1. “No One Could Have Planted Bombs in the World Trade Center Without Being Detected, Could They?
As Raw Story notes:
A Government Accountability Office investigator smuggled live bomb components into a federal building in just 27 seconds, then assembled a bomb in a restroom and ventured throughout the building without being detected, a leaked tape revealed Wednesday.
In addition, congressional investigators were able to penetrate every single federal building they probed without any difficulty — 10 in all.
Indeed, as I wrote in 2005, there is substantial additional evidence that bombs could have been planted in the World Trade Center without anyone knowing:
- Bomb-sniffing dogs were inexplicably removed from the Twin Towers five days before 9-11
- The Twin Towers had been evacuated a number of times in the weeks preceding 9/11
- Workers in the Twin Towers observed heavy work taking place on supposedly empty floors in the weeks before 9-11; supposedly, the work took place on floors the elevators would not stop on without a special access key (toward the end of the video).
- Bombs could have been placed during renovation of the elevators in the Twin Towers.
- And — as an interesting coincidence — a Bush-linked company ran security at the trade centers, thus giving it free reign to the buildings
These are just a few of the known, public examples of opportunities to plant bombs. There were undoubtedly many additional opportunities available to skilled operatives. See also this video.
As with all of the other arguments trying to debunk those who question the government’s version of 9/11, the argument that bombs couldn’t have been planted without people observing it is incorrect.
The people still defending the government’s version of 9/11 have simply not spent the time to look at the facts.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/how-could-they-have-planted-bombs-in.html
2. “Obama in Russia
The same policies, albeit gift-wrapped
President Barack Obama’s trip to Russia – overshadowed in our air-headed media by the death and funeral of Michael Jackson – shows that the change we were all so eager to welcome is rather a bit less than anticipated. Indeed, if we take the text of the speech he gave at Moscow’s New Economic School as in any way definitive, one is forced to conclude it looks and sounds like the same old, same old – and possibly a bit worse.
After getting through the requisite flattery – praise of Russia’s artistic contributions, and a jokey reference to a Russian-born hockey player – our president described the Bad Old Days of the Cold War as “when hydrogen bombs were tested in the atmosphere, children drilled in fallout shelters, and we reached the brink of nuclear catastrophe.” Scary stuff, although he doesn’t say who was responsible. Suddenly, however, “within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: this change did not come from any one nation alone. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful.”
This is demonstrably false: the end of the Cold War had nothing to do with “the actions of many nations over many years.” Instead, it was a decision by the Soviet leadership not to resist the inevitable downfall of their system, which had been calcified and virtually moribund for many years. In short, U.S. foreign policy had zero to do with it: it was all about what was happening (and not happening) inside the Soviet bloc, including inside the USSR itself.”
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/07/07/obama-in-russia/
3. “Israel Kept Palestinian Detainees in Ditches Without Food and Water”
Al Franken is a warmonger who turned against Bush only after it became politically correct to do so, and only turned against the war to score partisan points. He is, in principle, no less committed to U.S. imperialism and mass killing than are the neocons, even if his rhetoric isn’t nearly as offensively bloodthirsty as theirs is.
…
Am I being too harsh? I’d be happy to see Franken prove me wrong. Next chance he gets, he can refuse to finance Obama’s bloody exploits in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. He can stand by principle and resist the urge to vote with the hordes to continue to appropriate our tax dollars to slaughter abroad. If he turns out to be a consistent critic of the Obama administration on questions of war and peace, I will apologize and praise his principle to the skies. But if he does vote to continue sending Americans to die and kill, he is no better than the lying liars he has made a fortune criticizing. He is no better than the chickenhawks he lambastes, and certainly not nearly as good an opponent of jingoism and aggressive war as the much more thoughtful, if sometimes inconsistent, Pat Buchanan.”
http://www.independent.org/blog/?p=2656
5. “While Talking About Keynesian Stimulus, Feds Are Really Just Giving Money to the Big Boys
Keynesians like Paul Krugman say that fiscal stimulus will get us out of this economic crash.
Austrian economists like Mish say that the Keynesians are wrong, and that they erroneously think that stimulus spending is a “free lunch”.
But – whether you agree with Keynesians or not – the fact is that what the government has actually been doing is spending our money on helping out the big boys, and spending next to nothing on even trying to stimulate the economy. The government is giving trillions to the big banks and financial giants, but almost zero to the working people.
Specifically, the stimulus bill was $787 billion, which is less than a tenth of the money thrown at the financial elites.
The lion’s share of the $787 billion was for pork, not for anything which could actually stimulate the economy.
Of the $787 billion, only about 10% has been spent so far.
The Government Accountability Office says that the $787 billion stimulus package is not being used for stimulus. Instead, the states are in such dire financial straights that the stimulus money is instead being used to “cushion” state budgets, prevent teacher layoffs, make more Medicaid payments and head off other fiscal problems. So even the money which is actually earmarked to help the states stimulate their economies is not being used for that purpose.
Stimulus? Where’s the stimulus?
So when Obama’s economic people say we need another stimulus program, they are pretending that the government has tried – in good faith – to stimulate the economy, but that they’ve underestimated how severe the economic problems are.
In fact, the government has simply undertaken a massive redistribution of wealth from the little guy to the big boys. That is not stimulus. That is robbery.
Don’t believe me?
Okay, but leading economist Dean Baker said the true purpose of the bank rescue plan is “a massive redistribution of wealth to the bank shareholders and their top executives”.
And Nobel economist Joe Stiglitz says the Geithner plan will rob US taxpayers.
And congressman Grayson puts it succinctly when he demands “Stop stealing our money!”
The fact that lobbyists from the financial industry have paid hundreds of millions to Congress and the Obama administration is clearly just a coincidence. See this, this, this, this and this.“
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/while-talking-about-keynesian-stimulus.html
6. “Demand that the Government Reveal Injuries of Innocent but Indefinitely-Detained Prisoners
The Wall Street Journal writes:
The Obama administration said Tuesday it may continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges by a U.S. military commission.
Many writers have said the real reason that the government wishes to indefinitely detain certain prisoners is that they have suffered horrible, disfiguring torture, which the U.S. is trying to hide.
We must assume this is true unless the government lets independent doctors from the Red Cross examine all of the prisoners and publicly release their findings.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/07/demand-that-government-reveal-injuries.html
7. “Bill Gives Attorney General Power To Designate Gun Owners, Tax Protesters As Terrorists
Amendments to the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act, which has already been passed by the House, would empower the Attorney General Eric Holder to define gun owners, anti-abortion activists and tax protesters as domestic terrorists in light of recent federal reports that classify millions of Americans as “extremists”.
Former impeached Florida judge and now Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings has introduced amendments to H.R. 2647: National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010, which would give Holder dictator powers to demonize legitimate protest groups as being affiliated with violent race hate organizations.
…
The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would similarly criminalize free speech on the Internet if it can be deemed in any way to have been “harmful” to an individual. This represents the end of political blogging and free speech on the world wide web.
If both bills are not opposed and thrown out then the First Amendment will become nothing more than a relic of a bygone age.
All of these coordinated moves to demonize informed, armed and pissed off Americans as extremists, terrorists and hate criminals represents the federal government’s final push to brainwash the population into accepting the notion that some Americans are dangerous, that they are enemies of the state, and that they can be targeted in the same way that victims of the “war on terror” are now being targeted across the world – through misappropriation of guilt, torture and indefinite imprisonment.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14252
8. “In today’s Wall St. Journal, which also reported that “the Obama administration said Tuesday it could continue to imprison non-U.S. citizens indefinitely even if they have been acquitted of terrorism charges,” Rep. Jerry Nadler was quoted as saying something quite similar about the Obama approach:
“What bothers me is that they seem to be saying, ‘Some people we have good enough evidence against, so we’ll give them a fair trial. Some people the evidence is not so good, so we’ll give them a less fair trial. We’ll give them just enough due process to ensure a conviction because we know they’re guilty. That’s not a fair trial, that’s a show trial,” Mr. Nadler said.
Exactly. Show trials are exactly what the Obama administration is planning. In its own twisted way, the Bush approach was actually more honest and transparent: they made no secret of their belief that the President could imprison anyone he wanted without any process at all. That’s clearly the Obama view as well, but he’s creating an elaborate, multi-layered, and purely discretionary “justice system” that accomplishes exactly the same thing while creating the false appearance that there is due process being accorded. And for those who — to justify what Obama is doing — make the not unreasonable point that Bush left Obama with a difficult quandary at Guantanamo, how will that excuse apply when these new detention powers are applied not only to existing Guantanamo detainees but to future (i.e., not-yet-abducted) detainees as well?
Whatever else is true, even talking about imprisoning people based on accusations of which they have been exonerated is a truly grotesque perversion of everything that our justice system and Constitution are supposed to guarantee. That’s one of those propositions that ought to be too self-evident to need stating.”
http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/
