A 48-page reprint of Smedley Butler's 1935 booklet War Is A Racket. Foreword by Cindy Sheehan. Each copy is autographed by Cindy and includes a free download link of the audio recording in a digital MP3 file format. Order here: WWW.WARISARACKET.NET
Submitted by libbyliberal on Tue, 05/25/2010 - 3:22am
If you think the new world order Obama alluded to in his 5-22-10 9th-crop-of-cadets-as-MidEast-cannon fodder-for-the-new-world-order-(hegemony)-killing-fieldsspeech at West Point this past Saturday has any remote benefits for those of us not in the top 1% of global income holders, there is an oil well in the Gulf I’d like to sell you.
By the way, there was a group of about 100 protesters up at West Point organized by Debra Sweet's The World Can't Wait organization. A respectable number, and I am grateful for their commitment. But a very tiny number when you consider that most of the 80 million Americans who voted in Barack Obama made it abundantly clear their number one priority was for him to end the illegal and ferocious wars in the Middle East. Within his first year he has earnestly escalated the troop numbers, the scope of the wars, the use of ultra-violent weaponry, the casualty counts and the Pentagon's mind-numbing budgets in this time of economic crisis. There is something seriously -- terrifyingly -- wrong with our profound passivity as citizens. The passivity of all but a relatively small handful of continually committed resisters. We are, like it or not, the proverbial "good Germans." I always wondered how the Holocaust could have occurred. I have my answer in these United States.
Submitted by Tjadendevries on Sat, 03/13/2010 - 4:40pm
Remember in the last post I said that Michael Chertoff was going to get his own post in this series? Well, he's going to get at least two, and this is the first one. It's very serendipitous for him that he just happens to represent a company, ironically called Rapiscan (as in raping of civil rights) that is positioned to make a huge profit from the rhetoric generated by Chertoff in the wake the strange story of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Below are a few paragraphs from Antifascist Calling that summarize his involvement, followed by the full article. And my guess is that these expensive machines will go the way of the discontinued Puffers
On New Year's eve, former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff penned a Washington Post op-ed that argued "whole-body imagers" should be deployed world-wide.
[...]
Currently TSA has fielded 40 machines at 19 airports with more on the way. Indeed, the agency handed out a $25 million contract last October to Rapiscan Security Systems for 30 more peep-show devices with funds generously provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
What Chertoff failed to disclose however, is that since leaving the secret state's employ his security consulting firm, The Chertoff Group, "includes a client that manufactures the machines" according to The Washington Post.
Over the last few weeks there have been a series of posts at different websites that have documented the latest variations of the conjunction of the military and anti-terror industrial complex with our government. I'm going to call it the Fear Industrial Complex because to be boxed in into the Military Industrial Complex would be inaccurate and wouldn't even come close to defining the collusion of 1) the military wing, with 2) the security wing, with 3) the Congressional wing, with 4) the Presidential wing and lastly 5) the media wing of the complex . There are so many links that if I tried to put them all in one post it would take several hours to put together and would shortshrift them all and be a disservice to the thought-provoking information.
With that, here's the first post by Frida Berrigan, with an intro by Tom Engelhardt in the link. I'm posting the entire thing because things like this have a way of disappearing
On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was “suspected” of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,’ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.
Submitted by Tjadendevries on Tue, 12/08/2009 - 7:05pm
This is such a good blog, I posted the entire thing. But please click on the header to read the original. What we are being sold about Afghanistan is a reprise of The Simla Manifesto
Remnants of an Army by Elizabeth Butler depicting William Brydon who was the sole British survivor after Britain's catastrophic retreat from Kabul.
A leading advisor to the U.S. military, the Rand Corporation, released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida". The report confirms what experts have been saying for years: the war on terror is actually weakening national security.
"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."
McDonnell Douglas Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri was awarded a $51,900,000 contract to provide Massive Ordnance Penetrator Integration on B-2 test aircraft. At this time $32,150,000 has been obligated. 708 ARSG/PK, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida is the contracting Activity. (FA8681-09-C-0280,P00002)
In the great global chess match, the Axis of Evil exchanges pieces with Russia towards a check-mate on Iran, while Afghanistan is set to be the proving ground of an open-ended military strategy.
The G20 crowns itself queen of the global economy, as our civil liberties are pawned off the board for the illusion of security.
If the audience is the human masses, they seem blithely disinterested in the high-stakes moves on the board and only vaguely aware that beneath the board itself Mother Nature is shaking the table, rattling the Earth and making waves.
September was yet another episode in the slow motion collision of humanity's tragic history and reality.
One of the most alarming side effects of the federal government’s war on drugs is the militarization of law enforcement in America. There are two aspects to the militarization phenomenon. First, the American tradition of civil-military separation is breaking down as Congress assigns more and more law enforcement responsibilities to the armed forces. Second, state and local police officers are increasingly emulating the war-fighting tactics of soldiers. Most Americans are unaware of the militarization phenomenon simply because it has been creeping along imperceptibly for many years. ...
[...]
What is clear  and disquieting  is that the lines that have traditionally separated the military mission from the police mission are getting badly blurred. Over the last 20 years Congress has encouraged the U.S. military to supply intelligence, equipment, and training to civilian police. That encouragement has spawned a culture of paramilitarism in American police departments. By virtue of their training and specialized armament, state and local police officers are adopting the tactics and mindset of their military mentors. The problem is that the actions and values of the police officer are distinctly different from those of the warrior. The job of a police officer is to keep the peace, but not by just any means. Police officers are expected to apprehend suspected law breakers while adhering to constitutional procedures. They are expected to use minimum force and to deliver suspects to a court of law. The soldier, on the other hand, is an instrument of war. In boot camp, recruits are trained to inflict maximum damage on enemy personnel. Confusing the police function with the military function can have dangerous consequences. As Albuquerque police chief Jerry Glavin has noted, “If [cops] have a mindset that the goal is to take out a citizen, it will happen.â€ÂÂÂÂÂÂ8
The lines that have traditionally separated the military mission from the police mission are getting badly blurred. Paramilitarism threatens civil liberties, constitutional norms, and the well-being of all citizens. Thus, the use of paramilitary tactics in everyday police work should alarm people of goodwill from across the political spectrum.
This paper will examine the militarization of law enforcement at the local level, with particular emphasis on SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) units. The paper will conclude that the special skills of SWAT personnel and their military armaments are necessary only in extraordinary circumstances.
The deployment of such units should therefore be infrequent.More generally, Congress should recognize that soldiers and police officers perform different functions. Federal lawmakers should discourage the culture of paramilitarism in police departments by keeping the military out of civilian law enforcement.
A Brief History of the Relationship between the Military and Civilian Law Enforcement
The use of British troops to enforce unpopular laws in the American colonies helped to convince the colonists that King George III and Parliament were intent on establishing tyranny.9
The Declaration of Independence specifically refers to those practices, castigating King George for “quartering large Bodies of Armed Troops among us†and for “protecting [soldiers], by mock Trial, from Punishment, for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States.†The colonists complained that the king “has kept among us, in Times of peace, Standing Armies, without the consent of our Legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of, and superior to, the Civil Power.â€ÂÂÂÂÂÂ
DJ Galaxy (www.myspace.com/djgalaxy916) will be performing, and speakers from the We Are Not Your Soldiers (http://www.wearenotyoursoldiers.org/) project, as well as others will be there. The main thrust of the event is to get high school students to opt-out of being contacted by military recruiters, a requirement of the No Child Left Behind Act. Also on hand will be plenty of resources for alternatives to military service.
CIA director Leon Panetta implied Sunday that the "reality of 9/11" excused the unconstitutional and criminal acts of the Bush administration:
The country was frightened, and political leaders were trying to respond as best they could. Judgments were made. Some of them were wrong.
Panetta makes it sound like all of the illegal decisions were made after 9/11, in response to that horrific event.
But as I've previously pointed out:
* The government's spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here)
* The Patriot Act was written before 9/11 [*note below*]
* The Afghanistan war was planned before 9/11
* The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11
* The decision to launch a war against Iran was made before 9/11
* Cheney advocated strengthening the powers of the White House to the point of monarchy before 9/11
In addition, while the decision to torture appears to have been made after 9/11, it appears to have been made for the purpose of creating a false linkage between Iraq and 9/11 in order to justify the Iraq war. In other words, the post-9/11 decision to torture appears to have been made to rationalize the pre-9/11 decision to invade Iraq.
Moreover, it was known long before 9/11 that torture doesn't work to produce accurate intelligence.
Click the header to read the links
[**] The link for the article on the Patriot Act being written prior to 9/11 is dead, but I found a reprint and will reprint it in it's entirety below
After reading these stories I knew I had a subject - Gary Webb's article - in order to know why it's important you have to know the nature of how the mind processes information
... That television (or video game) you watch every day, your secret best friend, is an addictive opiate, and not only that, it's one of the most potent mind control devices ever produced. And I'm not just basing this on intuition. I have the neurological evidence to prove it.
[...]
Of course, not all addictions are chemical. Any behavior that leads to a pleasurable experience will be repeated , especially if that behavior requires little work. Psychologists call this pattern "positive reinforcement" . This is what we mean, technically speaking, by addiction. In this sense, television certainly fits into the category of an addictive agent.
When you watch TV, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. In fact, experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman showed that while viewers are watching television, the right hemisphere is twice as active as the left, a neurological anomaly. The crossover from left to right releases a surge of the body's natural opiates: endorphins, which include beta-endorphins and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming (we rarely call them addictive). These include cracking knuckles, strenuous exercise, and orgasm. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.
[...]
Psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland found that after just 30 seconds of watching television the brain begins to produce alpha waves , which indicates torpid (almost comatose) rates of activity. Alpha brain waves are associated with unfocused, overly receptive states of consciousness. A high frequency alpha waves does not occur normally when the eyes are open. In fact, Mulholland's research implies that watching television is neurologically analogous to staring at a blank wall.
On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was “suspected” of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,’ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.
