NY Times: Mourning in Amerika

Yet another long NY Times editorial eulogy for the Bill of Rights.

This past Sunday's plangent laundry list of rising fascism offers so many major bullet-pointed assaults on the Constitution that revising the "Patriot" Act and closing Gitmo appear at the end as an afterthought.

To wit:

Restore Habeas Corpus
Ban Torture, Really
Close the C.I.A. Prisons
Account for ‘Ghost Prisoners’
Ban Extraordinary Rendition
Tighten the Definition of Combatant
Screen Prisoners Fairly and Effectively
Ban Tainted Evidence
Ban Secret Evidence
Better Define ‘Classified’ Evidence
Respect the Right to Counsel

Land of the free. Yeah, right. Tell me another.

Walter Reed: Karmic Payback

I hesitated to comment on the Walter Reed Veteran's Hospital scandal, as it is so obvious what this is all about.

The Cheney administration and Commander Codpiece couldn't give the time of day to the wounded and broken soldiers coming back from the Iraq/Afghanistan killing fields and are only interested in sending more to be killed and maimed in their insane global chess game.

Walter Reed Hospital, once a leading government facility, was privatized by the neocons and the contractors bled it for profit instead of carrying out even the most basic maintenance. The hospital is now, according to the WaPo, a "dank structure besieged by mold, leaks and rot."

There's a low-level war going on right now between the White House and the Pentagon, and I believe there's no coincidence that this story surfaced right now, in the run-up to the Iran war. This is sabotage, and I think the military was willing to take the hit on this one because they know the ultimate responsibility rests with the administration and they'd get tarred with the blame. Apparently there are still a lot of real patriots in our armed forces and they're making their stand now.

As for Cheney and his Cheerleader and the neocon court, they can fire all the Army Secretaries and scapegoat colonels they want, but that will not redeem their utter disregard for the most basic responsibility of government to care for sick and wounded soldiers--most barely beyond adolescence--that it has sent to fight and die for it.

The karmic payback: veterans groups are rightly outraged, weakening one of the few remaining pillars of popular support for the Bush regime.

Unconscionable.

NY Times: Loose Nukes Echo Chamber

The tempo of apocalyptic fear-mongering has kicked into overdrive: the MSM is literally awash with portentious articles of new terror attacks involving loose nukes.

Let's be very clear about this: the 9/11 drug is wearing off, the wheels are coming off that lie, and they're hustling "the next big thing" to market as fast as they can. These madmen are doubling down on terror, just as they're about to do the same with Iraq.

I can barely keep up with the sowing-the-ground articles, and I focus almost exclusively on the top tier NYT, WaPo & BBC--and THIS IS NOT A GOOD THING.

The NY Times' second "we're-gonna-get-nuked-soon" article this week, via the Huffington Post, behind the NYT firewall:

"Frank Rich: Experts Warn Al Qaeda "To Detonate Nuclear Device" In US, But Bush Punts on Threat."

In an op-ed in the New York Times, columnist Frank Rich argues that
over five years after the events of September 11, 2001, President George
W. Bush is still ignoring serious terrorist threats to the United
States. Faced with warnings from terrorism experts and a White House
seemingly more focused on Iraq, Rich begs readers to ask, "Haven't we
been here before?"

Yes Frank, on the same pages just this past Sunday in fact. And that's what really scares the Hell out of me.

Dept. of In-Your-Face Symbolism:McClown Shows Presidency Is a Joke

From today's WaPo:

McCain Joins Race for 2008

On "Late Show With David Letterman," senator says he is seeking the nomination for president.

They are laughing in our faces.

This has been carefully considered. McCain is a messenger, by launching his campaign on a late-night comedy show, he is telling us what a joke the Presidency really is. But then after Reagan and two terms of W, no one but a fool would think differently.

Owl Gods Redux

In a prior post on 9/11 and secret societies, I mentioned Bohemian Grove and Molloch, the ancient Babylonian owl god worshipped there. Though none of what follows is particularly new information, I wanted to expand on that prior post here.

The question why Presidents, CEOs, media moguls and financiers secretly gather to worship huge stone owl effigies in Redwood forests is obviously an interesting one, and quite revealing.

The owl, of course, can see in the dark, and thus is the perfect symbol for the Illuminati, that most secret of societies, which sees behind and in large part plans the apparently random events that form our "current events": carefully planned accidents, false-flag terrorist attacks, financial and political machinations that pop up in our MSM long after the fact--if at all.

The owl then is a symbol of hubris, of condescension--there is even a tiny one perched on the upper right corner of the front of the one-dollar bill--which of course sports the Illuminati/freemasonry pyramid with its all-seeing eye of Isis/Osiris on the verso, just above its inscription dedicated to a Latinate "new world order." And there's another one drawn in the roads surrounding the Capitol, which sits in its belly--the belly of the beast.

Neat little package, the dollar bill--all the conspiracies in a nutshell--and even better, you carry it in your pocket every day, totally in the dark about all its hidden symbolism. The dollar bill is a talisman, and these secret-society nutjobs think that it generates positive auguries for their plans and projects.

The current half-dozen posts give you some idea of their current projects--provoking war with Iran and dismantling American civil rights being foremost on the agenda--and I think that 2007 will be a critical year in American history. We are heading for a crisis of their making, and they have gambled enormously and dug themselves so deep into their occult-feathered nest of unprecedented lies, crimes and manipulations that it can only lead to horrific confrontation. You know, enough is enough. This sh*t has got to stop.

So fasten your seat-belts and stock up on duct tape, it's going to be one Hell of a bumpy year.

"American Liberty at the Precipice"

No, that headline's not mine, or scrawled by some paranoid, left-wing conspiracy nut, but rather heads today's lead NY Times editorial.

Click on the link, read the whole piece. Yes, this is the old Grey Lady shrieking of the present danger--the most establishment of establishment media.

Wake up, America.

Secret Is As Secret Does

An editorial from Monday's NY Times:

Monday 19 February 2007

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration's behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law.

The provision, signed into law in October, weakens two obscure but important bulwarks of liberty. One is the doctrine that bars military forces, including a federalized National Guard, from engaging in law enforcement. Called posse comitatus, it was enshrined in law after the Civil War to preserve the line between civil government and the military. The other is the Insurrection Act of 1807, which provides the major exemptions to posse comitatus. It essentially limits a president's use of the military in law enforcement to putting down lawlessness, insurrection and rebellion, where a state is violating federal law or depriving people of constitutional rights.

The newly enacted provisions upset this careful balance. They shift the focus from making sure that federal laws are enforced to restoring public order. Beyond cases of actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or to any "other condition."

Changes of this magnitude should be made only after a thorough public airing. But these new presidential powers were slipped into the law without hearings or public debate. The president made no mention of the changes when he signed the measure, and neither the White House nor Congress consulted in advance with the nation's governors.

There is a bipartisan bill, introduced by Senators Patrick Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, and Christopher Bond, Republican of Missouri, and backed unanimously by the nation's governors, that would repeal the stealthy revisions. Congress should pass it. If changes of this kind are proposed in the future, they must get a full and open debate.

No further comment needed, other than to note that that bipartisan bill has a snowball's chance in Hell of being enacted.

Imperium Americanum: History Repeating

Here we are deep in the last third of Gibbon.

Almost 45 years ago, Ceasar died in Dallas, the long knives replaced by a hail of bullets, with the devolution of honor being such that the conspirators hid behind contract killers bought from the mafia rather than looking their prince in the eye as they betrayed him and murdered their republic.

Wars and foreign intrigues followed, as the conspirators, now the rulers of empire, fed at the trough of money and power. In Rome, uneasy parents, witness to the unspeakable, soon enough gave way to sons and daughters who reveled in wealth and decadence.

The rich were never richer, the poor never more despised. The outward forms and structures were maintained, from familiarity and convenience, but all Romans knew that democracy had been supplanted by dictatorship, that Rome had sacrificed its soul to grasp at the delirious prize of world domination.

The pathetic spectacle of the current Senate's inability to pass a non-binding resolution censuring the conduct of the Iraq war should have been played out in togas.

The craven politics, posturing and rank hypocrisy of the past weeks' maneuverings have reached new lows even for Congress--a profoundly saddening and shameless display that reveals an institution that is impotent, dysfunctional and frankly irrelevant. The stink of rotten decadence hangs over the farce: Congress is defunct as a viable, let alone co-equal, branch of government.

Enter Nero, playing air guitar.

You Know You're In Trouble When...

This is truly scary.

Gary Wills, arch Old-Guard Conservative (with a capital C) and NY Times op-ed columnist, has seen the light about the American police state. When Wills raises the alarm, you know we're really in trouble.

Please read the entire article; it is more than worth your time.

I'll just post a few excerpts here, though I'd like to repost the entire essay:

When Abraham Lincoln took actions based on military considerations, he gave himself the proper title, “commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States.” That title is rarely — more like never — heard today. It is just “commander in chief,” or even “commander in chief of the United States.” This reflects the increasing militarization of our politics. The citizenry at large is now thought of as under military discipline. In wartime, it is true, people submit to the national leadership more than in peacetime. The executive branch takes actions in secret, unaccountable to the electorate, to hide its moves from the enemy and protect national secrets. Constitutional shortcuts are taken “for the duration.” But those impositions are removed when normal life returns.

But we have not seen normal life in 66 years. The wartime discipline imposed in 1941 has never been lifted, and “the duration” has become the norm. World War II melded into the cold war, with greater secrecy than ever — more classified information, tougher security clearances. And now the cold war has modulated into the war on terrorism.

There has never been an executive branch more fetishistic about secrecy than the Bush-Cheney one. The secrecy has been used to throw a veil over detentions, “renditions,” suspension of the Geneva Conventions and of habeas corpus, torture and warrantless wiretaps. We hear again the refrain so common in the other wars — If you knew what we know, you would see how justified all our actions are.

But we can never know what they know. We do not have sufficient clearance.

The United States of America has been governed under a "State of Emergency" for over thirty years. Bet you didn't know that. But I bet you can guess what kind of powers that allows the executive.

Home of the free? Don't make me laugh--or cry.

A note on the photo: Yes, the badge is real. FEMA is a national police agency. Welcome to 1984 folks, just a few decades late, is all. (And by the way, the triangle in a circle above the eagle is, you guessed, it, an occult symbol.)

Chilling Prescience: Jim Garrison Speaks, 1967

Here I cede the floor to a remarkable man, whose words should not be lost.

Earling Carothers "Jim" Garrison was District Attorney for New Orleans, and placed local businessman Clay Bertrand on trial for conspiracy in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. He is the focus of Oliver Stone's film, JFK. From a Playboy interview in 1967:

PLAYBOY: Many of the professional critics of the Warren Commission appear to be prompted by political motives: Those on the left are anxious to prove Kennedy was murdered by a internal conspiracy within the establishment; and those on the right are eager to prove the assassination was an act of "the international Communist conspiracy." Where would you place yourself on the political spectrum--right, left or center?

JIM GARRISON: That's a question I've asked myself frequently, especially since this investigation started and I found myself in an incongruous and disillusioning battle with agencies of my own Government. I can't just sit down and add up my political beliefs like a mathematical sum, but I think, in balance, I'd turn up somewhere around the middle. Over the years, I guess I've developed a somewhat conservative attitude--in the traditional libertarian sense of conservatism, as opposed to the thumbscrew-and-rack conservatism of the paramilitary right--particularly in regard to the importance of the individual as opposed to the State and the individual's own responsibilities to humanity . . .

I was with the artillery supporting the division that took Dachau; I arrived there the day after it was taken, when bulldozers were making pyramids of human bodies outside the camp. What I saw there has haunted me ever since. Because the law is my profession, I've always wondered about the judges throughout Germany who sentenced men to jail for picking pockets at a time when their own government was jerking gold from the teeth of men murdered in gas chambers. I'm concerned about all of this because it isn't a German phenomenon; it's a human phenomenon. It can happen here, because there has been no change, there has been no progress and there has been no increase of understanding on the part of men for their fellow men.

What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly eroding into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the State. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and the Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution.

In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work.

About the photo: Paramilitary police attacking lawful demonstrators protesting against the Free Trade Area of the Americas pact (FTAA) in November of 2003 in Miami.

But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here the internal process is more subtle, but the end results are the same. I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the internal dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the State and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act.

I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own long experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.