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In Soviet Russia private ownership of mimeograph machines was illegal.
Vhat a country!

That governments have permitted terrorist acts against their own people, and have even themselves been perpetrators in order to find strategic advantage is quite likely true, but this is the United States we're talking about.

That intelligence agencies, financiers, terrorists and narco-criminals have a long history together is well established, but the Nugan Hand Bank, BCCI, Banco Ambrosiano, the P2 Lodge, the CIA/Mafia anti-Castro/Kennedy alliance, Iran/Contra and the rest were a long time ago, so thereâ(TM)s no need to rehash all that. That was then, this is now!

That Jonathan Bushâ(TM)s Riggs Bank has been found guilty of laundering terrorist funds and fined a US-record $25 million must embarrass his nephew George, but it's still no justification for leaping to paranoid conclusions.

That George Bush's brother Marvin sat on the board of the Kuwaiti-owned company which provided electronic security to the World Trade Centre, Dulles Airport and United Airlines means nothing more than you must admit those Bush boys have done alright for themselves.

That George Bush found success as a businessman only after the investment of Osamaâ(TM)s brother Salem and reputed al Qaeda financier Khalid bin Mahfouz is just one of those things - one of those crazy things.

That Osama bin Laden is known to have been an asset of US foreign policy in no way implies he still is.

That al Qaeda was active in the Balkan conflict, fighting on the same side as the US as recently as 1999, while the US protected its cells, is merely one of history's little aberrations.

The claims of Michael Springman, State Department veteran of the Jeddah visa bureau, that the CIA ran the office and issued visas to al Qaeda members so they could receive training in the United States, sound like the sour grapes of someone who was fired for making such wild accusations.

That one of George Bush's first acts as President, in January 2001, was to end the two-year deployment of attack submarines which were positioned within striking distance of al Qaeda's Afghanistan camps, even as the group's guilt for the Cole bombing was established, proves that a transition from one administration to the next is never an easy task.

That so many influential figures in and close to the Bush White House had expressed, just a year before the attacks, the need for a "new Pearl Harbo

No. Just because many people and their nations have done so since the dawn of civilization does not make it a valid move (bandwagon.)

The "protection" of economic interests fuel and even are the underlying causes for a great many wars and covert acts all over the world (gaining a lock on mutually exclusive resources.)

Allowing nations to perceive it as a VALID means to their ends will allow them to continue excusing it and perpetuating such actions in the world. (Before you say "welcome to the real world," think about the same reasoning on a smaller local scale in a "civilized" community vs an "uncivilized" community.)

Iraq is about Oil Dollars and finally Americans are figuring that out (well, just the oil part.) Its a complete failure because we are not getting the oil and we are losing oil dollars. We are keeping the large war machine employed; however, its at the gamble of destroying the economy. Four large military bases in Iraq will probably not secure economic interests either (remember, the same people wrote the plan in the 90s-- the few experts I've met said they knew this underlying stuff was wrong decades ago. Wrong for long term empire and wrong ethically.)

The Gestapo isn't going to stop them from voting or rig the election.

I think you have some good points there.

1. If the police cant find a judge to get a warrant, bribed or threatened it doesn't matter, that undermines a layer of the current criminal system. When there is a judges signature on a warrant it means that the judge, as well as the police, are both responsible for the legality of the search, and neither can say "its the other guys fault". Under the current system, with the loss of the check and balance, even FBI officers that launched a search on your house, seized property, and damaged your car would not be liable, or responsible if the closest you were to a terrorist was watching 9/11 on TV.

2. While I do like freedom of speech (although its not written the same in the Canadian Constitution) Laws similar to this (restricting freedom of speech) have existed like this in history for various purposes and time spans. It is simply a prerequisite factor to lead to a police state, not really huge contributing factor. Why doesn't it contribute? The government could always say that, "these people were terrorists" or "30KG of C4 was found hidden in box 2 feed under their foundation". The government will always find ways to cover up when it screws up, this specific restriction simply makes it illegal to talk about them.

3 I will say that The USA does look somewhat like Germany did in 1933 pre-Hitler era (http://www.crisispapers.org/Editorials/germany-19 33.htm/ but I don't support most of it, just some alarmist). There is no easy way to avoid the comparison between Bush being elected for the second time, versus Hitler's electron (aside from Hitler having more electoral support). Both promised a strong economy, stability, and protection from external threats (communism vs terrorism), as well to support the current companies.

I would sincerely hope this is not where the USA is going, as the USA today has a lot more muscle to flex then Nazi Germany ever did, and it seems somewhat stupid to repeat the same mistakes just 70 years later.

Medevo

Iraq is not a free country. It is owned and operated by PNAC, under the auspices of the Bush Administration, which is in turn owned and operated by a number of large corporations and wealthy individuals.

Microsoft being one of the largest contributors, expect Windows Everywhere. It isn't just a coincidence that Windows is on the "allowed to export" list and Linux isn't.

I'm sure I'll get flamed by the libertarian free-market fanatics for posting this, but this is the truth and it needs to be heard.

Ernest Partridge: 'Dear CEO: Is this really what you want?'

By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers [crisispapers.org]

An open letter to the Chief Executive Officers of the Fortune 500 companies, and of the major commercial media.

Dear CEO,

Congratulations! You have won, decisively and overwhelmingly.

Your favored politicians and political party are now in control of all three branches of the United States government. Your political and economic ideologies, preached virtually without rebuttal in your media, have been enacted by law, executive order and judicial decree. And those ideologies are destined to be solidified as federal judges who endorse these ideologies come to dominate the federal judiciary.

As a result of your victory, the Congress of the United States now follows the dictates of its corporate "sponsors," and is thus no longer responsive to the wishes and interests of its constituents. The Federal regulatory agencies the EPA, the FCC, the SEC, the FDA, etc. have become the captives, and virtual subsidiaries, of the industries that they were intended to regulate.

Thanks to "your" Administration and Congress, and the unchallenged political message of "your" media, the fortunate wealthy few, like yourself, are the beneficiaries of "tax reform" legislation which accelerates the flow of national wealth from the vast majority of our population which produces that wealth, to those of you who own and control that wealth. That same tax policy is producing enormous deficits in the federal budget and an increase in the national debt that will likely bankrupt the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and burden our children and grandchildren essentially forever. But, of course, none of that directly affects you and yours.

All in all, you have received from the incumbent Administration and Congress, an overwhelmingly favorable return on your investment in campaign funds.

However, I must wonder if you have carefully assessed the larger return on this investment, the full consequences of your complete political victory.

If you do, I suspect that you may discover that yours has been a pyrrhic victory. You might, on reflection, decide that you do not really want the prize that you have won. You may in fact have reaped a whirlwind so dreadful that you may wish, while there is still time, to make corrections or even, dare I say, reparations.

One might urge you to reassess your "victory" and your continuing course of political action on grounds of morality, of religion, or of political tradition. Instead, I would ask you to assess the current political condition in the United States from the perspective of that central principle of the dominant economic theory: the principle of self-interest.

From the perspective of self-interest alone, I would submit that all that you have won may be much less than meets the eye, and that this accomplishment might even contains the seeds of its own destruction, and of your ruin.


The Economy: At the Democratic convention of 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the finest Republican mind in the Democratic Party, quoted Harry Truman: "to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat." This is more than a partisan slogan, it is history. Mark Hulbert reports, in CBS Market Watch [smirkingchimp.com] that "since 1901, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages average annual gain, after inflation, has been nearly twice as high when a Democrat has occupied the White House."

But if the history of the last century is unconvincing, just think back to the past decade. While its true that the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress have given you