1. These pictures are all faked:
“NYPD World Trade Center 9/11 Aerials
After a year, ABC’s FOIA request gains release of 2,779 pictures, some never having been released before, on nine CDs and all they can make available to the public is 12 really, really, crappy lowrez pictures. The original hirez digital images will not have a NYPD watermark and should contain important embedded EXIF info. How much more is NIST still hiding? How high the moon?
…
Funny how pancaked buildings create a sea of cauliflower-shaped dust clouds just like planned demolitions. The aerial shots are unbelievable. Any fool can see that Ground Zero was blown apart and pulverized.”
http://www.911blogger.com/node/22548
2. “Liberty Versus ‘Patriotism’
The ancient Greeks and the men of the 18th-century Enlightenment, which included the American founders, differentiated between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism to both of these groups meant a responsibility to fellow citizens and devotion to humanity and the common good. Fealty to the nation-state and its government – nationalism – was an entirely different concept. In fact, the original U.S. patriots fought the American Revolution against the British nation-state and its government to preserve the traditional Englishmen’s rights in the colonies, which were under attack from the British crown.
Unfortunately, in the 19th century, the concepts of patriotism and nationalism blended. On top of that, after World War II, U.S. foreign policy became permanently militarized and public guilt about some mistreatment of returning Vietnam conscripts has led to excessive post-Vietnam adulation of the U.S. military. The public also feels sheepish about its lack of sacrifice – for example, sitting in lazy boy recliners watching the Super Bowl – while young men and women fight the government’s wars.
Such excessive admiration of things military is quite the opposite of what the founders believed. They, almost to a man, were suspicious that large standing armies, such as those of 18th-century European monarchs, would be a major threat to liberty.”
http://original.antiwar.com/eland/2010/02/09/liberty-versus-patriotism/
3. “UK Reveals ‘Cruel, Inhuman, and Degrading’ Treatment by US at Gitmo“
http://news.antiwar.com/2010/02/10/after-court-order-british-gitmo-docs-released/
4. “The 700 Military Bases of Afghanistan “
http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/02/09/americas-shadowy-base-world/
5. “Yes, America is Still in an Official State of Emergency
Does a state of emergency really mean anything?
Yes, it does:
The Washington Times wrote on September 18, 2001:
“Simply by proclaiming a national emergency on Friday, President Bush activated some 500 dormant legal provisions, including those allowing him to impose censorship and martial law.”
…
However, presidents have made numerous declarations of emergency since then, and the declarations made by President Bush in September 2001 are still in effect).
It is also clear that the White House has kept substantial information concerning its presidential proclamations and directives hidden from Congress. For example, according to Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists Project on Government Secrecy:
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2010/02/yes-america-is-still-in-official-state.html
6. “Food: New Bill Repeals Key Sections of Dietary Supplement Health Senator McCain Files New Bill
New supplements may be arbitrarily banned by the FDA or adopted by drug companies in a way that precludes their further sale as supplements.
McCain’s bill would wipe out even the minimal protections contained in DSHEA. It would give the FDA full discretion and power to compile a discreet list of supplements allowed to remain on the market while banning all others.
Everyone knows that the FDA is friendly to drug companies (which pay its bills and provide good revolving door jobs) and hostile to supplement companies. Under this bill, this same Agency could quite arbitrarily ban any supplement it wished or turn it over to drug companies to be developed as a drug and sold for multiples of its price as a supplement.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17539
7. “Canada’s Supreme Court : Torture as Foreign Policy: the Omar Khadr Decision
The decision of the Supreme Court of Canada in the Omar Khadr1 case, that remedies to prevent torture and punish perpetrators are a privilege to be granted or withheld at the pleasure of the Prime Minister, is wrong.
In a decision that ignored Canadian law, Canada’s international law duties and the rule of law, the Supreme Court of Canada confirmed that Canada has violated Omar Khadr’s Charter rights and that those violations continue and that those violations contribute to his ongoing detention. “
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17538
8. “TNR’s ugly and reckless anti-semitism games
Even by that magazine’s lowly standards, The New Republic yesterday published an amazingly ugly, reckless, and at-times-deranged screed from its Literary Editor, Leon Wieseltier, devoting 4,300 words to accusing Andrew Sullivan of being an anti-semite, largely due to his critical (i.e., forbidden) comments about Israeli actions and American neoconservatives. Particularly since the horrific Israeli assault on Gaza, Sullivan has become more critical of Israeli actions and more dubious of uncritical U.S. support. The whole TNR column oozes dark and obvious innuendo but never has the courage to state the anti-semitism accusation explicitly (the last paragraph comes closest).
…
The very idea that Wieseltier and Chait — of all people — would hold themselves out as arbiters of bigotry while working for Peretz for years without ever objecting to a hateful word he wrote on that topic (indeed, Chait vehemently defended his boss from charges of anti-Muslim animus) is so warped as to border on the comical. It would be as if Dick Cheney’s loyal aides published a treatise objecting to oppressive detention and torture policies in other countries. Of all the political magazines in the nation, TNR is close to the bottom of the list when it comes to credibility in assessing and protesting bigotry. But because overt and unapologetic hatreds are acceptable when directed to Arabs and Muslims — while people’s words are surgically dissected to detect any hidden, subtle, lurking anti-semitism — the absurdity of this charade largely goes unmentioned. We just collectively agree to ignore the fact that this respectable political magazine is edited by one of the nation’s most nefarious haters among those with a platform beyond a street corner cardboard box.
…
You can’t run around making direct appeals to the Jewishness and Israel-affection of American-Jewish voters when you want to induce them to vote Republican, but then turn around and scream “anti-semite!” at your political opponents when they discuss the same issues in the same context or talk about the political beliefs of various Jewish factions. At least you can’t do that without being guilty of hideous double standards and, worse, cheapening and trivializing “anti-semitism” to the point of irrelevance (see point 1).”
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/
9. “Who Wants to Bomb Iran?
Meet the men calling on Barack Obama to launch airstrikes against the Islamic Republic.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24647.htm
10. ““My Country Has Been Hijacked”
Sadly, President Obama is guilty of every item I cited in my Articles of Impeachment against President Bush.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24641.htm
11. “Why The Oscars Are A Con
This year’s Oscar nominations are a parade of propaganda, stereotypes and downright dishonesty. The dominant theme is as old as Hollywood: America’s divine right to invade other societies, steal their history and occupy our memory. When will directors and writers behave like artists and not pimps for a world view devoted to control and destruction?
I grew up on the movie myth of the Wild West, which was harmless enough unless you happened to be a native American. The formula is unchanged. Self-regarding distortions present the nobility of the American colonial aggressor as a cover for massacre, from the Philippines to Iraq. I only fully understood the power of the con when I was sent to Vietnam as a war reporter. The Vietnamese were “gooks” and “Indians” whose industrial murder was preordained in John Wayne movies and sent back to Hollywood to glamourise or redeem.
I use the word murder advisedly, because what Hollywood does brilliantly is suppress the truth about America’s assaults. These are not wars, but the export of a gun-addicted, homicidal “culture”. And when the notion of psychopaths as heroes wears thin, the bloodbath becomes an “American tragedy” with a soundtrack of pure angst. “
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article24639.htm
12. Tea party morons:
“I have been especially disappointed with their lack of interest in reforming the American political system through a third political party. Sometimes tea party people say they are fed up with both major parties, but they keep supporting Republicans. As if this will put people in Congress who would actually act as independents and work courageously to enact true, deep reforms. Call my cynical, but I doubt whether people like Senator Scott Brown will resist pressures to be loyal Republicans no matter how extensively they avoid calling themselves Republicans in their campaigns. Sadly, the tea party movement is a blow to third parties, particularly the Libertarian Party that has struggled for many years. Could some very clever people be using this movement to strengthen the Republican Party rather than transform the political system? If so, then most of the tea party crowd have been conned and deceived.
Second, I am nauseated by the noxious negative views about President Obama, even though I did not support or vote for him. Attacks on his citizenship, calls for his impeachment, and labeling him a Marxist seem thinly disguised tactics hiding racism and not an accurate understanding of the facts about him and his policies. To simplify, for example, getting the nation out of the Great Recession requires massive government spending to reboot the economy, a plain fact that virtually every economist over the entire political spectrum recognizes. It does not represent socialist or Marxist principles. Yes, there should have been more spending on directly helping people and small businesses rather than the financial sector, but this does not invalidate massive government spending.
Third, the pervasive support for smaller federal government and so many other openly expressed platitudes reveal inconsistencies and outright hypocrisy about what tea party zealots are willing to do to show their true beliefs. I want to see these people proudly professing their commitment to stop participating in social security and Medicare; stop using public schools for their children; stop taking unemployment payments or support for job training; stop using local police and fire departments and public libraries. I want to hear far more support for necessary government functions. Less government does not necessarily equate to better government.”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17525
