The Sorrows of Empire : Militarism, Secrecy, and the End of the Republic by Chalmers Johnson
"Four sorrows, it seems to me, are certain to be visited on the United States. Their
cumulative effect guarantees that the U.S. will cease to resemble the country outlined in
the Constitution of 1787. First, there will be a state of perpetual war, leading to more
terrorism against Americans wherever they may be and a spreading reliance on nuclear
weapons among smaller nations as they try to ward off the imperial juggernaut. Second is
a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is
itself transformed from a co-equal 'executive branch' of government into a military junta.
Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of
war, power, and the military legions. Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States
pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges
the education, health, and safety of its citizens." -Chalmers Johnson

 

 

Can we talk!!

Do you like to talk about politics or current events? The web is great, posting is okay, but sometimes don't you want a real time response? If you do, come talk to us on the IRC channel #news_garden. Connect to Undernet IRC, type /join #news_garden, hit enter and there we'll be.

If you aren't familiar with IRC (Internet Relay Chat) the best way to get to it is to download mIRC at www.mirc.com. (It's shareware which means you can try it until you decide you want to buy it.)

Download mIRC and install. (It installs in a snap.) Then fire it up while you're connected to the internet. In the mIRC menu go to File > Options and you'll get a dialogue box. The first heading is Connect. There you'll find a scrolling menu with LOTS of different IRC servers. Scroll down toward the bottom and choose one of the Undernet servers. I find those in Scandinavia work best. Then hit "Connect to IRC Server" and in a minute you'll be there. Then type /join #news_garden and all your political chat dreams will be come true! The first time shouldn't take but about 10 minutes total. After that less than a minute.

Come see us. We chat mostly about politics and current events and our chatters represent all points of view.

We even have a pretty nice website here at www.newsgarden.org


Columns:

Note: Anyone who wishes to become a columnist
or submit a column or a response to a column
please contact Alllie.

A Real Protest

By Alllie

Much of the American public opposes the Bush Administration and Bush's murderous war. Many of us have taken to the street to protest, to no avail. The Bush Administration has referred to these protests as "theater" and seems to regard them as an insignificant art form they can ignore. They said the protests would not affect their actions and that has proven to be true.They don't seem to have affected their supporters either, especially the big money behind the Bush cabal.

What can influence them? How can they be stung?

Only by Money.

Two thirds of the American economy is supported by consumer spending and all businesses, except weapons and war, lead back to the consumer. Almost half of Americans did not support Bush's war or Bush, but poll numbers mean nothing as long as the neo-fascist Bush cabal holds power. Hitting them below the money belt would affect them and, especially, their wealthy puppet-masters.

So, let's hit them there. Let's boycott...everything. Let's resolve to do the following until Bush leaves office:

1. Buy nothing but necessities. No clothes. No new furniture. No new appliances. Nothing that is not necessary. No cars. No houses. Nothing optional.

2. Resolve to buy your necessities, when ever possible, from small, independently owned stores.

3. Get off the grid, get out of the economy every way you can. Grow a garden. Make your own clothes. Buy from thrift shops and garage sales. Anyway, with Bush deliberately running the debt up, there will be no Social Security when you retire, so you probably need to start saving your money now. Maybe in gold.

4. Barter whenever possible, to avoid paying taxes that only go for the war machine or into more tax cuts for the rich.

5. Spend no money for entertainment except that produced by artists that you KNOW oppose Bush and his evil policies. Go rent a George Clooney movie. Buy a Dixie Chicks album. Go to nothing featuring Arnold Swartzenegger. Buy nothing from Kid Rock. If you don't KNOW where an entertainer stands, don't buy their product. (A list of musicans who oppose the war can be found here.)

6. Minimize all purchases. Ask yourself before you spend any money "How does this help Bush and his supporters?" and "How will the taxes this sale produces go into helping murder innocents and enriching Bush's friends?" You exist for them ONLY as a consumer. Express your anger that way.

7. Organize a BUY NOTHING DAY. Show them the influence we have. They want to limit every freedom except the power to decide how to spend our money. Exercise that POWER. Show them. Punish the wealthy for inflicting this monster on us. Hit them in their wallets.

That would be a REAL protest, one they could NOT ignore.

*******************

Acknowledgement: Thanks to Aleister for his beta help.


© Alllie, 2003

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by Alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where, this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/allliecolumns.shtml .


 

Who's To Blame?

By Alllie

The United States is becoming anathema to much of the world. More and more people are turning their hatred on us and on President Evil. Before Bush we usually had or felt we deserved the world's approbation, for our good intentions, for our generosity, and for treating even our enemies humanely. Now we have a president who sends prisoners to be tortured, who brags about having people assassinated, who plans suffering and death for innocents in Iraq, who replaced the Taliban in Afghanistan with something even worse, the rule of warlords, and who has done nothing but harm and evil at home and abroad. We have a president who makes many of us ashamed to be Americans and who endangers us by the hatred he cultivates. But we are trapped by this evil idiot and his minions because they hold the reins of power. So who do we have to blame for that?

Should we blame ourselves? Since I believe many of the computerized voting machines are fixed I don't blame us. That would be like blaming a victim for being defrauded. I wish we had been more suspicious of these machines but people cann't be blamed for believing that we still lived in a democracy, that no one would really try to fix a national election, nor for (especially before the internet) being ignorant that the CIA has pulled similar fixes in other countries. So no, I don't blame the American public. We trusted. That has proved to be foolish but it wasn't unethical.

So who do I blame?

Well, first I blame the evil rich who spent a billion dollars financing a right wing tsunami, who put the power of their money in the hands of hundreds of foundations and felons to facilitate it. People like Scaife, the Coors, the Olins, people who deserve to suffer the same fate as did aristocrats during the French revolution.
Many foundations...few funders

Next I blame the intelligence agencies that have caused so much suffering and death around the world. By doing evil they became evil to their core until that evil came home to roost. I blame many members of these organizations. Their patriotism is nonexistent and their only loyalty is not to the nation or the constitution but to the wealthy, many of whom are at least part-time members of the CIA (Capitalist Intelligence Agency) very much like in the South they used to be members of the Klan.

Do I blame the Bush crime family? Certainly. They are such a nexus of evil that the more I read of their activities, past and present, the more shocked and horrified I am. They have direct links to everything from promoting Hitler and the Nazis, the invasion of Poland, the use of Nazi slave labor from the death camps, JFK's assassination, Watergate, bioweapons and even the attempted assassination of Reagan by Hinkley (The Hinkley family was so close to the Bushes that the day after the assassination attempt John Hinkley's brother had supper with Neil Bush.) With so many webs leading to the Bushes eventually the dullest of us begin to realize there must be a spider.

But more than anyone else I blame two people for the usurpation of power by the Bush crime family: FDR and Jimmy Carter. Twice in the last century the criminal evil of the Bush family became evident to presidents. In both cases the Bushes were secretly chastised but not publicly exposed, charged or punished. This allowed them to continue their evil ways and even to multiply them.

First: In 1942 Prescott Bush was charged with trading with the enemy for maintaining his financial relationship with the Nazis even after World War II started.* A bit of his money was taken but charges were kept secret. This allowed Prescott Bush to run for senator a few years later and win. I do not believe he would have been elected if his Nazi connections had been exposed. The more research one reads on this subject the deeper the Nazi relationship is shown to be. If FDR and his administration had openly prosecuted this monster the Bushes might have been wiped out as a political force. Forever. But he didn't. For this I blame FDR even if his his goal was placating a capitalists class gearing up for wartime production.

Next, President Jimmy Carter is thought to have fired CIA director George H. Bush for violating the germ warfare treaty. On October 31, 1977 Carter also began the termination of between a hundred and a thousand CIA agents for various abuses of power. No criminal charges were filed against anyone and Bush and these ex-CIA agents were able to slither away unpunished. They found a new home in the Republican party and an new goal of removing Carter from office and replacing him with someone of their choosing. (It was also in 1977 that Prentis Hale, right wing multi-millionaire and friend of fascists such as Franco, bought Computer Election Services, the largest producer and programmer of voting machines and vote counting software.) If Carter had filed charges against Bush and his evil minions instead of letting them slink away I believe the world would be a much different place and the United States would still be a democracy.

So, I believe, in failing to prosecute members of this rich and powerful family (not for the first or last time) that FDR and Jimmy Carter are those most responsible for our present situation.


*President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number 248 seizing the property of Prescott Bush under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The order was published in obscure government record books and kept out of the news. Bush Property Seized--Trading with the Enemy


© Alllie, 2003

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by Alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where, this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/allliecolumns.shtml .


 

Listening to the Lies

By Alllie

The evening of 9/11/02 I watched Tom Brokaw interview air traffic controllers for an hour. He had a group of about six controllers talking about their experiences on 9/11. They had controlled Flight 11, Flight 77, and Flight 175. They sat and discussed their experiences, what they heard and did that day. It was all very straight-forward. Brokaw also interviewed people in Air Traffic Control towers. All still (mostly) straightforward. Till he came to Flight 93. I had the most questions about that flight so I was waiting for the interview with its air traffic controllers. Instead he interviewed a woman who claimed she "observed" what happened. She was alone. She was not interviewed with the other group of controllers. She said she wasn't busy that morning so was watching what was happening to Flight 93. But 9/11 was the busiest morning in US aviation history as air traffic controllers tried to track planes known to be hijacked, tried to clear all air traffic out of the way of hijacked airliners, and tried to determine if other airliners were hijacked (initially about 10 others were suspected). Yet this woman "wasn't busy". As she spoke I became convinced she was not an air traffic controller but a government agent sent on TV to try to convince the American people that Flight 93 wasn't shot down. First she said there was no F-16 trailing Flight 93, that she would have seen it, that the plane seen was a private jet passing by and that she had sent it to investigate the crash. Every plane in the US had been ordered out of the sky, especially out of the way of the hijacked airliners, but a private jet was just passing by? And the air traffic controller who actually controlled Flight 93 said, the day after it happened, that there had been an F-16 trailing Flight 93. He wasn't interviewed. Nor was any air traffic controller directly involved with the control of Flight 93. And, since Air Traffic Control information is technically classified, no controller can be interviewed without the administration's permission. But instead of sending out the actual controllers they send out what, an agent? For a cover up? I was outraged.

Was Flight 93 shot down? Sad if it was, even sadder if it was shot down just as the passengers were retaking it. But perhaps necessary. But the lies. Bush's lies. Cheney's lies. This woman's lies. The press's concealment. The administration authorizing this woman to go on TV and lie…that is what appalls me most. That is why I don't believe anything they say any more. They lied during the election. They lied during the recounts and court cases. They have lied and lied during this entire administration. I suppose to them this is just one more lie and the Bushes admit to living by the Big Lie. I expect it from them but 9/11 seems …well …holy ...and to lie about it seems even more despicable than their usual slimy behavior. They lie and then try to use the dead heroes on Flight 93 to promote their own evil schemes and NBC seemed to be knowingly going along with it. It reminded me why I don't get my news from TV anymore. It saddened me for the people who do.

I was appalled.

****************************************

"Controllers have also learned that an F-16 fighter closely pursued hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 until it crashed in southwestern Pennsylvania, the employee said. Although controllers don't have complete details of the Air Force's chase of the Boeing 757, they have learned the F-16 made 360-degree turns to remain close to the commercial jet, the employee said.

"He must've seen the whole thing," the employee said of the F-16 pilot's view of Flight 93's crash."

FAA worker says hijacked jeltiners almost collided before striking World Trade Center

This story was quashed fast and the air traffic controller who handled Flight 93 was never allowed to give an interview.

"But what if the passengers gained control of the plane only to have it shot down by an American fighter jet? Is that possible? By the time Flight 93 crashed, all civilian aircraft had been ordered to land. Presumably, by the time Flight 93 went down, most other civilian aircraft were on the ground.

Military jet fighters had been scrambled more than an hour earlier. They were in the air. They had been ordered to protect the White House "at all costs," according to The New York Times. Flight 93, we're told, was headed in the direction of the White House.

Flight 93's "black box," the flight recorder, has been recovered, but so far the government hasn't seen fit to allow the press or the public to hear what was on it.

The government also refuses to give out the names of the fighter pilots known to be flying in the vicinity of Flight 93. Because we don't know who they are, they can't be interviewed.

Unanswered Questions About Flight 93

So they're lying not for security reasons...but for political ones.

"...why has the FBI told Air Traffic Controllers not to talk with the press under threat of prosecution? Answer: As a condition of employment Controllers are required to have a "secret" security clearance rating. As a civilian air traffic controller you are bound to know military flight information that should remain secret."

http://www.flight93crash.com/

But other air traffic controllers have been allowed to talk. They spent an hour talking to Brokaw. Were they allowed to talk because they didn't know that an F-16 shot down Flight 93 just as it was being retaken by its passengers? In other words, it's a political cover up. Not a military one. Not a national security one. The Bush administration continues to cover up the shoot down of Flight 93, which, in the heat of 9/11, was probably justified. Cheney has admitted he gave the order. Now they send an agent to be interviewed on TV and to lie while refusing to allow anyone to talk to the actual controller. For political reasons. How can that be right in a democracy?

"Residents and workers at businesses outside Shanksville, Somerset County, reported discovering clothing, books, papers and what appeared to be human remains. Some residents said they collected bags-full of items to be turned over to investigators. Others reported what appeared to be crash debris floating in Indian Lake, nearly six miles from the immediate crash scene. In a morning briefing, state Police Major Lyle Szupinka confirmed that debris from the plane had turned up in relatively far-flung sites, including the residential area of Indian Lake. "

Investigators locate 'black box' from Flight 93; widen search area in Somerset crash

Debris from Flight 93 was found many miles from the crash site, including metal and body parts. The administration claims this debris "drifted on the wind." But the debris field sounds like Lockerby Scottland. Where a plane blew up in the air. Not like the Pentagon, where a plane barreled in and there were no scatttered debris. I'm sure any forensic investigator from the NTSB could tell us the truth…if they were allowed.

The pilots that were scrambled that morning and were in the area of Flight 93 cannot be interviewed. The air traffic controllers who handled Flight 93 cannot be interviewed. Because they might NOT lie.

It's the lying that's making me sick.

"The Pennsylvania state police said debris from the crash has shown up about 8 miles (13 km) away in a residential area where local media quoted some residents as seeing flaming debris from the sky. "
Jet may have been shot down, says FBI

Flaming debris falling from the sky. But Flight 93 wasn't shot down. Right.

"Szupinka said searchers found one of the large engines from the aircraft "at a considerable distance from the crash site."
"It appears to be the whole engine," he added. '
http://www.flight93crash.com/flight93_secondary_debris_field.html#2nd

Right, a whole engine floated away from the crash site on a light breeze.

"In separate interviews Thursday, five residents who live and work less than four miles from the crash site said they saw a second plane flying erratically within minutes of the crash of the Boeing 757 that took off from Newark two hours earlier Tuesday morning.

Susan Mcelwain of Stonycreek Township said a small white jet with rear engines and no discernible markings swooped low over her minivan near an intersection and disappeared over a hilltop, nearly clipping the tops of trees lining the ridge.

It was less than a minute later, Mcelwain said, that the ground shook and a white plume of smoke appeared over the ridge.

"As soon as we looked up, we saw a midsized jet flying low and fast," Decker said. "It appeared to make a loop or part of a circle, and then it turned fast and headed out. "

An official at the Cleveland Air Traffic Control Center in Oberlin, Ohio, which tracked Flight 93 as it turned in the sky and tracked eastward from the Cleveland area, said "no comment" when asked if there was any record of a second plane over the crash site.

"That's something that the FBI is working on and I cannot talk about," said Richard Kettel, head of tower operations at the Cleveland center. He spoke shortly before the FBI announced it had no evidence of a second jet.""

http://www.flight93crash.com/second-plane-at-flight93-crash-site.htm

It was the Bush administration's refusal to release information that ignited this controversy. They refused to let the involved air traffic controllers or military pilots be interviewed. They refused to make public any information from the planes black boxes. Now they produce a fake air traffic controller thus multiplying the suspicions of anyone who notices the inconsistencies. Cheney has admitted he authorized the shooting down of civilian airliners but denies that it ever happened. But the coverup says differently. If they didn't have anything to hide they wouldn't be hiding it so hard. I am now convinced Flight 93 was shot down.

********************

It's what George [H.] Bush had said to me privately once when I was at a dinner with him in Miami in late 1985. Jeb was there . . . The whole cast of characters.

But George Bush, Sr. always said that his concept of government, what he believed in, and how he always operated, was on the Big Lie principle. (p. 274)
The Bush White House: Foxes in the henhouse and free range hogs

The Big Lie was one of Hitler's tactics. To tell huge, ridiculous Big Lies often and loudly until the public began to believe them.


© Alllie, 2003

Distribution: This article is copyrighted by Alllie, but permission is granted for reprint in print, email, or web media so long as you tell me where, this credit is attached as well as a link back to this page, http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/allliecolumns.shtml .


Reader Response

Xena^: Just to say I have now just read `"listening to lies" that you posted on the Garden site. I am not sure what feedback you got on it , but mine you will have, as always..it is one of the best pieces you have ever written, for sure. Not only is it well written, it raises questions, so many. Many I had never even thought of. Let me share with you.

Alllie, my friend, it is stories like this that have made Americans (and others) so cynical, so blasé...I will even go so far as saying that political lies..so many are there, are a direct cause of voter apathy in last US election. I mean, the right to vote was hard-gained for so many, for women and for the minorities...and now, So many renounce that vote. A tragedy is it not?

Let me go further in this.....

I am thinking of the so many major ones...DeGaulle re-writing history to say France was one of the victors of WW2.... Stalin erasing Trotsky from the Russian revolution....The US Pentagon camouflaging the image of vietnam war....

This deliberate negation of reality ---modern lies - Is very dangerous indeed. It actually makes us doubt our Leaders....And, sadness it is as they are our only hope - Are they Not?

LOL! Am getting carried away, encore, but did want to share what your essay brought me. It did what good essays are supposed to..made me think:))

Xena, Quebec, September 2002

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Articles of Interest

Bush and the Assassination of JFK by Paul Kangas

ANNALS OF DEMOCRACY : COUNTING VOTES by Ronnie Dugger (Nov 7, 1988)

Computerized Systems for Voting Seen as Vulnerable to Tampering by David Burnham, The New York Times (July 29, 1985) plus emphasis, links and comments

Sigmund Aas

The Terrorist's Achilles Heel: An Alternative Blow to Terrorism (June 24, 2004)

Aleister

Apocalypse Number Nine
(mp3, 2.9 meg, Oct 4, 2002)
Souces:Artist: Kumi Tanioka
Album: Final Fantasy XI Original Soundtrack (CD TWO)
Track :The Awakening
Vocals: George W. Bush
Plus Additional sounds & subliminal track
Editing by Aleister

Fun with Paperdolls
(May 19, 2003)

Algorythm

Just Say No!
( Oct 21, 2003)
A Real Protest (April 9, 2003)
Who's to Blame (Feb 20, 2003)
Listening to the Lies (Sept.12, 2002)
White Storm (August 2, 2003)
!!!Fight!!! (September 9, 2003)
Happy Endings: A Theory of (November 16, 2002)
It Just Isn't Fair
(December 11, 2003)
Every Picture Tells a Story (January 23, 2004)
Who Do You Trust? (April 17, 2004)
The Criminal - Fiction (May 8, 2004)
Why I Believe Bush is the Anthrax Terrorist (October 10, 2004)

Arachne & TaoUrso

TURTLE TALES: Exodus in a Tin Can on Wheels

Part 1 -
Part 2 -
Part 3 -
Epilogue

Turtle Tales II: The Road Warrior (November 2004)

Jimmy2k^

What is the American Way of Life (Jan27, 2003)
America is Under Siege (Dec 3, 2002)
Ozzy Osbourne - American Idol
(Nov 26, 2002)
Thomas Jefferson and Ann Coulter - Comparison and Contrast (Nov 21, 2002)
Some Thoughts on American Media (Nov 11, 2002)
Some Thoughts on Addiction
(Oct 28, 2002)
What Color is the Sky? (Oct 25, 2002)
The End is Near - And Other Truths
(Oct 7, 2002)

Hoopie

News_Asylum (Sept 15, 2002)

ItsMarty

Virtue is not chosen, the chosen becomes virtuous (October 14, 2003) Conspiracy Theory This!(November 18, 2003)
Black & White (November 21, 2003)
From Cordoba to Jerusalem (November 25, 2003)
Free Speech and Intolerance (January 20, 2004)
State of the Old Union seen from the New Union (Febuary 2, 2004)

KG4ZMP
Lunar Cheese And Federal Pork
(January 20, 2004)

Lester Michaels

Morality & Ethics: A case study of the Carlyle Group

Marij
Bush's Folly

Samurai_Liberal

Election 2000-Highway Robbery and a Supreme Court Disgrace-

Part 1 (May 23, 2003)
Part 2
(May 29, 2003)
Part 3 (June 12, 2003)
Part 4 (July 8, 2003)

TaleWgnDg

Bush Is Packing The Federal Courts: What Can I Do? (June 28, 2003)

Thargor

The Rantings of an Angry, Fed Up Conservative

BUSH BASHING DONE WITH LACK OF EVIDENCE OR CONCERN FOR ACCURACY (July 1, 2003)

A RECAP OF THE USSC'S 2002 TERM (July 5, 2003)

Warpster

The Myth of Free Trade (Febuary 3, 2004)

More Columns
 
 

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