Letter Never Sent Tell me when to go.

The United States government is making secret deals to hand over Al-Quaeda suspects to states which use torture. The US is prohibited by the constituiton from torturing suspects, but that’s not stopping them from violating the spirit of that prohibition. As if you needed any more proof that the government has no scruples or morality. Via the Syndey Morning Herald:

The United States has been secretly sending prisoners with suspected al-Qaeda connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources.

Prisoners are being moved to places in Egypt and Jordan where they can be subjected to torture and threats to their families to extract information sought by the US.

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Fortune magazine had a warm and fuzzy piece on the Carlyle Group. It started out nicely and had some good stuff, but ultimately was more of a public relations profile:

Are you the sort of person who believes in conspiracies–the Trilateral Commission secretly runs the world, that sort of thing? Well, then, here’s a company for you. The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C., buyout firm, is one of the nation’s largest defense contractors. It has billions of dollars at its disposal and employs a few important people. Maybe you’ve heard of them: former Secretary of State Jim Baker, former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, and former White House budget director Dick Darman. Wait, we’re just getting warmed up. William Kennard, who recently headed the FCC, and Arthur Levitt, who just left the SEC, also work for Carlyle. As do former British Prime Minister John Major and former Philippines President Fidel Ramos. Let’s see, are we forgetting anyone? Oh, right, former President George Herbert Walker Bush is on the payroll too.

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FoxNews is pure whitey. Not only that, but have you noticed how many blonde females anchor for Fox. It’s downright creepy.

Bush View of Secrecy Is Stirring Frustration: Disclosure Battle Unites Conservatives, Liberals

“Kessler’s order, they say, reflects a growing frustration with the information control tactics used by the Bush administration. They say it is a gathering trend, fed by, but not rooted in, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

They point to a memo issued in October by Attorney General John D. Ashcroft, which they say is an indication of the administration’s drive to restrict access to information. The memo – in the works long before the terrorist attacks – assures agencies that “when you carefully consider FOIA requests and decide to withhold records . . . you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions.”

They also cite President Bush’s executive order in November limiting the disclosure of past presidents’ records. And Cheney’s refusal last spring to release energy task force records prompted at least a dozen FOIA requests, including 10 from Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group that sued both the task force and the individual agencies for the data. In response, a federal judge in one case said last week that he would order the nine federal agencies making up the task force to release their records on the task force meetings.”

Increasingly, any activity not sanctioned by our benificent masters has been linked to and equated with terrorism. Use drugs, you’re helping terrorists make money. Ergo, you are a terrorist. Violate intellectual property, you help pirates make money. Pirates are criminals, terrorists are criminals thus pirates are terrorists. Ergo, you are a terrorist. See, it’s a easy. However, it only works against the weaker party. You can’t say for example that the United States is engaged in terrorism even though engaging in terrorism is standard operating procedure for our government. I remember when the US first started bombing Serbia. They bragged about having levelled power plants, bridges, and hospitals. Essentially, the US bombing campaign was a terrorist act. The US has admitted that they only destroyed a handful of tanks and artillery. In the end more hospitals were destroyed than tanks. I’m sure those hospitals were busy making WMD (the lingo for weapons of mass destruction) and sheltering terrorists or we wouldn’t have bombed them, right?

Terrorism is a question of power. Since US power is globally heremonic any force seeking to counter the US is terrorist. Because what really is terrorism? During the Revolutionary War we used guerrilla tactics against the British and Americans loyal to the British. Today, this would be called terrorism. At the time, the British tried to play the same name game because the guerrilla tactics of the American Revolutionaries were effective. If Al Quaeda has murdered thousands of innocent people the United States has undoubtedly done the same with just as much hypocrisy and self-righteousness. The US government and Al Quaeda actually have a lot in common. Both are run by insane religious fundamentalists. Both do business with the Carlyle Group, and both have proven a deep disregard for human life and a hatred of freedom and tolerance. The biggest difference between the two is that the US has been engaged in terrorism for over 50 years whereas Al Quaeda seems to be on a more short-term trajectory.

• Testimony from U.S. Under
  Secretary of State for Economic, Business and Agricultural Affairs
  Alan Larson at Senate Foreign Relations Committee February 12, 2002:
  
  With growing evidence of links between intellectual property crime,
  organized crime and funding for terrorist activities, embassy country
  teams are seeking to foster closer ties between U.S. Government
  agencies and the foreign counterparts who work these enforcement
  issues.
• Will the real bad guy please stand up?
  He showed the three robed judges, and the prosecutors who spent two days depicting Milosevic as the architect of the Balkans horror, dozens of gruesome pictures of heads without bodies, severed limbs crusted in blood, and the remnants of fingers poking from a pile of rubble.

  Milosevic said they were ethnic Albanian civilians from Kosovo as well as Yugoslav civilians slain by NATO bombs during the alliance’s 78-day air war, which he called “the greatest aggression in the world after World War II.”

  He said they were killed not because they were fleeing the Serb forces he allegedly commanded to wipe out the Albanian population of Kosovo, but because they were racing to get away either from NATO air strikes or marauding Kosovo guerrillas rising up against the Yugoslav state.

• Return of the ‘military-industrial complex’?
  We arm the world to make it safer. Basically, your taxes are given to huge corporations in exchange for over-priced weaponry which is sold/given to other countries meanwhile we buy the dangerous, crappy weaponry no one wants to bailout these same huge corporations. Some of the ridiculously expensive, pointless weaponry you paid for includes the crash-prone Osprey, the useless B-1 bomber, the crash-prone Comanche helicopter, the rendundant F-22 Raptor, and the idiotic Crusader self-propelled artillery system.

History has a tendency to repeat itself especially when dealing with dirty scoundrels and mountebanks. About 20 years before Bush Jr. and co. took control of the whitehouse, the CIA and Republicans staged another secret effort to gain power. In the fall of 1980, Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan were neck in neck headed toward the November election. Reagan and ex-CIA head, George Bush made an all-out effort to sabotage Jimmy Carter’s efforts to win the release of the Iranian-held hostages. This became known as the October Surprise and was the beginning of the Iran-Contra Scandal.

Essentially, the Republicans and the CIA wanted to prevent Carter negotiating the release of the American hostages. This could have won him reelection. In fact, there were many parties who had a stake in it. The CIA wanted off their leash and as you know the 80’s were THE decade of CIA trained death squads and covert ops, the Iranians wanted weapons to fight Iraq which they got from the United States through Israel, and Israel wanted the Republicans in power since Carter had been a little too conciliatory towards the Arabs for their tastes. (Remember the peace talks at Camp David?)

Exactly five minutes after Reagan took the oath of office the Iranians agreed to release 52 American hostages. And later, a few days after the inauguration, the arms starting flowing to Iran.

Reagan turned 91 last week. More evidence that only the good die young.

1. More on the October Surprise
2. The Election Story of the Decade There was a probe into all this in 1991-1992. This has a lot of information.
3. Think Reagan was a good president? You’re wrong. Now start reading. (Thanks to George for the link!)

As if killing thousands of innocent men, women and children wasn’t enough, the Bush administration admits to mistakenly killing and beating the shit out of their own allies. This is the oxymoron, Military Intelligence, in action. Nice job.

I can never forgive them,” Mr. Rauf said in an interview today as he lay on cushions at his home, still clearly suffering from his ordeal. “Why did they bomb us? Why did they do this?” …

Among the men killed in the school, survivors said today, were two of Mr. Karzai’s top commanders, while in the district headquarters, two guards were killed. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld admitted last week that American forces may have killed local allies in the raid.

Despite the Afghan government’s continued support for United States operations to hunt down fighters from the Taliban and Al Qaeda, local officials here said it was time for them to end the bombing and commando raids to prevent further mistakes and loss of life. …

“I was shouting `Dost! Dost!’ — `We are friends!’ — but they were not listening,” he said. “And I was telling my men that they are friends, and American soldiers came and started to beat me.

“I was down on my knees, bent over, and they kicked me in the chest. I heard my ribs crack. Then I was lying on my side and they kicked me in the back, in the kidneys, and I fainted.”

He came round to find his hands tied and one of his men dead on the ground.

While Bush cuts the budget of programs for job training the defense budget swells like a fly-bloated corpse. The pentagon has admitted that they can’t account for $2.3 TRILLION dollars. Trillion! Trillion! No, this money doesn’t just vanish. It’s not eaten by rodents in the walls. It is pilfered by rats of a different sort. These public funds, which amount to $8000 for every single person, could have been used in a constructive manner. Hell, even giving people an $8000 bonus would be more worthwhile than allowing it to be stolen by government contractors and private business. War is a racket, plain and simple, and this ‘war’ is no different. It is sick with the stench of profiteering. While the parasites syphon off more and more money a large percentage of Americans eat up the bullshit with a spoon. America wave more flags, put the plastic bag over your head and go back to sleep.

Above all, the American industrial-complex has a new enemy with which to justify its gargantuan appetite for public resources – the new military budget is enough to end all primary causes of poverty in the world.

Donald Rumsfeld, the Defence Secretary, says he has told the Pentagon to “think the unthinkable”.

Vice President Dick Cheney, the voice of Bush, has said the US is considering military or other action against “40 to 50 countries” and warns that the new war may last 50 years or more.

A Bush adviser, Richard Perle, explained. “(There will be) no stages,” he said.

“This is total war. We are fighting a variety of enemies. There are lots of them out there … If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don’t try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.”

Their words evoke George Orwell’s great prophetic work, Nineteen Eighty-Four.

In the novel, three slogans dominate society: war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.

Our folksy Big Brother President gave his ‘State of the Union’ speech this evening. The main focus of it was the continuing ‘war against terrorism’. I don’t know if I can stand any more irony. Sometimes I wonder if people who run the government really believe all the slogans and crap they say.

Anyway, not suprisingly Bush announced that the war on terror has just begun. Look forward to a spiraling deficit as your hard-earned money is poured into the corporate feeding trough. What will you get for it? Nothing but more advanced weaponry which we will use to kill more people.

I’m glad I wasn’t at home to watch the state of the union address. With all the applause from the pinks I would’ve gotten sick. Supposedly, there was a 3 and a half minute standing ovation! I really can’t believe people honestly like this guy. According to a Washington Post poll Bush’s support is around 83%. Am I still on earth? It feels like I’m in a bad movie about the 50’s. I’m expecting crewcuts and flattops to come back in style.

In a weird part of the speech, Bush pushed a ‘voluntary’ universal service for Americans. Basically, he said people should spend two years serving their country. He suggested Americans join the ironically named USA Freedom Corps to help with Fatherland…er Homeland Security. He also spoke of a plan to expand the Peace Corps. I’m guessing this has something to do with the information war. The US is interested in expanding the Peace Corps in order to affect the educational systems of Islamic countries so that they become more pro-American. This idea that the US should coerce foreign educational institutions has been discussed openly by the government.

Bush said he wants to double the number of Peace Corps volunteers over the next five years, and asked the group to join “a new effort to encourage development, education and opportunity in the Islamic world.”

In a tip of the hat to religious fundamentalists in our own country Bush said:

“For too long our culture has said, ‘If it feels good, do it,'” Bush said. “America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: ‘Let’s roll.’ We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self.”

For some reason, I hear that phrase a lot when I ask people what a liberal is. I once asked my grandmother what she thought a liberal was and that’s what she said. A person who says ‘if it feels good, do it.’ I can honestly say, as someone who has been accused of being liberal I’ve never said or heard anything like this. Where do people get this?

Here are the definitions of liberal and conservative:

lib·er·al (lbr-l, lbrl)

adj.
1. 1. Not limited to or by established, traditional, orthodox, or authoritarian attitudes, views, or dogmas; free from bigotry.
   
   
   2. Favoring proposals for reform, open to new ideas for progress, and tolerant of the ideas and behavior of others; broad-minded.
   
   
   3. Of, relating to, or characteristic of liberalism.
   
   
   4. Liberal Of, designating, or characteristic of a political party founded on or associated with principles of social and political liberalism, especially in Great Britain, Canada, and
      the United States.
   
   

con·ser·va·tive (kn-sûrv-tv)

adj.

1. Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.

Now, I ask you. Which would you rather be?

Dear readers:

This is Ed. I will brief and to the point. Will return later with further explanation. Here it is: They have a symbol. It symbolizes Bush and all that Bush represents. Their symbol is the American flag. On t-shirts, buttons, bumper-stickers, car antennas. What’s our symbol? It is the PRETZEL. Post pretzel signs in yards, make pretzel banners, make pretzel earrings, make pretzel t-shirts, get pretzel tattoos. Eating pretzels will become more dangerous than burning the flag.