Columnist Jack Anderson Dies At 83

"Jack Anderson, the Pulitzer Prize-winning muckraking columnist who struck fear into the hearts of corrupt or secretive politicians, inspiring Nixon operatives to plot his murder, died Saturday. He was 83."

"Anderson died at his home in Bethesda, Md., of complications from Parkinson's disease, said one of his daughters, Laurie Anderson-Bruch."

Man, I haven't heard his name in years, and in fact, forgot all about him, I'm sorry to say. He was someone I always watched for back in the late 60s early 70s. He was one of the people that helped form my skepticism about politicians and big business, back in my impressionable years.

You could tell how good he was by how much the establishment hated him......

"Such scoops earned him a spot on President Nixon's "enemies list." Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy has described how he and other Nixon political operatives planned ways to silence Anderson permanently — such as slipping him LSD or staging a fatal car crash — but the White House nixed the idea."

The man had integrity, something sorely missing in todays journalism.

R.I.P Jack!

Federal agents' visit chills student

"A senior at UMass Dartmouth was visited by federal agents two months ago, after he requested a copy of Mao Tse-Tung's tome on Communism called "The Little Red Book."

"The student, who was completing a research paper on Communism for Professor Pontbriand's class on fascism and totalitarianism, filled out a form for the request, leaving his name, address, phone number and Social Security number. He was later visited at his parents' home in New Bedford by two agents of the Department of Homeland Security, the professors said.
The professors said the student was told by the agents that the book is on a "watch list," and that his background, which included significant time abroad, triggered them to investigate the student further."

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they supposed to be using those oppressive, unAmerican, Patriot Act powers to protect us from the dreaded terrorists, who are supposed to be radical muslim fundamentalists? Then why the hell are they bothering with investigating loans of Communist literature? It's because the Patriot Act has little if anything to do with fighting "the terrorists", and everything to do with oppression. Ever wonder why they spend so much time making a big public show of force (like at airports with lots of people around), without actually doing anything to safeguard any part of our vulnerable infrastructure from terrorist attack? It's because the primary goal of the War on Terrors' Homeland Security, is to keep us in terror. The purpose of the Act, is to monitor us, and keep us in line, watching out for any dissent, while they go about their merry way intimidating the world into complying with neo-con goals. This is why the administration is so insistant that the Patriot Act be a permanent law of the land, instead of allowing it to be renewed periodically, if still necessary. Threats from those Islamic terrorist may not abait for years, but it's inconceivable that we should still have to deal with them 20, 50, 100 years from now, so why should the Act be permanent?

As the article shows, the War on Terror does not make us safe, it make us all suspects of sedition.

[UPDATED Dec. 25, '05]

Actually, what the article shows, is just how gullible we can be. I just found out it was all a hoax, the kid made it all up.

Next Conservatism

"In one of the early columns in this series, I pointed out that, if we look back over the last thirty or forty years, we see that the Left won the culture war while we conservatives won politically. It is true that we won politically, in the sense of winning elections. Republicans now control the White House and both Houses of Congress, something we could not have even dreamed about forty years ago. But to assess where conservatives are in politics today, we have to look beyond just winning elections."

"The question is do we have power? Not power for ourselves but power for the common good. I would venture that while we have influence, we often lack power. And as my old colleague Howard Phillips used to teach there is a profound difference."

This is an article from a Conservative site that expresses dismay at not being able to advance the cause of Conservatism, even though they control the White House and both Houses of Congress.

The problem is that Bush is not only not a true Republican Conservative, but he has a different agenda altogether. He's not really interested in advancing the mainstream conservative cause, but favors that of the so-called Neo-Conservatives, who couldn't care less about the Republican aganda. Arguably, these 'neo-cons' shouldn't even be considered Republican or Conservative, but Imperialists. Their agenda is in the global arena. They're interested in making the world subservient to American power, via the Project for a New American Century. To this end, they've employed tactics to gain contol of the government that are now resulting in investigations and prosecutions. The implementation of the neo-con policies have resulted in Republicans begining to distance themselves from the President in an effort to save their own political skins, because many don't believe they can survive the elections of 2006, being too closely allied with an administration racked by corruption and extremely low approval ratings.

I care as little for much of the main Republican agenda as I do the Democratic one, but if the Republicans do maintain a hold on Congress, and even win the next White House, I sincerely hope by then they've purged themselves of this neo-con pestilence, shoving them back to the fascist fringes where they belong. If they don't, the Republic is in mortal danger.

Op-Eds for Sale

"A senior fellow at the Cato Institute resigned from the libertarian think tank on Dec. 15 after admitting that he had accepted payments from indicted Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff for writing op-ed articles favorable to the positions of some of Abramoff's clients. Doug Bandow, who writes a syndicated column for Copley News Service, told BusinessWeek Online that he had accepted money from Abramoff for writing between 12 and 24 articles over a period of years, beginning in the mid '90s."

It just never ends. This is why you must always form your own opinions, based on just the facts (if you can get them), and not to simply mimic some commentators'. You hear about the war for the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq, but there's been one being waged in your own media, against you and your best interests.

Bill Moyers: In The Kindom Of The Half-Blind

"This is the prepared text of the address delivered on December 9, 2005, by Bill Moyers for the 20th anniversary of the National Security Archive, a non-governmental research institute and library at The George Washington University, in Washington D.C. The Archive collects and publishes declassified documents obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Collaborating with him on this speech was Michael Winship. They have been colleagues in public broadcasting for over thirty years, including, most recently, on the PBS weekly broadcast NOW with Bill Moyers. Moyers, who retired from the NOW broadcast last December, is the President of the Schumann Center for Media and Democracy."

As always, Bill Moyers has no trouble seeing and speaking the truth. In this speech, he talks about the history of the Freedom of Information Act, his time spent as Lyndon Johnsons' White House press secretary, political dirty deeds, and of course, the story of how the Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting conspired to get him pushed out of PBSs' NOW program.

I'm as much troubled by the state of modern journalism as Moyers is, but what troubles me even more is the apparent apathy of the public towards it's main sources of information regarding what's happening in our lives. While there has always been varying degrees of collusion between government and the media, what's been happening lately is truely unconscionable.

What bothers me is that these issues don't raise much fuss in the public. It says to me that people really don't care about how or why they're manipulated into forming whatever opinions are designed for them to have. I do understand though, that most people are simply too busy dealing with their daily lives to follow most of the underreported stories that should raise public outcry. With so many dealing with their marriages, families, maintaining or aquiring jobs in an unstable job market, the economy, personal debt, education, health care, the lastest fashion trends, reality TV, Jessica Simpson, etc, there's little time, if any, to keep an eye on the various influences working behind the scenes that are the root causes of their problems. Because of so much competition for their time, it's easy for them to miss the little tidbits which when taken together, expose a system of corruption that can only be addressed by their undivided attention, and activism. But the powers that be, know that all they have to do is keep up the appearence of legitimacy, and an inattentive public will take them at their word, because they have no time left to do otherwise.

So much is so wrong, but the system's not going to fix itself. It will require the public to stand up, go to the window, and shout; "I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymone!!".

1 In 20 Can't Read English

"An estimated in one in 20 U.S. adults is not literate in English, which means 11 million people lack the skills to perform everyday tasks, a federal study shows."

"From 1992 to 2003, the nation's adults made no progress in their ability to read a newspaper, a book or any other prose arranged in sentences and paragraphs. They also showed no improvement in comprehending documents such as bus schedules and prescription labels."

This is pitiful, and there's no excuse for it. While I'm always skeptical of implied poll and survey statistics, in this case 19,000 are supposed to represent almost 300 million, I am aware of a large number of my fellow citizens who have somehow managed to avoid learning the most basic of reading skills. I'm also aware that many of them did attend school, some even graduated high school, yet remain illiterate. If they have some degree of mental impairment, then it's understandable, otherwise, inexcusable.

Like most elements of basic education, learning to read doesn't require any money, a school, or even a paid teacher. All that's needed is an old newspaper or book, and someone to spend a little time with occasionally. It would be bad enough if they'd never been to school, and grew up around no one else who could read, like in many other parts of the world. But this is in America, and this study shows even a graduate degree doesn't guarantee literacy.

Pentagon rolls out stealth PR

"A $300 million Pentagon psychological warfare operation includes plans for placing pro-American messages in foreign media outlets without disclosing the U.S. government as the source, one of the military officials in charge of the program says."

"Run by psychological warfare experts at the U.S. Special Operations Command, the media campaign is being designed to counter terrorist ideology and sway foreign audiences to support American policies. The military wants to fight the information war against al-Qaeda through newspapers, websites, radio, television and "novelty items" such as T-shirts and bumper stickers."

Here we go again. Corrupting the U.S. media by paying them to promote pro-government propaganda. Corrupting the Iraqi press by buying pro-U.S. propaganda. Now they're going to corrupt the media world-wide, all in the name of fighting "the terrorists".

I guess leading by example is too much to ask. We're supposed to be promoting the cause of democracy, it's benefits and institutions, but all we seem to be doing is deceiving, corrupting, kidnapping, torturing, the list goes on.

You would think, if our cause is so just, our ideals so great, our actions so legitimate, we would'nt have to resort to corrupting the media to show us in a good light.

What we're doing, is putting the world on notice that nothing favorable they read about us, can ever be trusted to be the truth.

Media Bias Is Real, Finds UCLA Political Scientist

"While the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal is conservative, the newspaper's news pages are liberal, even more liberal than The New York Times. The Drudge Report may have a right-wing reputation, but it leans left. Coverage by public television and radio is conservative compared to the rest of the mainstream media. Meanwhile, almost all major media outlets tilt to the left."

"These are just a few of the surprising findings from a UCLA-led study, which is believed to be the first successful attempt at objectively quantifying bias in a range of media outlets and ranking them accordingly."

"I suspected that many media outlets would tilt to the left because surveys have shown that reporters tend to vote more Democrat than Republican," said Tim Groseclose, a UCLA political scientist and the study's lead author. "But I was surprised at just how pronounced the distinctions are."

Interesting study, but they consider the results surprising, because they left out the main reason many people judge the bias of a media report, namely......

"Since Groseclose and Milyo were more concerned with bias in news reporting than opinion pieces, which are designed to stake a political position, they omitted editorials and Op‑Eds from their tallies. This is one reason their study finds The Wall Street Journal more liberal than conventional wisdom asserts."

It's those same omitted opinion pieces that are the ones most used to judge the bias of a paper or program. I would've liked them to do a study of local news outlets as well. While the media sources studied, were all national outlets, I believe that many more opinions are expressed within news stories by the talking-head anchors, and are slanted.

I won't get off on a rant here about local news, as I already did in a previous post entitled; Not Necessarily the News. In it, you'll find an article showing how one company that owns several media outlets, manipulates the news on the stations they own.

I believe it's the local media that really should be studied.

Bush: Iraq Invasion My Responsibility

"President Bush said Wednesday the responsibility for invading Iraq based in part on faulty weapons intelligence rested solely with him, taking on the issue in his most direct and personal terms in the 1,000-plus days since the war's first shots."

"It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," Bush said. "As president, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq."

Give me a break. The statement that: "As president, I'm responsible for the decision to go into Iraq.", is the only bit of truth he spoke. Why does he act as though we don't know any better? Did we not hear from our own intelligence agencies, as well as those from other countries, that he was told that the intel he was given was highly suspect, and could not be trusted, at the time it was given to him? Wasn't some of it obtained by torture? Didn't we hear that whenever he was briefed on what was discovered, it also came with disclaimers about it's authenticity? Or is it just me? Am I trapped, phasing in and out of some alternate universe? "Much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong" he says, but he knew there were doubts expressed, as well as confirmation from foreign agencies and governments, that the intel was wrong, long before the invasion.

He knew that the intel was riddled with flaws, but still chose to use and exagerate it to the point of outright lies. A real apology, should have included that fact. Instead, he continues to blame others for giving him bad information.

His repeated statements about how bad Saddam was, is still no excuse. Without any evidence whatsoever that Iraq posed any threat to the U.S., imminent or otherwise, it's wrong to continue to justify it. It's not our job to regime change every country that abuses it own people. We can't afford to do that, any more than we can afford a President that can't tell the truth. The ends do not justify the means.

A Religious Protest Largely From the Left

"When hundreds of religious activists try to get arrested today to protest cutting programs for the poor, prominent conservatives such as James Dobson, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell will not be among them."

"That is a great relief to Republican leaders, who have dismissed the burgeoning protests as the work of liberals. But it raises the question: Why in recent years have conservative Christians asserted their influence on efforts to relieve Third World debt, AIDS in Africa, strife in Sudan and international sex trafficking -- but remained on the sidelines while liberal Christians protest domestic spending cuts?"

Yes, why would professed Christians fail to act to protect the poor and needy in America? The article goes on to explain that it boils down to politics. Some who have claimed a belief in Christ, have decided that it's more important to promote and impose their beliefs on the entire country, instead of behaving in a Christ-like manner. It all goes back to power and control. Somehow they've apparently convinced their followers that behaving in a manner befitting Christ, isn't really all that important. Imposing their will on others, is.

Just as some followers of Mohammed have shamed their faith, so have some followers of Christ. Nowhere in the stories of Christ can anyone find any evidence that Christ would act, or look favorably on, any of the activities of these people who invoke his name. Shameful.

International Campaign for Justice in Bhopal

Remember Bhopal? You know, in India? Well, 21 years after the industrial accident that left tens of thousands dead and maimed, the negligent Union Carbide Corporation, now owned by Dow Chemical, has yet to be held accountable. They haven't helped the victims, nor have they bothered to clean up their environmental mess.

This is an example of what the much hyped 'Globalization', brings to the world, besides slave wages. This is what unrestrained capitalism brings. This is why we in America, heaped piles of laws and regulations on corporations in the past hundred years. This is why there's such a big push to move more plant operations overseas, usually into countries where the laws are insufficient, and the poor in vast numbers.

The lie is that they bring economic opportunity and prosperity to the Third World, the reality is, cruel, heartless, crimes against humanity.

Background......

"Shortly after midnight poison gas leaked from a factory in Bhopal, India, owned by the Union Carbide Corporation. There was no warning, none of the plant's safety systems were working. In the city people were sleeping. They woke in darkness to the sound of screams with the gases burning their eyes, noses and mouths. They began retching and coughing up froth streaked with blood. Whole neighbourhoods fled in panic, some were trampled, others convulsed and fell dead. People lost control of their bowels and bladders as they ran. Within hours thousands of dead bodies lay in the streets."

Since then.......

"For the last 20 years, some of the poorest people on earth, sick, living on the edge of starvation, illiterate, without funds, powerful friends or political influence, have found themselves fighting one of the world's biggest and richest corporations, backed by the government, military, and, it often seems, the judiciary of the world's most powerful nation.
The corporation and its allies have it all – wealth, power, political influence, lawyers, PR companies, the ear of presidents and prime ministers, the power to dictate policy or bend it to their will, and to manipulate the courts and laws of two countries to avoid justice in either."

Here's a site with tons of articles on the continuing saga of the forgotten victims, from One World.Net

Let's Not Mince Words About America's 'Death Camps'

This is an excerpt from a site that translated a Hungarian websites' commentary on our not-so-secret-anymore CIA camps in Europe.

"Each year, the U.S. State Department issues a report on Hungary that measures our respect for human rights, and how we're proceeding on our road to democracy. Basically, it's about whether we're behaving ourselves. Anyone can see it on the Embassy's homepage. I'm reading it now, and it's making my blood boil. I know I should be ashamed, but I'm thinking: Why don't you report on your mother, you Yankee peasant! America has no moral basis for this."

"Placing concentration camps in Europe is a level of brashness that not even the Soviet Union achieved. This matter of outsourcing gulags could be a watershed in European-American relations: do we forgive this, because we've seen concentration camps before, or do we make a worldwide scandal for exactly that reason? It looks like these camps are within Eastern Europe's comfort zone. It wasn't heads of state who reported to Brussels that, damn it, these animals are building death camps in Europe! No, it was the Washington Post who first raised this issue. They took it as an honor, and then made excuses while happily appeasing the beast. One is reminded of any number of past terrorist states. It may seem harsh, but history shows that if a set of institutions is built where anyone can be annihilated by those in power, then the machine guns are already waiting in the wings, and they're going to go off. If you're not with us, you're against us. Who said American democracy is permanent and unbreakable?"

As it becomes clear that certain governments have indeed allowed those camps on their territory, it's also becoming clear that the citizens in those countries are more upset by them, than we are. They have every reason to be, and so should we. But it appears that we really don't care that much, because there are still too many idiots here who still accept and believe that this sort of behavior is necessary to fight the terrorists. While we debate (albeit half-heartedly) the meaning of the word 'torture', our torturing continues. And while it continues, we are creating more and more hostility towards us, that will itself, create more terrorists.

The cronic liars in our government have convinced many here that they should be allowed to do whatever they want, to whomever they want, wherever they want, to fight the terrorists. They've tried convincing us that a finite enemy is infinate, and everywhere, yet it appears that they only used the threat of terrorism to scare us into blindly accepting a crusade towards American global domination. A crusade that had been planned long before 9/11, back when the Soviet Empire collapsed. Bush and his neocon puppet-masters are simply initiating a program that they believed was supposed to have begun during the first Gulf War. They were pissed when Bush senior abruptly ended that war. This is why Bush junior was so insistant on rushing into war with Iraq again, using lies and exaggerations to get his way. 9/11 was simply a convenient excuse to use.

These CIA camps, as well as those such as Guantanamo bay, are very clear symptoms of the disease that's infected our government, and it's people. It's people are infected, since even though approval ratings are extremely low, there's not much attention being paid to our clearly unAmerican activities, and nobody here is raising much of a fuss. Our politicians, notably the Democrats, aren't really saying much either. That's because both partys are complicit in this, despite what the liberals would have us believe.

I'm begining to wonder if those European camps were meant to be exposed, to drive a wedge between the EU member states, to stunt the EUs' growth. It's clear that the EU will grow and eventually rival the U.S. in many areas, and that certainly would cause problems for our crusade. Think about it, did we really need to set up camps there? There are certainly many other places we could've established them without anyone finding out. Not even released prisoners would be able to tell anyone where they were.

Constitution of the United States

Constitution of the United States

Adopted by convention of States, September 17, 1787;
Ratification completed, June 21, 1788

PREAMBLE

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

For those Americans who have yet to read this, do so. For some odd reason, every time there's a survey of Americans on their knowledge of this document, far too many are clueless on even the most basic elements. All of you should read it through at least once in your life, so you'll know what it's about for yourself.

If you chose to bother reading it (I know how busy you probably are), or if you've already done so, then you may just understand why I don't believe that anyone, such as our President, who believes “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”, has absolutly no business holding pubic office, since they're sworn to protect and defend this "goodamned piece of paper".

[Update - March 2 2006. Original link went dead, so I had to replace it.]

Bush Estimates That 30,000 Iraqis Killed

"President Bush offered encouragement to war-weary Iraqis on Monday but acknowledged they have paid a heavy price _ 30,000 dead _ as a result of the U.S.-led invasion and its bloody aftermath."

"I would say 30,000 more or less have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," the president said.

30,000 he says. Think that's accurate? Just how much, more or less?

Well, as of last month, the estimate was 100,000, according to this site:

100,000 Iraqi civilians dead, says study

"About 100,000 Iraqi civilians - half of them women and children - have died in Iraq since the invasion, mostly as a result of airstrikes by coalition forces, according to the first reliable study of the death toll from Iraqi and US public health experts. The study, which was carried out in 33 randomly-chosen neighbourhoods of Iraq representative of the entire population, shows that violence is now the leading cause of death in Iraq. Before the invasion, most people died of heart attacks, stroke and chronic illness. The risk of a violent death is now 58 times higher than it was before the invasion. "

Is he "misleading" the Iraqis? Has he been misled by inaccurate intelligence?

Well to me, his track record speaks for itself; He's just lying again.

The Great American Hypnosis

"The US claims to champion freedom. In fact, its long record of brutality has imperilled peace, says Harold Pinter."

"Politicians are interested not in truth but in power. To maintain that power it is essential that people remain in ignorance, that they live in ignorance of the truth, even the truth of their own lives. What surrounds us therefore is a vast tapestry of lies, upon which we feed."

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

This is a highly critical piece by a British writer, on how the U.S. manages to claim leadership of the free world, while at the same time, committing crimes abroad they claim to be against. And that it's double-standard actions are down-played, covered up, and denied. He also says those cover ups are generally believed by the American people because of manipulations of the truth.

Well, because I've always managed to think for myself, rather than allow others to pull my strings to bring me to conform to whatever popular opinions I'm supposed to go along with, I know what he says is true.

Reading that article, I couldn't help think of the reactions of those who are still convinced we're always in the right, always doing what's best for America and the world. Whether criticism comes from an American or not, they are accused of being anti-American, among other things. But let's get things straight here, most all the criticisms of our actions throughout the world, and throughout our history, is and has been directed at our governments' actions. The criticisms, even the ones by Americans, are not, and have not, been directed at the American public, but the true-believers will insist that any ill spoken words about our governments actions, means the speaker of those words hates America itself. They refuse to allow a distinction between being against government actions, and the people governed. If we dare question anything our government does, we're labeled as being against the whole country, it's people, way of life, etc, etc. It's really pathetic, considering the fact that questioning government is at the very heart of what it means to be an American. Being a Patriot is one who protects and defends their country, not their government. Our very existence as a sovereign nation is due to our questioning and eventual rejection of a government that refused to look out for the best interests of it's people. And when we formed our own new government, we set it up in such a way that We the People had a lot to say about who would run it and how it's run. We set it up in such a way that the government couldn't arbitrarily do as it wanted, without the peoples permission. We did not want a copy of the major powers of the day. We wanted a government that didn't try to colonize and exploit the world for it's own sake.

Only by being aware of what our government doesn't want us to be aware of, can we have a country that lives up to the ideals expressed in our Constitution, you know, that document that's the basis for our great nation. That document that our President says is "just a goddamn piece of paper".

[Update]

A little while after I made the above post, I found another site where Harold Pinter goes into even more detail than the article above: "The Crimes of the United States Have Been Systematic, Constant"