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News, Brain Droppings, and Links to the Progressive Community
Tuesday, September 6, 2005
To All Members of Congress
The entire Hurricane Katrina response by FEMA is beyond an outrage. It is an atrocity. The Republicans brainwashed us with “Saddam gassed his own people”; well, George Bush drowned and starved his own people. He has turned what could have been a heroic rescue effort into a military combat operation.
Why are no journalists allowed in the devastated areas, except for the official propagandist "embedded" ones? Do we even know who these "troops" are who are "stabilizing" the area after the deliberate creation of a chaotic and desperate situation by the Bush administration's lack of even basic food and water drops for more than 5 days after the hurricane? More than one witness has described soldiers with full face masks. Do we have mercenaries rounding up, terrorizing, and killing American citizens in the disaster area???
I am reading account after account of FEMA sabotaging communications, turning back caravan after caravan of search and rescue teams, doctors, law enforcement officials, towed airboats, truckloads of supplies and medicine—even the Red Cross has been denied entrance into New Orleans from Day 1 of the hurricane. Why are caregivers and rescuers being denied entry? And why are survivors being blocked from leaving the area? There are many many witness accounts of people fighting their way through toxic water, rats, filth and garbage, with lack of sanitary facilities, water, and food, to make it to the highway, only to be told at gunpoint that they couldn't leave. This is a monumentally sickening and horrific scenario.
George Bush has given every indication that he couldn’t care less about this catastrophe, that it didn’t register in his stump of a brain stem until fully FIVE DAYS had gone by after Katrina made landfall in the New Orleans area. His photo-ops were a sickening reminder that the only way to get him to engage himself in a crisis is if it can be about HIM. He actually brought a table of food to a stricken area, posed with it, and then removed it as he left! This is beyond belief but was documented by a German TV station that was reporting, at the scene.
The ensuing chaos, destruction and death brought about by his lack of provision of even basic needs has prompted anybody with the intelligence of an ant to wonder how much of this was deliberate? Is the disaster area being used simply as a military training exercise?
We The People have paid our hard-earned tax dollars in good faith that this corrupt and evil administration would provide at least basic search and rescue functions in case of disaster. Isn’t that one of the lies they spun so well when they were whoring for votes? That the Republicans were the party of “national security”?
Furthermore, it is an abomination that Halliburton/Kellogg-Brown-Root (Carlyle/Bechtel will be along shortly I am sure) have contracts to salvage the New Orleans waterfront or whatever the hell they’ve been contracted to do. This administration has turned the government into a business for their own personal monetary gain.
I DEMAND THE IMMEDIATE RESIGNATION OF THE ENTIRE BUSH ADMINISTRATION, and immediate investigation of the crimes of criminal negligence, mass murder, willful obstruction of life-saving measures on a grand scale, political favoritism, diversion of the public treasury for private gain, perjury, and engagement in war by willful lying to the American people. The safety and security of the entire nation is at risk. We The People will settle for nothing less than their complete REMOVAL as we have heard their lies and been victims of their scams and incompetence one too many times.
It also goes without saying that George Bush will NOT be conducting an investigation of himself in this matter. An independent prosecutor wil be appointed and an open investigation, along with indictments and real sentences of hard prison time wil be handed down. I would also consider it very very fitting if the highly unqualified director of FEMA, Michael Brown, who apparently has done nothing during his tenure, returned every cent of the tax dollars that he stole as salary.
Furthermore, any Congressperson who continues to support this corrupt regime will be considered complicit in their crimes and will be held fully accountable. I insist you to do your duty and represent The People in this matter. The nation can stand nothing less.
Outrageous account of sabotages of survivor efforts
The truth of what really went on in the Republican’s ugly version of “search and rescue” will come out slowly over the next days and weeks. This grim account, of foraging, banding together, and then being summarily and repeatedly thwarted and scattered, rather than rescued, by “authorities” who confiscated water and food, was written by paramedics who had been in New Orleans for a conference:
I used to believe that even on the most minimal level, that of protection and rescue of Americans from disasters, what should be a good deal of the “soul” of government business, I was safe or reasonably so. I had faith that there was a plan, a procedure in place in the event of emergency, and that we had at our disposal a vast arsenal that could be mobilized from every corner of the country: vehicles for air, water, land, not to mention highly qualified, dedicated and heroic personnel throughout the country to perform search and rescue, resuscitation, first responder, medical, and follow-through to relocation in a safe area including even basic water and food, more than adequate supplies to treat the most gruesome conditions, and caring people all along the way.
I guess I remembered what it was like after Oklahoma City in 1995, when we had a fully engaged, caring American people with the government watching their backs in case things got too big for just one or a few or even an entire region to handle.
I won't get into the response to 9/11; it is only too well etched into the American memory. We came together despite the lack of warning, within minutes of the attacks, and didn't stop until we knew, had to accept, that there were no more survivors. It suddenly seems a lucky thing that all the string-pullers of the “useful idiot”* were on the ball that time, during our national cowing by shock and awe. I guess by some strange coincidence they might have seen it coming that time. Yeah, they got me believing it was as safe as in the old days, when people I paid with my tax dollars to watch out for the national disasters were qualified and eager to do just that.
Did you know your tax dollars for management of the entire mighty might of the U.S. government rescue capabilities are now residing cozily somewhere in the vast cavern of “U.S. Homeland Security”? In the old days that had been a Cabinet-level job, someone who would meet on a very regular basis with the very capable President to let him know yes, we're on the job and ready on a moment’s notice and here's a report of our latest activities and expenditures. These are times of “terror,” after all, as well as precipitous climate changes and a gathering national mood of anxious tension. We have been conditioned to expect a disaster of some proportion going off somewhere at some time in the not too distant future. Wouldn’t our disaster preparedness be up to the minute?
I have not been reassured in watching the horror of indifference, incompetence, and outright obstructionism unfold to learn that FEMA Director Michael Brown previously served as commissioner of the International Arabian Horse Association, a Colorado-based group that organizes breeders and horse shows, and was subsequently asked to resign (more info). This is the guy at the top of the emergency preparedness and response agency of the U.S. government—someone with absolutely no experience in that field, and fired from his previous job as well. That is where our tax dollars are going, folks. George W. Bush entrusted the national security and health and welfare of all U.S. citizens to a loser with no experience, no credentials, no NOTHING in the field of disaster management. Did the guy even show up at the office? Or did he thank his lucky stars for his great fortune in being a friend of George W. Bush and receiving that big taxpayer-supplied paycheck every week without having to know anything or do anything?
I am sick, SICK, at what might have been, what SHOULD have been, and how heartbreakingly obvious it all is. Tens of thousands (I understand now the number was about 60,000) trapped in the New Orleans Superdome obviously need water and food—how could anyone in a position to do so have hesitated in the slightest to do absolutely everything necessary to see that those supplies were there the day after the hurricane? We, the mighty U.S., got supplies to tsunami victims in Asia within two days but could not do so for our own citizens?
Batillions of citizens towing flotillas of boats, U-Hauls of food, clothing, medical supplies, cots and bedding, volunteer first responders, policemen, sheriffs, rescue personnel—all of these converged quickly outside of New Orleans from the far corners of the U.S. The rescue of New Orleans residents would have made stirring news, we could have watched the way we watched the recovery after 9/11 and cheered every hero. The little smirking incompetent pretender to the presidency could have gotten away with taking credit for it all too, we really wouldn't have cared that much because the important job of pulling together to save lives and give aid and comfort to the suffering would have been accomplished.
But those good people who wanted to help were inexplicably turned away. How many thousands of people died needlessly after that? How many children and elderly and ill went several days longer without food or water? How many people trapped in their attics, with no way at all of knowing what was going on, had as their last thought, “why hasn’t anybody rescued me?” The useful idiot was “on vacation” until two or three days after the storm, yukking it up with the party faithfuls—but even after he checked back in nothing was done for another day or two! He didn't even give authorization for the National Guard to deploy until Day 4! It was by his orders, don’t doubt it for a second, that food and supplies were held up to coincide with his disgusting, outrageous carefully orchestrated photo op with hand-picked “victims” in blindingly white tennis shoes (those weren't “looters,” were they George? one spoke of coming to that area “looking for clothes”) while people lay dying all around him, and then having the table of food and the levee repair equipment REMOVED when he left.
The slimeball even joked about how he was looking forward to sippin’ drinks on the porch of the new home that Trent Lott was going to get out of this. Even in front of the entire nation this despicable scum can’t stop reminding everybody who he really cares about. If you don't understand “government by cronyism” you will never get a better lesson. From appointing entirely unqualified people to do the most critical work to providing taxpayer-subsidized perks and benefits for his faithful lapdogs to finagling legislation that benefits his fat-pork billionaire looter friends, this guy is a textbook case.
This whole disaster, from slashing the budget of FEMA and for New Orleans levee repairs and other preparedness initiatives specifically, to taking no action whatsoever for several days after the storm, to allowing the situation in a mired city to get so out of hand that “anarchy” ensued (but I’m not sure I fully buy that spin yet, this administration is so slick at creating the reality they want to sell) that the military had to be sent in in combat mode, to the needless suffering and death of tens of thousands of people—I rest that on the shoulders of him whose name I will never say again. I spit on you and turn my back. I demand, for the good of this country, that you RESIGN IMMEDIATELY. Knowing you, the pretender, assuredly won’t do this (even Nixon was more ethical than you), I call on all Americans to IMPEACH, INDICT, and IMPRISON WITHOUT DELAY. Until then, the entire United States is a Disaster Area.
* The original useful idiot was Lee Harvey Oswald, fall guy for the Kennedy assassins, whose network includes many still-familiar faces. The next major useful idiot was Timothy McVeigh, patsy for the Oklahoma City bombers. We have known all along, and everything about the New Orleans Massacre just epitomizes, that George W. Bush is nothing but the current useful idiot, and it appears We The People are in the crosshairs this time. Look behind the curtain and take action to rid our public offices not only of unqualified do-nothing friends of the the Bush family but also of dangerous war-minded ghouls who have their own agendas.
Incompetence? or something more malevolent?
Feds willfully obstructed rescue and aid efforts, rebuffed offers of assistance, sabotaged supplies and communications
The president of Jefferson Parish, La., Aaron Broussard, stated in an emotional interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sun. Sept. 4th that
We had Wal-Mart deliver three trucks of water. FEMA turned them back. They said we didn’t need them. This was a week ago. FEMA, we had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel on a Coast Guard vessel docked in my parish. When we got there with our trucks, FEMA says don’t give you the fuel. Yesterday – yesterday – FEMA comes in and cuts all of our emergency communication lines. They cut them without notice. Our sheriff, Harry Lee, goes back in, he reconnects the line. He posts armed guards and said no one is getting near these lines . . .
Cutting communication lines during a natural disaster is evidence all by itself of gross criminal activity.
Volunteer physicians are pouring in to care for the sick, but red tape is keeping hundreds of others from caring for Hurricane Katrina survivors while health problems escalate. . . .
U.S. Northern Command was in position, waited 4 days for Presidential orders—BBC, Sept 3 2005 The link is to a video interview with Lt. Cmdr. Sean Kelly remarking that everything was at a standstill until He Who Shall Remain Nameless had returned from his vacation (playing guitar, eating cake, and grandstanding his latest Medicare scam to dementia patients) on Thursday evening, Sept. 1st, four days after Katrina made landfall, five days after he himself had declared the Gulf Coast a Disaster Area.
. . . New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson offered Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco help from his state’s National Guard last Sunday, the day before Hurricane Katrina hit Louisiana. Blanco accepted, but paperwork needed to get the troops en route didn’t come from Washington until late Thursday.
California troops just began arriving in Louisiana on Friday, three days after flood waters devastated New Orleans and chaos broke out. . . .
Note how the excuse of “unruliness,” “anarchy,” “riots” is repeatedly given as a reason for nonaction. These clowns claim to be able to go into war zones and “create stability,” “restore order,” yet they can’t even manage an airdrop of food and water to natural disaster victims in our own borders.
No airdrops from the military—and no relief from the Red Cross, the resource I thought any disaster victim could count on: Homeland Security won’t let Red Cross deliver food—Ann Rodgers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Sept 3 2005
. . . “The Homeland Security Department has requested and continues to request that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans,” said Renita Hosler, spokeswoman for the Red Cross.
“Right now access is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities. We have been at the table every single day [asking for access]. We cannot get into New Orleans against their orders.” . . .
A contingent of doctors from the Washington D.C. area were given the bureaucratic runaround and could not get “authorization” to enter the area: Bad Communication Hinders Area's Aid Efforts—Michael Laris & Karin Brulliard, Washington Post, Sept 3 2005. The article also notes that a search and rescue team from Fairfax County was sent to an area of Mississippi that was not hard hit by the storm and wasted most of a week looking fruitlessly for victims.
. . . offered emergency, medical and technical help to the federal government as early as Sunday to assist people in the areas stricken by Hurricane Katrina, but as of Friday, the only things the feds said they wanted was a single tank truck. . . .
I was managing director of a Russian-American telephone company providing rapid communications in the former Soviet Union and have helped with disaster communications projects around the world. . . . When the storm approached the Gulf coast I called offering simple suggestions to government types (since this was obviously from all reports going to be a terrible storm) of how to bring communications systems up as soon as the storm passed. I recommended bringing in Blimps with portable cell transceivers and VHF, UHF and other types of broadcast equipment and also equipment to aid in the search and rescue effort. No one was interested.
When the storm hit and everyone knew the worst had happened, I contacted the Red Cross, (someone there hung up on me) and then FEMA where someone told me it was all up to the DOD -- and I wondered why the Pentagon was in charge of FEMA? I was also told that FEMA was being privatized and a number of the experienced staff trained in hurricane relief had been told they had to resign from FEMA and then be rehired by the private company.
. . . Then Putin offered helicopters, search and rescue personnel, water purification equipment, and doctors and so much more. Had the State Department allowed the Russian humanitarian mission to proceed, Russian help would have been on the ground a good 24–48 hours before FEMA was in many of the poorer and worst-affected areas.
Everyone here now knows that all international help was turned down . . .
note: I will not accept criticism for printing “unverified sources.” Any semblance of a free press died back in November 2000 and We The People have been forced to comb the internet and foreign press for any real news. Because BushCo insists on manipulating what we see and hear, the true facts about Katrina response and effects will have to come from first-person survivor and responder accounts. Though the press does seem to be having a bit of an epiphany during this disaster.
As a flooded New Orleans sinks further into despair, up to 500 Florida airboat pilots have volunteered to rescue Hurricane Katrina victims, transport relief workers and ferry supplies.
But they aren’t being allowed in. And they're growing frustrated.
“We cannot get deployed to save our behinds,” said Robert Dummett, state coordinator of the Florida Airboat Association. He said the pilots, who range from commercial airboat operators to weekend pleasure boaters, “are physically sick, watching the New Orleans coverage and knowing that the resources to help these poor people is sitting right in our driveways.”
On standby since Monday, the pilots — many from Central Florida — have spent thousands of their own dollars stocking their boats and swamp buggies with food, water, medical supplies and fuel.
But the Federal Emergency Management Agency will not authorize the airboaters to enter New Orleans. . . .
LEESBURG, Va. (AP) - A group of Loudoun County sheriff's deputies heading to Louisiana to help maintain order among hurricane refugees had to turn around at the Virginia border when they couldn't get confirmation from emergency management officials, the Loudoun County sheriff said.
After attempting for 12 hours to reach officials at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Louisiana Emergency Operations Center, the deputies were told to head home . . .
The deputies were to be sworn in locally as law enforcement officers in Jefferson Parish, La. near New Orleans. Their assistance had been requested by the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department through the National Sheriff’s Association in an Aug. 31 letter . . .
Thus was exposed the lie that “security” was a top concern.
. . . There are supplies sitting in Baton Rouge for the folks in New Orleans, but the National Guard has the city surrounded and is not letting anyone in or out. They are turning away people with supplies, claiming it is too dangerous. If we have planes that can drop bombs on people in Iraq, certainly we can air drop supplies into the city. Our goverment is KILLING the people of New Orleans.
See the full story by a group that organized a supply truck, at the link.
MOSCOW (AP) The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency has rejected a Russian offer to send rescue teams and other aid in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, a Russian emergency official said Thursday.
Russia offered to send two transport planes with rescue teams, helicopters and other equipment to help deal with Katrina's aftermath.
. . . the president’s visit was a completely staged event. Reports on German TV showed open-air food tables immediately dismantled and taken away after his little photo shoot in Mississippi. Hurricane victims were left to fend for themselves. See the letter to War and Piece, Sept. 3 2005.
. . . I understand that the U.S. Forest Service had water-tanker aircraft available to help douse the fires raging on our riverfront, but FEMA has yet to accept the aid. When Amtrak offered trains to evacuate significant numbers of victims – far more efficiently than buses—FEMA again dragged its feet. Offers of medicine, communications equipment and other desperately needed items continue to flow in, only to be ignored by the agency.
But perhaps the greatest disappointment stands at the breached 17th Street levee. Touring this critical site yesterday with the President, I saw what I believed to be a real and significant effort to get a handle on a major cause of this catastrophe. Flying over this critical spot again this morning, less than 24 hours later, it became apparent that yesterday we witnessed a hastily prepared stage set for a Presidential photo opportunity; and the desperately needed resources we saw were this morning reduced to a single, lonely piece of equipment. The good and decent people of southeast Louisiana and the Gulf Coast—black and white, rich and poor, young and old—deserve far better from their national government.
Three tons of food ready for delivery by air to refugees in St. Bernard Parish and on Algiers Point sat on the Crescent City Connection bridge Friday afternoon as air traffic was halted because of President Bush’s visit to New Orleans, officials said.
The provisions, secured by U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon, D-Napoleonville, and state Agriculture Commissioner Bob Odom, baked in the afternoon sun as Bush surveyed damage across southeast Louisiana . . .
(I can't resist adding a link to a story and graphic about presideath Bushit stage-managing a phony photo exactly one year ago in Florida, following hurricane Ivan)
The press blasts Bush (just the tip of the iceberg)
Approval has now eroded even further, to 46% per a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll published May 24th.
Friday, June 3, 2005
A lot of water has passed under the bridge since I had to take a leave of absence beginning in November 2004. Despite my good intentions, the task of keeping current on Election 2004 irregularities, outright cheating, and anomalies was too overwhelming and at a time when personal responsibilities and problems just made it impossible to focus any attention at all on the vast theft and corruption that went on; I am so thankful that there have been so many who have had the time and energy to pursue this tirelessly, and I have updated links to their work on the Black Box Voting page. Where do we stand now on this issue of corrupt e-voting and manipulated election results, in anticipation of a fair and free Congressional election in 2006?—an incredibly important election, by the way, in terms of restoring democracy and progressive values to an out-of-kilter administration running amok with right-wing, anti-humanity legislation—check that page and see. And check your schedule to see if you might be able to contribute a little time to the effort in some way, too.
Can there be any doubt now that the whole stinking lot of them should be impeached and tried for war crimes?
First there are the revelations of minutes of a meeting at 10 Downing Street on July 23, 2002—noting that Bush wanted “to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. . . But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. . .”
The implications of this information for US lawmakers are profound. It was already well known in Washington and international diplomatic circles that the real aim of the US attacks in the no-fly zones was not to protect Shiites and Kurds. But the new disclosures prove that while Congress debated whether to grant Bush the authority to go to war, while Hans Blix had his UN weapons-inspection teams scrutinizing Iraq and while international diplomats scurried to broker an eleventh-hour peace deal, the Bush Administration was already in full combat mode--not just building the dossier of manipulated intelligence, as the Downing Street memo demonstrated, but acting on it by beginning the war itself. . . .
Michigan Democratic Representative John Conyers has called the latest revelations about these attacks “the smoking bullet in the smoking gun,” irrefutable proof that President Bush misled Congress before the vote on Iraq. When Bush asked Congress to authorize the use of force in Iraq, he also said he would use it only as a last resort, after all other avenues had been exhausted. But the Downing Street memo reveals that the Administration had already decided to topple Saddam by force and was manipulating intelligence to justify the decision. That information puts the increase in unprovoked air attacks in the year prior to the war in an entirely new light: The Bush Administration was not only determined to wage war on Iraq, regardless of the evidence; it had already started that war months before it was put to a vote in Congress.
It only takes one member of Congress to begin an impeachment process, and Conyers is said to be considering the option. . . .
This revelation of not only plotting (which we already knew anyway) but also intensified bombing was further fortified in a BBC transcript of Tony & the Truth, a series of interviews and investigative reporting by John Ware conducted back in March 2005 that was recently brought to the fore at DailyKos.
. . . The 308-page [2004 annual] report accused the United States of shirking its responsibility to set the bar for human rights protections and said Washington has instead created a new lexicon for abuse and torture. Amnesty International called for the camp to be closed.
“Attempts to dilute the absolute ban on torture through new policies and quasi-management speak, such as ‘environmental manipulation, stress positions and sensory manipulation,’ was one of the most damaging assaults on global values,” the annual report said. . . . (more details at Political Affairs Magazine.)
The convergence of these disgusting revelations—secret and duplicitous war and well-documented torture—is inspiring the unbridled wrath and disdain of courageous commentators—people of conscience who just cannot accept the infliction of pain and death and nightmares in our name. To wit—the most exasperated, most merciless, most passionate, tear-inducing verbal whipping:
The unspeakable brutality detailed in this story stems directly — absolutely directly — from George W. Bush himself. It is George W. Bush who lifted the protection of the Geneva Conventions from all those he has rounded up in his “war on terror,” including the literally thousands of innocent people (as confirmed by the Red Cross) devoured by his gulag. It is George W. Bush — this sniveling, smirking, shirking little coward, this cosseted little pipsqueak trying to prove his manhood with macho bluster and aggressive war — who is directly responsible for establishing this world-wide system of inhuman degradation and pig-ignorant bullying. It is his direct orders, his implications, his rhetoric and his will — passed down along the entire chain of command — that have instigated these crimes, these bloody stains on the national honor. Yet who among the high command — from Rumsfeld on down — has resigned in protest over these outrages? No one.
Meanwhile, predictably, Bush called the Amnesty report “absurd” and the whole rancid bunch of murderous tyrants dismissed it as, basically, lies and hogwash—but didn’t they suck up to AI in the run-up to their war! when they cited Amnesty International “and other human rights organizations” to give credence to their mantra of the “repressive” “brutal” “tyrant” Saddam Hussein, who was such a butcher, and such a threat to our own shores that all of our lives had to be turned upside down and sacrifices—ultimate sacrifices—made to get him out of power.
It was just a couple of weeks ago that Bush threw a hissy fit over some stupid Newsweek imaginary transgression, of reporting already well-documented U.S. abuse of Muslim prisoners. This is similar to the Dan Rather smear job, when an extraneous document giving weight to the known fact that Dear Leader got special treatment in avoiding any meaningful military service was trashed as “forged”—and thereby any real reporting or consequences of the true facts in the case of AWOL Chickenshit Chickenhawk Furious George were allowed to slide into the ozone. The Afghanis couldn't be upset about murder, rape, torture, occupation, and pillaging or anything, could they? They are rioting only because they think a Koran got flushed? And it’s all Newsweek’s fault?
This very issue, of the diversionary tactics of BushCo and its well-oiled smear machine when confronted with evidence of its atrocities, was recently well-covered by Terry M. Neal in the Washington Post, in Drowning Out the Real Issues, May 27:
A certain and clear pattern has emerged when a damaging accusation or claim against the Bush administration or the Republican-led Congress is publicized: Bush supporters laser in on a weakness, fallacy or inaccuracy in the story's sourcing while diverting all attention from the issue at hand to the source or the accuser in the story.
Often this tactic involves efforts to delegitimize the entire news media based on the mistakes or sloppy reporting of a few. We saw this with the discrediting of CBS’s story on irregularities in President Bush’s Texas Air National Guard service in the 1970s. Although the CBS “scoop” was based on faked documents, the administration’s response and backlash from both conservative and mainstream media essentially relieved Bush of having to deal with the story. In other words, the allegedly “liberal” media dropped the story like a hot rock. . . .
Regarding the impending military draft, I have heard very little, except for a letter that PNAC sent to Congress on Jan. 28 05 asking that they “take the steps necessary to increase substantially the size of the active duty Army and Marine Corps.” This is of course code for Draft, since the only way Congress can exercise its “power . . . to raise and support the military forces of the United States” is to pass legislation authorizing a Draft. I wouldn’t underestimate the power of PNAC to get what they want—after all, they pretty much have set our foreign policy thus far.
“Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes that you can do these things. Among them are a few Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or businessman from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid.”
This is brilliant! My only complaint is that he refers to them as the MSM—MainStream Media—when in fact they are not “mainstream” but the Corporate Media, beholden only to their corporate owners, who benefit greatly from a status quo of warfare and increasing control and repression of the people. They are not about to reveal the sorry underbelly of their own doings—the true extent of killing and suffering in their wars, the dirty deals, the excessive profits, the egregious rule-bending and arm-twisting and outright bullying and cheating. As a small gesture of consciousness-raising, we should call it “corporate media,” not “mainstream media.”
And you probably are aware that this same Corporate Media is poised to take over PBS, to mold even that last oasis of something halfway intelligent and noncommercial into their divine image of Profits.
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lucinda@blatanttruth.org
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