Just Who Hates Us for Our Freedoms?

The point about Ms. "Pitbull" Palin has been made for now. Time once again to step back for the larger view. Do you really think John McCain and her righteous Christian Dominionist warriors are going to protect us from these terrorists? Heck, they would sell their souls to be these folks.

Wait, they already have.

Blue Ibis
*******************************************************************

9/11 Bailout: They hate us for our freedoms!

OpEdNews
Sun, 12 Oct 2008 09:07 UTC

Allen Heart

Shocked by 9-11, Americans wondered who could perpetrate such a horrible crime against people. Over two thousand Americans jumped to their death, were burned, crushed, or murdered in a spectacular collapse of the Twin Towers. In a joint session of Congress a few days later, President George W. Bush gave us the first clue who "they" were. "They" hated us for our freedoms.

It seemed incomprehensible at the time but we now have an opportunity to recognize who actually hates us for our freedoms. We can identify the culprits by this simple description: They hate us for our freedoms. We need only judge them by their actions. Do you know who has destroyed most of our treasured American freedoms? When you can answer that question you will know the identity of the criminals who conceived and orchestrated the 9-11 Attack on America. They hate us for our freedoms.

Less than a week after he spoke those words, President George W. Bush presented legislation for Congress to pass into law. The USA PATRIOT Act of 2001 revoked much of the Bill of Rights to the US Constitution. Arabs and Muslims of al Qaeda didn't do it. George did it. Congress was given only hours to read the extensive volume and no opportunity to debate. A quick vote was required.

Does that sound familiar to you? Remember the Bailout of the Banks that was rammed through Congress with little debate or deliberation? Do you recognize the similarities with the USA PATRIOT Act? Those who stood in its way received a letter contaminated with fatal weapons grade anthrax, later identified as the Ames strain which was kept under guard at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Arabs and Muslims of al Qaeda had no access to it. It was done by those who "hate us for our freedoms." Only one senator voted against the ironically named USA PATRIOT Act. The vote in the House of Representatives was 357-66. Only a few dozen Democrats voted against the Patriot Act. Al Qaeda did not have a vote. Only those who hate us for our freedoms voted to demolish American freedoms.

Phones were tapped, emails were read, letters were opened. We saw a rapid increase in warrantless searches, secret courts, massive spying on citizens, especially those involved in political dissent. We've seen taser attacks by police on children, elderly, and innocent citizens. We've seen the creation of watch-lists, no-fly lists and similar exclusionary documents, increasing government control over private behavior. Al Qaeda did not do this. The fascist regime of George Bush, neocon Republicans, and the neoliberal Democrats did this. Are you beginning to see who hates us for our freedoms?

Torture was re-instituted and blessed in secret as America turned from human rights advocate to human rights terrorist. US Christian leaders supported Bush's use of torture. Al Qaeda did not do this. This crime against humanity was perpetrated by those who hate us for our freedoms.

Creation of a mercenary military force such as Blackwater for foreign and domestic purposes has led the oppression and murder in Iraq and in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Al Qaeda didn't hire them. These killers and thugs are the private militia of those who hate us for our freedoms.

Dissent is now characterized as disloyalty by government and its supporting media, protestors are herded into pens called "free speech zones," the media supports and condones the government's police state activities. Al Qaeda media? No, mainstream American media. Those in charge hate us for our freedoms.

People are now beaten and arrested for demanding their rights under the Bill of Rights and their President dismisses the Constitution as just a piece of paper. The President asserts the right to ignore part or all of laws passed by the national legislature and the courts increasingly support presidential use of unconstitutional powers. The President and other officials regularly lie to you, the newspapers and media lie to you, the President claims the right to make war whenever he wants and keep soldiers past their tour of duty indefinitely. Government agencies and officials declare themselves exempt from portions of the law or Constitution. Citizens lack any legal recourse to stop illegal government actions and now under the Military Commissions Act you can be imprisoned without trial, arrested and held without charges. Al Qaeda didn't do this. It was done by those who hate you for your freedoms.

The long history of habeas corpus has disappeared after centuries of due process. Al Qaeda didn't make these changes. These changes were made by people who hate us for our freedoms. Are you beginning to recognize who was responsible for 9-11? It was done by those who hate us for our freedoms.

You read their words in the newspapers and see them on the nightly news. Some of them hold a strong loyalty to another country.

There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom. - Garet Garrett

By means of Presidential National Security Directive 51 signed by George W. Bush in 2007, the President can assume dictatorial powers without the consent of Congress. Because of the Domestic Terrorism Law what you think and what they think you think can be a sufficient cause for investigation, arrest, and imprisonment if the President determines it fits his interpretation of the definition of domestic terrorism. The Department of Homeland Security can place your name on a no-fly no-go list if Director Michael Chertoff thinks that you are a "security risk." This can also mean that in the future you can't get on a bus or train to go visit your grandma if someone puts your name on the list. Al Qaeda didn't do this. This is being done by those who hate us for our freedoms.

The Washington Post has reported (April 24, 2008) that the U.S. government will order commercial airlines and cruise lines to prepare to collect digital fingerprints of all foreigners before they depart the country under a security initiative that the industry has condemned as costly and burdensome. Chertoff says fingerprints aren't 'personal data'. He's not al Qaeda. He's a dual-citizen of the US and Israel. Chertoff is a member of the Federalist Society; a cabal of radical lawyers devoted to the systematic dismantling of the Bill of Rights. He's hired former Stasi chief Markus Wolfe and former head of the KGB General Yevgeni Primakov to oversee the American Gestapo. He was in charge of criminal investigation at the Department of Justice and responsible for the release of the Israelis seen celebrating the fall of the Twin Towers.

FEMA, an agency under his direction, has had over 600 concentration camps built by Halliburton and one out of every 100 Americans is in prison, highest in the First World nations. Surveillance cameras are everywhere. Al Qaeda didn't put them there. People are arrested for taking photographs of buildings in the city. The FBI swoops down on private money enterprises and confiscates (steals) millions of dollars worth of gold, silver, and platinum without leaving so much as a receipt and with a warrant that lacks specific cause. Then they steal gold, silver and platinum from the people's private mint without cause. Al Qaeda didn't do this. Another type of terrorist did this. This other terrorist hates us for our freedoms, too.

With the dollar dropping precipitously in the world markets, President Bush negotiates with Canadian and Mexican leaders for a Security and Protection Pact that will create the North American Union with its own currency, the Amero. An unwanted war rages on in Iraq while US leaders press for another war in the Middle East, this time against Iran for seeking nuclear power for electricity, their right under international treaty. Violating Iran's rights is a violation of US law as well as international law but no one can arrest the US leaders who have taken this position. The rule of law has become a quaint artifact of another time. Al Qaeda didn't create the thuggery and treason around us. That's the doing of those who hate us for our freedoms.

We have entered the period of chaos which precedes martial law but Al Qaeda isn't responsible. Arabs and Muslims didn't do this. It was done by those who hate us for our freedoms. These people who hate us for our freedoms are the ones who told us that 9-11 was done by those who hate us for our freedoms. In telling us their lies we can see through their propaganda and illusion to the truth.

Garet Garrett wrote:

There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, "Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don't watch out." These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when "one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state."

Franklin Delano Rosenfeld brought over 4,000 communists and socialists into US Government during his regime and declared a national emergency that made him a de facto dictator. That national emergency was never ended. We think that we have a Constitution and Bill of Rights that limit the power of government. We think that our Declaration of Independence declares our independence. We think that the American Revolution and the American dream are our heritage and our destiny. We think that we have a democratic republic and that our votes count, our voices are heard. Such mirages should have evaporated in the Presidential Election of 2000 when the US Supreme Court stopped a legal recount of votes in Florida to give the win to George W. Bush, son of the man who had appointed them.

Such illusions should have disappeared when the Twin Towers dropped at the rate of free fall into their own footprints. The immutable laws of physics should have helped us discern the truth from the propaganda. But a century ago the Tavistock Institute discovered that only 13% of the population can think for themselves. The remaining 87% depend upon "authorities" whose pieces of paper on their walls tout their academic superiority.

So we are left with the power of practical observation and a bit of logic to help us discover the truth from the fiction. The horrible atrocity that was 9-11 was truly done by those who hate us for our freedoms. It might be the only way that most people can see through the lies and propaganda. In his address to a joint session of Congress following 9-11, President George W. Bush told the truth in such a way that we were supposed to think that he meant al Qaeda. He had twisted the truth into a lie.

What George told us was true! They hate us for our freedoms! Now you can see who planned and orchestrated 9-11. Perhaps now you can also understand the Bailout of the Banks. The answer lies in the simple clue: It was planned and orchestrated by those who hate us for our freedoms. The old biblical truism, "By their fruits ye shall know them."

Bush freedoms John McCain Sarah Palin pitbull Patriot Act bank bailout Al Qaeda warrentless wiretaps Blackwater Tavistock Twin Towers free fall speed

Katrina--> Blackwater--> Martial Law --> Asteroid/Comet Impacts?

Stepping back to connect the recent dots. Congratulations to the excellent SOTT editors.

Blue Ibis
**********************************************************

Update: Clear and Present Danger

SoTT Editors
Signs of the Times
Mon, 06 Oct 2008 20:43 UTC

© Cassiopaea.org

The one thing that's been proven is the absolute fear-mongering that's being used to drive us is false. I've seen members turn to each other and say if we don't pass this bill, we're going to have martial law in the United States. -- Rep. Brad Sherman, October 1, 2008

We've had a bad feeling these past several years, as those of you who have read these pages may know, that the Iraq disaster wasn't so much a resource grab or to encircle Iran and Russia, nor just to protect Israel, but something more sinister: training soldiers to be mindless killers so that when they're brought back home they would have no problem killing their fellow citizens when martial law is declared and the cow pies really hit the fan.

In fact, a Blackwater mercenary said as much at the time:

Post-Katrina New Orleans: American police state is here

Corroborating and adding to mounting evidence of the militarization of New Orleans, investigative reporter Jeremy Scahill noted the following in a September 12 KPFA radio interview:

1. New Orleans is teeming with heavily-armed mercenaries, troops from the US military and national guard, and police from cities around the country.

2. Mercenaries, including Blackwater USA were deputized by Governor Kathleen Blanco. [Blanco's actions throughout this crisis, noted in a number of previous reports, appear increasingly suspicious and demand investigation.-LC] They are also working for Homeland Security, even though Homeland Security denies it.

3. Blackwater mercenaries were seen looting bars in the French Quarter. Blackwater has also taken over another bar in the French Quarter as their de facto headquarters.

4. Arrogant Blackwater mercenaries that were queried by Scahill boasted about their deputization, and their combat experience in Iraq, which included work for L. Paul Bremer.

5. Mercenaries, troops and New Orleans police are engaged in a terror campaign, intimidating remaining "holdouts," while continuing to withhold food, medicine and aid.

6. A Blackwater mercenary warned Scahill that the rest of the country will experience the same kind of hell in the future.

So when we read that an army combat unit, the first to storm Baghdad, has been deployed within U.S. and that they will be training with "beanbag bullets, Tasers, spike strips and roadblocks" and to use what they learned in crowd control to subdue angry Iraqis, well, we could see the writing on the wall. What is the point of having an army unit, supposedly deployed in the event of a "terrorist event" or "natural disaster" when perfectly good national guard troops are at hand by the governors of each state? Well, that's it exactly. The national guard answers to the governor and not the president. If you aren't scared at this point, you should be. Naomi Wolf reiterates the key points in this short interview:

Was Katrina a dry run?

Cynthia McKinney, the one time Congresswoman and presidential candidate has recently let the cat out of the bag on what really happened with Blackwater mercenaries in the days after hurricane Katrina struck:

In the wake of hurricane Katrina ... I had a mother to call me because her son had a very gruesome task. Her son's charge by the Department of Defense was to process 5,000 bodies that had received a single bullet wound to the head and these were mostly males and her son was afraid to talk because he had signed a silence agreement...He only complained to his mother but data about these individuals was entered into a Pentagon computer and then reportedly the bodies were dumped in the swamp of Louisiana. ... and I have verification from insiders who wish to remain anonymous at the Red Cross.

Wayne Madsen did a report from back then, but we don't have a direct link to it (he just put everything on his front page at the time). Here is an excerpt:

Under obvious pressure from FEMA, the state of Louisiana contracted with a Texas firm, Kenyon International (a subsidiary of Services Corporation International), to collect and properly arrange for the burial of the bodies of victims of Hurricane Katrina. Kenyon, a firm charged with illegal body dumping and which was tied politically to both George W. Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales (Bush was Governor and Gonzales was his counsel), now stands to receive similar contracts to improperly dump the bodies of victims (we earnestly hope there will not be any) from Hurricane Rita. From an informed source in St. Tammany Parish and the city of Slidell comes this revelation: A week after Katrina struck the Gulf Coast, small planes from around the country began delivering food, water, and medical supplies to outlying parishes in Louisiana and counties in Mississippi. However, according to the source, St. Tammany Parish made a startling request to one of the pilots: the parish needed well over 5000 body bags.

Then there were the doctors and nurses who killed hospital patients rather than leave them behind alive. Now, in a state of lawlessness who's to say if these patients were near death or not? Perhaps they were, if that makes you feel better:

'With gangs of rapists and looters rampaging through wards in the flooded city, senior doctors took the harrowing decision to give massive overdoses of morphine to those they believed could not make it out alive.'

In an extraordinary interview with The Mail on Sunday, one New Orleans doctor told how she 'prayed for God to have mercy on her soul' after she ignored every tenet of medical ethics and ended the lives of patients she had earlier fought to save.

Her heart-rending account has been corroborated by a hospital orderly and by local government officials. One emergency official, William 'Forest' McQueen, said: "Those who had no chance of making it were given a lot of morphine and lain down in a dark place to die."

McKinney's testimony also gives more credibility to Farrakhan's claim that the levees were blown up:

Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan on Thursday fuelled a rumour that explosives, not Hurricane Katrina, broke New Orleans's dykes and flooded poor African-American neighbourhoods.

"A member of the army corps of engineers saw burn marks on the concrete," Farrakhan told reporters, describing an e-mail he had received.

"They found two types of explosives used by the military," he said, without naming the source, adding that an 8m crater had been blown in the dyke.

Farrakhan said locals had reported sounds of explosions, among other things, leading him to believe the rumours should be investigated.

"Wickedness exists in high places," he said.

Then there's this disturbing article which, if true, portends even more sinister developments. The US House of Representatives held a secret meeting back in March while discussing the passage of the surveillance bill which would give retroactive immunity to the telecom companies who participated in the illegal program.

Last week's session was only the fourth time in 176 years that Congress has closed it's doors to the public.

Word has begun leaking from last weeks special, closed-door session of the United States House of Representatives.

Theorists wrote "Not only did members discuss new surveillance provisions as was the publicly stated reason for the closed door session, they also discussed: The imminent collapse of the U.S. economy to occur by September 2008, the imminent collapse of US federal government finances by February 2009, the possibility of Civil War inside the USA as a result of the collapse and advance round-ups of "insurgent U.S. citizens" likely to move against the government.

Note that the author uses the word "theorists" when perhaps he's really referring to insiders who were there at the meeting, too afraid to leak the information to a US reporter perhaps.

And while the house was recently debating the passage of the $700 billion bankers bailout bill they passed the little debated, $634 billion spending measure:

The Department of Homeland Security will proceed with the first phase of a controversial satellite-surveillance program, even though an independent review found the department hasn't yet ensured the program will comply with privacy laws.

Congress provided partial funding for the program in a little-debated $634 billion spending measure that will fund the government until early March. For the past year, the Bush administration had been fighting Democratic lawmakers over the spy program, known as the National Applications Office.

The program is designed to provide federal, state and local officials with extensive access to spy-satellite imagery -- but no eavesdropping -- to assist with emergency response and other domestic-security needs, such as identifying where ports or border areas are vulnerable to terrorism.

Since the department proposed the program a year ago, several Democratic lawmakers have said that turning the spy lens on America could violate Americans' privacy and civil liberties unless adequate safeguards were required.

A new 60-page Government Accountability Office report said the department "lacks assurance that NAO operations will comply with applicable laws and privacy and civil liberties standards," according to a person familiar with the document. The report, which is unclassified but considered sensitive, hasn't been publicly released, but was described and quoted by several people who have read it.

The report cites gaps in privacy safeguards. The department, it found, lacks controls to prevent improper use of domestic-intelligence data by other agencies and provided insufficient assurance that requests for classified information will be fully reviewed to ensure it can be legally provided.

No eavesdropping? Who are we kidding? They've been doing it for decades.

As Nick Juliano from Raw Story writes,

Essentially, the bill only requires the Homeland Security Secretary to assure lawmakers that NAO programs comply with exisiting laws. Congress also has required the DHS Inspector General to provide quarterly classified reports on how much information has been collected by the domestic satellite surveillance, although the bill required those reports be made to the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, not the Homeland Security Committees that are traditionally in charge of DHS oversight.

...

There are further concerns about whether the surveillance program would violate Posse Comitatus, which prohibits the military from participating in domestic law enforcement activities. It's "ridiculous" to think that's not what would be happening under this program, [Tim Sparapani, an American Civil Liberties Union lobbyist]1 says.

So we have an army brigade deployed on US soil answerable only to the president of the United States and a domestic surveillance system aimed at US citizens with an upcoming presidential election. Who's to say this army brigade won't be deployed at voting booths or inside Congress itself? And it's not just US citizens that should be concerned:

Germany's governing coalition partners want to change the constitution to allow for military deployment within the country if needed to combat terrorism, officials said Monday.

The proposal would allow use of the military only if police are overwhelmed and cannot properly respond to a situation themselves.

Government will spy on every call and e-mail

Ministers are considering spending up to £12 billion on a database to monitor and store the internet browsing habits, e-mail and telephone records of everyone in Britain.

GCHQ, the government's eavesdropping centre, has already been given up to £1 billion to finance the first stage of the project.

Hundreds of clandestine probes will be installed to monitor customers live on two of the country's biggest internet and mobile phone providers - thought to be BT and Vodafone. BT has nearly 5m internet customers.

Ministers are braced for a backlash similar to the one caused by their ID cards programme. Dominic Grieve, the shadow home secretary, said: "Any suggestion of the government using existing powers to intercept communications data without public discussion is going to sound extremely sinister."

But will be done anyway...

There's been a lot of the "October 7" event going around from the halfpasthuman.com people over at Urbansurvival.com. Supposedly it's bigger than 9/11 and it doesn't necessarily involve the current financial crisis. Well, if you lump the "October 14" contact people, specifically Blossom Goodchild's prediction that ETs will arrive in a very substantial "spacecraft", and will spend at least three days 'parked' over the "south of our hemisphere", Barry Warmkessel's High impact threat level, the Ulysess' galactic dust, an incoming newly discovered, but 'totally harmless' asteroid on an earth collision course, the noctilucent clouds and perhaps the lowest sunspot activity of the space age, and the not so subtle bilking of the US treasury similar to the put options just before 9/11 but on a far grander scale we can only speculate what it all means. A continental disaster and finally the troops would have to return home, only the entire US would get the Katrina treatment? Even if it's just a financial collapse and the troops are needed to return home to "restore order". Perhaps it's nothing. Perhaps It could all just be mass internet hysteria. Go back to sleep:

A small, newly-discovered asteroid named 2008 TC3 is approaching Earth and chances are good that it will hit. Steve Chesley of JPL estimates that atmospheric entry will occur on Oct 7th at 0246 UTC over northern Sudan [ref]. Measuring only a few meters across, the space rock poses NO THREAT to people or structures on the ground, but it should create a spectacular fireball, releasing about a kiloton of TNT in energy as it disintegrates and explodes in the atmosphere. Odds are between 99.8 and 100 percent that the object will encounter Earth, according to calculations provided by Andrea Milani of the University of Pisa.

Update:

The universe is full of synchronicities. Apparently, a confirming report comes from aviation meteorologist, Jacob Kuiper:

The following potentially confirming report comes from Jacob Kuiper, General Aviation meteorologist at the National Weather Service in the Netherlands: "Half an hour before the predicted impact of asteroid 2008 TC3, I informed an official of Air-France-KLM at Amsterdam airport about the possibility that crews of their airliners in the vicinity of impact would have a chance to see a fireball. And it was a success! I have received confirmation that a KLM airliner, roughly 750 nautical miles southwest of the predicted atmospheric impact position, has observed a short flash just before the expected impact time 0246 UTC. Because of the distance it was not a very large phenomenon, but still a confirmation that some bright meteor has been seen in the predicted direction. Projected on an infrared satellite-image of Meteosat-7 of 0300 UTC, I have indicated the position of the plane (+) and the predicted impact area in Sudan (0)."

Blackwater Cometary Bombardment FEMA Homeland Security Hurricane Katrina martial law Posse Comitatus Act Sunspots

Sadism, Cruelty, Torture In The Twin Cities: Professional Cultural Norms For US "Law" Enforcement

The title says it all. Or maybe it should be It Can't Happen Here . . .

Blue Ibis
**************************************************************
Sadism, Cruelty, Torture In The Twin Cities: Professional Cultural Norms For US "Law" Enforcement

Kirk James Murphy, M.D
Operation Itch
Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:13 EDT

Over the last week we've seen even the MSM drop the Village kewl kids pose and stand up to criticize the pervasive cruelty, abuse, and illegal use of force "law" enforcement inflicted upon the Twin Cities community.

The torture, sadism, and abuse the Minneapolis Police, St. Paul Police, Ramsey County Sheriffs (and out of town departments) unleashed upon protesters, press, passers-by, and community members took place while Homeland Security and the Secret Service they control were in direct command of all area "law" enforcement and had final authority over all decisions about protests and protesters. In other words, what we saw in the Twin Cities shows us how American local "law" enforcement act in broad daylight when the Feds are on the scene and supervising their work.

Over the last week, we had a chance to observe de facto professional cultural norms in America's local, state, and Federal enforcement. This is what democracy looks like?

What happened to people in local communities of color who weren't even associated with the protests? Here's what Rebecca Trotzky-Sirr, a fourth-year Univ. of Minnesota medical student learned when she interviewed a local resident on behalf of United Communities Against Police Brutality:

While much attention has been paid to arrests of prominent journalists & protesters harsh treatment during arrests, in the streets of St Paul many community members feel invisible as they live out the RNC protest repercussions. Undocumented families, refugees have been staying away from their homes in highly patrolled areas near downtown St Paul in fear of encountering police by accident. I visited and documented a gentleman of color who had no prior criminal history, who was detained without cause near central St Paul. During his arrest, while handcuffed he was beat by a police officer. The victim had recently had major surgery, released from hospital less than a week prior. Later, during booking, the same officer punched him repeatedly in the head and neck in front of other officers who looked on without concern. When police realized that this man was severely injured, they drove him one block away from the hospital and let him limp his way to the ER.

People of color, those most marginalized in our community, have faced severe consequences because of RNC protests. Police riled up, frustrated with protesters are taking out their anger on those without large wallets, or skin privilege.

Michael Cavlan, RN is a nurse who works on surgical trauma and burn units. I know surgical trauma nurses - I used to work with them. The ones I knew weren't prone to overstatement: working around intense suffering makes that a very poor occupational choice. What did Michael Cavlan observe on the steets of the Twin Cities during the RNC?

Day Two

I hear "we need a medic over here" so we responded. Apparently, the police had maced a member of the "Minnesota Peace Team." These were all people marked in bright green vests, who were working with the police to contain violence. The two that were maced, full in the face were both 70 year old men. For the record, the peace teams had been very successful in de-escalating violence. I ran over and treated one and my buddy treated the other one. While I was doing so, someone from the crowd ran over and said "buddy, get out of here, I heard the cops say 'get the medic in blue.'"

I hightailed out of there, ditching my blue scrubs. Ironically, as I did so a young man has a seizure, fell and hit his head hard right in front of me. I was still a medic, just unmarked now. I and others treated him until an ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital. Again, for the record we were now getting reports that the police were specifically targeting journalists and medics all over.

[snip]

At this time the police gave a dispersal order. We knew what that meant. They threw gas and concussion grenades into the crowd and then opened up with rubber bullets, wooden baton rounds, tear gas etc etc.

My team treated another young lady who had been maced in the face and delivered her to the clinic, to get cleaned up from the burning chemicals on her face, eyes, arms and clothes. By the way, this stuff hurts even when you only put your exposed skin on someone who was hit by it.

[snip]

Day Three

My buddy was redeployed back to jail support while I went back to more organizational meetings. During one, I got paged. Apparently, the police had beaten two of the protesters in jail so badly that they released them. When they release people that they beat, that is bad. They asked me to come help them, as they know I am a Trauma Nurse. Then they called back and said that it was OK as a Doctor had showed up at the clinic site..

[snip]

One young man had apparently just returned from serving in Iraq. I treated him after the police maced him, full in the eyes. He had been simply walking by, going somewhere. As I treated him one of the NLG lawyers came by, took his information and a picture. At this time, the wall of police opened up, a commander of some sort pointed at myself and the lawyer, took a picture of us. I thought, "oh sh*t" and myself, my son and the lawyer started to walk away. Then a group of about fifteen bike cops came after us, surrounded me and pushed my son aside. Sean went to get the lawyer to help and they apparently threatened to tase him. Thank God, I did not know this at this time.

They detained me, searched me and questioned me. Then they let me go. I took my son home and went home to bed.

[snip]

We now have reports that Minneapolis has been legally put in the hands of the Department of Homeland Security.

All of our elected officials and the media have failed us. The question is, what do we do about it?

This is your Op Ed Journalista and Street Medic, Michael Cavlan reporting from the occupied Twin Cities.

What did the Northstar Health Collective learn and see in the Twin Cities during the RNC?

On Monday evening, two clearly marked providers, giving care to a paraplegic, were forcibly thrown to the ground by police and arrested. Explained Sean P. McCoy, a U.S. Navy Veteran and trained EMT:

"My medic partner and I were treating a handicapped male in a wheelchair for pepper spray to the face at the parking lot of Jackson Street. In the process of treating the patient, we were surrounded by several police officers in riot gear and forcibly thrown to the ground and told we were under arrest. We were then forcibly removed from our patient, handcuffed, and forced to lay face down on the ground while the officers proceeded to cut our bags off of us and remove all of our medical gear by dumping it on the ground."

Mr. McCoy was held for over 55 hours in Ramsey County Jail, and, like many other protesters, locked in his cell for over 23 hours a day.

What did the Portland Street Medics encounter in the Twin Cities?

Four members of the Portland Street Medic Collective who had travelled to the RNC to provide medical care to the radical community were arrested on 9-1-2008. All are now released pending court dates in October.

Before the arrest, the medics were following an unpermitted march around the outskirts of the boundaries of the Excel Center. The march stayed mostly to sidewalks and utilized several pedestrian trails.

After heading nearly a mile down a bike trail with a river on one side and an unpassable bank on the other side of the road, protesters found themselves under fire from police chemical weapons, having never received an order to disperse. The protestors and the medics fled back up the bike path while the onslaught of chemical weapons and differently-lethal weapons continued behind and next to the fleeing crowd. Police in riot gear ran past the tail end of the running group, continuing to launch weapons into the crowd, forcing those at the back to run through the already dispensed weapons.

The four medics helped with the evacuation of at least five patients, including one with a broken hand from being hit with police weaponry, one with an injured ankle from being hit with police weaponry who needed physical support to walk, and one who was blinded by pepper spray. This assistance left the medics at the very back of the crowd and among the worst victims of chemical weapons as they fled the scene.

At the corner of Ontario and Shepard the crowd was trapped in a park by lines of riot police and all people in the park, including those holding tickets to a concert and attempting to utilize the pedestrian bridges to get to the concert, were arrested. Those with misdemeanors were released later that night, while those being held on felonies were in jail for 48 hours.

Three of the Portland Medics, David Drew, Jr, Tracy Maier, and R. Westlund are charged with Misdemeanors in the 1st degree of "presence at an unlawful assembly and refusing to leave." They face 90 days in jail and fines up to $1,000. The fourth, A. Oliver Hayes, is charged with a Gross Misdemeanor in the 3rd degree of rioting, and faces one year in jail and a fine of $1,000.

How do "law" enforcement under Fatherland Homeland Security/Secret Service command behave towards people in the the Twin Cities?

This is from Portland Street Medics who weren't arrested:

Later in the week, a group of six medics, three of them from Portland, were again the targets of police misconduct. A group of 350 people were being detained and preparing to be arrested on a bridge. The group included some legal observers from the NLG and 12 Street Medics. Medic Dispatch received news that the legal observers in the group had been released prior to the arrest, so the six medics headed out to see if they could negotiate with the police for the release of the medics.

[snip]

Upon arrival at the scene one of the Portland Medics spoke with an officer and received a phone number for "Watch Command" to begin negotiations. On the first phone call, the medic explained the job of the medics and explained that they were asking for the release of the medics detained on the bridge. The medic gave WC their full legal name and offered to provide proof of credentials as an EMT. WC offered to give the request to the commander at the scene and then call the medics back.

After a reasonable amount of time, the medic called WC back to check on the status. WC questioned the location of the medics, and the medic confirmed that they were at the scene of the arrest before ending the phone call to wait for further news.

The medic attempted to speak with two officers on scene, but neither would produce a supervisor to do the negotiations. Moments after the second attempt, while the Medic Liaison was making another call to WC, one of the Portland Medics was pulled out of the crowd of observers and drug into the street by four police officers. The medic's pockets were searched while the medic stated, "I do not consent to this search." While still searching this medic, the commanding officer led four more officers into the crowd and pulled out the Medic Liaison, who had been on the phone moments before. The first medic was released back into the crowd after their pockets were searched.

The second medic was questioned as to why they were carrying a backpack and hip pack. The medic explained their status as an EMT and allowed officers to take their registration card as proof. Officers explained, "You reached your hands in your pockets, and that makes us nervous, so now we have to check what you're up to." The medic repeatedly denied consent for the search but officers began opening the medic kits regardless. An officer asked, "Where did you get all this stuff? Did you steal it off the ambulance?" The medic responded, "I'm not going to answer any more of your questions until I speak to my lawyer." The officer replied, "In that case, you can pick your own shit up off the ground," and began opening ziplock bags and dumping medical supplies on the ground.

During the search, officers repeatedly made threats about possible criminal charges against the medic, including "medical terrorism." Officers dumped the entire contents of both medical kits on the ground, purposefully stepped on the equipment, read all the aftercare flyers and made threats about "testing the pepper spray" on this medic, and searched the medic's body and clothing three separate times in an extremely rough and inappropriate manner. After running the medic's ID through the system, the officers ordered to medic to clean up all the supplies, and accused the medic of littering when a small packet of vitamins was overlooked on the ground. Once the supplies were repacked, the medic was free to go.

These police actions were not based on any reasonable suspicion of wrongdoing. The police were targeting the medics who were attempting to liaise with commanding officers and harassing them in order to reduce their power and prevent further negotiating tactics.

Just a few rogue cops who don't believe in negotiation? Nope.

Twin Cities "law" enforcement now storms into meetings between residents and elected political leaders.

A peaceful meeting of lawyers with the Mayor of Minneapolis to discuss the police-incited riots and the way peaceful protesters and journalists have been treated is broken up by cops in FULL RIOT GEAR.

This is what democracy looks like?

Over the course of this week, we at FDL, visitors to the Twin Cities, and local residents have seen and read of "form-letter" warrants used as an excuse for search-and-disrupt missions against food providers, legal collectives,videographers, political organizers, and journalists. We've learned about "snatch squads" kidnapping residents from the streets.

We've even seen video and read witness' accounts of torture under cover of authority by uniformed "law" enforcement officers.

To put it bluntly, uniformed "law" enforcement in St. Paul and Ramsey County:

* torture with electroshock weapons (Tasers)
* torture with chemical weapons
* stomp on a young man's chest
* cruelly (perhaps fatally) deny medical care to a victim spitting up blood (the fancy medical name is hemoptysis) from thoracic trauma
* respond to calls for food with torture by beating, Taser, and chemical weapons: the same chemical weapons known to cause respiratory arrest and death in victims with pulmonary disease. "Spitting up blood" is a symptom of pulmonary disease so severe as to require emergency medical evaluation.
* then tie up the victim in "restraint chairs" known to exacerbate pre-existing breathing difficulties in some victims of thoracic trauma.

The Ramsey County Jail officials did this in plain earshot of other detainees: that's a pretty strong sign they don't see anything to hide. Which-when one's been doing the same thing over and over for years-is a common assumption.

To sum up, over the last week we've seen and read as local "law" enforcement under the direct control of FatherlandHomeland Security (via their obedient partisan instrument the Secret Service) deploy the techniques for abuse of power and political repression we once were taught were solely the trappings of authoritarian police states.

Like those Cold War opponents we Americans were told were so loathsome we'd be better off blowing up the world than submitting to such tyranny.

And now - in the Twin Cities - we just saw the Bushies deploy the same evils Radio Free America once promised Eastern Europe's people the American people would free them from.

Eastern Europe (or much of it) now has their freedom. We have the Bushie authoritarians, and a "law" enforcement culture that accepts sadism, cruelty, and torture as routine...even with the whole world watching.

And elections are eight weeks away.

What are we going to do? What are you going to do?

Throwing Money at it

Summer holidays are over. Back to reality though sadly, it was never really out of mind.

Blue Ibis
**********************************************
Blackwater is here to stay

Jeremy Scahill
The Guardian
Tue, 22 Jul 2008 19:06 EDT

Despite reports that the company is leaving the mercenary business, Blackwater's future is secure.

It seems that executives from Blackwater Worldwide, the Bush administration's favourite hired guns in Iraq and Afghanistan, are threatening to pack up their M4 assault rifles, CS gas and Little Bird helicopters and go back to the great dismal swamp of North Carolina whence they came. Or at least that's how it is being portrayed in the media.This story broke on Monday, when the Associated Press ran an article based on lengthy interviews with Blackwater's top guns. Since then, the story has picked up considerable steam and generated a tremendous amount of buzz online and in the press. After all, Blackwater has long been a key part of the US occupation and has been at the centre of several high-profile scandals and deadly incidents. Add to that its owner's ties to the White House and the radical religious right in the US and it is clear why this is news. On top of that, Barack Obama - a critic of Blackwater - just completed a tour of Iraq, where he was touting his withdrawal plan.

Among the headlines of the past 24 hours: "Blackwater plans exit from guard work" (link), "Blackwater getting out of security business" (link), "Blackwater sounds retreat from private security business" (link), and "Blackwater to leave security business" (link). One blogger slapped this headline on his post: "Blackwater, worst organisation since SS, to end mercenary work" (link).

Frankly, this is a whole lot of hype.

Anyone who thinks Blackwater is in serious trouble is dead wrong. Even if - and this is a big if - the company pulled out of Iraq tomorrow, here is the cold, hard fact: business has never been better for Blackwater, and its future looks bright. More on this in a moment.

Back to the matter at hand. Complaining that negative media attention and congressional and criminal investigations are hurting business and that the Blackwater name had become a catch-all target for anti-war protesters, the company's brass told the AP that Blackwater was shifting its focus to its other areas of government contracting, like law enforcement and military training, as well as logistics.

''The experience we've had would certainly be a disincentive to any other companies that want to step in and put their entire business at risk,'' said Erik Prince, Blackwater's reclusive, 39 year-old founder and owner. Company president Gary Jackson said Blackwater has become like the "Coca-Cola" of war contractors, a brand representing all private companies servicing the Iraq occupation. Jackson charged the company had been falsely portrayed in the media, saying, ''If [the media] could get it right, we might stay in the business.''

All of this sounds a bit like whining on a children's playground.

Shame on journalists for not recognising the noble work of the gallant heroes and patriots (who happen to be paid much more than US troops and have not been subjected to any system of law and who can leave the war zone any moment they choose) and forcing Blackwater to consider abandoning its (very profitable, billion-dollar) charitable humanitarian campaign in Iraq. Remember, according to Blackwater, it is not a mercenary organisation. It is a "peace and stability" operation employing "global stabilisation professionals" (link).

While they were at it, Jackson and Prince should have blamed those wretched 17 Iraqi civilians who had the audacity to step in front of the bullets flying out of Blackwater's weapons in Baghdad's Nisour Square last September. After all, following those killings, Erik Prince told the US Congress that the only innocent people his men may have killed or injured in Iraq died as a result of "ricochets" and "traffic accidents". If that is true, Nisour Square might have been the most lethal jaywalking incident in world history.

As for the current hype, the day after the AP story broke, Blackwater's long-time spokesperson Anne Tyrrell was quick to clarify the matter. Blackwater, she said, has no immediate plans to exit the security business. "As long as we're asked, we'll do it," she said. Meanwhile, the US state department, which renewed Blackwater's contract for another year in April, says it has received no communication from the company indicating it is not going to continue on in Iraq. "They have not indicated to us that they are attempting to get out of our current contract," said undersecretary of state Patrick Kennedy.

As of 2005-2006, according to the company, about half of Blackwater's business was made up of its security work in places like Iraq, Afghanistan and post-Katrina New Orleans. Today, Jackson says it is about 30%. ''If I could get it down to 2% or 1%, I would go there," he said in the interview.

Blackwater, like all companies operating in US war zones, is following political developments very closely. The company may be bracing for a possible shift in policy should Obama win in November. Blackwater could be contemplating resignation before termination. On the other hand, Obama has sent mixed messages on the future of war contractors under his Iraq policy. While he has been very critical of the war industry in general - and Blackwater specifically - he has also indicated he will not "rule out" using private armed contractors at least for a time in Iraq.

Perhaps Blackwater has already gotten what it needed from Iraq: over a billion dollars in contracts and a bad-ass reputation, which has served it well. In May, Blackwater boasted of "two successive quarters of unprecedented growth." Among its current initiatives:

- Erik Prince's private spy agency, Total Intelligence Solutions, is now open for business, placing capabilities once the sovereign realm of governments on the open market. Run by three veteran CIA operatives, the company offers "CIA-type services" to Fortune 1000 companies and governments.

- Blackwater was asked by the Pentagon to bid for a share of a whopping $15bn contract to "fight terrorists with drug-trade ties" in a US programme that targets countries like Colombia, Bolivia, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan. The New York Times said it could be the company's "biggest job" ever.

- Blackwater is wrapping up work on its own armoured vehicle, the Grizzly, as well as its Polar Airship 400, a surveillance blimp Blackwater wants to market to the Department of Homeland security for use in monitoring the US-Mexico border.

On top of this, Blackwater affiliate Greystone Ltd, registered offshore in Barbados, is an old-fashioned mercenary operation offering "personnel from the best militaries throughout the world" for hire by governments and private organisations. It also boasts of a "multi-national peacekeeping programme," with forces "specialising in crowd control and less than lethal techniques and military personnel for the less stable areas of operation." Greystone's name has been conspicuously absent in this current news cycle.

At the end of the day, maybe this is just a story, a whole lot of a hype and a dash of misdirection from a pretty savvy company. Safe money would dictate that Blackwater plans on continuing to be, well, Blackwater.

Consider this. The other day Blackwater president Gary Jackson told the AP: "Security was not part of the master plan, ever."

Interesting claim. It was in fact Jackson himself who, back at the beginning of the Iraq occupation, described his goal for Blackwater as such: "I would like to have the largest, most professional private army in the world."


Interesting?? More like bloody scary.

Blackwater - Food for Thought

So the US has contracted out up to 40% of the Iraq Occupation duties to a private company. It a win-win situaiton. No bodies to count, no immediate accountability for incidents like the one below for the US and billions of your tax dollars for the enrichment of a whole slew of psychopaths. Just remember, these are the same folks who were brought in to "assist" with Katrina disaster relief. A disheartening glimpse of the future from SOTT to be sure, but who would want to not be aware of the true nature of the "help" being offered?

Blue Ibis

*******************************************
Video shows Blackwater guards fired first

AP
Sun, 23 Sep 2007 12:33 ED

Iraqi investigators have a videotape that shows Blackwater USA guards opened fire against civilians without provocation in an incident last week in which 11 people died, a senior Iraqi official said Saturday. He said the case had been referred to the Iraqi judiciary.

Iraq's president, meanwhile, demanded that the Americans release an Iranian arrested this week on suspicion of smuggling weapons to Shiite militias. The demand adds new strains to U.S.-Iraqi relations only days before a meeting between President Bush and Iraq's Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf said Iraqi authorities had completed an investigation into the Sept. 20 shooting in Nisoor Square in western Baghdad and concluded that Blackwater guards were responsible for the deaths.

He told The Associated Press that the conclusion was based on witness statements as well as videotape shot by cameras at the nearby headquarters of the national police command. He said eight people were killed at the scene and three of the 15 wounded died in hospitals.

Blackwater, which provides most of the security for U.S. diplomats and civilian officials in Iraq, has insisted that its guards came under fire from armed insurgents and shot back only to defend themselves.

'A criminal record'

Khalaf also said the ministry was looking into six other fatal shootings involving the Moyock, North Carolina-based company, including a Feb. 7 incident outside Iraqi state television in Baghdad in which three building guards were fatally shot.

"These six cases will support the case against Blackwater, because they show that it has a criminal record," Khalaf said.

Khalaf said the report had been "sent to the judiciary" although he would not specify whether that amounted to filing of criminal charges. Under Iraqi law, an investigating judge reviews criminal complaints and decides whether there is enough evidence for a trial.

But government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said Saturday that no decision had been taken whether to seek punishment for any Blackwater employees.

"The necessary measures will be taken that will preserve the honor of the Iraqi people," he said in New York, where al-Maliki arrived Friday for the U.N. General Assembly session. "We have ongoing high-level meetings with the U.S. side about this issue."

Al-Maliki is expected to raise the issue with Bush during a meeting Monday in New York.

It is doubtful that foreign security contractors could be prosecuted under Iraqi law. A directive issued by U.S. occupation authorities in 2004 granted contractors, U.S. troops and many other foreign officials immunity from prosecution under Iraqi law.

Security contractors are also not subject to U.S. military law under which U.S. troopers face prosecution for killing or abusing Iraqis.

Iraq to push for changes

Iraqi officials have said in the wake of the Nisoor Square shooting that they will press for amendments to the 2004 directive.

A senior aide to al-Maliki said Friday that three of the Blackwater guards were Iraqis and could be subject to prosecution. The aide spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

Shortly after the Sept. 20 shooting, U.S. officials said they "understood" that a videotape had recorded the incident in Nisoor Square but refused to give more details. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not supposed to release information to the media.

Following the Nisoor Square shooting, the Interior Ministry banned Blackwater from operating in Iraq but rolled back after the U.S. agreed to a joint investigation. The company resumed guarding a reduced number of U.S. convoys on Friday.

The al-Maliki aide said Friday that the Iraqis were pushing for an apology, compensation for victims or their families and for the guards involved in the shooting to be held "accountable."

Hadi al-Amri, a prominent Shiite lawmaker and al-Maliki ally, also said an admission of wrongdoing, an apology and compensation offered a way out of the dilemma.

'They are always frightened'

"They are always frightened and that's why they shoot at civilians," al-Amri said. "If Blackwater gets to stay in Iraq, it will have to give guarantees about its conduct."

Allegations against Blackwater have clouded relations between Iraq and the Americans at a time when the U.S. administration is seeking to contain calls in Congress for sharp reductions in the 160,000-strong U.S. military force.

Adding to those strains, President Jalal Talabani demanded the immediate release of an Iranian official detained Thursday by U.S. forces in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

The U.S. military said the unidentified Iranian was a member of the Quds force -- an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards accused of arming and training Shiite militias in Iraq.

A statement issued Saturday by Talabani's office said the arrest was carried out without the prior knowledge or the cooperation of the Kurdish regional government.

"This amounts to an insult and a violation of its rights and authority," said the statement, quoting a letter Talabani sent to Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker. Talabani, a Kurd, is one of Washington's most reliable partners in Iraq.

'Our dismay over the arrest'

Talabani said Iran had threatened to close the border with the Kurdish region if the official were not freed - a serious blow to the economy in the president's political stronghold.

"I want to express to you our dismay over the arrest by American forces of this official civilian Iranian guest," Talabani wrote to Petraeus and Crocker.

Five Iranians said to be linked to the Quds force were arrested in the Kurdish city of Irbil and remain in U.S. custody.

Also Saturday, the U.S. military announced the death of two more U.S. soldiers - one of an unspecified non-combat related injury and another in a vehicle accident in Diyala province. The deaths raised to at least 3,795 members of the U.S. military who have died since the Iraq war started in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count.

The U.S. said seven insurgents were killed and 12 were captured in a raid in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad. A U.S. statement said one of those captured is believed to know the whereabouts of senior al-Qaida in Iraq leaders.

None Dare Call It Genocide

There's not much to add. History will condemn the United States Empire and its "coalition of the willing" in even more damning terms than even the Nazis. Bet on it.

Blue Ibis

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

None Dare Call It Genocide

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.
ICH
Tue, 18 Sep 2007 15:21 EDT

How comfy we are all in the United States, as we engage in living-room debates about the US occupation of Iraq, whether "we" are bringing them freedom and whether their freedom is really worth the sacrifice of so many of our men and women. We talk about whether war aims have really been achieved, how to exit gracefully, or whether we need a hyper-surge to finish this whole business once and for all.

©Danziger

But there's one thing Americans don't talk about: the lives of Iraqis, or, rather, the deaths of Iraqis. It's interesting because we live in an age of extreme multiculturalism and global concern. We adore international aid workers, go on mission trips abroad, weep for the plight of those suffering from hunger and disease, volunteer in efforts to bring plumbing to Ecuador, mosquito nets to Rwanda, clean water to Malawi, human rights to Togo, and medicine to Bangladesh.

But when "we" cause the calamity, suddenly there is silence. There is something odd, suspicious, even disloyal about a person who would harp on the deaths of Iraqis since the US invasion in 2003. Maybe a person who would weep for Iraq is really a terrorist sympathizer. After all, most of the deaths resulted from "sectarian violence," and who can stop crazed Islamic sects from killing each other. Better each other than us, right?

Well, it's about time that we think about the numbers, even though the US military has decided that body counts are not worth their time. Opinion Research Business, a highly reputable polling firm in the UK, has just completed a detailed and rigorous survey of Iraqis. In the past, the company's results have been touted by the Bush administration whenever the data looks favorable to the US cause. But their latest report received virtually no attention in the US.

Here is the grisly bottom line: more than one million people have been murdered in Iraq since the US invasion, according to the ORB. Yes, other estimates are lower, but you have to be impressed by what they have found. It seems very credible.

In Baghdad, where the US presence is most pronounced, nearly half of households report having lost a family member to a killing of some sort. Half the deaths are from gunshot wounds, one-fifth from car bombs, and one-tenth from aerial bombs. The total number of dead exceeds the hugely well-publicized Rwandan genocide in 1994.

You are welcome to inspect the detailed data.

Aside from the astonishing detail, what jumps out at me is the number of dead who are neither Sunni nor Shia. It is also striking how the further geographically you move from US troop activity, the more peaceful the area is. Americans think they are bringing freedom to Iraq, but the data indicate that we are only bringing suffering and death.

If you have ever lost a family member, you know that life is never the same again. It causes every manner of religious, social, and marital trauma. It's bad enough to lose a family member to some disease. But to a cold-blooded killing or a car bomb or an airplane bomb? That instills a sense of fury and motivation to retribution.

So we are speaking of some 1.2 million people who have been killed in this way, and that does not count the numbers that were killed during the invasion itself for the crime of having attempted to oppose invading foreign troops, or the 500,000 children and old people killed by the US-UN anti-civilian sanctions in the 10 previous years.

And let's not flatter ourselves into thinking that these are nothing but ragheads killing each other for no good reason. Just this past weekend, there is an example in point. Some of the legendary contractors for the State Department were driving through the Sunni neighborhood of Mansour in Baghdad. They were driving their SUVs when witnesses reported an explosion of fire that lasted 20 minutes. The SUVs drove off, leaving at least nine people dead on the road.

Why? No one knows. Sure there will be investigations. There have already been apologies. The company in question has had its license to practice occupation revoked by the Iraqi government. For how long, no one knows. But these are merely symbolic gestures. There will be no justice, and no forgetting.

To the extent anyone pays attention to this stuff, they only hear the words of the State Department spokesman: "The bottom line is that the secretary wants to make sure that we do everything we possibly can to avoid the loss of innocent life."

In light of the one million plus figure, such statements come off as evil jokes. The US has unleashed bloodshed in Iraq that is rarely known even in countries we think of as violent and torn by civil strife. It is amazing to think that this has occurred in what was only recently a liberal and civilized country by the region's standards. This was a country that had a problem with immigration, particularly among the well-educated and talented classes. They went to Iraq because it was the closest Arab proxy to Western-style society that one could find in the area.

It was the US that turned this country into a killing field. Why won't we face this? Why won't we take responsibility? The reason has to do with this mysterious thing called nationalism, which makes an ideological religion of the nation's wars. We are god-like liberators. They are devil-like terrorists. No amount of data or contrary information seems to make a dent in this irreligious faith. So it is in every country and in all times. Here is the intellectual blindness that war generates.

Such blindness is always inexcusable, but perhaps more understandable in a time when information was severely restricted, when technological limits actually prohibited us from knowing the whole truth at the time. What excuse do we have today? Our blindness is not technological but ideological. We are the good guys, right? Every nation believes that about itself, but freedom is well served by the few who dare to think critically.

An essential postulate of the Western idea, or so we tell ourselves, is the universal and ultimate value of human life. And indeed it is true. No person or group of people is without value - not even those whom our own government chooses to label the enemy.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com, and author of Speaking of Liberty.

The Empire Abroad . . . . .

Remember how it was said that the sun never set on the British Empire? Ok, so you slept through history. Well the US is the new empire. Liz would be proud. I'm ashamed.

Blue Ibis

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

Why there was no exit plan

Lewis Seiler, Dan Hamburg
San Francisco Chronicle
Wed, 09 May 2007 07:17 EDT

"There are people in Washington ... who never intend to withdraw military forces from Iraq and they're looking for 10, 20, 50 years in the future ... the reason that we went into Iraq was to establish a permanent military base in the Gulf region, and I have never heard any of our leaders say that they would commit themselves to the Iraqi people that 10 years from now there will be no military bases of the United States in Iraq." - former President Jimmy Carter, Feb. 3, 2006

For all the talk about timetables and benchmarks, one might think that the United States will end the military occupation of Iraq within the lifetimes of the readers of this opinion editorial. Think again.

There is to be no withdrawal from Iraq, just as there has been no withdrawal from hundreds of places around the world that are outposts of the American empire. As UC San Diego professor emeritus Chalmers Johnson put it, "One of the reasons we had no exit plan from Iraq is that we didn't intend to leave."

The United States maintains 737 military bases in 130 countries across the globe. They exist for the purpose of defending the economic interests of the United States, what is euphemistically called "national security." In order to secure favorable access to Iraq's vast reserves of light crude, the United States is spending billions on the construction of at least five large permanent military bases throughout that country.

A new Iraq oil law, largely written by the Coalition Provisional Authority, is planned for ratification by June. This law cedes control of Iraq's oil to western powers for 30 years. There is major opposition to the proposed law within Iraq, especially among the country's five trade union federations that represent hundreds of thousands of oil workers. The United States is working hard to surmount this opposition by appealing directly to the al-Maliki [puppet] government in Iraq.

The attack upon, and subsequent occupation of, Iraq can be seen as a direct result of the 2001 National Energy Policy Development Group (better known as vice president Cheney's energy task force) that was comprised largely of oil and energy company executives. This task force -- the proceedings of which have been kept secret by the administration on the grounds of "executive privilege" -- recommended that the U.S. government support initiatives in Middle Eastern countries "to open up areas of their energy sector to foreign investment." As Antonia Juhasz, an analyst with Oil Change International wrote last month in the New York Times, "One invasion and a great deal of political engineering by the Bush administration later, this is exactly what the proposed Iraq oil law would achieve."

The people of the United States have indicated, in the national election last November and in countless polls, that they no longer support the Bush administration's war. The Scooter Libby trial revealed that top administration officials, including the vice president, "cherry-picked" and distorted intelligence in order to sell a "pre-emptive" war to a spooked public. The squandering of hundreds of billions of dollars, some billions of which, according to Seymour Hersh writing in the New Yorker, is being siphoned into "black-ops" programs being run out of Cheney's office (a stunning redux of Iran-Contra carried out by many of the same actors), has also strained the patience and credulity of the American people.

Another betrayal is the "contracting out" of "war-related activities" to corporations such as Halliburton, Bechtel, Chemonics and Blackwater. Halliburton, Vice President Cheney's previous employer, calls itself an "energy services company" but has tentacles reaching into nearly every aspect of the war (originally dubbed Operation Iraqi Liberation until some bright bulb among the Bushies realized that "OIL" might not be the best handle for this venture). Halliburton has also profited handsomely from no-bid government contracts awarded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the construction at the national embarrassment known as "Gitmo," and most recently, from the fiasco at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, D.C.

[Dick don't miss a trick, do he??]

Unfortunately, all this corruption, mayhem and death are good for some (or it wouldn't go on).

The U.S. military budget, larger than the military budgets of the rest of the world's nations combined, continues skyward, even without all the "supplementals" passed regularly by Congress to fight the "war on terror."

The question we must ask as citizens is this: Is the United States a democratic republic or an empire? History demonstrates that it's not possible to be both.

Lewis Seiler is president of Voice of the Environment. Dan Hamburg, a former U.S. representative, is executive director.