Mayday!

The Insufferable Silence
www.OpEdNews.com
Anthony Wade,
May 24, 2005

How much is enough America? How much is enough before we stand up collectively and say, “No more”. America has become sedated, tranquilized by a corporate media that keeps the truth from coming to light on an everyday basis. Anesthetized to the point that when the vilest acts perpetrated in the war on terror are being carried out by us, we just flip the channel to see if we can see who is left on American Idol. What has happened to our collective conscience when in latter day America we spend more time worrying about the freak show that is the Jackson trial then what atrocities are being committed in our name.

That is right America; this war is fought in your name, my name, and the names of every other citizen who resides in this country. Do you even remember why? Do you care anymore? Tens of thousands of people have died, over 1,600 of our own and do you even remember why? Does their blood scream out to you, as it does to me, as an American, as a Christian, as a human?

If not, then maybe the latest story out of Afghanistan will shake our collective conscience. You remember Afghanistan don’t you? That was where this great war started. We were told it was where the big bad guy, bin Laden was. As it turns out, as soon as we had him surrounded, we let him go. We continued though to bulldoze through the country and install our puppet government in the name of democracy. The reality was a little more stark, as this resulted in the return of Afghanistan is the world’s chief supplier of heroin. That aside, we were told that Afghanistan was a great example of the success of the war on terror. The real terror however, has been going on after the great victories.

As reported this week, on Friday, there was another incident of prisoner abuse that resulted in the deaths of two suspects. These reports usually break on Friday, so the media can ignore them and then switch subjects come Monday. Just another shot of anesthesia for the American populace. The deaths are not only disgusting, but they now represent what we have become, what our legacy is.

Mr. Dilawar was a quiet man with a wife and daughter who was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The place was Afghanistan and the time was during the Bush Wars. Driving his taxi past a base used by American troops, Camp Salerno, which had been the target of a rocket attack that morning; was his undoing. In a land dominated by an unrelenting foreign power, us, Mr. Dilawar was promptly picked up for interrogation. His crime was DWA, driving while Afghani. Mr. Dilawar was not an imposing man, standing only at 5 foot nine inches and weighing 122 pounds. That mattered not to his captors, us, who immediately labeled him as non-compliant. Apparently non-compliant is not a label you want in a U.S. prison in Afghanistan.

His torture started with over 100 strikes to his legs in a 24 hours period, while he was shackled standing up. Three days later, he began his fourth interrogation. His hands were slapped back up every time they fell below his head. They were falling of course because of the beatings and shackled positions he had been forced to endure for the past three days. He was violently shoved against a wall multiple times, because he could not sit in a chair as instructed by his tormentors, us. Of course he could not sit because of the state of his legs, battered over 100 times in a day. After 15 minutes of this, he was so weak he could not get up so they stood him up. It was then that the Sergeant stepped back and kicked him fiercely in the groin. Seemingly unsatisfied by this “interrogation”, the Sergeant then instructed them to leave the battered Mr. Dilawar chained to the ceiling with a black hood over his head.

Soon, he was crying out for mercy when his captors investigated. He said he needed to see a doctor because of his legs. The attending MP said he was ok and just trying to get out of his restraints. The next morning began his final interrogation. Mr. Dilawar was incoherent. The treatment was similar. He was beaten some more, choked with his black hood, and all in the name of you an I. By that time the next day, God had granted Mr. Dilawar the peace his captors, us, refused to give him for so many days. There was zero intelligence gathered and it appears the man had done nothing wrong.

The autopsy confirmed that death was cause by the blunt trauma to his legs which in the word of one of the coroners, were basically pulpified. Did you get that America? They beat this 122 pound man in his legs so badly that the tissue turned into pulp. The coroner compared the injuries to someone getting run over by a bus.

Mr. Dilawar was one of two murdered prisoners from that prison at that time. I will not review the horrific details of the other, except to say that it is no less violent and no less despicable. Most of the troops working there had decided that Dilawar was innocent before the final interrogation that took his life. They killed him anyway. They killed him in your name. They killed him in my name. By God, they killed him in Christ’s name and that is what has to stop.

George Bush goes to great lengths to tell us about his Christianity. Some say it is what clinched the last election for him. Jesus Christ is the Prince of Peace, not war. I have read the Bible and did not come across the word pulpify. There is nothing Christian about this war. Yet Pastors all over this country support this man and his policies of death and torture. It has to stop.

We were told that these wars are to protect us. Bush has done a masterful job of connecting two countries that have little to do with terror and making them the central point for his wars. The only thing that made Afghanistan central to terror was Osama bin Laden and he has not been there since we first got there and let him escape. Iraq had nothing to do with it at all and thousands have died because of nothing. In your name.

How much will be enough for you? Monday will bring a new day and a new opportunity for the media to ignore this story, which should be the only story. There will be a new witness in the Jackson fiasco. There will be more developments in the nuclear showdown in the Senate. Even if they manage to get around to it, will they simply tell us more fairy tales of bad apples? How many Lyndie England’s will it take to make you say no more? How many more Charles Graner’s will it take to break through this silence? How many more before we all realize it is not a couple of bad apples but the farmer that is to blame. When you draft memos designed to render the Geneva Convention “quaint”, you are the root cause of the bad apples. When you outsource torture you are the primary cause of the bad apples. When you invade countries that have nothing to do with terrorism and ally with countries that support it, you are the only cause of the bad apples. You are the bad apple.

Bush will continue to make grand speeches that defy the very facts that are occurring every day. His media machine will support it, and keep giving you the sedatives you are used to. Somewhere in a poor country that we have annihilated though, someone else will be killed in your name. They will be killed in my name. Where is the outrage? Why is there nothing but silence?

Will there be any outrage for a country that pretends to act in the cause of morality but behaves with no morality guiding it? Will there be any outrage for a President that claims to talk to God and then perpetrates such blinding evil upon mankind? Will there be any outrage that our media has sold us out?

Will there be any outrage for Mr. Dilawar, a 122 pound innocent taxi driver from Afghanistan, murdered in your name, for the cause of freedom. Or will there just be more of this insufferable silence.

Nancy Pelosi Speech to American Israel Public Affairs Committee
5/24/2005

WASHINGTON, May 24 /U.S. Newswire/ — House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at their 2005 Policy Conference last night. Pelosi discussed the relationship between the United States and Israel and the continued effort for peace between Israelis and Palestinians. Below are her remarks:

“Thank you, Amy Friedkin, my dear friend for so many years. Californians, North and South, are proud of your great leadership at AIPAC. And to Bernice Manocherian, President of AIPAC, thank you. All who care about peace in the Middle East are grateful for your strength and wisdom in guiding AIPAC. As a native of Baltimore, I take special pride of your incoming President, Howard Friedman, who will continue in the tradition of outstanding leadership at AIPAC. “I also want to acknowledge all of the students who are here. It is great to see so many young people taking such an interest in public affairs, especially on one of the critical issues of our time: peace in the Middle East.

“This spring, I was in Israel as part of a congressional trip that also took us to Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq. One of the most powerful experiences was taking a helicopter toward Gaza, over the path of the security fence. We set down in a field that belonged to a local kibbutz. It was a cool but sunny day, and the field was starting to bloom with mustard. Mustard is a crop that grows in California, and it felt at that moment as if I were home. “And then we were told that the reason we had to land in that field, as opposed to our actual destination, was because there had been an infiltration that morning, and they weren’t sure how secure the area was. And that point alone brought us back to the daily reality of Israel: even moments of peace and beauty are haunted by the specter of violence. “While in Israel, we met with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Vice Premier Shimon Perez. From them and from other leaders, we heard something I had not heard in a long time: cautious optimism. This was an attitude quite different from the one that confronted us when I spoke to AIPAC two years ago. “One thing, however is unchanged: America’s commitment to the safety and security of the State of Israel is unwavering. America and Israel share an unbreakable bond: in peace and war; and in prosperity and in hardship. “Prime Minister Sharon’s leadership of Israel at this crucial time has been remarkable. He has brought Israel through an extremely challenging period, and now he has made the difficult decision that it is in Israel’s national security interest to disengage from Gaza.

“In the next few months, Israeli settlers will be evacuated entirely from Gaza and from four settlements in the northern West Bank. This courageous decision is gut-wrenching for Israel.

“Israel’s decision can be a decisive milestone on the road to peace. If the Palestinians agree to coordinate with Israel on the evacuation, establish the rule of law, and demonstrate a capacity to govern, the world may be convinced that finally there is a real partner for peace.

“Any progress on the Roadmap for Peace must be based on real change on the ground, as evidenced by the establishment of an accountable, and reconstituted Palestinian security force that prevents terrorism, not promotes it. “Fortunately, Palestinian Authority President Abbas is no Yasir Arafat. He has condemned terrorism in Arabic, stating that it prolongs the day that the Palestinian goal of statehood can be achieved, and, at least as significant, stating that terrorism is immoral. He has begun to restructure the security services. All that is commendable.

“But he has not removed Arafat’s corrupt cronies from positions of power, nor has he moved to dismantle the terrorist infrastructure. That is, I am sorry to say, cause for concern. President Abbas has said his goal is to establish the rule of law, but he has done nowhere near enough to realize that vision, and now he is confronted with a huge challenge: by the end of summer, Israel will be out of Gaza.

“Can Gaza become a pilot case for self-government for a Palestinian state? Or will it become a terrorist haven, a launching pad for rockets into Israel? “President Abbas must act, for his own good, against those he must know are his enemies and are the enemies of the aspirations of the Palestinian people. “The United States, just as Israel, wants to see him succeed. That is why I was so pleased when President Bush dispatched Jim Wolfensohn to help with the Gaza withdrawal. It is why I supported additional aid to the Palestinians in the Emergency Supplemental bill that recently passed Congress.

“There are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist.

“The greatest threat to Israel’s right to exist, with the prospect of devastating violence, now comes from Iran. For too long, leaders of both political parties in the United States have not done nearly enough to confront the Russians and the Chinese, who have supplied Iran as it has plowed ahead with its nuclear and missile technology.

“Proliferation represents a clear threat to Israel and to America. It must be confronted by an international coalition against proliferation, with a commitment and a coalition every bit as strong as our commitment to the war against terror. “The people of Israel long for peace and are willing to make the sacrifices to achieve it. We hope that peace and security come soon - and that this moment of opportunity is not lost. As Israel continues to take risks for peace, she will have no friend more steadfast that the United States.

“In the words of Isaiah, we will make ourselves to Israel ‘as hiding places from the winds and shelters from the tempests; as rivers of water in dry places; as shadows of a great rock in a weary land.’ “The United States will stand with Israel now and forever. Now and forever.”

Comment: Pelosi’s comments provide further evidence that there is only one ‘party’ in the US - The NeoCons. Pelosi perfectly parrots the NeoCon line of “any enemy of Israel is an enemy of the US”. Pelosi unashamedly lauds AIPAC, a central player in Israeli spying in the US as evidenced by last year’s “Franklin affair” where a Larry Franklin, a high level Pentagon employee, was accused of passing Pentagon secrets to Israeli intelligence. Pelosi is a traitor. The Honorable House Democratic Leader also seems to be somewhat confused about the history of the Middle East. She states:

“there are those who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. This is absolute nonsense. In truth, the history of the conflict is not over occupation, and never has been: it is over the fundamental right of Israel to exist”

Pelosi not only openly lies about the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also attempts to manipulate her audience with the boring old rant about Israel’s “specialness” and “right to exist”. The fact is that Israel has asserted its right to exist by trampling on the rights of the indigenous Palestinians. If, as she claims, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is all about Israel’s fundamental right to exist, the fact is that Israel has established its “homeland” on Palestinian territory and Israel’s right to exist and the occupation of Palestinian land are therefore inextricably linked.

There is more to the matter however.

Sharon could have peace with the Palestinians in the morning if he so chose. But peace with Palestinians was never on the agenda. It is clear that Sharon, backed by rabid American “Zionist” politicians like Pelosi, has only one aim for the Palestinians: their complete destruction through a manipulated and manufactured war. The invasion of Iraq, widely recognised as having been carried out at the behest of Israel, was the first step in preparing for just such a war. As Pelosi intimates in her comments above, Iran is now the chosen ‘threat du jour’ to Israel’s “right to exist”. Clearly there is a grand plan that has been many years in the making. While the details may change from day to day based on the fluctuating conditions in the Middle East, all out war is still very much on the agenda.

‘Buy American’ legislation draws fire
By Ed Frauenheim
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
Published: May 20, 2005, 1:09 PM PDT

Adding fuel to the debate over U.S.-international trade, a tech industry group is blasting “Buy American” legislation passed by the House of Representatives this week.

On Friday, the Information Technology Association of America called the measure bad security policy and bad economic policy. The legislation, an amendment to the Homeland Security Authorization Act, would force the Department of Homeland Security to buy products mostly made in America.

The legislation was authored by Rep. Don Manzullo, an Illinois Republican, and passed by the House on Wednesday. It would require more than 50 percent of the components in any end product procured by the department to be mined, produced or manufactured inside the United States.

“With this purchasing prohibition, I guess (the department) will have to learn to do without computers and cell phones,” ITAA President Harris Miller said in a statement. “I cannot think of a single U.S. manufacturer that could meet this 50 percent threshold for these devices, and I doubt that those charged with protecting our safety here at home can either.”

Manzullo said the measure is in the tradition of the Buy American Act, passed during the Great Depression. “When U.S. taxpayers’ dollars are spent, we must make sure the federal government is buying as much of their goods and services possible from U.S. manufacturers,” Manzullo said in a statement Wednesday. “This legislation preserves the intent of the Buy American Act while helping to restore the U.S. industrial base and creating jobs for Americans.”

According to Manzullo, the Buy American Act has been undermined by pacts between the United States and other countries that allow the substitution of foreign components for U.S. ones. The Pentagon, Manzullo said, has agreements with 21 countries that waive the Act. Manzullo’s amendment would prevent the Department of Homeland Security from waiving the 50 percent “Buy American” content restrictions like the Pentagon has done without approval from Congress.

Conflict over global trade has resurfaced in the past few years, coinciding with the growing shipment of white-collar jobs like programming to lower-wage nations. In the past week or so, tensions over commerce have risen between China and the United States. China has been accused of subsidizing its exports by pegging its yuan to the dollar, resulting in a currency value that is artificially low.

As that trade dispute simmers, the U.S. tech industry is keen to see changes by the Asian giant–but opinions vary on how hard to push.

In the short run, at least, U.S. techies may be more the losers than gainers in global trade arrangements. A report last year sponsored by ITAA on offshore outsourcing of software and IT services indicated that sacrifices by American IT workers would result in an improved U.S. economy overall. […]

Comment: An improved US economy?! Unfortunately, the policies of psychopathic business leaders and politicians allowed them to profit handsomely while the average American suffered economically. Now it seems that the US economy as a whole will crash, and the masses are already being prepped to blame China and anyone else except for those same business leaders and politicians who have proven themselves to be so crooked.

In U.S. Report, Brutal Details of 2 Afghan Inmates’ Deaths
By TIM GOLDEN
NY Times
20/05/2005

Even as the young Afghan man was dying before them, his American jailers continued to torment him.

The prisoner, a slight, 22-year-old taxi driver known only as Dilawar, was hauled from his cell at the detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan, at around 2 a.m. to answer questions about a rocket attack on an American base. When he arrived in the interrogation room, an interpreter who was present said, his legs were bouncing uncontrollably in the plastic chair and his hands were numb. He had been chained by the wrists to the top of his cell for much of the previous four days.

Mr. Dilawar asked for a drink of water, and one of the two interrogators, Specialist Joshua R. Claus, 21, picked up a large plastic bottle. But first he punched a hole in the bottom, the interpreter said, so as the prisoner fumbled weakly with the cap, the water poured out over his orange prison scrubs. The soldier then grabbed the bottle back and began squirting the water forcefully into Mr. Dilawar’s face.

“Come on, drink!” the interpreter said Specialist Claus had shouted, as the prisoner gagged on the spray. “Drink!”

At the interrogators’ behest, a guard tried to force the young man to his knees. But his legs, which had been pummeled by guards for several days, could no longer bend. An interrogator told Mr. Dilawar that he could see a doctor after they finished with him. When he was finally sent back to his cell, though, the guards were instructed only to chain the prisoner back to the ceiling.

“Leave him up,” one of the guards quoted Specialist Claus as saying.

Several hours passed before an emergency room doctor finally saw Mr. Dilawar. By then he was dead, his body beginning to stiffen. It would be many months before Army investigators learned a final horrific detail: Most of the interrogators had believed Mr. Dilawar was an innocent man who simply drove his taxi past the American base at the wrong time.

The story of Mr. Dilawar’s brutal death at the Bagram Collection Point - and that of another detainee, Habibullah, who died there six days earlier in December 2002 - emerge from a nearly 2,000-page confidential file of the Army’s criminal investigation into the case, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times.

Like a narrative counterpart to the digital images from Abu Ghraib, the Bagram file depicts young, poorly trained soldiers in repeated incidents of abuse. The harsh treatment, which has resulted in criminal charges against seven soldiers, went well beyond the two deaths.

In some instances, testimony shows, it was directed or carried out by interrogators to extract information. In others, it was punishment meted out by military police guards. Sometimes, the torment seems to have been driven by little more than boredom or cruelty, or both.

In sworn statements to Army investigators, soldiers describe one female interrogator with a taste for humiliation stepping on the neck of one prostrate detainee and kicking another in the genitals. They tell of a shackled prisoner being forced to roll back and forth on the floor of a cell, kissing the boots of his two interrogators as he went. Yet another prisoner is made to pick plastic bottle caps out of a drum mixed with excrement and water as part of a strategy to soften him up for questioning.

The Times obtained a copy of the file from a person involved in the investigation who was critical of the methods used at Bagram and the military’s response to the deaths.

Although incidents of prisoner abuse at Bagram in 2002, including some details of the two men’s deaths, have been previously reported, American officials have characterized them as isolated problems that were thoroughly investigated. And many of the officers and soldiers interviewed in the Dilawar investigation said the large majority of detainees at Bagram were compliant and reasonably well treated.

“What we have learned through the course of all these investigations is that there were people who clearly violated anyone’s standard for humane treatment,” said the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, Larry Di Rita. “We’re finding some cases that were not close calls.”

Yet the Bagram file includes ample testimony that harsh treatment by some interrogators was routine and that guards could strike shackled detainees with virtual impunity. Prisoners considered important or troublesome were also handcuffed and chained to the ceilings and doors of their cells, sometimes for long periods, an action Army prosecutors recently classified as criminal assault.

Some of the mistreatment was quite obvious, the file suggests. Senior officers frequently toured the detention center, and several of them acknowledged seeing prisoners chained up for punishment or to deprive them of sleep. Shortly before the two deaths, observers from the International Committee of the Red Cross specifically complained to the military authorities at Bagram about the shackling of prisoners in “fixed positions,” documents show.

Even though military investigators learned soon after Mr. Dilawar’s death that he had been abused by at least two interrogators, the Army’s criminal inquiry moved slowly. Meanwhile, many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison. According to a high-level Army inquiry last year, Captain Wood applied techniques there that were “remarkably similar” to those used at Bagram.

Last October, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Command concluded that there was probable cause to charge 27 officers and enlisted personnel with criminal offenses in the Dilawar case ranging from dereliction of duty to maiming and involuntary manslaughter. Fifteen of the same soldiers were also cited for probable criminal responsibility in the Habibullah case.

So far, only the seven soldiers have been charged, including four last week. No one has been convicted in either death. Two Army interrogators were also reprimanded, a military spokesman said. Most of those who could still face legal action have denied wrongdoing, either in statements to investigators or in comments to a reporter.

“The whole situation is unfair,” Sgt. Selena M. Salcedo, a former Bagram interrogator who was charged with assaulting Mr. Dilawar, dereliction of duty and lying to investigators, said in a telephone interview. “It’s all going to come out when everything is said and done.”

With most of the legal action pending, the story of abuses at Bagram remains incomplete. But documents and interviews reveal a striking disparity between the findings of Army investigators and what military officials said in the aftermath of the deaths.

Military spokesmen maintained that both men had died of natural causes, even after military coroners had ruled the deaths homicides. Two months after those autopsies, the American commander in Afghanistan, then-Lt. Gen. Daniel K. McNeill, said he had no indication that abuse by soldiers had contributed to the two deaths. The methods used at Bagram, he said, were “in accordance with what is generally accepted as interrogation techniques.”

The Interrogators

In the summer of 2002, the military detention center at Bagram, about 40 miles north of Kabul, stood as a hulking reminder of the Americans’ improvised hold over Afghanistan.

Built by the Soviets as an aircraft machine shop for the operations base they established after their intervention in the country in 1979, the building had survived the ensuing wars as a battered relic - a long, squat, concrete block with rusted metal sheets where the windows had once been.

Retrofitted with five large wire pens and a half dozen plywood isolation cells, the building became the Bagram Collection Point, a clearinghouse for prisoners captured in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The B.C.P., as soldiers called it, typically held between 40 and 80 detainees while they were interrogated and screened for possible shipment to the Pentagon’s longer-term detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The new interrogation unit that arrived in July 2002 had been improvised as well. Captain Wood, then a 32-year-old lieutenant, came with 13 soldiers from the 525th Military Intelligence Brigade at Fort Bragg, N.C.; six Arabic-speaking reservists were added from the Utah National Guard.

Part of the new group, which was consolidated under Company A of the 519th Military Intelligence Battalion, was made up of counterintelligence specialists with no background in interrogation. Only two of the soldiers had ever questioned actual prisoners.

What specialized training the unit received came on the job, in sessions with two interrogators who had worked in the prison for a few months. “There was nothing that prepared us for running an interrogation operation” like the one at Bagram, the noncommissioned officer in charge of the interrogators, Staff Sgt. Steven W. Loring, later told investigators.

Nor were the rules of engagement very clear. The platoon had the standard interrogations guide, Army Field Manual 34-52, and an order from the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to treat prisoners “humanely,” and when possible, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But with President Bush’s final determination in February 2002 that the Conventions did not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war, the interrogators believed they “could deviate slightly from the rules,” said one of the Utah reservists, Sgt. James A. Leahy. […]

Comment: Support our troops! Yes indeed. America’s sons and daughters, raping and torturing Iraqi children, beating innocent Iraqi and Afghani men and women to death, forced and abusive rectal examinations, ordering innocent prisoners to dig for hours in human feces, hanging innocents to ceilings and administering electric shocks to their genitals, tying a weak and frail 22 year old Afghan taxi driver to the ceiling of his cell and periodically beating him until he dies - and all of it sanctioned, or rather ordered, by the Commander in Chief himself. This is the nature of America, one nation under “god” indeed.

Toughening Its Line, U.S. Warns China About Currency By EDMUND L. ANDREWS
The New York Times
May 18, 2005
WASHINGTON - The Bush administration warned China on Tuesday that its currency policies were distorting world trade, and it brandished the threat of retaliation against the country’s exports if Chinese leaders did not change course in the next year.

In language far harsher than it has used before, the Treasury Department declared that China’s fixed exchange rate between its currency, the yuan, and the dollar posed a risk to its economy and the economies of much of the rest of the world.

The administration stopped short of accusing China of outright currency manipulation, a move demanded by American manufacturers who complain that the Chinese have artificially undervalued their currency to make exports cheaper in the United States.

But the new language marked a change in relations, which the administration has until now handled with painstaking delicacy.

“Current Chinese policies,” the Treasury Department said in a report to Congress on Tuesday, “are highly distortionary and pose a risk to China’s economy, its trading partners and global economic growth.” […]

Comment: Yup, it’s all China’s fault! We are meant to believe that the outsourcing and offshoring committed by American companies is irrelevant. We are supposed to forget all about the massive US trade deficit and the sky-high personal debt levels in the US. Above all, we must never even consider that the Bush administration’s war on terror has done nothing but harm the US economy and the average US consumer as mountains of cash are dumped onto the military and arms manufacturers, even as ordinary Americans can’t find jobs, must pay exorbitant medical insurance premiums, and watch helplessly as their financial nest eggs are obliterated by psychopathic corporations and their psychopathic pals in government.

Where’s All the News That’s Fit to Print?
TvNewsLIES.org
May 2005
To the Editors of the NY Times:

On the front page of every issue of your publication you proclaim that we will find “All the News That’s Fit to Print.” Unfortunately you have not lived up to that proclamation for quite some time.

I have a serious question for you people at the NY Times. Where the hell have these headlines been? (See below). Why have we had to cherry pick our news? Why to we have to read buried stories or international publications in order to know what is going on in our own country?

Here are some of the news HEADLINES that have been fit to print, only to be printed by the independent journalist, the blogger and various international publications. While on occasion these blockbuster stories end up buried somewhere in your 5 pound Sunday edition, they should be splattered all over the headlines until the issues that face our nation get addressed.

* NOVAK HIDES WHITE HOUSE TREASON! - REFUSES TO EXPOSE TRAITOR WHO OUTED US AGENT!

* CHALABI PAID MILLIONS FOR LIES ABOUT SADDAM! CIA KNEW ABOUT QUESTIONABLE INTEL! ADMINISTRATION RUMSFELD’S SPECIAL GROUP MASSAGED INTEL!

* RICE AND POWELL: “SADDAM IS NO THREAT!” RICE AND POWELL: “SADDAM IS NO THREAT!” RICE AND POWELL WERE BOTH FILMED DECLARING THAT IRAQ WAS CONTAINED, WAS NOT A THREAT TO ITS NEIGHBORS AND DID NOT HAVE A FUNCTIONING CONVENTIONAL ARMY. DID THEY THEN OR ARE THEY LYING NOW?

* P.N.A.C. EXPOSE! A GROUP OF RADICALS COMPRISE THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. WHO ARE THESE MEN? WHAT IS THEIR AGENDA? DID THEY SET UP THEIR “NEW PEARL HARBOR” ON SEPTEMBER 11TH?

* SADDAM STATUE TOPPLING STAGED! BUSH/PENTAGON STEP UP PROPAGANDA!

* DIEBOLD EXEC PROMISES TO DELIVER OHIO TO BUSH! CAN WE TRUST THE VOTE COUNTERS?

* JESSICA LYNCH STORY A FAKE! BUSH/PENTAGON CONTINUE PROPAGANDA!

* PHOTOS SHOW BOXES UNDER BUSH’S JACKETS! WAS BUSH GETTING HELP DURING THE DEBATE?

* CHENEY HOLDS HIGHJACK DRILLS ON MORNING OF 9/11! WHY WERE WE NOT TOLD!

* BUSH REFUSES TO INVESTIGATE CAUSES OF 9/11! IS HE HIDING SOMETHING

* BUSH FAMILY HAS CLOSE TIES TO BIN LADEN CLAN! JUST HOW CLOSE ARE THEY?

* DOZENS OF BIN LADEN KIN FLOWN OUT OF US AFTER 9/11 DESPITE BAN ON FLIGHTS! MICHAEL MOORE WAS RIGHT!

* TOWER 7 COLLAPSES WITHOUT BEING HIT! SILVERSTEIN ADMITS BUILDING WAS ‘PULLED’ WHAT DID HE MEAN?

* PENTAGON ATTACK FILMED – WHITE HOUSE WON’T RELEASE TAPES!

* NO PLANE DEBRIS FOUND AT PENTAGON CRASH! OPENING TOO SMALL FOR AIRLINER WINGS! FILMS FROM SECURITY CAMERAS CONFISCATED!

* 9/11 CRIME SCENE EVIDENCE ELIMINATED! WHITE HOUSE VIOLATES LAW BY DESTROYING EVIDENCE!

* BUSH APPOINTS FELONS – IRAN CONTRA CRIMINALS FIND HOME IN BUSH WHITE HOUSE

* SMOKING GUN DOCUMENT! – BUSH FIXED INTEL TO FORCE WAR

* IT’S OFFICIAL: BUSH LIED! SMOKING GUN! DOC PROVES BUSH FIXED INTEL TO FORCE WAR ON IRAQ!

* NY TIMES APOLOGIZES TO RITTER AND BLIX & EL BARADI! YOU WERE RIGHT!

* 9/11 REPORT DOES NOT ADD UP – CONTAINS HUNDREDS OF DISTORTIONS & OMISSIONS!

* IT’S OFFICIAL: US MEDIA GUILTY BETRAY AMERICA - DEMOCRACY THREATENED BY GREEDY LIARS!

Our nation is in deep trouble. Our democracy is being decimated by the Bush administration. We are virtually living under a coup. Evidence exists that supports the allegation that the past 3 elections including the midterm elections were tampered with. There is overwhelming evidence that our President lied to Congress and to the world for the purpose of starting a war. The Patriot Act, or more accurately the Anti-Constitution act is in essence transforming this nation into a police state, and our news media, the NY Times included, have not only shirked their responsibility to preserve democracy, but have empowered the eradicators of our democracy.

All this while we have as our leaders a group of individuals who had planned this radical agenda years before 9/11/2001. They had openly stated that their agenda would not be accepted by the American people unless there was a “catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor!” These men were responsible for preventing such an event when one took place. As journalists, do you not see the need to look into this? Do you not understand that at the very least, if we take the official story as truth, the events of 9/11 were very preventable. VERY preventable! As journalists can you not identify motive when you see it?

Your failure to act as our guardian has resulted in the creation of a new breed of journalists. Some are called bloggers, others consolidate news from alternative sources. These people have had to assemble the truth from multiple sources because our nation no longer has a single reliable news organization that is either capable or willing to carry the torch of the journalist, our guardian of democracy. For over 5 years you have lied to the American public by intentionally leaving a false impression with them. While you have thrown us bits and pieces of information, we have had to rely for truth on the international journalist and the few dedicated independent journalists scattered around the globe.

The rest of the world should take notice. The American journalism cancer is now spreading to the UK. The BBC has just had their budget slashed by the very people whom they are supposed to hold to account. At the same time, the mind melting FOX News brainwash machine is moving in. Soon, there will be nobody to save us. Soon, only the lone blogger, who has been wrongfully maligned by the uninformed masses with the help of the deceptive and betraying news media, will be the only hope for our future.

And so, I am appealing to the editors of the NY Times to remember Watergate, Daniel Ellsberg, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and the real journalists who protected the freedoms and democracy that you are so willingly helping to destroy.

You have the power. Look up the word journalism, reach back to the reasons you became journalists and start practicing journalism once again. Save the world. It’s your responsibility.

Comment: While the US media is certainly filtering the news presented to Americans, each of us individually also has the power and the responsibility to become “journalists” and seek the truth behind world events. As the author mentions, many bloggers have picked up the ball and become a refreshing alternative to publications like the New York Times. While we at Signs of the Times really don’t think it’s very likely that we are going to save the world, we do think it is important to shine the light of truth upon a world that has fallen under the shadow of lies and deception.

The film US TV networks dare not show
Thursday May 12, 2005
The Guardian
Adam Curtis has recut his explosive war on terror documentary The Power of Nightmares into a feature film - and is taking it to the festival. But he’s no Michael Moore, he tells Stuart Jeffries

[…] He was asked to trim half an hour off his three-hour series so that it could be shown at Cannes as a film by the festival’s artistic director Thierry Frémaux, who in turn had been lobbied by Tom Luddy, who runs the Telluride Film Festival, and Bertrand Tavernier, the great French director and documentary maker. “I know they both liked the BBC series I did before, called The Century of the Self [about the growth of the mass-consumer society in Britain and the US].” Was it hard to edit the series for Cannes? “If you spend six months making three films that you think have a coherent argument, you become convinced that there is nothing that can come out because it’s all so wonderful,” he says. “But I think the new version works - it has been updated and it makes the argument more powerful.” Are you looking forward to being feted on the Côte d’Azur? “I don’t know what to expect. I’ve never been to Cannes before. It’s not really a place for the likes of me.”

His documentary took as its starting point the year 1949, when two men who would prove massively influential to the establishment of Islamic terror groups and to the neo-Conservative American tendency that now dominates Washington were both in the US. One was an Egyptian school inspector called Sayyid Qutb whose ideas would directly inspire those who flew the planes on the attacks of September 11. Qutb’s summer visit to Colorado revolted him so much - he could see nothing there but decadent materialism - that he went home thinking that modern liberal freedoms were eroding society’s bonds and that only a radical Islam could prevent its destruction. Meanwhile, in Chicago, an obscure political philosopher called Leo Strauss was developing a similar critique of western liberalism (though without the Islamic answer to individualism’s purported ills). He called on conservative politicians to invent national myths to hold society together and stop America in particular from collapsing into degraded individualism. It was from such Straussian reflections that the idea that the US’s national destiny was to tilt against seeming foreign evils - be they the Soviet bloc or, later, fundamentalist Islam - was born.

But the film is even more incendiary for its analysis of what Curtis controversially insists is the largely illusory fear of terrorism in the west since 9/11. Curtis argues that politicians such as Bush and Blair have stumbled on a new force that can restore their power and authority - the fear of a hidden and organised web of evil from which they can protect their people. In a still-traumatised US, those with the darkest nightmares have become the most powerful and Curtis’s film castigates the media, security forces and the Bush administration for extending their power in this way. “It has really touched a nerve with people who realise something is not quite right with the way terrorism has been reported.”

For these reasons, one might well think that The Power of Nightmares would provide a usefully chastening corrective to the prevailing orthodoxy if it were shown on US television. But it seems extremely unlikely that it will be. While a two-and-a-half -hour film version is to be given a prime-time Cannes screening, and while the original three-hour series will be shown tonight on al-Jazeera along with a live interview with the director, US telly has run scared from showing it. “Something extraordinary has happened to American TV since September 11,” says Curtis. “A head of the leading networks who had better remain nameless said to me that there was no way they could show it. He said, ‘Who are you to say this?’ and then he added, ‘We would get slaughtered if we put this out.’” Surely a relatively enlightened broadcaster like HBO would show it? “When I was in New York I took a DVD to the head of documentaries at HBO. I still haven’t heard from him.” He has little hope that he will.

Did the BBC have similar com punction about commissioning the series? “No. And the response from viewers was overwhelmingly positive. Ninety-four per cent of the emails were in favour.” That said, some comments on the BBC message boards for Curtis are less enthusiastic. Iain Foster from Portsmouth wrote: “I have sat through your documentary tonight. I hope your programme is shown again following the next terrorist attack. You sound like the hedgehog who claims that cars won’t hurt you!!!! I’m amazed!!!!!!!” But the repeat screenings for the series on the BBC show a very different attitude towards The Power of Nightmares from what is prevalent on US TV. “What happens on US TV now is that you have a theatre of confrontation so that people avoid having to seriously analyse what the modern world is like - perhaps because of the emotional shock of September 11,” says Curtis. “People take so-called left or right positions and shout at each other. It’s almost like the court of Louis XIV - people taking elaborate positions and not thinking very much.”

And yet the documentary’s success in being selected for Cannes has resulted in Pathé buying up distribution rights to exhibit The Power of Nightmares in cinemas around the world. “They think there’s a massive market for this.” As a result, there is every possibility that his film will be shown in American cinemas, though Curtis worries that it will as a result become marginalised to art houses. As with the Channel 4 drama Yasmin about a Muslim Yorkshirewoman’s travails in post 9/11 Britain, it seems important that the topical Power of Nightmares be seen by as many people as possible rather than savoured by a relatively small number of aesthetes in indie houses. “I work in TV because it’s a more powerful medium and it reaches more people. It would be good for it to be shown on American TV, though they might think it’s a bit dull to stimulate discussion. Are they too frightened to have the debate?”

Curtis argues that there is a huge appetite for a serious critical analysis of the post-9/11 geopolitical world in the US. “It has been shown at the Tribeca and San Francisco film festivals. All the shows were sold out. There were queues around the block, and the discussions were extraordinary. Sometimes I would just sit back and let the audiences discuss it. But I was quite shocked that the audiences, very well-educated people mostly, did not know about Qutb, whose thinking, which was developed under torture in Egyptian jails, was a direct influence on Zawahiri, al-Qaida’s number two. ”

How will al-Jazeera’s audience respond to the uncut version tonight? “No idea.” Perhaps Osama will be tuning from his mystery hideout in Pakistan? “I’m sure he’d find it enlightening.”

Comment: We recommend The Power of Nightmares to anyone who hasn’t seen it. Although Curtis does not go far enough (he still doesn’t believe that 9/11 was in inside job), he lays out clearly the way fundamentalist Islam and the neocon ideology work together to create an atmosphere of fear that can be used by our leaders to manipulate us.

Vigil Held In Honor Of KSU May 4 Shootings

A silent 12-hour candlelight vigil to remember the Kent State tragedy is being held this morning, NewsChannel5 reported.

Thirty-four years ago, four students were shot and killed by the National Guard at the KSU campus. They were protesting the Vietnam war.

The memorial started Monday night to honor the four students killed and nine others injured May 4, 1970.

The May 4th Task Force, students who are putting the memorial together, said this year’s theme is the Patriot Act.

The kick off to this year’s remembrance began last night. At 11 p.m., students marched with candles to the site where the students were shot.

At noon, students will detail what led up to the shooting along with ringing the victory bell at 12:24 p.m. 15 times in honor of those who lost their lives in Kent State and Jackson State that year.

WEWS reported many students believe this year’s memorial is extra special because of the war on terror and the loss of troops in Iraq. - newsnet5.com
——————————————————————————–

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her
And found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know?

Tin soldiers and Nixon coming,
We’re finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming,
Four dead in Ohio.

- Neil Young
Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young

——————————————————————————–
Editor’s note: There is credible evidence that there was a pre-existing government plan for the National Guard to open fire on the students as a desperate step to put an end to the student movement against the war in Viet Nam. But many believe the public hearings held, were a whitewash and coverup. No person was ever convicted of committing these state-executions at Kent State on May 4, 1970. The U.S. government may be gearing up to reinstate the draft again due to its pending defeat in Iraq and its failure to recruit sufficient numbers of young people into its “volunteer army”. Will we see repeats of the Kent State killings by the government as the “war on terrorism” mirrors the war in Viet Nam? We are already seeing them in the “volunteer army”, aren’t we? There is one lesson we can learn from the Kent State killings and every war the U.S. government has conducted: Noone should have any lingering question about what the U.S. government is capable of doing to its own people. - Les Blough, Editor
————————————————————–

Comment: Vietnam, Kent State, September 11, 2001, Iraq. Killing Americans comes easy to those in power. Although these deaths are always either blamed on someone else or justified because everyone needs to make sacrifices to stay free, the truth is that we are all nothing but cannon fodder for the rulers and an energy source for their controllers. We are the means to their ends.

We can only continue to be fooled as long as we buy into their ends, the values that our materialist society considers so highly while clutching their Bibles and singing the praises of the Lord. As long as we believe the lie that anyone in America can succeed as long as she or he works hard, that there is an equal opportunity for the daughter of a poor Black family in Mississippi as there is for the son of a Bush, or that even if we do not become a celebrity, we are better than everyone else because, at least, we are American, the bullets will remain in the rifles and those rifles will remain pointed at us.

There is no democracy in the United States. There is no real participation of the citizen in the political process. By and large, most people don’t care. They elect a congressman or a president to take care of business for a few years and then either re-elect him or change horses. Decisions are taken behind closed doors, and when Bush makes a public appearance to discuss his policies, he presents his case in front of hand-picked zombies who take his smirk for a show of concern and his psychopathic inability to express empathy as proof that he is “one of us”. Bush is president because of two rigged elections not because he was elected.

Those who attempt to stand up to this wall of contempt for individual rights and the principles upon which their country was founded are hustled out of the audience, thrown into pens for “free speech”, and ridiculed with spiteful glee by right-wing pundits on the airwaves. They are denounced as un-American and suggestions are made that they either be thrown into jail or be killed. Freedom of speech means the freedom to agree with the war president, the former AWOL National Guardsman, now commander-in-chief, with a thing for uniforms and maybe even the men in them or out of them.

Can enough Americans wake up to the truth of what is happening in their country to change the course? We doubt it. Even if they wake up, the fanatics are still in power and a few more dead protestors aren’t going to make them lose any sleep. The alphabet soup agencies are likely scouring the Internet for voices of dissent and compiling the lists of those to be hauled in during the first sweep, and the second, and the third…. The Democrats are as corrupt as the Republicans. What choice do Americans have on the political landscape?

A future crisis provoked by an economic crash or some un-dreamed of natural disaster (by those who aren’t following very closely the news about meteor sightings, or volcano and earthquake threat) could shift the political and natural landscape in the blink of an eye. However, the powers that be are very likely fully aware of the possibility of such dangers and are probably making their plans as you read these lines.

The next time around, four dead in Ohio may seem like nothing.

The Silent Scream of Numbers
The 2004 election was stolen — will someone please tell the media?
by Robert C. Koehler

As they slowly hack democracy to death, we’re as alone — we citizens — as we’ve ever been, protected only by the dust-covered clichés of the nation’s founding: “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

It’s time to blow off the dust and start paying the price.

The media are not on our side. The politicians are not on our side. It’s just us, connecting the dots, fitting the fragments together, crunching the numbers, wanting to know why there were so many irregularities in the last election and why these glitches and dirty tricks and wacko numbers had not just an anti-Kerry but a racist tinge. This is not about partisan politics. It’s more like: “Oh no, this can’t be true.”

I just got back from what was officially called the National Election Reform Conference, in Nashville, Tenn., an extraordinary pulling together of disparate voting-rights activists — 30 states were represented, 15 red and 15 blue — sponsored by a Nashville group called Gathering To Save Our Democracy. It had the feel of 1775: citizen patriots taking matters into their own hands to reclaim the republic. This was the level of its urgency.

Was the election of 2004 stolen? Thus is the question framed by those who don’t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener’s eyeballs roll. So let’s not ask that question.

Let’s simply ask why the lines were so long and the voting machines so few in Columbus and Cleveland and inner-city and college precincts across the country, especially in the swing states, causing an estimated one-third of the voters in these precincts to drop out of line without casting a ballot; why so many otherwise Democratic ballots, thousands and thousands in Ohio alone, but by no means only in Ohio, recorded no vote for president (as though people with no opinion on the presidential race waited in line for three or six or eight hours out of a fervor to have their say in the race for county commissioner); and why virtually every voter complaint about electronic voting machine malfunction indicated an unauthorized vote switch from Kerry to Bush.

This, mind you, is just for starters. We might also ask why so many Ph.D.-level mathematicians and computer programmers and other numbers-savvy scientists are saying that the numbers don’t make sense (see, for instance, www.northnet.org/minstrel, the Web site of Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, lead statistician in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit challenging the Ohio election results). Indeed, the movement to investigate the 2004 election is led by such people, because the numbers are screaming at them that something is wrong.

And we might, no, we must, ask — with more seriousness than the media have asked — about those exit polls, which in years past were extraordinarily accurate but last November went haywire, predicting Kerry by roughly the margin by which he ultimately lost to Bush. This swing is out of the realm of random chance, forcing chagrined pollsters to hypothesize a “shy Republican” factor as the explanation; and the media have bought this evidence-free absurdity because it spares them the need to think about the F-word: fraud.

And the numbers are still haywire. A few days ago, Terry Neal wrote in the Washington Post about Bush’s inexplicably low approval rating in the latest Gallup poll, 45 percent, vs. a 49 percent disapproval rating. This is, by a huge margin, the worst rating at this point in a president’s second term ever recorded by Gallup, dating back to Truman.

“What’s wrong with this picture?” asks exit polling expert Jonathan Simon, who pointed these latest numbers out to me. Bush mustered low approval ratings immediately before the election, surged on Election Day, then saw his ratings plunge immediately afterward. Yet Big Media has no curiosity about this anomaly.

Simon, who spoke at the Nashville conference — one of dozens of speakers to give highly detailed testimony on evidence of fraud and dirty tricks from sea to shining sea — said, “When the autopsy of our democracy is performed, it is my belief that media silence will be given as the primary cause of death.”

In contrast to the deathly silence of the media is the silent scream of the numbers. The more you ponder these numbers, and all the accompanying data, the louder that scream grows. Did the people’s choice get thwarted? Were thousands disenfranchised by chaos in the precincts, spurious challenges and uncounted provisional ballots? Were millions disenfranchised by electronic voting fraud on insecure, easily hacked computers? And who is authorized to act if this is so? Who is authorized to care?

No one, apparently, except average Americans, who want to be able to trust the voting process again, and who want their country back.

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts Ray McGovern
May 04, 2005

Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour.

“Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.”

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries’ leaders to “fix facts” to “justify” an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.

It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.

Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents—this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive “patriotic leak” of the war by giving London’s Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain’s CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration’s plans to make war on Iraq.

Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.

Juggernaut Before The Horse

In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction.” Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, “The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy.”

At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since “the case was thin.” Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.
[…]

Comment: Gee, they cooked the books. Coming from a good buddy of Ken Lay, we don’t find this at all surprising. It is the way the psychopath works. Any subterfuge is permitted if it aids in getting what he wants. This is the modus operandi of the Bush Reich. Look at the current debate over Social Security. Bush doesn’t care that Americans are largely opposed. He’ll continue finding justifications until the opposition wilts.

Taken from Signs of the Times