The shocks that allow the powerful to push through radical reforms are sometimes natural disasters and are sometimes events that are created to terrify the public. 9/11 was a devastating shock to the American system, as its aftermath provided the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Military Commissions Act, and much more. But what if the first shock to American society that was used to benefit The Club that controls our society was not 9/11, as it may appear, but was instead the JFK assassination? How do the 10 steps towards destroying constitutional freedoms look when the focus dates back to the 50’s and 60’s, instead of just the tragic years governed by George W. Bush?
*To start this post series from the beginning, start here:
Set up an internal surveillance system
This step has been present since at least the 1960s, as it has been confirmed that Martin Luther King Jr. was wiretapped by the FBI. As a response to the wiretapping and spying on activists that took place in the 1960s and early 1970s, Congress passed the FISA law in 1978, which requires the government to obtain a warrant before invading a person’s private space and conversations. This law, however, allowed the government to go to a secret court to obtain the warrants, taking away the public’s ability to scrutinize the validity of the request.
The FISA law has been repeatedly amended over the years, starting with the Clinton administration, to allow more and more leniency to the government. In 1995, President Clinton and then Attorney General Janet Reno worked to get secret physical searches of a person’s home and belongings to be made legal. The amendment was challenged as unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court never handed down a ruling, making this issue a legal no man’s land. The FISA law was amended again by the Clinton administration in 1999 and 2000, expanding the type of wiretaps allowed and expanding the definition of who can be wiretapped.
The FISA law took its biggest hits during the Bush administration. The 2001 Patriot Act “made extensive changes to the FISA, broadening the circumstances when the secret FISA authorities could be used and eliminating some of the safeguards against abuse”. In 2002, the FISA law was amended again to allow the Attorney General to wait three days after a wiretap has begun, instead of 24 hours, before he requests a court order for a wiretap (which defeats the purpose of having a law requiring warrants before wiretaps are begun).
Not that FISA matters anymore because the Bush administration has openly broken the FISA law. Starting in at least 2003, willing telecom companies installed “splitter cabinets” in some of their facilities, which copy all the information that passes over that company’s fiber optic lines directly to the Department of Homeland Security. The splitter is a dumb device and it is impossible for it to filter out the emails, internet searches, and phone calls of the millions of innocent civilians (and Congressional representatives) that use the internet everyday. In effect, it is safe to assume that all actions we take which require the use of the internet are available for viewing and/or listening by the Department of Homeland Security.
The Department of Homeland Security is also making preparations to be able to watch us as well. Even though cities are increasingly installing video surveillance cameras, the Department of Homeland Security is planning to open a new office dedicated to using our military spy satellites to watch the American public (which, yes, is a direct violation of Posse Comitatus, the law that says the government may not use the military for domestic law enforcement purposes). The new spy satellite office will be called The National Applications Office, and while Congress was able to delay its opening, Michael Chertoff is pushing again for the NAO to begin operations.
The government has also begun to create the foundation for being able to track our whereabouts when we are not in their jurisdiction. All passports that were issued in 2007 are now equipped with electronic chips inside the back cover. I just received my new passport and can personally testify that this fact is, sadly, true. The government says that the chip contains the same information as the front cover and a digital picture for facial recognition software. Regardless of whether or not the chip can track us GPS style, with the presence of a chip inside our passports being idly accepted by a numb public, is it not just a matter of time?
The shocks that allow the powerful to push through radical reforms are sometimes natural disasters and are sometimes events that are created to terrify the public. 9/11 was a devastating shock to the American system, as its aftermath provided the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Military Commissions Act, and much more. But what if the first shock to American society that was used to benefit The Club that controls our society was not 9/11, as it may appear, but was instead the JFK assassination? How do the 10 steps towards destroying constitutional freedoms look when the focus dates back to the 50’s and 60’s, instead of just the tragic years governed by George W. Bush?
*To start this post series from the beginning, start here:
Develop a group of thugs to terrorize citizens
Naomi Wolf described the third step towards closing a society in this way:
When leaders who seek what I call a “fascist shift” want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: you need citizens to fear thug violence and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.
The obvious image that immediately pops into my head is Blackwater, and the other private military firms like them. This group of guys operates completely outside of the rule of law all over the world – including inside the United States. I almost never hear anyone talking about this and I wonder if people even know this happened, but private military guys were deputized, with the authorization to make arrests and use lethal force, by the Department of Homeland Security to patrol the streets of New Orleans after Katrina. Jeremy Scahill of The Nation found out that while there, private military guys commandeered an apartment because it was above the bar they were using as their headquarters and because they liked the view. They threw many of the belongings that the evacuee left at home out onto the street below. While they were working, they carried automatic assault rifles over their shoulders and wore flak jackets with pockets for extra ammunition. They shot at least a few citizens, but that’s all we know because no investigations were conducted.
So far that’s our only city that has experienced the “security” offered by the private military, but Blackwater has training facilities in North Carolina and Illinois, and are still trying to open up a training camp in San Diego. That's just Blackwater. I know very little about the other firms as Blackwater is the only one covered at all by the media.
What I do know, however, is that if the 3rd step towards closing a society requires a paramilitary force, the government has one waiting in the (Middle Eastern) wings and continue to improve their foundation for an easy landing if and/or when they are summoned to come work closer to home.
There is another group of thugs that have been terrorizing the public, and for far longer. They have just done it in a strategically different way. Instead of using paramilitary groups to terrorize the public, certain members of the media, who have only increased in number, use social humiliation to terrorize citizens into submission, which is often a more powerful motivator than the threat of violence.
In 1987, President Reagan got the Fairness Doctrine repealed, which was the law that said programs featuring political editorial comments had to provide equal time to the opposing point of view. The repeal, and the freedom to say anything over the public airwaves with no requirement for accountability, gave birth to the Rush Limbaugh show, which was then followed by all the other shows (Bill O’Reilly, Tucker Carlson, Michael Savage, etc), who spend hours each day humiliating people into agreeing with their uniform way of thinking. They have become known for attacking those who challenge them, to the point that Rush Limbaugh openly brags about blackmailing journalists and Bill O’Reilly threatens to send thugs to callers’ homes. Also, by arguing and bullying in defense of the private military, the media thugs serve to encourage the public into quiet acceptance of the private military forces (and all the other actions of the government that are unconstitutional).
These two groups, the paramilitary group for physical terrorizing and the media group for social terrorizing, would make an extraordinarily effective thug caste if the private military ends up as present in our daily lives as our radios and televisions.
The shocks that allow the powerful to push through radical reforms are sometimes natural disasters and are sometimes events that are created to terrify the public. 9/11 was a devastating shock to the American system, as its aftermath provided the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Military Commissions Act, and much more. But what if the first shock to American society that was used to benefit The Club that controls our society was not 9/11, as it may appear, but was instead the JFK assassination? How do the 10 steps towards destroying constitutional freedoms look when the focus dates back to the 50’s and 60’s, instead of just the tragic years governed by George W. Bush?
*To start this post series from the beginning, start here:
#2 - Create a prison system outside the rule of law
I interpret this step to mean not just the creation of a physical system of prisons, but the beginning of detention of individuals with no cause or repercussions. In this context, I think there is a fair argument that the creation of the CIA itself created a form of “prison system” outside the rule of law. The CIA was created in 1947, and starting in 1950, the CIA purchased the services of a doctor, Dr. Ewen Cameron, who researched how to most effectively torture people in order to erase their personalities and create a “clean slate”. In order to do this research, he needed people to perform his experiments on. With the assistance of the Canadian government, this doctor was the first person employed by the CIA to detain individuals outside the rule of law. Since 1950 and Dr. Ewen Cameron, the CIA’s detention and torture has only gotten more sophisticated, widespread, and technically legal. It’s now accelerated to the point of the United States government openly fights in favor of operating Guantanamo Bay Prison, a legal no man’s land in the ocean where people just disappear. It’s also well known that the CIA is operating additional “black sites” in unknown locations all over the world.
It was also recently revealed that in 1950, the same year the CIA began funding Dr. Ewen Cameron, J. Edgar Hoover, the former director of the FBI, presented a plan to President Truman to imprison 12,000 people (97% of them Americans) for “treason, espionage, and sabotage.” President Truman did not proceed with the detentions, but the strategy outline for doing so was born. It’s quite astonishing how the plan Hoover presented resembles the groundwork that the Bush administration has laid.
As for the our actual prison system, incarceration rates began to climb in the 1970s, doubling in the 1980s and then again in the 1990s. Our existing prison system also increasingly operates outside the rule of law. It’s a pretty sick joke when you really think about it, but when someone talks about going to prison, a common piece of advice is “Don’t drop the soap”. This is because rapes happen in prison. Often. It’s now to the point of common knowledge. There are also many fights and beatings. While the prisoners and guards may technically be protected and restrained by the same laws as the rest of us, in practice, the laws inside the prison walls are entirely separate.
It’s a reality that is currently dismissed by the American public. The majority of people that wind up in prison are not of the ruling class. When the ruling class is put in prison, they serve 84 minutes for their second drunk driving arrest. When the rest of us, especially minorities, are locked up, the first strike is not a free-be, the second strike is served for longer than a movie, and the third strike is for life.
But more prisons are being built by Halliburton inside the United States. $382 million dollars worth of prisons, to be exact. We have no idea where they are and the stated purpose is “for an unexpected influx of immigrants, to house people in the event of a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space”. We may care about the condition of our prisons very soon.
Naomi Wolf wrote an article for The Guardian in April, 2007. It was based on her book, titled The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, in which she researched the progression away from open societies and towards closed societies that have occurred in history. She found some clear patterns and, in this article, described ten “steps any would-be-dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms.”
In September 2007, I found Naomi Wolf’s article and wrote about how many of the steps have been met by the Bush Administration. However, since writing that post, I’m starting to wonder if the Bush Administration is an expanded and accelerated part of a plan that began a long time before the Supreme Court chose George W. Bush to be our President in 2000. While the last 7 years may have been the most dramatic years in terms of losing our democracy, I no longer think that they were the beginning.
I was born in 1982 and have always known that President Kennedy was killed in 1963, but that date was just an arbitrary number. It’s only recently, now that I’ve been paying much closer attention to dates, that I have realized that a succession of assassinations only began with John F. Kennedy. In the next 5 years, between 1963 and 1968, Americans also saw Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert Kennedy assassinated. That’s the same amount of time between when the Iraq War started and now. It’s only recently, after seeing the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and now that I have begun to worry for the safety of Barack Obama, someone who, in a way, embodies the legacy of all three of those men, do I understand what a huge shock that series of events must have been to the people who experienced them.
Over the past half-century, the members of The Club (my name for the group of people that are working together to transform this country into something other than what the founders intended) have used the disaster capitalism model described in Noami Klein’s The Shock Doctrineto gain control of the public and the wealth, not only in the United States, but in countries all over the world. The basic theory is that during the aftermath of a national disaster, a state of shock is created for that country. It is during this state of shock, when a society is traumatized and distracted, that the people in control are able to push through radical “free-market” reforms, which are reforms that, by their very nature, lead to lower qualities of life for the vast majority of citizens, while a small group of powerful people reap enormous benefits from privatization of that country’s labor and assets.
The shocks that allow the powerful to push through these radical reforms are sometimes natural disasters and are sometimes events that are created to terrify the public. 9/11 was a devastating shock to the American system, as its aftermath provided the Patriot Act, the Department of Homeland Security, the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, the Military Commissions Act, and much more. But what if the first shock to American society that was used to benefit The Club that controls our society was not 9/11, as it may appear, but was instead the JFK assassination? How do the 10 steps towards destroying constitutional freedoms look when the focus dates back to the 50’s and 60’s, instead of just the tragic years governed by George W. Bush?
Over the next 10 days, I will analyze one step per day (as this post would be ridiculously long otherwise and tough to comment on). Keep in mind…This analysis is being done by someone that was an egg between the 1950s and 1982. I have no doubt, with the degenerated state of the media, that there are relevant events that I’ve never even heard of before because I wasn’t alive to personally remember them. But many of my readers were. Here are the 10 steps, as determined by Naomi Wolf, that I will be looking for over the next 10 days:
1)Invoke a terrifying internal and external threat – the shock
2)Create a prison system outside the rule of law
3)Develop a group of thugs to terrorize citizens
4)An internal surveillance system is established
5)Infiltrate and harass citizens groups
6)Create a list that subjects those listed to arbitrary detention and release
7)Threaten key individuals with their jobs, or worse, if they don’t toe the line
8)Control the press
9)Cast dissent as “treason” and criticism as “espionage”
10)Suspend the rule of law
I will publish a final draft of this, updated after I get your feedback, with all the steps on one post. If you think of something to add, let me know and I’ll give it some thought. Hopefully together, we can gain some clarity into what the hell is happening to us.
The first step described by Naomi Wolf, that is taken to close an open society is to:
#1: Invoke a terrifying internal and external threat – the shock
Between 1963 and 1968, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy were killed. These were just the biggest names. There were others including Malcolm X and Medgar Evers. The official stories behind the assassinations of at least JFK, MLK, and RFK were all blamed on crazed gunmen, but over the last 4 decades, enough evidence as emerged to indicate, at the very least, that the investigations were not thorough and justice has never been served. This internal threat shocked the American people. If their leaders were not safe because of unknown forces within the United States, what did that mean for the average citizen? If you wanted to lead, or had information to tell, would you wind up dead too?
The death of President Kennedy allowed for the escalation of the Vietnam war.
During the 1970’s, there was a recession, a word that still has not been defined to my generation despite the frequency we now hear it on the news. What I do know is that lots of people were out of work, gas was expensive, the clothes looked cheap, and the music was bad. There was a general darkness hanging over the decade, a darkness also aided by the law-breaking Presidency of Richard Nixon and lack of justice served by his pardon. This economic shock kept the public dormant, as no one could afford to lose the jobs they had, and inspiration was hard to find having been so devastated by the assassination shocks of the 1960’s.
9/11 was the obvious shock of my generation and has lead to the “terrorist” boogeyman as our constant current external threat. The threat posed by the never-ending “war on terror” allows the powerful to scare part of the public into willingly relinquishing their rights and national assets while the assassination and economic shocks (including the new one starting to take effect now) keep the other part of the public too afraid of internal threats to fight back.
Shocks wear off as the public becomes more aware of what is happening to them. We may be coming out of the shock of the assassinations of the 1960’s, which is very good news. However, 9/11 is still deeply haunting the 30%ers and an economic shock is on its way. The internal and external threats have been successfully invoked.
On Tuesday, January 22, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a confirmation hearing for two people nominated by President Bush to serve in the Justice Department.
One of the people in the process of being confirmed is Gregory Katsas, who will be the Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Division. Gregory Katsas is a very strange man and his answers were also very strange. To tell you the truth, I didn't really understand what he was talking about during the whole hearing. But the other guy is the important one anyway.
The other guy being confirmed is Kevin O'Connor, who will be the Associate Attorney General of the Justice Department, which is the #3 position in the Department.
As we've already discussed here at Little Country Lost, Michael Mukasey (Bush's new Attorney General) and Mark Filip (Bush's new Deputy Attorney General) both have either limited grasp of the law (which I don't believe) or are protectors of the Bush Administration, as both of them have refused to label waterboarding as torture. Not being one to break up a pattern, President Bush's new Associate Attorney General looks like he is going to be a shield for President Bush too.
During the hearing, Senator Sheldon Whitehouse expressed concern that the Justice Department has put political concerns over the concerns for protecting people's civil rights, and the result has been that it has become harder for people to vote. He asked Kevin O'Connor, "If confirmed, what will you do to ensure that the Civil Rights division is apolitical and vigorously protects the right to vote?"
In typical Republican fashion, Kevin O'Connor gave the right answer and then included his real answer as a "but".
We have an obligation to make sure that people who should vote, can vote, and aren't intimidated and that's probably one of the most important missions that we have.
There is, I believe, a concern in some parts of the country, although I'm not privy to the facts there, where there are people voting that perhaps should not be voting and I think its safe to say that in those respects there's an interest as well in making sure that people who shouldn't vote don't dilute the votes of those who should.
First of all, if Kevin O'Connor is not privy to the facts, why is he making this claim? I do a lot of reading and I have yet to see any evidence of there being an epidemic of either undocumented immigrants lying about their identities in order to vote or an epidemic of registered voters lining up and voting twice. I have, however, seen demonstrations of how the electronic voting machines are defective, testimony that the voting machines are easily hacked, and have already seen an entire state disenfranchised by the Democratic party.
The only reason I can think of that would explain why Kevin O'Connor would make this claim is because it is a Republican talking point. Every time the discussion comes to voting rights, some wealthy Republican stands up and points at the evil immigrants who dare to want to vote in the country they live in. It's a false flag to distract the public from the very real evidence of disenfranchisement that the Republican party was guilty of in 2000 and 2004, and since they got away with it in those two elections, we can probably expect disenfranchisement by Republicans again in 2008.
Since Kevin O'Connor's answer was an obvious false flag Republican talking point saying that too many votes are being cast, Kevin O'Connor basically told Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, on the record, that he's not going to do a damn thing to prevent or punish voter disenfrachisement.
There is also another interesting bit of insight we get into the Bush Administration mind by Kevin O'Connor's answer. He believes there are people who should and should not vote and the danger in this country is that those who should not vote will dilute the votes of those who should.
Tell me, who is determining who should and should not vote? What is the criteria?
As we already know, there is no epidemic of undocumented immigrants lying to the people checking off names at the voting booths and essentially stealing the votes of people registered there. So who are these people who should not vote? Could it be black people, who tend to vote in their own self interests and know the Republican party wants them picking cotton? Could it be Hispanic people, who tend to vote in their own self interests and have been treated like worthless pests by the Republicans for relocating to a neighboring country that pays enough to feed their families? Could it be poor people, who tend to vote in their own self interests and who have seen the few dollars they have become worth less during the Bush Administration? Could it be the middle class families, who tend to vote in their own self interests and who are finding themselves rapidly joining the poor thanks to Kevin O'Connor's political party?
Hmm...
So, if that weren't enough to make you want this guy to stay far away from the Justice Department, take a look at his views on Presidential power.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse was able to get a few lines of recent Justice Department rulings declassified. Here's one of them:
An executive order cannot limit a President. There is no constitutional requirement for a President to issue a new Executive order whenever he wishes to depart from the terms of a previous Executive order. Rather than violate an Executive order, the President has instead modified or waived it.
Senator Whitehouse's interpretation of this ruling is that:
It allows the published Executive orders of the Executive Branch of government to become a foil and a screen of the real activities of the government... The idea that you must never, you are free never to come into compliance or change an Executive order and simply run a classified program in violation of your own disclosed Executive order, which in many situations have the force of law, strikes me as being a trespass beyond the bounds of legal propriety.
Kevin O'Connor isn't that concerned.
It's less important to me whether he can or cannot do that. It's really more important whether he should or should not do it. And if he does, it seems to me that the best course of action would be to see that he was consulting with the appropriate folks in Congress so that they were aware of it.
So, the #3 guy in the Justice Department thinks it's okey dokey for the President to issue an Executive order explaining policy to the American people but at the same time act totally outside of that order, not allowing the public to have a clue what's really going on. That action is not as important as the "appropriate folks" in Congress being told about the President's deception.
Lovely.
Oh, and did I forgot to mention that Kevin O'Connor used to be Chief of Staff to Alberto Gonzales? Didn't want to leave that little tidbit out.
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse did a damn good job asking questions in this hearing, but neither of these answers were followed up with the expected, "What the hell is wrong with you?" response. I'm so tired of watching these hearings, and seeing the Congressmen and Senators get these answers, just to go ahead and confirm the bastards anyway.
The point of telling you all this is to make sure we all understand that our Justice Department is still horribly broken, with or without Alberto. Anytime you see an investigation into Bush Administration crimes being handed to the Justice Department this year, feel free to assume that it will effectively be quashed by the three men in charge: Michael "What is waterboarding?" Mukasey, Mark "I'm with Mukasay" Filip, and Kevin "We decide who votes" O'Connor.
Need some proof? Remember when the CIA destroyed some videotapes (evidence) of people being tortured? That investigation was put in the control of the Justice Department. Attorney General Michael Mukasey announced yesterday that he is refusing to appoint an independent prosecutor.
I still have a MySpace account. Some people have MySpace accounts and try to rack up as many friends as possible for whatever reason. I, like a lot of other people, use it to keep in touch with old friends and most of the people on my "friends" list are people I've known in real life.
On MySpace, you can post bulletins. Bulletins are not put on your public page for the internet to see, but instead appear on the opening page of your friends' accounts. People use these bulletins to say all sorts of things.
In the past twenty-four hours, I've seen a topic become a bit of a pattern on my bulletin board: people are mourning Heath Ledger.
It's always sad to see an actor die, or anyone die for that matter. I'm a fan of Heath Ledger's work. I feel especially bad for his baby girl.
But the attention this has gotten from my peers has made me raise an eyebrow.
It has to do with the the topic patterns of the bulletin board. Before Heath Ledger's death, the last topic pattern I noticed was the Giants making it to the Super Bowl. Before that... I can't remember. I guess bulletins saying Happy New Year. Topic patterns tend to be relatively rare.
Here's the bulletin that I posted today in response to the recent Heath Ledger topic pattern. The first paragraph is a mix and match of phrases close to ones I saw written by other people:
Today I write to say goodbye to a true American hero -Heath Ledger. Yes, I know he was Australian – which I know because of that sexy Australian accent – but he was one of our actors. He was one of us. He was only 28 years old and just had that cute little baby with Michelle Williams (Jen from Dawson’s Creek). It’s going to be so hard to watch the new Batman and not feel some sadness. I’ll never be able to watch 10 Things I Hate About You in the same carefree way again. His death is such a tragedy. He will be sorely missed.
Heath Ledger.
I’m amazed by the number of bulletins I’ve seen posted in remembrance of Heath Ledger. Usually bulletins are boredom surveys, cool things people found on the internet, or announcements of hang outs that will be coming up soon. I’d say I rarely see bulletins actually written by people about something they are thinking about. Maybe a few times a week. Yet in the last 24 hours, the urge to spontaneously speak to friends about something you care about came to quite a few people because of the passing of Heath Ledger.
In and of itself, this is not a bad thing. But…
A few days ago something very bad happened in the global stock market. I don’t understand what is was… hell, who can even understand their own bank accounts lately?... but the world is worried. We probably should be too.
California is going to get bitch-slapped by another big storm this weekend... starting today… Wednesday. This storm came out of nowhere, as 4 days ago the 10 day forecast was all little sunshine symbols. Now it’s full of rain. Look it up. It’s weird.
Since New Years Day (also known as the last 23 days) 32 guys (and maybe girls) died in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’ll bet you $100 that most of those 32 people who were killed occupying those countries were younger than Heath Ledger.
There’s a new study in the news today that found that President Bush and his top officials lied to us 935 total times about the threat Iraq posed during the 2 year time period after 9/11.
Yet none of these things have inspired the outpouring of emotion that the death of Heath Ledger has. His death is sad, but why is his death drawing more emotion and driving more people to speak out than things that are happening that affect us all in much bigger ways?
To the people that posted those messages: I’m not making fun of you. I understand the urge to write about stuff… I do it all the time. Heath Ledger’s death is sad and I think it’s cool that you cared enough to share what you think. I think it’s awesome, actually. But maybe you could post those kinds of bulletins more often, and about other things that are going on too.
Maybe we all could. And besides, don’t you think those kind of bulletins are more interesting to read?
I took a holiday away from thinking about the state of the world this weekend so I'm not up for writing a big post today. Therefore, I'm going to ask my readers to write this one for me.
Here's the question: (and I want honest answers):
Let's say you had gone on a road trip to Vegas over the summer and had taken a few of those big plastic water bottles (the kind with the spout) and put them in your trunk, just in case. In that trunk was also a box of 100 sandwich sized plastic baggies. Let's say you haven't been in the mood to clean out your trunk anytime between June and January. When you finally do, you find out that one of the water bottles has leaked. The box around the plastic baggies is drenched and falls apart when you pick it up. The 100 plastic baggies are kind of scattered and have old water all over them. You throw away the leaky water bottle, and then you come back and stare into your trunk at the 100 soggy plastic baggies.
Do you pick up the all the little bags, bring them upstairs, clean them all off, and use them or do you scoop them up and throw them away?
Be honest: Knowing yourself, what would you probably do? Why?
*For extra credit: Watch this 20 minute movie called The Story of Stuff after you answer. Its got some great information, even better perspective, and it doesn't require reading (always a bonus for me!).
The House Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee held a hearing today on a sneaky move by the Bush Administration to get themselves an oil deal.
As everyone pretty much knows already, as our climate continues to change, polar bears are screwed. On December 26th, 2006, the United States Fish and Wildlife Service issued a proposal to list the polar bear as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. If they were to be listed under the Endangered Species Act, we would be obligated to protect their habitat.
The Bush Administration, however, wants to lease a big chunk of the Chukchi Sea, the polar bears' natural habitat, to the highest bidding oil company. If the polar bear were to be declared an endangered species, the Bush Administration would not be able to move forward with their 29.4 million acre deal because the entire area would need to be protected for the safety of the species. This is because the construction, the drilling, and the transportation routes needed to pillage the area for oil would essentially destroy what's left of the delicate ice in the region. The oil industry would also subject the area to oil spills (the chances of which were estimated, even by the Bush Administration, at between 33% and 51%), which are almost impossible to clean up in large areas of broken up ice.
The unshaded part of the following graph is the section of the arctic controlled by the United States. The green area is where most polar bears live (50% of them). The red section is the area that the Bush Administration wants to turn over to oil companies for drilling:
See the dilemma? In order to lease that area for oil, the polar bear can't be on the endangered species list.
Here's the reason for today's hearing. As described by CSPAN:
Earlier in the week, the Interior Department announced it would miss the statutory deadline to reach a decision on listing the polar bear under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), saying it would take up to a month more to reach the decision. That would put the listing decision one day after the sale of oil drilling rights in Alaska’s Chukchi Sea, scheduled for February 6th.
As has become typical, the hearing went like this: Administration guys testify first. They talk a lot about how much integrity they have and masterfully mask disturbing answers with impressive sounding sentences that make no sense. They do this until Congress gets tired of talking to them.
A nice example:
The second panel consists of people who, while maybe a little strange, do not make you sick. They tend to be Professors and experts whose knowledge is relevant to the issue at hand.
While everyone else was being polite and tip-toeing around the issue, Kassie Siegel from the Center of Biological Diversity, part of the second panel, cut through the crap and laid the issue right on the table:
Here are a few quick refreshers first...to help with storyline:
Secretary Dirk Kempthorne is the Secretary (head) of the Department of the Interior. The is made up of the people who control our "nature" policy. He's a Bush appointee.
1981 was Ronald Reagan's first year as President. Did you know that the White House was partially powered by solar panels when Jimmy Carter left office? Ronald Reagan tore them down.
Former Assistant Secretary of the Interior, Julie McDonald, resigned from her position in May 2007 after an internal review found that she had violated federal rules by giving government documents to lobbyists for industry. She was appointed by President Bush in 2002.
Ok, Ms. Seigel. Sorry for the interruption. You were saying?
Over the past seven years, the Bush Administration has essentially shut down the listing program for endangered species. This administration has listed fewer species than any administration in history and it's not because of a lack of worthy candidates. Overall, there are 279 species that are official candidates that have been waiting an average of 19 years for protection.
Secretary Kempthorne has gone 617 days without listing a single species under the Endangered Species Act. The second longest delay in history was in 1981 when then Secretary of the Interior James Watt went 382 days without listing a species, and in that situation Congress quickly amended the act to include the strict statutory deadlines for listing species that we now have.
We have repeatedly seen political appointees in this Administration use delays, such as the current delay with the polar bear listing, to interfere with the conclusions of service biologists. One example from a similar situation concerns a species called the California tiger salamander. The Service was under a court order to issue a final listing decision for the species and asked the court for more time. This time was then used by the political appointee to overrule the judgment of agency scientists, and the court later ruled that the request for a delay had been used to illegally reduce protection for that species.
Under investigation by Congress and the Inspector General, the Service has admitted to political interference in 7 listing decisions which involved former Assistant Secretary Julie McDonald but has not actually committed to correcting this interference. The Center for Biological Diversity has found evidence of political interference in an additional 55 Endangered Species Act listing decisions that the agency has refused to address. This is why we are so concerned with the current delay in the listing decision for the polar bear.
Do you know what this means? (Yes, I know this means that the Bush Administration is literally prioritizing oil over life, but that's not what I'm about to say). This means that Congress is starting to catch on to the Bush Administration's crimes before they get a chance to commit them. While it is quite sad that Bush Administration crimes have become this commonplace yet they are still in power, it is a fantastic sign for the future that in January of this new year, the intelligence community already stopped a war with Iran by drawing attention to the NIE and now Congress might be able to stop this oil deal since they are learning about it with 3 weeks left before it's final. Chris Dodd is putting his foot down on FISA and Big-Business immunity. Robert Wexler is pushing for Cheney impeachment hearings.
Could this mean that the tide is starting to turn?
Michigan voters were blatantly disenfranchised. Wasn't even hidden. The Democratic ballots were tainted in multiple ways:
The ballots were missing the names of two of the leading candidates
The ballots have the name of one person that is no longer running
The ballots included write-in sections, but if you wrote in a name, your vote didn't count
and, as expected, there was incredibly low voter turnout.
This is so damn illegal, I can't even stand it!
The media is completely ignoring all parts of this whole story. Not only are they ignoring the on-going crime of voter disenfranchisement, they are ignoring the fact that Democrats even voted at all in Michigan. After all, if they were to report on the Michigan results, more people might find out that there was something wrong with the ballots! In Michigan - a state that has been devastated by the crappy auto industry and a state that has a lot of blue-collar workers that have been thrown out of work. These are the people that were prevented from voting in the primary! This is wrong! This is huge!
And all I am hearing is silence.
Dennis Kucinich was not allowed to participate in MSNBC's debate that took place on the same day. Dennis Kucinich was invited to the debate, but was then uninvited by NBC. Can you imagine the outcry if Simon, Paula, and Randy would have uninvited Sanjaya to American Idol half-way through last season? That's what happened! So Dennis Kucinich took NBC to court... won... NBC took him to court...won... and Dennis Kucinich was left out of the debate. But the unfairness isn't even the biggest outrage here. A network is making the decision of who is and who is not running for President!
Who do these parties think they are? Have you guys heard about what's going on in Michigan?
So today is Michigan's primary. However, Michigan voters are being disenfranchised by the Democratic Party (disenfranchise = depriving of the rights of citizenship especially the right to vote).
Watch it live, folks! That's how obvious this is.
Michigan's governor, Jennifer Granholm, moved Michigan's primary up from February 9th (four days after the so-called "Super Tuesday") to January 15th. Now if memory serves me correctly, all this primary-jumping started last year when Schwarzenegger moved California's primary from June to February 5th. Since all those weenies in Washington were apparently afraid to take on The Terminator, it was actually allowed and a whole bunch of other states then jumped on the bandwagon in order to also became more relevant this year. That's how "Super Tuesday" was conceived. Over half the delegates in the nation will be awarded that day.
Michigan believed that Iowa and New Hampshire were unfairly getting to determine the election year after year, so instead of jumping on our bandwagon, they upgraded and moved their primary to January 15th (which is still after Iowa and New Hampshire, but is before California and friends). Sure, it's was a ballsy move. But Carl Levin (the Senator from Michigan who thought of this idea) and Michigan's governor wanted to make their state competitive with Iowa and New Hampshire. It's fine by me. That's what California was trying to do.
The Democratic Party didn't like that. In a monumental hissy fit, the Party convinced some of the candidates to sign a "pledge" ensuring that they wouldn't accept Michigan's delegates unless Michigan bowed to the Party's authority and moved the primary back to where the Party wanted them... voting no earlier than February 5th.
Michigan played chicken with the Party (which is not the stupid move here. If we still had the rule of law in this country, this issue would have been handled by the courts last year and the courts should have found the Democratic Party's arrogance to also be illegal. This "pledge" disenfranchises voters and tramples on their right to an equal vote, which trumps the Party's authority to rule over who stands where in line). But, in the chaos that is 2008, the people of Michigan lost the game.
And you know what? We're all from Michigan today.
A state has been trumped by the will of a Party. Where, oh where, did the United States go?
Anyhow, I digress. Here is is the list of candidates who were so loyal to Party that they were willing to tell every voter in Michigan to go "F" themselves:
Barack Obama John Edwards Bill Richardson Joe Biden
Don't want to play the Party's game? Fine. You don't count this time, so there.
But the disenfranchisement doesn't end there.
When every Michigan voter goes to the polls today and requests a Democratic ballot, they will be given ballots that look something like this:
Hillary Clinton Dennis Kucinich Mike Gravel Chris Dodd Uncommitted Write In______________
While this ballot suggests that it is possible to vote for one of the missing candidates by writing in their names, what they aren't going to tell you is that the write-in names will not count.
So why have the option on the ballot, you ask? I don't know. You tell me.
Randi Rhodes said today that a similar scenario is going to play out in Florida. I haven't researched this yet, but anyone from Florida may want to.
I don't know why I expected better from the Democratic Party, but I did. I thought the Republican Party was the only one destroying our votes for their own gain, but I was wrong.
I guess we can just start referring to both political parties as "The Party" because they seem to be working for the same side. Haven't Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid been just as important in protecting the Bush Administration as the Bush Administration has? Now they all disenfranchise voters too (Republicans with caging lists and Democrats with dirty "pledges"). We're not safe being loyal to either of these groups. They're both working against the interests of the people.
There are a lot of different theories going around about who may have killed Benazir Bhutto, although most people who are talking about the assassination at all are talking about the video of the shooting and not the bigger picture. What I’m finding amazing is the vast number of people, even in the blogosphere, who are ignoring one of the best pieces of evidence that is available for whoever wants to use it: The interview with David Frost during which Benazir Bhutto gave everyone watching Al Jazeera English easily decipherable hints as to she thinks was trying to kill her. She personally identified her assassin on International TV. Would Jack McCoy avoid this evidence? I don’t think so.
But everybody is… including blogs. Take this article by Michael Shaw at The Huffington Post. This is actually an interesting article that gives little known back-story on the role the Bush Administration played in Benazir Bhutto’s assassination.
Condoleezza Rice, our Secretary of State (in charge of the diplomatic wing of our government) is the reason Benazir Bhutto was in Pakistan in the first place. Benazir Bhutto had been living in self-imposed exile with her family in either London or Dubai when approached by Condoleezza Rice. In order to make it appear like Pervez Musharraf was going to hold legit elections, Condoleezza Rice negotiated with Benazir Bhutto to get her to come back to Pakistan and run in the election. Condi promised Benazir Bhutto that Pervez Musharraf would share power with her. But as described by Michael Hersh of Newsweek,
At Rice's urging, Bhutto earlier this year agreed to take part in the parliamentary elections, with the understanding that the Pakistani president would keep his part of the bargain by permitting her, a twice-elected prime minister, to serve for a third term (which was banned by a technical rule). Instead, Musharraf did nothing to change the law and instead declared emergency rule- a decision that President Bush did not immediately denouce. Nor did the Americans push Musharaff on the other aspects of the deal that would have allowed her to be a three-time prime minister. "The Americans left her high and dry, "says a close Bhutto ally who requested anonymity when discussing diplomatic issues. "They did not keep their word."
Immediately after Benazir Bhutto stepped into Pakistan in October 2007, she was immediately almost blown up by a suicide bomber. The very first day she was back. She survived the attack but knew from that moment on that she would eventually be killed. As Michael Shaw describes it,
For Bhutto's part, after she arrived home, she did everything she could to telegraph that she was not just at risk, but being hung out to dry... Although there was no turning back once she re-entered Pakistan and launched her campaign to regain power, it was pretty obvious to Bhutto from mid-October that she was in a death trap.
But this is where the mainstream media and the bigger bloggers stop telling the story. While trying to tell anyone and everyone that she was not getting the security she needed, on November 2nd, Benazir Bhutto did an interview with David Frost of Al-Jazeera English. David Frost asked Benazir Bhutto about a letter she wrote to Pervez Musharraf naming people she wants investigated in the case of her assassination. While she’s says that three individuals are named in the letter, Bhutto only described one of them before the end of the interview. Her words exactly:
One of them is a very key figure in security. He's a former military officer. He's someone that has had dealings with Jaish a Mohammad, one of the band groups of Maulana Azhar, who was in an Indian jail for decapitating 3 British tourists and 3 American tourists, and he also had dealings with Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.
Now I know that dealings with people does not necessarily mean direct evidence, but I also know that internal security has totally collapsed in Pakistan, and that internal security cannot collapse without there being some blind eye, if not collusion, being turned towards the rise of the militants and militancy.
Although she probably signed her own death warrant when she gave this interview, it was a brilliant move if her goal was to expose her killer to the “West” (with bonus points for screwing over the Bush Administration and Pervez Musharraf when their populations find out that the main target of the “war on terror” has actually been dead almost the entire time).
By revealing a devastating, yet possibly true, secret about Osama bin-Laden, the one Middle Eastern name that all “Westerners” recognize, she was able to create a clip that would be passed around the internet and generate interest in the English speaking world (isn’t it fortunate that someone taped the original airing of the interview and posted it on YouTube?). By including the information she wanted us to know (the identity of the person trying to kill her and the fact that security in Pakistan has collapsed) and information we would want to know (Osama bin-Laden has been dead for over 6 years) in the same breath, and making sure that an easy connection existed between the two pieces of information, she leads us quite easily to General Ahmad Mahmood, the former director of the ISI (the Pakistani version of the CIA), who I believe might be the person being described by Benazir Bhutto in the David Frost interview.
This connection is quite simple in the “6 degrees of Kevin Bacon” kind of way. Osama bin-Laden was murdered by Omar Sheikh. Omar Sheikh transferred $100,000 to Mohammad Atta before 9/11 at the orders of General Mahmood Ahmad. Two degrees. Not too hard.
The other clue Bhutto gives us, that the “key figure in security” had dealings with the group Jaish a Mohammad and it's founder Maulana Azhar, leads us to General Mahmood Ahmad as well. On October 12, 1999, General Mahmood Ahmad was instrumental in the military coup that seized power for Pervez Musharraf and was rewarded with the ISI director job. Less than three months later, on December 24th, 1999, the General Mahmood Ahmad-controlled ISI orchestrated the hijacking of Indian Airlines flight 814 and demanded that Maulana Azhar, Omar Sheikh, and a third prisoner be released from an Indian prison in return for the hostages.
It ain't brain surgery. Any journalist (especially journalists with New York Times or Washington Post access and salaries) could figure it out if they bothered.
General Mahmood Ahmad would also have obvious motivations to want Benazir Bhutto dead. Benazir Bhutto wanted to go after terrorists, but more importantly, the financiers of the terrorism. She wanted to bust the people who were creating safe haven for militants starting at the top of the chain. This guy would definitely be on her list.
General Mahmood Ahmad is a name I want you to remember, because the more I hear about this guy, the more he makes my blood run cold. Like I said in an earlier post, General Mahmood Ahmad, after having ordered "Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin Laden" to transfer $100,000 to Mohammad Atta in Florida before the 9/11 attacks, was eating breakfast in the United States while the actual attacks occurred. These are the people he met with during that visit:
George Tenet: the director of the CIA from July 1997 to July 2004.
Rep. Porter Goss: the co-head of the “Joint 9/11 Intelligence Inquiry” (meaning the House and Senate investigation into 9/11), co-sponsor of the Patriot Act, and the guy that will become director of the CIA after George Tenet leaves in 2004 (he resigned on May 5, 2006).
Senator Bob Graham: the Senator from Florida who was the other co-head of the “Joint 9/11 Intelligence Inquiry”.
Marc Grossman: Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (March 2001 – January 2005) and former Ambassador to Turkey (November 1994 – June 1997). He had something to do with the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame.
I had no idea who Marc Grossman was when I first read his name, but it turns out that this little nerd might be the scariest associate for General Mahmood Ahmad to have had.The former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds (anyone heard of her already?) has information that suggests Marc Grossman was involved in (I can’t believe I’m saying this) selling United States nuclear secrets on the black market.
Remember that plane that flew from North Dakota to Lousiana with nuclear bombs “accidentally” loaded on its wings last August?
I'll get into this bunch of dots that need to be connected in my next post about this subject. For now, just keep a look out for the name General Mahmood Ahmad in your reading. To get cryptic and weird: shadows lurk wherever he roams.
“Beware the power of zealots who are well-funded, well-armed, and supported by elements of your own government!” --Benazir Bhutto
On September 18, 2007, I reported on the opening of the National Applications Office (NAO), which is a new part of the Department of Homeland Security which will be dedicated to using super-powerful military satellites to spy on people inside the United States. The opening was originally set for October 1, 2007 but, thanks to the efforts of Congress, has been delayed. However, Big Brother's office is now making a comeback.
For a bit of perspective, take a quick trip over to Google Maps. Once you're there, look up your address, click on "Satellite", and zoom all the way in. That's the type of power that anyone is allowed to use. Can you imagine what the military satellites can see?
The brief back-story on the National Applications Office goes like this: The plan for the National Applications Office began in 2005 after a "Blue Ribbon Study" was conducted and the plan to use military satellites on Americans was recommended. The study was put together by Bush Administration officials and contractors linked to Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell (one of the scary people). The plan was developed by Department of Homeland Security officials largely in secret. They did not start consulting the DHS Privacy Officer (the guy in charge of ensuring that our civil liberties are protected) until July 2007. In August 2007, The Wall Street Journal published an article about the National Applications Office. That's how Congress found out about this new Bush Administration brainchild, and as expected, they were pissed. On September 6th, they held a hearing and discovered that:
The guidelines for how the National Applications Office will operate and protect Americans' civil liberties are not finished
The people in charge of the National Applications Office haven't thought about whether or not they will get warrants before using the military satellites to look inside someone's home.
Posse Comitatus (the law that says that the military may not be used for domestic law enforcement) has not been addressed
The National Applications Office will be policed by the Executive branch and the map guys (I'm not kidding). To be fair, they also said Congress would have oversight privileges, but Congress didn't know about the office until they read about it in the paper, so I wouldn't hold my breath.
Go to this post to get more details and find links for the information above.
After the hearing, Congress put their foot down and the opening of the National Applications Office was delayed. However, The Wall Street Journalreported on December 20, 2007 that Michael Chertoff is now pushing to get the National Applications office up and running. Congress had asked for a number of reports and copies of guidelines back in September before they would allow the National Applications Office to be funded, but so far, according to Congressman Bennie Thompson, none have been received.
The Wall Street Journal article also reveals a new idea being pushed by Micheal Chertoff:
Mr. Chertoff also plans soon to unveil a cyber-security strategy, part of an estimated $15 billion, multiyear program designed to protect the nation's Internet infrastructure. The program has been shrouded in secrecy for months and has also prompted privacy concerns on Capitol Hill because it involves government protection of domestic computer networks.
Do you trust the government to protect your internet access and not abuse that power?
Me neither.
Congress is back in session on Monday. The best people to call about this, as far as I can tell, are:
Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi: (202) 225-5876
Rep. Al Green of Texas: (202) 225-7508
Rep. Jane Harmon of California: (202) 225-8220 (however, Boeing is pegged to get some serious money from the National Applications Office and Boeing's headquarters are in Jane Harmon's district, so don't be terribly surprised if she lets you down).
I need to admit something. I have the overwhelming urge to believe in Barack Obama. The cynic in me, after 7 years of the Bush Administration, knows that this may be naive. Is any politician that has succeeded in this system capable of really turning it around? I'm not sure. But out of any of the candidates that have a chance to win this year, I think Barack Obama has the biggest chance of actually being able to shift the country's direction. The reason is largely generational.
I was born in 1982. Most of what I know about the 50's, 60's, and 70's (the decades I associate with my parents, and therefore the Boomer generation) I learned about on TV and in school textbooks. People tend to have wildly varying opinions on the Boomer generation, but one thing I think everyone can agree on is that Boomers are fascinating.
The 50's was the era of I Love Lucy, when men controlled their women and the world was focused in black in white, in just about every way. Our parents were around the same age as little Ricky, and back then, the world was segregated by color of skin and gender. For the well-to-do white people, especially the men, the 50's sure seemed like a hell of a set up.
But then in the 60's, during our parent's teenage years, some people realized that the superiority of one group over the others was wrong and they started fighting for equality. This seems to be when the big split happened. There was a divide created between the people that wanted equality and those that didn't. Those that didn't want equality were the group of people that enjoyed the way society was structured in the 1950s and who wanted to keep it that way.
The people that wanted a more equal societal structure got JFK elected at the beginning of the decade. Then, on November 22, 1963, JFK was assassinated. It was a horrible national tragedy, the 9/11 of their generation. But just as 9/11 is turning out to be so much more than a terrorist attack, something terrible happened on that day which I can't believe is limited to the loss of the President. I'm starting to think that the JFK assassination was the real launch of the coup. Up until recently, I thought that the big shift from democracy and equality to corporatism and extreme division of wealth was the election of George W. Bush. But then I did these things:
I'm afraid to say this (and I mean that quite literally), but I'm starting to think that the group that has control of our government and society (a group I call "The Club", for lack of a better term), were able to take over the country, in part, by creating the CIA.
I guess I always just assumed that the CIA was a natural section of our government, but upon some non-school book reading, I have realized that couldn't be further from the truth. The CIA, everything about it, has been some sneaky shit since its creation. Two years after its initial roll-out, when the spotlight had moved off the new agency, the laws governing the agency were altered so that the the people running the CIA would have no meaningful "civilian" oversight (when I say 'civilian', think regular, non-"Club member" human being). The amendments ensured that instead of having to disclose its budget to the public like every other big government department, the CIA would be allowed to keep their budget a secret. The CIA would also be able to accept money from other departments without reporting the transaction, opening the door for all other government departments (i.e. Defense, Justice, State) to take advantage of the CIA's legal secrecy. Then the members of the CIA were given legal permission to omit the following things from their records and therefore keep secret from the public and/or any investigators their:
Names Officials Salaries Titles Number of persons the CIA employs The organizational structure Functions
So what do United States citizens get to know about this agency we pay for if we don't know who is in the CIA or what the CIA does, you may ask? Well, damn near nothing.
This shady business has only been going on since 1949.
In the early 1960s, the secretive group found itself in mortal danger when JFK took on the CIA. The biggest moves that pissed off the CIA were when Kennedy didn't provide the air support the CIA requested for the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and many of the CIA members participating in the invasion were captured or killed. After that humiliation, Kennedy then fired the director of the CIA, Allen Dulles, and his chief deputy, Charles Cabell for screwing up the operation. JFK also said he planned to "smash the CIA into a thousand pieces".
Then, bam! JFK gets popped. Allen Dulles, the guy Kennedy had publicly humiliated and fired, was allowed to sit on the Warren Commission, the group that published the widely debunked "official" story of the JFK assassination.
It was around this time, when the people who should be investigated started getting positions as investigators, that I think we started to lose the rule of law.
The Shock Doctrine picks up the story from there. The 70's, the time of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, were also a time of a political dark skies in the country. The individual Boomers either fought in or against a war they couldn't understand. Over 58,000 Americans would die in Vietnam, but their enemies weren't Nazi's. They were Asian farmers and hunter/gatherers. What were they fighting for? It's a question that would push the two groups, those that wanted equality and those that didn't, even further away from each other into their separate corners.
In the 80's and 90's, our parents had their babies (where I come into the picture). With the threat of being sent to the Vietnam war over, they just wanted to live their lives. Man, were the Boomers awesome parents! Growing up in the 80's and 90's, in hindsight, was so cool. With relative peace in the world and doting parents, us kids were able to focus on our schoolwork, sports, and social lives. Our parents worked hard and prided themselves on being able to give us everything we would need...tutors, sports training, cool toys, ect... so that their little angels could excel at anything and everything, if we cared to. Our parents showered us with support and pride and told us we could accomplish anything if we just believed in ourselves and worked hard. And if that didn't work out so well, we were told it's OK because each one of us was special in our own way. We believed our parents with all our hearts. Why wouldn't we? We've turned out to be an independent and confident group of people as a result.
Unfortunately, childhood couldn't last forever and we turned 18. I'm in the high school class of 2000. It amazes me how dramatically the world changed the moment I became an adult.
I'm not going to get into any of the details of what has happened here since the turn of the century. We all know this part of the story all too well. Let's just say that the news became more serious, and it stopped being just another TV show. Events that we either read about in school books, heard about from our parents, or had seen on TV were suddenly coming back to haunt us. My generation was slapped in the face with the reality that we were the ones that would suffer the consequences of decisions we had no say in, decisions we never even thought to pay attention to.
*I was born in 1982. I am now 25 years old. A lot of people I went to school with are married, and more than a few of them have children. I’m not ready for kids yet, but I never doubted that I would want children at some time. I’m a writer and buy my own health insurance. I pay $100 a month for a basic plan by HealthNet, but am fairly certain that if I had a really bad accident, it would probably bankrupt me. A no-frills physical cost me over $300 after my co-pay (I didn’t know they charged per test the doctor runs and that my plan didn’t cover some of the tests. Those bills stung). My parents tell me to get better health insurance because money is less important than my health, which is totally true. But the only reason I have any savings is because I can afford to put a little away each month, which an extra $ 300 a month to pay for something I never use would make so much harder. So, since I’m young, healthy, and careful, I’m running a bit of a gamble. A lot of educated, working people my age are doing the same thing.
My boyfriend gets his health insurance through his employer, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they were skimping costs and his HealthNet HMO wasn’t the best. He hasn’t had to use it at all, (he avoided getting a physical after my experience), so we’ll just have to wait and see how his insurance is.
How can I justify bringing a child into this situation? A situation where I can’t afford for the kid to break an arm while playing with friends? This is where we’re at on an Masters Degree-holding mechanical engineer’s salary. If I want to be home with my kids, like my mother was with me, can I literally afford to have children while living in the United States?
Do you think the Boomers, as a whole, are thinking are the same line we are?*
Like the frog that doesn't realize that he's dying in boiling water because the increase was so gradual, the country has been fundamentally shifted, going back to the 1960s. Our generation came late to the party. We probably have a better gage of how hot the water really is and likely have some new ideas about how to stir the pot (ideas which might not occur to the frogs that are used to the temperature where it's at). Eventually, it will be up to us to solve these problems, because (let's face facts) the Boomers can't rule forever. But doesn't now seem like a good time for this story to be continued by us kids?
I think the reason so many Boomers are resistant to this idea of allowing the next generation to take over is that the battle between the people who wanted equality and the people wanted to keep their good thing going appears to have been won by the greedy. I think some Boomers may consider this reality a failure, and they want to keep fighting until they win.
But the thing is, while the Boomers were struggling and fighting amongst each other, us kids were kicking back and watching our crazy parents duke it out. We've listened to the best arguments of both sides of the Boomer battle, and something you may not realize about the next few generations is that we have learned a lot from you. We've learned that fighting amongst each other is going to get us nowhere good. We've learned that left vs. right is an inferior argument to right vs. wrong. We've learned that the best way to beat a system is to change it from within. These are lessons we have learned by watching you guys fight the best way you knew how.
Let us build on that and move forward.
I want to believe in Barack Obama because I think he can bring about this kind of generational shift, a much-needed major shock to the system. Its a move that, just by nature, cannot be accomplished by Hillary Clinton or John Edwards. They are brilliant players in an old game. Barack Obama when he speaks is talking about not just changing healthcare, or the rules that govern corporations. He's talking about changing the whole damn thing. How we run our country. How we lead our lives. He doesn't give us many specifics, but I'm OK with that because he's giving us his big picture view of what he thinks the United States can and should be. I like the picture he paints. I want to help him make it happen.
* The lines between these marks were added after I originally posted this, but I felt that they were needed to really complete my point.
I've been trolling The Huffington Post today and reading the blogs that are breaking down why Hillary Clinton didn't dominate in Iowa. There's lots of theories floating around out there. The women did show up for her. The men didn't show up for her. She's inauthentic. She didn't get the youth vote. She has a bad staff. My favorite stupid theory: Bill Clinton has held her back.
But that's all crap. It all boils down to this:
I bet you are, Mussolini.
The honest truth is that Hillary's problems as a Presidential candidate have next to nothing to do with her gender or her marital problems, as the corporate media would have us obsess on. Sure, there are some dumbasses like Dana Kennedy who really care about that stuff, but most of us are looking elsewhere because we're on to her game. Her whole campaign has been a carefully staged reality-TV show starring Hillary Clinton as a woman who cares. But even people that don't pay close attention know that she's just putting on a show. A little play. No matter what her writers have her say though, we all know that when it comes down to it, she's not going to represent our side in the battle of Big Business vs. the rest of us.
The term I think best describes her is 'Elitist Corporatist'.
'Elitist' because the owners of society are the people whose interests she is really representing. People in the now government-sponsored Super Wealthy Club, consisting of self-important Washington beltway tools and the CEO's that bribe them for expanded power over their workers and the world.
'Corporatist' because she's working for "a system that erases the boundaries between Big Government and Big Business, [which] is not liberal, conservative or capitalist but corporatist." Over the past few years, she has proved time and time again that she is all for merging our government as quickly and slyly as possible with Big Business. She votes consistently for the expansion of the military industrial complex (our new economy) into the Middle East (ie: Iraq Occupation Authorization, Kyl-Leiberman amendment). And want the short story on her health care plan? Everyone will be required to buy health insurance. This means that you must either work for a corporation that gives you the luxury of health in their "benefit" package or it becomes like rent you will be required to pay every month in order for your government to ensure that when you show up at the hospital, they won't just let you die.
Healthcare for everyone! *As long as you work long, hard hours, get two jobs for 80 hours if you have to, and pay your bills on time to your corporate masters.
And then there is the matter of her husband. Bill Clinton was the President of the United States, making Hillary Clinton our First Lady, for 8 years. Almost a decade. Unlike porcelain doll Laura Bush, who smiles and waves and keeps her opinions to herself while her husband drives us off a cliff, Hillary Clinton as First Lady "tried to remake the nation's health care system". There's no way to argue that Mrs. Clinton wasn't heavily involved in the policies of the Bill Clinton White House. I mean, think way, way back to the 1990's. The big joke, that we all half-believed, was that Hillary was actually the person who was running the country while Bill was partying with chicks and playing his sax. The actions of her husband while he was President, in matters of policy (not pussy), absolutely must be taken into consideration while we decide whether or not she should be elected to be the post-Bush Administration President, and thereby inherit the most powerful Executive Branch in American history.
Hillary Clinton's husband, and fellow member of The Club, brought us disgraces like NAFTA, waged secret CIA wars to fulfill the dreams of Milton Friedman, and allowed the IMF to hold various countries hostage so that our corporations could pillage their resources and populations. If we want to stop that shit, and make amends with the rest of the world, his wife and partner-in-politics is not our girl.
The only people who might not be corporatists and have a chance to win this reality-competition/Presidential election are John Edwards, Barack Obama, and possibly Ron Paul (I haven't figured this guy out yet, but I know he gives a damn about us. That's a start). That's the reason others are doing better than Hillary Clinton.
David, one of my readers, asked if this interview was broadcast outside of the Al-Jazeera network. The answer is yes - and no.
The BBC aired the interview, but edited out the sentence where Benazir Bhutto says Omar Sheikh murdered Osama bin-Laden. Here's a video showing the edit
(FYI: This is not the original video I had posted here, but the original is "no longer available". YouTube's very sorry. I have a feeling this is not the last time this will happen so just know that if I need to keep switching out this video, I will.)
*UPDATE* Reader Lee Glenny contacted the BBC regarding their edit and was issued this response via email:
The BBC has an agreement with al-Jazeera which enables both broadcasters to share certain news material including pictures and interviews. It was on this basis that we offered an extract of Sir David Frost's interview with Benazir Bhutto to users of the BBC News website.
During the interview Ms Bhutto made an allegation that Osama Bin Laden had been murdered by Omar Sheikh. A claim which was unchallenged and so unexpected that it seemed most likely that she had mis-spoken.
Under time pressure the item producer responsible for publishing the video edited out the comment with the intention of avoiding confusion. On reflection this was clearly a mistake and should not have happened. There was no intention on our part to distort the meaning of the interview, and we have replaced the incorrectly edited version with the original unedited interview as broadcast by Al-Jazeera.
I would like to take the opportunity to apologise for what was an error of judgement and the confusion that this has caused.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I have this horrible, but reasonable, feeling that this weekend is going to have some of those "disaster days".
You know that what I'm talking about. Those days when a natural disaster is actually taking place. The days during Hurricane Andrew or Katrina. The Northridge earthquake. The day of the tsunami. The day Laguna Beach washed away. The fires in California...Those days that you are glued to the TV because something big is going down and people are in trouble.
I think we're about to have some of those "disaster days" this weekend on the West Coast. Take a look at this storm, ok?
Now anyone that has met me in real life will tell you that I'm a total weather junkie. I watch the Weather Channel regularly (even though I live in Southern California, which is usually pretty boring weather-wise) and every time a storm rolls in, I become fixated on the clouds. I have a sick fascination with the Doppler Radar. When a storm is on the horizon, I obsessively check to see which direction the clouds will come in from and if any of those cool yellow or red spots are getting closer to my home. It's like crack to me. I can't help it.
My point is that I've seen a lot of storms moving into Southern California on the Doppler radar in the last 25 years and never in my life can I remember a storm this circular that stretched from Canada to Mexico. Never. After seeing this radar image on the computer, I turned on my dear friend The Weather Channel and, sure enough, this storm is going to have lower pressure than some of the most damaging storms in the last few decades. If 'low pressure' means nothing to you, just know that the lower the number, the worse the news. This pretty much spells out what this storm's pressure level means:
They are predicting that this storm, when it moves into Southern California tonight will dump up to 10-12 inches of rain, in an extended period of heavy downpours, on the mountains. Those are the same mountains where massive fires burned the plants that keep the hillside soil together just three short months ago.
When the soil from beneath a house on a hillside gives way, it more often than not takes that heavy house with it. If people are in that house, it takes the people as well.
I'm afraid that we're going to lose some homes tonight, maybe a lot of homes depending on just how much of those hillsides give way. All because of this crazy storm which is another example of how unpredictable and extreme our weather has gotten.
"Normal" rainfall for Los Angeles is around 15.13 inches per season.
We got 37.97 inches of rain during the 2004/2005 season.
The 2007-2008 season is shaping up to be one of the eventfully wacky years a la 2004-2005. Our first winter storm of the season took place in the summer. And it's looking like we will likely get more rain in this one weekend than we got during the entire previous season.
But Senator James Inhofe still doubts that we have a problem. Makes me want to tear my hair out.
Anyway, I just have a bad feeling. Thought I'd share...
I'm writing today in response to an email I received yesterday regarding your effort to begin hearings looking into the activities of Vice-President Dick Cheney in the House Judiciary Committee. I strongly support your push for hearings and am incredibly thankful that you have decided to step up for the rule of law. In your email, you provided a blog-ad that I was going to put up on my blog to help get more signatures on the petition at www.wexlerwantshearings.com. However, to my dismay, when someone clicks on the blog-ad you provided in that email, it directs the user to a donation form for your re-election campaign. I understand that you need money to do what you do, but wasn't this about getting signatures to show your colleagues the support the American people have for holding hearings? Wouldn't it be more appropriate to have that blog-ad direct users to the petition, instead of a form that tells the user to donate money to you?
Unfortunately, I do not make enough money to give to every politician that does something I like. I hope that doesn't mean that my support doesn't matter to you. Even though I will not give you money at this time, I have been talking to friends, family, and strangers about WexlerWantsHearings.com. I've been telling anyone who will listen about your efforts and telling them that there is a petition they can sign that may actually make a difference in Congress. I'm putting myself out there, which isn't often a comfortable thing to do, trying to get you as many signatures as I can. I want those hearings desperately because I know that a law is meaningless if it can be easily broken. That goes for a Constitution too. This is the cause you have successfully recruited me for. Please don't try to warp me into a Robert Wexler campaigner.
What I would like is to a post a different blog-ad (which I will do free of charge) that will link my readers directly to www.wexlerwantshearings.com, where they can sign the petition for hearings. I know you have this available as The Young Turks has the very blog-ad I'm asking for on their page. Advertise yourself all over the petition page, if you wish. You are doing the right thing by publicly demanding hearings and deserve to be compensated accordingly. But please put the petition, the hearings, and the Constitution above 'Wexler for Congress'.
Besides, if your efforts actually result in impeachment hearings (or better yet, an impeachment), you will have no trouble raising money for your campaign. Please trust us. If you come through for your country, we will not let you down.
In a November 2, 2007 interview, less than two months before she would be assassinated, Benazir Bhutto was asked by reporter David Frost of Al-Jazeera English about a letter that she had sent to Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf. The letter outlined who she believed should be investigated in the event of her assassination. While giving her answer, she listed as one of the suspects a "key figure in security... a former military officer in Pakistan" who had dealings with, among others, "Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin-Laden."
Jump to 1:37 to hear this portion of the interview: (I should probably tell you that this is not the original video I posted. That one is "no longer available". Since I have this sneaky feeling that this is not the last time this post's video will somehow become unavailable, please let me know if it doesn't work and I'll refresh it.)
If that name, Omar Shieikh, sounds familiar it's because he was a key figure in some huge stories between 1999 and 2002. His full name is Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, and multiple variations of those names are used to describe him including Omar Sheikh and Saeed Sheikh. Here's how you may have heard of him:
In 1999, Indian Airlines flight 814 was hijacked by Pakistani nationals. In return for the hostages, the hijackers demanded India release the leaders of the ISI (the Pakistani version of the CIA) funded group Harkat-ul-Mujahideen. One of these leaders was Omar Sheikh.
In the months before 9/11, using the alias "Mustafa Mohammad Ahmed", Omar Sheikh transferred at least $100,000 to Mohammad Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers.
Omar Sheikh was sentenced to death in 2002 for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.
Having trouble wrapping your head around this? I was too, so I did a little research. First, let's see if this revelation that Omar Sheikh murdered Osama bin-Laden is even possible. I guess the first question would be 'Is Osama bin-Laden dead'?
There are a few reports from around the world that I found that indicated that Osama bin-Laden had died. One report from a French newspaper said that Osama bin-Laden died on August 23, 2006 of typhoid fever. However, if Benazir Bhutto is to be taken at her word, this report cannot be true because Omar Sheikh has been in Pakistani police custody since February 2002 for the murder of Daniel Pearl.
However, some other reports, which seem to make some sense, indicated that Osama bin-Laden died in December 2001. An Egyptian newspaper called al-Wafd published the following article (Volume 15 No 4633) on December 26th, 2001:
A prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement announced yesterday the death of Osama bin Laden, the chief of al-Qa'da organization, stating that binLaden suffered serious complications in the lungs and died a natural and quiet death. The official, who asked to remain anonymous, stated to The Observer of Pakistan that he had himself attended the funeral of bin Laden and saw his face prior to burial in Tora Bora 10 days ago. He mentioned that 30 of al-Qa'da fighters attended the burial as well as members of his family and some friends from the Taleban. In the farewell ceremony to his final rest guns were fired in the air. The official stated that it is difficult to pinpoint the burial location of bin Laden because according to the Wahhabi tradition no mark is left by the grave. He stressed that it is unlikely that the American forces would ever uncover any traces of bin Laden.
If the funeral took place 10 days before this article was published in al-Wafd and The Observer of Pakistan, this would put the death of Osama bin-Laden around the 16th or 17th of December 2001. Israeli intelligence officials also told reporters in October 2002 that they and United States officials believe that Osama bin-Laden had been killed in December 2001.
If you look at a timeline of events involving Osama bin-Laden, ignoring the questionable videotapes, there is a noticeable shift in the type of communication Osama bin-Laden has with the world and the rhetoric used by Bush Administration and Pakistani officials in regards to the threat Osama bin-Laden poses starting in the middle of December 2001. Some highlights: September 15, 2001 – President Bush says of bin-Laden, “If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he will be sorely mistaken.”
September 17, 2001 – President Bush says, “I want justice. And there’s an old poster out West, I recall, that says, ‘Wanted: Dead or Alive.’”
November 7, 2001 - Pakistani reporter Hamid Mir interviews Osama bin-Laden in person.
November 25, 2001 - Osama bin-Laden gives his last known public speech to his followers in Milawa, Afghanistan, a village located on the route from Tora Bora to the Pakistani border.
December 15, 2001- Osama bin-Laden's voice is reportedly intercepted for the last time communicating with his fighters in Tora Bora via his shortwave radio
December 17, 2001 - US Intelligence and Pentagon officials admit they have lost Osama bin-Laden
December 26, 2001 - Article about Osama bin-Laden's funeral is published in Pakistan and Egypt. The funeral allegedly takes place about 10 days earlier. The article is also discussed by Fox News.
December 28, 2001– President Bush says, “Our objective is more than bin-Laden”
January 18, 2002 – Pakistani dictator Pervez Musharraf tells CNN that he believes Osama bin-Laden to be dead
January 27, 2002 - Vice President Dick Cheney says that Osama bin-Laden "isn't that big of a threat. Bin Laden connected to this worldwide organization of terror is a threat."
January 27, 2002 – White House Chief of Staff Andy Card tells CNN, “"I do not know for a fact that he's alive. I happen to believe he's probably alive… Our overall objective is to defeat terrorism, wherever it is around the world. And so, our objective is not to get Osama bin Laden."
January 29, 2002 – President Bush delivers his first State of the Union address since 9/11. While he labels Iraq, Iran, and North Korea the “axis of evil”, he fails to mention Osama bin-Laden at all.
March 13, 2002 – President Bush says, “Deep in my heart I know the man is on the run, if he's alive at all… He’s a person who’s now been marginalized.… I just don’t spend that much time on him.… I truly am not that concerned about him.”
April 4, 2002 - Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Richard Myers says, "The goal has never been to get bin-Laden"
October 14, 2002 – President Bush says, “I don’t know whether bin-Laden is alive or dead”
October 16, 2002 – Middle East Newsline reports that Israeli Intelligence officials confirmed that Israel and the United States believe Osama bin-Laden was killed in mid-December 2001 during the Tora Bora bombing campaign.
This timeline, with Osama bin-Laden's death allegedly occurring in the middle of December 2001, makes it possible that Omar Sheikh could have committed the murder. From October 2001 through January 19, 2002, Omar Sheikh was living openly in his home in Lahore, Pakistan. His positions as leader of Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (a Taliban and Osama bin-Laden partner) and ISI agent (the source of funds for Harkat-ul-Mujahideen) would also have given him means for access to Osama bin-Laden.
While it is disturbing that Benazir Bhutto may have revealed that our government has been (and continues to be) lying to us about Osama The Big Bad Wolf, the revelation that his supposed killer was Omar Sheikh raises even more questions than the obvious 'Who the hell is making and releasing all those Osama bin-Laden videos and for what purpose?'.
Here are some interesting facts:
Daniel Pearl was investigating, among other things, connections between the Pakistani ISI and terrorist groups when he was kidnapped and killed.
On February 5, 2002, before Daniel Pearl's body was found, Omar Sheikh turned himself in to ISI officials. ISI kept Omar Sheikh (one of their agents) in custody for a week before turning him over to Pakistani police. What happened during that week is unknown as Omar Sheikh wouldn't discuss the details fearing his family will be killed.
The trial of Omar Sheikh in Pakistan, the result of which was a death sentence, was held entirely in secret and with questionable evidence. According to The Guardian, both US officials and Marianne Pearl (Daniel Pearl's wife) have concluded that Omar Sheikh is not guilty.
Before Omar Sheikh's trial had concluded, Pervez Musharraf publicly declared that he wanted the trial to result in a death sentence, leading many to believe he effectively ordered the courts to render that verdict.
As of today, Omar Sheikh has not been executed. He has been held by the Pakistanis for years awaiting his appeal which has been delayed 32 times.
Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales told Marianne Pearl (Daniel Pearl's wife) that Khalid Sheikh Mohammad confessed to the murder of Daniel Pearl. Daniel Pearl's family and former CIA investigators doubt that the confession, received only after Mohammad was tortured, is true.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammad is the so-called "9/11 mastermind" whose identity was supposedly provided by the interrogations of Abu Zubayda and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri. The tapes of these interrogations were the ones famously destroyed by the CIA in 2005.
On October 7, 2001 General Mahmood Ahmad was replaced as the head of the ISI at the request of the United States due to numerous reports that he had ordered Omar Sheikh to transfer $100,000 to Mohammad Atta before 9/11.
ISI director General Mahmood Ahmad was in the United States during 9/11. In the days preceding the attacks, he met with CIA director George Tenet and US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Mark Grossman. During the attacks, we was meeting with Senator Bob Graham and Representative Porter Goss (who will take over as CIA director after George Tenet leaves). After the attacks, Graham and Goss will co-head the House-Senate investigation into the 9/11 attacks.
The previous time the director of the ISI, Ziauddin Butt, came to the United States was a few days before Pervez Musharraf took over control of Pakistan in a 1999 military coup.
Benazir Bhutto said that a "key figure in security" (ISI?) would be on the list of people who would want her dead.
The ISI has been in existence since the 1980's due to the financing of the CIA and according to The Guardian"it has long been established that the ISI has acted as go-between in intelligence operations on behalf of the CIA."
I don't really know what to make of these facts and don't even know if all of them are relevant. But I do have some questions:
Is it possible that Daniel Pearl had found out that Osama bin-Laden had been killed during the course of his investigation, leading him to be kidnapped one month after the alleged murder?
If Omar Sheikh did kill Osama bin-Laden, could that explain why he was falsely accused and convicted of the murder of Daniel Pearl? To shut him up? Is he still alive, as believed, because of his ties to Pakistan's ISI?
(The uncomfortable question) How much do CIA and Bush Administration officials know about the murder of Daniel Pearl? Did they have an interest in the silence of both Daniel Pearl and Omar Sheikh? Why hasn't the Bush Administration demanded that Pervez Musharraf allow the United States to question Omar Sheikh, since he is still alive and in their custody?
How deep and how sinister is the alliance of the Bush government and the Musharraf government? How interconnected are the ISI and CIA and could the ISI assist Osama bin-Laden, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, and the Taliban without the knowledge of the CIA?
Why does the Bush Administration want us to think Osama bin-Laden is still alive? How do they personally benefit from this deception more than they would benefit by publicly taking credit for catching Osama bin-Laden?
I understand that Benazir Bhutto's statement is uncorroborated and could very well not be true. However, she was the Prime Minister of Pakistan twice and is no doubt privy to more information than any reporter, especially reporters working for the American press. Also, it's her word against those of the Bush Administration, the CIA, Pervez Musharraf's government, and the American and British mainstream press. Who is more deserving of our trust?
If only she had not been assassinated. We could have asked her ourselves...
While I'm irritated by the narrator of this video, who uses the word "obviously" far too many times when explaining his far from "obvious" opinion, he does present some interesting evidence that Benazir Bhutto may have mis-spoken, as she is quoted talking about the need to find Osama bin-Laden before and after the David Frost interview. The relevant portion starts at 2:14 in the video.
, titled The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, in which she researched the progression away from open societies and towards closed societies that have occurred in history. She found some clear patterns and, in this article, described ten “steps any would-be-dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms.” 
, when men controlled their women and the world was focused in black in white, in just about every way. Our parents were around the same age as little Ricky, and back then, the world was segregated by color of skin and gender. For the well-to-do white people, especially the men, the 50's sure seemed like a hell of a set up.
