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by Chris Floyd - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"This age: layers of lime harden in the sick son's blood... There's nowhere to run from the tyrant-epoch... Who else will you kill? Who else glorify? What other lies will you invent?"
- Osip Mandelshtam, 1 January 1924
This column stands foursquare with the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, when he warns that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large. We know, as does the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, that this statement is an incontrovertible fact, a matter of scientific certainty. And how can we and the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense, be so sure that there will be more terrorist attacks against the American people and civilization at large?
Because these attacks will be instigated at the order of the Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, U.S. Secretary of Defense.
This astonishing admission was buried deep in a story, which was itself submerged by mounds of gray newsprint and glossy underwear ads in last Sunday's Los Angeles Times. There--in an article by military analyst William Arkin, detailing the vast expansion of the secret armies being massed by the former Nixon bureaucrat now lording it over the Pentagon--came the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception."
According to a classified document prepared for Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization--the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)"--will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
In other words--and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan--the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people--your family, your friends, your lovers, you--in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.
For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice--a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy. (Or should we use the Regime's own preferred terminology and just call it "evil"?) No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action--by killing their family members?, luring them with loot?, fueling them with drugs?, plying them with jihad propaganda? , and messing with their mamas? Or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves?--they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire. And what if the territory you fancy doesn't actually harbor any convenient marauders to use for fun and profit? Well, surely a God-like "super-Intelligence Support Activity" is capable of creation ex nihilo, yes?
The Rumsfeld-Bush plan to employ murder and terrorism for political, financial and ideological gain does have historical roots (besides al Qaeda, the Stern Gang, the SA, the SS, the KGB, the IRA, the UDF, Eta, Hamas, Shining Path and countless other upholders of Bushian morality, decency and freedom). We refer of course to Operations Northwoods, oft mentioned in these pages: the plan that America's top military brass presented to President John Kennedy in 1963, calling for a phony terrorist campaign--complete with bombings, hijackings, plane crashes and dead
Americans--to provide "justification" for an invasion of Cuba, the Mafia/Corporate fiefdom, which had recently been lost to Castro.
Kennedy rejected the plan, and was killed a few months later. Now Rumsfeld has resurrected Northwoods, but on a far grander scale, with resources at his disposal undreamed of by those brass of yore, with no counterbalancing global rival to restrain him--and with an ignorant, corrupt president who has shown himself all too eager to embrace any means whatsoever that will augment the wealth and power of his own narrow, undemocratic, elitist clique.
There is prestuplyeniye here, transgression, a stepping-over--deliberately, with open eyes, with forethought, planning, and conscious will--of lines that should never be crossed. Acting in deadly symbiosis with rage-maddened killers, God-crazed ranters and those supreme "sub-state actors," the mafias, Bush and his cohorts are plunging the world into an abyss, an endless night of black ops, retribution, blowback, deceit, of murder and terror--wholesale, retail, state-sponsored, privatized; of fear and degradation, servility, chaos, and the perversion of all that's best in us, of all that we've won from the bestiality of our primal nature, all that we've raised above the mindless ravening urges and impulses still boiling in the mud of our monkey brains.
It's not a fight for freedom; it's a retreat into darkness.
And the day will be a long time coming.
This E-letter is posted at
http://www.whatmatters.nu/wmeletters/wmeletters22.html#WM-108
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Legally Drugging Our
Children Just Got Easier
Big Pharma Slips Congress An $18 Million Mickey
By Arianna Huffington
Working For Change.com
Chalk up another profitable victory for those promoting the legal drugging of America's children -- also known as the good folks of the pharmaceutical industry. Earlier this month, a federal judge struck down a Food and Drug Administration regulation that required drug makers to test medicines routinely given to children.
As a result, America's legal drug pushers are once again free to offer their potent concoctions for our kids' consumption without having to prove that they are safe or effective for pediatric use.
This is no small matter, given the skyrocketing number of children being prescribed heaping helpings of powerful mood-altering drugs. For instance, 1.5 million kids are currently taking Prozac and its equivalents even though the FDA hasn't approved these drugs for use by anyone under 18.
In making his ruling, U.S. District Judge Henry Kennedy, Jr. made it clear that the problem wasn't the FDA's attempt to protect our kids, but Congress' failure to authorize them to do so. He pointed out that earlier this year Congress considered but passed on the chance to require drug companies to make sure that products designed for grown-ups but regularly given to kids are, in fact, safe for children to take.
Instead, our elected representatives -- legislating under the influence (LUI) of the $18 million drug companies have donated to congressional campaigns this election cycle -- approved an industry handout, offering "financial incentives" to companies willing to take the trouble to find out if their products are dangerous for kids. Rewarding companies that bother to behave with ordinary civic responsibility is becoming a bad habit for Washington and it reveals their scary baseline assumption that, left alone, big business can never be expected to do the right thing.
Sens. Christopher Dodd, Mike DeWine, and Hillary Clinton are cosponsoring a new bill that would supersede the federal court's ruling and give the FDA legal authority to require drug testing for children. "Children will be harmed if we don't pass this legislation," warns DeWine. So far, the troika's efforts to bring the bill to a vote have been thwarted by the drug companies' loyal beneficiaries in the Senate.
But Capitol Hill is not the only pharmaceutical industry-friendly place in Washington. The drug companies also appear to have found an ally inside the highest echelons of the FDA.
In keeping with the White House's habit of assigning foxes to guard the henhouses they used to stalk -- including the tres-vulpine Harvey Pitt and Gale Norton -- last summer the president appointed lawyer Daniel Troy as the FDA's general counsel. While in private practice, Troy had successfully challenged the agency's power to regulate drug companies -- particularly the companies' ability to freely promote and market their products.
It probably shouldn't come as too much of a surprise then that, from his lofty post, Troy has overseen a dramatic decrease in the number of drug companies that have been reprimanded for running false or misleading commercials -- even as the drug ads filling our TV screens and magazines have multiplied. Of course, it could just be that the drug companies have all joined the Boy Scouts and are now being meticulously honest and trustworthy.
One of the pharmaceutical industry's weapons of choice in its fight to free itself from federal oversight has been the First Amendment, a tactic once favored by none other than Daniel Troy. Groups aligned with the industry have successfully used free speech arguments to convince courts to strike down regulations barring drug companies from advertising so-called "compounded drugs" and from telling doctors about unapproved uses for its products -- such as giving adult drugs to children. The founding fathers would have had to pop a lot of pills to conceive of this perversion of the Bill of Rights.
Reeling from these rulings and under increasing pressure from the drug industry, this spring the FDA invited interested parties to comment on whether any of its other rules raise "First Amendment issues". Among the flurry of feedback the agency received was a suggestion from the ever-helpful gang at Pfizer that the FDA do away with those pesky rules requiring drug companies to list a product's side effects and replace them with a cheerful reminder that since all medications come with some risks, patients should always check with their doctor before taking them.
Makes sense. Why bother letting consumers know that downing a brightly colored, widely advertised little pill might cause nervousness, anxiety, insomnia, restlessness, suicidal thoughts, self mutilation, manic behavior, and bad breath when a simple and direct "Consult your doctor" -- or rather "consult your overworked, underpaid, HMO-tormented physician" -- will suffice? Who on earth takes a prescription drug without consulting their doctor? It's not like patients can prescribe the drugs for themselves, although now that I've said it, I fear I've given drug companies and Daniel Troy an idea for the ultimate regulatory rollback.
This kind of self-serving, the-public-be-damned thinking is precisely why we need strong drug industry oversight in Washington, not appointees and politicians beholden to their deep-pocket patrons. Especially when our children's health and well-being are at stake.
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