I N T R O D U C T I O N : / A GATHERING DANGER /n/ September, 2004 /n "In the counsels of Government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military Industrial Complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes." ./ - President Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Address \ "What's emerged full-blown is the military-industrial complex famously predicted and feared by President Eisenhower fifty years ago." . .- Bill Moyers ? "... this is a dangerous condition for any representative democracy to find itself in. The tight control of information, as well as the dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up a disturbing image of a very different kind of society. Democracies are not well-run nor long-preserved with secrecy and lies." . - Walter Cronkite ? "To say that the [Bush-Cheney] secret presidency is undemocratic is an understatement. I'm anything but skittish about government, but I must say this administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous." .. - John Dean ? b"This junta that is governing us, this Enron/Pentagon junta, dedicated only to enrichment through the oil business, as all the Bushes and Cheneys and so on are oil people, they are going to destroy, for personal profit, the United States. We are going to be destroyed by the hatred of the rest of the world." . - Gore Vidal / "I think this is a deliberate, intentional destruction of the United States of America." . - Bill Moyers

 

x

"We have a deranged president. We have despotism. We have no due process." / "We are talking about despotism. The USA PATRIOT Act is as despotic as anything Hitler came up with-- -- even using much of the same language. The Founding Fathers would have found this to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged." / - Gore Vidal /= "There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. . ...At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve. The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding their people a steady diet of hatred are over." / - Dick Cheney, World Economic Forum January 24, 2004  /

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The Price of Liberty . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

I have never served my country.

I missed the Vietnam draft by a year or two. But, like everyone else, I recited the Pledge of Allegiance at school every morning. I was taught to believe that America stood for truth and justice. I was taught to value the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and was told about all the wars fought, all the lives sacrificed, to protect them. Although I spent 12 years in Catholic schools, I do not call myself a Christian, though I came to value and respect the main tenets of the purported teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as much as those of our founding fathers. I was taught "Thou shalt not kill" (Dad), and "Blessed are the peacemakers", and, perhaps Jesus' most important, most ignored commandment of all:

"Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me."

I never thought of myself as especially patriotic, and certainly not religious. But now I see both Democracy and Christianity being perverted in the most profound ways -- ways that are utterly antithetical to their most basic precepts. And millions who profess to care about democracy, freedom and morality are apparently oblivious to the travesty.

The Founders would be shocked and saddened to see what the 'the Land of the Free' has become. We have the highest per capita incarceration rate in the world (this includes dictatorships and totalitarian states), the greatest economic inequality in the advanced world, and give more money to our military than all other countries on the planet combined -- with trillions "missing", just disappeared into the black hole of the Pentagon's unaccountable accounting books. (A trillion is one thousand billions.)

And now, our own King George, on his say-so alone, has the power to throw a citizen into the dungeon indefinitely, without trial or due process. This is the true "State of the Union" in the year 2004.

"What gives the government the right to arrest you and imprison you indefinitely without offering a reason or opportunity to appeal? The answer, in the United States, is: Nothing gives the government that right. It is hard to see what is left of American freedom if the government has the authority to make anyone on its soil - citizen or noncitizen - - disappear and then rule that no one can do anything about it." -/ - "It's Called Democracy", Los Angeles Times Editorial, June 29, 2004 / "An American citizen can be fingered as a terrorist, and with what proof? No proof. All you need is the word of the attorney general or maybe the president himself. You can then be locked up without access to a lawyer, and then tried by military tribunal and even executed. Or, in a brand-new wrinkle, you can be exiled, stripped of your citizenship and packed off to another place not even organized as a country -- like Tierra del Fuego or some rock in the Pacific. All of this is in the USA PATRIOT Act." / "They're now going to lock up anybody they want to, silence anybody they want to. Those powers are now theirs, the dreamed-of powers for the state. The state will come out of this very, very powerful, and We the People, in or out of Congress assembled, will come out much weaker. That said, we glory in the fact that we are the United States of Amnesia. We won't remember a thing the next day. What has emerged is nothing less than a police state. There's no euphemism for it." - Gore Vidal /

And in an all too similar way, I see many 'Christians' (what I call pseudo-Christians) -- including our President -- perverting and defiling the most basic, core teachings of Jesus -- indeed, doing the exact opposite of them. If you think Jesus was angry at some moneylenders in the temple, imagine how he'd feel about the off-handed, cavalier killing and maiming of tens of thousands of children. Or the torture of innocent people (and children). Or the naked greed that guides our "leaders"' nearly every move.//

///

"One wishes, for the sake of the whole planet, that the people in and around the White House nowadays truly mean it when they say, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," and that they respect as children of God the losers, the nobodies so loved by Jesus in the Beatitudes, in His Sermon on the Mount: the poor in spirit, they that mourn, the meek, the merciful, the peace makers and so on. zbs "But such is obviously not the case. George W. Bush smirks and gloats unmercifully as he boasts of his readiness to loose more than a hundred cruise missiles, what I call "Timothy McVeighs," into the midst of the general population of Iraq, nearly half of whom are children, little boys and girls under the age of 15." bv x hjfhjgt5jr4f "And they have turned loose a myriad of our high-tech weapons, each one costing more than a hundred high schools, on a Third World country, in order to shock and awe human beings like us, like Adam and Eve, between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers." gfdhs - Kurt Vonnegut gfdxnbcd gngd "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children." ddjmdt - President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address / l;k;l "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." l;k;l  b, mnvh,vj fbz / /x "Blessed are the peacemakers" b bm gncmg b bbd nxc gnc "We will export death and violence to the four corners of the Earth in defense of our great nation." b What could be more anti-Christian?m nnfd nnfd Saddam tortured people in horrible ways. Is this not also torture?

Supposedly, the core of Bush's following, the 25 million right-wing evangelical (psuedo-) Christians who support him, believe Jesus would say that stem cell research and gay marriage are bad, but killing 100,000 innocent people, and maiming, traumatizing, poisoning and impoverishing hundreds of thousands more, mostly women and children, for a lie, is O.K. /(At least the lies weren't about sex). /And thanks to Dick Cheney's continuous string of lies and disinformation trying to connect Saddam with his sworn enemy Osama (even after Bush himself was forced to disavow any such link), roughly half the American population STILL believes that Iraq had something to do with 911, and thus this mass murder was justified. Would Jesus agree?

"Be not overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." - Romans 12:17-21 /

"EITHER YOU'RE WITH JESUS, OR YOU'RE WITH THE TERRORISTS."

___________________________________________________________________________

The incredible number of lies, deceptions, distortions, and betrayals of the principles of both Christianity and democracy that this administration gets away with, without consequence or accountability, are stunning. This is way beyond Reagan's infamous 'Teflon'. This administration, and the whorish media that enables it, have truly taken us "through the looking glass". White is black. Lies are truth. Clear Skies Initiative means more air pollution. Healthy Forest means fewer trees. Greed is compassion. Death is liberation. Torture without trial is freedom. Love is hate. War is peace. Ignorance is strength.

It's enough to make you crazy.

////b/s

"And when you've been around the world and seen what the lack of freedom produces, you're going to take it personally when someone violates it, it, or when it's threatened--which I think it now is-- and you just get crazy, and you say, 'C'mon, surely someone's going to see through this'." - - Robert Redford,on the Charlie Rose Show .

It was out of this very same kind of crazy-making frustration with We The People, anger at our 'leaders', and fear for our future, that this site was created. After reading the various articles presented here, I began to see a bigger picture: a picture of a danger to our nation far greater than most of us realize. A danger not only from the threat of terrorism, but a very real danger from within our government, that could result in nothing less than the end of democracy, World War Three and Armageddon.

"I think that right now we are in one of the most dangerous periods in our existence. Not since the Civil War has the state- of our democracy been so doubtful." - Veteran News anchor Walter Cronkite, selected by the American people as"the most trusted man in America" / "We are truly 'sleepwalking through history.' In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings." - - Senate Remarks by Robert C. Byrd February 12, 2003 / "What we're talking about is nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in danger of being paralyzed and pulverized. Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just cannot exist without an informed public." - - Bill Moyers / "We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened." - - Walter Cronkite, / "...BRENT SCOWCROFT, One of the Republican party's most respected foreign policy gurus yesterday appealed for President Bush to halt his plans to invade Iraq, warning of "an Armageddon in the Middle East". In yesterday's article, Mr Scowcroft argued that by alienating much of the Arab world, an assault on Baghdad, would halt much of the cooperation Washington is receiving in its current battle against the al-Qaida organization." "While Armageddon aficionados might be easily dismissed, when Brent Scowcroft says an attack on Iraq will lead to Armageddon and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warns it will "open the gates of hell," these matters take on more weight. Likewise, when a Saudi diplomat explains that Bush's "obsession" with Iraq will lead to tragedy, one thing becomes starkly clear: Armageddon, tragedy and "gates of hell," aren't words traditionally used by generals and ambassadors." / -The Guardian UK, 8/15/2002 / /

Seeing how incredibly uninformed and misinformed so many Americans seem to be, I felt strongly, desperately even, the need to help get this this information out to people, to wake them up to this danger, so that we might form some sort of defense against this fast creeping threat. And like Bill Moyers, I believe that defense has to begin with information: i.e., the truth.gh,hg

"...So that's the role I play, and we all should, to use art, or your own voice to simply say "This is not the truth." You deserve better, you deserve to get the truth, to get a certain kind of information, and we're not getting it." / - Robert Redford (Charlie Rose Show, 4/30/2002) / "A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on." / - William Burroughs

I realize I'm just Some Guy, Joe Average Citizen, with even less credibility than Dick Cheney. You may think I'm overstating, exaggerating, hysterical, even paranoid; but I don't expect you to take my word for it. That's why this introduction (and this site) is bolstered with quotes and interviews with Smart People, people like Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, Kurt Vonnegut, Nelson Mandela and the Mayor of London. People who know a little of what's going on. People who are telling us the danger is real, and it's now.

You don't have to take my word for anything. But I hope you'll listen and hear them.

Your freedom, and your life, and the lives of your family, and the survival of our democracy, our country, and our planet may depend on it.

s"/

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." ­ Wendell Phillips/?

 

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"They're BACK ..." . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ga "Who are these people? Let's look at what is behind every move they make." - - Robert Redford 9yyp9 "What's emerged full-blown is the military-industrial complex famously predicted and feared by President Eisenhower fifty years ago." - - Bill Moyers eeryre "This junta that is governing us, this Enron/Pentagon junta, dedicated only to enrichment through the oil business, as all the Bushes and Cheneys and so on are oil people, they are going to destroy, for personal profit, the United States. We are going to be destroyed by the hatred of the rest of the world." - - Gore Vidal eerier d"...This is the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years." - - Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London eeryreyre "The truth is straightforward: Virtually every significant problem facing the American people today can be traced back to the policies and people that came from the Reagan administration. It is a laundry list of ills, woes and disasters that has all of us, once again, staring apocalypse in the eye."/ - - William Rivers Pitt, "Planet Reagan" eeryre

In the 1980's they were described as a "Shadow Government".

That Shadow Government has now returned: the Arms-for-Hostages / October Surprise / Iran-Contra Brigade, among them Donald Rumsfeld, John Negroponte, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Elliot Abrams, Otto Reich and John Poindexter--invited back to run wild again in the halls of power by an amnesiac populace (and with the help of stolen black votes and a stacked Supreme court). They've re-formed and created new Shadow Governernt offices with Orwellian monikers like the "Office of Information Awareness" and the "Office of Special Plans".

This great, powerful nation is motivated not by power for power's sake, but because of our values. If everybody matters, if every life counts, then we should hope everybody has the great God's gift of freedom." eryre - Bush invokes "the great God" in justifying invading Iraq, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Jan. 29, 2003

f"How would you feel if your wife and children were brutally raped before being hacked to death by soldiers during a military massacre of 800 civilians, and then two governments tried to cover up the killings?" It's a question that won't be asked of Elliott Abrams' (Project for a New American Century) Senate confirmation hearing -- because George W. Bush, according to press reports, may appoint Abrams to a National Security Council staff position that (conveniently!) does not require Senate approval. Moreover, this query is one of a host of rude, but warranted, questions that could be lobbed at Abrams, theIran/contra player who was an assistant secretary of state during the Reagan years and a shaper of that Administration's controversial-and deadly-policies on Latin America and human rights.

"And in 1993 after a UN truth commission, which examined 22,000 atrocities that occurred during the twelve-year civil war in El Salvador, attributed 85 percent of the abuses to the Reagan-assisted right-wing military and its death-squad allies, Abrams declared, "The Administration's record on El Salvador is one of fabulous achievement." Tell that to the survivors of El Mozote. His designated spot in the new regime: NSC's senior director for democracy, human rights and international operations."

- From "Elliott Abrams: It's Back! " by David Corn, The Nation http://www.the nation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20010702&s=c

/Elliot Abrams, convicted of lying to congress, then given a sneaky Christmas pardon by George W.'s father, has since been given another position in George W's administration: Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs, including Arab/Israel relations and U.S. efforts to promote peace and security in the region.

/John Poindexter, Oliver North's boss during Iran-Contra, convicted of conspiracy, lying to Congress, defrauding the government, and destroying evidence, was made head of the controversial Office of Information Awareness.

/Richard Armitage, who was denied a 1989 appointment as Assistant Secretary of State `because of links to Iran-Contra and other scandals, served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs in the Reagan years. U.S. Government stipulations in the Oliver North trial specifically named Armitage as one of the DoD officials responsible for illegal transfers of weapons to terrorist Iran and the Contras. George W. Bush made him Deputy Secretary of State.

/John Negroponte was ambassador to Honduras from 1981-1985, As such he supported and carried out a US-sponsored policy of violations to human rights and international law. The infamous Battalion 316, trained by the CIA and Argentine military, kidnaped, tortured and killed hundreds of people. Negroponte knew about these human rights violations and yet continued to collaborate with them, while lying to Congress. George W. Bush made him United States Representative to the United Nations.

/Otto Reich's nomination as Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, the top post for Latin America, was predicted to draw the most congressional fire. "Between 1983-1986, Reich was elected by the veteran CIA agent and propaganda specialist, Walter Raymond, to run the notorious Office of Public Diplomacy (OPD), a covert psychological and media spinning unit which reported to Colonel Oliver North at the National Security Council. Raymond described the OPD's role as selling to the US 'a new product -- Central America'. In 2000, Reich became the vice-chairman of Worldwide Responsible Apparel Production (WRAP), a group financed by the clothing industry to support sweatshops.

/John Bolton, who supported the Nicaraguan 'contras' during the Reagan era, "Undermined efforts by Sen. John Kerry to investigate drug smuggling and gunrunning by the contras," and was "put in charge of stonewalling Congressional efforts to obtain Justice Department documents and interview White House Chief Edwin Meese's deputies about their role in the Iran-Contra scandal, was made Under Secretary for Arms Control (!) and International Security.

UPDATE 2005: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS: From gunrunner put in charge of arms control, Bolton, who would like to see the U.N abolished, has just been nominated US ambassador to the UN. White is black..

(See also: "How John Kerry Exposed the Contra-Cocaine Scandal", by Robert Parry, Salon, Monday 25 October 2004 )

and "NARCOTICS TRAFFICKERS AND THE CONTRAS: Selections from the Senate Committee Report on Drugs, Law Enforcement and Foreign Policy chaired by Senator John F. Kerry

 

And last but not least:/Henry "Dr. Strangelove" Kissinger: Bush's original choice to head the 911 commission. He is fighting extradition to Spain and Chile to be tried for war crimes.

//(whitehouse.org)

"Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy."

/- Henry Kissinger, quoted in "Kiss the Boys Goodbye: How the United States Betrayed Its Own POW's in Vietnam / / "Boohoo, boohoo," Kissinger said, pretending to cry and rub his eyes. "He's still beating his breast, right? Still feeling guilty." He spoke in a mocking, singsong voice and patted his heart for emphasis." -/ - Henry Kissinger, on Robert McNamara's public repentance for his part in the millions of lives lost in the Vietnam war / ___________________________________________________________ /

This is just a sampling of the kind of people who make up the Bush administration: Iran-Contra felons, war profiteers, weapons pushers, drug smugglers, insider traders, tax dodgers, accounting fraudsters, pseudo-Christians, and Neo Con-men. People who have no qualms about lying to congress and the people, using deception and obfuscation to enact their hidden agendas, to achieve their alleged goals of some 'greater good' through lies and violence -- and just happening to make themselves a tidy profit at the same time.c Zx cs

"The President, his father, the Vice President, a whole host of powerful government officials, along with stockholders and executives from Halliburton and Carlyle, stand to make a mint off this war. // // Long-time corporate sponsors from the defense, construction and petroleum industries will likewise profit enormously." -/ - "Blood Money" By William Rivers Pitt /

No debate, no discussion needed, just trust them; they know best. Like Henry Kissinger, they practice realpolitik; they believe that democracy is too important to be left up to the people -- that "you can't handle the truth"-- and no doubt they believe that the fact that so many people buy their lies merely proves their point.

"... this is a dangerous condition for any representative democracy to find itself in. The tight control of information, as well as the dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up a disturbing image of a very different kind of society. Democracies are not well-run nor long-preserved with secrecy and lies." - /- - Walter Cronkite knj/kl "To say that the [Bush-Cheney] secret presidency is undemocratic is an understatement. I'm anything but skittish about government, but I must say this administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous." /- - John Dean

These are the same men who in the 1980's, for political gain, covertly gave weapons (to terrorists ) for hostages, lied to congress, and committed countless other subversions of the rule of law, both national and international.

The same men who sold Saddam Hussein chemical and biological weapons, then looked the other way when he used them on his own people.

The same men who armed, trained and funded Osama Bin Laden. Z

The same men who, in violation of Iraq sanctions, did business with Saddam in the 90's.
(Just as Prescott Bush, W's grandfather, did business with Hitler during World War II --- until an act of congress (the "Trading With The Enemy Act") made him stop in 1943).

These same men are now maneuvering us into an eternal war, foisted on a supposed democracy with lies, and without discussion or debate, or even an admission of what they're really up to. What kind of democracy is that? As has been shown time and again in many and various ways, these are people who don't believe in democracy, who don't believe in, respect, or represent, the will of the people, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, the separation of church and state, nor indeed any rule of law, whether domestic or international, secular or biblical.

"International law? I better call my lawyer! I don't know what you're talking about, about international law." / - The Smirking One, in response to the administration's handing out of reconstruction contracts in Iraq, Dec.11, 2003 m hfmjmf "If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace. It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America." - - Nelson Mandela / hfmmfjmf f"This junta that is governing us, this Enron/Pentagon junta, dedicated only to enrichment through the oil business, as all the Bushes and Cheneys and so on are oil people, they are going to destroy, for personal profit, the United States. "/ - - Gore Vidal / "Who are these people? Let's look at what is behind every move they make. Every single one of them, almost every one of them, have made their fortunes from the oil & gas interests. So what do we expect to get from them?" - - Robert Redford /

What did we expect from them? How asleep to truth have we become to follow these monsters into hell, and accept lie after lie after lie? What did we expect, but the increased militarization of millions of Arabs who had nothing to do with 911? What did we expect, after the debacle of Iraq, the blind and unconditional support of Israel, and Abu Ghraib, but Absolute Holy War declared on the wicked West? Our Masters got what they wanted: Orwell's Perpetual War, in the fashion of the eternal Israel/Palestine conflict, ultimately spiraling into some pathetic final Armageddon. A morbid, cynical, and unimaginative end for the human race, the self-fulfilling prophecy of child-like minds who twist the teachings of the Bible into a war/death cult, a mirror image of the perverted version of Islam practiced by Osama.

The war profiteers rake in windfall profits and the religious zealots get to help usher in the end of the world and the Rapture... and all the rest of us can do is watch in horror -- watch, and pay.

 

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hmg
'I never took him as a compassionate conservative. I'm a Texan. I saw what he had done to Texas and I knew he would do to the nation what he had done to Texas. And by God he's done it.' /- - Bill Moyers

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Compassionate Conservatism: THE BIG LIE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . / /

"By their works shall ye know them"gg

"We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbor just like you like to be liked yourself."

- "Devout Christian" George W. Bush

c x c "Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me." /- - Bush's God nxfnxcbnxfnxgf

"Until we honor the image of God in the neighbor,

until we eliminate our sins of omission (our failure to protect others), until we understand that we can't believe or love unless we stop the killing, then the pursuit of disarmament, justice, and peace is a melodrama of contradiction and futility." "When Americans find the faith to stop the killing, the prophecy of Isaiah and the Sermon on the Mount will become the ultimate political statement." / - Father Philip Berrigan ___________________________________________________________ /

There is no compassion, no faith, and no sanity in their actions. They've made a mockery of truth and justice. They've disgraced America. There's never been an American administration more reviled by the rest of the world in the history of our republic. They've set the middle east aflame, bankrupted the treasury, shredded the constitution, trampled human rights, broken treaties, alienated allies, violated international law and the Geneva Convention, and mismanaged an ill-conceived war that sabotaged the real war on terror.

Look at who they are, who they're beholden to, where their investments lie, where the money trails lead, what they've done and said, and connect the dots. What are they really up to?

They call themselves patriots, but their only allegiance is to money and profit.

They pose as 'compassionate' while further enriching the wealthy, and increasing the misery and suffering of the poor.

They wear the masks of Christians, but worship only Mammon. And their cavalier attitude toward killing betrays their true colors.

They claim to be spreading freedom and democracy and wrap themselves in the flag, while systematically removing every freedom our soldiers throughout history fought and died for. And then they tell us that to question or criticize them is treasonous.

They talk about bringing honesty and integrity to government, while their nearly every word andfact is a lie.

These are our choices for spokesmen of this supposed New Age of democracy? A group that stole an election in their own country? And with the help of electronic voting machines, and more phony felon lists, are about to do it again? Will we sit by, like 'Good Germans', as fascism, or totalitarianism, or whatever name you want to give it, overtakes our country and our world? Will the vital questions go unasked, unanswered? Will these 'leaders' remain unaccountable? Can we stop it? Will we try to stop it?

Or will we even VOTE for it?

"What would it take to turn America into the kind of society that Orwell warned about, a society that envisions war as peace, freedom as slavery and ignorance as strength?  Would it happen overnight, or would it involve a gradual erosion of freedoms with the people's consent?" dgsdhb - "Learning To Love Big Brother; George Bush Channels George Orwell", by Daniel Kurtzman, San Francisco Chronicle, July 28, 2002 dgsdhb "Once alienated, an 'unalienable right' is apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope of earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in lineby SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated." dgsdhb xf b"...Vidal sees the new powers that Bush has claimed to combat terrorism as completing the destruction of the Bill of Rights. "They're now going to lock up anybody they want to, silence anybody they want to. Those powers are now theirs, the dreamed-of powers for the state. The state will come out of this very, very powerful, and we the people, in or out of Congress assembled, will come out much weaker. dgsdhb "That said, we glory in the fact that we are the United States of Amnesia. We won't remember a thing the next day. " What has emerged is nothing less than a police state. There's no euphemism for it . Now the attorney general can act against 'terrorism', which has never been defined. It's like 'un-German activities' under Hitler - what's an un-German activity?" dgs d- Gore Vidal, The New Statesman Interview, 15th October 2001

"Elliot Abrams pled guilty to perjury in the Iran-Contra sandal. Abrams was later pardoned by Bush's father, and today, he runs Middle East policy in the Bush II White House."

Could we possibly find a worse group to elect as spokesmen for the "democratization" of the Middle East, to convince the Arab world that our intentions are noble, than this band of oilmen, pseudo-Christians, weapons pushers and war profiteers? These people who claim to be champions of democracy who stole the election that brought them to power? These people who claim to be for a free market who are insider traders, tax cheats, accounting scam artists, and promoters of corporate welfare? Who seek the 'privatization' of everything from schools to prisons to water supplies? Who use Saddam's torture chambers for....torture? Who in the world (besides some gullible Americans) would buy the "democracy" they're selling?

"...They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest." - Vice President Henry Wallace, "The Danger of American Fascism", New York Times, 1944 "When we're given these slogans all our lives about the importance of democracy & democratic ideals, the role of the constitution in our lives, and so forth, well, that's the way I grew up. I grew up I in a very American household during the second world war, when jingoism was a big deal. And I see these slogans (about protecting freedom) and the discrepancy between them and their actions, the hypocrisy..." - Robert Redford, on the Charlie Rose show, 4/30/2002 "How we dare even prate about democracy is beyond me. Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale. It's far worse than anything that occurred in the Roman empire, until the praetorian guard started to sell the principate. We're not a democracy, and we have absolutely nothing to give the world in the way of political ideas or political arrangements. God knows, the mention of justice is like a clove of garlic to Count Dracula." - Gore Vidal "Those who refuse to learn from history are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana

To continue following them down their path of greed, fear and violence can only ultimately destroy us all, in a vicious downward spiral of lies, terrorism and war.
Did we learn nothing from the example of Israel and Palestine?
Did we learn nothing from Vietnam?
Did we learn nothing from Watergate and October Surprise and Iran Contra?
Did we learn nothing from the the assisted coups and the collusions with dictators and death squads in South and Central America, whose greatest enemies wer
e true Christians and missionaries?
Did we learn nothing from the example of Germany in the 1930's?
What have we become? What have we allowed ourselves to become?

"What objections have there been in the US to Guantanamo Bay? At this very moment there are 700 people chained, padlocked, handcuffed, hooded and treated like animals. It is actually a concentration camp. I haven't heard anything about the US population saying: ' We can't do this, we are Americans.' Nobody gives a damn." ndmn - From "Legendary playwright/actor director Harold Pinter blasts 'Nazi America' and 'deluded idiot' Blair" dmnfnd / "Is it any wonder that we are a confused and frightened nation, haunted and hounded by dark forces, on the brink of world war, ready to sacrifice the very things we are fighting for?" "...Fear stops them from thinking clearly and puts their minds into a highly suggestive state. Once they are in a suggestive state, war seems like peace to them, aggression ensures safety, and throwing themselves into a sea of trouble saves them. It is classic trance logic." / z- "The Madness Of America", by Jennifer Van Bergen

Caught between the comfort of our delusions and the anxiety of fears stoked by our court-appointed rulers, we have blindly followed them down a dark path, possibly of No Return. With fear as a prod, we're being lured into a monumental quagmire--not just in Iraq--but, likely, a world wide conflagration--as in World War III.

"The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a "world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Queda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future ... what the White House really has in mind is an enterprise of a scale, cost, and scope that would be almost impossible to sell to the American public." /vc z- "Practice to Deceive", by Joshua Micah Marshall, Washington Monthly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
hmg

 

 

 

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WAR is PEACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . // "The mission must be to fight and win war and therefore to prevent war from happening in the first place." - - George W. Bush hdsh "The reason we start a war is to fight a war, win a war, thereby causing no more war!" - - George W. Bush, the first Presidential debate / "AN ATTACK ON IRAQ AT THIS TIME WOULD SERIOUSLY JEOPARDIZE, IF NOT DESTROY, THE GLOBAL COUNTER TERRORIST CAMPAIGN WE HAVE UNDERTAKEN." - - Brent Scowcroft, National Security Advisor to George H. W. Bush ( Bush I ) / "...BRENT SCOWCROFT, One of the Republican party's most respected foreign policy gurus yesterday appealed for President Bush to halt his plans to invade Iraq, warning of "an Armageddon in the Middle East". In yesterday's article, Mr Scowcroft argued that by alienating much of the Arab world, an assault on Baghdad, would halt much of the cooperation Washington is receiving in its current battle against the al-Qaida organization." "While Armageddon aficionados might be easily dismissed, when Brent Scowcroft says an attack on Iraq will lead to Armageddon and Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa warns it will "open the gates of hell," these matters take on more weight. Likewise, when a Saudi diplomat explains that Bush's "obsession" with Iraq will lead to tragedy, one thing becomes starkly clear: Armageddon, tragedy and "gates of hell," aren't words traditionally used by generals and ambassadors." / -The Guardian UK, 8/15/2002 / "It is clearly a decision that is motivated by George W Bush's desire to please the arms and oil industries in the United States of America... If you look at those matters, you will come to the conclusion that the attitude of the United States of America is a threat to world peace." - - Nelson Mandela vbsdbbss vbsdbbssbbbb "If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action." / - Dick Cheney, the Vice-Presidential debate

 

B We were warned by reasonable men and women:

Conservatives like Brent Scowcroft, Pat Buchanon and even Henry Kissinger. Military leaders like Generals Norman Shwartzkopf, Anthony Zinni, Eric Shinseki, and Scowcroft. Journalists like Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers and Helen Thomas. Current and former heads of state like Nelson Mandela, Mikhail Gorbachev, Desmond Tuttu and the mayor of London. Writers like Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer and Harold Pinter. Many career diplomats quit in protest.

Die-hard republicans like John Eisenhower and former Minnesota governor Elmer L. Anderson have tried. And more than 10 million world citizens who took to the streets to add their voices, the largest protest in the history of mankind, against the greatest folly in the history of our country.

But, like Condi and George's response to the warnings of 911, we chose to ignore all of them, in favor of the likes of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Ahmed Chalabi, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Robert Novak, Oliver North, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, et al.

Can all of those other people be deluded, while this group of Neocon-artists and their shills be right and truthful? The evidence points to other conclusions.

"When Nobel laureates, a vast majority of the scientific community, and a host of current and former diplomats, intelligence operatives, and military officials line up against you, it becomes increasingly difficult to characterize the opposition as fringe wackos." - - Ron Reagan Jr. ____________________________________________________ / cvxvzxcavd   "The Red Cross report, published by The Wall Street Journal, said that Iraqi prisoners - - 70 to 90 percent of whom apparently did nothing wrong - were routinely abused when they were arrested, and their wives and mothers threatened." cvxvzxcavdf cnxhsjcvxvzxcavdhhdf n"Why, in the face of the Abu Ghraib travesty, wouldn't the administration make some uniquely American gesture? Because these folks have no clue how to export hope. cvxvzxcavd cvxvzxcavd They would never think of saying, "Let's close this prison immediately and reopen it in a month as the Abu Ghraib Technical College for Computer Training - with all the equipment donated by Dell, H.P. and Microsoft." - - Conservative columnist Thomas Friedman, "Dancing Alone", New York Times, May 13, 2004

Could we possibly find a worse group to elect as spokesmen for the "democratization" of the Middle East, to convince the Arab world of our good intentions, than these oilmen and (pseudo) Christian Crusaders?

Thanks to their incompetent lack of planning, their lack of respect for human rights, their lack of concern for winning the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people, their blatant greed and corruption, and the fact that virtually every reason they gave for the war was false, the "democratization" of Iraq is a complete and utter failure. The war is lost, as surely as the Vietnam war was lost, because of the arrogance, hubris, short-sightedness, and callous racism of these fantasists (who, ironically, think of themselves as pragmatic realists).

/ "This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks-- -- men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war. This is a blueprint for US world domination -- a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing." - - British Labour MPTam Dalyell vbsdbbssbbbb "The option of quickly turning Iraq into a successful, free-market democracy was never practical, and was as absurd a neoconservative fantasy as the idea that success in this objective would magically make Iraq an example that would transform the Middle East." - - Bob Hebert, New York Times / vbsdbbssvbsdbbssbbbbbbbb "If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action." - - Dick Cheney, the Vice-Presidential debate

All the arguments for their war fall apart under the slightest scrutiny:

Weapons of mass destruction?
Strategy in the war on terror?
The liberation of the Iraqi people, to give them a better life?
The security of the American People--making us safer ?

In the end, none of these aims will be served. This will not just be an exercise in futility, but the biggest blunder the U.S. has ever made, costing us untold amounts of lives, money, U.S. credibility and safety... and quite probably, it will be the fuse that ignites World War III -- which according to their own words, is what they want.

(See Washington Monthly's "Practice to Deceive" ).

"If somebody wanted to plan a clash of civilizations, this is how they'd do it. These pictures (of Abu Ghraib) play into every stereotype of America that Arabs have: America as debauched, America as hypocrites." / - "Clash of Civilizations", by Maureen Dowd, New York Times, May 13, 2004 gbs vvda "If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy, but just wage a total war... our children will sing great songs about us years from now." / - Pentagon advisor Richard Perle. x zx cvnxcnng"...let not your eye spare, neither have ye pity: Slay utterly old and young, both maids and little children, and women." - Ezekiel 9:4-6 x zx x zx "Extending the war into Iraq would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Exceeding the U.N.'s mandate would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the U.S. could still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land." / - From " Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" by George H.W. Bush ( Bush I ) and Brent Scowcroft, Time Magazine, 1998 vbsdbbssvbsdssbbbbbbbb "If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action." - - Dick Cheney, the Vice-Presidential debate ugkbsdbbssvbsdkhkj . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . hmg sbbsdbssbbb

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With Great Power Comes Great Irresponsibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . / efdbfbdf "The fact is that today's "Republican" Party is one with which I am totally unfamiliar. To me, the word "Republican" has always been synonymous with the word "responsibility," which has meant limiting our governmental obligations to those we can afford in human and financial terms. Today's whopping budget deficit of some $440 billion does not meet that criterion. Responsibility used to be observed in foreign affairs. That has meant respect for others. Recent developments indicate that the current Republican Party leadership has confused confident leadership with hubris and arrogance." /    - John Eisenhower, son of Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and loyal Republican for 50 years (until now) fbzsdb

GO FUCK YOURSELVES.  x   s"And now, having installed themselves as our federal government, or taken control of it from outside, they have squandered our public treasury and then some. They have created a public debt of such appalling magnitude that our descendants, for whom we had such high hopes, will come into this world as poor as church mice." / - Kurt Vonnegut //     "The Republicans used to be deeply concerned for the middle class and small business. Today's Republican leadership, while not solely accountable for the loss of American jobs, encourages it with its tax code and heads us in the direction of a society of very rich and very poor." // - John Eisenhower, lifelong Republican and son of Dwight D. Eisenhower fsd//gv vbsd / "...between 1973 and 2000 the average real income of the bottom 90 percent of American taxpayers actually fell by 7 percent. Meanwhile, the income of the top 1 percent rose by 148 percent, the income of the top 0.1 percent rose by 343 percent and the income of the top 0.01 percent rose 599 percent. " - "The Death of Horatio Alger", by Paul Krugman, NY Times fs/d/gv "... in 1982, just before the Reagan-Bush "supply side" tax cut, the average wealth of the Forbes 400 (people) was $200 million. Just four years later, their average wealth was $500 million each, aided by massive tax cuts. Today, those 400 people own wealth equivalent to one-eighth of the entire gross domestic product (GDP) of the United States." - "Healthcare Reveals Real "Conservative" Agenda - Drown Democracy In A Bathtub", by Thom Hartmann fs/d/gv "...In 1960, the gap in terms of wealth between the top 20% and the bottom 20% was 30 fold. Four decades later it is more than 75 fold." / "For years now a small fraction of American households have been garnering an extreme concentration of wealth and income while large corporations and financial institutions have obtained unprecedented levels of economic and political power over daily life. - "This is the Fight of Our Lives", by Bill Moyers /fsdgv "The concentration of wealth and power in the hands of the few is the death knell of democracy. No republic in the history of humanity has survived this. The election of 2004 will say something about what happens to ours. The omens are not good." - "We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore", by Garrison Keillor, In These Times

____________________________________________________________________________

 

 

vbsd"Nowadays, if your country is attacked, you immediately get a contract to rebuild something. Then perhaps you are a member of the cabinet who knocks down cities, and then you go over to the vice president and get his company, Halliburton, to rebuild them with treasury money." / - Gore Vidal / vbvbsd/sd "This Administration Is A Smash And Grab Robbery Writ Large." / - William Rivers Pitt vbvbsd bvb"What we have here is a form of looting." / - George Akerlof, Nobel Prize Winner In Economics vbvbsd

BB Our world is headed for major crises: global warming, dwindling oil supplies, nuclear and bio-terrorism. And what have those who've been entrusted with the greatest power and responsibility on earth done with it? They've grabbed everything they can for themselves, and the people and the planet be damned. And they have the gaul to suggest that we "shouldn't change horses in midstream", because of the seriousness of our situation. What we have to decide is if we want a bunch of incompetent, irresponsible maniacs to continue their bungling and looting, and possibly have to put up with them indefinitely under some sort of martial law, because of the terror threats that they helped create.

Meanwhile real security issues, like guarding ports and nuclear and chemical plants, and making sure we have enough hospital and emergency care in the event of catastrophes, are ignored.

One of the more ridiculous claims they've made (and that apparently people are buying) is that the country will be safer under Bush than Kerry. In truth, this administration has been the greatest friend Osama binLaden could've asked for---and in truth, we are far, far less safe.

Had John Kerry been president, we never would have needlessly invaded Iraq, and al Qaeda recruitment would have been a fraction of what it is now. We would have had the enthusiastic support of moderate muslim nations (most of which we which we have now undoubtedly lost) in the real war on terror.

Had John Kerry been President, we never would have violated the Geneva convention, knowing that, besides being morally wrong, and increasing the danger to our own troops, the resultant blowback--loss of prestige, credibility, and effectiveness in the real war on terror--would be catastrophic. And 70 to 90 percent of those arrested and abused in Iraq were innocent of any crime, according to the Red Cross. "Why do they hate us?", we used to ask. Well... now we'll know.

Do you feel safer?

And speaking of safety, if John Kerry had been president, do you think we would have seen the destruction of an entire spy network protecting us from WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION? When a "senior administration official" "outed" ambassador Joseph Wilson's CIA wife, out of spite (because he had the temerity to point out their lie about a uranium sale in Niger), this was the end result --an entire network, not just one agent, was compromised so they could enact their petty revenge on a whistleblower. If Bush wanted to, all he had to do was call for the ones responsible to submit their resignation, and it would be over with. But he chose not to. "We'll probably never find out who did it", he said (and they haven't).

If Clinton had let this happen, and had such a cavalier attitude about it, the cries of "TRAITOR!" and "IMPEACHMENT!" would be ringing from sea to shining sea. And yet George W. Bush gets away with it. Why?

Finally, we also have to also ask: is our democracy safer under Cheney/Bush?

 

"I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy -- but that could change." / - George W. Bush, May 22, 1998 / ? ff"To say that the [Bush-Cheney] secret presidency is undemocratic is an understatement. I'm anything but skittish about government, but I must say this administration is truly scary and, given the times we live in, frighteningly dangerous." "...I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy." / - Ex-Nixon Counsel and constitutional scholar John Dean /ssa We have a presidency that has found that governing by fear is a lot easier. They have managed to keep the terror in terrorism. They've done nothing to educate the American people about these issue, they've made them worse rather than better, they've exploited the tragedy and a travesty, and to me, that--the reason that's at the end of the book because this is, -- these are the secrets that are going to really potentially threaten democracy and take the air out of democracy, if you will." - dvda - Former Nixon counsel John Dean, on MSNBC's COUNTDOWN /a "... this is a dangerous condition for any representative democracy to find itself in. The tight control of information, as well as the dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up a disturbing image of a very different kind of society. Democracies are not well-run nor long-preserved with secrecy and lies." - / - Walter Cronkite, voted "the most trusted man in America" by the American People in1995 ? OUTRIGHT FALSEHOOD, EXHIBIT # 527: ? ?/ "I think that right now we are in one of the most dangerous periods in our existence. Not since the Civil War has the state of our democracy been so doubtful. " / - - Walter Cronkite

fOur democracy is less safe, we are less safe, less prosperous, less respected, less everything, under the irresponsible, misleading, fear-mongering, greed-driven leadership of President Richard B. Cheney.

 nfdn"We have the first, if you will, Co-Presidency, and I think Cheney is- -we just had Woodward's revelations further confirm what I had found. And we know that this man has enormous powers. Only Dick Cheney and George Bush really know exactly what's going on, but I think Dick Cheney is shrewd enough that he lets Bush wake up every morning and believe he's President." - / - Former Nixon counsel John Dean interviewed on PBS' Tavis Smiley show mhggm    "I am more fearful for the state of this nation than I have ever been - - because this country is in the hands of an evil man: Dick Cheney. It is eminently clear that it is he who is running the country, not George W. Bush." -     - Elmer L. Anderson, former Minnesota Governor and lifelong Republican---until now. x Z  x   s s GO FUCK YOURSELVES.  x   s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . hmg jk

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A Frog in Boiling Water . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . fgbn "We are truly 'sleepwalking through history.' In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings." - / - Senate Remarks by Robert C. Byrd February 12, 2003 lmc '/vc z  v "A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on." - / - William Burroughs

There's an old folk myth that if you throw a frog in boiling water he will quickly jump out. But if you put a frog in a pan of cold water and raise the temperature ever so slowly, the gradual warming will make the frog doze happily . . . and will eventually cook to death, without ever waking up.

The German people in the 1930's found themselves in just such a situation. By the time they realized the cozy warm waters were boiling, it was too late.

For those of us who feel we know at least a little of 'what's going on', it's extremely frustrating, and more than a little scary, to watch our fellow citizens 'sleepwalking through history'. When the German people went sleepwalking in the 1930's, plenty of statesmen, artists and intellectuals, mostly of the kind of people who would be labeled 'the liberal elite' now, spoke out then as well, trying to wake their countrymen. But then, as now, the people refused to listen.

Our rights and liberties are being taken away by degrees. The water is almost at the boiling point. Will we wake up in time?

It's not looking good.

"What would it take to turn America into the kind of society that Orwell warned about, a society that envisions war as peace, freedom as slavery and ignorance as strength? Would it happen overnight, or would it involve a gradual erosion of freedoms with the people's consent?" - dgsdhb - Daniel Kurtzman, "Learning To Love Big Brother; George Bush Channels George Orwell", San Francisco Chronicle ,July 28, 2002 vsavasz xZ "Once alienated, an 'unalienable right' is apt to be forever lost, in which case we are no longer even remotely the last best hope of earth but merely a seedy imperial state whose citizens are kept in lineby SWAT teams and whose way of death, not life, is universally imitated." vsavasz xZ "They're now going to lock up anybody they want to, silence anybody they want to. Those powers are now theirs, the dreamed-of powers for the state. The state will come out of this very, very powerful, and We the People, in or out of Congress assembled,will come out much weaker. That said, we glory in the fact that we are the United States of Amnesia. We won't remember a thing the next day." - / - Gore Vidal, The New Statesman Interview, 15th October 2001

Connect the dots. Distilled into this one web site (by no means, of course, a complete catalog of crimes and lies), they form a very ugly and frightening portrait.

And there is just so much, so much dirt that has accumulated these past four years, a veritable mountain of shit, that this site only scratches the surface. It's truly staggering...and chilling. The more I dug, the more I found. Connection after connection. Lie after lie. Scam after scam. Scandal after scandal. With no accountability. John Dean, former Nixon counsel and author of "Worse than Watergate", estimates that there are at least eleven Watergate-level scandals (not petty "travelgates" or "Monicagates") in progress, with even more brewing just below the surface. (The 911 story alone has enough attendant scandals, lies and unanswered questions to fill a two thousand page book).

"But this is what is far more troublesome to me: I open and close the book with the fact that Bush and Cheney could take the air out of democracy. That is what truly worries me. And since no one is discussing their obsessive secrecy and its dangerous implications, I decided I had to write this book, and do my best to get it before the American people before November 2004. They must decide if they want a situation that is worse than Watergate." / - Ex-Nixon Counsel and constitutional scholar John Dean / "... this is a dangerous condition for any representative democracy to find itself in. The tight control of information, as well as the dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up a disturbing image of a very different kind of society. Democracies are not well-run nor long-preserved with secrecy and lies." / - Walter Cronkite __________________________________________________________ /

In the 1960's, Alvin Toffler wrote a book called "Future Shock", predicting that, in effect, the ever-increasing rate of change would take its toll on our sanity. That time is now upon us. A million entertainments, a million diversions, a million distractions. Video games, cable TV, CD's, DVD's, the internet; on top of that, we are bombarded with advertising as never before--ads on TV, ads on billboards, ads on radio, ads in magazines, even in movie theaters. And political ads are the worst of the worst: slicker, more deceptive, manipulative, more Orwellian than ever.

"We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened." - Walter Cronkite /    "...Dr. Peter Philips, director of 'Project Censored' at Sonoma State University in California where he teaches media censorship provided taped testimony. He said that at no time since the 1930s has the United States been so close to "institutionalized totalitarianism", and added, "U.S. society has become the least informed, best entertained society in the world." / - "Media Held Guilty of Deception", February 14, 2005

The ever-increasing power of The Tube to control and misinform has taken its toll. We are confused, distracted, overloaded, mesmerized, zombified, and more and more easily misled; and it's happened so gradually that most of us hardly even noticed it.

We're being amused to death, and all the while robbed, poisoned, lied to, spied on, intimidated, incarcerated, disenfranchised, vilified, smeared, or 'outed' ; and most recently, steamrolled and railroaded into war. And soon we may be able to add "disappeared" to the list; the laws are in place. Thanks to the Patriot Act (perhaps the most Orwellian of all their Orwellian titles), the Bush cabal can declare anyone an 'enemy combatant ' and whisk them away to an undisclosed location, without notifying their family and without access to a lawyer, as in any two-bit banana republic. All it would take is another major terrorist attack, and the round-ups would begin.

bcn xcbcn x "What gives the government the right to arrest you and imprison you indefinitely without offering a reason or opportunity to appeal? The answer, in the United States, is: Nothing gives the government that right. It is hard to see what is left of American freedom if the government has the authority to make anyone on its soil - citizen or noncitizen - - disappear and then rule that no one can do anything about it." / - "It's Called Democracy", Los Angeles Times Editorial, June 29, 2004 x zx "...What I was not quite sure how the handle this in the book because I didn't want to be an alarmist. About the time I was working on this section, General Tommy Franks came out with a statement and gave an interview, and he said, that if terrorists get a hold of weapons of mass destruction, and the United States knows it, he said, "this constitution in this country in this democracy we love, is in deep trouble." / - Ex-Nixon Counsel and constitutional scholar John Dean bcn xcb "We are talking about despotism. The USA PATRIOT Act is as despotic as anything Hitler came up with-- -- even using much of the same language. The Founding Fathers would have found this to be despotism in spades. And they would have hanged anybody who tried to get this through the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia. Hanged." / - Gore Vidal, LA Weekly, Nov.14-20, 2003

Dig deeper and you will find ever more dots, with ever more connections.
If you take the time to give these pages an even a cursory scan, you will find the bigger picture that emerges, dots connected, is ugly and frightening indeed: so ugly, so monstrous and so scary (yet familiar), it will make your head spin. And no amount of denial will change the Awful Truth. Only seeing it, facing it, and acting to stop it will do that.

/ ddbsd"...This is the most corrupt and racist American administration in over 80 years." He said: "Some US journalist came up to me and said: 'How can you say this about President Bush?' Well, I think what I said then was quite mild. I actually think that Bush is the greatest threat to life on this planet that we've most probably ever seen. The policies he is initiating will doom us to extinction." / - Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London / "The US government is the most dangerous power that has ever existed ...' "The US is really beyond reason now. It is beyond our imagining to know what they are going to do next and what they are prepared to do. There is only one comparison: Nazi Germany." / - Harold Pinter

Strong words? Hyperbole? Hysteria? Paranoia?

We trusted that they wouldn't willfully steal an election.
We trusted them to protect us from terrorist attack.
We trusted that the Patriot Act was necessary, and our rights and freedoms would not be threatened by it.
We trusted that they weren't purposely running up a deficit to starve social programs like Medicare and Social Security.
We trusted that the tax breaks that created those deficits would benefit everyone, not just the super-rich.
We trusted that we were going to war for good reasons, and that war would make us safer. 
Will we now trust them as well with the flickering flame of democracy?
Will we now re-elect them to see how far they will go when they no longer have to worry about being re-elected?
And will we now trust these corrupt bunglers with the coming crises, and will we watch them, again, only make it worse?

(For a hint of where they would take us next, read their own manifesto, "Rebuilding America's Defenses").

 

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ rdfgndf "The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite." / - Thomas Jefferson ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________ rdfgfbfbdjnd "We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national autodetermination practiced in past centuries." /fbfbdj - David Rockefeller, ( founder of the Trilateral Commission), in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991 fbfbdj "Today Americans would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government." /fbfbdj - Henry Kissinger. speaking at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 Bilderburgers meeting. Unbeknownst to Kissinger, his speech was taped by a Swiss delegate to the meeting fbfbdjjhe "We are on the verge of global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." fbfbdj - David Rockefeller - Statement to the United Nations Business Council, 1994

/ "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." /

For most people, these are just words. It's not like there's ever any real danger of our government being overthrown by a Totalitarian elite, is it? Our system is rock-solid, incorruptible; democracy will always be here, it just goes through phases... Through Nixon and Watergate and Vietnam and the Cold War and the Shadow Government of Reagan, our system of government has always prevailed. Daddy has always been there, and of course he always will be...

Rockefeller and Kissinger were undoubtedly joking when they made those statements. Besides, if there were such a danger, it's not like we'd have the power to do anything about it anyway, it is it?

Unfortunately it is this very apathy, complacency, and misguided blind faith in our leaders which would allow such a coup to happen. Somewhere along the line, we were taught to believe that as individuals, as mere citizens, we are ineffectual, helpless. So we gave up. We gave up reading, we gave up asking questions, we gave up voting. We went to sleep. And this is just what these elitist extremists want, because they by no means represent a majority.

fWhere is our anger, where is our outrage? Where, even, is our sense of self-preservation?

 

"We know things are bad. Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy so we don't go out anymore.

We sit in a house as slowly the world we're living in is getting smaller and all we say is, "Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster, and TV, and my steel belted radials and I won't say anything." Well I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crying in the streets. All I know is, first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being. God Dammit, my life has value." So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell,

"I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

- From Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay for NETWORK (1976)

cv cxv "We are truly 'sleepwalking through history.' In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings." / - Senate Remarks by Robert C. Byrd February 12, 2003 /

"Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty." Unfortunately, we are not vigilant -- we are barely awake. The fact that half the electorate is prepared to vote for the Bush Cheney junta, after everything they've done and everything we now (should ) know about them, is a testimony to that fact. That we could be so easily misled about the Saddam/911 connection is a prime example of the kind of apathy toward truth we've descended to. How many other things are We The People misinformed and deluded about? f

War is Peace. Danger is Safety. Lies are Truth. Ignorance is Strength.

Orwell was a true prophet.

 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . hmg

 

 

gnmfcm

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

"A Clever Concentration Camp of the Mind" . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . cxaxcv nmmf "The tight control of information, as well as the dissemination of misleading information and outright falsehoods, conjures up a disturbing image of a very different kind of society." / - Walter Cronkite svsvav "I believe we have reached a time in our country, similar to what life must've been like under Hitler in the 30's, except we don't realize it because Fascism in our country takes the benign disguise of liberal democracy. There won't be such familiar signs as swastikas. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work ... svsv "Fascism will come," Huey Long once said. "in the name of anti-fascism" - it will come in the name of your security - they call it "National Security," it will come with the mass media manipulating a clever concentration camp of the mind. The super state will provide you tranquility above the truth, the super state will make you believe you are living in the best of all possible worlds, and in order to do so will rewrite history as it sees fit. George Orwell's Ministry of Truth warned us, "Who controls the past, controls the future." -/ - Attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner ) in "JFK (The Memory of a Young President) ", written by Oliver Stone & Zachary Sklar, from the book by Jim Garrison and the book by Jim Marrs 1991 http://www.whysanity.net/monos/jfk2.htmlb

When the United States invaded Iraq, a New York Times/CBS News survey estimated that 42 percent of the American public believed that Saddam Hussein was directly responsible for the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. And an ABC news poll said that 55 percent of Americans believed that Saddam Hussein directly supported al-Qaeda. We now live in that "clever concentration camp of the mind": the glaring omissions, half-truths and outright lies we get from an ever smaller corporate broadcasting cabal that rewrites not only the past, (as it has done recently with the Reagan legacy), but the present, and increasingly, dictates our future. The cable TV networks, and their corporate owners like FOX, GE, Sinclair, Clear Channel, are slowly merging with our military-industrial government, morphing into the Orwell Channel, a parody, a satire, a bad sci-fi movie version of a 21st Century Totalitarian Happpy Face Propaganda Network. But there's nothing funny about it -- because it's working. And this unholy union is happening more and more rapidly as the threat of terror is being used in various ways to the advantage of... the Military Industrial (and now Media) Complex.

 

   "Dr. Peter Philips, director of 'Project Censored' at Sonoma State University in California where he teaches media censorship provided taped testimony. He said that at no time since the 1930s has the United States been so close to "institutionalized totalitarianism." // - - "Media Held Guilty of Deception", February 14, 2005 / \ "Congress, judiciary, and executive have been taken over by radical enemies of our Republic. In this they have been aided and abetted by the most corrupt and totalitarian-minded media in our history. At least in 1860, there were Lincoln and his supporters. Today we have corporate America with its eye on what is left of a dwindling fossil fuel supply. While what is left of those of us who conserve our Constitution is drowned out by CNN, etc., who told us that 70% of the delegates to the Democratic convention favored abortion on demand! Truth is dead on air." / / - - Gore Vidal   \/ "Mainstream media journalism today is a shameful joke because of Reagan's deregulation policies. Once upon a time, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that the information we receive -- -- information vital to the ability of the people to govern in the manner intended -- -- came from a wide variety of sources and perspectives. Reagan's policies annihilated the Fairness Doctrine, opening the door for a few mega-corporations to gather journalism unto themselves. Today, Reagan's old bosses at General Electric own three of the most-watched news channels. This company profits from every war we fight, but somehow is trusted to tell the truths of war. Thus, the myths are sold to us.u[ [iu[bJHK,Fdbsdf[i s JHK,F The deregulation policies of Ronald Reagan did not just deliver journalism to these massive corporations, but handed virtually every facet of our lives into the hands of this privileged few. ...In the final analysis, however, the legacy of Ronald Reagan - whether he had an active hand in its formulation, or was merely along for the ride - is beyond dispute. His famous question, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is easy to answer. We are not better off than we were four years ago, or eight years ago, or twelve, or twenty. We are a badly damaged state, ruled today by a man who subsists off Reagan's most corrosive final gift to us all: It is the image that matters, and be damned to the truth." /// - "Planet Reagan" By William Rivers Pitt / cv"Our corruption is the absolute triumph of image over reality, of flash over substance, of the pervasive need within most Americans to believe in a happy-face version of the nation they call home, and to spurn the reality of our estate as unpatriotic." // - Writer Edward Abbey / bsx "..Pinter blamed "millions of totally deluded American people" for not staging a mass revolt. He said that because of propaganda and control of the media, millions of Americans believed that every word Mr Bush said was "accurate and moral"." k, / gj- "Harold Pinter blasts 'Nazi America' and 'deluded idiot' Blair" / ______________________________________________________________________ nhgsfhs POLL: Bush's support tied to misperceptions

Public Perceptions of the Foreign Policy Positions of the Presidential Candidates:
A PIPA/Knowledge Networks Study [September 29, 2004]

FULL REPORT

A new study by the Program on International Policy has revealed that people who rely on television to get their news are more likely to be misinformed on the facts about Iraq, WMD's and Iraq's ties to 9/11 than those who get their news from other sources or even those who don't follow the news at all.

The study polled over 3,000 people on their perceptions about international support for the Iraq War, ties of Saddam Hussein to the events of 9/11, and the Discovery of WMD's in Iraq. What they found, incredibly, though not surprising, was that the more people got their news from TV, the higher the frequency of their misperceptions.

Out of all the news networks, Fox News ranked highest among misinformed viewers. The lowest was PBS.

FULL REPORT
__________________________________________________________________________________________________ h/fhs\ "Referring to the importance of educating the public on critical issues such as the Iraq War, Cronkite stated, "We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened." / - Veteran News anchor Walter Cronkite, selected by the American people in the mid1990s as "the most trusted man in America" / "...The war certainly does not exist on my television, and I am tired of that as well. The television news media's consensus-building machine works all day and night on a half-dozen news channels, and according to them, all is fine and dandy. It is amazing how effective these small boxes are at controlling the thoughts, emotions and desires of our population. It is daunting to try to come up with a way to get around their noise." // - "Take the Long Way Home" By William Rivers Pitt /

In all my years on this planet, I have never known a time when the American people were more ill-informed or easily led. When 50% of the population (still!) thinks Iraq had something to do with 911, we are in deep trouble. Europe and the rest of the world are appalled and aghast, dumbstruck, at what's happened to us. Dots connected, the picture that emerges is ugly and frightening indeed, and Europeans are understandably more worried about our out-of-control monster than we; they've seen fascism close-up, and they know what it looks like. They're generally better educated than Americans, and their information is not as tightly controlled by corporate interests whose only moral compass is another big tax break.

 

"They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird."

- George Orwell, 1984

ghnsfoup'u . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . hmg gnmfcm

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Truth Is Stronger Than Fiction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . lg kug "A nation of well-informed men, who have been taught to know and prize the rights that God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins!" / - Benjamin Franklin hdjetej "Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people." / - John Adams / "We are on the precipice of being so ignorant that our democracy is threatened." / - Veteran News anchor Walter Cronkite, selected by the American people in the mid1990s as "the most trusted man in America" /j "What we're talking about is nothing less than rescuing a democracy that is so polarized it is in danger of being paralyzed and pulverized. Alarming words, I know. But the realities we face should trigger alarms. Free and responsible government by popular consent just cannot exist without an informed public. // - Bill Moyers

This is not politics-as-usual. If our democracy is to survive, we will need to become a great deal more informed (and quickly) and more pro-active--starting with prying the slimy tentacles of the Bush Cabal from the neck of our government.

In the early days of the country 'seditious' pamphlets were circulated, whereby, through the new technology of the printing press, thoughts and ideas could be broadcast to large numbers of people. But with the advent of mass production and distribution of newspapers, this technology became largely the province of the wealthy and powerful. Now we have (at least for now) the internet, with which individual voices can again be freely heard by unlimited numbers of world citizens. Never before has the press been so tightly controlled by corporate interests; but at the same time, never before has the common man had such unlimited and rapid ability to receive and transmit information to fellow citizens. If it's true that truth is a threat to power, we may not have this freedom of information much longer. In the Orwellian future the Bush cabal would like to see, such seditious words and images as these would never see the light of day.

"Presidential assistant Donald Rumsfeld, right, and his deputy Richard Cheney meet with reporters at the White House in Washington, D.C., Thursday, Nov. 7, 1975. At that time Rumsfeld and Cheney were persuading Ford to veto one of the most important Watergate-inspired reforms, an enhanced Freedom of Information Act, designed to guarantee public and media scrutiny of the FBI and other agencies." - from "Restoring the imperial presidency" by Bruce Shapiro, Salon

"The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth becomes the greatest enemy to fhe State." // - Dr.Joseph Goebbels fhmd "...So that's the role I play, and we all should, to use art, or your own voice to simply say "This is not the truth." You deserve better, you deserve to get the truth, to get a certain kind of information, and we're not getting it." /   - Robert Redford sdvas sdvas "As people do better, they start voting like Republicans -- -- unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing" / - Karl Rove, senior advisor for George W. Bush, The Daily Texan", March 19, 2001 h,f "...But what about Cronkite? Does he think that, if he were an anchorman today, he would try to speak out on the Iraq war? "Yes, yes I do. I think that right now it would be critical to do so," he said. "I think that right now we are in one of the most dangerous periods in our existence. Not since the Civil War has the state of our democracy been so doubtful. Our foreign policy has taken a very strange turn. And I do think I would try to say something about that."  // - "Cronkite Fears Media Mergers Threaten Democracy", by John Nichols, the Capital Times, November 8, 2003 l"'j "...you just get crazy, and you say, you say, 'C'mon, surely someone's going to see thru this'. But when they don't, you say to yourself, "OK what role can I play in this, what can I do to get another message out there?' And therefore you speak out against it, and simply say, 'look-- - here's another version of what you're being fed with a big corporate spoon, on a daily basis, from the bully pulpit of an administration." / - Robert Redford, on The Charlie Rose Show

Like Cronkite and Moyers and Redford, I believe it's more crucial than ever before for average citizens to become as informed as possible, and speak out. This homemade site represents my humble attempt to sift the sea of misinformation, disinformation, and infotainment flowing through our Future Shock, 21st century, edge-of-Apocalypse world, select the most crucial fact and opinion I've found, and present it in this new medium.

These pages are the result of nearly three years of gathering, culling, assessing, and assembling. Here then, is another point of view, another version of what you're being fed with a big corporate spoon, in the form of facts and figures, plain news reports, and the perceptions and opinions of some of the great minds of our time, wherein some degree of the truth of our dire situation might be found. Because I believe the situation is absolutely critical, I've given many spare-time hours, days, evenings and weekends to put this site together. I've learned a lot in the process, and I hope you will, too. Please pass it on to as many people as you can, especially those who are considering voting for Cheney-Bush -- even if the election is a day away.

"Direct threats require decisive action," Cheney said in a speech to the World Economic Forum. He urged European allies to "act with all the urgency that this danger demands." "There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are.. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted. At that point, we must show that beyond our resolutions is actual resolve. The days of looking the other way while despotic regimes trample human rights, rob their nations' wealth, and then excuse their failings by feeding their people a steady diet of hatred are over." / - Dick Cheney, World Economic Forum January 24, 2004  / s"...So that's the role I play, and we all should, to use art, or your own voice to simply say "This is not the truth." You deserve better, you deserve to get the truth, to get a certain kind of information, and we're not getting it."   - Robert Redford /

/"Connect the dots", as donald rumsfeld put it, and I believe you will come to the conclusion that we are now living in that time Orwell and Eisenhower and others warned of, and those who are still awake enough would do well to heed those warnings---and a multitude of new warnings from all over the world today, warnings by men and women of intelligence, wisdom and true integrity. It's up to us to do what George W. Bush pledged to do and failed so miserably and completely to do: to defend our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and democracy itself from this clear and present danger that now threatens it. Defend it not only by becoming informed, but by taking action, and spreading the truth as you see it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .   .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

 

 

 

I have never served my country.

I'll probably never know what it's like to put my life on the line, to face death for the survival of our nation. But after what I've seen, what I've discovered, and what I now know, I had to do at least this one, small part in it's defense. However miniscule a contribution this is (and however large a risk to anger these mobsters), I couldn't just stand by and do nothing. So must we all resist the pressure to be passive, to give up, to be a Good German. The price of freedom is vigilance, but it's also action. The water is near boiling, and we who see the danger must all do our part in the battle against the sleep and torpor that ihas overtaken us, and question, learn, speak out, and VOTE -- while we still can.

It's our only hope, and it's our duty.

 

 

"The rule of no realm is mine, but all worthy things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my part, I shall not wholly fail in my task if anything passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in days to come.
For I too am a steward. Did you not know?"

 

- J.R.R. Tolkein

 

~

 

 

 

 

 

 



. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

ABOUT THIS FORMAT
/

This site is an experiment in online presentation. I's a genuine homemade product, and obviously it's not perfect: much of it was done in a rush (to the election), with an outdated and limited web page authoring program, and all by one person me (and I'm still weeding out typos). After some trial and error, I've come to the opinion that the use of bold type and colors are useful tools to emphasize key points as well as to break up the monotony of the page, and make it easier to read on-screen. In an age where we're deluged with information, this aids the scanning process, and key information can be gleaned, even while scrolling. As I said, this is an experimental technique, which I think works most of the time. However, for those who find these embellishments annoying, or an intrusion on the author's intent, (something I do worry about), it's a simple matter to go to the original (in most cases a link is provided), or you can simply copy and paste the page into your word program, sans the bolds and colors.
Wherever possible, I've also linked images to their original sites (if known). (For you internet neophytes, simply hold the cursor over the image. If a hand appears, click.)

I've tried to arrange these articles so that they tell a story, so that themes flow into each other. A few of them are re-presented on multiple pages, because they are so crucial (or, the subject matter overlaps, as in the BUSHLIES about the BUSHWARS) .

As depressing, frightening and appalling as our situation may be, I realize that this is the age of infotainment, and I'm competing for attention with billion dollar corporations with slick computer graphics, editing, etc. So if I can get the viewer's attention using humor, cartoons, photos, or illustrations, so much the better. Thus some pages (Incurious George) are primarily humorous (while making the serious point that George W. Bush is absolutely unfit for the presidency), while others ("Death Culture") ... not so funny.

 

 

As for some of the more disturbing images you may find... it's been a real challenge to decide what's too much, over the top, too unpleasant or distasteful. I've tried to show restraint in this (believe me, there are a multitude of images far worse out there I had to sift through). Everyone's sensibilities are different, but I firmly believe that Americans have become extremely de-sensitized to the true horror of the violence we are inflicting in our wars. Most of the "war footage" we've seen in the Gulf Wars has been reduced to soft green fireworks, and I believe a dose of the "the Shocking-and-Awful" is necessary to jolt us out of our state of collective denial, and force us to at least begin to learn to value the lives of The Other: "the least of these our brethren". And for those who think the mere showing of these images is "helping the enemy", I refer you to "Fanning the Flames of Fear and Loathing", and "Death Culture", and ask you to think about who is really "helping the enemy".

Lastly, I'd like this site to remain online findefinitely, as a warning for the future; for these events which have altered our lives so indelibly to be known and remembered, and not be vanished down Orwell's Memory Hole. This crucial information should be easily accessible, so that these mistakes might never be repeated in this country, and we might understand better what needs to be done to both repair and safeguard our government from those who would do it harm.

The most important goal for me is to reach people, to get through the walls of denial and disinformation that have so seriously skewed our worldview -- and most especially, to connect with young people, whose lives and futures are most directly at risk -- and many of whom it seems, need a crash course in what's going on -- before the water reaches the boiling point.

- Joseph J. Barney, September 2004

  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  . .  .  .  .  .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
v asvsas / bf6a / / . . . Signal to Noise . . . Signal to Noise . . . Signal to Noise . . . Signal to Noise . . . Signal to Noise . . . Signal to Noise . \ccccccccccccc Peter Gabriel from the album "Growing Up" (2004) ccccccccc cccccccccccccccccc You know the way that things go when what you fight for starts to fall jvcj and in that fuzzy picture the writing stands out on the wall so clearly on the wall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

send out the signals deep and loud



and in this place, can you reassure me with a touch, a smile - while the cradle's burning all the while the world is turning to noise vvmcmc oh the more that it's surrounding us the more that it destroys vmvmcc turn up the signal wipe out the noise

 

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

send out the signal deep and loud



man i'm losing sound and sight of all those who can tell me wrong from right vmc when all things beautiful and bright sink in the night vmc yet there's still something in my heart that can find a way to make a start vmc to turn up the signal wipe out the noise wipe out the noise wipe out the noise you know that's it you know that's it you know that's it receive and transmit

 



. . . receive and transmit . . .

 

 



. . receive and transmit . . / / / / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 

 

 

 

 

/

 

 



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About This Site's Creator:

Joseph John Barney began his career as an illustrator at Continuity Associates in New York, the commercial art studio commandeered by comics legend Neal Adams. He also worked on Madison Avenue, turning out hundreds of storyboards and 'animatics' for TV commercials. He free-lanced as a comic book penciller as well, working on such famous Marvel Comics characters as The Hulk, Thor, Silver Surfer, and Fantastic Four.

In the nineties Joe moved west to work in the burgeoning multimedia arena. Among his recent projects: character design for Broderbund software's Carmen Sandeigo nemesis Chase Devineaux; animation artwork for the CD-ROM games Mysterious Island and Marty the Mouse for Elliot-Portwood Productions; a web adventure comic series for Eplay, an educational children's web site; production paintings and storyboards for the CGI 'cinematics' of Crystal Dynamics' Akuji the Heartless Playstation game; and a 'film noir' comic book for the I.T. consulting firm Xpedior.

Joe is also an instructor in comic book illustration at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. You can see some his work at http://www.communicomics.com/

 

____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

 

ADDENDUM: dbdas

( EDITOR'S NOTE: I came across this review immediately after finishing this essay. A neater, more concise summation of the above.)

 


Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order

by Mark Crispin Miller

 

Mark Crispin Miller is a media critic, professor at New York University, and the author of Boxed In: The Culture of TV. See PBS FRONTLINE's interview HERE.

(Amazon.com Editorial review)
While numerous books have been written criticizing the policies and practices of the George W. Bush administration, few have been as foreboding about the meaning of those policies and practices as Mark Crispin Miller's Cruel and Unusual. In Bush and company, Miller sees a regime comparable to the most ruthless authoritarian dictatorships of the modern era and warns that Americans, skillfully duped by a corrupt government and a complicit mass media, are blithely accepting the curtailing of their liberties and the eradication of their democracy. The attacks of September 11, 2001 and the tremendous fear and insecurity they generated among the American people provided, in Miller's estimation, ample opportunity for Bush and company to move the country to a place where dissent is crushed by force, wars are started on lies, and democratic elections will soon be a thing of the past. Cruel and Unusual makes a compelling case by providing massive amounts of evidence, some concrete and some speculative, although at times the sprawling range of his subject matter harms Miller's attempts to form a cohesive argument. And for someone writing a book about George W. Bush, Miller is awfully preoccupied with the treatment President Bill Clinton received from the press and right-wing activists. Particularly strong, however, are passages related to the build-up to war in Iraq and the discrediting of weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who insisted that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction. Miller provides transcripts from cable news talk shows where administration spokesman attack Ritter with the apparent assistance of like-minded hosts while Ritter himself doggedly defends himself and persistently rejects the main reason given for war. Cruel and Unusual is one of the most energetic and dire criticisms of the Bush administration but its urgency is matched by the crimes it sees being committed. - John Moe

nfgjdfhggfchjhgcjf "The clock is ticking, and it's ticking towards war. And it's going to be a real war. It's going to be a war that will result in the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians. It's a war that is going to devastate Iraq. It's a war that's going to destroy the credibility of the United States of America." / - U.N. weapons inspector, and Gulf War I veteran Scott Ritter speaking at Suffolk University in Boston on July 23, 2002 . "Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." / - Dick Cheney, Meet the Press, March 16, 2003

 

 

Cruel and Unusual: Bush/Cheney's New World Order

A mordant and passionate exposé of the right-wing threat to American democracy and freedom.

(Amazon.com Product Description)

Read a newspaper or catch the news on television, and you might get the impression that America's current leadership is "mainstream": perhaps a bit more conservative and in its foreign policy more belligerent than its predecessors, but still a federal authority that functions within America's political traditions.

But as Mark Crispin Miller argues here with great clarity and effect, we are in fact living in a state that would appall the Founding Fathers: a state that is neither democratic nor republican, and no more "conservative" than it is liberal. He exposes the Bush Republicans' contempt for democratic practice, their bullying religiosity, their reckless militarism, their apocalyptic views of the economy and the planet, and--above all--their emotional dependence on sheer hatefulness.

Abraham Lincoln once observed that, if the United States should ever be subverted, "it will be conquered from within." And that is exactly what has happened.



_____________________________________________________________ dnnj Excerpt:  There Is No Tomorrow xc   By Bill Moyers The Minneapolis Star Tribune Sunday 30 January 2005

"One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress. For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington.
Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. When ideology and theology couple, their offspring are not always bad but they are always blind. And there is the danger:
voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts."

  "The news is not good these days. I can tell you, though, that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free - not only to feel but to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk. What we need is what the ancient Israelites called hochma - the science of the heart ... the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you.

 

  "Believe me, it does."

______________________

 

 

"The way of life can be free and beautiful. But we have lost the way. asvxc Greed has poisoned men's souls - has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. asvxc We have developed speed but we have shut ourselves in; machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical, our cleverness hard and unkind. We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery we need humanity; More than cleverness we need kindness and gentleness. gg Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. asavxc The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men, cries out for universal brotherhood, for the unity of us all. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people. svavva To those who can hear me I say,"Do not despair". The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress: the hate of men will pass and dictators die and the power they took from the people , will return to the people; and so long as men die [now] liberty will never perish. . . asvxc Soldiers - don't give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you - who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel, who drill you, diet you, treat you as cattle, as cannon fodder. vx x x vx  "Military men are just dumb stupid animals to be used as pawns in foreign policy." - Henry Kissinger (Bush's original choice to head the 911 commission) vx x x vx Don't give yourselves to these unnatural men, machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts. You are not machines. You are not cattle. You are men. You have the love of humanity in your hearts. You don't hate - only the unloved hate. Only the unloved and the unnatural. Soldiers - don't fight for slavery, fight for liberty. asvxc In the seventeenth chapter of Saint Luke it is written: asvxc " the kingdom of God is within man" asvxc asvxc - not one man, nor a group of men- but in all men - - in you, the people. fbgdzg You the people have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness. You the people have the power to make life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy let's use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give you the future and old age and security. asvxc By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power, but they lie. They do not fulfil their promise, they never will. asvxc Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people. Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world, to do away with national barriers, do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. asvxc Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men's happiness. asvxc Soldiers - in the name of democracy, let us all unite! as vxc - Charlie Chaplin's end speech in his film "The Great Dictator" (1940)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



"Rise like lions after slumber in invanquishable number - Shake your chains to earth like dew which in sleep had fallen on you - ye are many - they are few." hnsdbn ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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"Empire may well go to war, but it's out in the open now, too ugly to behold its own reflection, too ugly even to rally its own people. It won't be long before the majority of American people become our allies."

- Arundhati Roy

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/_____________ / Smart People nrfnnfnf/ Bushwars / Bushlies / Cheneylies / Incurious George / St. George / King George (the madness of) / George the Lionheart and the New Crusades / George of Orwell / Georgie Warbucks / George W. Hoover / Vanishing Votes // Death Culture / Hall of Shame // 911 Accountability / (Not-so) Friendly Fascism / Project For A New American Perpetual War / Fanning the Flames of Fear, Loathing and Terror / T h e C o l l a t e r a l C h i l d r e n / About This Site: A Gathering Danger _____________// / More writings by, and interviews with SMART PEOPLE on our Dire Situation: / Kurt Vonnegut Speaks  / Bill Moyers Rallies / Gore Vidal Rants / Mark Twain Sings _____________// /

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