then BCNI, furious that Paul Martin's first budget did not cut billions from social spending as recommended, delivered its policy prescription to the finance minister: "A Ten Point Growth and Employment Strategy for Canada." The plan was an aggressive corporate wish list that included huge cuts to social programs, a deliberate moderate economic growth policy, using any surpluses to pay down the debt (rather than reinvest in social programs), massive corporate tax cuts and decentralization. Within four years Martin had delivered on almost every item.

The fact that our nation has been effectively governed according to the priorities of 150 global corporations is now so "normal" that it is almost never remarked upon. Yet there is an enormous disconnect here that goes beyond the obvious question of just how anti-democratic this situation is. I am speaking here of the irrefutable fact that the corporate sector which now claims the right to define our nation has reached unprecedented levels of corruption and social irresponsibility. For the past several years we have witnessed the spectacle of almost unimaginable greed, fraud, lying and outright theft from the men who were the heroes of capitalism.

The perverse nature of corporate culture tells us that those like Bernie Ebbers, had they not been caught, would still be heroes. Indeed from Wall Street's and Bay Street's viewpoint, getting caught was their only real crime. The roots of this cultural pathology go to the relentless drive for deregulation and the resulting corporate contempt for the laws that remain.

Since the early 1980s ethical behaviour has even been equated by some business theorists with violating fiduciary responsibility. University of Chicago law professors Frank Easterbrook and Daniel Fischel have taught that when it comes to making profits, executives not only may violate the law but should do so if it enhances the bottom line. And the fines and penalties if they get caught? Simply the cost of doing business.

While this view may be extremist, it has it roots in traditional corporate law which says that those who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. If they fail to do so directors and officers are open to being sued by shareholders. Corporate law not only says nothing about directors and officers serving the public interest, it actually implies that absorbing the necessary cost of doing so could be seen as violating their fiduciary duty.

When the CCCE/BCNI dictates to Paul Martin about the direction of the country, it is speaking on behalf of an ethically corrupted and perverse institution: the modern, global corporation. Governments - and by implication, citizens - crafted the laws that made them so. It's time we changed them.

************************************

Ok, got that background info settled in? Now consider this. One of the weirdnesses of Parliamentary political systems is that if the party in power starts to look shaky, the other party(ies) can, if they choose, procedurally "gang up" on it and force a new election AT ANY TIME. Doesn't matter if you won the election a month ago. Mess up, annoy enough people, and you can be forced to run a new campaign within six weeks. It's called a "snap election" See this CBC link.

So here's the possible scenario. The Conservatives and whoever will help, will force an election anywhere between now and say, Sept. I'm betting on June which will conveniently keep Canada distracted while the US is bombing/invading Iran. Steven Harper gets elected with a whacking great majority, since when Canadian slap their politicians they go all out, plus they will never seriously consider the NDP. Last time a scandal this big broke twenty years ago, the Conservative went from nearly two hundred parlimentary seats to TWO.

Steven, a northern fundie then rushes to mend fences with his evangelical counterpart George, joining forces to defeat the demons of them that "hates our way of life". Look for Canada signing back on with the missile defense plan, and Canadian forces to be posted to Iran and Iraq by the end of the year. But they will start buying our cattle again. Ain't democracy grand?

For all of you who are so happy that "Canadians are different", you read it here first.

Blue Ibis

Gomery
Canadian Politics
ADSCAM
Gannon