--- Begin Message ---
-Caveat Lector-
Greetings from the Center for an Informed America! Please forward this
newsletter widely. If this was forwarded to you and you would like to
receive future mailings, e-mail a request to be added to this mailing
list.
The Center for an Informed America
NEWSLETTER #5
June 16, 2002
http://davesweb.cnchost.com/nwsltr5.html
Greetings to all subscribers, and best wishes to all the fathers out
there!
The chess moves being made by the Bush team are, with each passing day,
growing increasingly transparent, increasingly cynical, increasingly
contemptuous of the American people, and - perhaps most of all -
increasingly arrogant.
It is becoming more and more obvious that this administration doesn't
feel the need to even give lip service to justifying their actions to
the American people -- doesn't feel the need to tell lies with even a
modicum of credibility. For Bush & Co., no lie is too absurd to parade
out before the American people.
Now these people, with the rather obvious exception of George himself,
are not stupid. They simply don't care. They have elevated arrogance to
a level perhaps never before seen on the world stage. They know that
they can rely on all of their media whores to boldly repeat any lie that
rolls off their lips, and they really don't give a damn how thoroughly
ridiculous those lies have become.
In my mind's eye, I can picture them sitting in a smoke-filled back room
somewhere laughing their asses off at the willful ignorance and blind
patriotism of many of our fellow citizens. Yes, even as we wave our
flags and tell pollsters how much we admire the exemplary job that Team
Bush is doing, they are having a good laugh at our expense.
How could they not be?
They have taken a man who, if he hadn't had the good fortune to be born
with the name "Bush," would have had a hard time holding down a job
shoveling shit out of the stables, and they have installed him, against
the will of the electorate, in what is purportedly the highest office in
the land.
In a country where we are indoctrinated from the womb to believe that we
will be rewarded for hard work, talent, and intelligence - where we are
taught that the very best and brightest will naturally rise to the top -
they have chosen to install at the very top of the food chain a lazy
(intellectually and otherwise), talentless, functionally illiterate,
hollow shell of a man.
In a nation of better than 250,000,000 people, George Bush was declared
to be the best qualified applicant to represent to the country, and to
the world, the principles for which we claim to stand -- principles
which George Bush contradicts by his very existence.
And cynically installing Sir George was just a warm-up exercise for what
has followed.
If you listen carefully, you can almost hear the bellows of laughter
coming from that smoke-filled room.
Cheney: "Wait a minute guys ... how's this for an idea ... let's all
start talking about how he has really grown into the job."
(hysterical laughter follows)
Rumsfeld: "Wait ... I've got an even better one: let's compare him to
Churchill!"
(even more hysterical laughter)
Ari Fleischer: "Oh my god, that's perfect!"
(riotous laughter)
George Bush: "Ha, ha, that's funny ... who are we talking about?"
Karl Rove: "Hey Rummy, are you going to pass that bong around or what?"
(high-fives all around the room)
If one has the ability to journalistically detach ones self from the
passing parade, the fools on the Hill put on a wonderfully surreal and
sublimely hilarious show. But the unfortunate reality is that the
actions taken by this administration and its congressional team of
rubber-stampers have consequences that are all too real and all too
ominous.
Without question the most disturbing development of the week was the
announcement of the arrest of "Dirty Bomber" suspect Jose Padilla. Now
make no mistake about it, everything about the purported case against
Padilla absolutely reeks, from the cynical timing of the announcement,
to the fact that the state doesn't have anything even remotely
resembling actual evidence to support its charges.
The boys in the back room must have been in rare form as they bounced
around ideas about how to present the Padilla case to the American
people.
There is no question that the timing and near hysterical tone of the
initial announcement smacked of cynicism and opportunism. John Ashcroft,
appointed to office after demonstrating that he couldn't even beat a
corpse to get elected to office ("Hey John, how did you do against that
dead guy?" "Oh, I lost ... but I think I can take him next time"), acted
as though he had single-handedly foiled a plot, just in the nick of
time, that would have reduced New York City to a mushroom cloud.
Now don't get me wrong -- that's a really good story. Really scary. It
made us all feel very vulnerable and thankful that Uncle John was there
to save us. The only problem is that the entire story is bullshit. And
not even good bullshit, like the kind that I spread all over my lawn
last weekend to piss off my neighbors. No -- this bullshit has a much
more pronounced stench. Call it, as others have, Bushit.
First of all, the alleged 'dirty bomber' had been in custody for weeks,
and had ceased being a threat, if in fact he ever was one, long before
the announcement was made. Second, he didn't actually have a plan, nor a
target, nor the materials to create the so-called 'dirty bomb,' nor the
training to know how to build a 'dirty bomb,' nor - as near as can be
discerned - much of a motive.
So Ashcroft's scare tactic of presenting a scenario whereby there was an
imminent threat to the country can only be described as pure,
unmitigated Bushit.
Then there is the fact that the threat posed by a 'dirty bomb' was,
shall we say, somewhat overstated. For those who don't yet know what a
'dirty bomb' is, it works on much the same principle as that little
stunt you used to pull as a kid: putting an M-80 under a pile of dog
shit on your neighbor's front porch.
And the effects of the 'dirty bomb,' according to the experts, are
basically the same as the effects of the shit bomb: a lot of noise, a
big mess to clean up, and a lot of upset people -- but not much real
damage.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000041027jun11.story
So this entire escapade could be laughed off as just another stunningly
heavy-handed, and unbelievably transparent, attempt by the Bush regime
to manufacture a blatantly fraudulent threat to the nation to keep the
American people in a constant state of fear and confusion so that they
will blindly lend their support to the most reactionary of police-state
measures.
But the scripted response to this sideshow spectacle is certainly no
laughing matter. Make no mistake about it: Team Bush has openly declared
war on the American people, particularly all the dissenters in the
crowd. Anyone who fails to grasp the significance of the unabashedly
Gestapo-inspired actions taken against Padilla is truly living in a
fantasy world.
All joking and snide remarks aside, this is a very serious, and very
deadly game we're playing here. The stakes couldn't possibly be any
higher. There is nothing less at stake here than the futures of your
children and your grandchildren. So the question is: what is it going to
be? What kind of a world do you want them to inherit?
A world of never-ending violence and war? A soulless world devoid of
compassion? A world of vast police-state powers? A world filled with
fear and despair? A cold and brutal world where anything remotely
resembling social services have been sacrificed on the altar of
grotesquely bloated military budgets? A world where the select few hoard
all the world's resources while the huddled masses are left to wallow in
their misery?
What's that you say? That's not what you want? You think your kids
deserve a better world than that to grow up in? Then the question that
needs to be asked is: what are you going to do about it? The boys in the
back room don't think you're going to do a goddamn thing about it.
That's why they're laughing at you.
And to tell you the truth, I'm not so sure that they aren't right.
The changes that have occurred in this country in the last nine months,
with only the most muted of protests, are truly staggering. The world
(or more precisely, what we refer to as the 'Third World') has been put
on notice that the formidable U.S. military machine will strike first,
will strike without warning, and will strike without presenting any
justifying evidence.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22374-2002Jun9.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-323129,00.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000041033jun11.story
A U.S. citizen has been thrown in a military prison without a shred of
evidence having been presented to justify the sensational accusations
leveled by the Bush regime. He hasn't been charged with any crimes,
because there isn't any evidence to support any criminal charges.
He will not be brought to trial, because the state would then have to
present some kind of a case, which would, of course, require the
presentation of actual evidence. He is not allowed any legal counsel. He
will be held under such conditions, according to Team Bush,
approximately until hell freezes over.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-legal11jun11.story
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/bomb-j12.shtml
That the case of Jose Padilla, who may or may not prefer to be called
Abdullah Al Muhajir, was used in an inept attempt to bolster the
credibility of the FBI ("see? ... we didn't screw up this time")
couldn't possibly be any more transparent. Even the subservient U.S.
media took note of the convenient timing by Ashcroft and Co.
Far more disturbing though is that Padilla's case is also being used to
set a precedent, and an extremely alarming one at that: any American
citizen can be swept off the street under the most preposterous of
pretexts, and locked away indefinitely without the bother of legal
representation, an indictment, a trial, the presentation of evidence, or
any of those other outdated traditions of the American criminal
'justice' system.
And don't look to the courts to curtail the blatantly unconstitutional
powers that this administration has unilaterally conferred upon itself.
The head of the presidential appointment team, William Rehnquist, has
made it very clear that the highest court in the land has no intention
of doing any such thing.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000041966jun15.story
There is no shortage of other Bushit to cover this week, but first I
have to get to some of the latest news out of the Washington surrogate
in the Middle East known as Israel. I have a fairly large backlog of
articles, so bear with me while I try to get through them all.
First off we have a report here of a clandestine meeting between CIA
Director George Tenet and his counterpart in the Mossad. They were, I'm
sure, discussing peaceful solutions to the current conflict.
http://www.zawya.com/Story.cfm?id=634069031&Section=Main&page=Home&channel=All%20Arab%20News&objectid=2A17E941-F5E0-11D4-867D00D0B74A0D7C
And here's a report from Amnesty International condemning the mass
detention of Palestinians "in cruel, inhuman and degrading conditions."
http://web.amnesty.org/ai.nsf/Index/MDE150742002?OpenDocument&of=COUNTRIES\ISRAEL/OCCUPIED+TERRITORIES
Coupled with that is this condemnation from the International Committee
of the Red Cross.
http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList325/C4091471E111E80BC1256BA00058ECF5
Next we have a website calling for divestment from Israel until such
time that the Israeli leadership complies with longstanding UN
resolutions that have been ignored for decades.
http://www.princeton.edu/~speac/apartheid.htm
The next order of business is this WSWS posting that looks at the Bush
regime's support for Sharon's refusal to seek diplomatic solutions.
George and Ariel purportedly agree that there can be no negotiations
until the Palestinian Authority has new leadership.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/isra-j12.shtml
The truth though is that the last thing the Western powers want is for
Arafat to be replaced. If that was indeed the goal, Yasser would have
drawn his last breath a long time ago. The furthest thing from Bush and
Sharon's minds is deposing Yasser Arafat, which would create a power
vacuum that could conceivably be filled by someone who isn't a pawn of
Western intelligence services.
This Los Angeles Times report takes a peek at the concerted efforts made
by Israeli military forces to prevent aid groups from getting
humanitarian assistance and basic supplies to the besieged Palestinian
people. http://www.latimes.com/la-000041017jun11.story
Finally, here are a couple of postings that take another look at the
wanton war crimes committed by Israeli forces in the Jenin refugee camp
-- war crimes that are openly boasted of by one of the men who committed
them.
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=648422002
http://www.gush-shalom.org/archives/kurdi_eng.html
Of course we all know, as various respondents keep reminding me, that
"everyone" now agrees that there was no massacre in Jenin. That is why,
I'm thinking, Israel blocked all efforts to conduct any sort of a
serious investigation into what exactly took place there.
According to Sharon, Israel stands above international law. In fact,
Israel doesn't have to answer to anyone for anything that it chooses to
do: "Israel may have the right to put others on trial, but certainly no
one has the right to put the Jewish people and the State of Israel on
trial."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/middle_east/newsid_1241000/1241371.stm
Speaking of arrogance, I seem to remember reading something about some
other rogue state that declares itself to be above the law, but I can't
quite put my finger on which country that is ...
http://www.thebulletin.org/bulletinwirearchive/BulletinWire010817.html
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/15/14542/384
And speaking of massacres, it turns out that that far-fetched story that
the Bush boys put out months ago about a prison revolt in Mazar-i-Sharif
was exactly what some of us said it was at the time: Bushit.
http://www.news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=648372002
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=22&art_id=qw1023894901416B265&se
What actually occurred there, according to an apparently well-documented
film, was a U.S.-directed massacre on a scale that would have made the
Nazis proud. Don't expect though to see this film showing up on your
television screens anytime soon.
And here's some more Bushit exposed: remember that badly-botched hostage
rescue operation in the Philippines that the United States had nothing
to do with and didn't provide any military support for? Well ...
shockingly enough, it turns out that the administration may have been
fudging just a little bit on that story.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/06/09/1022982800237.html
Continuing on, here's yet another Bushit story exposed: remember when
the Bush team moved into the White House as though they had actually won
the election and then started whining about how the Clinton staffers had
totally trashed the place? It seems that Bob Barr wasn't going to let
that story go away, so he persuaded the GAO to conduct a thorough
inquiry.
And now, thousands of man-hours and hundreds of thousands of dollars
later, we have a 200+ page report that reveals that there was, at most,
a total of $15,000 in maintenance and repairs costs after the Clinton
team moved out. And apparently (and this is the really scandalous part),
they weren't required to leave a security deposit when they rented the
place.
http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/front/la-na-clinton12jun12.story
Some of you may remember another bit of Bushit as well: The Smirk's
claims during the presidential selection that he wasn't into "nation
building." We should assume then that the Bush team wouldn't have any
interest in shaping the 'post-war' government of Afghanistan.
But according to a number of reports, Afghanistan's loya jirga was a
wholly manufactured and U.S.-directed affair:
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia_china/story.jsp?story=304429
http://www.truthout.org/docs_02/09.14C.afghan.vote.htm
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/jun2002/afgh-j15.shtml
>From Canada's Globe and Mail comes this fascinating bit of information:
"In the minutes after the [September 11] attacks, control of the
continent's airspace was turned over to NORAD." According to the deputy
commander of NORAD, their "reaction on that day was sufficiently quick"
-- so much so that he claims that "we may well have precluded at least
one other hijacking."
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/GIS.Servlets.HTMLTemplate?tf=tgam/common/FullStory.html&cf=tgam/common/FullStory.cfg&configFileLoc=tgam/config&vg=BigAdVariableGenerator&date=20020613&dateOffset=&hub=international&title=International&cache_key=international¤t_row=3&start_row=3&num_rows=1
Now that is a most remarkable statement given the fact that the most
damning evidence of complicity of the Bush administration in the events
of September 11 has always been the complete absence of any civil air
defense measures taken that day.
Though aircraft that were known to have been hijacked remained in the
air for considerable periods of time that day, no jets were ever
scrambled to intercept the errant aircraft. Dispatching interceptors is,
as several researchers have noted, a fairly routine procedure. It does
not require that the hijacked craft be shot down. The first job of an
interceptor is merely to attempt to make contact with the suspect plane.
And at no time did that happen on September 11. There is simply no
reasonable explanation for that. There is no way that it can be
explained away, and no way that it can be spun out of existence. That is
why the 'conspiracy' bashers on the 'left' like Michael Albert and David
Corn tend to steer clear of the issue.
In the following posting, an experienced pilot explains how the air
traffic and civil air defense systems work, and why the official
September 11 story doesn't add up:
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=165346&article=10650. And here,
for additional perspective, is the transcript of an interview with Jared
Israel, who has been at the forefront in emphasizing the significance of
the lack of any military response to the attacks:
http://emperors-clothes.com/indict/radio-1.htm
In other news, The Smirk has now signed into law a "Bioterror Attack
Bill," part of an ongoing effort by the boys in the back room to
militarize the country's healthcare system. The bill was passed by the
U.S. Congress with but a single dissenting vote, carrying on a post-9/11
tradition.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-000041575jun13.story
Apparently the casting of a single dissenting vote in the 435-seat House
is supposed to reassure us that there is still some loyal opposition on
the Hill to Plan Bush.
For those who doubt that militarizing healthcare, or - to put it another
way - the merging of medicine and law enforcement, is a goal of the Bush
regime, take a look at this photo and ask yourself: does this look like
a man who should serve as the top healthcare official in the nation?
[Image]
No? Well, George Bush thinks that it does. Meet Richard Carmona, The
Smirk's pick to serve the country as Surgeon General.
For those of you who are wondering how all those additional billions of
dollars allocated to America's defense will be spent, one avenue of
research is the possibility of converting ground troops into cyborg-like
"supermen." And coming soon to a war near you, we may soon have the
"objective individual combat weapon" to arm our robotroops:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1112000/1112411.stm
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/military/1998/9/army_wonder_weapon/index.phtml
Other uses for your tax dollars include the creation of "Directed Energy
Weapons" - to be used for military purposes and for civilian law
enforcement and crowd control (which is to say, the control of dissent)
- and the control of the weather as a potentially devastating tool of
war.
http://cndyorks.gn.apc.org/yspace/articles/raytheon-optics.htm
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/military/1997/2/weather_wars/
There were, I'm happy to report, some encouraging developments this
week, though they were easily lost in the flurry of 'dirty bomber'
reports. For example, an unprecedented legal decision will force Unocal
to answer in court for its human rights abuses in Burma:
http://www.earthrights.org/news/unocal11june.html
http://www.earthrights.org/unocal/
And, though it is a long-shot at best, the Bush team may find themselves
in court as well, answering to charges that they knowingly and willfully
allowed the events of September 11 to transpire:
http://www.examiner.com/news/default.jsp?story=n.lawyer.0611w. In a
similar vein, a coalition of World Trade Center widows have come
together to demand an independent investigation:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/politics/12WIDO.html?ex=1024899617&ei=1&en=abd51f87c44203ab.
Activist Judi Bari won a posthumous court victory when her estate was
awarded nearly $3 million by a federal jury as compensation for the
violation of her civil rights by the FBI and the Oakland Police
Department. http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-000041226jun12.story
Bari had been the victim of a Cointelpro-type operation. Cointelpro was,
of course, a massive domestic spying operation aimed at stifling dissent
in this country (http://www.sfgate.com/campus/). For those who missed it
the first time around, have no fear: it's coming back with a vengeance,
thanks to Ashcroft, Ridge and the rest of the White House gang.
I mentioned several pages back that John Ashcroft lost his last Senate
race to a dead guy. It just occurred to me, as I am writing this, that
maybe we should have corpses run as candidates in all elections. That
might be a good way to clear all the jackals out of office without
merely replacing them with other jackals.
Maybe we can even start up a Corpse Party and fill the White House and
Congress with dead guys. We can tie strings to their arms and legs so
that they can be animated when necessary. They will basically function
exactly as our current politicians do, except that they won't smell
quite as bad and won't make quite as many asinine statements to the
press.
Moving on to the week in sports, some basketball team from Los Angeles
won some kind of a championship thanks in part to some questionable
officiating, and Mike Tyson was knocked out by Lennox Lewis -- which
wasn't nearly as entertaining as watching Greg Brady get his ass kicked
by Danny Partridge on Fox's "Celebrity Boxing." Now that's
entertainment. Lewis, I'm happy to report, finished the fight with both
of his ears intact.
And finally, I leave you with a very special treat from my mailbag this
week: actual e-mails that I have received from my alleged relatives.
Specifically, these two e-mails arrived in response to a mailing of mine
that mistakenly found its way into the in-box of my first-cousin Nancy
and her husband Harry. OK ... it didn't really arrive there mistakenly
... I actually sent it there deliberately, but that's beside the point.
Harry and Nancy are, as their correspondence indicates, huge fans of my
work. This first response came from Harry. Now Harry is, purportedly, a
fairly well educated man who runs a successful business in America's
heartland. I'm quite embarrassed to say though that his e-mailed
response is reproduced here exactly as it arrived:
Man your are out there, if you could onle have served in the
military and not hide behind some else who served for you.
Just to give you the privledge to slam anthing you don't feel
is good. Ever thought of living in Iraq or Iran? I'll pay for
the ticket. Boso
This country has alot to be proud of and people like you will
never know it.
To bad.
Harry
I don't think the president himself could have composed a more literate
message. This second, considerably more frantic mailing arrived less
than an hour later:
David, I didn't read any of your email and Harry didn't read
much of your email before he realized that he didn't share
your opinions. Be advised that we will NOT open any emails
that you send in the future. Are time is very valuable. Please
remove us from your email address book. I'm sorry you are
missing the blessing of being an American and living in the
United States. You are in our prayers.
Your Cousin,
Nancy
You would have thought that Satan himself had deposited mail into their
in-box. I haven't sent them any further mailings. I don't want to take
up any more of their valuable time. There are flags that need to be
waved and bibles that need to be thumped. Hypocrisy can be a very
time-consuming task.
I had some other very amusing e-mails that were sent by a few other
cousins, but I seem to have already deleted them. Maybe I'll send this
newsletter out to the family to see if I can generate some new comedy
material for a future newsletter.
Until then ....
(Permission is hereby granted for this material to be widely
distributed, provided that the content is not altered in any way.
Forwarding, re-posting and air-dropping printed leaflets over Washington
are all encouraged.)
<A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/";>www.ctrl.org</A>
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic
screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are
sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis-
directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with
major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought.
That being said, CTRLgives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and
always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no
credence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html
<A HREF="http://peach.ease.lsoft.com/archives/ctrl.html";>Archives of
[EMAIL PROTECTED]</A>
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
<A HREF="http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/";>ctrl</A>
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
--- End Message ---
