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*OUTING THE NUCLEAR MAFIA * ** */Huffington Post/ has a good short piece <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/companies-profiting-from-war_n_1313392.html#s744979&title=1_Lockheed_Martin> with a slide show about the companies which profit most from weapons and war. The influence of these companies is awesome, as they employ a part of the tax dollars they get from us to rent our elections, keeping the tax dollars flowing. They own media companies, their investors act as media board members, and they flood mass media with advertising revenue for control of information, keeping most citizens in the dark as much as possible**. Their executives individually make millions in wages and benefits from the taxpayer, and their investors make billions. A great many retired generals and admirals have said if we took the profits out of war, they would come to a screeching halt.* ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *OCCUPY MOVEMENT SPREADS TO COLLEGES * ** *"Students from colleges and high schools around the country gathered Thursday for protests and rallies called the National Day of Action for Education," begins a piece this morning by Saki Knafo <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/01/occupy-wall-street_n_1314948.html#s746896&title=Sara_Shaw>. It is too early to see if this movement will be influential within the larger Occupy protests against inequality,**though it's only starting, and worth recalling that the student movement was a powerful force in ending the Vietnam War.* ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ** ** ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **All of our wars now are more clearly based on lies than at any time in our history, and all of them were based on misinformation. It is not possible to get the masses behind war if the masses know the whole truth. There is a civilized option called diplomacy of which the psychopaths in our State Department seem completely unaware. As a combat vet, I find it sickening that we continue to do this, knowing what's happened in the past. If people could hear the noise of battle (I lost my hearing in Vietnam) they would hear the loudest noises on the planet. If they could see the children of war that I saw, and tried to feed, they would experience the impossibility of keeping children alive under conditions that don't allow food to be grown, or transported, or purchased by the masses. And then there are the bodies, conveniently overlooked by the mass media in our modern wars. Those, such as /LUV News/, who show the splattered bodies of children, are accused of "propaganda" by the real propagandists, the mass media who blot out all of the inconvenient truth in hyping war for profit to please their masters, the media owners, board members and advertisers so deeply invested in profitable wars. What we wind up with is a population of zombies shielded from reality and unaware that they are contributing to a thing far more frightening than any horror movie they've seen, as our nation sinks deeper into savagery and barbarism. George Zornick looked into the justification for the Afghanistan war and proves beyond a shadow of a doubt we are being lied to with false justifications. Will any of the cowards of our sycophantic mass media pick the following story up, or will they continue to stick microphones in front of official sources and call it "news?" --Jack ** When Did the United States Last Kill an Al Qaeda Fighter in Afghanistan? <http://www.thenation.com/blog/166539/when-did-united-states-last-kill-al-qaeda-fighter-afghanistan> *by George Zornick </authors/george-zornick> * *Earlier this week, White House press secretary Jay Carney took a beating <http://www.thenation.com/blog/166492/white-house-taking-heat-afghanistan> on the issue of Afghanistan, following a spate of bad news from the war zone---including more American deaths <http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/03/two-more-western-troops-killed-by-uniformed-afghan-accomplice.html> at the hands of supposed Afghan allies. He was peppered with questions from reporters about the viability, purpose and waning public support for the American mission there. No less than ten times, Carney repeated some version of this justification:* *What the President did when he reviewed U.S. policy in Afghanistan was insist that we focus our attention on what our absolute goals in the country should be, and prioritize them. And he made clear that the number-one priority, the reason why U.S. troops are in Afghanistan in the first place, is to disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat al Qaeda. It was, after all, al Qaeda, based in Afghanistan, that launched the attacks against the United States on September 11th, 2011.* *Finally, ABC's Jake Tapper asked <http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/02/afghanistan-al-qaeda-and-security-todays-qs-for-os-wh-2272012/> Carney when was "the last time US troops in Afghanistan killed anybody associated with Al Qaeda." Carney didn't have an answer, and referred Tapper to the Defense Department and NATO's International Security Assistance Force.* *I queried those agencies Tuesday and got an answer today. According to a Defense Department spokesman, the most recent operation that killed an Al Qaeda fighter was in April 2011---ten months ago. However, there was an "Al Qaeda foreign fighter" captured <http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/al-qaeda-foreign-fighter-captured-during-security-operation.html> near Kabul in May 2011, and an "Al Qaeda facilitator" captured <http://www.isaf.nato.int/article/isaf-releases/isaf-joint-command-morning-operational-update-january-30-2012.html> in the Paktiya province on January 30 of this year.* *By comparison, there have been 466 <http://icasualties.org/OEF/ByMonth.aspx> coalition fatalities since April 2011. * *Given Carney's repeated insistence that the "number one" purpose of the American mission is to "disrupt, dismantle and ultimately defeat" Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, and given the ongoing sacrifices the country is making to achieve that goal, it's very important to keep these benchmarks in mind. It is surprising Carney wasn't aware of them, or didn't disclose them---though, perhaps it's not.* http://www.thenation.com/blog/166539/when-did-united-states-last-kill-al-qaeda-fighter-afghanistan ** ------------------------------------------------------------------------ *If you wish to be removed from this list, please let us know* ** *To join the Liberty Underground news service email libertyuv@hotmail.comwith "join" for a subject* ** *You may also join our talk group athttp://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyundergroundtalk/ <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/libertyundergroundtalk/>if you would like to participate* ** *email: libert...@hotmail.com* ** *Tell your friends about /LUV News/ because some people just don't get it* [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ --------------------------------------------------------------------------- LAAMN: Los Angeles Alternative Media Network --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Unsubscribe: <mailto:laamn-unsubscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Subscribe: <mailto:laamn-subscr...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Digest: <mailto:laamn-dig...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Help: <mailto:laamn-ow...@egroups.com?subject=laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Post: <mailto:la...@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive1: <http://www.egroups.com/messages/laamn> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Archive2: <http://www.mail-archive.com/laamn@egroups.com> --------------------------------------------------------------------------- Yahoo! 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