There is a formality to the Spanish language which doesn´t exist in English, especially American English.  Grown children who live with their parents still observe the polite form of you; people long familiar still address each other as señor and señorita, while an address frequently heard in shops and on the street would translate literally, ¨Good-day Gentleman.¨ It is also common to address people in a professional setting with their titles.  At the English institute I teach at, for example, since the students are used to using the police forms of address, some modifications of English are used only for us.  ¨Teacher Patrick,¨ is what the students call me.  In English we are not used to saying that, but in Spanish it is normal to address people by their titles.  It is an unwritten rule that staff only speak in English yet we still address the general administrators as señora and señorita, since in English the words Mrs and Madam mean something slightly different.  In a culture where there is respect, the language reflecting that respect materializes. 

Not everywhere, however, is respect.  Many women have confided in me that infedility (sometimes called machismo) is a big problem.  The maturity among women, though, is very high.  They want to marry young and have children.  As long as they are single they still live with their parents.  There is never any question of moving out.  They help provide for their families, cleaning the house and help take care of their siblings.  Peru has one of the highest fertility rates in the world and so big families are normal.  The level of maturity among the average man, however, is very low.  After marriage, the men frequently abandon their families, have affairs and cat calls and sexual harassment is normal.  Still, it would be wrong to characterize all Peruvian men in this way.  The ones with more education often have a boyish quality about them and it is very easy to make friends and go do things.

Because of the unfortunate economic situation in Peru, many Peruvians dream of slipping away to the United States, often moving back for retirement.  But they still hold onto their identity wherever they are.  It is interesting:  the general consesus among Peruvians is that the government and its institutions (including the press, which is thought of as an arm of the state) are intrinsically corrupt.  ¨Of course our leaders are all theives and crooks,¨ seems to be the reigning consensus.  If you say good things about the government, they will assume you are working for the government.  Yet they still hang Peruvian flags (especially during the month of July, their independence month) and wear buttons that say ¨Proud to be Peruvian¨ and ¨Made in Peru¨.  They are capable, more easily than Americans, of distinguishing between love of their country and a realistic view of their government.  This is a far cry from how it is in the United States, where handing out DVD´s and pamphlets criticizing the government often got me labelled ¨anti-American¨.  Anti-American is a very interesting phrase.  Noam Chomsky, a world reknowned linguist, did an interesting study in one of his CD lectures showing that the use of the prefix anti only preceeds countries with a deep totalitarian strain.  It is not taken seriously anywhere else.  If one called a Peruvian or Ecuadorian, for example, ¨anti-Peruvian¨ or ¨anti-Ecuadorian¨ for critisizing their government, the result would be to meet with laughter or ridicule.  Even when the policies of their leaders drive the citisens of these countries to North America to seek a better life, they still consider themselves true Patriots.  They are able to clearly distinguish between the love of the things in their culture to affirm and a realistic view of their leaders.  It is a distinction many Americans are still incapbable of making.  Even among the left and the peace movement, one often hears things like, ¨I hate America and everything it stands for¨.  In short, these distinctions between love of one´s country and a blind faith in our leadership, or letting the bad decisions of the leadership affect one´s love of one´s country on the other hand, is a lessons most Americans would do well to learn.  It should be underscored that the real haters of the United States, are the political leadership.  At this point there should be little doubt of that, especially after it has been revealed by Semor Hersh, a Politzer prze winning jounralist, that Dick Cheney recently proposed, during a secret meeting, building American ships in the style of the Iranian navy and staffing them with Navy Seals disguised as Iranians and having them go ape on American troops.  This was nothing short of a proposed terrorist attack on the United States.  He wanted it as a causes belli for a new war with Iran.  It was overided by Bush, who on Sep 10th and 11th was on Florida while his father, King George the First, and Dick Cheney slept in the White House and conducted secret underground meetings.  We know the meetings were underground, at least for part of the time, because of leaks and whistle-blowers, even some public ones from cabinet ministers.

Over the last week, the Venezualan government, as well as the Bolivian government, have expelled the American ambassadors from their countries.  I don´t know how the press in the United States has portrayed the events.  It is reflected negatively here by a press owned by an oligarchy, yet information is easier to come by.  I don´t think we should be too quick to blame Hugo Chaves and Evo Moralis for the decisions.  After an intense 60 years of the United States interferring in their countries, taking over national businesses—often violently—and making them US businesses, can you blame them if their threshold of tolerance is very low?  Probably if the world new that the United States was carrying out terrorist attacks on its own citizens and proposing more, the platitudes about peace and political advice, from the Caucases to South America, would seem more what it is: pompous and hypocritical medling.

More of this can be found at www.neilslade.com

THE PSYCHOLOGY of 9/11 Perception

¨On Sep 11th 2001 the world saw evil.¨  These are the first words to a hip-hop song perfored at the end of the second edition of the internet blockbuster Loose Change.  The most downloaded film of all time, Loose Change was viewed over a million times on google video with Korean subtitles, a success that led google into overt censorship.   

¨On sep 11th the world saw evil,¨ perhaps more than we realized at first.  Aside from the initial tole, the crime has been compounded and multiplied many times over by the sicknesses and deaths that have befallen the rescue workers, many of which were volunteers.  It is known that Christie Whitman, head of the Bush administration´s EPA during 911, had received memos warning her office of the dangers poised from the toxic air at ground zero.  Yet with criminal intent, she assured rescue workers the air was safe to breath.  Their lives could have been saved by only using simple white resperators.  Soon 60,000 of them will be dead.  This is a fact that has been noted by many conservative scholars, showing the truly bipartisan nature of the 911 truth movement. New tests performed on the 911 dust by physicist Steven Jones shows just why breathing it was so toxic and is going to be the subject of a new book coming out in January by world net daily invistigative journalist Jerome Corsi, of recent fame for writing Obama Nation and Unfit for Command. 

The final cut of Loose Change, which is completely different, opens by explaining how the hijacked flights were stacked with U.S intellegence officers.  David Ray Griffin writes about this briefly in his book The New Pearl Harbor, saying that on three of the four hijacked flights just happened to be the heads of the armies remote control airplane division, flying incognito on 9-11.  So while none of the flights lists contained any Arab names, and as many as six of the supposed hijackers have turned up alive in various parts of the world according to the BBC, the flight lists did contain the top coordinators for the military´s semi-secret project of developing remote control civilian and military aircraft.  This raises very interesting questions about the burden of proof.  And while Bin Laden denied having anything to do with the attacks, there were a group of people who shortly before 9-11 had been calling for just such an attack.  They are known as neo-cons. 

In 2000 a group of neo-cons, calling themselves The Project for the New American Century, wrote a paper advocating full-spectrum dominance over the word´s land, sea, air and space, they advocated putting bombs in outer space and aiming them at earth, as well as clusters of mettal telephone polls to cause meatore like events which they called ¨rods from God¨, to create, in their words, economic hemogony.  They wrote that they needed ¨a new Pearl Harbor even¨ in order for the American people to accept their goals.  I´d like to now quote from an article I found about this group.  the whole article can be found at…http://empireburlesquenow.blogspot.com/2005/03/dark-passage-pnacs-blueprint-for.html

¨Not since Mein Kampf has a geopolitical punch been so blatantly telegraphed, years ahead of the blow.

Adolf Hitler clearly spelled out his plans to destroy the Jews and launch wars of conquest to secure German domination of world affairs in his 1925 book, long before he ever assumed power. Despite the zig-zags of rhetoric he later employed, the various PR spins and temporary justifications offered for this or that particular policy, any attentive reader of his vile regurgitation could have divined his intentions as he drove his country – and the world – to murderous upheaval.

Similarly – in method, if not entirely in substance – the Bush Regime’s foreign policy is also being carried out according to a strict blueprint first written ten years ago, then renewed a few months before the Regime was installed in power by the judicial coup of December 2000.

What does the plan call for? An attack on Iraq. Vast increases in military spending. Planting new American bases all over the world, from the jungles of South America to the steppes of Central Asia. Embracing the concept of “pre-emptive war” and unilateral action as cornerstones of national strategy.

These policies may seem like reactions to the “changed world” confronting America after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. But in fact, each one of them – and many other policies now being advanced by the Bush Administration – was planned long before the first plane ever struck the doomed Twin Towers.

They are the handiwork of an obscure but influential conservative group called Project for the New American Century (PNAC), whose members – including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – now sit in the highest reaches of power. The papers they produced during the 1990s are like a roadmap of the course that America is following – a course which PNAC hopes will lead to a “benign” but utterly dominant “American Empire.”

The Unipolar Moment
Not surprisingly, the roots of PNAC go back to the first Bush Administration. In 1992, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney asked two of his top aides, Paul Wolfowitz (now assistant secretary of Defense) and Lewis Libby (now Cheney’s chief of staff), to draw up a “Defense Guidance Plan” to shape American strategy in the post-Cold War world. They produced an aggressive, ambitious document calling for the unilateral use of American military might to “discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Military intervention would be “a constant fixture” of what Wolfowitz and Libby called a “new order” which the United States – not the United Nations – would “establish and protect.”

The goal was to seize the opportunity offered by the collapse of the Soviet Union – which left the United States without a serious international rival – and extend this “unipolar moment” of American dominance for decades to come; indeed, into a “New American Century.”

The report was leaked in the midst of the 1992 presidential campaign, sparking controversy over its “imperial ambitions,” and was publicly disowned by President George H.W. Bush. After the Bush team was defeated by Bill Clinton, a lame-duck Cheney finally issued a watered-down version of the paper as official policy. The Clinton Administration then scrapped it upon taking office.

But the unipolar vision of American dominance was not forgotten. During the 1990s, it was refined and expanded in a number of conservative think tanks – the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), the Hudson Institute, the Center for Security Policy and others – whose memberships often overlapped. And now that they were out of office, the advocates of dominance could speak more freely.

One former member of Cheney’s Defense Department team, Zalmay Khalilzad (now Bush’s special emissary to Afghanistan), wrote openly that the U.S. must “be willing to use force” to express its “global leadership” and preclude the rise of potential rivals. Others, such as former Reagan official and AEI stalwart Richard Perle (now head of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board) and Douglas Feith (now assistant secretary of Defense), worked with Israel’s Likud Party, drawing up plans calling for American-led “regime change” efforts in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Finally, in 1997, Project for the New American Century was formed as a focal point for disseminating the dominance ideal. It was a “big tent” of Great Power adherents: Beltway players like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, former Vice President Dan Quayle, and former Reagan education secretary turned public scold, William Bennett; Christian “social conservatives” like Gary Bauer; and the so-called “neoconservatives” (often former Democrats whose staunch anti-communism had led them to the Reagan Right), including Elliot Abrams, who’d been convicted of lying to Congress in the Iran-Contra scandal but was pardoned by George Bush Sr. (and now serves on the White House director of Middle East policy). Other notable figures joining PNAC included the Afghan-born Khalilzad, publisher and presidential candidate Steve Forbes, and Jeb Bush, younger brother of the president-to-be.

“A New Pearl Harbor”
PNAC fired its first shot across the bow in 1998, with letters to President Clinton and Congressional leaders calling for “regime change” in Iraq, by force if necessary, and the establishment of a “strong U.S. military presence in the region.” Then in September 2000, just months before the disputed election that brought George W. Bush to power, the group published a highly detailed, 90-page “blueprint” for transforming America’s military – and the nation’s role on the world stage.

The document, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” acknowledged its adherence to the “basic tenets” of the controversial 1992 Wolfowitz-Libby report, and advocated a series of “transformations” in national defense and foreign affairs. These included:

— Projecting American dominance with a “worldwide network of forward operating bases” – some permanent, others “temporary access arrangements” as needed for various military interventions – in the Middle East, Asia and Latin America. These additions to America’s already-extensive overseas deployments would act as “the cavalry on the new American frontier” – a frontier that PNAC declared now extended throughout the world.

— Withdrawing from arms control treaties to allow for the development of a global missile shield, the deployment of space-based weapons and the production of a new generation of “battlefield nuclear weapons,” especially “bunker-busters” for penetrating underground fortifications.

— Raising the U.S. military budget to at least 3.8 percent of gross domestic product, with annual increases of tens of billions of dollars each year.

— Developing sophisticated new technologies to “control the global commons of cyberspace” by closely monitoring communications and transactions on the Internet.

— Pursuing the development of “new methods of attack – electronic, ‘non-lethal, biological…in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace and perhaps the world of microbes.” Just this month, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld was complaining to Congress about long-standing international chemical weapons treaties which have “tangled us up so badly” and prevented the use of non-lethal chemical arms in subduing enemy armies – and enemy populations.

— Developing the ability to “fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars.” This means moving beyond the “two-war standard” of preparedness which has guided U.S. strategy since World War II in order to account for “new realities and potential new conflicts.” It lists countries such as Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea and Libya as targets for those potential new conflicts, and urges Pentagon warplanners to consider not merely containing them or defeating them in battle, but “changing their regimes.”

Oddly enough, although “regime change” in Iraq was still clearly a priority for PNAC, it had little to do with Saddam Hussein and his brutal policies or his aggressive tendencies. Instead, removing Saddam was tied to the larger goal of establishing a permanent U.S. military presence in the Persian Gulf in order to “secure energy supplies” and preclude any other power from dominating the vital oil regions of the Middle East and Central Asia. The PNAC report puts it quite plainly:

“The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.”

This is why the Bush Regime has offered a constantly shifting menu of rationales for the impending attack on Iraq: because the decision to remove Saddam was taken long ago, as part of a larger strategic plan, and has little to do with any imminent threat from the broken-backed Iraqi regime, which is constantly bombed, partially occupied (with U.S. forces already working in the autonomous Kurdish territories) and now swarming with UN inspectors. If the strategic need for the attack “transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein,” then almost any rationale will do.

Perhaps due to the presence of Washington heavyweights like Cheney and Rumsfeld, the PNAC report recognized that thorny political difficulties could stand in the way of implementing the group’s radical designs. Indeed, in one of the most striking and prescient passages in the entire 90-page document, PNAC acknowledged that the “revolutionary” changes it envisaged could take decades to bring about – unless, that is, the United States was struck by “some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor.”

The Path of Action
That “new Pearl Harbor” did come, of course, in the thunderclap of September 11, 2001. And the PNAC alumni now in government were quick to capitalize on this “catalyzing event.” All of the PNAC recommendations listed above were put into place, with almost no debate from a shellshocked Congress and a populace reeling from the unprecedented assault on American security. In the very first days following the attack, Rumsfeld urged the Bush cabinet to make “Iraq a principal target of the first round in the war against terrorism,” despite the lack of any proof connecting Baghdad to the terrorist atrocity, according to Bob Woodward’s insider account, Bush at War.

But Rumsfeld was overruled by Colin Powell, who counseled that “public opinion has to be prepared before a move against Iraq is possible.” So the “war on terrorism” was launched initially against Afghanistan, where the Taliban regime was harboring Saudi terrorist Osama bin Laden and his band of international extremists. The attack on Afghanistan was accompanied by the construction of new American bases and “temporary access arrangements” throughout Central Asia, giving America a military “footprint” in the strategically vital region for the first time. At the same time, new U.S. forces were dispatched to East Asia, to the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere, and to South America, to help Colombia combat “narco-terrorists” and to protect that nation’s vital oil pipelines.

Meanwhile, at home, military budgets skyrocketed to deal with the “new realities and potential new conflicts.” The Bush Administration withdrew from the landmark ABM arms control treaty and began construction of missile defense facilities. There were new funds and more research for the militarization of outer space (dubbed “Full Spectrum Dominance”), and the development of “non-lethal” biochemical weapons. Pentagon technicians, led by another convicted Iran-Contra figure, John Poindexter, began the development of Internet “data-mining” and monitoring technology (which, despite some recent Congressional restrictions, continues today). And the U.S. announced a new “nuclear posture,” including the willingness to use tactical nuclear weapons – a move supported by the Republican-led House of Representatives, which approved Pentagon plans to develop the “bunker-buster” nukes specifically recommended by PNAC.

“The Savage Wars of Peace”
The existence of PNAC and its influence on the Bush Administration is not some “conspiracy theory.” It follows a pattern frequently seen in American history: a group of like-minded people band together in think tanks, foundations, universities and other institutions, where they lay out their vision for America’s future. And when they at last have access to the levers of power, they try to make that vision a reality.

What is different now is that the September 11 attacks have given this particular group an unprecedented amount of political capital – not to mention cold, hard federal cash – to put their long-held dreams into practice, virtually without opposition. (In contrast, consider the bitterly partisan political struggles between Congress and Lincoln during the Civil War.) What is also different is the essential content of that vision: the establishment – by force – of an American Empire.

This Empire is to be different from the old Roman or British models, of course. It will not entail settlement or direct control of foreign lands, but will instead offer paternal “protection” and “guidance” – backed up with strategically placed military bases and “temporary access arrangements” for the inevitable “constabulatory duties” required to enforce PNAC’s longed-for “Pax Americana.” However, the intent is not outright conquest, but the chance to bring “the single sustainable model of national success” to all the world, to set people, and their markets, free – as long as no “regional or global challenges to America’s leadership” arise, of course.

But there will be costs to taking up what Thomas Donnelly, the principal author of the PNAC blueprint, calls “the free man’s burden.” Donnelly, a former journalist and legislative aide, wrote in the journal Foreign Affairs last year that America should look to its “imperial past” as a guide to its future. Reviewing The Savage Wars of Peace, a pro-Empire book by journalist Max Boot, Donnelly cites approvingly the “pacification” of the Philippines by American forces in 1898-1900, in which at least 100,000 Filipinos were killed in a bid for independence. He also points to the U.S. Army’s success in subduing the Native American tribes in a series of small wars, and, closer to our time, the efficient “constabulatory operation” in Panama, which was invaded by the first President Bush in 1989. Similar “savage wars of peace” – pacifications, counterinsurgencies, police actions, invasions – will be required to maintain the new American Empire, says Donnelly.

And here too, George W. Bush has clearly echoed the thinking of the PNAC members who now surround him in the White House. Speaking at a Republican fundraiser last August, the President seemed keenly aware of the heavy price in blood and treasure the nation will have to pay to maintain its imperium in the New American Century: “There’s no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland.”

The Beautiful Song of War
These texts spring from the Dominators’ quasi-religious cult of “American exceptionalism,” the belief in the unique and utter goodness of the American soul – embodied chiefly by the nation’s moneyed elite, of course – and the irredeemable, metaphysical evil of all those who would oppose or criticize the elite’s righteous (and conveniently self-serving) policies.

Anyone still “puzzled” over the Bush Regime’s behavior need only look to these documents for enlightenment. They have long been available to the media – which accepted Bush’s transparent campaign lies about a “more humble foreign policy” at face value – but have only now started attracting wider notice, in the New Yorker this spring, and this week in the Glasgow Sunday Herald.

The documents explain America’s relentless march across Afghanistan, Central Asia and soon into the Middle East. They explain the Bush Regime’s otherwise unfathomable rejection of international law, its fanatical devotion to so-called “missile defense,” its gargantuan increases in military spending – even its antediluvian energy policy, which mandates the continued primacy of oil and gas in the world economy. (They can’t conquer the sun or monopolize the wind, so there’s no profit, no leverage for personal gain and geopolitical power in pursuing viable alternatives to oil.) The Sept. 11 attacks gave the Regime a pretext for greatly accelerating this published program of global dominance, but they would have pursued it in any case.

So there will be war: either soon, after immediately the November mid-term elections, or – in the event that Iraq’s new offer for inspections is accepted – then later, after some “provocation” or “obstruction,” no doubt in good time before the 2004 presidential vote. The purse-lipped rhetoric about “evil” and “moral clarity” is just so much desert sand being thrown in our eyes. Backstage, the Bush Regime is playing Mafia-style hardball, warning reluctant allies to get on board now, or else miss out on their cut of the loot when America – not a “democratic Iraq” – divvies up Saddam’s oilfields: a shakedown detailed last week by the Economist, among many others.

The Dominators dream of empire. Not only will it extend their temporal power, they believe it will also give them immortality. Indeed, one of their chief gurus, Reaganite firebreather Michael Ledeen, says that if the Dominators have the courage to reject “clever diplomacy” and “just wage total war” to subjugate the Middle East, “our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”* This madness, this bin Laden-like megalomania is now driving the hijacked American republic – and the world – to murderous upheaval.

Just curious why you are against women driving buses? You mention you like the freeness of Peru but then you mention something you like that isn’t exactly about equality and freedom… atleast for women.  Can you explain your view?

From children working at banks, 2008/07/09 at 12:41 PM

Thanks for the feedback Carl.  I am not opposed to freedom.   We would probably both agree that certain jobs are unfeminine, just like certain jobs are not masculine.  Being a fighter pilot or military general is a good example on one end.  These things aren´t absolutes but rather exist on a continuum.  Driving buses aren´t as obvious but they are still tilted in the masculine direction.  It always seemed not quite right to me in Portland where you have these really big women driving buses and shouting out orders, acting and dressing just like men.  They sometimes didn´t smile and you felt intimidated.  They wouldn´t stop for you even if you were waving, just because you weren´t exactly at the bus stop.  Buses here stop for you in the middle of the street and let you off wherever you want.  That is another thing you don´t see here, fat people.  I am not trying to be disrespectful or funny, but it is the truth.  There are no big women driving buses.  The women act gentle. There is no law that says women can´t drive buses or taxis in Peru, although I haven´t seen it yet.  What I do see in Peru, though, is women policemen.  But it´s interesting.  Instead of running around with tazer guns ready to zap you if you don´t cuff up or hit the ground the second they tell you, the women policemen here still act like women, wear earings and walk together with other women.  They direct traffic and help pedestrians who need directions.  When was the last time you felt comfortable going up to a policeman or policewomen on the streets in America and asking for directions.  That is what they are there for, public servants.   The whole concept of having police for conflict resolution and being public servants has been lost in the United States.  So while I agree that women should have the freedom to have whatever jobs they want, it is good that in Peru they don´t do the dirty work that men have to do.  The fertility rate in Peru is one of the highest in the world and they actually appreciate having children.  Not only is the concept of birth control completely unbiblical, and creates an economic situation where women are forced to work, but it was midwifed into our culture by Bilderbergers on the top of the pyramid, who´s reason for being is eugenics and population reduction.

They dispute and negate facts simply because they are facts, because they do not want facts to be facts, and they try with all their might to transform facts into hypotheses, into illusions, into fictions.

Justin Popovich.

When I visited the monastery of Fr. Jonah for the first time, now Bishop of Texas, I was overwhelmed when the monks presented me with a book of letters from the 1st century.  Expanding upon where Paul had left off, the letters of St. Ignatious and St. Polycarp offer a window into early Christian practice and make frequent references to ¨the wisdom and blessing of the glorified Paul…who, when among you, accurately and stedfastly taught the word of truth.¨ 

Why was it I had never heard of these letters written so soon after the passing of Paul? I felt cheated.  I had been around Christian bookstores all my life, around bible studies and deep thinking Christian people and yet the modus apparandi was to treat Christian history as if it stopped after the book of Revelation.  I´ve often wondered if the ideology of solo-scriptura had anything to do with this ommission.  St. Ignatious and St. Polycarp´s strong injunctions to follow the Bishops in the Catholic church, to avoid Hebrew/Jewish customs, along with their belief in the Eucharist as the real presense, would not have sat comfortably with many I´m afraid. 

Here is a quote from a letter by St. Ignatious.

Every kind of wound is not healed with the same plaster.  Mitigate violent attacks of disease by gentle applications…For this purpose you are composed of both flesh and spirit, that you may deal tenderly with those evils that present themselves visibly before you.  And as respects those that are not seen, pray that God would reveal them unto you, in order that you may be wanting in nothing, but may abound in every gift.  The times call for you, as pilots do for the winds, and as one tossed with tempest seeks for the haven, so that both you, and those under your care, may attain to God.  Be sober as an athlete of God: the prize set before you is immortality and eternal life, of which you are also persuaded.  In all things may my soul be for yours, and my bonds also, which you have loved.

The current fruhaha in the Caucases was occasioned by Georgia violently bombing South Ossetia, targetting civilians infrastructure and engaging in what amounts to war crimes.  This is the new face of war, weather on the Texas-Mexico border, Lebanon, Iraq or South Ossetia, armies against armies is pasé and it is the civilians which will inevitably bare the brunt of nations´ power struggles.  It doesn´t make sense, but then war is not supposed to make sense.  Neither, however, does the coverage in the American press make any sense.  Or the British press for that matter.  War breaking out is succifient excuse, I told myself over the weekend, to buy a London newspaper on the street of Lima, priced exorbatantly high.  But coverage in the Guardian was only marginally better than the yahoo news headlines.  I must be moving to the right, I thought, as I put down the newspaper slightly miffed, wondering if a particular column´s token to Marxism was really a joke, and wishing to be hearing the libertarian Alex Jones Show instead.

All the coverage was quick to condemn Russia, forgetting that George violently and abruptly attacked the seperatist Republic. South Ossetia then asked Russia for help.  In this way, Russia was acting on a precedent set by the west, and more specifically the United States, when it rushed to the defense of the breakaway republic Kosovo in 1998.  When residents of Belgrade sat on their front porches in the evenings and watched U.S warplanes dropping bombs on their city, Tony Blair and Bill Clinton gave flowery speaches saying that ¨a new generation was drawing the line¨ in the name of ¨humanitian intervention.¨ It is doubtful that Mikheil Saakashvili, the President of Georgia, will fare the way of Radovan Karadzic, caught last month in Belgrade and now in jail for ¨war crimes¨. The west is quite ecumenical in its choice of enemies and will one moment supports Muslims, like in their action against Serbia, and another time attacks Roman Catholics, central America in the 80´s, where churches and bishops were targeted, and other times fight with Jews against Orthodox Christians as in Lebanon and Palastine. 

What the media isn´t saying about the newly converted ecumenical west, though, is that US mititary advisers, as well as US privitized mercinaries, have been operating in the Republic of Georgia for some time.  In fact, it was the U.S´s dirty money which brought about Georgia´s own ¨rose revolution¨, amid allegations of widespread electorial fraud, and planted the current crop of pro-western, pro-Nato belicose leadership.  Since it is inconvieable to think that Georgia would take an action like this without the green like from Washington, just like Sudam Husaine asked permission before attacking Kuwait, it must be assumed that Washington played a role.  George Bush´s public words in support of Georgia which followed should confirm this.  But the fact that you now have U.S mercinaries fighting against Russia in Georgia, even as American warships are speeding towards the coast of Iran, signals something in what particular thought to work I know not, but in the gross and scope of my opinion bodes some strange eruption to our state.

A disaffected neo-con within the White House circle has told Semor Hersh, probably the most respected investigative journalist in the United States, that Dick Cheney recently proposed 20 difference false flag scenarios for starting a war with Iran, including building five US ships in the style of Iranian warships and dressing navy seals up like Iranians and then having them go ape on our navy, a process that would have most certainly resulted in the death of the Navy Seals.  The plan, according to Hersh´s source, was squashed by somebody higher up than Cheney.  Who might that be?  This goes back to what I have always said that, although Bush is misguided, he is not a monster.  It also follows from the idea of plausable deniability.  In short, Bush obviously had nothing to do with 9/11.  Cheney, however, may be more than a monster.  He may be the devil incarnate.

 This comes on the heals of the anthrax inside job/murder/suicide plot, so deftly covered by Alex Jones, only part of which was covered on this blog, but which is huge and leads to all sorts of other shady stuff coming out of bio-warefare central Fr. Detrik.  These are where the vaccines for babies are made, out of our bio-weapons lab.  Even as armed intellegence agents harrass anti-war webmasters and neo-cons are actually talking of putting in place draconian measures to shut down the internet, war with Iran may be coming as soon as October of this year.  All the legislation has been passed that would enable the executive branch to laungh an areal bombing campaign.  But Iran is no Serbia and instead of distracting from a domestic financial crises, it may precipitate one that would make the great depression look like a game of monopoly.

this reminds me of Alex Jones´ family getting death threats for Alex having the nerve to write about Bilderberg.  Some of the facts which made this website so threatening, like a million dead Iraqi´s, are found following this post. 

Information Clearing House editor victim of home invasions, warnings to “stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Thursday, August 7, 2008

The operator of a leading alternative news and strongly anti-war website has become the target of nefarious thugs apparently in the employ of the U.S. government who have continually harassed him and ordered him to shut down his website.

Tom Feeley, owner and editor of InformationClearingHouse.info, has endured public harassment, home invasions, death threats and threats to his family simply for running a website.

Counterpunch writer Mike Whitney has circulated an e mail describing what happened to Feeley in an attempt to draw attention to the matter.

Whitney writes that earlier this week Feeley’s wife was startled to suddenly discover three well dressed men standing in her kitchen who told her that Tom must “Stop what he is doing on the Internet, NOW!”

To emphasize the point, the thug pulled back his jacket to reveal a gun while barking out the warning.

Tom’s wife was hysterical and refuses to go back to the house. She contacted the FBI but was told there was nothing they could do.

According to Whitney, “The well-dressed man told Tom’s wife that he knew where her son lived, what line of work he was in, and how many children he had.”

Subsequently, two men in a parked car a block from Tom’s mother’s house were spotted using laptops and sped off when they were approached by Tom’s son.

A similar incident had happened four years previously, when Feeley was approached by a stranger in the parking lot of Long’s Drug store in Southern California, after being forced to remain in his car by an accomplice who blocked him from opening the car door. The man told him, “You need to stop what you are doing on the web”.

Tom said the man was overweight and had his shirt untucked. Tom was taken aback, but (after collecting himself said) “What the hell? Who do you think you are telling me what I can do?”

The man answered, “Tom, I’m just giving you some good advice. You should take my advice, Tom.”

Alex Jones has experienced similar intimidation tactics on several occasions in the past, particularly the scenario that happened to Tom in the parking lot as well as thinly veiled threats against his family.

In every single instance, the best response is to stand up and be vocal in the face of such harassment. Mafia-like thugs only continue to feed on those who put up with such treatment. The most dangerous thing to do is cower and acquiesce to the will of tyrants.

These kind of tactics will only succeed if the thugs think their actions can have any kind of effect. Every time someone in our movement is intimidated or harassed, we should respond only by re-doubling and intensifying our efforts.

I’ll tell you this about Tom Feeley; he is no nonsense,” writes Whitney, “He is the “real deal” and completely committed to exposing the mob that is presently running our country. He does not understand why, (as he says) “They are reaching down SO far to get someone who just runs web site”. But, the truth is, they are. Someone wants him to “shut up” and they apparently have the muscle to do it. He knows he is in danger.”

Feeley is ditching his cellphone and maintaining a low profile but to his credit, refuses to cave in to the threats and will continue to publish his website.

Drawing attention to Feeley’s situation is of paramount importance to ensure his protection and also to combat head on attempts to create a chilling atmosphere and intimidate journalists and website publishers.

Number Of Iraqis Slaughtered In US War And Occupation Of Iraq “1,251,944“

Number of U.S. Military Personnel Sacrificed (Officially acknowledged) In U.S. War And Occupation Of Iraq 4,134

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Amazing revelations have emerged concerning already existing government plans to overhaul the way the internet functions in order to apply much greater restrictions and control over the web.

Lawrence Lessig, a respected Law Professor from Stanford University told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California, that “There’s going to be an i-9/11 event” which will act as a catalyst for a radical reworking of the law pertaining to the internet.

Lessig also revealed that he had learned, during a dinner with former government Counter Terrorism Czar Richard Clarke, that there is already in existence a cyber equivalent of the Patriot Act, an “i-Patriot Act” if you will, and that the Justice Department is waiting for a cyber terrorism event in order to implement its provisions.

During a group panel segment titled “2018: Life on the Net”, Lessig stated:

There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”.

Lessig is the founder of Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. He is founding board member of Creative Commons and is a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and of the Software Freedom Law Center. He is best known as a proponent of reduced legal restrictions on copyright, trademark and radio frequency spectrum, particularly in technology applications.

These are clearly not the ravings of some paranoid cyber geek.

The Patriot Act, as well as its lesser known follow up the Domestic Security Enhancement Act 2003, also known as USA Patriot Act II, have been universally decried by civil libertarians and Constitutional scholars from across the political spectrum. They have stripped back basic rights and handed what have been described by even the most moderate critics as “dictatorial control” over to the president and the federal government.

Many believed that the legislation was a response to the attacks of 9/11, but the reality was that the Patriot Act was prepared way in advance of 9/11 and it sat dormant, awaiting an event to justify its implementation.

In the days after the attacks it was passed in the House by a majority of 357 to 66. It passed the Senate by 98 to 1. Congressman Ron Paul (R-Tex) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was even allowed to read the legislation.

Now we discover that exactly the same freedom restricting legislation has already been prepared for the cyber world.

An i-9/11, as described by Lawrence Lessig, would provide the perfect pretext to implement such restrictions in one swift motion, as well as provide the justification for relegating and eliminating specific content and information on the web.

Such an event could come in the form of a major viral attack, the hacking of a major city’s security or transport systems, or some other vital systems, or a combination of all of these things. Considering the amount of unanswered questions regarding 9/11 and all the indications that it was a covert false flag operation, it isn’t hard to imagine such an event being played out in the cyber world.

However, regardless of any i-9/11 or i-Patriot Act, there is already a coordinated effort to stem the reach and influence of the internet.

We have tirelessly warned of this general movement to restrict, censor, control and eventually completely shut down the internet as we know it, thereby killing the last real vestige of free speech in the world today and eliminating the greatest communication and information tool ever conceived.

Our governments have reams of legislation penned to put clamps on the web as we know it. Legislation such as the PRO-IP Act of 2007: H.R. 4279, that would create an IP czar at the Department of Justice and the Intellectual Property Enforcement Act of 2007: S. 522, which would create an entire ‘Intellectual Property Enforcement Network’. These are just two examples.

In addition, we have already seen how the major corporate websites and social networks are decentralizing and coming together to implement overarching identification, verification and access systems that have been described by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as “the beginning of a movement and the beginning of an industry.”

Some of these major tech companies have already joined efforts in projects such as the Information Card Foundation, which has proposed the creation of a system of internet ID cards that will be required for internet access. Of course, such a system would give those involved the ability to track and control user activity much more effectively. This is just one example.

In addition, as we reported yesterday, major transportation hubs like St. Pancras International, as well as libraries, big businesses, hospitals and other public outlets that offer wi-fi Internet, are blacklisting alternative news websites and making them completely inaccessible to their users.

These precedents are merely the first indication of what is planned for the Internet over the next 5-10 years, with the traditional web becoming little more than a vast spy database that catalogues people’s every activity and bombards them with commercials, while those who comply with centralized control and regulation of content will be free to enjoy the new super-fast Internet 2.

We must speak out about this rampant move to implement strict control mechanisms on the web NOW before it is too late, before the spine of the free internet is broken and its body essentially becomes paralyzed beyond repair.