[CanYoAssDigIt] Re: [Bizarro_UltraZine] Pinter Attacks Bush and Blair in Nobel Speech

I doubt this will be of much interest. Pinter doesn't have tits. He
goes on and on long after the atrophied attention span wanders. He
disappoints, by failing to rant, as the IMDB (a reliable source)
accuses him of doing. Instead, he writes a logically compelling and
accurate assessment of US foreign policy.

Therefore, I plead with you to to ignore the following, not not read
any further into this text, which is the majoiryt of the text of
Pinter's acceptence speech (not rant), which takes up at the point he
stops speaking about art and starts speaking about politics.

....the majority of politicians, on the evidence available to us, are
interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that
power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in
ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of
their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of
lies, upon which we feed.

As every single person here knows, the justification for the invasion
of Iraq was that Saddam Hussein possessed a highly dangerous body of
weapons of mass destruction, some of which could be fired in 45
minutes, bringing about appalling devastation. We were assured that
was true. It was not true. We were told that Iraq had a relationship
with Al Quaeda and shared responsibility for the atrocity in New York
of September 11th 2001. We were assured that this was true. It was not
true. We were told that Iraq threatened the security of the world. We
were assured it was true. It was not true.

The truth is something entirely different. The truth is to do with how
the United States understands its role in the world and how it chooses
to embody it.

But before I come back to the present I would like to look at the
recent past, by which I mean United States foreign policy since the
end of the Second World War. I believe it is obligatory upon us to
subject this period to at least some kind of even limited scrutiny,
which is all that time will allow here.

Everyone knows what happened in the Soviet Union and throughout
Eastern Europe during the post-war period: the systematic brutality,
the widespread atrocities, the ruthless suppression of independent
thought. All this has been fully documented and verified.

But my contention here is that the US crimes in the same period have
only been superficially recorded, let alone documented, let alone
acknowledged, let alone recognised as crimes at all. I believe this
must be addressed and that the truth has considerable bearing on where
the world stands now. Although constrained, to a certain extent, by
the existence of the Soviet Union, the United States' actions
throughout the world made it clear that it had concluded it had carte
blanche to do what it liked.

Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America's
favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described
as 'low intensity conflict'. Low intensity conflict means that
thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them
in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country,
that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom.
When the populace has been subdued or beaten to death the same thing
and your own friends, the military and the great corporations, sit
comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy
has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the
years to which I refer.

The tragedy of Nicaragua was a highly significant case. I choose to
offer it here as a potent example of America's view of its role in the
world, both then and now.

I was present at a meeting at the US embassy in London in the late 1980s.

The United States Congress was about to decide whether to give more
money to the Contras in their campaign against the state of Nicaragua.
I was a member of a delegation speaking on behalf of Nicaragua but the
most important member of this delegation was a Father John Metcalf.
The leader of the US body was Raymond Seitz (then number two to the
ambassador, later ambassador himself). Father Metcalf said: 'Sir, I am
in charge of a parish in the north of Nicaragua. My parishioners built
a school, a health centre, a cultural centre. We have lived in peace.
A few months ago a Contra force attacked the parish. They destroyed
everything: the school, the health centre, the cultural centre. They
raped nurses and teachers, slaughtered doctors, in the most brutal
manner. They behaved like savages. Please demand that the US
government withdraw its support from this shocking terrorist
activity.'

Raymond Seitz had a very good reputation as a rational, responsible
and highly sophisticated man. He was greatly respected in diplomatic
circles. He listened, paused and then spoke with some gravity.
'Father,' he said, 'let me tell you something. In war, innocent people
always suffer.' There was a frozen silence. We stared at him. He did
not flinch.

Innocent people, indeed, always suffer.

Finally somebody said: 'But in this case "innocent people were the
victims of a gruesome atrocity subsidised by your government, one
among many. If Congress allows the Contras more money further
atrocities of this kind will take place. Is this not the case? Is your
government not therefore guilty of supporting acts of murder and
destruction upon the citizens of a sovereign state?'

Seitz was imperturbable. 'I don't agree that the facts as presented
support your assertions,' he said.

As we were leaving the Embassy a US aide told me that he enjoyed my
plays. I did not reply.

I should remind you that at the time President Reagan made the
following statement: 'The Contras are the moral equivalent of our
Founding Fathers.'

The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in
Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the
Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular
revolution.

The Sandinistas weren't perfect. They possessed their fair share of
arrogance and their political philosophy contained a number of
contradictory elements. But they were intelligent, rational and
civilised. They set out to establish a stable, decent, pluralistic
society. The death penalty was abolished. Hundreds of thousands of
poverty-stricken peasants were brought back from the dead. Over
100,000 families were given title to land. Two thousand schools were
built. A quite remarkable literacy campaign reduced illiteracy in the
country to less than one seventh. Free education was established and a
free health service. Infant mortality was reduced by a third. Polio
was eradicated.

The United States denounced these achievements as Marxist/Leninist
subversion. In the view of the US government, a dangerous example was
being set. If Nicaragua was allowed to establish basic norms of social
and economic justice, if it was allowed to raise the standards of
health care and education and achieve social unity and national self
respect, neighbouring countries would ask the same questions and do
the same things. There was of course at the time fierce resistance to
the status quo in El Salvador.

I spoke earlier about 'a tapestry of lies' which surrounds us.
President Reagan commonly described Nicaragua as a 'totalitarian
dungeon'. This was taken generally by the media, and certainly by the
British government, as accurate and fair comment. But there was in
fact no record of death squads under the Sandinista government. There
was no record of torture. There was no record of systematic or
official military brutality. No priests were ever murdered in
Nicaragua. There were in fact three priests in the government, two
Jesuits and a Maryknoll missionary. The totalitarian dungeons were
actually next door, in El Salvador and Guatemala. The United States
had brought down the democratically elected government of Guatemala in
1954 and it is estimated that over 200,000 people had been victims of
successive military dictatorships.

Six of the most distinguished Jesuits in the world were viciously
murdered at the Central American University in San Salvador in 1989 by
a battalion of the Alcatl regiment trained at Fort Benning, Georgia,
USA. That extremely brave man Archbishop Romero was assassinated while
saying mass. It is estimated that 75,000 people died. Why were they
killed? They were killed because they believed a better life was
possible and should be achieved. That belief immediately qualified
them as communists. They died because they dared to question the
status quo, the endless plateau of poverty, disease, degradation and
oppression, which had been their birthright.

The United States finally brought down the Sandinista government. It
took some years and considerable resistance but relentless economic
persecution and 30,000 dead finally undermined the spirit of the
Nicaraguan people. They were exhausted and poverty stricken once
again. The casinos moved back into the country. Free health and free
education were over. Big business returned with a vengeance.
'Democracy' had prevailed.

But this 'policy' was by no means restricted to Central America. It
was conducted throughout the world. It was never-ending. And it is as
if it never happened.

The United States supported and in many cases engendered every right
wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second
World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay,
Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of
course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in
1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries.
Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US
foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are
attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn't know it.

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening
it wasn't happening. It didn't matter. It was of no interest. The
crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious,
remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You
have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical
manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for
universal good. It's a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of
hypnosis.

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show
on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but
it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its
most saleable commodity is self love. It's a winner. Listen to all
American presidents on television say the words, 'the American
people', as in the sentence, 'I say to the American people it is time
to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the
American people to trust their president in the action he is about to
take on behalf of the American people.'

It's a scintillating stratagem. Language is actually employed to keep
thought at bay. The words 'the American people' provide a truly
voluptuous cushion of reassurance. You don't need to think. Just lie
back on the cushion. The cushion may be suffocating your intelligence
and your critical faculties but it's very comfortable. This does not
apply of course to the 40 million people living below the poverty line
and the 2 million men and women imprisoned in the vast gulag of
prisons, which extends across the US.

The United States no longer bothers about low intensity conflict. It
no longer sees any point in being reticent or even devious. It puts
its cards on the table without fear or favour. It quite simply doesn't
give a damn about the United Nations, international law or critical
dissent, which it regards as impotent and irrelevant. It also has its
own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and
supine Great Britain.

What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What
do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed
these days conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts
but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all
this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without
charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due
process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate
structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is
not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what's called the
'international community'. This criminal outrage is being committed by
a country, which declares itself to be 'the leader of the free world'.
Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the
media say about them? They pop up occasionally a small item on page
six. They have been consigned to a no man's land from which indeed
they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being
force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these
force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anaesthetic. Just a tube
stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is
torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this?
Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing.
Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticise our conduct
in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You're either with us
or against us. So Blair shuts up.

The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state
terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of
international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action
inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the
media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate
American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading
as a last resort all other justifications having failed to justify
themselves as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force
responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of
innocent people.

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable
acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi
people and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle
East'.

How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described
as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than
enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair
be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice. But
Bush has been clever. He has not ratified the International Criminal
Court of Justice. Therefore if any American soldier or for that matter
politician finds himself in the dock Bush has warned that he will send
in the marines. But Tony Blair has ratified the Court and is therefore
available for prosecution. We can let the Court have his address if
they're interested. It is Number 10, Downing Street, London.

Death in this context is irrelevant. Both Bush and Blair place death
well away on the back burner. At least 100,000 Iraqis were killed by
American bombs and missiles before the Iraq insurgency began. These
people are of no moment. Their deaths don't exist. They are blank.
They are not even recorded as being dead. 'We don't do body counts,'
said the American general Tommy Franks.

Early in the invasion there was a photograph published on the front
page of British newspapers of Tony Blair kissing the cheek of a little
Iraqi boy. 'A grateful child,' said the caption. A few days later
there was a story and photograph, on an inside page, of another
four-year-old boy with no arms. His family had been blown up by a
missile. He was the only survivor. 'When do I get my arms back?' he
asked. The story was dropped. Well, Tony Blair wasn't holding him in
his arms, nor the body of any other mutilated child, nor the body of
any bloody corpse. Blood is dirty. It dirties your shirt and tie when
you're making a sincere speech on television.

The 2,000 American dead are an embarrassment. They are transported to
their graves in the dark. Funerals are unobtrusive, out of harm's way.
The mutilated rot in their beds, some for the rest of their lives. So
the dead and the mutilated both rot, in different kinds of graves.

Here is an extract from a poem by Pablo Neruda, 'I'm Explaining a Few Things':

And one morning all that was burning,
one morning the bonfires
leapt out of the earth
devouring human beings
and from then on fire,
gunpowder from then on,
and from then on blood.
Bandits with planes and Moors,
bandits with finger-rings and duchesses,
bandits with black friars spattering blessings
came through the sky to kill children
and the blood of children ran through the streets
without fuss, like children's blood.

Jackals that the jackals would despise
stones that the dry thistle would bite on and spit out,
vipers that the vipers would abominate.

Face to face with you I have seen the blood
of Spain tower like a tide
to drown you in one wave
of pride and knives.

Treacherous
generals:
see my dead house,
look at broken Spain:
from every house burning metal flows
instead of flowers
from every socket of Spain
Spain emerges
and from every dead child a rifle with eyes
and from every crime bullets are born
which will one day find
the bull's eye of your hearts.

And you will ask: why doesn't his poetry
speak of dreams and leaves
and the great volcanoes of his native land.

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!*

Let me make it quite clear that in quoting from Neruda's poem I am in
no way comparing Republican Spain to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. I quote
Neruda because nowhere in contemporary poetry have I read such a
powerful visceral description of the bombing of civilians.

I have said earlier that the United States is now totally frank about
putting its cards on the table. That is the case. Its official
declared policy is now defined as 'full spectrum dominance'. That is
not my term, it is theirs. 'Full spectrum dominance' means control of
land, sea, air and space and all attendant resources.

The United States now occupies 702 military installations throughout
the world in 132 countries, with the honourable exception of Sweden,
of course. We don't quite know how they got there but they are there
all right.

The United States possesses 8,000 active and operational nuclear
warheads. Two thousand are on hair trigger alert, ready to be launched
with 15 minutes warning. It is developing new systems of nuclear
force, known as bunker busters. The British, ever cooperative, are
intending to replace their own nuclear missile, Trident. Who, I
wonder, are they aiming at? Osama bin Laden? You? Me? Joe Dokes?
China? Paris? Who knows? What we do know is that this infantile
insanity the possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons is at
the heart of present American political philosophy. We must remind
ourselves that the United States is on a permanent military footing
and shows no sign of relaxing it.

Many thousands, if not millions, of people in the United States itself
are demonstrably sickened, shamed and angered by their government's
actions, but as things stand they are not a coherent political force
yet. But the anxiety, uncertainty and fear which we can see growing
daily in the United States is unlikely to diminish.

I know that President Bush has many extremely competent speech writers
but I would like to volunteer for the job myself. I propose the
following short address which he can make on television to the nation.
I see him grave, hair carefully combed, serious, winning, sincere,
often beguiling, sometimes employing a wry smile, curiously
attractive, a man's man.

'God is good. God is great. God is good. My God is good. Bin Laden's
God is bad. His is a bad God. Saddam's God was bad, except he didn't
have one. He was a barbarian. We are not barbarians. We don't chop
people's heads off. We believe in freedom. So does God. I am not a
barbarian. I am the democratically elected leader of a freedom-loving
democracy. We are a compassionate society. We give compassionate
electrocution and compassionate lethal injection. We are a great
nation. I am not a dictator. He is. I am not a barbarian. He is. And
he is. They all are. I possess moral authority. You see this fist?
This is my moral authority. And don't you forget it.'

A writer's life is a highly vulnerable, almost naked activity. We
don't have to weep about that. The writer makes his choice and is
stuck with it. But it is true to say that you are open to all the
winds, some of them icy indeed. You are out on your own, out on a
limb. You find no shelter, no protection unless you lie in which case
of course you have constructed your own protection and, it could be
argued, become a politician.

I have referred to death quite a few times this evening. I shall now
quote a poem of my own called 'Death'.

Where was the dead body found?
Who found the dead body?
Was the dead body dead when found?
How was the dead body found?

Who was the dead body?

Who was the father or daughter or brother
Or uncle or sister or mother or son
Of the dead and abandoned body?

Was the body dead when abandoned?
Was the body abandoned?
By whom had it been abandoned?

Was the dead body naked or dressed for a journey?

What made you declare the dead body dead?
Did you declare the dead body dead?
How well did you know the dead body?
How did you know the dead body was dead?

Did you wash the dead body
Did you close both its eyes
Did you bury the body
Did you leave it abandoned
Did you kiss the dead body

When we look into a mirror we think the image that confronts us is
accurate. But move a millimetre and the image changes. We are actually
looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer
has to smash the mirror for it is on the other side of that mirror
that the truth stares at us.

I believe that despite the enormous odds which exist, unflinching,
unswerving, fierce intellectual determination, as citizens, to define
the real truth of our lives and our societies is a crucial obligation
which devolves upon us all. It is in fact mandatory.

If such a determination is not embodied in our political vision we
have no hope of restoring what is so nearly lost to us the dignity of
man.

* Extract from "I'm Explaining a Few Things" translated by Nathaniel
Tarn, from Pablo Neruda: Selected Poems, published by Jonathan Cape,
London 1970. Used by permission of The Random House Group Limited.

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[CanYoAssDigIt] Fwd: 'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate

Klein says "And yet when covering the Bush announcement, not a single mainstream
news outlet mentioned the sordid history of its location."

Read the article and let me know how NPR did covering the story. I
missed it - wouldn't it be great to be able to write to the nation and
say "NPR did cite the sordid history Klein referenced."

'Never Before!' Our Amnesiac Torture Debate
by Naomi Klein

It was the "Mission Accomplished" of George W. Bush's second term, and
an announcement of that magnitude called for a suitably dramatic
location. But what was the right backdrop for the infamous "We do not
torture" declaration? With characteristic audacity, the Bush team
settled on downtown Panama City.

It was certainly bold. An hour and a half's drive from where Bush stood,
the US military ran the notorious School of the Americas from 1946 to
1984, a sinister educational institution that, if it had a motto, might
have been "We do torture." It is here in Panama and, later, at the
school's new location in Fort Benning, Georgia, where the roots of the
current torture scandals can be found. According to declassified
training manuals, SOA students--military and police officers from across
the hemisphere--were instructed in many of the same "coercive
interrogation" techniques that have since migrated to Guantánamo and Abu
Ghraib: early morning capture to maximize shock, immediate hooding and
blindfolding, forced nudity, sensory deprivation, sensory overload,
sleep and food "manipulation," humiliation, extreme temperatures,
isolation, stress positions--and worse. In 1996 President Clinton's
Intelligence Oversight Board admitted that US-produced training
materials condoned "execution of guerrillas, extortion, physical abuse,
coercion and false imprisonment."

Some of the Panama school's graduates returned to their countries to
commit the continent's greatest war crimes of the past half-century: the
murders of Archbishop Oscar Romero and six Jesuit priests in El
Salvador, the systematic theft of babies from Argentina's "disappeared"
prisoners, the massacre of 900 civilians in El Mozote in El Salvador and
military coups too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that
choosing Panama to declare "We do not torture" is a little like dropping
by a slaughterhouse to pronounce the United States a nation of
vegetarians.

And yet when covering the Bush announcement, not a single mainstream
news outlet mentioned the sordid history of its location. How could
they? To do so would require something totally absent from the current
debate: an admission that the embrace of torture by US officials long
predates the Bush Administration and has in fact been integral to US
foreign policy since the Vietnam War.

It's a history that has been exhaustively documented in an avalanche of
books, declassified documents, CIA training manuals, court records and
truth commissions. In his upcoming book A Question of Torture, Alfred
McCoy synthesizes this unwieldy cache of evidence, producing an
indispensable and riveting account of how monstrous CIA-funded
experiments on psychiatric patients and prisoners in the 1950s turned
into a template for what he calls "no-touch torture," based on sensory
deprivation and self-inflicted pain. McCoy traces how these methods were
field-tested by CIA agents in Vietnam as part of the Phoenix program and
then imported to Latin America and Asia under the guise of police
training programs.

It's not only apologists for torture who ignore this history when they
blame abuses on "a few bad apples"--so too do many of torture's most
prominent opponents. Apparently forgetting everything they once knew
about US cold war misadventures, a startling number have begun to
subscribe to an antihistorical narrative in which the idea of torturing
prisoners first occurred to US officials on September 11, 2001, at which
point the interrogation methods used in Guantánamo apparently emerged,
fully formed, from the sadistic recesses of Dick Cheney's and Donald
Rumsfeld's brains. Up until that moment, we are told, America fought its
enemies while keeping its humanity intact.

The principal propagator of this narrative (what Garry Wills termed
"original sinlessness") is Senator John McCain. Writing recently in
Newsweek on the need for a ban on torture, McCain says that when he was
a prisoner of war in Hanoi, he held fast to the knowledge "that we were
different from our enemies...that we, if the roles were reversed, would
not disgrace ourselves by committing or approving such mistreatment of
them." It is a stunning historical distortion. By the time McCain was
taken captive, the CIA had already launched the Phoenix program and, as
McCoy writes, "its agents were operating forty interrogation centers in
South Vietnam that killed more than twenty thousand suspects and
tortured thousands more," a claim he backs up with pages of quotes from
press reports as well as Congressional and Senate probes.

Does it somehow lessen the horrors of today to admit that this is not
the first time the US government has used torture to wipe out its
political opponents--that it has operated secret prisons before, that it
has actively supported regimes that tried to erase the left by dropping
students out of airplanes? That, at home, photographs of lynchings were
traded and sold as trophies and warnings? Many seem to think so. On
November 8 Democratic Congressman Jim McDermott made the astonishing
claim to the House of Representatives that "America has never had a
question about its moral integrity, until now." Molly Ivins, expressing
her shock that the United States is running a prison gulag, wrote that
"it's just this one administration...and even at that, it seems to be
mostly Vice President Dick Cheney." And in the November issue of
Harper's, William Pfaff argues that what truly sets the Bush
Administration apart from its predecessors is "its installation of
torture as integral to American military and clandestine operations."
Pfaff acknowledges that long before Abu Ghraib, there were those who
claimed that the School of the Americas was a "torture school," but he
says that he was "inclined to doubt that it was really so." Perhaps it's
time for Pfaff to have a look at the SOA textbooks coaching illegal
torture techniques, all readily available in both Spanish and English,
as well as the hair-raising list of SOA grads.

Other cultures deal with a legacy of torture by declaring "Never again!"
Why do so many Americans insist on dealing with the current torture
crisis by crying "Never Before"? I suspect it has to do with a sincere
desire to convey the seriousness of this Administration's crimes. And
the Bush Administration's open embrace of torture is indeed
unprecedented--but let's be clear about what is unprecedented about it:
not the torture but the openness. Past administrations tactfully kept
their "black ops" secret; the crimes were sanctioned but they were
practiced in the shadows, officially denied and condemned. The Bush
Administration has broken this deal: Post-9/11, it demanded the right to
torture without shame, legitimized by new definitions and new laws.

Despite all the talk of outsourced torture, the Bush Administration's
real innovation has been its in-sourcing, with prisoners being abused by
US citizens in US-run prisons and transported to third countries in US
planes. It is this departure from clandestine etiquette, more than the
actual crimes, that has so much of the military and intelligence
community up in arms: By daring to torture unapologetically and out in
the open, Bush has robbed everyone of plausible deniability.

For those nervously wondering if it is time to start using alarmist
words like totalitarianism, this shift is of huge significance. When
torture is covertly practiced but officially and legally repudiated,
there is still the hope that if atrocities are exposed, justice could
prevail. When torture is pseudo-legal and when those responsible merely
deny that it is torture, what dies is what Hannah Arendt called "the
juridical person in man"; soon enough, victims no longer bother to
search for justice, so sure are they of the futility (and danger) of
that quest. This impunity is a mass version of what happens inside the
torture chamber, when prisoners are told they can scream all they want
because no one can hear them and no one is going to save them.

In Latin America the revelations of US torture in Iraq have not been met
with shock and disbelief but with powerful déjà vu and reawakened fears.
Hector Mondragon, a Colombian activist who was tortured in the 1970s by
an officer trained at the School of the Americas, wrote: "It was hard to
see the photos of the torture in Iraq because I too was tortured. I saw
myself naked with my feet fastened together and my hands tied behind my
back. I saw my own head covered with a cloth bag. I remembered my
feelings--the humiliation, pain." Dianna Ortiz, an American nun who was
brutally tortured in a Guatemalan jail, said, "I could not even stand to
look at those photographs...so many of the things in the photographs had
also been done to me. I was tortured with a frightening dog and also
rats. And they were always filming."

Ortiz has testified that the men who raped her and burned her with
cigarettes more than 100 times deferred to a man who spoke Spanish with
an American accent whom they called "Boss." It is one of many stories
told by prisoners in Latin America of mysterious English-speaking men
walking in and out of their torture cells, proposing questions, offering
tips. Several of these cases are documented in Jennifer Harbury's
powerful new book, Truth, Torture, and the American Way.

Some of the countries that were mauled by US-sponsored torture regimes
have tried to repair their social fabric through truth commissions and
war crimes trials. In most cases, justice has been elusive, but past
abuses have been entered into the official record and entire societies
have asked themselves questions not only about individual responsibility
but collective complicity. The United States, though an active
participant in these "dirty wars," has gone through no parallel process
of national soul-searching.

The result is that the memory of US complicity in far-away crimes
remains fragile, living on in old newspaper articles, out-of-print books
and tenacious grassroots initiatives like the annual protests outside
the School of the Americas (which has been renamed but remains largely
unchanged). The terrible irony of the anti-historicism of the current
torture debate is that in the name of eradicating future abuses, these
past crimes are being erased from the record. Every time Americans
repeat the fairy tale about their pre-Cheney innocence, these already
hazy memories fade even further. The hard evidence still exists, of
course, carefully archived in the tens of thousands of declassified
documents available from the National Security Archive. But inside US
collective memory, the disappeared are being disappeared all over
again.

This casual amnesia does a profound disservice not only to the victims
of these crimes but also to the cause of trying to remove torture from
the US policy arsenal once and for all. Already there are signs that the
Administration will deal with the current torture uproar by returning to
the cold war model of plausible deniability. The McCain amendment
protects every "individual in the custody or under the physical control
of the United States Government"; it says nothing about torture training
or buying information from the exploding industry of for-profit
interrogators. And in Iraq the dirty work is already being handed over
to Iraqi death squads, trained by US commanders like Jim Steele, who
prepared for the job by setting up similarly lawless units in El
Salvador. The US role in training and supervising Iraq's Interior
Ministry was forgotten, moreover, when 173 prisoners were recently
discovered in a Ministry dungeon, some tortured so badly that their skin
was falling off. "Look, it's a sovereign country. The Iraqi government
exists," Rumsfeld said. He sounded just like the CIA's William Colby,
who when asked in a 1971 Congressional probe about the thousands killed
under Phoenix--a program he helped launch--replied that it was now
"entirely a South Vietnamese program."

And that's the problem with pretending that the Bush Administration
invented torture. "If you don't understand the history and the depths of
the institutional and public complicity," says McCoy, "then you can't
begin to undertake meaningful reforms." Lawmakers will respond to
pressure by eliminating one small piece of the torture
apparatus--closing a prison, shutting down a program, even demanding the
resignation of a really bad apple like Rumsfeld. But, McCoy says, "they
will preserve the prerogative to torture."

The Center for American Progress has just launched an advertising
campaign called "Torture is not US." The hard truth is that for at least
five decades it has been. But it doesn't have to be.

Naomi Klein is the author of No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies
(Picador) and, most recently, Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the
Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (Picador).

(c) 2005 The Nation

Published on Friday, December 9, 2005 by The Nation

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[CanYoAssDigIt] Re: [bond_the_four_classical_pop_queens] why jack when you can fuck

Hey Conrad

You ask a very sensible question, but what the devil does it have to
do with Bond, the Four Classical Pop Queens?

In fact, I don't remember a single post to this list, ever, since I've
joined that had to do with Bond, the Four Classical Pop Queens. I was
capitavated by them in Johnny English, and wanted to learn more about
them.

Perhaps I've come to the wrong place for that?

*****
Democracy is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses," -- HL Mencken.
www.soundclick.com/Bureaucratica - Jackal Music for Jackass People

On 10 Dec 2005 10:05:38 -0800, conradstacey0007@ispsimple.com
<conradstacey0007@ispsimple.com> wrote:
> try out personals today they have the hottest guys
> http://www.litlurl.com/litlurl/?c=89
>
> and everyone wants the same thing you do other guys
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>
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> This message was generated in a yahoo group and is not spam
> If you do not want to receive these messages goto
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bond_the_four_classical_pop_queens
> and change your setting to no emails
>
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[CanYoAssDigIt] Re: [Alexteen] I'm Engaged!

Monica, at the rate you're going, tomorrow you're going to be over
felt. I congratulate you on your engagement, but don't you think it's
unwise under the circumstances to be dating other people? Have you no
sense of shame?

******
Democracy is the worship of Jackals by Jackasses," -- HL Mencken.
www.soundclick.com/Bureaucratica - Jackal Music for Jackass People

On 12/10/05, monika.overfelt7090@wellowgreenblue.com
<monika.overfelt7090@wellowgreenblue.com> wrote:
> Wow, I never thought I'd try this stuff, but after a couple of mates egged me on I decided to give it a go. Honestly, I am pretty damn happy with how things are going so far. Already been flirting with a few ppl and have my first da/te organised for tommorow. Wish me luck guys! Oh, and check it out http://www.localareachicks.info/yzczk if ur interested.

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[CanYoAssDigIt] Let's share photos

	Matt wants to share photos with you. Get Matt's latest photos in your email

If you can't click on the link above please copy/paste the link below:
http://www.ringo.com/i.html?i=129076798x194744&homeEmail=canyoassdigit%40yahoogroups.com&firstName=canyoassdigit&lastName=&origin=invite

This invitation was sent to canyoassdigit@yahoogroups.com on behalf of Matt (matt.mattlove1@gmail.com)

If you do not wish to receive invitations from this Ringo member, click here. To stop receiving invitations from all Ringo members, click here.

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[CanYoAssDigIt] He's got a lot of backpeddling to do...

A new rap for Eminem. He can use this if he wants too, he's a little
off his game lately...:

Eminem Says He's Back With Ex-Wife Kim

Well lil kimmy she's mine all mine
she's really fine
one of a kind
and I never said I wanted to kill her
I just said that the dear girl should chill
er, and Bush Sr never said
vodoo economics
the poor are just jealous of rich
sonsabitches like me and
MC Chronic

I'm makin nice to mom, too
just something that I gotta do
so I'm introducing some new bad guys
to make my rhythmic rhymin fly

Like Ralph Nader
Hes a masterbater
never been laid
what kinda prez
don't get head from the maid

How about that chomsky
he could be the bomb, see,
if he'd just get into line
say what he's supposed to
all of the time

he be jivin instead of funky
just another cheese eating surrender monkey
as for me, I'm friends with the junkies
Dubya and Dick, those boys are hunky

word

Eminem Says He's Back With Ex-Wife Kim
12.07.2005 7:49 AM EST

'We have reconciled and are probably going to remarry,' he said in a
call to a Detroit radio show.
Eminem
Photo: Getty Images
Stranger things have happened, but not many. In a call to a Detroit
radio show on Tuesday, Eminem said that he is back together with his
on-again, off-again and apparently on-again ex-wife, Kim Mathers. In
fact, he revealed that the pair may marry again, according to a story
from The Associated Press.

"We have reconciled and are probably going to remarry," Eminem told
Detroit radio station WKQI-FM's "Mojo in the Morning" show. The
teenage sweetheart couple, who were married in 1998 and underwent an
ugly divorce and custody battle over their daughter Hailie Jade,
finalized their divorce in 2001 (see "Eminem's Divorce From Kimberly
Mathers Finalized"), though Em reportedly referred to Kim, 30, as his
wife repeatedly during the interview.

Kim, who has been the unflattering subject of violent songs like "Kim"
on The Marshall Mathers LP, in which Em rapped about killing his wife,
attempted suicide in the couple's home in 2000 following a hometown
concert by the rapper at the Palace of Auburn Hills and was arrested
on drug charges in 2003 (see "Eminem's Ex-Wife Kim Mathers Charged
With Drug Possession").

Eminem also talked about his stay in a rehabilitation facility on the
radio show. He was treated earlier this year for a dependency on
sleeping pills (see "Eminem Hospitalized For Sleep-Medication
Dependency").

"When I went into rehab, I kind of went into it ... with the notion of
'I'm gonna get clean, I'm gonna get off this stuff before it gets too
out of hand,' " he said. The news about the hospitalization came in
August after the rapper canceled his European tour, initially citing
exhaustion and unspecified "other" medical issues.

Though the 33-year-old MC denied reports in the Detroit press in July
that he was retiring (see "Eminem: 'I'm Not Retiring' "), in the radio
interview Em made it sound like he had some time off planned. "I'm at
a point in my life right now where I feel like I don't know where my
career is going," he said. "This is the reason that we called it
Curtain Call, because this could be the final thing. We don't know."
In a promotional video for the album, Em mentions that at the very
least, the album is the final appearance by his Slim Shady alter ego.

Along with Tuesday's episode of "TRL," in which Eminem discussed his
daughter Hailie, this radio call is one of the only live interviews
that the rapper has planned to promote Curtain Call, according to his
label, Interscope Records.

— Gil Kaufman

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[CanYoAssDigIt] Re: [TennesseeWayne] Anyone else makeing cash in the housing market?

Hey Brittney

that's an awesome name, Brittney Steele, have you thought about going
into porn movies? You have the right name for it, that's for sure.

The real question we should be asking is "is anybody anywhere making
cash in the Tennessee Wayne song remix market?

How about it folks, please let me know!

On 12/4/05, brittney.steele2194@yeeeeernnn.com
<brittney.steele2194@yeeeeernnn.com> wrote:
> Well I got given this link from a girlfriend the other week that gave me a bit of information about refinancing my home (here's the link he gave me. I didn't think much of it but I filled out their form and sent it off. They contacted me some time last week with a bit of information and I couldn't believe how bad a deal I was in with my current mortgage. Anyway, to cut a long story short I gave them a call, talked to them about my options and eventually sorted out an awesome deal to refinance my home. I already feel a hell of a lot more relaxed knowing that I am going to have a fair bit extra money per month to live on. Anyway, just thought I'd share my fortune and pass on a tip to all you home owners, or those seeking to get their first mortgage. Check these guys out: http://www.joinusandsavetoday.info/tjaoy
>
>
>
>
>
> Listen to the songs of Tennessee Wayne at: http://www.soundclick.com/TennesseeWayne Submit new arrangements and remixes to: matt.mattlove1@gmail.com
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

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[CanYoAssDigIt] PBS sinks to new lows...

Check this out - even after they've ousted the Tomlinson, the slide of
PBS (even faster and more depressing than NPR) into the muck continues
- quickens in fact. The last paragraph is key if you don't have time
to read this whole article from www.counterpunch.org - one of the
places where I turn to (along with www.democracynow.org and
http://www.fair.org) when I want to get some real news, instead of the
slightly-right-of-center propagand of public media.

I have for various reasons been listening to a little more NPR than
usual lately, and it's been so very depressing, except when it moves
me to futile anger.

December 3/4, 2005

Why Let Anxiety Over Your Son's Fate in Iraq Give You a Migraine?
Consumerama: the Real Simple Guide to Selling Anything
By RALPH NADER

On my desk one morning I found a 378-page tome whose name is "Real
Simple" with an intriguingly worded "Life Made Easier" subtitle. It
was the week when the members of the American Anthropological
Association were meeting in Washington, DC. Too bad there wasn't a
copy of "Real Simple" by each of the anthropologists' hotel room
doors. It would keep them busy analyzing the natives who produced it
for months.

I can only guess at what Managing Editor, Kristin van Ogtrop's future
ambitions are these days. But for the present she has created the
ultimate consumerama--a bulging volume of product advertisements laced
with editorial content that springs from the frenzy, created by the
heavy, slick, glossy pages of this marketing mania.

"Real Simple" does anything but make life easier. Opening its pages
releases a veritable gust of perfume-scented pages. There go the
'chemically sensitive' customers. For readers who are more resistant,
it can give you a mild headache after a while. "Real Simple" is not so
simple.

Let us persevere, however, and flip through the pages. Page after page
of perfumes, moisturizers, skin tighteners, infallible make-up,
haircolor, takes you to the first pearls of wisdom.

The great French writer, Albert Camus, is pressed into action for
Clinique, the repairwear, intensive eye cream. "Real generosity toward
the future lies in giving all the present," Camus is quoted as writing
in his book "The Rebel." Somehow I doubt whether he had anything
remotely connected to a consumer product in mind. But, hey, why not
let "Real Simple" provide some intellectual heft to a Niagara of
luxuries, whims, frivolities and downright mind-numbing minute
complexities of manufactured consumer desires.

Complex narcissism courses its way through page after page. This is
sheer narcissism with its intended contagion to the shoppers who,
off-guard, can be drawn into a morass of consumable complexity under
false pretenses. There are the bewildering choices of 3 to 3.5 inch
high heels that keep podiatrists complexly busy. Not to be outdone, is
an offering of a tailored alarm clock "for kids" with a barnyard's
choice of talking animals to choose from--dog, cat, pig, rooster, cow,
frog, duck, butterfly and the stray monkey. So simple. But, how do
your kids get to hear them all to make an informed choice?

Another glossy tries the linguistic approach to simplicity. "There's
one language everyone understands," (trademarked phrase) and that is
"gold earrings". For those who are complexly serious about their dog
and cat pets, there are dog place mats, catnip toys for cats and a
cotton-terry Soggy Dog towel for Fido's postbath rubdown.

You can't really flip through this advermagazine. There are numerous
cardboard-like inserts that serve a function similar to street bumps.
In case you don't feel you have the "simple time" to peruse and weigh
all these offerings, don't worry, a Lipton Tea commercial says, "you
feel ten years younger."

The Defense Department also decided to communicate inside this massive
bazaar. You--the taxpayer--pay for a full page, in the middle of all
these promotional distractions, with this message, "Talking with your
son about the military has you anxious and emotional. In times like
this, facts are reassuring," leading you to the website:
TodaysMilitary.com. Not to worry, a few pages later, there is an ad
titled, "Why Let a Migraine Disrupt your Life?".

To continue is to be compelled to move into satire. In two full pages,
Citi (bank) has you following a confusing, labyrinth through the Land
of Credit, with a starting gate and an ending destination called
"Credit Card Nirvana". This is the giant bank's way of "introducing
the Citi Simplicity Credit Card."

Businesses have done worse to the English language. But they don't
usually devote nearly 400 pages to such a semantic fraud. When I want
to read about the simple life, I take off my shelf classic paperback
by the public interest scientist, Albert Fritsch. It is accurately
titled, 99 Ways to a Simple Lifestyle.

You won't see Fritsch's practical insights into true simple living on
PBS anytime soon. What you will see is a new program by the name of
Real Simple debuting on the Public Broadcasting System in January
2006. It's the magazine turning itself into a television show! At
least you won't be overcome by its smell, or shall we say, its scent.

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[CanYoAssDigIt] Re: [allsexybabes] Do you want to see the fountain of sperm? Try our new Soft Cialis Tabs.

No thank you! I do not want to see the fountain of sperm! But it's a
very nice offer, I'm sure you can sell a peak of it to somebody.

--
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
human face - forever. - George Orwell

www.soundclick.com/SongPoet
Boot Music for Face People

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--
***
Democracy is a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
- H.L. Mencken

www.soundclick.com/pseudojandek
jackal music for jackass people

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[CanYoAssDigIt] The old dodderer vs. the strutting punk

It's a nice thought... Reagan got out of Iran Contra because people
percieved him as an "endearingly doddering, if nothing-between-the
ears, sort of president," - "Poor dear, there's nothing between his
ears" Margaret Thatcher said about him in 1988, and Caligula won't
because he's "a strutting punk with a murderous streak whose fratboy
smirk has lost its charm."

Nice turn of phrase. Hope it's true.

November 29, 2005

"Who Will Rid Me of My Meddlesome Cabinet?"
Bush the Dupe?
By GARY LEUPP

I read in the Drudge Report that Bush "has become isolated and feels
betrayed by key officials." Maybe Cheney and his neocon protégés are
really in the dog house these days. The report asserts that "Mr. Bush
maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush,
his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes."

I read too on Capitol Hill Blue news service that presidential aides
have become increasingly concerned about Bush's "short temper and
tirades," directed especially at anyone who questions his war and his
honesty. But he's also been exploding in cabinet meetings at his
subordinates. Angry at his enemies, angry at his friends, he may be
under stress and returning to his youthful habits. Check out this
video clip (http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/11/13.html#a5842) of
his appearance at Jerry Kilgore's campaign rally in Virginia awhile
back.

No further comment on that clip, but I'm just wondering. Might the
president be feeling so messed up on account of him feeling himself,
you know----duped? Big time?

The president is of course not the most intelligent man to ever occupy
the Oval Office. In debates or news conferences, in any unrehearsed
unscripted situation, he is inarticulate, repetitious, incoherent,
unfocused, lost, fourth-grade, apparently brain-fried. He famously
avoids reading newspapers, has a poor memory for details, is unable to
grasp nuance, mistrusts science and embraces religious fundamentalism.
On the other hand, he is surrounded by people who are highly
intelligent and sophisticated, and he has been uncommonly dependent
upon them---especially Cheney and his neocon Machiavellian amoral
warmongering staff.

Quite likely, the latter think of Bush the way Margaret Thatcher
thought about Ronald Reagan. ("Poor dear," she remarked in 1988,
"there's nothing between his ears.") But just as Thatcher found in the
Gipper a staunch friend and ally, Bush's advisors may see in Dubya the
perfect front man for their world-changing agenda. He doesn't know
much about foreign countries, won't ask many questions, loves Israel
as a matter of principle, thinks its existence fulfills Bible
prophecy. The perfect patsy to get to say, "I know Ariel Sharon is a
man of peace," "Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities
of uranium from Africa," "Iraq has also provided al-Qaeda with
chemical and biological weapons training," "We found the weapons of
mass destruction. We found biological laboratories" and other such
suckered nonsense.

But now, the majority of Americans think Bush's dishonest. 58% of
those polled question his integrity. Maybe that explains the reported
rages in cabinet meetings. Of course it's possible that Bush was in on
the lies all along, as I've pretty much assumed to date. But maybe
not. Maybe he really believed what he was told to say by trusted staff
members, and has only gradually come to ask, "How'd they dare make me
say all that bullshit, that makes me look like a liar?"

Cheney is out lecturing reliable neocon-friendly audiences that it's
"dishonest and reprehensible" for anyone to suggest that any member
the Bush administration "purposely misled the American people" before
the war. It's a perfectly natural self-defense mechanism for the vice
president---whom only 29% of Americans think honest at this point
because he himself indeed purposely mislead the American people before
the war---to bark in that fashion. Meanwhile, wouldn't it be nice for
Bush to have the following conversation with his trusted spouse?

Laura: I was at the library today, reading this book about Leo Strauss.

Dubya: Who's that?

Laura: He's a philosopher who had an impact on Wolfowitz, Libby,
Feith, Perle, Wurmserthose guys.

Dubya: Ok.

Laura: He divides society into three groups. The wise, the gentlemen,
and the masses. He thinks most people are pretty dumb and need the
wise to lead them.

Dubya: Well that makes sense.

Laura: The Wolfowitz-Perle guys think they're the wise ones. And they
think you're a gentleman.

Dubya: I won't argue with that.

Laura: And the function of the gentleman is to convince the masses to
support the decisions of the wise.

Dubya (exploding): Goddam it, look, nobody had to persuade me to go to
war on Iraq! I wanted to myself!

Laura: Yes dear, I know you did. But these wise guys used what Strauss
called "noble lies."

Dubya: Whadya mean?

Laura: Well, they think that if you said the truth---that we want to
invade Iraq because of the oil, and for bases, and to make it a friend
of Israel---people wouldn't agree with it. So instead, they said Iraq
might stage a nuclear attack on New York, and they got you to say
things about Niger uranium and centrifuges and mobile labs that just
weren't true. So most people supported the war.

Dubya: Dick let them make me say that?

Laura: Yes, dear. Remember when you started saying that there was no
evidence for a connection between bin Laden and Saddam?

Dubya: Yes.

Laura: But Dick kept saying it was true?

Dubya: I didn't notice.

Laura: Well he's been repeating the same thing over and over again. He
thinks it's completely right to say whatever it takes to get people to
want to conquer the Middle East.

Dubya: So now people think I'm a liar.

Laura: Yes, dear. As these investigations move forward I'm just afraid
more and more folks might think that way.

Dubya: What can I do?

[Indeed, how does he get out of this mess? I think of Ronald Reagan,
who finessed his way out of the Iran-Contra scandal by explaining that
he wasn't a hands-on manager but rather delegated responsibility to
trusted subordinates who let him down. Many believed and forgave him.
But he was for many an endearingly doddering, if nothing-between-the
ears, sort of president, and this one's a strutting punk with a
murderous streak whose fratboy smirk has lost its charm. And an
arms-for-hostages deal is nothing next to a bloody unwinnable war
based on lies.]

Laura: You could give a speech, and confess the truth, say you made a
mistake because of bad advice.

Dubya: But they're all in on it! All of them used me, made fun of me!
Cheney, Rumsfeld, Libby, Wolfowitz, Feith

Laura: They abused your trust, yes.

Dubya: Damn them all! Who can I trust?

In this coterie of women around the lonely president, Rice holds the
greatest power. While a team-player, willing to use the "mushroom
cloud" imagery concocted by the White House Iraq Group in September
2002 and to promote the centrifuges lie at the same time, Rice is not
a neocon ideologue. She may wish to rein the crazies in. She's stated
specifically that the U.S. seeks "policy change" rather than "regime
change" in Syria, and that she will hold John Bolton, neocon
ambassador to the UN and big-time disseminator of disinformation, "on
a short leash."

Maybe she and the other ladies should do the same for Dubya. Handcuff
him to the bed for a few days, for godsakes. Tell people he's choked
on a pretzel, fainted again, and needs rest. Do NOT let Dick Cheney
near him, lest he curse the man out so that the veep in turn lashes
out wildly at Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy again. Do NOT let Rev.
Franklin Graham in the room, lest he be shocked at Dubya's slurred and
ungodlike speech. Do NOT let Patrick Fitzgerald get anywhere near the
man until the wild glint disappears from his eyes, the impish grin
disappears from his lips, the tell-tale tongue-in-jowl dry-mouth
symptoms fade and he's ready to identify just one teeny-tiny mistake
he's made in his presidency. Bring in almost Supreme Court justice
Harriet Miers, and station her at the bedside, repeating, "You're not
a dupe, not a dupe, not a dupe. You're the most brilliant man I've
ever met!" He'll like that.

But what if he was used, unwittingly, his callous cruel arrogant
nature exploited by those who really are Evil Incarnate, and who are
going to make him go down in the "History" he alternately validates
and despises as the worst and stupidest president ever? How painful
for the spoiled brat, who as Texas governor mocked a born-again
Christian death-row inmate, pursing his lips to the camera in mock
desperation cracking that she'd pleaded, "Please, don't kill me!"
before he happily decreed her death. How painful for a child of
privilege accustomed to abusing everybody else to wake up and discover
he's been had by people far more aware and intelligent than him.

Isolated and betrayed, this most powerful of men. May he withdraw
further into himself, and those divine voices in his head telling him
"Smite! Smite!" as out in the real world the crimes of his
administration become more and more clear.

Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct
Professor of Comparative Religion. He is the author of Servants,
Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male
Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and
Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women,
1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless
chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial
Crusades.

He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu

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[CanYoAssDigIt] The conservative position on Bush: Flip Flop! Flip Flop! Flip Flop!

November 28, 2005

The Detainees are Props in the Terror Game
The Grave Threat of the Bush Administration
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

According to news reports, at a US Naval Academy speech on Wednesday,
President Bush will announce plans for withdrawing US troops from
Iraq. It will be diverting to watch the propagandists at Fox "news"
flip-flop with the White House line and explain that now is the time
to cut and run after all.

A month ago the administration's line was that cutting and running was
the dastardly act of cowards and traitors who would abandon our troops
and all they have fought for. A month ago senior US commanders in Iraq
said that the US-trained new Iraqi army only had 700 troops who could
operate independently of US support.

Now suddenly the new Iraq has the troops to do the job and America's
soldiers can come home. What this means is that Republican pollsters
have made it clear that the Republicans cannot win next year's
congressional elections if the US is still mired in Iraq. The war is
unpopular. A large majority of Americans do not believe the war was
justified, and they no longer support it. Republicans have no prospect
of rehabilitating Bush if he keeps the country bogged down in a
pointless war.

The war, in other words, no longer serves the Republicans' political
interest and must be got rid of. So much for "staying the course."

What will happen to Iraq and the Middle East no one knows. Our
concerns need to be directed at what happens here in the US. Bush's
war against Iraq might be over, but the police state Bush built at
home is still in place.

On November 27 Walter Pincus reported in the Washington Post that the
Pentagon is expanding its domestic surveillance activity and that all
sorts of proposals are afoot to allow military agencies to spy on
law-abiding Americans and to build secret dossiers on citizens. The
demand for police state powers is said to be necessary in order to
fight the "war on terror."

Considering the drastic gestapo-type activities for which Washington
is clamoring, a person would think that America is being overwhelmed
by terrorist attacks. Yet, despite an aggressive and brutal war that
Bush has been waging in Iraq for going on three years, terrorist
attacks in America are even more rare than a honest politician. There
has not been a terror attack since September 11, 2001, more than four
years ago!

The Bush administration's hype about terrorism serves no purpose other
than to build a police state that is far more dangerous to Americans
than terrorists.

Ever since the "war on terror" was initiated by the Bush
administration, the US has been holding large numbers of "detainees."
By chance or the laws of probability, a few of these people might fit
some definition of "terrorist." The vast majority, however, are
innocents picked up in the equivalent of Stalin-era KGB street sweeps.
Many are hapless people sold by warlords to the US in order to receive
cash awards for turning in "terrorists."

Despite the large number of alleged "terrorists" or "enemy combatants"
that are being held, the Bush administration simply hasn't a shred of
evidence with which to bring "detainees" to trial.

If truth be known, the "detainees" are merely props for Bush's hype
about the "terrorist threat." The "detainees" were arrested in order
to make Americans feel safe and at ease with the police state.

Perhaps the most famous of the alleged terrorists, a man held for more
than three years, is the "dirty bomber" Jose Padilla. Padilla was the
"grave threat" who was going to set off a radioactive dirty bomb in a
US city.

The charge never made any sense. If al Qaeda had a dirty bomb, they
certainly would not entrust it to the loud-mouthed Padilla, who was
being followed around by FBI agents. Such a weapon would be kept
secret and entrusted only to the most competent and proven hands.
Who could possibly believe that top al Qaeda operatives would meet and
plot with Jose Padilla?

The Bush administration has itself given up its Padilla fantasy. After
three years of hype about this most dangerous of terrorists who
allegedly intended to kill large numbers of Americans, the
government's indictment doesn't mention dirty bombs or the murder of
Americans. Instead, Padilla is indicted for conspiring "to commit at
any place outside the United States acts that would constitute murder"
for the purpose of advancing "violent jihad." Padilla is also charged
with "conspiracy to provide material support for terrorists."

In other words, the government has no case against Padilla and is
putting him on trial in the US for conspiring to kill unidentified
foreigners in an effort to overthrow an unidentified foreign country.
His case is lumped in with a case against four other persons, one or
more of whom may have committed an actual crime that can be used to
tar them all.

Both the Attorney General and President of the United States branded
Padilla a "grave threat" to the lives of Americans. After three years
of this propaganda, all the US government can come up with is the
trumped up charge of conspiracy to kill foreigners and to provide
support for terrorists.

A police state has to catch enemies in order to keep the people
frightened and appreciative of the watchful eye of the police state.
Now that the Padilla case has evaporated, the Bush administration has
come up with a replacement. An American student of Arab descent, who
was studying at a Saudi Arabian university, has been indicted by a
federal grand jury for conspiracy to assassinate President Bush. The
indictment rests on the confession wrung out of the young man by
torture in a Saudi prison.

Does anyone really believe that al Qaeda leaders would conspire with
an American college student to assassinate President Bush? Indeed,
President Bush has been Osama bin Laden's greatest benefactor. Why
would al Qaeda want to kill the man who is doing them so much good?
Before Bush launched his war on terror and invaded Iraq, the vast
majority of Muslims thought bin Laden was a nut case and supported the
US. Today Muslims think Bush is a nut case and support bin Laden.

What kind of a country have we become when we put a citizen on trial
on the basis of a confession obtained under torture by a foreign
government? Is the case against this student anything other than an
attempt to enlist the sympathy factor for Bush in order to repair his
standing in the polls?

Americans need to understand that a police state has to produce
results in order to justify its budget and its powers. It doesn't
really care who it catches. Stalin's police state caught the wife of
Stalin's foreign minister in one of its street sweeps.

The Bush administration justifies torture and threatens to veto
congressional attempts to restrain its use. The Bush administration
justifies indefinite detention of American citizens without charges.
It asserts the power of indefinite detention based on its subjective
judgment about who is a threat. An American government that preaches
"freedom and democracy" to the world claims the powers of tyrants as
its own.

Americans need to wake up. The only danger to Americans in Iraq is the
one Bush created by invading the country. The grave threat that
Americans face is the Bush administration's police state mentality.

Paul Craig Roberts has held a number of academic appointments and has
contributed to numerous scholarly publications. He served as Assistant
Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. His graduate
economics education was at the University of Virginia, the University
of California at Berkeley, and Oxford University. He is coauthor of
The Tyranny of Good Intentions. He can be reached at:
paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com

***
Democracy is a form of religion. It is the worship of jackals by jackasses.
- H.L. Mencken

www.soundclick.com/pseudojandek
jackal music for jackass people

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[CanYoAssDigIt] Re: Russell Crowe -- Celebrity "Justice" is nothing to "crowe" about ... Justice went South with North

that asswipe celebrity ollie north just spoke in town. if you can
believe it, he was selected as a speaker at an event that was to raise
money to build a church school! The irony of it all is almost two
much, that this satanically evil lowlife (who did more than throw
phones in people's faces, thousands of men, women, and yes, children,
were slaughtered as a result of this "War Hero's" (yeah, right Tim,
dream on) efforts in (by his own count) 12 wars. I didn't even know
the US was involved in 12 wars even if you include grotesque and
pathetic "police actions" like Reagan's Granada invasion.

The low point of the article was mention of a 17 year old kid, who is
a big oliver north fan. he said the protesters (75 of them, and I
wish I'd been there) made him angry, he gave them slips of paper
saying "too bad ignorance doesn't hurt."

If it did this little shitwipe would be squirming in molten lava in
some low circle of hell. The nerve of the little cretin - one of the
protestors was a pastor who had actually gone to Nicaragua with
Witness for Peace and saw what North's devilish work did firsthand. At
a bare minimum, I'm guessing most of the protesters were alive,
functional, and paying attention when North was committing his
atrocities.

This little shit for brains wasn't even born yet. I guess this is
what you get when you let so-called christians (I'll stop calling them
satanic, it's unfair to satanists) home school their little inbred
clans.

It's nice to know that there are some people around here that oppose
criminal activity. They aren't all too busy getting cornholed by
horses to notice..

On 11/21/05, kdhaisch@aol.com <kdhaisch@aol.com> wrote:
>
> > he threw a phone AT him - did it strike him?
>
> Yes, hit the employee in the face! He got cuts and bruises.
> Seems Russell Crowe wanted to phone someone, and then
> got mad at the employee when his call didn't go through,
> or something.
>
> ************
>
> > And which offence was this? I've heard Russell Crowe is
> > an asshole. this certainly sounds as though it wasn't the
> > hotel employees fault.
>
> Right, it was definitely NOT the employee's fault.
> But Russell Crowe, ASSHOLE that he is, thinks he can
> take his anger and frustration out on a "menial" employee.
> Well, the employee sued (good for him!), but since
> Russell Crowe is a CELEBRITY, he won't be faced with
> prison time, as anybody else would for assault and battery!
>
>
> kdh
>
>
>
> .
>
> ________________________________
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>
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[CanYoAssDigIt] Hugo Chavez vs. the King of Vacations

You gotta love this guy! Why can't we have a president like him? Oh,
I forgot, because unlike Venesuala, we don't have elections that could
pass inspection from international observers!

Pretty funny, the network news said after the drubbing Caligula took
in South America, he was going to burnish his image in Asia. Yeah, he
was welcomed with open arms by 10s of thousands of people in South
Korea. Did I say open arms? I meant shaken fists.

I wish armericans had more balls. the majority feel just the same way
the rest of the world does. their just afraid to express it.

November 21, 2005
Poor Americans are Now Getting Charitable Aid from Venezuela
Hugo Chavez vs. the King of Vacations

By MIKE WHITNEY

Hugo Chavez seems to take great pleasure in tweaking George Bush's
nose. He's repeatedly called Bush a "terrorist" and disparaged the US
as a "terrorist state". Just last week, Chavez fired off another
broadside saying, "The planet's most serious danger is the government
of the United States ... The people of the United States are being
governed by a killer, a genocidal murderer, and a madman."

He got that right.

For liberals and leftists Chavez's fiery salvos have been a welcome
respite from the weak-kneed groveling of congressional Democrats and
the congratulatory purring of media brown-nosers. So far, the
Venezuelan president has been the only leader on the world stage to
state the obvious, that Bush and his maniacal group of liars,
carpet-baggers, and war criminals are savaging the planet and putting
millions at risk.

That doesn't mean that Chavez hates the American people; far from it.
Following the vast devastation of Hurricane Katrina Chavez responded
more quickly than FEMA, offering to send cheap fuel, humanitarian aid
and relief workers to the disaster area. He offered to provide $1
million of free petroleum via the state run Petroleos de Venezuela and
its subsidiary CITGO for the relief effort.

According to civil rights leader, Jesse Jackson, Chavez also offered
two mobile hospital units, 120 rescue and first aid experts, and 50
tons of food; considerably more than "Brownie" was able to produce.

"We have drinking water, food, and we can provide fuel," Chavez told reporters

None of this was, of course, was reported in the American media which
consistently lambastes Chavez as a "radical leftist".

Huh?

The self-proclaimed socialist, Chavez, is seen as a serious threat to
expanding capital markets in the southern hemisphere and, therefore,
ripe for regime change. This explains the hostile language the media
uses in describing the ebullient and charismatic Chavez.

Chavez succeeded in using Katrina to blast away at the callousness and
cynicism of the Bush administration saying, "Before the hurricane,
they knew Katrina was coming and refused to evacuate people. In Cuba,
when they know a hurricane is coming, chickens, hens, and people are
all evacuated. A hurricane recently destroyed many towns in Cuba but
not a single person died because no one was there. The government
prepared its people and took them to shelters, whereas here they left
the poor, without protection, especially the blacks. That's horrible!"

"The government had no evacuation plan. The world's only superpower is
so involved in Iraq ...but left its own people adrift," Chavez said on
live TV. "And, that cowboy, the king of vacations, stayed at his ranch
and said nothing but, 'You have to flee'. It's incredible."

"The king of vacations"?

Ouch!

Chavez also got his digs in at the recent economic summit at Mar Del
Plata, Argentina where he was the center of attention. A throng of
35,000 celebrated his arrival and filled the local soccer stadium with
protestors chanting, "Bush is the terrorist. Bush is the fascist".

Chavez gave a 2 hour speech railing against Bush, his "immoral war"
and his ruinous "neoliberal economic policies"

"The US has bombed entire cities, used chemical weapons and napalm,
killed women and children and thousands of soldiers. That's
terrorism," said Chavez. "The US government is a threat to humanity."

The summit at Mar del Plata was billed as a "showdown" between Bush
and Chavez and many of those attending anxiously awaited the face-off.
Chavez even joked to reporters that "he would sneak up on Bush and
scare him".

No need. The normally boastful Bush was uncommonly subdued during the
activities and slinked away to the safety of Air Force 1 as soon as he
spotted an opening. The Crawford peacock had no intention of going
nose to nose with his Venezuelan nemesis.

Bush prefers to limit his displays of bravado to televised appearances
on the flight-deck of American aircraft carriers, cinched up in a
warrior-jumpsuit and cod-piece, surrounded by a phalanx of security
guards.

Yee-hah!

Chavez summarized Bush's stealthy departure saying, "The real failure
here was Mr. Bush. He left defeated, and he will keep being defeated.
This century will be for the people of Latin America."

Last week, Chavez took another swing at the Bush team by ordering the
delivery of "12 million gallons of discounted home-heating oil to
local charities and 45,000 low-income families in Massachusetts next
month." (Boston Globe)

The deal will provide nine million gallons of oil to institutions that
serve the poor, such as homeless shelters. Families will be able to
buy heating fuel at discount rates, keeping them from freezing to
death in the bitter New England winter.

The plan is yet another blow to the administration and the rickety
system of predatory capitalism.

Massachusetts congressman William Delahunt explained that there was a
"desperate need" for affordable home heating oil that would not be met
by state or federal governments.

No wonder. There's been a 13% rise in the number of American's living
below the poverty line since Bush took office, and the fissures in the
"free market" edifice are beginning to appear everywhere.

Bush has reinforced the feudal system of upward redistribution,
creating even greater structural injustices that are hurting those who
are least able to protect themselves. Chavez's generosity shines a
light on a voracious system that is increasingly turning inwards and
wreaking havoc on the poor. Washington continues to siphon off the
nation's wealth to a small cadre of venal elites while others are
struggling just to keep warm.

Chavez's gift will be distributed by officials from Citizens Energy of
Boston and CITGO, a Houston-based subsidiary of Petroleos de
Venezuela. It should help to minimize the suffering of the working
people who face a 50% increase in the price of oil.

The political implications of Chavez's move are enormous. It's a slap
in the face to George Bush, who tried to remove Chavez 4 years ago in
a failed-coup attempt. It also demonstrates that Bush's "survival of
the fittest" neoliberal policies have fallen on hard times. Chavez has
assumed the mantle of Franklin D. Roosevelt redistributing Venezuela's
prodigious oil wealth to the people who need it the most, while the
blinkered Bush has become a modern-day Herbert Hoover paving the way
for economic Armageddon by shifting $1.3 trillion of wealth from the
middle class to his friends at the top of the fiscal food-chain.

Just this week, Bush slashed another $700 million from the food stamp
program leaving 235,000 needy Americans without enough to eat. These
same people face the prospect of a frigid Bush-winter unless they can
get help from Chavez.

Who could have imagined just 5 years ago that American citizens would
be getting charitable assistance from Venezuela?

Viva Chavez.

Mike Whitney lives in Washington state. He can be reached: fergiewhitney@msn.com

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