27
Sep
Daniel Ellsberg Says: There Has Been A COUP in the USA
TODAY’S WORD ON JOURNALISM — Tuesday, Sept. 25, 2007
“Good evening. Thank you for inviting me into your laps.
The press and the government are in bed together in an embrace so intimate and wrong, they could spoon on a twin mattress and still have room for Ted Koppel. Journalists used to question the reasons for war and expose abuse of power. Now, like toothless babies, they suckle on the sugary teat of misinformation, and poop it into the diaper we call the 6 o’clock news. Demand more of your press. Demand more of your government. Vote out your so-called representatives. Reject your corporate masters. Buy nothing. Hug your children. Love the one you’re with.”
–Kent Brockman, in his first news commentary, “The Simpsons” by Matt Groening, 2007
UAW AND GM TO SETTLE STRIKE
SENATE PASSES BILL TO ALLOW WAR WITH IRAN
CAMPAIGN AGAINST PREDATORY LENDING UNDERWAY
Here’s a wrap up of important stories:
The United Auto Workers and General Motors Corp. agreed Wednesday to a tentative contract to end a two-day national strike - the first against the automaker in 37 years - and puts the responsibility for retirees’ health care into the union’s hands.
Shots fired to disperse Burma protests
Security forces fired warning shots and tear gas canisters while hauling Buddhist monks away in trucks Wednesday as they tried to stop anti-government demonstrations in defiance of a ban on assembly.
ANALYSIS FROM IDEA INTERNATIONAL, an organization committed to promoting Democracy:
The popular protests in Myanmar demonstrate the power of democracy. What they also demonstrate is how little the outside world can actually predict events. Conventional wisdom on Myanmar has tended to be that people are too oppressed and too afraid to stand up for democracy. In the last few days tens of thousands of Burmese have, literally, demonstrated otherwise. They deserve our support in their call for a true, democratic and inclusive national dialogue to build a better future for their country
CHINA NOT TOTALLY ALIGNED WITH RULERS
BEIJING (Reuters) - China has been quietly nurturing ties with democratic and ethnic groups at odds with Myanmar’s military government, partly hedging bets in the restive Southeast Asian nation even as Beijing avoids openly criticising the junta.
China has been a steady friend of the generals who have ruled for decades in Myanmar, also known as Burma, standing by them after they crushed a pro-democracy uprising in 1988 and then swept aside a 1990 election won by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy.
In past days, as thousands of Buddhist clergy have taken to Myanmar’s streets to demand democratic change, Beijing has avoided public pressure on its resource-rich neighbour, instead urging “stability” and vowing non-interference.
But behind the scenes in past months and even years China has held low-key meetings with minority ethnic and democratic opposition groups, said group representatives and a Western analyst.
Zin Linn, a spokesman for the exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma in Thailand, said his organisation had met Chinese representatives in the past year or so.
COUP IN THE USA?
Meanwhile, back in the USA, Daniel Ellsberg reports what the media has yet to: ‘A Coup Has Occurred’
If there’s another 9/11 under this regime … it means that they switch on full extent all the apparatus of a police state that has been patiently constructed, largely secretly at first but eventually leaked out and known and accepted by the Democratic people in Congress, by the Republicans and so forth.
2 Patriot Act Provisions ruled unlawful
CNN: — Judge declares a mistrial in the Phil Spector murder case.
AND WAR WITH IRAN DRAWS NEARER
See my article on Mediachannel about the media coverage. So far, largely uncovered is this development reported by Mike Hirsh:
What are we going to do about it?
Will the US attack Iran? Why not a sense of Congress vote against it? Why not a public outcry against the next horrendous, illegal, immoral, self-defeating war?
How can anyone vote for a Senate resolution seeking international doom? This story isn't covered at all. That's why the neocons feel (know?) they can act with impunity. I'm tired of playing defense and I'm tired of arguing about how best to protest / end a war that should never have started. I don't want to spend the next five or ten years protesting against another war we should work together to prevent. What are we doing about it now?
Bush’s Iran War Plans
By Matthew Rothschild, Editor, The Progressive, October 2007
He’s got the war plans ready. A recent study by two British arms experts shows the magnitude of the assault that Bush could wage.
“The U.S. has made military preparations to destroy Iran’s WMD, nuclear energy, regime, armed forces, state apparatus, and economic infrastructure within days, if not hours, of President George W. Bush giving the order,” says the report by Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London, and Martin Butcher, the former director of the British American Security Information Council.
“U.S. bombers and long-range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours,” the study says. “Such a strike would take ’shock and awe’ to a new level.”
It seems unbelievable that Bush would wage another war, given the disaster he has already created in Iraq. But it’s only unbelievable if you assume Bush is sane, rational, and humane. If you consider that he is not in the reality-based community, then he could do just about anything. He’s got Cheney whispering in one ear that he is the only President tough enough to take on the Iranians. And he thinks he’s got God whispering in the other ear that he must rid the world of evil. With that peculiar iPod, Bush is raring to go.
Quote —
“In the absence of an imminent threat (with the Iranians at least several years away from having a nuclear arsenal), the attack would be a unilateral act of war. If undertaken without formal Congressional declaration, it would be unconstitutional and merit the impeachment of the President.”
— Zbigniew Brzezinski, Former National Security Adviser
the issue with the rationality of bush & the neocons is the core philosophy and values that drive them which no one talks about. so the discussion about their rationality rings hollow and is useless. they are rational. they have a belief system that is very clear and well directed. it is a system that believes in the right of the few to control the world. it is a belief system that thinks all people, except themselves, are useless except for what they can be programmed to provide for the rulers wealth and convenience. it is machiavellian, fascist, feudal. it does not believe in democracy, but in fascism.
if people do not begin to talk about the real value structure that drives them, we have no hope in motivating the country to rise up and clamor for the change we need. there has been a coup and it was not bloodless. in iraq blood is flowing massively and some of it is american. blood is flowing elsewhere as well. in the america blood flows in the hospitals as a result of the deaths from toxic drugs pumped into people in the name of profit. blood flows in the streets as people kill each other out the frustration of their lives which prevent decent survival. blood flows with the epidemic of adhd and autism in our children who become part of the economic frontier of big pharma which turns these children and their families into non-stop life-long consumers of their poison–a process which was caused by the use of enforced toxic vaccines.
their is a deep conflict between humanistic values which are the basis of a democratic society and the anti-human, anti-life values of the neocons. once that is understood, maybe the arguments to counter the administration propaganda will begin to take meaning.
September 27th, 2007 at 6:25 am