Rolling stones,Neil Young, Prince,Bob Seger,eels, Bob Marley, Interseed, Annie Mac, dub Addict, Machine Dub, Rehabilitation, These kids, Refused, Rise Against, Anti-Flag
Movies
Iraq:The hidden story
The story of what does not get reported in Iraq by the mainstream media.
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<msprm name="movie" value="
Rancho http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOZ0l-uir6sDeluxe, Dr. Strangelove, Pulp Fiction, Station Agent, Sexy Beast, American Beauty, Caddy Shack, Body Heat, Thank You For Smoking, Bullet,the Fog of War, Why we Fight, V for Vedetta, Casablanca, Citizen Kane, Vision Quest,Harold and Maude
Television
College Football, Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiam, Bill Maher, the final 4, House
Books
The End of America by Naomi Wolf, The Revolution by Ron Paul, Nemesis by Chalmers Johnson, Day of Deceit by Robert Stinnett, The Politics of War by Walter Karp, Bush Vs the United States of America (a Hypothetical indictment of Bush, Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Collin Powell for committing fraud against the American Poeple) Anything by Charles Bukowski, A Sport and a Pastime(James Salter) Everything written by Noam Chomsky, Blood Meridian(Cormac McCarthy, Chalmers Johnson(Blowback,The sorrows of Empire), A Fan's Note's(Frederick Exley), anything by Walter Mosley,Calculated Chaos by Butler Shaffer, The Road(Cormac McCathy)Speaking of Liberty by Lew Rockwell, Garet Garrett: Defend America First (Antiwar editorials of the Saturday Evening Post 1939-1942),Salvos Against the New Deal, Ex America(The People's Pottage
Heroes
Guy Fawkes,Ludwig Von Mises, Murray Rothbard, Noam Chomsky, Charles Bukowski,Buthler D. Shaffer, Lew Rockwell, Albert J. Nock, Frank Chodorov, F. A. Baldy Harper, H.L.Mencken, Garet Garrett,John T. Flynn, Suzanne La Follette Felix Morley,Rose Wilder Lane, Isabel Paterson, Russell Kirk, Noam Chomsky, F. A. Hayek,Randolph Bourne
About me: V--The preamble: I am an anarchist. I want a stateless society. Its easy for me now to have this position. We live in a violent country, led by the most violent government that has ever existed in human history. What is most distressing to me, however, is the easy acceptance of these facts by the American public. We get up everyday and know that our government is killing innocent people around the world, either covertly or overtly. Yet there is no real mass unrest from the public. The current administration has turned the constitution on its ear and challenged congress to stop them. From congress we get NOTHING!! Even though polls show the majority of Americans now recognize that the illegal invasion and occupation of Iraq was a mistake, the congress and the administration ignore the public. We have allowed the government to consume our treasure and build the most powerful military in the history of the world. While we bluster at Iran and China about military activities our history tells us the USA dropped two atomic weapons on two cities in Japan, incinerating 200,000 or more innocent citizens, mostly elderly men and women and children. And the madness goes on. Now there is more then a plausible chance that this administration and congress plan to attack Iran; and may use NUCLEAR WEAPONS! Egged on by the Israel lobby leading democratic presidential candidates are fully on board for the attack. While the chances for a stateless society in my lifetime are remote I will do what I can to live outside the soft cage that the government is building for you and me. Many of the founding fathers warned us about this day but as you see------NONE OF US LISTENED.
I was born into this on August 9, 1947. This year I will celebrate my 60th birthday! You know the cliche--where did the time go. So here I am living in America. I have travelled, I spent a year in Thule Greenland, a guest of the U.S. Air Force so to speak. Actually I enlisted so I could avoid Vietnam--Vietnam a noble adventure sponsored by the U.S. Government. 58,000 dead American soldiers, 3.8 million murdered Vietnamese civilians. Bush mentions the Axis of Evil: Iran, Korea, Iraq. Nothing in the history of mankind tops Vietnam for sheer butchery(bombing campaigns,napalm, assasinations,use of defoliate/agent orange("In Vietnam, between 1961 and 1971, the high command of the United States decided that, since a guerrilla struggle was apparently being protected by tree cover, a useful first step might be to "defoliate" those same trees. Famous corporatons such as Dow and Monsanto were given the task of attacking and withering the natural order of a country. The resulting chemical weaponry was euphemistically graded by color: Agent Pink, Agent Green,(yes, its true), Agent Purple, Agent Blue, Agent White, and-spoken often in whispers-Agent Orange. This shady gang, or gang of shades, all deferred to its ruthless chief, who proudly bore the color of hectic madness. The key constituent of Agent Orange is dioxin: a horrifying chemical that makes total war not just on vegetation but also on the roots and essences of life itself. The orange, in other words, was clockwork from the start. If you wonder what the dioxin effect can look like, recall the ravaged features of Viktor Yushchenko-ironically the leader of the Orange Revolution. The full inventory of this historic atrocity is still being complied: it's no exaggeration to say that about 12 million gallons of lethal toxin, in Orange form alone, were sprayed on Vietnam, on the Vietnamese, and on the American Forces who were fighting in the same jungles. A prime use of the chemical was in the delta of the Mekong River, where the Swift Boats were vulnerable to attack from the luxuriant undergrowth at the water's edge. Very well, said Admiral Elmo Zumwalt Jr. we shall kill off this ambush-enabling greenery by poisoning it from the skies. Zumwalt believes his own son Elmo III, who was also serving in the delta, died from the effects of Agent Orange, leaving behind him a son with grave learning disabilites. The resulting three-generation memoir of the Zumwalt family-My Father, My Son (1986), written by the first and second Elmos about themselves and about the grandchild-is one of the most stoic and affecting family portraits in American history" "Out of a population of perhaps 84 million Vietnamese, itself reduced by several million during the war, there are as many as one million cases of Agent Orange affliction still on the books. Of these, the hardest to look at are the monstrous births. But we agree to forgive ourselves for this, and to watch real monsters such as Robert McNamara and Henry Kissinger, who calmly gave the orders and the instructions, as they posture on chat shows and cash in with their "memoirs." "But, hey, forget it. Forget if if you can." "The Vietnam War came home, and so did many men who had been exposed to Agent Orange, either from handling it and loading it or from being underneath it. If you desire even a faint idea of the distance between justice and a Vietnamese peasant family,take a look at how long it took for the American victims of this evil substance to get a hearing. The chemical assault on Vietnam began in 1961, in the early days of the Kennedy administration, and it kept on in spite of many protests for another 10 years.The first effective legal proceeding brought in any American court was in 1984, in New York. This class action, settled out of court was so broadly defined, in point of American victims and their stricken children, that almost nobody got more than $5,000 out of it, and there was a sharp (or do I mean blunt?)cutoff point beyond which no claim could be asserted. Six million acres of Vietnam had been exposed to the deadly stuff, and, as is the way with protracted litigation, the statistics began to improve and harden. It was established that there was a "match" between those who had been exposed and those who were subject, or whose offspring were subject,to alarming disorders. Admiral Zumwalt, who had first used the phrase "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" in connection with Vietman, took a hand in forwarding the legal cause and might have added that his grandson shoud not be (or do I mean should be?)the last one to suffer for a mistake. More than mistake. A crime.Long after both senior male Zumwalts had died-or in 2003, to be precise-the Supreme Court ruled that the issue had not been completely put to rest by the 1984 settlement. The way now lies open for a full accounting of this nightmarish affair. A report, written by Professor Jeanne Stellman, of Columbia University, as part of a U.S. government study, has concluded that nearly two million more gallons of herbcide were disseminated than has yet been admitted, and that the dioxin content of each gallon was much higher than had been officially confessed. (It has been calculated from tests on some Vietnamese that their dioxin levels are 200 times higher than "normal." The implications are extraordinary, because it is now possible that thousands of Americans may join a million of their former, Vietnamese adversaries in having a standing to sue. Doesn't it ever end? When will Agent Orange become history?" These were the words of Kenneth Feinberg, who figured as teh court's "special master" in the 1984 suit, and who has more recently run the Victim Compensation Fund for the families of those who died in the the attacks of September 11, 2001. One should not leave him to answer his own question all by himself. Agent Orange will "become history" in a different way from the trauma of September 11. Of that event, it's fairly safe to say, there will no lapse of memory at lease until everybody who lived through it has died. Of this Vietnam syndrome, some of us have sworn, there will likewise be no forgetting, let alone forgiving, while we can still draw breath. But some of the victims of Agent Orange haven't even been born yet, and if that reflection doesn't shake you, then my words have been feeble and not even the photographs will do.Article by Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair August 2006/check out the photographs!!!) ).Hooray for the good old USA.
Yes, I am an EMEMY OF THE STATE. All governments are evil and the longer we support the U.S. Government or any other government for that matter the longer we condone violence committed in the name of the people.
For those of you in your early 20's now is the time to demand the end of the welfare-warfare state because if you do not you and your children and their grandchidren will inherit a debt that you will not be able to repay. The rest of the world will pass you by--not because they hate you but because the leaders of America made a HUGE MISTAKE!!
A HUGE MISTAKE! AND WHAT WOULD THAT BE? HUBRIS, are we better then anyone else, do we know what the rest of the world should know, does the rest of the world want to be like the U.S.? Spreading democracy? If spreading U.S. style democracy means what we now have----you have got to be FUCKING KIDDING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Perpetual war for perpetual peace? The war on Terror, the war on DRUGS(and what did Milton Friedman have to say about the WAR ON DRUGS in a famous 1989 open letter to Bill Bennett, drug czar under the 1st bush clown, Friedman wrote: "Your mistake is failing to recognize that the very measures you favor are a major source of the evils you deplore...Illegality creates obscene profits that finance the murderous tactics of the drug lords; illegality leads to the corruption of law-enforcement officials; illegality monopolizes the efforts of honest law forces so that they are starved for resources to fight the simpler crimes of robbery,theft and assault." good ol milty recentley passed from this lovely planet),the war on POVERTY,the war on this and that--blah, blah,etc. The interesting thing to consider is that not one of my friends is demanding a war on anything or anybody. How about your friends-are they demanding war on anything or anybody? But what about your government. They seem hell bent on contolling the rest of the world. But why? I can tell you this much the US Government does not care about the American public. The US Government (the Congress) is a bunch of ELITES--MILLIONAIRS MOSTLY--who are interested in only two things POWER & MONEY. And one more thing--the control of the flow of OIL from the Middle East.
So do you think I have to listen to this nonsense the rest of my life? Are you listening to the MORONS that lead the United States of America? These fools will drop the BIG ONE unless we find a way to stop them. AND I DON'T MEAN VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS. We have to devote the rest of our lives to living outside the BOX!! By this I mean find a way to live without paying taxes which support these bastards. Form co-ops, share everything, educate your children outside the public school system, develop your own energy systems, oppose all government!!!!!!!!
I know it is not easy to face the future as it is starting to unfold. But you still have time to make some decisions. Lets start with just one: oppose the US goverment. The US government is EVIL. I know it sounds silly but its just fun to say. But hey its true. We all went to public school, or most of us did. And thats when we all got the old flag waving routine from our teachers or shall I say the propagandists. The US was good everyone else was bad. Now most of you who might be taking time to read this might wonder what the hell I am talking about but just take minute or so and stop and start thinking! Why are we in Iraq? Now ask some older person (me) why were in Vietnam? Now go back to the Korean War and ask someone why we were there. Ask why we had to go to Europe and get involved in WWII. And before that WWI. If you want to know just get on the net and ask a few pertinent questions and you will be surprised and amazed at the information you will have at your fingertips. Maybe this sounds like bullshit but its not. I am proposing that you take the time to research and hopefully come to the conclusion that the US government IS THE MOST DANGEROUS GOVERNMENT ON THE PLANET. Your security is in your hands.The US government cannot protect you from anything! And besides if they wanted to protect the country the crackpots in D.C. would close all the US bases spread around the world (estimated to be more then 700 in more then 130 countries that we know of)and bring the people home and hey actually do something about border security.
You might think, after reading some of this, that I dislike the US government and you would be correct. And you might also think that I am a pretty angry guy right now and you would also be correct. For me its pretty hard to listen to the crackpots(bush, cheney, rice, rumsfeld and all there hired agents) in D.C. talk about the war in Iraq. I use the word crackpots to describe these people but C. Wright Mills, a "New Left Sociologist from the 60's, used the concept of crackpot realism to explain people like John F. Kennedy and all of his agents who were determined to save the world from communism. Some of what he said is relevant to what the present crackpots say and do. Here are some relevant lines taken from his book "The causes of World War III: In crackpot realism, a high flying moral rhetoric is joined with an opportunist crawling among a great scatter of unfocused fears and demands. In fact, the main content of "politics" is now a struggle among men equally expert in practical next steps--which, in summary, make up the thrust toward war__ and in great, round, hortatory principles.(p.86) The expectation of war solves many problems of the crackpot realists; it also confronts them with many new problems. Yet these, the problems of war, often seem easier to handle. They are out in the open: to produce more, to plan how to kill more of the enemy, to move materials thousands of miles...So instead of the unknown fear, the anxiety without end, some men of the higher circles prefer the simplication of known catastrophe.(p.87) Now the next one is right on: They know of no solution to the paradoxes of the Middle East and Europe, the Far East and Africa except the landing of Marines. Being baffled, and also being very tired of being baffled, they have come to believe that there is no way out__except war__which would remove all the bewildering paradoxes of their tedious and now misguided attempts to construct peace. In place of these paradoxes they prefer the bright, clear problems of war__ as they used to be. For they still believe that "winning" means something, although they never tell us what.(p88)Some men want war for sordid, others for idealistic, reasons; some for personal gain, others for impersonal principle. But most of those who consciously want war and accept it, and so help t create its "inevitability," want it in order to shift the locus of their problems.(p.88)
But how does war really happen, how do the politicans accomplish their devious works--well its quite simple they fucking lie! I give you two pages of concise explanation from the book "Resurgence of the Warfare State by Robert Higgs. Here we go: "To Make War, Presidents Lie" When American presidents prepare for foreign war, they lie. Surveying our history, we see a clear pattern. Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war. The enormous losses of life, property, and liberty that Americans have sustained in wars have occurred in large part because of the public's unwarranted trust in what their leaders told them before leading them into war.
In 1898 President William McKinley, having been goaded by muscle-flexing advisers and jingoistic journlists to make war on Spain, sought divine guidance as to how he should deal with the Spanish possessions, especially the Philippines, that U.S. forces had seized in what ambassador John Hay famously described as a "splendid little war." Evidently, his prayer was answered, because the president later reported that he had heard "the voice of God," (No Shit) and "there was nothing left for us to do but take them all and educate the Filipinos, and uplift and Christianize them."
In truth, McKinley's motivations had little if anything to do with uuplifting the people whom William H. Taft, the first governor-general of the Philippines, called "our little brown brothers," but much to do with the political and commercial ambitions of influential expansionists such as Captain Alfred T. Mahan, Theodore Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and their elk. In short, the official apology for the brutal and unnecessary Philippine-American War was a mendacious gloss.
The Catholic Filipinos evidently did not yearn to be Christianized in the American style, at the point of a Krag rifle, and they resisted the U.S. imperialists as they had priviously resisted the Spanish imperialists. The Philippine-American War, which officially ended on July 4, 1902, but actually dragged on for many years in some islands, cost the lives of more than 4,000 U.S. troops, more than 200,000 Filipino fighters, and more than 220,000 Filipino civilians, many of whom perished in concentration camps eerily similar to the relocation camps into which U.S. forces herded Vietnamese peasants sixty years later."The twentieth century was the bloodiest in all history. More than 170 MILLION people were killed in World I and fifty million killed in World War II. In regard to the fifty million killed in World War II, it is significant that nearly 70% were innocent civilians, mainly as a result of the bombing of cities by Great Britain and America. This mumber of fifty million deaths does not include the estimated six to twelve million Russians killed by Stalin before World War II, and the several million people he killed after the war ended when Roosvelt delivered to him one-third of Europe as part of the settlement conferences. George Crocker's excellent book Roosevelt's Road to Russia describes the settlement conferences, such as Yalta, and shows how Roosevelt enhanced communism in Russia and China throughly deliberate concessions that strengthended it drastically, while Nazism was being extinguished in Germany."
When World War I began in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson's sympathies clearly lay with the British. Nevertheless, he quickly proclaimed U.S. neutrality and urged his fellow Americans to be impartial in both thought and deed. Wilson himself, however, leaned more and more toward the Allied side as the proceeded. Still, he recognized that the great majority of Americans wanted no part of the fighting in Europe, and 1916 he sought reelection successfully on the appealing slogan "He kept Us Out of War."
Soon after his second inauguration, however, he asked Congress for declaration of war, which was approved, although six senators and fifty members of the House of Representatives had the wit or wisdom of vote against it. Wilson promised this war would be "the war to end all wars," but wars aplenty have taken place since the guns fell silent in 1918, leaving their unprecedented carnage--nearly 9 million dead and more than 20 million wounded, many of them hideously disfigured or crippled for life, as well as perhaps 10 million civilians who died of starvation or disease as a result of the war's destruction of resources and its interruption of commerce. And what did the U.S. or the world gain? Only a twenty-year reprieve before the war's smoldering embers burst into flame again.
After World WAr I, Americans felt betrayed, and they resolved never to make the same mistake again. Yet, just two decades later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt began the maneuveres by which he hoped to plunge the nation once again into the European cauldron. Unsucessful in his naval provocations of the Germans in the Atlantic, he eventually pushed the Japanese to the wall by a series of hostile economic-warfare measures, issued clearly unacceptable ultimatums, and indeed induced them to mount a desperate military attack, most devastatingly on the U.S. forces he concentrated at Pearl Harbor.
Campaigning for reelection in Boston on October 30, 1940, FDR had sworn: "I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars." Well, Pelelia ain't Peoria. Roosevelt was lying when he made his declaration, just as he had lied repeatedly before and would lie repeatedly for the remainder of his life.(Stanford University historian David M. Kennedy, careful not to speak too stridently, refers to FDR"s frequently cagey misrepresentations to the American public.")Yet many, many Americans trusted this inveterate liar, sad to say, with their lives, and during the war more than four hundred thousand of them paid the ultimate price.
Among FDR's many political acolytes was a youngg congressman, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who eventually and for the world unfortunately clawed his way to the presidency. As chief executive, he had to deal with vital questions of war and peace, and like his beloved mentor, he relied heavily on lying to the public. In October 1964, seeking to gain election by portraying himself as the peace candidate(in contrast to the alleged mad bomber Barry Goldwater), LBJ told a crowd at Akron University: "We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves." In 1965 however, shortly after the start of his elected term in office, Johnson exploited the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, itself based on a fictitious account of attacks on U.S. naval forces off Vietnam, and initiated a huge buildup of U.S. forces in Southeast Asia that would eventually commit more than five hundred thousand American "boys" to fight an "Asian boy's war. Some fifty-eight thousand U.S. military pesonnel would lose their lives in the service of LBJ's vanity and political ambitions, not to speak of the millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Loations killed and wounded in the melee, Chalk up another catastrophe to a lying American president. Now President george w. bush is telling the American people that we stand in moral peril of imminent attack by Iraqis or their agents armed with weapons of mass destruction. Having presented no credible evidence or compelling argument for his characterizations of the alleged threat, he simply invites us to thrust him and therefore to support him as he undertakes what once would have been called naked aggression. Well, David Hume long ago argued that that no black swan exists. So Bush may be telling the truth. In the light of history, however, we would be making a long-odds bet to believe him. What did George say about Iraq(just a few of the lies):1.Iraq has 500 tons of chemical weapons(sarin gas,mustard gas,vx nerve gas). This was a lie. Zero chemical weapons found. 2. Iraq has 30,000 weapons capable of dumping chemical weapons on people. Not a single chemical weapon's munition was ever found in Iraq. 3. Iraq has a growing fleet of planes capable of dispersing chemical weapons almost anywhere in the world. Zero aerial vehicles found. 4. Iraq aids and protects terrorists including members of Al Qaeda. To date, not a shred of evidence connecting Hussein with Al Qaida or any other known terrorist organizations have been revealed (besides certain Palestinian groups who represent no direct threat to the US). 5. Iraq has purchased metal tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) as well as dozens of leading scientists declared said tubes unsuitable for nuclear weapons production--months before the war. 6. Iraq is rebuilding nuclear facilities at former sites. Two months of inspections at these former Iraqi nuclear sites found zero evidence of prohibited nuclear activities there. 7. Iraq recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Niger. This was a HUGE whooper. The ..s implied were known at the time by the CLOWN to be forged and not credible. 8. Iraq has nuclear weapons for a fact. "The IAEA had found no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapons program in Iraq." 9. Hussein refused to allow UN inspectors into Iraq. UN inspectors went into Iraq to search for possible weapons violations from December 2002 into March 2003. 10. Iraq's WMDs were sent to Syria for hiding--No evidence. 11. The CIA was primarily responsible for any prewar intelligence errors or distortions regarding Iraq. The Pentagon was bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq. In the end the CIA could not----Collin Powell lied in front of the UN security council. 12. An IAEA report indicated that Iraq could be as little as six months from making nuclear weapons--claim retracted when the IAEA pointed out that no such report existed. 13. Saddam was involved with bin laden and al Qaeda--a big whooper. 14. The US wants democracy in Iraq and the Middle East--"Democracy is the last thing the U.S. can afford in Iraq. Representative government in Iraq would mean the rapid expulsion of U.S. interests. Rather, the U.S. wants westernized, secular leadership regimes that will stay in pocket and work to neutralize the politically ambitious anti-western religious sects popping up everywhere. 15. Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress are a homegrown Iraqi political force, not a U.S. sponsored front. In fact Chalabi worked for Iran and fed false information to the clowns in D.C. 16. The U.S. is waging a war on terror. Really--if that were true why do the clowns give a pass to there Saudi friends and Israel. And the Pentagon has cozied up to the Mujahideen-e-khalq (MEK), an anti-Iranian terrorist group based in Iraq. 17. The U.S. has made progress against world terrorist elements, in particular by crippling al Qaeda. On the contrary al Qaeda is stronger then ever and is presently kicking our ass in Afqanistan. 18. The Clown's administration has made Americans safer from terror on U.S. soil. Terror on U.S. soil would disappear if we would stop meddling in the affairs of the rest of the world. Just shut down the bases around the world and bring all the soldier boys home. 19. The clowns's administration has nothing to hide concerning the events of september 11, 2001 or the intelligence evidence collected prior to that day. On the contrary--the Saudi connection and the Israel connection have never been revealed to the public. 20. U.S. air defense functioned according to protocols on September 11, 2001. The open secret here is that stateside U.S. air defenses had been rduced to paltry levels since the end of the cold war. 21. The clown had a plan for restoring essential services and rebuilding Iraq's infrastructure after the shooting war ended. Another big whooper. In fact many think chaos was the goal..to keep the middle east destablized. 22. The U.S. has made a good-faith effort at peacekeeping in Iraq during the postwar period. You be the judge. 23. Despite vocal international opposition, the U.S. was backed by most of the world, as evidenced by the 40-plus-member coalition of the willing. Big whooper. Another huge whooper. 24. The war was notable for the protection of civilians. It is now estimated that at least 100,000 to 655,000 innnocent people have been murdered by coalition forces. Since 1991 the U.S. is has been responsible for the deaths in Iraq of over 1,000,000 people. 25. The looting of archaeological and historic sites in Baghdad was unanticipated. Not true. 26. Saddam was planning to provide WMD to terrorist groups. "declassified portions of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) judged that possibility to be unlikely." 27. Saddam was capable of launching a chemical or biological attack in 45 minutes. "the 45 minute claim was at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public dossier on Iraq in September at the insistence of a aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair--and against the wishes of British Intelligence, which said the charge was from a single source and was considered unreliable." I could go and on but why waste your time. In his article "Dying for a lie" Laurence M. Vance states "They died in vain; they died for a lie. This does not mean that they were not brave, heroic, well-meaning, or patriotic. They may have fought with the best of intentions; they may have sacrificed themselves for others; they may have been sincere in their belief that they were fighting for a good cause; BUT THEY DIED FOR A LIE. THE FIRST LIE IS THAT WAR IS NECESSARY. After commanding forces that firebombed Tokyo, which killed as many civilians as the atomic bomb dropped a few months later, General Curtis LeMay remarked: "We knew we were going to KILL A LOT OF WOMEN AND KIDS when we burned that town. HAD TO BE DONE." But regardless of what happened beforehand, or what might have happened in the future, since when does slaughtering 100,000 people at one time ever have to be done? War should not be considered as an alternative; it is always the worst possible solution. As psychologist Alfred Adler has said: "War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man." War is not inevitable; it is never an absolute necessity. As Adler's successor Lydia Sicher once said: "Wars are inevitable...as long as we believe that wars are inevitable. The moment we don't believe it anymore it is not inevitable." THE SECOND LIE IS THAT IT IS THE PEOPLE IN A COUNTRY THAT WANT WAR. Surprisingly, it was Ronald Reagan who recognized that governments make wars, not people." It is up to the government to convince its citizens that the citizens of another country are "the enemy." After all, as one columnist remarked: "When people have friends and customers in other lands, they tend to take a dim view of their government dropping bombs on them." Governments abuse the concept of patriotism to convince the populace that "the enemy" should be bombed, maimed, and killed. Hermann Goering recognized that all a government has to do to get the people to support a war is to "denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." Real patriotism is not wanting to see the blood of your country's soldiers shed in some desert or jungle halfway around the world fighting the enemy of the week, month, or year. Patriotism, as Charles de Gaulle explained,"is when love of your people comes first; nationlism, when hate for people other than your own comes first." It is old men who make wars, and then send the young men to fight them; it is the members of Congress with no children in the military who agitate for war. THE THIRD IS THAT THERE ARE WINNERS AND LOSERS IN A WAR. No side ever really wins a war. As Jeannette Rankin, the only member of Congress to vote against U.S. entry into both world wars, said: "You can win a war than you can win an earthquake." Every side loses something in a war. English mystery writer, Agatha Christie, certainly showed more wisdom than most members of Congress when she said:"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one." The consequences of a war are never as expected. One reason, as recognized by Thomas Jefferson, is that "war is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses."THE FOURTH LIE IS THAT WAR CAN BE GOOD FOR A NATION'S ECONOMY. This myth of war proseperity was exploded by Ludwig von Mises: "War prosperity is like the prosperity that earthquake or a plague brings. The earthquake means good business for construction workers, and cholera improves the business of physicans, pharmacists, and undertakers; but no one has for that reason yet sought to celebrate earthquakes and cholera as simulators of the productive forces in the general interest." More recently, Robert Higgs has called this "The Fallacy that Won't Die." But didn't unemployment fall during WWII? Of course it did. How could it not fall when the government conscripted 16 million men into the armed forces? But what about the GDP during World War II? Naturally, it increased, but only because of the increased output of military goods and services. Tell the grieving parents of their only son, who never gave them and grandchildren, about how much greater their standard of living will now be because of the war that took their son.THE FIFTH LIE IS THAT THE US MILITARY DEFENDS OUR FREEDOMS. "The military is too busy policing the world to defend our freedoms. We have U.S. troops in 158 countries of the world. How are the 69,395 US troops in Germany defending our freedoms? How are the 35,307 US troops in Japan defending our freedoms? How are the 12,258 US troops in the UK defending our freedoms? How are the_________US troops in___defending our freedoms? To appease his conservative base on the illegal immigration issue, Bush recently called for the stationing of some National Guard troops along the border with Mexico. The National Guard units that have been deployed to Iraq should not be assigned to guard the Mexican border. They should be sent home to their jobs and their families, and only used for genuine emergencies on US soil. Stationing US soldiers along the Mexican border would be defending our freedoms a thousand times more than putting them along any German or Italian border. Contrary to these lies, the truth about war, in the words of Major General Smedley Butler, is that "WAR IS A RACKET. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious." Ambrose Bierce once made a callous statement about war that nevertheless comes to pass whenever the US intervenes in another country: "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography." The aphorism that truth is the first casualty of war has often been spoken but rarely learned from. The is because, as Charles Lindbergh said: "In a time of war, truth is always replaced by propaganda." This war in particular was started and maintained by more government LIES than perhaps any other war in our history. WHAT WERE OUR OBJECTIVES IN THIS WAR? Finding weapons of mass destruction? Finding chemical and biological weapons? Removing Saddam Hussein? Imposing democracy to Iraq? Bringing stability to the Middle East? Forcing Iraq to comply with UN resolutions? Protecting the nation of Israel? Dismantling Al Qaeda? Freeing Muslim women from oppression? Enforcing the no-fly zone imposed on Iraq after the first Persain Gulf War? How are we suduced by War? I will quote from the fabulous book by Butler Shafer entitled "Calculated Chaos" the chapter is Fueling the Engines of War( I am starting on page 124, 3rd paragraph): Because we have chosen to divide ourselves from other people and the rest of nature, we have created a state of war with one another. So accustomed have we become to our personal and institutionalized sources of conflict that we have simply accepted the inevitability of leaving behind us a trail of corpses and crippled victims. Whether we are considering box elder bugs, or the animals we routinely slaughter as we speed along the highways in our rush to go nowhere, or the aborted fetuses whose only offense were to be impediments to our self-indulgent life-styles, or the victims of more formalized systems of conflict, we seem increasingly indifferent to the consequences of our conflict-ridden lives. Because we have separated ourselves from these faceless "others," we find it easy to rationalize the suffering we so thoughtlessly inflict. After all, we convince ourselves, they did get in our way, did they not? Nowhere, though, do we indulge ourselves in such a vicious and unquestioning piling up of victims as in the system of POLITICAL WARFARE. Perhaps it is the enormity of the harm caused by war that anesthetizes our minds and permits us to overlook its obscene and monstrous nature. Even those who are rightfully horrified by the psychopathic BUTCHERY involved often fail to understand how war is both the ultimate expression of institutional superiority over the lives of human beings and, at the same time, the natural consequence classifying ourselves into mutually-exclusive groupings. War is an activity with implications for the institutional control of people that have rarely been understood by even its most ardent critics. Far too many opponents of war nevertheless believe that society could not function without political supervision and coordination. What they fail to understand is the necessity of the war system for soldifying political authority over a population. We have seen how people identify their ego boundaries with the political state, coalescing their individualities into a unified whole. Similarly, the world becomes divided into "we-they" relationships that generate conflict and fear of others. In order to resolve these perceived conflicts in there favor, people sanction the exercise of power by the political state. It is not sufficient for the maintenance fo their power that political institutions have only a theoretical capacity or formal authority to deal with conflicts. The State must be able to constantly exercise its control over conflict situations, and to demonstrate its capacity for violence, in order to reinforce both the herd-identity of its citizens and the force of is own authority. The State is as dependent upon conflict for its survival as the medical profession is upon illness. If conflicts do not arise in any other way, the State must concoct its own. War is, indeed, the health of the State, the means by which the State maintains its existence. Politics feeds on conflict like a parasite, drawing its life-sustaining blood from the wounds it has inflicted. This same conclusion was reached in what were reportedly the results of a secret, government-funded study--conducted over a period some three years by prominent scholars from various disciplines, as well as people from non-academic fields--of the likely consequences of a general condition of peace. Even though the group's report was published without authorization and without identifying any of the purported participants--thus raising questions of its authenticity--it nevertheless contains (like Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm) a perceptive understanding of the essential relationships between political institutions and the war system. Bearing the title Report From Iron Mountain, this professed study reflected a rather dim view by the group members of a condition of universal peace. Such a situation would, they feared, serve to dilute the power of political institutions.
Acknowledging war to be the principal means for the organization of nations, the Iron Mountain group declared that the war system has been indispensable for governments securing a popular sanction for their rule. Wars and other threats to the national interest provided the sense of necessity making possible the state of mind that would gain the allegiances of men and women to a politically organized society. War, in other words, "is the basic social system," and the end of war means the end of national sovereignty." Because Allegiance requires a cause," and "a cause requires an enemy," the report goes on, the war-making societies require--and thus bring about--international conflicts."
Since the health of the State is dependent upon its warmaking capacities, and a "healthy" military system "requires regular excercise," what would be the likely political consequences of a abandoment of war? The answer to that question was, of course, the primary charge to the Iron Mountain Group. If the State was no longer able to rely on military "threats" from foreign governments as fear-objects for maintaining control over its own population then, the group suggested, "alternate enemies" would have to be found. Demonstrating its capacity for practical as well as theoretical solutions, the group provided a list of such possible enemies that included threats from interplanetary creatures, environmental pollution(which, it was suggested, the State itself might have to secretly engage in order to make such a threat plausible), ethnic minorities within the the population, and the use of blood games. Should the State be unable to indentify any existing group as a substitute enemy, the report continues, "such a threat will have to be invented." Other methods of social control mentioned by the group included the use of "selective population control" and the "reintroduction of slavery," to be accomplished through a form of "universal military service."
What more damning indictment of institutions could be offered than this? What fiendish monsters concocted in the dreariest recesses of a psychopatic imagination could begin to match the evil inherent in the systematic and calulated slaughter of millions of human beings? More importantly, what evasion of reality do we practice when we choose to acknowledge the propriety and even the glory of such institutionlized savagery? When the State can engage in its murderous exploits with no other purpose in mind than the aggrandizement of its own power, how can we continue to embrace such agencies as being essential to the maintenance of social order? Do we really believe, as we have been taught, that the absence of such agencies of mass-extermination would lead to disorder?
Is it possible for us to look at the war system through clear, focused eyes, rather than the red, white, and blue lens filters that have been implanted in our minds, and see this vicious game for what it is? It should become evident to us that the governments of the US and the Soviet Union, for example, are organized not so much against one another, as against their own respective citizens, and that each government carefully guards against the disclosure of those State secrets that would reveal to their own people the nature of the game being played. It should also become apparent that, in spite of the heated rhetoric of the cold war, the American poitical and corporate systems require a healthy and vigorous communist bloc of nations, a fact that helps to explain the Reagan Administration's assistance to the Polish government during the "Solidarity" strikes. Political oratory about the "Red Menace" may have frightened many American into surrendereing more of their liberty to the State, but it has not dissuaded western bankers from lending billions of dollars to communist regimes, loans that might become worthless should these governments succumb to the emerging spirit of human liberation. Nor would the disappearance of this purported monolithic threat bode well for the beneficiares of the national defense racket: the defense contractors who have amassed great wealth in supplying the equipment for this game; the educational institutionss that have been well paid to train the players (even the federal government's student loan program bears the name "National Defense Education Act"); and the politicans, warlords, and bureaucracies, into whose hands are centralized even greater power and authority.
It can hardly be denied that we have willingly been bamboozled into State-directed war frenzies conducted against whomever our political leaders have selected as our current enemies. During my lifetime, I have been told that Germany and Japan were my "enemies," and that Russia and China were my "friends." No sooner was that war concluded, though, and the roles rdeversed: it was Russia and China that were now my "enemies," while Germany and Japan were my "friends." During the Korean and Viet Nam wars, I was told that if these nations fell under the rule of the Chinese government, the rest of the free world would be threatened. But even now, as southeast Asian nations are brought under communist control, I learn that the American government is concluding agreements for arms sales to China, which is really my "friend" after all. A Richard Nixon who, as President, was ordering the sacrifice of Americans lives in order to arrest the fall of dominoes, now preaches the doctrine that a militarily strong China is in the best interests of the US. As this is done, we are asked to look elsewhere for our latest "enemies list," perhaps toward Iran, Libya, or some Central American nation. To those who are willing to subject millions of human beings to pain, misery, and death, for no other purpose than to maintain their own power, it really matters little who the war is against, or what the issues are.
The vicious nature of what the politcal State is up to should be obvious. If the ABC grocery chain went on television with a series of commercials to convince us that they were our friends, while the XYZ grocery chain was our enemy, few of us would be inclined to believe them. And if they tried to persuade us to go to a neighborhood shopping center with our fellow ABC customers and shoot at the XYZ customers as they came in to shop, even fewer of us would likely do so. The self-serving nature of their proposal, as well as the absurdity of own participation in their scheme, would be so apparent as to evoke no interest on our part. Why, then, do we not question the State when it seeks to send us or ur children off to a foreign land to die for the glory of the State and its leaders? Those of us who carefully lock burglars out of our homes, allow predators with more voracious appetites into our very souls. Those of us who would not think of permitting our daughters to go out with known rapists, willingly turn our sons over to those who wish to place their lives in mortal danger in order to gratify their self-serving ambitions for power.
If we were aware of the contrived nature of the State's bloody conflicts, we would lose our enthusiasm for participating in war games. When two people understand the logic of a game, it is usually pointless for the two of them to thereafter play that game with one another. One sees this in tic-tac-toe and computerized chess matches:when all the consequences of every move are known in advance by each player, it becomes impossible for either to win. The game remains meaningful to only two groups of people: those who do not understand the game, and those who do understand it and seek to take advantage of those who do not. Continuation of war games,then, is dependent upon widespread ignorance of the fundamental nature of politics.
It is certainly not in the interests of the State to encourage--or even tolerate-any substanial questioning by its citizens. From the State's point of view, the ideal citizen is the kamikaze pilot; the unthinking, obedient lemming capable of being programmed for its own self-destructive marches to wherever the State directs. The State cannot abide a thinker, an independent individual, a person who refuses to lose himself in the herd. In order to inculcate the attitudes upon which such mindless subservience to political authority rests, schools, churches, youth organizations, the enteraintment industry, and business groups have carefully taught us to march in straight lines, to come to attention on command, to respect authority, and to do as we are told. As a consequence, we have become the kind of people who value the security that comes from the certainty of our own institutionalized suffering, who prefer "the devil we know" to the uncertainty of being deprived of our emotional crutches. What we have turned ourselves into was noted so dramatically and pathetically in the movie Holocaust, when one of the concentratioon camp victims declared, while being ordered to march to th gas chambers, "why do we still obey them? We're finished anyway."
The extent of our moral paralysis in the face of established authority was alarmingly identified in the now-classic study conducted by Stanley Milgram. Following a series of experiments in which subjects were directed to inflict pain upon others participating in the project, Milgram concluded that many people do as they told, regardless of the nature of the act, as long as they regard the source of their orders to be a "legitimate authority." It was neither anger, hatred, nor vindictiveness that caused people to be willing to inflict such pain, Milgram said. Rather, man tends "to abandon his humanity...as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures."
To the political state, human beings have never amounted to anything more than resources available for exploitation on behalf of institutional purposes, a sad truth made no more evident than in plans to develop the neutron bomb. In case there any doubts as to the arrogance and human insensitivity of the State, or of the proposition that institutions have interests of their own which take priority over the interests of people, consider the implications of this ultimate weapon: a bomb that only kills people, while leaving buildings and equipment intact! A bomb capable of making distinctions between what is institutionally essential and what is dispensable. "Responsible" men and women will be able to be disintegrated for the glory of the state, comfortable in knowing that their homes will remain intact and thus not disturb the mortgage interests the secure their obligations to banks and loan companies, or provide a postmortem threat to their personal credit ratings. The agonizing screams of dying children will not be aggravated by their disquieting fears that the white house, or the washington monument, or their school building will suffer damage. At last, war shall have been made more "peaceful" for institutional interests. Wars are, it must be conceded, bad enough without insurance companies having to pay out billions of dollars for damaged property, or manufacturing firms having to suffer production line shutdowns. Neither should banks and insurance companies be left without tangible assets with which to guarantee repayment of corporate bonds, nor should gvernments be deprived of property on which to foreclose for unpaid taxes. Neither should we countenance the blasphemy inherent in toppling the Mormon Tabernacle or St. Peter's Basilica: religious "values" must be maintained. Wars do have a way of causing problems, and we must be prepared to exhibit that sense of "responsiblility" with which institutions have carefully imbued us. Far better that the government develop a nice, "clean" bomb, one that is not so "messy" and "destructive," one that kills people off by "peaceful" means! Someday, perhaps, the State may even be able to design a bomb that does not leave bodies around to litter public parks!
The neutron bomb is not so much th product of some State-subsidized cadre of mad scientists as it is the logical extension of the basic premises by which we have chosen to live our lives. Once we accepted the idea that our lives ought to be subordinated to the purposes and control of institutions, once we subscribed to the proposition that "meaning" in life is only to be found in subservience to those "greater" purposes outside us, we also accepted for ourselves the status of fungible human 'resources," means to the ends of others. It was our individual decision to place our lives at the disposal of institutional interests, as coequals with such other resources as buildings and machines and mineral deposits and other forms of wealth. I wonder if we really fell in love iwth the Star Wars robots because of their human qualities, or because we saw something of ourselves in their roles of institutionally-created and programmed seromechanisms. When the political State introduces its neutron bomb, it is telling us the same thing it tells us in every war, if only we will listen, namely, that the institutional hierarchy has taken inventory of all its assets, and that the bottom has fallen out of the market for human beings.
The political history of mankind has consisted of little more than recyling of the war system. We continue to mistake for "progress" our escalating technological sophistication for clawing, clubbing, and slashing one another. If Attila the Hun or Genghis Khan were to return today, they would no doubt be amazed by the design and power of modern weapondry. They would have no lack of familiarity, however, with the logic or the organizational structure of the war system itself.
Though we do not love war, many of us are uncomfortable considering the factors that can lead to peace, for to do so would require us to confront all of our institutional commitments. And so we do nothing to change ourselves. We keep honoring dead soldiers as a way of reinvesting our own lives in the purposes of the State, never asking whether the Chinese are better off today than whey would have been under Japanese domination, or whether eastern European nations suffered less under the tyranny of Stalin than of Hitler. We are more comfortable with the illusion that our relatives and friends died in wars fought to advance important principles, than we are with the harsh truth that they were exploited and consumed for no other purpose than to feed the insatiable apetites of the machines of war. And so we remain in our State-induced sleep, dreaming of "national honor" and "glory" bought with the broken bodies of our children. We dream, as well, that peace will come to the world....somehow; that it will occur as a result of fundamental changes in thinking...by someone,...sometime.
Theodore Roszak has commented upon the suicidal implications of our preoccupations with power and poitics, suggesting that we are behaving as though we did not choose to survive. "Power," he suggests, "is the enemy of life," because power would "make life what it would not be." We profess our ignorance of the lethal nature of political systems, as though our innocence exculpates us from the responsiblity for our unthinking involvement with the destruction of mankind. But if we are to be responsible people we must overcome our lack of awareness, not take refuge in it. The threats to human life posed by the war system are too great for any of us to continue indulging ourselves in our innocence of what we are doing.
Some may argue that conflict is natural to us as territorial animals, and that we ought to accept our periodic mass-suicide ventures as simply one of the costs of being human. Again, such attitudes only help us to evade the responsibilities for our actions, and neutralize our efforts to change ourselves. We need to understand that aggression is the product of our conscious minds, of our ego boundary image-making. Our diabolical madness is the product not of natural selection, but of our preferences for the security of our collective images over the existence of life itself.
But even if our tastes for blood have come to us through the processes of evolution, to embrace our biological phylogeny affords us no assurance of our continued survival. Most of the life forms that have ever lived on earth are now extinct--in spite of their fidelities to their natures--and mankind has been provided no greater guarantees of special immortality. If conflict and violence are indeed a part of our genetic chemistry--which I doubt--then we had best learn not to control or suppress our nature, but to rise above it. For along with whatever other attributes we have been provided, we humans also possess minds capable of transcending the present limitations of our conscious thought processess. Evolution, after all, is a continuing process in which we are active participants, not simply end products. If we are to avoid the fate of being the only species to deliberately engineer its own extinction, we must begin to think more in terms of making fundamental changes in our understanding than in incremental modifications of existing policies or strategies. It is not new programs or systems that we so desperately require, but a radical transformation within our consciousness. We need to become aware of what we have been doing to ourselves and to one another as a result of the fragementary and enervated habits of our minds. Though we have taught ourselves to feel menaced by enemies, the threat to our survival as a species comes from within: it is not us against them, but us against ourselves.
I have no doubt that the war system will come to an end someday, and that the earth will experience total and unconditional peace. The only question is whether mankind will be around to enjoy it. If the human race is to survive, we must be prepared to abandon the political, religious, and ideological divisions that have nourished the war system. Those who persist in their efforts to reconcile peace with the interests of the State in organizing and controlling people should learn that there is no such thing as a peacful form of conflict. In the past, the political State has asked "who will defend our nation," or "who will defend freedom," or "who will defend democracy?" But if life on this earth is to continue, we must now ask "who will defend mankind?" Those who were prepared to march into war in order to save the interests of their respective nation-States must now be willing to walk away from war in order to save humanity itself. In the name of life, we must find the courage to move beyond all those sanctified divisions that are tearing the human race apart. We must be willing to transend political authority itself, to challenge the legitimacy of the machinery that has universalized human suffering, and to deny all institutiional claims of sovereign power and ocntol over people.
Over the untold centuries of our existence, we humans have commited almost every conceivable form of violence upon not only our planet, but one another. We have tried conquering and dominating anything and any anyone that served our apparent interests. While our ancestors were exploiting nature as well as their neighbors, we have felt more comfortable managing them. No matter how well-intended we have been in using other people or our environment for our purposes, all of such methods have been for controlling--and keeping us in a state of continuing warfare with--our universe. We live in what the Hopi call a state of "koyaanisqatsi," of "life out of balance." Because of the enormous technological and organizational power we have invested in the agencies that conduct these wars, we must now choose between destroying one another--if not our planet-or learning to live one another. At no other time in human history have the consequences of our thinking been so immediate and pervasive. If mankind is to survive, you and I will have to take the responsibility for ending our participation in violence. The character of any society can never rise higher than the character of the individuals within it. If our world is disorderly and violent, it is because you and I have learned to be conflict-ridden and aggressive. Institutions are blessed with no mysterious powers that would enable a society to transcend the dvision, discord, and confusion of its members. Only by transforming ourselves can our wolrld become peacful and orderly. The task is ours, yours and mine. We have no one else to whom we can turn for salvation. No international organization of nation states can be expected to curb the appetites of its own members. We must save mankind, for we are mankind. Our leaders, or gods, or ideologies, our laws, our thinkers, our experts, our institutions have all failed us--or, to be more precise, because of our dependencies upon these agencies we have failed ourselves. But if we are to end war, we must be prepared to do more than talk and moralize about the subject. We will not accomplish our purpose with humanely-inspired resolutions, nor by creating institutional scarecrows to ward off conflict. We cannot oppose war on a piecemeal basis, opposing "unjust" wars while sanctioning "just" ones, opposing nuclear weapons but favoring conventional methods of killing. We cannot oppose war while worshiping the engines that produce the agony. We must understand the nature of conflict and the conitions that make for peace. This means that we must be able to discover and deal iwth the conflicts we feel withing ourselves, for those who cannot find peace for themselves will never help to secure it for the rest of mankind. But in the process of our inquidrey, we must not be afraid to ask the questions we are not supposed to ask. We can no longer make a pretense of opposing war and, at the sametime, fail to see that war is inherent to all political institutions. We must learn to be awaare of how otheres embroil us in theeri disputes. We must learn to be more skeptical of those who teach children to march.
Who I'd like to meet: Winston Churchill, Madelaine Albright(Remark to Collin Powell,1993,"What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it.?"), Abraham Lincoln(The Lincoln Myths--Exposed. MYTH #1: "LINCOLN INVADED THE SOUTH TO FREE THE SLAVES". This is another way of saying that slavery was the sole cause of the war, which has recently become the mantra of the Lincoln gatekeepers. The problem for them, however,is that Lincoln never said this and most certainly did not believe it. Nor did anyone else in his government--or in the Northern states. It is unlikely that anyone who voted for Lincoln in 1860 did so because he thought the new president whould order an army to march south to free the slaves in a war that might cost hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars. On March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln's inauguration as president, the U.S. Senate passed a proposed constitutional amendment that read:"No Amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of the State." The U.S. House of Reprsentatives passed the amendment on February 28, 1861. "Domestic institutions" meant slavery. Two days later, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln promised several times that he had no intention to interfere with Southern slavery, and that even if he did, it would be unconstitutional to do so. He also pledged his support for this amendment, announcing to the world that "holding such a provision (the legality of slavery) to be implied constitutinal law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable". Thus, on the day of his inauguration, Abraham Lincoln did not defend or support the natural, God-given rights of Southern slaves to life, liberty, and property. Quite the opposite: He supported the "rights" of Southern slave ownners to deprive the slaves of those rights. Lincoln was perfectly willing to see Southern slavery persist long pass his own lifetime, for all he knew, as long as the Southern states remained in the Union and continued to pay federal taxes. Lincoln clearly stated the real cause and purpose of the war on numerous occasions, including in his famous August 22, 1862, letter to newspaper editor Horace Greeley. There he wrote, "My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery." His objective was to destroy the secession movement by force of arms, period. The U.S.Congress concurred, announcing to the world on July 22, 1861, that the purpose of the war was not "interference with the rights or established institutions of those states"--that is, slavery--"but to preserve the Union with the rights of the several states unimpaired." Thus, according to both President Lincoln and the Congress, the conflict over states rights was the sole cause of the war. The Confederate states believed the Union was voluntary, that governments derived their just powers from the consent of the governed, and that they consequently had a right to secede. Lincon disagreed, and was willing to wage total war to "prove" himself right. Most gatekeepers today will say that states' rights were, at best, a "figleaf." Or they will peddle the false notion that it was made up as an excuse after the war by disgruneled former Confederates. Either way, they are distorting true history and contradicting Lincoln himself.MYTH#2: LINCOLN SAVED THE UNION." In reality, Lincoln did more than any other individual to destroy the voluntary union of the founding fathers. All of the founding documents--the Articles of Confederaton, the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty with Great Britain, the Constitution--refer to the states as "free and independent." That is, the founders construed them as being free and independent of any other state, including the federal government which they--the states--had created as their agent. The states delegated certain narrowly defined and enumerated powers to the federal government but preserved sovereignty for themselves. The federal Constitution was created by a voluntary association of states and three of them--New York, Rhode Island, and Virginia--explicitly reserved the right to withdraw from the constitutional compact should the federal government ever abuse their liberties. Since all states have equal rights under the Constitution, and no state is given more riths than any other, the fact that this contingency was accepted by all the other states implies that this right of secession was naturally asssumed to be enjoyed by all the states. The citizens of the states did not create "a new nation" with the Constitution; they created a compact or a confedereacy of states. This was an uncontroversial view in 1860. Newspapers throughout the North echoed the opinion of the Bangor Daily Union, which editorialized on November 13, 1860, that the Union "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." Thus, Lincoln "saved" the federal union in the same sense that a man who has been abusing his wife "saves" his marital union by violently forcing his wife back into the home and threatiening to shoot her if she leaves again. The union may well be saved, but it is not the same kind of union that existed on their wedding day. That union no longer exists. The American union of the founding fathers ceased to exist in April 1865.Myth #3: "LINCOLN WAS A CHAMPION OF THE CONSTITUTION." George Orwell himself would blush at this assertion. The only way one could conceivably make this argument is to base the argument exclusively on a few nice things that Lincoln said about the Constitution while generally igoring his actions. For example, he launched an invasion without the consent of Congress; illegally suspended the writ of habeas corpus and imprisoned tens of thousands of Northern political opponents; shut down some three hundred opposition newspapers; censored all telegraph communication; imprisoned a large percentage of the duly elected legislature of Maryland as well as the mayor of Baltimore; illegally orchestrated the secession of West Virginia; deported the most outspoken member of the Democratic opposition, Congressmen Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio; systematically disarmed the border states in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively declared himself dictator. The gatekeepers try to excuse all of this, but their words ring hollow to anyone familiar with the historical facts.Myth #4:"Lincoln was devoted to equality." Lincoln's words and, more importaant, his actions, throughly contradict this claim. "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," he stated in his August 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas. Incredibly, various Lincoln scholars take a statement like this and somehow conclude that Lincoln "really" meant, "I do have purpose to introduce political and racial equality..."Mostly, statements like this are simply ignored and kept from the innocent eyes fo American schoolchildren. Lincoln opposed the immigration of black people into Illinois; suported the Illinois Black Codes, which deprived the small number of free blacks who resided in the state of any semblance of citizenship; and was a leader of the Illinois Colonization Society, which persuaded the state legislature to allocate funds to "colonize,"or deport, free blacks. As syndicated columnist Joseph Sobran has remarked, Lincoln's position was that blacks could be "equal" all right, but not in the United States. He favored "colonizing them in Africa, Haiti, Central and South America--anywhere but in the United States. This position was supported by the vast majority of Northerners, and Lincoln, as an astute and even brilliant politician, supported it as well. Myth #5: "Lincoln was a great statesman." Imagine that California seceded from the union and an American president responded with the carpet bombing of Los Angeles, San Diego, and San Francisco that destroyed 90% of those cities. Such was the case with General Sherman's bombardment of Atlanta; a naval blockade; a blocking off of virtually all trade; the eviction of thousands of residents from their homes (as occurred in Atlanta in 1864);the destruction of most industries and farms; massive looting of private property by a marauding army; and the killing of one out of four males of military age while maiming for life more than double that number. Would such an American president be considered a "great statesman" or a war criminal? The answer is obvious. A statesman would have recognized the state's right to secede, as enshrined in th Tenth Amendment, among other places, and then worked diligently to persuade the seceded state that a reunion was in its best interest. A great statesman, or even a modest one, would not have impulsively plunged the entire nation into a bloody war. Lincoln's warmongering belligerence and his invasion of all the Southern states in response to Fort Sumter (where no one was harmed or killed) caused the upper South--Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas--to secede after originally voting to remain in the Union. He refused to meet with confederate commissioners to discuss peace and even declined a meeting with Napoleon III of France, who offered to broker a peace agreement. No genuine statesman would have behaved in such a way. After Fort Sumter, Lincoln thanked naval commander Gustavus Fox for assisting him in manipulating the South Carolinians into firing at Fort Sumter. A great statesman does not manipulate his own people into starting one of the bloodiest wars in human history. Myth #6: "Lincoln was a great humanitarian". Great humanitarians do not micromanage the waging of total war, or wage war on civilians, as Lincoln did for the duration of his administration. This included the burning of entire towns populated only by civilians, massive looting and plundering, and even the execution of civilians. A great humanitarian would not express his personal thanks and "the thanks of a nation" to those who committed such atrocities and war crimes, as Lincoln did to General Philip Sheridan. Nor would he have literally laughed at the fate of Southern civilians who had lost everything, as General Sherman said tht he did in his (Sherman)memoirs. Great humanitarians do not become obsessed with allocating tax dollars to the development of more powerful and more devastating weapons of mass destruction to be aimed at their own citizens, as Lincoln did. Historian Lee Kennett was right when he wrote, Marching Through Georgia, that had the Confederates somehow won, they would have been justified in "stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command" as war criminals, especially for waging war on civilians. This is the kind of conclusion that one often comes to from studying the actual history of the War between the States, as opposed to the fanciful reinterpretations of it provided to us by the gatekeepers and assorted court historians.) Woodrow Wilson (Wilson took America into the WWI and with that America changed forever:With U.S. entry innto the Great War, the federal government expanded enormously in size, scope, and power. It virtually nationalized the ocean shipping industy and actually did natiionalize the rairoad, telephone, domestic telegraph, and international telegraphic cable industries. It became deeply engaged in manipulating labor-management relations, securities sales, agricultural production and marketing, the distribution of coal and petroleum, international commerce, and the markets for raw materials and manufactured products. Its Liberty Bond drives dominated the financial capital markets. It turned the newly created Federal
Reserve System into a powerful engine of monetary inflation to help satisfy the government's voracious appetite for money and credit. In view of the more than five thousand mobilization agencies of various sorts--boards, committees, corporations, and administrations--contemporaries who described the government's creation as "war socialism" were well justified. During 1917 and 1918, the government built up the armed forces to a strength of 4 million officers and men, drawn from a prewar labor force of 40 million persons. Of those added to the armed forces after the U.S. declaration of war, more than 2.8 million, or 72 percent, were drafted. By employing the draft, the government got more men into the army and got them there more quickly than it could have by recruiting volunteers. Moreover, it got the men's sevices at far less expenese to the Treasury. As the army leadership had recommended and President Wilson had accepted even bfore the declaration of war, the U.S. government obtained is servicemen by following the Prussian model.Men alone, however, did not make an army. They required barracks and training facilities, transportatiion, food, clothing, and health care. They had to be equipped with modern arms and great stocks of ammunition. In short, to be an effective fighting force, a large soldiery required immense amounts of complementary resources. As the buildup began, the requiste resources remained in the possession of private citizens. Although manpower could be obtained by conscription, public opinion would not tolerate the outright confiscation of all the property required to turn the men into a well-equipped fighting force. Still, ordinary market mechanisms threatned to operate too slowly and at too great an expense to facilitate the government's plans. The Wilson administration therefore resorted to the vast array of interventions mentioned earlier. All were devices to hasten the delivery of the requisite resources and to diminish the fiscal burden of equipping the huge conscript army for effective service in France. Notwithstanding these contrivances to keep the Treasury's expenses down, enormouusly increased taxes still had to be levied--federal revenues increased by nearly 400 percent between fiscal 1917 and fiscal 1919--and even greater amounts had to be borrowed. The national debt swelled from $1.2 billion in 1916 to $25.5 billion in 1919. To ensure that the conscription-based mobilization could proceed without obstructiin, critics had to bve silenced. The Espionage Act of June 15, 1917, penalized those convicted of willfully obstructing the enlistment services with fines as large as $10,000 and imprishonmnet as long as twenty years. An amendment, the notorious Sedition Act of May 16, 1918, went further, imposing the same harsh criminal penalties on all forms of expression in any way critical of the government, its symbols, or its mobilization of resources for the war. These suppressions of free speech, subsequently upheld by the Supreme Court, established dangerous precedents that derogated from the rights previously enjoyed by citizens under the protection of the First Amendment. The government further subverted the Bill of Rights by censoring all printed materials; peremptorily deporting hundreds of alins without due process of law; and conducting-and encouraging state and local governments as well as vigilante groups to conduct--warrantless searches and seizures, blanket arrests of suspected draft evaders, and other outrages too mumerous to catalog here. In California, the police arrested Upton Sinclair for reading the Bill of Rights at a rally. In New Jersy, the police arrested Roger Baldwin for publicly reading the Constitution. The government also employed a massive propaganda machine to whip up what can only described as public hysteria. The result was countless incidents of intimidation, physical abuse, and even lynching of persons suspected of disloyalty or insufficent enthusiasm for the war. People of German ancestry suffered disproportionately. The connection of the draft with these official subversions of the Constitution was hardly coincidental; it was direct, intentional, and publicly acknowledged. Consider the statement of a contemporary legal authority, Professor John Henry Wigmore: "Where a nation has definitely committed itself to a foreign war, all principles of normal internal order may be suspended. As property may be taken and corporal service may be conscripted, so liberty of speech may be limited or suppressed, so far as deemed needful for the successful conduct of the war...(A)ll rights of the individual, and all internal civic interests, become subordinated to the national right in the struggle for national life." The formula, applied again and again, was quite simple: if it is acceptable to draft men, then it is acceptable to do X, where X is any government violation of any individual rights whatsover. Once the draft had been adopted, then, as Justice Louis Brandeis put it, "all bets are off." When the war ended, the government abandoned most--but not all---of its wartime control measures. The draft ended when the armistice took effect on November 11,1918. By the end of 1920, the bulk of the economic regulatory apparatus had been scrapped, including the Food Administration, the Fuel Administration, the Railraod Administration, the War Industries Board, and the War Labor Board. Some emergency powers migrated into rgular governmnet departments such as State, Labor, and Treasury and continued in force. The Espionage Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act remained on the statute books. Congressional enactments in 1920 preserved much of the federal government's wartime invovement int the railroad and the ocean shipping industries. The War Finance Corporation shifted missions, subsidizing exporters and farmers until the mid-192s Wartime probibition of alcoholic beverages, a purposrted conservation measure, transfogrified into the ill-fated Eighteenth Amendment. Most important, the dominant contemporary interpretation of the war mobilization, including the the belief that federal economic controls had been instrumental in achieving the victory, persisted, especially among the elites who had played leading roles in the wartime economic management. Economic czar Bernard Baruch did much to foster the postwar disseminatiion of this interpretation by historians, journalists, and other shapers of public opinion. Many inerest groups, however, such as the farmers, needed no prompting to arrive at Baruchian conclusion. "By the time the Food Administration dropped its wartime controls, it had weakened farmer resistance to governmental direction of their affairs. Have observed how the government could shape wartime food prices, farmers would expect it also to act in peacetime to maintain the propserity of America's farms. Big businessmen in many industries took a similar lesson away from the war. FDR, Harry Truman (ordered the unnecessary bombing of two Japanese cities killing thousands of innocent civilians,Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan(More than any other person Reagan justified and facilitated the barbarity that raged through Central America in the 1980s claiming the lives of tens of thousands of peasants, clergy and students, men, women and children. Reagan protrayed the bloody conflicts as a necessary front in the cold war, but the Central American violence was always more about entrenched ruling elites determined to retain their privileges against improverished peasants, including descendents of the region's Maya Indians, seeking social, political and economic reforms. One of the most notorious acts of brutality occurred in December 1981 in and around the Salvadoran town of El Mozote. The government's Atlacatl Batalion-freshly trained and newly armed thanks to Reagan's hard-line policies-systematically slaughtered hundreds of men, women and children. When the atrocity was revealed by reporters at the New York Times and the Washington Post, the Reagan administration showed off its new strategy of "perception management",denying the facts and challenging the intergrity of the journalists. Because of that P.R. offensive, the reality about the El Mozote massacre remained in doubt for almost a decade until the war ended and a United Nations forensic team dug up hundreds of skeletons, including many little ones of childred. Now the Washington Post has added a new grisly dtail. Several months after the massacre, the Salvadoran army returned to the scene and collected the skulls of some El Mozote children as novelty items, the Post reported. "They worked well as candle holders", recalled one of the soldiers, Jose Wilfredo Salgado, "and better as good luck charms." Now, a quarter century later, describing his role piling the tiny skulls into sascks as souvenirs, Salgado acknowledged that he had "lost his love of humanity." The Post reported that "witnessing the aftermath of what his colleagues did in Mozote and reflecting on those skulls changed his mind about how the war was being fought." Salgada said his mentor, Col. Domingo Monterrose, who later died ina helicopter crash, had ordered an act of "genocide" in El Mozote. "If Monterossa had lived," the Post reported. "Salgada said, he should have been prosecuted for "war crimes like a Hitler." But what about the American officials who were the enablers and the protectors of Central America's mass murderers? While Monterrosa may have ordered massacres in El Mozote and other towns in El Salvador, President Reagan and other senior U.S. officials collaborated in and covered up those crimes, along with acts of genocide in Guatemala and terrorism in Nicaragua. Yet, the U.S. officials who supplied the guns, helicopters, advanced technology and political cover have never been called to account. Some, like former State Department official Elliot Abrams, have moved on to oversee the bloody chaos in Iraq. After leaving office, Reagan was showered with honors, including having dozens of government sites named for him, including National Airport in Washington. Criticism also should fall on President Bill Clinton, who came into office after the end of the Cold War but rejected suggestions that he authorize an American truth commission to investigate U.S. complicity in the era's crimes and separate fact from fiction, as was done in Argentina, South Africa and other countries. Only late in his eight-presidency did Clinton agree to declassify documents for use by a Guatemaian truth commission examining three decades of political violence that had torn that Central American country apart and claimed some 200,000 lives. But the worst of the Guatemaian violence--like the bloodletting in El Salvador, Nicaragua and to a lesser extent Honduras--came after the election of Reagan in November 1980. That outcome touched off celebration in the walled-off, well-to-do neighborhoods across Central America. After four years of Jimmy Carter's human rights nagging, the region's rich and powerful were thrilled to have someone in the White House who understood their problems and would let them do the needed dirty work. Once in office, Reagan and his administration swung into action, deflecting condemnation of Salvadoran security forces for the rape/murders of four American churchwomen as well as playing down the staggerering number of political slayings that left decaying and mutilated corpses on street corners and in trash dumps. Reagan also put the Central Intelligence Agency to work arming and training an army of Nicaraguan exiles to launch raids into northern Nicaragua and destabilize that country's leftist Sandinista government. The contra army soon gained a reputation for rape, torture, murder, drug trafficking and terrorism. THE GUATEMALAN GENOCIDE: Reagan also chipped away at an arms embargo imposed on Guatemala by Carter who was offended by its ghastly human rights record. A fundamental plan of Reagan's strategy was to silence criticism of the atrocities whether the accusations were coming from the news media, human rights groups or the U.S. intelligence community. In April 1981, for instance, a secret CIA cable described a Guatemalan army massacre of peasants at Cocob, near Nebvaj in the Ixil Indian territory. On April 17, 1981, government troops attacked the area, which was believed to support leftist guerrillas, the cable said. According to a CIA source, "the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas" and "the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved." The CIA cable added that "the Guatemalan authorities admitted that "many civilian were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants." While keeping the CIA account secret, Reagan permitted Guatemala's army to buy $3.2 million in military trucks and jeeps in June 1981. Confident of Reagan's sympathies, the Guatemalan government continued its political repression without apology. According to a State Department cable on Oct. 5, 1981, Guatemalan leaders met with Reagan's roving ambassador, retired Gen. Vernon Walters, and left no doubt about their plans, Guatemala's military dictator, Gen. Fernado Romeo Lucas Garcia, "made clear that his government will continue as before--that the repression will continue," the cable said. Human rights groups saw the same picture. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report on Oct. 15, 1981 blaming the Guatemalan government for "thousands of illegal executions." But the Reagan administration sought to confuse the American public. A State Department "white paper" in December 1981 blamed the violence on leftist "extremist groups" and their "terrorist methods," inspired and supported by Cuba's Fidel Castro. Yet, even as these ratinalizations were sold to the American people, U.S. intelligence agencies in Guatemala continued to learn about government-sponsored massacres. One CIA report in February 1982 described an army sweep throught the so-call Ixil Triangle in central El Quiche province, an area where descendents of the ancient Maya lived. "The commanding officers of the units involved have instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the People (known as the EGP) and eliminate all sources of resistence," the report stated "Since the operation began, several villages have been burned to the ground, and a large number of guerrillas and collaborators have been killed." The CiA report explained the army's modus operandi: "When an army patrol meets resistance and takes fire from a town or village, it is assumed that the entire town is hostile and it is subsequently destroyed...The well-documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian population is pro-EGP has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike." RIOS MONTT GROUP: In March 1982, the violence continued to ratchet up when Gen. Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a coup d'etat. An avowed fundamentalist Christian, he was hailed by Reagan as "a man of great personal integrity." By July 1982, Rios Montt had begun a new scorched-earth campaign. In October, he also gave secret carte balnche to the feared "Archivos" intelligence unit to expand "death squad" operations. The U.S. embassy was soon hearing more accounts of the army conducting Indian massacres. But the political officers knew that such grim news was not welcome back in Washington and to report it would only damage their careers. So, the embassy cables increasingly began to spin the evidence in ways that would best serve Reagan's hard-line foreign policy. On Oct. 22, 1982, the embassy sought to explain away the mounting evidence of genocide by arguing that the Rios Montt government was the victim of a communist-inspired "disinformation campaign." Reagan picked up on that theme. During a swing through Latin America, he discounted the growing evidence that hundreds of Mayan villages were being eradicated. On Dec. 4, 1982, after meeting with Rios Montt, Reagan hailed the general as "totally dedicated to democracy" and declared that the Rios Montt government was "getting a bum rap." On Jan. 7, 1983, Reagan lifted the ban on military aid to Guatemala and authorized the sale of $6 million in military hardward. Approval covered spare parts for UH-1H helicopters and A-37 aircraft used in counterinsurgency operations. In February 1983, a secret CIA cable noted a rise in "suspect right-wing violence" with kidnappings of students and teachers. Bodies of victims were appearing in ditches and gullies. CIA sources traced these political murders to Rios Montt's order to the "Archivos" in October 1982 to "apprehend, hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrrillas as they saw fit." Despite these grisly facts on the ground, the annual State Department human rights survey sugarcoated the facts for the American public and praised the supposedly improved human rights situation in Guatemala. "The overall conduct of the armed forces had improved by late in the year" 1982, the report stated. A different picture--far closer to the secret government reports--was coming from independent human rights investigators. On March 17,1983, Americas Watch representatives condemned the Guatemalan army for human rights atrocities against the Indian population. New York attorney Stephen L. Kass said these findings included proof that the government carried ut "vitually indiscriminate murder of men, women, women and children of any farm regarded by the army as possibly supportive of guerilla insurgents." Rural women suspected of guerrilla sympathies were raped before execution, Kass said. children were "thrown into burning homes. They are thrown in the air and speared with bayonets. We heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads are destoyed." Publicly, however, senior Reagan officials continued to put on a happy face. On June 12, 1983, special envoy Richard B. Stone praised "positive changes" in Rios Montt's government. But, in reality, Rios Montt's vengeful Christian fundamentalism was hurtling out of control, even by Guatemalan standards. In August 1983, Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores seized power in another coup. Despite the power shift, Guatemalan security forces continued the killings. Guatemala, of course, was not the only Central American country where Reagan and his adminstration supported brutal military operations and then sought to cover up the blooody facts. Reagan's falsification of the historical record became a hallmark of the conflict in El Salvador and Nicaragua as well as Guatemala. In one case, Reagan personally lashed out at a human rights investgator named Reed Brody, a New York lawyer who had collected affidavits from more than 100 witnesses to atrocities carried out by the U.S.-supporte contras in Nicaragua. Angered by the revelations about his contra "feedom-fighters," Reagan denounced Brody in a speech on April 15, 1985, calling him "one of dictator Ortega's supporters, a sympathizer who has openly embraced Sandinismo." Privately, Reagan had a far more accurate understanding of the contras. At a point, Reagan turned to CIA offficial Duane Clarridge and demanded that the contras be used to destroy some Soviet-supplied helicopters that had arrived in Nicaragua. In his memoir, A Spy for All Seasons, Clarridge recalled that "President Reagan pulled me aside and asked, "Dewey, can't you get those vandals of yours to do this job." Clarridge also acknowledged that "the people then in power in El Salvador were an unsavory collection of rightist cutthroats with an abominable record on human rights." KILLING CHILDREN--Despite the bloodletting across Central America in the 1980s, the massacre at El Mozote in northeastern El Salvador in December 1981 still stood out as notable not only for the ferocity of the killings but for the brazenness of the Reagan administration's cover-up. The slaughter occurred as the U.S. trained Atlacatl Battalion swept through northeastern El Salvador, a region considered sympathetic to leftist guerrillas. Around the town of El Mozote, the troops rounded up about 800 unarmed peasants of all ages. The Atlacatl soldiers started by shooting and beheading the men, followed by the slaughter of the women, some of whom were first dragged off to be raped. The soldiers then turned to the childred, many of whom had watched their parents butchered. The children were bludgeoned to death or burned alive. When news of the El Mozote massacre leaked out in stories published by the New Yourk Times and the Washingnton Post in March 1982, the Reagan administration sought to discredit the information and the jounalists. Times correspondent Raymond Bonner became a favorite target of right-wing attack groups and eventually his Times Editors succumbed to the pressure, recalling him to New York and giving him an unappealing job. Bonner resigned to the delight of Reagan's right-wing activists who claimed vindication. Not until 1991, when a United Nations forensic team excavated the site and found hundreds of skeletons, including many tiny ones, was the reality of the El Mozote massacre confirmed. (Bonner was subsequently rehired by the Times.) The Election of Bill Clinton--as the first President to take office after the end of the Cold War--offered a unique opportunity to expose the real history of the era and hold American war criminals to account. But Bill Clinton and his advisors saw such investigations as a distraction and chose instead to focus on economic and social legislation. After 1994, with the Republican congressional landslide, the opportunity was lost. Instead, the Republicans transformed Reagan into an icon, naming score of buildings and other facilities after him, including Reagan National Airport. An honest accounting of what really happened under Reagan's presidency became a political taboo in the United States. Even when Clinton finally released incriminating U.S. documents to a Guatemalan truth commission, the evidence never got the attention that it deserved. On Feb.25, 1999, Guatemala's Historical Clarification Commission issued a report on the human rights crimes that Reagan and his administration had aided, abetted and concealed. The independent human rights body estimated that some 200,000 Guatemalans had died, with the most savage bloodletting occurring in the 1980's. The report documented that in the 1980s, the army committed 626 massacres against Mayan villages. "The massacres that eliminated entire Mayan villages--are neither perfidious allegations nor figments of the imagination, but an authentic chapter in Guatemala's history," the commission concluded. The army "completely exterminated Mayan communites, destroyed their livestock and crops," the report said. In the northern highlands, the report termed the slaughter a "genocide." Besides carrying out murder and "disappearances," the army routinely engaged in torture and rape. "The rape of women, during torture of before being murdered, was a common practice" by the military and paramilitary forces, the report found. U.S ASSISTANCE: The report added that the "government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some of these state operations." The report concluded that the U.S. government also gave money and training to Guatemalan military units that committed "acts of genocide" against the Mayas. "Believing that the ends justified everything, the military and the state security forces blindly pursued the anticommunist struggle, without respect for any legal principles or the most elemental ethical and religious values, and in this way, completely lost any semblance of human morals," said the commission chairman, Christian Tomuschat, a German jurist. "Within the framework of the counterinsurgency operations carried out between 1981 and 1983, in certain regions of the country agents of the Guatemaian state committed acts of genocide against groups of the Mayan people," Tomuschat said. During a visit to Central America, on March 10, 1999, President Clinton apologized for the past U.S. support of right-wing regimes in Guatemala. "For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake," Clinton said. But the story of the Reagan-supported genocide of the Mayan Indians was quickly forgotten, as Republicans and the Washington press corps wrapped Reagan's legacy in a fuzzy blanket of heroic mythology. The atrocities inflicted on the Mayas--and the peasants of El Salvador and Nicargua--were rarely associated with the popular Reagan. Neither, of course, will anyone in polite Washington society link Reagan to the revelation that the skulls of children butchered at El Mozote became candle holders and good luck charms.)JIMMY CARTER, BILL CLINTON, JOHN BOLTON, GEORGE H.W. BUSH,GEORGE W. BUSH(Bill of Rights Under Bush: A Timeline/2001 January: Presidential directive delays indefinitely the scheduled release of presidential documents (authorized by the Presidential Records Act of 1978) pertaining to the Reagan-Bush administration. Bush and Cheney begin process of radically broadening scope of documents and information which can be deemed classified:FEBUARY" The National Security Agency (NSA) sets up Project Groundbreaker, a domestic call monitoring program infrastructure. Spring: Bush administration order authorizes NSA monitoring of domestic phone and internet traffic. May: US Supreme Court rules that medical necessity is not a permissible defense against federal marijuana statutes. September: In immediate aftermath of 9-11 terror attacks, Department of Justice authorizes detention without charge for any terror suspects. Over one thousand suspects are brought into detention over the next several months. October: Attorney General John Ashcroft announces change in Department of Justice (DOJ) policy. According to the new policy DOJ will impose far more stringent criteria for the granting of Freedom of Information Act requests. September-October: NSA launches massive new database of information on US phone calls. October: The USA Patriot Act becomes law. Among other things the law: makes it a crime for anyone to contribute money or material support for any group on the State Department's Terror Watch List, allows the FBI to monitor and tape conversations between attorneys and clients, allows the FBI to order librarians to turn over information about patron's reading habits, allows the government to conduct surveillance on internet and email use of US citizens without notice. The act also calls for expanded use of National Security Letters (NSLs), which allow the FBI to search telephone, email and financial records of US citizens without a court order, exempts the government from needing to reveal how evidence against suspected terrorists was obtained and authorizes indefinite detention of immigrants at the discretion of law enforcement and immigration authorities. NJ Superior court judge and civil liberties scholar Anthony Napolitano, author of A Nation of Sheep, has described the law's assault on first and fourth amendment principles as follows,"The Patriot Act's two most principle constitutional errors are an assault on the Fourth Amendment, and on the First. It permits federal agents to write their own search warrants(under the name "national security letters) with no judge having examined evidence and agreed that it's likely that the person or thing the government wants to search will reveal evidence of a crime...Not only that, but the Patriot Act makes it a felony for the recipient of a self -written search warrant to reveal it to anyone. The Patriot Act allows(agents)to serve self-written search warrants on financial institutions, and the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2004 in Orwellian language defines that to include in addition to banks, also delis, bodegas, restaurants, hotels, doctors' offices, lawyers' offices, telecoms, HMOs, hospitals, casinos, jewelry dealers, automobile dealers, boat dealers, and that great financial institution to which we all would repose our fortunes, the post office.NOVEMBER: Executive order limits release of presidential documents. The order gives incumbent presidents the right to veto requests to open any past presidential records and supercedes the congressionally passed law of 1978 mandating release of all presidential records not explicity deemed classified. 2002 Winter: FBI and Department of Defense (DOD), forbidden by law from compiling databases on US citizens, begin contracting with private database firm ChoicePoint to collect, store, search and maintain data. Spring: Secret executive order issued authorizing NSA to wiretap the phones and read emails of US citizens. Transportation Security Administration (TSA) acknowledges it has created both a "No Fly" and a separate "Watch" list of US travelers. MAY: Department of Justice authorizes the FBI to monitor political and religious groups. The new rules permit the FBI to broadly search or monitor the internet for evidence of criminal activity without having any tips or leads that a specific criminal act has been committed. JUNE: Supreme Court upholds the right of school administrators to conduct mandatory drug testing of students without probable cause. NOVEMBER: Homeland Security Act of 2002 establishes separate Department of Homeland Security. Among other things the department will federally coordinate for the first time all local and state law enforcement nationwide and run a Directorate of Information and Analysis with authority to compile comprehensive data on US citizens using public and commercial records including credit card, phone, bank and travel. The department also will be exempt from Freedom of Information Act disclosure requirements. The Homeland Security department's jurisdicton has been widely criticized for being nebulously defined and has extended beyond terrorism into areas including immigration, pornography and drug enforcement. 2003 FEBRUARY: Draft of Domestic Securtiy Enchancement Act (aka Patriot Act 2), a secret document prepared by the Department of Justice is leaked by the Center for Public Integrity. Provisions of the February 7th draft version included: Removal of court-ordered prohibitions against police agencies spying on domestic groups. The FBI would be granted powers to conduct searches and surveillance based on intelligence gathered in foreign countries without first obtaining a court order. Creation of a DNA database of suspected terrorists. Prohibition of any public disclosure of the names of alleged terrorists including those who have been arrested. Exemptions from civil liability for people and businesses who voluntarily turn private information over to the government. Criminalization of the use of encryption to conceal incriminating communications. Automatic denial of bail for persons accused of terrorism-related crimes, reversing the ordinary common law burden of proof principle. All alleged terrorists would be required to demonstrate why they should be released on bail rather than the government being required to demonstrate why they should be held. Expansion of the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty. The United States Environmental Protection Agency would be prevented from releasing "worst case scenario" information to the public about chemical plants. United States citizens whom the government finds to be either members of, or providing material support to, terrorist groups could have their U.S. citizenship revoked and be deported to foreign countries. Although the bill itself has never (yet) been advanced in congress due to public exposure, some of its provisions have become law as parts of other bills. For example The Intelligence Authorizaton Act for Fiscal Year 2004 grants the FBI unprecendented power to obtain records from financial institutions without requiring permission from a judge. Under the law, th FBI does not need to seek a court order to access such records, nor does it need to prove just cause. MARCH: Executive order issued which radically tightens the declassification process of classified government documents, as well as making it easier for government agencies to make and keep infromation classified. The order delayed by three years the release of declassified government documents dating from 1978 or earlier. It also allowed the government to treat all material sent to Americn officials from foreign governments--no matter how routine--as subject to classification, and expanded the ability of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to shield documents from declassification. Finally it gave the vice president the power to classify information. MARCH: In a ruling seen as a victory for the concentration of ownership of intellectual property and an erosion of the public domain, the Supreme Court in Eldred v. Ashcroft held that a 20-year extension of the copyright period (from 50 years after the death of the author to 70 years) called for by the Sonny Bono coypright extension not vioate either the Copyright Clause or the First Amendment. APRIL: In Denmore v. Kim, the Supreme Court ruled that even permanent residents could be subject to mandatory detention when facing deportation based on a prior criminal conviction, without any right to an individualized hearing to determine whether they were dangerous or flight risk. FALL: The FBI changes its traditional policy of destroying all data and documents collected on innocent citizens in the course of criminal investigations. This information would, according to the bureau, now be permanently stored. Two years later in late 2005 Executive Order 13388, expanded access to those files for "state, local and tribal governments and for "appropriate private sector entities," which are not defined. FALL: As authorized by the Patriot Act, the FBI expands the practice of national security letters. NSLs, originally introduced in the 1970s for espionage and terrorism investigations, enabled the FBI to review in secret the customer records of suspected foreign agents This was extended by the Patriot Act to include permitting clandestine scrutiny of all U.S. residents and visitors whether suspected of terrorism or not. 2004 January: The FBI begins keeping a database of US citizens based on information obtained via NSLs. SPRING: John Ashcroft invokes State Secrets privilege to forbid former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds from testifying in a case brought by families of victims of the 9-11 attacks. Litigation by 9-11 families is subsequently halted. JUNE: Supreme Court upholds Nevada state law allowing police to arrest suspects who refuse to provide identification based on police discetion of "reasonable suspicion." JANUARY: Supreme court rules that police do not need to have probable cause to have drug sniffing dogs examine cars stopped for routine traffic violations. JUNE: Supreme court rules that the federal government can prosecute medical marijuana users even in states which have laws permitting medical marijuana. SUMMER: The Patriot Act, due to expire at the end of 2005, is reauthorized by Congress. WINTER 2005: Senate blocks reauthorization of certain clauses in Patriot Act. 2006(March) Senate passes amended version of Patriot Act, reauthorization, with three basic changes from the original including: recipients of secret court orders to turn over sensitive infromation on individuals linked to terrorism investigations are not allowed to disclose those orders but can challenge the gag order after a year, libraries would not be required to turn over information without the approval of a judge, recipients of an FBI "national security letter"--an investigator's demand fro access to personal of business information--would not have to tell the FBI if they consult a lawyer. New bill also said to extend Congressional oversight over executive department usage guidelines. Shortly after bill is signed George Bush declares oversight rules are not binding.JUNE: Supreme Court rules that evidence obtained in violation of the"knock and announce" rules can still be permitted in court. SEPTEMBER: U.S.Congress and Senate approve the Military Commissions Act, which authorizes torture and strips non-US citizen detainees suspected of terrorist ties of the right of habeas corpus (which includes formal charges, counsel and hearings). It also empowers US presidents at their discretion to declare US citizens as enemy combatants and subject to detention without charge or due process. OCTOBER: John Warner Defense Authorization Act is passed. The act allows a president to declare a public emergency and station US military troops anywhere in America as well as take control of state based national guard units without consent of the governor or other local authorities. The law authorizes presidential deployment of US troops to round up and detain "potential terrorists", "illegal aliens" and "disorderly" citizenry. 2007 MAY: National Security Presidential Directive 51 (NSPD-51) establishes a new post-disaster plan (with disaster defined as any incident, natural or man-made, resulting in extraordinary mass casualties, damage or disruption) which places the president in charge of all three branches of government, The directive overrides the National Emergencies Act which gives Congress power to determine the duration of a national emergency. JUNE: In "Bong Hits for Jesus" case Supreme Court rules that student free speech rights do not extend to promotion of drug use. JULY: Executive Order 13438: "Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stablization Efforts in Iraq, issued. The order asserts the government's power to confiscate the property "of persons determined to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, and act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of threatening the peace or stablility of Iraq or the Government of Iraq or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistence to the Iraqi people. OCTOBER: The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Act passes the House of Representatives 400 to 6 (to be voted on in the Senate in 2008). The act proposes the establishment of a commission composed of members of the House and Senate, Homeland Security and others, to "examine and report upon the facts and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologiclly based violence in the United States" and specifically the role of the internet in fostering and disseminating extremism. According to the bill the term "violent radicalization" means the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence to advance political, religious, or social change, while the term "ideologically-based violence means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual's political, religious, or social beliefs."-------SO I COULD SPIT IN THEIR FACE.
A little one goes to school at church and this is what thet say honor your mother and father. the little one goes home and does anything mommy asks. a big one goes to the school for church the father says honor thy sun and mary thy mother. confusion sets in and now the little one doesn't know what to do. he loves his mother but knot enough to mary her, and he doesn't understand the father cuzz he was blinded by the other sun so he turns to witchcraft. by now the day is over nightime comes along and he hears @ star, the star says i have a very dark past but if you can forgive me i will make it up to you. the child follows the star only to find out that the star is in love with his mother too! so they share a few $ecret$, make a pack, and mommy has the time of her life....the moral of the story goes like this 13 is time to teach mommy @ lesson and 23 you better rite hur @ Letter!
THIS VIDEO IS DEDICATED TO EVERY TRUTHER, TRUTH SEEKER, 911 INVESTIGATOR, POLITICAL DEVIANT, REVOLUTIONARY ( etc. ) & ALL HUMAN FAMILIES OF THE PLANET EARTH. PLEASE, SHARE THIS VIDEO WITH OTHERS...
SHAKE THAT ASS AND GET THAT MONEY!!! AT LEAST UNTIL YOU ALL BURN..OR BECOME SLAVES....DUE TO YOUR INABILITY TO RECOGNIZE THE AGENDA OF THE POWERS THAT BE, YOU WILL BECOME IT'S VICTIM....A SYSTEM THAT WAS BUILT ON THE BACKS OF THE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN CONTROLLING THE MINDS OF THE POPULICE FOR GENERATIONS. MANY SIGNS OF WHAT'S TO COME HAVE BEEN GIVEN. YOU THE INDIVIDUAL MUST PREPARE NOT ONLY YOURSELF, BUT YOUR LOVED ONES AS WELL FOR THE HARSH DAYS TO COME. WE THE PEOPLE MUST UNITE UNDER ONE COMMON BOND IN ORDER TO LIVE, SURVIVE AND CONTINUE THE FIGHT FOR FREEDOM (BECAUSE WE ALL HAVE ONE COMMON ENEMY). THE BEST PREPARATION FOR THIS UP AND COMING BATTLE, IS THE TRUTH.
PS: FYI lab rats that animals that have been injected with squalene adjuvants develop Autoimmune diseases. They want to force vaccine you. Get the facts. Spread the word
What's up!? Just wanted to let you know what was going on with P6! Our 9th anniversary show is this Halloween! We will be playing with Bulletboys (Smooth Up in Ya back from the 80's!), Bionic Jive (AZ's resident old-school rap/rock soldiers!) and more at The Platinum Club inside Skye.
Also we're finally recording new tracks! Keep an eye out in November for our 2 track EP featuring songs off our upcoming new album "The New Amerikan Idols." Thanks for being our friend and don't be afraid to leave some love for us...Ladiebug and the rest of the band always like to make a personal response ;-) OneLove Sixers!!!
You should update your general interest section..I'm sure you have something to say about the Economy and the Health Care debacle. ALTHOUGH the Economy was so Bushes fault but the Stimulus really isn't working and jobless rates are RISING as well....I'm just sayin...
