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The State

June 17, 2002 - 12:02pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

Wanna know who really runs the USA? Take a look at these great charts... they rule

June 17, 2002 - 10:42am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

What Can be Done?

By John Stanton and Wayne Madsen, 10 June 2002

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not
be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience
hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are
sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpation's, pursuing
invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security [...]" US
Declaration of Independence, 1776

As July 4, 2002 approaches, Americans can no longer afford to practice
armchair democracy and checkbook citizenship. If the public does not rise
out of its feeble and hypnotic state it puts the lives of its children and
grandchildren at the disposal of utilitarian political, corporate and
military leaders who view flesh and blood as human capital, easily usable
and disposable in the march for the accumulation of wealth, power and
resources.

June 14, 2002 - 11:46am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

A People's Economic Revolution

Harry Valentine

[Posted June 13, 2002]

People's revolutions generally have their origins in inappropriate
governmental behavior. This behavior may be exploitative, it may be
oppressive, tyrannical, or even despotic. In rare instances, the opportunity
may present itself whereby the people may rise up and overthrow an otherwise
unpopular government. Not all successful uprisings, such as the Bolshevik
Revolution or Iran's anti-American revolution, are to the long-term
advantage of all citizens.

June 12, 2002 - 4:40pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
The State

The Golden Age of Things to Write Economics Term Papers About

The Mogambo Guru

Greenspan's Fed couldn't contain itself any longer. Total credit extended by
the Fed jumped $12 billion last week. Twelve billion! Total Fed credit
outstanding is now larger than currency in circulation. They managed to hold
themselves to the relatively minor fraud of sterilizing a paltry $2.5
billion for the same week. The Treasury jumped in and released another $5
billion in fresh fiat currency.

Man, these are exciting times for economists. We are in the epicenter of the
bizarre endgame of pandemic central bank corruption, and in the future this
will be referred to as the Golden Age of Things to Write Economics Term
Papers About.

June 5, 2002 - 1:10pm -- nomadlab
Analysis & Polemic
The State


Anonymous Comrade writes "THE DREADFUL RECORD OF THE FBI


Printed on Wednesday, June 05, 2002


By John Chuckman
YellowTimes.org Columnist (Canada)


(YellowTimes.org) ­ John Ashcroft, likely inspired while rolling around on the plush carpet of the Attorney General's office during a sudden onset of speaking in tongues, has given the FBI new powers for domestic spying. FBI Director Robert Mueller, ever-vigilant for the rights of Americans, assured the public that the Bureau's agents had been "hampered" by bureaucratic restrictions, his tone and substance closely resembling an American executive grumbling about the Environmental Protection Agency's having hampered sluicing operations of toxic sludge into wetlands.


The FBI is now free, in the great, "no damn fed'rah regulation" tradition of Enron or Silverado savings and loan, to pursue its goals. Only this is not just another crooked corporation chiseling people's savings, but a secret police force with vast powers and an unwholesome history.


Needless to say, Mr. Bush warmly welcomed the changes.

May 6, 2002 - 9:35am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
The State

polo writes

What Is A Terrorist?

by Jeff Cohen

ter·ror·ist (ter'er-ist) n.

1. One who engages in acts or an act of terrorism.

2. One who leads an armed group that kills civilians as a means of political intimidation -- unless he terrorizes Haitians while on the CIA-payroll, as did 1990s death squad leader Emmanuel Constant, in which case the U.S. refuses to extradite him to Haiti, even after Sept. 11, 2001.

3. One who targets civilian airliners and ships -- unless he blows up a Cuban civilian airliner, killing 73 people, and fires at a Polish freighter, like Orlando Bosch, in which case he is coddled and paroled by the Bush Justice Department in 1990, and his extradition is blocked.

4. One who leads a group that engages in kidnapping and murder -- unless the victims are Hondurans attacked by CIA-backed death squad Battalion 316, in which case Battalion architect Gustavo Alvarez becomes a Pentagon consultant, while the then-ambassador to Honduras who downplayed the terror, John Negroponte, is appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations days after Sept. 11.

5. One who uses rape and murder for political purposes -- unless the victims are four U.S. church women sexually assaulted and killed in 1980 by members of El Salvador’s U.S.-backed military, in which case excuses and distortions pour forth from then-U.N. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick (“these nuns were not just nuns; they were also political activists”) and Secretary of State Al Haig (the nuns “may have tried to run a roadblock”).

6. One who designates civilians as “soft targets” to be attacked in the cause of political transformation -- unless the targets are Nicaraguans killed by Contra guerrillas armed and directed by the U.S who, according to Human Rights Watch, “systematically engage in violent abuses…so prevalent that these may be said to be their principal means of waging war.”

7. One who facilitates a massacre of civilians -- unless the victims are 900 Palestinians shot and hacked to death in the Sabra and Shatila camps by Lebanese Christian militia as Israeli soldiers stood guard, in which case Israel’s then-Defense Minster (now Prime Minister) Ariel Sharon remains a U.S. “War on Terrorism” ally after being censured as indirectly responsible for the massacre by an Israeli commission of inquiry."

April 14, 2002 - 4:16pm -- Stenglander
News
The State

nolympics writes "The following article by Mouin Rabbani was posted by the Students for Justice in Palestine listserve:

The Only Truth About Jenin is the Cover-Up

by Mouin Rabbani

April 12, 2002

On the morning of Wednesday 10 April, reports began to emerge from
the Jenin refugee camp in the extreme north of the Israeli-occupied
West Bank that its Palestinian defenders had run out of ammunition
and were thus no longer able to resist the Israeli offensive that
began on 2 April. While this appeared to put a conclusion to the
most furious battle to be waged on Palestinian soil since 1948,
subsequent developments indicated otherwise. As night fell, one of
the camp's few remaining field commanders issued a dramatic, live
appeal to the world through the Qatari Al-Jazeera television
network, in which he stated that the Israeli military was summarily
executing defenseless fighters as it advanced and was refusing to
accept the surrender of those still alive.

April 14, 2002 - 4:13pm -- Uncle Fluffy
Analysis & Polemic
The State


Anonymous Comrade writes "America's War Incorporated: Weapons and Wars 'R' US
By John Stanton and Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writers


http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Stant on-Madsen040102/stanton-madsen040102.html


John Stanton is a Virginia-based writer on national security affairs and Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist who writes and comments frequently on civil liberties and human rights issues.


April 1, 2002—Critics of the US war machine frequently cite U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower's seminal speech in which he uncannily predicted the threat the "US military industrial complex" would pose to America and the world.


In 1961, Eisenhower, a retired U.S. Army general who led the allied invasion of Germany in WWII, uttered these prescient words, " . . . In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together . . ."


If only the citizenry had listened.

April 10, 2002 - 2:31pm -- Uncle Fluffy
News
The State

Louis Lingg writes "On April 9 U.S. Attorney General John Ascroft announced the indictment of four people for providing material support and resources to Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman and his organization, the Islamic Group. Among those indicted is New York City attorney Lynne Stewart, one of Rahman's lawyers.

Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman was convicted in 1995 for plotting the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

cryptome.org has posted the transcript of Ashcroft's press conference announcing the indictments."

April 8, 2002 - 2:13pm -- nomadlab
News
The State

crouching squirrel, hidden weasel writes "One of the most important trials of the century opens today.

Bari v the FBI


On May 24, 1990, Earth First! activists Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney, who were in the midst of organizing a massive nonviolent campaign against clearcutting, were nearly killed when a car bomb planted under their front seat exploded as they drove through Oakland. FBI investigators, who had recently completed a course in carbombing held at a Louisiana Pacific lumberyard, arrived on the scene almost immediately; FBI and Oakland Police investigators told the press that they had evidence that Bari and Cherney had themselves planted the car bomb and would thus be facing criminal charges. The campaign to discredit and "neutralize" Earth First! had reached new depths.

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