Category : MSM

President Obama announced the death of Osama bin Laden with great formality and solemnity tonight. This news has the potential to change our nation’s direction for good. It will be interesting to see what happens next as the global hoax that is the War on Terror (war of terror, more like) is getting wound down. That seems to be the natural course for things to take: We set out to kill bin Laden and we finally did it nearly 10 years later. It makes narrative sense to wrap this story up and move on.

Obama announcing the death of Osama bin Laden

And that’s what it is: A narrative, a story. The president took no questions and presented no evidence, be it DNA, a scrap of clothing, a gun, a flack jacket or even a Quran. No, what he did was tell a story. First, he told the story of 9/11, using the simplest terms and the broadest strokes, but identifying al-Qaeda as the perpetrator. Then he told a tale of how he was given intel on bin Laden’s possible whereabouts, followed up and eventually gave the order to move in and capture/kill.

Beyond the Official Stories
Seems simple enough until you remember that Osama bin Laden had been on dialysis as far back as 2000 because of a kidney disorder that the CIA said would kill him by 2010 at the latest. He also took time out his busy schedule to meet with the CIA shortly before 9/11; receiving last-minute instructions no doubt. The War on Terror has been fake from the beginning. Al-Qaeda was created by the CIA to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan back in the 80s; they never really left. They’ve been operating in the hills crossing Afghanistan and Pakistan ever since. The ISI, Pakistan’s version of the CIA, has been instrumental in this whole affair.

The whole government-sponsored astroturfing of the al-Qaeda brand is an interesting tale in itself. If you have time I highly recommend watching The Power of Nightmares, a BBC documentary about how fear is used to control the populace and how threats like Al-Qaeda are magnified or even created in order to manipulate the masses.

That’s how things went during the Bush and Blair years, but we’re seeing a new path emerging ahead. Is Obama showing the way out of the War on Terror’s Twisted Hall of Mirrors?

A Chance for Obama to Show his Quality
That’s what he has the chance to do. Will he seize it? It all comes down to what you think about Obama. He’s a tough guy to figure out. Don’t listen to the Birthers and the racists and the Islamophobes and the knee-jerk conservatives. Hate Obama if you want, but you should at least take the time to figure out why you hate him. There’s certainly a lot to take issue with on civil liberties, the escalation in Afghanistan, his dopey dismissal of the marijuana legalization movement, the limping economy and the way his administration has handled Bradley Manning. But I’m not convinced we can paint Obama with the tyrant brush. Tea Partiers who compare him with Hitler are out of their minds. GW Bush killed probably over a million people in Iraq and Afghanistan all told, but Obama has only a few hundred deaths by his order (which is not great, but seems to be par the course for American presidents). This new death is probably more of an illusion than reality, but it seems to be a lie with a somewhat more noble purpose than Bush’s lies leading to the invasion of Iraq. Obama is no saint, but painting him as a sinner like the Bushes is bit much.

Who is Barack Obama? A smooth operator, for one. He knows the game of politics as well as anybody. He has a way of floating above the fray. His “take the high road” approach is not an occasional tactic; it’s at the core of his strategy as a politician. But there are many times when a politician can only take the “somewhat less than the lowest part of the gutter road” because the political establishment has aligned itself in such a way that there are no good options. This happens quite a bit, unfortunately. The whole Beltway establishment is invested in the War on Terror and the Hunt for Bin Laden. You can’t just show up on the first day in office and pull the plug on the media’s favorite storyline. You’ve got to write the next couple chapters, as Obama did by ramping up our forces in Afghanistan — the Afghan Surge.

Next Obama set up the operation that would provide the cover to announce what he wanted to announce 2.5 years ago, but couldn’t because telling the truth in Washington is a good way to get mocked and ridiculed — or even assassinated.

Bin Laden in 2004 and fake in 2007No doubt bin Laden has been dead for quite some time; running around with a dialysis machine while being chased by American special forces in the wasteland of Tora Bora is not a good way to extend your lifespan. Around 2003 or 2004 Osama bin Laden stopped making videos… so the CIA and Intelcenter started making some fake videos for him! Most likely he was dead by then but the Bushies wanted to continue using Osama to spread fear and justify the War on Terror so they kept it quiet. Benazir Bhutto mentioned that Bin Laden was dead and managed to get assassinated herself shortly thereafter.

Stories Matter. Evidence? Not so much.
Was Obama able to procure bin Laden’s body? Who knows, but the physical evidence doesn’t really matter that much from a political point of view. The evidence has never mattered. There was never any evidence directly connecting bin Laden with 9/11 any way. The FBI never even put it on his wanted poster. There was never a good explanation for why 2 planes hit 2 buildings and yet 3 buildings fell down. A lot of people don’t even know about WTC Building 7 even though it was a 40+ story office building that hosted office space for the CIA, SEC, Secret Service and many more. A lot of people don’t know that the BBC reported that the building had collapsed before it did, despite it happening at 5 in the afternoon after some minor fires.

Evidence, I’m afraid, does not matter in Washington. What matters is the ability to tell stories and have people believe you. George W. Bush told a story about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The story turned out to not be true later, but it was too late by then. That story had given the neo-cons the cover they needed to invade, and once that was done they cast it aside and didn’t bother to defend its veracity anymore.

Osama bin Laden's secret underground lair... was a lie

Stories are powerful. They don’t even have to be plausible to get us hooked. Remember the story about bin Laden hiding in huge James Bond villain-esque underground fortress with cave entrances that Donald Rumsfeld told? Yeah, that was another fake story. But it worked, didn’t it?

Osama bin Laden was our bogeyman, our Emmanuel Goldstein, our Ernst Blofeld, our Commie-Nazi enemy par excellence. He was straight out of a James Bond movie and the mainstream media went wild with his tale, elevating him to Darth Vader status in our collective imagination. The stories were endless and they all came back to fear — that is if this guy seemed remotely threatening to you (he always seemed a bit fey and soft to me). The story always ended with the government needing more power to fight this shadowy enemy. Don’t ask questions, just let the nice man grope you at the airport.

The great thing about imaginary wars is that you can imagine a conclusion to them whenever you want. That seems to be what Obama has done to his near namesake, Osama. Now the story is over. People can start to relax, right? I’ve seen a bunch of people on Twitter asking if we still have to take our shoes off at the airport.

“Can we travel with big shampoo again??!”

“Guy on CNN, “Killing Osama ends the war on Terrorism.”  Yeah, um, does that mean I can have more than 3.4oz of liquids in my carry on?”

“Ok. So *now* can we start the 21st century?”

“Is gas still $4+? :/”

It’s time to end this story and start a new one. A better one.

Beautiful Execution
In a brilliant move to avoid being discovered, the Obama administration has said that bin Laden’s body will be treated in accordance with Islamic law. That means it will be buried within 24 hours.

Update: They claim they buried him at sea! No one will ever find the body now! So, we hunt for this guy for almost 10 years and first thing we do after catching him is chuck his body over the side of a boat? Okay…. (By the way, Abbottabad, where the operation took place, is hundreds of miles from the ocean.) I did some quick research on Islamic Burial Law and guess what — burial at sea is only permissible if the corpse would start to decay or cause problems:

620. * It is obligatory to bury a dead body in the ground, so deep that its smell does not come out and the beasts of prey do not dig it out, and, if there is a danger of such beasts digging it out then the grave should be made solid with bricks, etc.

621. If it is not possible to bury a dead body in the ground, it may be kept in a vault or a coffin, instead.

622. The dead body should be laid in the grave on its right side so that the face remains towards the Qibla.

623. * If a person dies on a ship and if there is no fear of the decay of the dead body and if there is no problem in retaining it for sometime on the ship, it should be kept on it and buried in the ground after reaching the land. Otherwise, after giving Ghusl, Hunut, Kafan and Namaz-e-Mayyit it should be lowered into the sea in a vessel of clay or with a weight tied to its feet. And as far as possible it should not be lowered at a point where it is eaten up immediately by the sea predators. [emphasis mine]

It would’ve been perfectly acceptable to keep the body in a coffin until the Navy returned it to American shores. Instead, they decided to dispose of the evidence — if there even was a body in the first place. It’s perfect — they don’t have to show us anything, except maybe some grainy photographs a few weeks later. This is a smart move on Obama’s part; Islam provides cover for the quick burial (or at least enough to keep Islam-ignorant Americans satisfied) and Obama can pretend he did it to appease Muslims. He also made a point of saying we were not at war with Islam during his speech. Most Americans won’t question the obvious because they’re so glad to finally be rid of Bin Laden and Muslims won’t raise a stink in the hopes that America will stop persecuting them.

Obama is finally mopping up the remnants of the Bush administration’s horrible stench. The Global War on Terror, the Invasion of Iraq, the Hunt for Bin Laden, the Crusade Against Islam — all of these elaborate tales are being given their dénouement. And all on the anniversary of the announcement of Hitler’s death in 1945, too. It all seems so staged, but Obama has to play the game if he wants to change the rules. And now that he has successfully wrapped up Bush’s parade of lies Obama will reap the benefits of it in his approval rating. It also buys him more time to sort out the economy, which was teetering on the edge of utter collapse. Obama, in his deceitful way, has given us hope.

Are we finally free from the clutches of the powerful cabal that still strangles the world under the economic tyranny wielded by the Federal Reserve’s fiat money system? No, but we do have some breathing room and the wind at our backs for once.

I must be getting so old and cynical that I’m not really bothered by Obama’s go-along to get-along deception, perhaps because he understands the power of stories and how they can affect our collective mood. Obama has given us the happy ending we wanted when this story started 10 years ago. Who cares if it wasn’t a true ending? The beginning wasn’t true and neither was the middle. It was all a big fairy tale to cause fear, mistrust and anger, which the neo-cons could then use to make one last stab at complete world domination. But they failed, and now they’ve let Obama act as a Presidential Pooper-Scooper and clean up the office for the next deranged neo-fascist warmonger. But Obama is making the most of his role and moving us forward in a way that might push him to an easy re-election (given that the GOP’s leading candidates are either punchlines or wallpaper) and spare us another dip into madness for awhile. If he plays his cards right he might just tell us enough stories to permanently put the American oligarchy out of business. We’ll see. It’s a lot to ask of a guy, but these are stressful, dangerous times. We’re staring at so many economic, political and environmental problems that to do nothing is suicide. The Shadow Government thrives in the darkness. But expose it to the light and it shrivels up like a snake’s skin. Obama needs to seize this moment and move forward boldly to push his agenda (which manifestly seems to be much more positive than Bush’s even though Obama is not perfect by any stretch).

It’s strange that he’s been parrying with a man named Trump recently over his birth certificate. First he laid down the long-form certificate in question (a low-res PDF…), and how he’s played his presidential trump card to great effect, with perfect timing and excellent execution.

Obama's trump card

All Part of the Plan
He even seems to be trying to make friends with Pakistan, praising the country for its help (despite not clearly indicating that he asked permission to launch such a mission in their country) and hopefully signaling a withdrawal from that country’s western mountain-land. In another amazing “coincidence”, Pakistan/US relations are at an all-time low after CIA agent Raymond Davis killed two ISI agents on the streets of Islamabad and was arrested (and outed as CIA) by the Pakistanis. Obama really had no choice but to end the charade since the CIA could no longer freely operate in Pakistan; hundreds agents were being kicked out by the local government (there are supposedly 3,000 CIA spooks operating in Pakistan — and that’s the official number! One can only imagine how many there really are). Now that Obama has done so, he has the political cover necessary to drastically scale back the CIA’s operation in Pakistan and eventually get us out of Afghanistan, too. We’re looking at a whole new national security paradigm.

In another timing “coincidence” Obama just reshuffled his national security team as Secretary of Defense Gates retires again and Leon Panetta replaces him, who, as head of the CIA, needs to be replaced, which opens the door for Petraeus to step into the role. And that’s not the only ground-shaking national security event that has taken place in the last week or so! There was a new national security grand strategy floated by the office of Joint Chiefs of Staff of the Armed Forces (all the heads of each branch of the military). It replaces the “containment” strategy that the US used during the Cold War — and even afterwards since it was not replaced, only tweaked for the War on Terror era, which is now ending. The new document is credited to a Mr. Y, the pseudonymous follower of the Containment Strategy’s Mr. X. The new document suggests ways to shrink the military and completely realign our national security posture. Look at these 5 key strategic shifts:

  1. From control in a closed system to credible influence in an open system.
  2. From containment to sustainment.
  3. From deterrence and defense to civilian engagement and competition.
  4. From zero sum to positive sum global politics/economics.
  5. From national security to national prosperity and security.

Read the whole National Security Narrative article here. They even use the same story metaphor I’ve been using in this post:

A narrative is a story. A national strategic narrative must be a story that all Americans can understand and identify with in their own lives. America’s national story has always see-sawed between exceptionalism and universalism.

A New Hope?
Obama is ending the Bush-era story of terror and beginning a new narrative of peace. It’s hard to overstate just how incredibly important this change is to our nation. Prepare for a couple weeks of breathless analysis from the media. No doubt few people will point out how ridiculous the whole story is — it’s too much fun to ruin it with reality. Nobody will question why Navy Seals were involved (in the most mountainous and landlocked part of Pakistan), or how Osama managed to live in a million dollar mansion undetected for months (even years) and nobody will question a dialysis patient supposedly firing his gun at US troops (but missing — bad guys have bad aims, right Hollywood?) or that Osama was hiding just 50 miles from the capital of Pakistan. But that’s besides the point. The point is that we have a chance to write a new future that doesn’t include the paranoia, aggression and hatred that the Bush admin’s narrative did. We can unify the world under peace instead of terror. Let’s all celebrate this happy news, even if it is totally fraudulent. Why? Because buried at sea along with Osama Bin Laden is the War on Terror, the Wars in Iraq & Afghanistan and the whole wretched Bush presidency. Good riddance to them all.

Ding dong, the wicked witch is dead!

This story is old and played out. Let’s write a new one that includes peace and unity throughout the world… and beyond.

Mind-control. MKULTRA. Brainwashing.

The above words tend to stop rational conversation in its tracks, sending it down a slippery slope of confusion, conspiracy and mockery. We like to think we’re too smart to fall for that Hollywood crap. This is the real world, and anybody who thinks mind-control is real needs to re-adjust their tin-foil hat, right?

Er…. not really.

The Elephant in the Room
Mind-control is real. It’s in the public record. The CIA has admitted that they had a super-secret program called Project MKULTRA that was focused on brainwashing people so they could become the ideal assassin. From Wikipedia:

The published evidence indicates that Project MKULTRA involved the use of many methodologies to manipulate individual mental states and alter brain functions, including the surreptitious administration of drugs and other chemicals, sensory deprivation, isolation, and verbal and sexual abuse.

Project MKULTRA was first brought to wide public attention in 1975 by the U.S. Congress, through investigations by the Church Committee, and by a presidential commission known as the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MKULTRA files destroyed in 1973…

So let’s get this straight right up front: Mind-control experiments are in the Congressional Record. They were front-page news back in ’75 and the CIA has admitted that they tried their best to create a mind-controlled assassin program. They claim that they failed (after torturing and ruining the mental states of many unwitting “volunteers”, often grabbed from the military or prison). But the Church Committee is considered by many to be a “limited hangout”, which basically means admitting to a minor crime in order to cover up a major one.

Why was the CIA trying to create a mind-controlled assassin? It was widely believed that the Soviets were working on a similar program — and they were. But after the Cold War ended and some of Russia’s records opened it was revealed that they were not nearly as far along as the CIA was. Oops.

Warfare is used to justify a great many things, and in the context of the Cold War, the CIA’s mind-c0ntrol program seems almost justifiable. Unfortunately, despite the destruction of most of the MKULTRA records, the program appears to have been simply renamed and continued.

The Manchurian Candidate brought the mind-c0ntrol issue to the fore in 1959 via Richard Condon’s book. It was made into a movie in 1962 (and again in 2004). The plotline has the Communist Party brainwashing Americans into committing crimes, which probably only encouraged the CIA to continue its research.

Dirty Laundry
Congress has virtually no oversight over the CIA’s black-operations programs (because, by definition, they are “black”; meaning hidden and completely off-the-record) because the black-ops programs are funded by the CIA’s illegal drug-smuggling operations, thus ensuring there isn’t a line-item in a Congressional budget somewhere for “mind-control.” That doesn’t mean the program isn’t getting funded somehow, of course. Congress never authorized Project MKULTRA in the first place, of course; it still happened.

The CIA is widely thought to be behind the crack-cocaine epidemic of the 80s. Many former gang members have since revealed that they were getting their supply directly from CIA operatives. San Jose Mercury News reporter Gary Webb wrote a serious of articles (and eventually a book, Dark Alliance) about how the CIA funded the Nicaraguan Contras using illicit funds generated by the sale of crack-c0caine (smuggled in from Nicaragua) in Los Angeles and other major U.S. cities. This was part of the Iran-Contra scandal, but it was largely obscured by the limited hangout that saw Ollie North take the fall (he later became a right-wing talk-radio host and Fox News correspondent; yes the same guy who did time for illegally selling weapons to Iran to fund the Contras got his own show on Fox News. Go figure.)

The CIA’s Mind-Controlled Assassin Program Hits the Road
Now, I’m not saying everybody in the CIA is a completely-immoral, evil genius, but like any powerful organization there are different factions. A lot of CIA folks seem to be trying their best to serve their country, but others have different motives, often because of financial ties, paranoia, political ideology or even darker agendas.

Whatever the reason, it seems that the mind-controlled assassins started popping up in the 1960s and have surfaced regularly since then. Like many MKULTRA victims, Sirhan Sirhan, the guy who supposedly shot Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, couldn’t remember the actual crime. If you do some research into RFK’s murder you’ll know that there were more bullets fired at the scene than could be loaded into Sirhan’s gun. It’s likely that there were multiple gunman and that Sirhan was not technically the assassin. The brainwashing process tends to be incredibly destructive and the mind-controlled slaves are not always the best shots. In those cases they still make excellent patsies.

“Listen, if anything happens to Yoko and me, it was not an accident.”
–John Lennon

Another likely mind-controlled assassin was Mark David Chapman, John Lennon’s assassin. After Chapman shot Lennon 4 times he calmly sat down and waited. And waited. And waited until the police came and arrested him. If he had wanted to get away it would’ve been simple to blend into the NYC crowd and disappear into a subway. But killing the target is just the first part of an MKULTRA subject’s programming. The next step is to take the blame.

It’s so simple to blame everything on a lone-nut. These so called “lone-nuts” basically cleared the field of left-leaning presidential candidates and influential pro-peace figures in the 1960s. John F. Kennedy, RFK, and Martin Luther King Jr. were all supposedly killed by “lone gunman” who just happened to target the 3 leading lights of the Democratic Party during the tumultuous (but hopeful… until the gunfire) 60s. These assassinations are inherently political acts and we have to ask “who benefits?”, because somebody did.

Before They Scrub History Clean
The process seems to have improved in efficacy over the years, but it’s still incredibly destructive to the mind-controlled victim’s psyche. Look at our most recent example of an MKULTRA assassin, Jared Lee Loughner. He is a shell of a man. A cursory glance reveals him to be utterly insane. But why is he insane; what brought him to this point?

There’s so much more we need to know about Jared Loughner that I can’t be absolutely sure he’s an MKULTRA victim, but it’s looking extremely likely at this point. It’s doubtful there will ever be a thorough investigation; most likely the authorities will cover up any evidence that doesn’t fit the official story so these first few hours are essential in getting an accurate picture before it all goes down the Memory Hole.

I’ve already seen multiple news reports that suggest that Loughner was not the only assassin. Mind-controlled slaves often need their puppetmasters close at hand in case they go off the script; they also need to be triggered into going from dormant mode into kill-mode. However, the cover-up is already in full swing:

Dupnik said authorities were all but certain Loughner acted alone, saying “he’s a typical troubled individual who’s a loner.”

This is conflicted by an earlier report that authorities were seeking a second individual. There’s even a security camera photo of him.

Investigators said they were looking for an accomplice, believed to be in his 50s, who may have assisted in the attack.

Don’t let this information slip down the Memory Hole. The story is titled, “Cops hunt 2nd suspect in deadly Ariz. rampage.” It’s likely that the 50 year old gentlemen in the picture was Loughner’s controller. He waited until the time was right and then gave Loughner the pass-phrase that triggered his attack, possibly using a cell phone.

As of this writing Gabrielle Giffords is miraculously holding onto life despite having a bullet go through her brain. Even if she survives it seems unlikely she’ll ever fully recover. Please send your thoughts and prayers her way as she struggles for life; also her family must be in agony right now. I’m sure they want to see justice done. In order for that to happen we need an investigation that leaves no stone unturned. I’m extremely doubtful that the authorities will allow that to happen since the evidence is already pointing back to the CIA and most of the right-wing political elite has every motivation to paint Loughner as a lone, deranged nutcase. Certainly he was insane, but let’s look at his particular obsession:

“He was one of the last kids tocome [sic] in, and he sat down and almost immediately started laughing to himself in a way that was just kind of creepy,” a classmate, Alex Kotonias, 20, told USA Today.

“As soon as the teacher started going over the syllabus, he had this outburst out of nowhere, didn’t even raise his hand, and started asking the teacher some sort of weird questions about whether he believed in mind control.”

So the suspect was talking openly of mind control in the weeks before the shooting. Perhaps you think I’m stretching a bit, except that I’ve watched the videos on Loughner’s YouTube channel. Amazingly, 4 out of 5 of them talk about mind control! Often, the context is completely missing (as is logic and grammar, but that’s a side effect of being brainwashed); instead he just blurts it out like he did in class.

One of Loughner’s videos is all about mind control. It’s called “How To: Mind Controller“. I’m going to post it below, but don’t worry if it doesn’t make much sense to you (be worried if it does):

Okay, so clearly he’s nuts. But his obsession with mind control is telling. On some level he knows his brain is under attack. Check out his other videos for a deeper window into his damaged psyche.

The mind control video ends with Loughner claiming to be the mind controller: “I’m able to control every belief and religion by being the mind controller!” If you’ve looked at his other videos (which are mostly text-based writings) you’ll know he’s in control of two things: Jack and shit. However, from a certain point of view he has affected all of us. If you let fear and confusion and anger overtake you then you are letting Jared Lee Loughner control you. Don’t give in to fear… or the mainstream media’s storyline.

Fear is the Mind-Killer
Fear and control are big business and they are not left to amateurs. If you recall the run-up to the Iraq War you’ll know that the real masters of fear are the folks in charge; they are the government officials and spoonfed reporters who scared us into thinking war was necessary. They are the mind-controllers: the military-industrial-media complex managed to swing public opinion around from mostly against the war to a majority in favor of invading Iraq. They lied about it and they all got away with it too. The liars and cheats are mostly still in Congress or still pretending to be fair and balanced on our TVs.

Mind control is real.

It’s likely you are a victim at some point in your life. But there are different levels of mind control and fear-based propaganda is an inexpensive and non-invasive technique designed to work in aggregate on the masses. MKULTRA assassins are the other end of the spectrum; they are the focus of much work by the controllers. They are brainwashed using various techniques including drugs, torture, deprivation, isolation, hypnosis and more we can’t even know about yet. Personally, I suspect that there are implants that can be put in the subject brain (or maybe just their ear drum) so that they will literally hear voices. Who knows what the latest technology has allowed the puppetmasters to do?

Loughner tried to join to the Army a few years back. Supposedly he was rejected, but it’s also possible he was shunted into a super-secret MKULTRA program and spent the next two or three years being subjective to incredible abuse, drugs, hypnosis and the rest. Hold your hate until you can be sure that Loughner was in his right mind. I suspect that he is just as much of a victim as Representative Giffords is.

All I know for sure is that this requires more investigation but it’s not going to happen because people are too eager to accept the lone gunman theory because the alternative is too horrifying and crazy. It’s our fear that enables this trick to work again and again. Not just the fear of the government but the fear of being mocked and ridiculed for even suggesting such a thing. I felt that same fear myself while writing this post: “Will people think I’m nuts?” I’m sure some of you will, but I think you’re nuts if you’re bound and determined to overlook the evidence. MKULTRA is real. You can’t deny that. Your only escape from that reality is to believe the CIA’s assurances that the program has been discontinued. I think you’d have trouble finding a less trustworthy organization than the CIA. Disinformation is their job! And they do it well.

So don’t be surprised if, when Loughner starts to talk, he claims not to remember the shooting spree. He probably doesn’t; he was in a hypnotic trance at the time and that information (and so much more) is blocked to him. Also, don’t be surprised if you never hear about the accomplice/controller again. His picture is on this page if you doubt your own mind. Don’t worry; you’re not going crazy, you’re just waking up to a nightmare reality.

Are all of these corruption scandals and bailouts for the rich just a ‘confluence of interest’ wherein the richest people in the world just happen to all be on the same page? Did all of these attacks on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange just materialize out of the shared frustration of ultra-rich patriots?

Or is there something darker at work?

While I agree confluence of interest makes it possible for the elite to work towards the same ends without ever talking to each other, doesn’t it also make it more likely they would see the benefit in conspiring since their interests are already aligned? Why not coordinate your attacks?

It’s not like we can stop them either way.

The editor of the New York Times has recently admitted they let the US government review all of the WikiLeaks docs the NYT published, before they were published. While not technically a conspiracy (because it’s not illegal), this is just one more example of how the supposedly independent news outlets of the US are really just state-run media with a few corporate strings attached. I highly recommend reading this Glenn Greenwald article.:

It’s extraordinary that the New York Times is clearing what it says about this with the U.S. Government, but that says a lot about the politics here…

The independent mainstream press is a fantasy.

There are all of these datapoints (secrecy, lies, corruption, bailouts for the rich, etc.) that obviously point to a conspiracy by the powers that be and yet many are still bound and determined to not look deeper into the maw of malfeasance that has engulfed our political and economic systems.

I guess I’ll mention the “I” word since we’re heading that direction already: Do you know who the Illuminati are? They’re glorified bankers. They are behind-the-scenes power-brokers who have enough money to make or break nations by either granting or denying loans. Look at the Rothschild family for a quick overview and just remember what happened when the bankers collapsed our economy 2 years ago. The government and the Federal Reserve (which the Illuminati basically owns outright) were quick to give them trillions upon trillions of dollars. That’s why you buy government officials off; it’s well worth it.

The natural course of human economic affairs is towards consolidation. Think of the Illuminati as a criminal gang who managed to forge a monopoly/oligarchy. They are the ultimate cartel. Do you believe in the Mafia? Well, believing in the Illuminati is no different; just a more refined — almost classy — version of Sicilian justice. Instead of controlling prostitution, gambling and drugs, the Illuminati control whole countries (wherein they let the Mafia run the aforementioned underworld black-markets).

I think we need to look at the endemic corruption that surrounds us as an invitation to dig deeper. Don’t flinch and stop looking because the horror is too great. We have no hope of getting our country back as long as we believe the party line that corruption in government is just the result of a few bad apples.

Here’s a question: How come (according the Media) corruption in banking, government and other white collar jobs is always the result of “a few bad apples” but whenever some dumbass Muslim kid buys an explosive it’s always a huge, global, interlocking terrorist conspiracy sworn to destroy us for our freedoms?

Seems awfully convenient.

Meanwhile the Democrats are caving on extending Bush’s tax cuts for the richest 2% — at a cost of $700 billion — in order to get a measly $60 billion in unemployment benefits from the Republicans. What a fucking joke. As per the usual plan the Democrats pretended to fight the good fight, then took a fall in the last round to give the Republicans another preordained victory. You’d think the party that controls the Senate and the presidency could scrounge a bit more out of the party that will soon control only the House, but that’s not the world we live in. We live in a world of conspiracies. If it gets much more obvious, those of you who still deny it will be the ones accused of being nutjobs. In fact, I think we’re at that point. How do you explain this and the other issues I’ve raised, if not through the machinations of the ruling class? And if the ruling class does act as one being through a confluence of interest, how is that any functionally different from a nefarious conspiracy?

Either way we’ve gotten to the point where the system does not even pretend to work for the common man anymore. We need more organizations like WikiLeaks to shed light on the inner working of our government, the banking apparatus and high-powered corporations.I highly recommend this article, which is itself a summation of a post by Julian Assange on how WikiLeaks hopes to disrupt the ability of conspirators to plan and execute their conspiracies by throwing their communication into the light. A taste:

Conspiracies are cognitive devices. They are able to out-think the same group of individuals acting alone. Conspiracies take information about the world in which they operate (the conspiratorial environment), pass through the conspirators and then act on the result. We can see conspiracies as a type of device that has inputs (information about the environment), a computational network (the conspirators and their links to each other) and outputs (actions intending to change or maintain the environment). Since a conspiracy is a type of cognitive device that acts on information acquired from its environment, distorting or restricting these inputs means acts based on them are likely to be misplaced. Programmers call this effect garbage in, garbage out. Usually the effect runs the other way; it is conspiracy that is the agent of deception and information restriction. In the US, the programmer’s aphorism is sometimes called “the Fox News effect”.

So basically, Assange plans to starve the beast of its communication system and limit its ability to act unobserved. This will send a shockwave of panic and inaction through the mind of the conspiracy, rendering it unable to formulate new plots and execute them with any efficacy. It’s a bold aim, to be sure. But something has to be done. Conventional attempts to solve the very real problems have not worked. They haven’t worked because the game is rigged; you can’t vote “Them” out of power; they own both parties. Only when people start to see the very real conspiracies that perpetuate our very real problems will we get close to solving said problems. The current system is set up so we have no real choice or voice.

Before you let America’s (or your own) apathy subsume your hope for the future just take a closer look at what Assange is doing. He’s trying to cripple the conspiratorial consciousness. It’s not fantasy — after Iceland decided not to bail out the bankers it caused a temporary breakdown in the control-grid. That created an opening and Iceland is using it to write a new constitution.

It’s not going to be easy, but this is our moment. We’re finally seeing the control-grid crack and openings start to appear. Maybe if/when the banksters demand another bailout we can mount a better organized campaign to make sure Congress doesn’t accede, then use the momentum to bring our own Constitution back online.

There’s something thrilling going on in Iran.

You wouldn’t know it from the coverage on many mainstream media news outlets this weekend (Fox, CNN and ABC, I’m looking in your direction), but there’s a revolution going on in Iran!

It’s a good kind of revolution; pro-freedom, pro-democracy and mostly peaceful (though many protestors are being beaten by police and Hezbollah thugs). The people of Iran are standing up for truth and justice and they are not being intimidated by theocratic thugs and government lies.

It makes me wonder why our U.S. media isn’t really standing with the people of Iran. Maybe it’s because I’m getting cynical in my (heh) old age, but I think it has something to do with the loss of their favorite boogey-man. It’s getting harder and harder to portray Iranians as fanatical terrorists bent on the destruction of the West:

Perhaps the most moving scene involved a group of young demonstrators, displaying the green colours of Mir-Hossein Mousavi, the defeated challenger, breaking into English and chanting: “We want freedom.”In an instant, these television pictures from Tehran delivered a stark reminder that Iran is not a backward country of medieval fanatics, but a modern nation with 70 million people, two thirds of whom are under 30 and have the same interests and aspirations as their Western counterparts.

These are my peers. My fellow-Twitterers. My friends. My brothers and sisters.

This is the real Iran:

No more distortions. No more hate. No more fear-mongering, Fox News! No more! We are the same, the Iranian People and those of us in the United States who still value and cherish freedom.

There is no difference between us beyond geography. Many of the Iranians even speak English and they are young and internet-savvy: they have been using Twitter to organize on the fly and there was a collective moan when Facebook was blocked. This is a youth movement that is cracking the edifice of lies that have served the hardliners on both sides for far too long.

Just don’t watch television if you want the real scoop:

Today, as global geopolitics is shaken to its core by events in Iran, I turned on cable news this morning, and saw endless ads for a Larry King Jonas Brothers “interview”, Morning Joe yukking it up discussing Kuwaiti massage therapists, a video of a tomato throwing contest on CNN, talk radio blowhard Bill Bennett…and occasionally a phone call from Christiane Amanpour in Tehran. I can’t even bring myself to turn on the network morning programs, I might vomit.

The mainstream media is rapidly smothering itself into a coma of irrelevance. Do they think we’re too stupid to get the news from somewhere else? Heck, I don’t even need the media at this point; I can get info directly from the participants in the struggle via Twitter.

Bloggers like Andrew Sullivan are covering the protests virtually nonstop. With the Huffington Post on the case, who needs the MSM?

At this point, Big Media is just playing catch-up. They were asleep at the switch for several days, but now seem to be paying attention again… but they are definitely not leading; they are following.

I should note that I’m taking it for granted that the election was stolen. They apparently did not even do a good job of it. From the numbers I’ve seen, Ahmadinejad didn’t even finish second! He finished 3rd, behind another reform candidate! Mousavi, the challenger and probable winner, was actually told by the Interior Ministry that he had won and to prepare his victory speech (which they insisted must be gracious and not boastful) before turning around and declaring Ahmadinejad the winner by a landslide. The numbers belie this laughable claim. The official results have Mousavi losing his home turf (preposterous) and big urban areas where he has polled higher than Ahmadinejad.

Let’s face it: This election was straight-up rigged. The Iranians know it and they’re not standing for it, which is more than I can say for Americans (*cough-2000-cough*). Now is our chance to repent for our laziness and apathy and support the democracy-loving Iranians with all our hearts!

I stand with the Iranian People in solidarity. We stand for Democracy, Freedom and Justice! May the winds of change bring peace and prosperity to Iran. Peace be upon you!

Somebody pinch me. This sounds like a shitty Johnny Depp movie (to be fair, the first one was good).

First, let me say that I don’t condone the taking of hostages (unless it’s an underrated Kevin Spacey and Samuel L. Jackson movie) and some of these pirates are clearly assholes.

But a large portion of them are fishermen who got sick and tired of seeing European vessels dumping toxic waste in Somalian waters. Johann Hari wrote a great short article on the piracy issue entitled You Are Being Lied to About Pirates. Here’s an excerpt:

In 1991, the government of Somalia – in the Horn of Africa – collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since – and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country’s food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.

Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died.

This is an environmental war.

Apparently Europe and America feel they have not raped the African continent enough and are engaging in a propaganda war against the “pirates” in order to justify continued presence in the area and as a convenient distraction from the foundering economy.

Just a reminder: Do not believe the mainstream media, especially when they get whipped into a frenzy like they are now. When the media is all aligned on an issue you can bet they’re wrong or lying. The pirates scare is Class A bullshit and should be treated as such. If we had more journalists like Hari this wouldn’t be a problem, but most will breathlessly recount whatever government officials tell them.

Dig deeper. There’s more to this story than the corporate media will ever report.

Every now and then I come across a bad science article. And I come across badly done science with disturbing regularity — but today I found both in an article at NewScience.com.

It’s a “study” about why people believe “crazy” things like creationism and intelligent design. The authors of both the article and the study have barely bothered to mask their contempt and disdain for those who believe in anything other than cold, hard science.

But the science and written logic they bring to the table can be described as mushy branflakes at best. Check out the article and see if you can taste the bias. Here’s a sampler:

People continued to agree with false teleological statements, particularly those that endorsed an Earth intended for life.

I was not aware the debate over the beginning of our world was settled. Good to know you can administer a simple true/false test and call people who believe the earth was made for life “wrong”.

This is supposed to be science? It seems to be based on more assumptions than religion! [new readers: I don’t believe in religion, but I don’t believe evolution’s reality settles the debate over our origins -v]

Either they’re trying to use trick questions or they don’t understand the nuance of language. This, for instance, is one of their “false” statements:

Mites live on skin to consume dead skin cells

Well… don’t they? The mites are better off living there than anywhere else. Where else would mites rather be?

The supposed scientists may have been grasping for “Mites exist only to remove our dead skin cells” but they utterly failed. And these people are claiming to be able to accurately and fairly judge me, my logical abilities and the validity of my beliefs??!!

Reminds me of this, more accurate, study.

This is also shoddy, biased journalism. I expect more from a mainstream publication like NewScience. Pro-atheism cheerleading is fine and good, but there’s a time and a place, just like we expect reporters to keep their Christian, Hindu or whatever views out of newscasts, we should expect the journalists over at NewScience and other consumer science outlets to do the same.

This is not an article so much as an attack on teleological thought, a legitimate philosophy of thought. Here’s what Wikipedia currently says about teleology:

A teleological school of thought is one that holds all things to be designed for or directed toward a final result, that there is an inherent purpose or final cause for all that exists.

As a school of thought it can be contrasted with metaphysical naturalism, which views nature as having no design or purpose. Teleology would say that a person has eyes because he has the need of eyesight (form following function), while naturalism would say that a person has sight because he has eyes (function following form).

A classic debate. Y vs. X and yet these supposed scientists are ready to throw telelogical thought under the bus without even investigating whether it might be right. Instead they’ve decided to do a sort of test to see if you think like a commie–..uh, er… “teleologist” in the hopes of one day “curing” it.

A first round of experiments suggested that adults make more teleological mistakes when pressed for time than when not. Yet Kelemen and Rosset also noticed that no matter how much time they had, test subjects tended to endorse false statements implying that the Earth is designed and maintained for life. [emphasis mine]

This is some of the most biased reporting I’ve ever seen, but it could be Ewen Callaway is just regurgitating what he was told. Then it would piss-poor reporting. But even more offensive to me as a rational person is the implicit goal laid bare in this study, which is clearly to find a way to eradicate teleological thought.

That’s the same kind of thinking that led to the Spanish Inquisition. We don’t need any more of that crap. These “scientists” need to learn how to take on their ideological opponents in an intellectual field of battle and quit trying to find ways to cow the populace into submission. If they have proof that the teleological school of thought is wrong, then they should firstly present it, then defend it.

Instead they use mouthpieces like NewScience, which I thought was a reputable publication, but now seems to be nothing more than a bloodbath battlefield between believers and nonbelievers. Here are some recent articles (among the most popular):

I guess it’s all about the page-views and contentious article bring in visitors galore. But then why not try and keep an editorially even hand and write balanced articles? There’s a good reason spiritually-minded folks often sound defensive in those forums. They know they’re being taunted — or else they wouldn’t be there, trying to explain deeply held beliefs to this generation’s most vicious nihilists.

What’s even more disturbing is that the atheists rarely stand up and say, “Hey, I agree, but let’s keep things respectful and balanced here.” Opinion Editor Amanda Gefter is particularly over-the-top. Here’s a typical passage:

Misguided interpretations of quantum physics are a classic hallmark of pseudoscience, usually of the New Age variety, but some religious groups are now appealing to aspects of quantum weirdness to account for free will. Beware: this is nonsense.

Free will has been debated for many millennia, but dear old Amanda won’t let us even consider the possibility that… what, quantum physics might be involved somehow? How the hell does she know? She clearly doesn’t because she chose ridicule over reason and neglected to back up her claims. If I print out the Wikipedia article on Free Will, it’s over 20 pages, but Ms. Gefter dismisses it with a warning: Beware!! Don’t read any further or you might turn into a commi- er, I mean “creationist!”

This is all about attacking the philosophical underpinnings of the opponents of strong-atheism, whom include religious folks, anti-religion/pro-metaphysics people like me, and many agnostics and weak-atheists.

It’s sad that people can’t find any common ground on this issue. It’s one of the most pressing of our times, especially with the growt
h of atheism in the young and urban. But it’s still a religious discussion and I remain somewhat aghast that a publication like NewScience would stoop to taking sides in the culture wars. Are they about to fold and need every page-view they can get?

I’d be more likely to read them in the future if they displayed a little more objectivity.

As for the “scientists” who are out to “cure” creationists or anybody who entertains metaphysical thoughts, well, I guess we’d better keep our eyes on them before they try to beat Religion’s high score in the killing game. Studying ways to eradicate thought that doesn’t conform with the scientific establishment’s is really beyond the pale.

I don’t think most atheists think this way. Certainly there is some bitterness about Christianity, the dominant religion in my culture, but few would actually seek to destroy it. They just don’t want fundamentalist Christians (like those that infested the Bush administration) enforcing prayer in schools, Intelligent Design in schools (ID should be in schools — the Philosophy Department) and various faith-based activities.

Totally understandable. But let’s make sure that we don’t end up with the mirror image as humanity gives up its superstitious beliefs. We don’t need fundamentalist atheists running amok any more than we need fundamentalist Muslims or Christians in charge. The extremists are the problem, and they hurt whichever side they are arguing for. Please, people, look for common ground in the culture wars!

Go in peace / Science be praised

Was the banking industry screwed over by its own bankruptcy law? It sure appears to have hurt the economy

“Before the reform, overindebted households might file bankruptcy and get rid of their credit card debt, and that would free up income to pay the mortgage,” Morgan said. “The new law blocks that escape route and forces better-off households to continue paying credit card debt, which makes it harder than before to continue paying the mortgage.”

The conclusions of Morgan and his colleagues echo earlier findings that the new law’s tougher requirements appear to have increased the number of people defaulting on their mortgages or walking away from their homes rather than seeking bankruptcy protection.

“One of the great lessons and ironies” of the new law, Treasury Department economist David P. Bernstein wrote in a recent paper, was that, by increasing the dollar value of assets susceptible to default, it has weakened many of the financial institutions that sought the new law in the first place.

Man, those guy are fucking idiots, right?
Hmm… I suspect that we need to reference incompetence theory here. These assholes didn’t get to the top of the finance industry by being clueless morons eager to throw their body into the arms of Defeat. No, these hard-asses know a lot more about the economy than most people do and they’re using that insider knowledge to time the crash of the economy and profit from it.The bankruptcy law was an important part of the crash: it was the trigger. It was the pin that popped the bubble.

The robberbarons in charge of this economy aren’t stupid. They know that their inflationary, fiat monetary system creates boom and bust cycles so they simply manipulate those cycles to their favor and crater the system at a time of their choosing.

Cheney’s invested in Europe. The Bushes are in South America and the Middle East. I’m sure Hank and Ben are well taken care of, too. The rest of us will be the ones to deal with the fallout from this avoidable disaster. Don’t assume the bankruptcy law was unimportant; it emanated from the very heart of the banking industry and its passage was assumed/assured in Congress. That law is now adding to the misery of those suffering in this corpse of a system.

It’s time to change. We need to switch to a gold-backed system wherein people can feel safe and plan for the future without the economic rollercoasters juiced by Big Media’s propaganda system, creating fear at the opportune moments. We ride on, strapped into a rickety system that is doomed to fail, and soon. The government hasn’t been keeping up the rollercoaster. In fact, the top of the hierarchy have sold all the screws and bolts to China for a tidy profit. We are held aloft by hope, inertia and the wings of big-tittied angels.

Well, don’t look down. Like Wile E. Coyote, we’d fall if we did. But we have to fall, don’t we?
 

It’s time to fall up
refuse to die
and start to fly
away from the lie

I went downtown to St. Paul in order to get some pictures and observe the situation (I already protested on Monday), but John Ireland Bridge was blocked by the police with dump trucks when I got there. The cops said there was a bomb threat to the Minnesota Historical Society, but that was quite clearly a lie since they were standing so close to it and they’d already closed the other bridges as I found out later.

cops in front of historical

So I went over to the capitol on foot using the Marion Street Bridge instead. I saw more cops than protesters.

protester at John Ireland Blvd bridge

The cops had the city in a headlock. All the other bridges were closed by the police; cops, BCA agents and national guardsman were everywhere. St. Paul was on fucking lockdown.

A shitload of cops

By the time I found out how totally heavy-handed the police presence was I was getting tired and decided to split. I was trying to get back to my car on the other side of the Marion street bridge when I saw a group about 200 protesters approaching the bridge. That’s why I’m walking against the flow at the beginning of the video. Unfortunately I was too busy trying to get good footage and didn’t notice the cops had surrounded us on all sides.

Soon the police started firing flash grenades, smoke bombs and generally scaring the shit out of me and all these peaceful protesters. We were corraled onto the bridge where they told us we were all under arrest, but not before all of us were shellshocked by the overwhelming police response. Watch the video, but beware that it’s intense, chaotic and there’s swearing and explosions.

Notice how none of the protesters resisted or attacked the cops in any way. This is ironic because we were charged with “resisting a lawful order” along with the 1st amendment-killing crime of “presence at an unlawful assembly.” Whatever happened to the right of people to peaceably assemble?

We are not free; The Bill of Rights is no longer operative.

If you aren’t reading this from jail that simply means the cops haven’t bothered to arrest you on trumped up charges yet. They can clearly do exactly that whenever they want, with no repercussions. I wasn’t even part of the protest and I was charged with being part of an “unlawful assembly.”

The whole arrest process took hours. We were told to sit and put our hands on our heads, which many people had to do for several hours (your arms get sore). I was cuffed after an hour or so and stood around for another hour waiting to get my mug shot (on the bridge; this was all very ad hoc). Since we were on the bridge for so long they eventually hauled at least 3 porta-potties onto the bridge itself, for both police and protester usage (under heavy guard, of course).

Eventually I was led onto a city bus with 40 other arrestees and brought to the Ramsey County jail for booking. They searched me about 5 times, confiscated all my stuff, and gave me a paper bag with a peanutbutter and jelly sandwitch and two apples. See, even oppressive police tactics have a Minnesota Nice aspect. Of course we didn’t get knives so we had to spread the jelly and PB with our fingers.

Hours dragged by as we waded our way through the bureaucracy and were eventually cited and loaded onto a paddywagon and driven out of the jail. They let us out just outside the fences and we were free and on our own far from where we were arrested, but at least the incredibly awesome Coldsnap Legal Collective were there to offer us hugs and access to free legal advice.

outside the jailhouse

People without rides or places to go were able to sleep on the grass outside the jailhouse thanks to sleeping bags the Coldsnap folks brought. Somebody sent the angels last night; they’re doing great work and need your support!

The problem with good things is that the police like to infiltrate and ruin them from the inside. That might’ve been the case with the protest last night. I heard several people talking about police plants agent provocateurs pretending to be protesters, inciting violence and keeping their superiors informed about where they are headed.

Unfortunately, this is standard practice for police departments these days, including Denver during the DNC. How many acts of vandalism and violence that you read about in the mainstream media were actually committed by undercover cops in order to incite and defame activists?

Imagine the embarrassment of the police and governments if they held a convention with massive protests and no one was arrested! They’d have spent millions upon millions of dollars for nothing! They’ve got to earn their outrageous security budgets, which is why they were so keen to arrest anybody who happened to be near Marion St. Bridge last night, including media folks and medics (at least 5 were arrested, along with a dozen credentialed photographers).

Of course they also wanted to show who’s boss. Clearly they are, and clearly they are not going to allow us to change the system peacefully or otherwise. We are not free. We are only permitted to do what they let us; truly free expression is verboten. Believe it or not, America used to be a pretty anything-goes society as long as it wasn’t overtly violent (think of the Old West). Nowadays we cling to our police state as if that makes us safer. But what have we lost in the process?

The Republicans are coming to town!!

No more running away. It’s time to stand up and fight back the only way we know how — peaceful protest. So that’s what we did.

The protest drew over 40,000 people to St. Paul according to organizers. Being one of the 40,000 that’s a very believable number — in fact it could be much higher. I’ve rarely seen so many people all in one place, but everybody was really peaceful in our march. There were so many good vibes and peaceful cops that I was almost bored! It’s great that the cops were restrained for our march. Many anarchist groups were not so lucky. Here’s a story told in photos:

Police form a line as anarchists try to march away

Police form a line against the anarchist group trying to take an authorized route.

Fred Phelps, cops and protesters

Fred Phelps (of the supposed Westboro Baptist Church) thinks god hates fags…and you and me and everyone else. What an asshole. He sent his family out to protest…everybody. They managed to piss people off pretty rapidly. In fact there may have been some sort of confrontation…

Injured guy after confrontation with Fred Phelps' family

This guy may have been injured after a confrontation with Fred Phelps’ family. He was being helped away by his friends.

Cheney, Bush, Condi, and Rummy face capture

Luckily Bush, Cheney, Condi and Rumsfeld were captured before they could do any more damage. … Wait, are those puppets? Dammit, they’ve eluded us again!

Young boy looks at puppet Bush in jail for war crimes

Hopefully Bush will be in jail before this kid grows up.

Rude Mechanical Orchestra 1

These guys were pretty cool. Apparently they are called The Rude Mechanical Orchestra.

crowd massing  at capitol

The crowd masses before the march begins.

crowd marches away from capitol

The crowd begins marching away from the capitol.

a river of protesters going towards the Xcel

Meanwhile the river of people flowing towards the Xcel Center appeared endless. I think the first people reached the Xcel before the end of the march managed to leave the Capitol. That’s how many people there were.

"No You Can't!" Lobbyists for McCain

Lobbyists For McCain! These guys have a message for Obama supporters — “No You Can’t!” These guys were hilarious. Yes, they were kidding.

Counter-protesters

These guys weren’t kidding. They were part of a small group of counter-protesters who were there to support the war while implying the troops would rather achieve victory than come home now. Umm… maybe you should ask them why they donate so much money to Obama and Ron Paul then, dudes.

There were approximately 30 to 40 of these hardcore pro-war Republicans there to greet the 40,000 of us who respectfully disagree. The 1,000 to 1 ratio makes me wonder if the few war supporters left are able to openly support the war only because of the Media’s cheerleading. If they knew they were so outnumbered they might start to question some of their assumptions.

cops on horseback block road

The police mostly stayed out of the way. Many of them were just there to block off roads and keep the marchers on track. By staying out of the way they made sure tensions stayed low and nobody felt threatened.

cop looking concerned

Some of them looked at bit concerned at times. The crowd could’ve easily torn these guys limb from limb if we were so inclined. We weren’t.

cop looking really hot and sweaty

The biggest worry the cops had was keeping cool. This guy looks like he’d rather not be wearing his dark, hot, heavy uniform. Can’t say I blame him.

cops marching away

Every now and then the cops would interrupt the protesters so they could march through and do…. what? I dunno. Seemed like they just liked making sure they were still in charge.

Freedom Cage

They herded us into the Freedom Cage, as we called it. It was a corridor of steel fences designed to give us the impression we were near the Xcel Center when were in fact a long distance away, especially considering how many obstacles you’d have to scale in order to get there.

Freedom Cage outside Xcel

This is as close as we ever got to the Xcel Center. Close enough to shake our fists but not much else. Not like they give a damn what we think anyway.

Freedom Cage 2

The Freedom Cage steered us back towards the state capitol. Boy did we ever feel safe and secure inside that Freedom Cage.

Free Speech Pen

This guy was his own personal free speech zone. He was the safest guy at the whole protest. The wires protect him from excessive liberty and independent thought.

Cheney and Bush drag Lady Liberty

Here Bush and Cheney have tied up, Lady Liberty, ripped her shirt off while strangling her and then proceeded to drag her through the street. I’d say this protest was pretty sick except that it’s a dead-on metaphor for what Bush/Cheney has done to our country and our civil liberties. This last 8 years has been like a slow-motion snuff film.

Red, White & Blue Puppy 2

Puppy abuse? Maybe, but he seemed pretty happy to be there. This red, white and blue pup was one of many patriotic ensembles. The protesters were not ready to cede patriotism to the Republicans; that’s for sure.

We The People

The Constitution of the United States of America: Rememeber this thing? We need to bring it back online.

crowd with a lot of signs 1

There were a lot of people there! I was never able to get the majority in one shot. I guess we’ll never know how many people were there, but I bet there could’ve been more. I’m guessing only 1 person showed up for every 10 people who hate the Bush regime and the idea of 4 more years of this crap. What can we do to change things?

Peace Begins with a Smile

“Peace Begins with a Smile”. Man, I hope she’s right.

Well, that’s it!. Have any other good pictures? Post them in the comments below. I have a couple more; you can check them out on my photostream on Flickr. Peace!

“The American people are today the best entertained and the least informed people on the face of the Earth.”

–Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.”

William Colby
CIA Director, 1973-1976

Kucinich has introduced the Articles of Impeachment against Bush

…and the Media hasn’t said shit.

“Liberal Media” my ass! The Media is fucking fascist, end of story. They are utterly controlled by the same corporate interests that control both major political parties. That’s why Dennis Kucinich is a pariah in his own party — he actually looks out for the Constitution and the rights of We The People. Such dedication to Liberty is considered treason in the bowels of both the Democratic and Republican parties.

A few mainstream outlets picked up the story and managed to spend an approximate average of less than 200 words describing the measure. They couldn’t even be bothered to list more than a few of the 35 articles of impeachment.

I’ve seen better reporting in a fucking high school newspaper.

I don’t blame the beat reporters; if their editors said “give me 2,000 words” they would have. As is, they probably had to fight to get 200.

But it’s disgusting. I mean, jeeze, it’s only the impeachment of the goddamn President of the United States of America. They all managed to mention that it’s not politically feasible. Well I wonder why that is, you jackasses! It’s because you won’t cover it! If you did, everything would change, no matter how shitty and biased your coverage. Mr. 25% Approval Rating would not find many advocates in the populace, even if he would in the dominant press. And then you’d look pretty stupid, wouldn’t you, defending the murdering megalomaniac who launched an illegal war. Those of us who still remember the impeachment of Bill Clinton know that it takes very little to whip the Media into a frothing frenzy of obsessive, inane coverage. Surely you could do the same for Bush. But you won’t.

Because you’re traitors.

Yeah, that’s right. I said it. And it’s true. This president is the most evil, diabolical man ever elected and you, the supposed Fourth Estate, won’t criticize him in a voice above a whisper. It’s fucking pathetic.

Look at Kucinich’s 35 articles of impeachment. There’s a lot of red meat here:

#1: Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq

#2 Falsely, Systematically, and with Criminal Intent Conflating the Attacks of September 11, 2001, With Misrepresentation of Iraq as a Security Threat as Part of Fraudulent Justification for a War of Aggression

#3 Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Possessed Weapons of Mass Destruction, to Manufacture a False Case for War

#4 Misleading the American People and Members of Congress to Believe Iraq Posed an Imminent Threat to the United States

#14: Misprision of a felony, misuse and exposure of classified information and cover up (Plame outing)

#15: Providing immunity from prosecution for criminal conduct for contractors in Iraq

#17: Illegal detention – detaining indefinitely, and without charge, American citizens and foreign captives (suspension of habeus)

#18: Torture – secretly authorizing and encouraging use of torture, as matter of official policy

#19 Rendition

#24 Spying on citizens violating 4th Amendment

#26 Announcing intent to violate laws w/signing statements, and then violating those laws.

#27 Failing to comply with congressional subpoenas, and instructing others to do so.

#29: Conspiracy to violate voting rights act of 1965, Ohio Sec of State 2004-06

#34: Obstruction into the investigation of 9/11

That’s just a few of them. And this isn’t wing-nut stuff, this is all stuff that has been discussed at one time or another in the mainstream press. Much of it was hushed up (the NSA spying scandal, election fraud, 9/11 obstruction) but some of it was loud and clear (torture, Plame, illegal Iraq War). Far from being left-wing lunacy, this is the last 7.5 years, distilled into 35 bullet points.

And yet the Media won’t cover a congressman trying to hold Bush/Cheney accountable for their crimes.

I already told you why. But let it sink in. The Mainstream Media are the ones who made the Bush/Cheney disaster possible. They’re the ones who greased the wheels, regurgitated the lies, jumped on the bandwagon and hushed up the really bad shit. Bush, without a fawning press corps, is just another partisan nutcase with a rich daddy. He wouldn’t’ve been re-elected, let alone “elected” in the first place (another coverup there).

Let me lay it down for ya, real simple: If Bush hangs, Brian Williams should hang, too. If Cheney hangs, Tim Russert needs to swing from the same pole. If Rumsfeld goes down to the gallows, Charles Krauthammer and David Brooks need to die too. The blood of OVER ONE MILLION IRAQI INNOCENTS is on their hands.

Maybe that’s why the Media is so protective of the Bush regime: They know if Bush goes down, they all go down. They’ve all bloodied their hands and sullied their souls together. Might as well stick together until the bitter end.

But if we don’t stop them, they’ll turn this nation into a fascist state and make you and I into criminals for believing in justice, peace and freedom. Somehow we’ve got to stop them, but I just don’t know how. I’m just some random guy with a blog. What can I do? There’s no one representing my interests in Washington except Dennis Kucinich.

One man, standing up against the Forces of Evil, spitting in the wind and calling for change. This doesn’t look good for the underdogs.

Meanwhile, the supposed hope of mankind is cozying up to Israel, possibly attending the secret Bilderberg meeting (another media coverup) and generally doing whatever it takes to get elected. Fair enough. But Barack Obama had better watch out that he doesn’t sell his soul in the process.

Maybe the whole Obama campaign is just a mirage, a hallucination by those of us who have dreamed of someone who could bring our government back from the brink of tyranny and outright fascism.

I hope I’m wrong, but it’s hard to believe in anything or anybody anymore. We’ve been utterly betrayed by the government, the media and the elite. It just hurts too much to care anymore. The audacity of hope, indeed.

I’d feel a lot more hopeful if I knew somebody out there was fighting the good fight. I sleep a little sounder knowing Kucinich has the balls of a man twice his size, but he’s only one man. We need a few hundred more like him in Congress.

Dennis Kucinich: I salute you. You are a true American patriot.

Ah, the wisdom of Twitter. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s amazing what you can fit in 140 characters… such as a complete evisceration of the mainstream media (MSM) because of their utter, obsequious hypocrisy and the biased, treasonous way they frame and focus on issues. Here it is, from Chuck Olsen:

“If the corporate media had been as diligent about watchdogging the president as… Rev. Wright, it’s likely we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq.”

Boom. Pretty much says it all doesn’t it?

Here’s where he originally found that quote.

The corporate media chooses — seemingly as one — what to make a big deal out of. And what to blackout.

The Corporate Media (especially the TV news stations who were caught red-handed) have been feeding us Pentagon-approved talking points through the supposedly-independent retired generals who show up for interviews about the war. Strange that they never invite peaceniks on the air, isn’t it? Well, war is big business. You can’t expect truth and fairness when the bottom line is at stake.

Quite simply, the Media act as a megaphone for the positions they support and a censor for those they do not. Peace, wisdom, tranquility, free thought…. these concepts are all offensive to the corporate media. They would rather focus on strife, stupidity, distraction and obedience.

All three major cable news networks are wasting valuable air time on Senator Obama’s former pastor. Why? Is the story newsworthy? Sure. Is wall-to-wall Wright coverage more important than Iraq or gas prices or the climate crisis? No way. But Reverend Wright is a scary, shouting black man and scary shouting black men equal ratings-sweet-ratings.

We expect to see this sort of race-baiting behavior from Fox News Channel, but CNN and MSNBC have, once again, similarly crossed the tabloid threshold into the very same nefarious Roger Ailes realm by beating this nothing story to death.

They’re all the same. Fox News is simply the worst offender. But instead of being an embarrassment to decent journalists everywhere Fox News is seen a pioneer, a bold leader in the (fascist) future of news. Thus, the other news channels simply follow Fox’s lead.

Face it folks: Our mainstream media is controlled. Totally controlled. By just five mega-corporations, all of whom have interests vastly different from the average American.

Is it too hard to imagine that these corporations embrace war, hypocrisy and distraction? Five corporations means five CEOs. These reptilian CEOs have a different agenda than the common man. They’re often Republican, always rich, usually ruthless and seldom charitable. These five scumfucks control 90% of what we see, hear or read in the press and they’ve all profited from the war. The only thing that gives us a chance at regaining our freedom is the internet and I assure you this blog and others like it don’t have ratings anywhere near that of Fox or CNN.

So when you see the Media trumpeting something, be it Paris Hilton, Rev. Wright or American Idol, just remember that they’re showing you what they want you to know and they’re hiding the rest. For everything they tell you they’re obscuring another ten useful facts with their incessant bullshit.

The media doesn’t investigate, they serve the rich; they afflict the afflicted and comfort the comfortable. They are traitors, liars, demons and filth. I consider Big Media’s tacit embrace of the Iraq War before and after the fact to be nothing less than treason.

One former participant, NBC military analyst Kenneth Allard, has called the effort “psyops on steroids.” As Barstow reports, “Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as ‘message force multipliers’ or ‘surrogates’ who could be counted on to deliver administration ‘themes and messages’ to millions of Americans ‘in the form of their own opinions.’ … Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war.”

If there’s any justice in this world they will all burn in the hell they’ve created. I say we give them all a one-way ticket to Baghdad. Sleep in the bed you’ve made, Fuckers!