"In the long run, as Milton once wrote, the winning side tends to be the one whose weapon is the truth.. As long as the alternate sources are there, the widespread recurrance of censorship and lies in the major media must be taken as a sign of the establishment's weakness, not its strength.
"It will be important to monitor whether the Internet remains free, both economically and politically. I believe that if it does, the American republic will be secure, despite challenges from above. Thus internet freedom is like a canary in the caverns of our modern mass society. It was indeed ominous when in December 2004 former CIA director George Tenet proclaimed: 'Access to networks like the World Wide Web might need to be limited to those who can show they can take security seriously.' That a former CIA director was proposing that the United States adopt the restrictive Web policies of China and Myanmar was barely mentioned in the mainstream U.S. press. But it was soon reported in fifteen hundred sources on Google, including sources in French, German, and Dutch." - Peter Dale Scott, The Road to 9-11, 264-5.
"The legend is your cover story.. the lie that holds together long enough to let you slip away.." - Daniel Hopsicker
Sunday, September 11, 2011
Saturday, September 10, 2011
WKMA remembers 10 years ago today when Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held a press conference saying "According to some estimates we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions." (full text)
The next day's events overshadowed the urgency of his concerns, and on the 15th of September, President Bush made his "trifecta" joke for the first time at a White House meeting, later recounted at a GOP luncheon: "You know, I was campaigning in Chicago and somebody asked me, is there ever any time where the budget might have to go into deficit? I said only if we were at war or had a national emergency or were in recession. Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta. (Laughter.)"
Last June, the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University estimated the cost of the War on Terror since that date to be between $2.3-2.7 trillion, soon to exceed $4 trillion factoring in disability payments and further military engagements.
Former HUD Assistant Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts mused on this topic in 2006: "Those who are saying that the Bush Administration has failed in Iraq or that we are not winning the war apparently do not understand that a policy must be judged according to its goals... A successful war policy is one that pours money into the private pockets that promoted it. So to whom is the (money) going? It appears that the Pentagon may not have to say because they are still allowed to hide behind the ruse that they and the most powerful corporate contractors and banks in the world who run their systems are not capable of maintaining a basic accounting system." (Her links to more information on the topic)
What do you know, turns out we needed that money. As you may have heard somewhere, $1.5 trillion is the figure the Super Congress has been asked to cut over the next ten years to prevent a US sovereign debt default.
The next day's events overshadowed the urgency of his concerns, and on the 15th of September, President Bush made his "trifecta" joke for the first time at a White House meeting, later recounted at a GOP luncheon: "You know, I was campaigning in Chicago and somebody asked me, is there ever any time where the budget might have to go into deficit? I said only if we were at war or had a national emergency or were in recession. Little did I realize we'd get the trifecta. (Laughter.)"
Last June, the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University estimated the cost of the War on Terror since that date to be between $2.3-2.7 trillion, soon to exceed $4 trillion factoring in disability payments and further military engagements.
Former HUD Assistant Secretary Catherine Austin Fitts mused on this topic in 2006: "Those who are saying that the Bush Administration has failed in Iraq or that we are not winning the war apparently do not understand that a policy must be judged according to its goals... A successful war policy is one that pours money into the private pockets that promoted it. So to whom is the (money) going? It appears that the Pentagon may not have to say because they are still allowed to hide behind the ruse that they and the most powerful corporate contractors and banks in the world who run their systems are not capable of maintaining a basic accounting system." (Her links to more information on the topic)
What do you know, turns out we needed that money. As you may have heard somewhere, $1.5 trillion is the figure the Super Congress has been asked to cut over the next ten years to prevent a US sovereign debt default.
Wednesday, August 10, 2011
I don't consider myself an expert on Brixton, but I stayed there a couple of weeks a while back and have certain impressions. First of all, Brixton has its Caribbean pockets, but is a mostly white, working class section of town, not racially homogenous like many black sections of US cities. It is unlikely that these riots will result in significant "white flight" as seen in US cities for various reasons, such as less intense suburbia and the price of London real estate. In the whole of Brixton there was one "mixed pub" which we went to, which drew a sedate slightly older crowd of whites and blacks that generally didn't sit together. I never felt unsafe there, though on one occasion I photographed a colorful Caribbean van - back when I used to take pictures of things - which didn't seem to be selling anything, and had to withstand the angry insistance of its owner that I hand over my camera. I was never offered drugs on the street. The whites were very cordial to me, as I had the look of a regular punter looking for his next pint. I was hosted by a pair which included an openly gay "public" (private) school teacher, who grew up Catholic in Ulster and had been involved in the IRA. The homophobia directed at him by whites in Brixton was shocking to me - not a case of some hooligan remarks but a sustained, premeditated sequence of threats that had compelled him to contact the police on more than one occasion.
This is the fourth major race riot in Brixton in thirty years, and each of them has started when a black person was killed by police. The first one, in 1981, led to the conclusion by a government-sponsored inquiry that the police force was "institutionally racist." I recall witnessing while sitting in a bus an elderly black man in a suit, bowler, and overcoat entering the bus first and sitting in the front row, and then a white man next in line stopping to glare at him and the seat, causing the black man to say "mind me ahh-I'm a pensioner," which struck me as odd then, as in the US whether or not senior citizens have pensions is a more delicate and variable matter, and people do not refer to themselves as Social Security recipients, and, of course, American blacks don't feel compelled to justify their Rosa Parks move to other commuters, but more than anything Yanks feel less compelled to appeal to others for respect, and respect for elders is less commonly evoked here. One of the more pleasant by-products of the current strife in Britain is the televised appearances of veteran columnist Darcus Howe, and his retort to Fiona Armstrong at the BBC "Have some respect for an old West Indian negro instead of accusing me of being a rioter because you want me to get abusive. You just sound idiotic. Have some respect. I have grandchildren.." reminds me of that moment on the bus.
But the common British term "pensioner" also hit home a different observation at the time: that in America there was comparitavely much more openness to people from different classes and races among the weathy as long as they could help create wealth and look the part, while in Europe there was more working class solidarity, as more people were going to stay in the social class they were born in, resulting in more activism by and social services for the working class. Britain's current austerity cuts and the looting for retail consumer items both suggest an ascending Yankee influence.
This is the fourth major race riot in Brixton in thirty years, and each of them has started when a black person was killed by police. The first one, in 1981, led to the conclusion by a government-sponsored inquiry that the police force was "institutionally racist." I recall witnessing while sitting in a bus an elderly black man in a suit, bowler, and overcoat entering the bus first and sitting in the front row, and then a white man next in line stopping to glare at him and the seat, causing the black man to say "mind me ahh-I'm a pensioner," which struck me as odd then, as in the US whether or not senior citizens have pensions is a more delicate and variable matter, and people do not refer to themselves as Social Security recipients, and, of course, American blacks don't feel compelled to justify their Rosa Parks move to other commuters, but more than anything Yanks feel less compelled to appeal to others for respect, and respect for elders is less commonly evoked here. One of the more pleasant by-products of the current strife in Britain is the televised appearances of veteran columnist Darcus Howe, and his retort to Fiona Armstrong at the BBC "Have some respect for an old West Indian negro instead of accusing me of being a rioter because you want me to get abusive. You just sound idiotic. Have some respect. I have grandchildren.." reminds me of that moment on the bus.
But the common British term "pensioner" also hit home a different observation at the time: that in America there was comparitavely much more openness to people from different classes and races among the weathy as long as they could help create wealth and look the part, while in Europe there was more working class solidarity, as more people were going to stay in the social class they were born in, resulting in more activism by and social services for the working class. Britain's current austerity cuts and the looting for retail consumer items both suggest an ascending Yankee influence.
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