WASHINGTON (FNS) – In a startling development related to the recent disruptions of town hall meetings, FNS is now able to confirm that the Obama Administration, with the assistance of Unilever Group and Queen Beatrix, both of the Netherlands, PepsiCo, Skull And Bones, and the Bilderberg Group, is unleashing a secret plot to dispatch fleets of unmarked aircraft and helicopters to prevent teabag protesters from having access to teabags.
The goal of the plot: to disrupt protesters’ plans to save America from the destruction of our health care system.
FNS reporters have been following a trail of information that includes airport noise abatement records, classified documents, and the testimony of insiders, some of whom are now willing to be publicly identified.
We’ll begin our story by reporting on three events that occurred the evening of Friday, August 8th.
According to a report by Paul Tait of Reuters, published at Truthout.org, U.S. forces in Afghanistan have expanded to near double the level of last year, with plans to expand to 68,000 troops or more by December, up from 32,000 at the end of 2008. Currently, with both U.S. and other allied troops, there are over 100,000 soldiers facing what is reported to be a more “aggressive” and “brazen” Taliban force.
Forty-one U.S. troops died in Afghanistan in the past month; 71 allied troops overall. The article gave no figures for Afghan deaths.
Commander of U.S. forces, U.S. Army General Stanley McChrystal — formerly head of Special Forces for the Pentagon, during a time when Special Operations units were implicated in torture in Iraq — “said the resurgent Taliban have forced a change of tactics on foreign forces and warned that record casualty figures would remain high for some months” (emphasis added). No one asks why the Taliban should be stronger now, almost eight years after 9/11 — well, no one in the mainstream U.S. press.
The World contains the systems and feedback cycles to bring things back into balance — given enough time. (like millenniums)
The great plankton blooms of the Oceans is one such cycle, that can potentially capture more carbon than all the forests of the world; while at the same time providing the basis of the food chain, in the world’s greatest food basket. Plankton, not eaten, are destined to become sediment rock, at the bottom of the sea (taking all that harmful CO2 with them).
Problem is, plankton blooms, have been fading, by as much as 30% due to rising Ocean temperatures. IPCC estimates that “80% of the heat that is being trapped by greenhouse gases is absorbed by the ocean.”
Humans have the know-how to “kick start” those Plankton Blooms back to their previous splendor —
Question is: Do we dare to use the Earth as a giant Test Tube?
Very heavy depression today. It was warm, it was summer yet empty floating horsies in the pool made my heart empty. My primary job of providing firewood and campfires for our group has ended. The loss of that simplicity and the memories of a pool full of happy kids, not happy today, not at all weighs heavily on my heart. Yes, Hillary. Bill Deagle has been in your physical prescence and deemed you an evil entity. Political orientations aside I too think it takes a village to indoctrinate a child. I cherish my grandson because he has yet to endure it and I find him pure of heart.
I have had many questions asked about my screen name and sig. Some people have accused me of being a Right Wing troll. Others have doubted my sincerity because of the meaning of my screen name. I thought I might explain my choice and point out a few facts, for those who may be interested.
We have replaced the two minutes hate with the 24/7 hate/lie cycle.
My hope is to challenge that, and to bring truth to light as best as I can.
One of the first books I read as a young man was George Orwell’s 1984. Politically it opened my eyes and unplugged me from the matrix. I re-read the book once a year and every year since then. It serves as a reminder for what is at stake.
But many would like to tell us that Government is always evil. They fail to recognize that the same can be said of Big Business.
Big Business can be Big Brother too.
In fact, Big Business may be worse than Big Government sometimes. Good Government can check Bad Business. Good Business has not once stopped Bad Government, and both Good/Good and Bad/Bad can exists as well.
The question is how we keep both accountable. If we kill good government to save Big Business, Big Business will become Big Brother. That is the heart of true Mussolini Fascism, a combination of Big Business and Bad Government.
And the wall between the reality of that and the reality they would sell us can be called the Ministry Of Truth.
The Ministry of Truth – Minitrue, in Newspeak – was startlingly different from any other object in sight. It was an enormous pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air. From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
The Ministry of Truth contained, it was said, three thousand rooms above ground level, and corresponding ramifications below. Scattered about London there were just three other buildings of similar appearance and size. So completely did they dwarf the surrounding architecture that from the roof of Victory Mansions you could see all four of them simultaneously. The were the homes of the four Ministries between which the entire apparatus of government was divided: the Ministry of Truth, which concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts; the Ministry of Love, which maintained law and order; and the Ministry of Plenty, which was responsible for economic affairs. Their names, in Newspeak: Minitrue, Minipax, Miniluv, and Miniplenty.
The Ministry of Love was the really frightening one. There were no windows in it at all. Winston had never been inside the Ministry of Love, nor within a half a kilometer of it. It was a place impossible to enter except on official business, and then only by penetrating through a maze of barbed-wire entanglements, steel doors, and hidden machine-gun nests. Even the streets leading up to its outer barriers were roamed by gorilla-faced guards in black uniforms, armed with jointed truncheons.
Each day we see a precept from 1984 personified before our eyes. Part of my purpose in writing is to educate people to the real truth, as I perceive it from my progressive liberal perspective. Many may not agree with my views. I do not place a premium on agreement. Rather, the importance I place is on the FACT. That is where the truth shall be found.
No one in their right mind who is not a fool can look at our Corporate controlled media and not see a similarity to Orwell’s Ministry Of Truth. The Right Wing Noise Machine is fully aware that their policies are not in the interest of the Average citizen of Earth. In order to convince the poor that they want free market fiscal conservative economic policies they have created a place that can be best described as the debate between fact and false. To deny fact, science and reality and equate it with falsity and lies. This is an important part of their agenda.
Thus
Ignorance = Strength
The issue is whether you will make your own decisions, do you own research and form your own opinions, or if you will allow programmers to pre-program you.
If we remain ignorant, we give strength to those who would exercise total power over us, whether they are Business or Politically oriented
Pachamama, mother earth, Santa Madre Tierra, the earth, the planet is obviously in trouble. This should by now be obvious.
The Q’ero of Peru, the descendants of the Incas, live in remote villages that are above 14,000 feet above sea level. They have lived in these areas for hundreds of years. They live above the tree line. They raise llamas, alpacas, vicunas, and other similar animals, and they grow big kernal maiz (“choclo”) and hundreds of species of potatoes. And until recently they kept to themselves. They stayed away from the cities. And the Government. And, of course, they kept their understandings of Shamanism and energy medicine to themselves. They certainly didn’t tell North Americans about it. But then, relatively recently, they noticed the oddest thing, that the glaciers surrounding them were slowly melting. Slowly becoming smaller. Slowly disappearing. And the spiritual teachers in the lineage decided that Q’ero who were healers, who were powerful Shamans, who knew that it was necessary to heal mother earth and her children, would have to go down the mountain and bring out their teachings and carry them across the world.
I spent this past weekend with Q’ero Shaman Don Mariano Quispe Flores at The Abode in New Lebanon, New York, along with some three dozen other shamans. Don Mariano is 72 years old. He does not know how to write. Or to read. He speaks only Quechua (though he does say a very few words in English and Spanish). His village in Peru is about an 8 hour bus ride and then a 4 hour walk uphill from Cuzco. This trip to the United States (he stopped in California and Washington State and Colorado before journeying to the East) was his first trip to the US, though he has been to Europe. He is a very sweet, gentle, and humble man. And a powerful, traditional healer.
Because Don Mariano speaks Quechua, his translator sometimes translated first into Spanish, and then someone else translated into English. This was an incredible gift: I could hear what Don Mariano was saying three times. No, I didn’t understand the first statements in Quechua, but I could feel and hear his tone of voice, and then it was repeated in both Spanish and English, so the content was repeated. I’m not going to try to bring you all of Don Mariano’s teachings.
Instead, I bring you this very short essay to tell you something important that you probably already know only too well, just to remind you.
Pachamama, your Mother Earth, Santa Madre Tierra is in trouble and she needs our help and our caring for her. She needs us to honor her. And protect her.
This might involve traditional practices, like making offerings (“despachos“) and prayers for the healing of the earth. It also might involve ceremonies, calling in the power of the Twelve Sacred Mountains (the Apus), the six directions, prayers, and healing thoughts. These are all important. But also important, perhaps even more important is our continuing awareness of Pachamama and our actions to take care of her as she takes care of us by feeding us, by giving us water, by providing shelter.
So I have a very simple request. Please pause now, look up from your screen, go outdoors if you can, and see, if you can, the unbelievable, abundant world surrounding us, the world on which we walk. Look at Pachamama. And feel, if you can, in your heart gratitude for all Pachamama provides us. This gratitude is incredibly important. It is the beginning point to help the planet.
Ray McGovern, in a 2-Part video series, speaks with Jay Paul, Senior Editor of the Real News Network — Revisiting the Downing Street Memo.
While we have mainly focussed our efforts on the torture, McGovern gives us some play by play events and some in-depth observations as to our war of aggression against Iraq. It is pretty jaw-dropping stuff!
Note this, as well:
With respect to waging a war of aggression-and that is a technical term defined by Nuremberg, the Nuremberg tribunal, which came after World War II. And what they said was that to institute a war of aggression is to commit the supreme international crime, differing from other war crimes only inasmuch as it contains the accumulated evil of the whole. (emphasis mine)
A war of aggression is the worst crime of all, because “it contains the accumulated evil of the whole.” Of course, that would include torture, and all the heinous crimes that we know were committed.
The LA Times reports Criminal investigation into CIA treatment of detainees expected. U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. is expected to name a criminal prosecutor to conduct an narrow-in-scope investigation “focusing on ‘whether people went beyond the techniques that were authorized’ in Bush administration memos” that approved of torture.
“Some cases have not previously been disclosed, including an instance in which a CIA operative brought a gun into an interrogation booth to force a detainee to talk, officials said.”
“Obama and Holder have both said that they believe waterboarding constitutes torture.” But, “the U.S. anti-torture statute requires proving that an interrogator ‘specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering’ — a daunting legal threshold.”
Meanwhile, the NY Times reports from London that the Head of MI-6 defends against torture allegations. Sir John Scarlett, “the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service”, is defending Britain’s counterterrorism policies, “rejecting accusations that his agency has colluded in the torture of terrorist suspects being interrogated abroad.”
Scarlett claims there was “no torture, and no complicity in torture” by the British despite allegations from former prisoners held by the U.S. American officials also have denied the torture claims.
Even as a wrongful-death lawsuit moves forward against the controversial private security company formerly known as Blackwater, the firm seeks to renew its contract with the State Department to guard diplomats when the deal expires next year. And the State Department shows no signs of ruling the company out of competition, despite a high-profile incident in 2007 that left 17 Iraqi civilians dead…
In 2005, the State Department issued a four-year contract, valued at $560 million per year, to provide on-the-ground security for its diplomats in dangerous areas around the world with three leading private security companies: Blackwater, Triple Canopy and DynCorp. The U.S. military does not consider the provision of security for diplomats in war zones to be its job…
While Xe may no longer be operating in Iraq, it is the only private security company guarding State Department employees in Afghanistan… Already, Xe has come under criticism for aggressive actions in Afghanistan reminiscent of its Iraq behavior.
Meanwhile, The Guardian reports a British security guard ‘admits Iraq killings’. Daniel Fitzsimons appeared before a Baghdad judge after the shooting deaths of two fellow ArmorGroup contractors. “The British guard today admitted his crime of killing the two men,” said Major Abdul Kareem General Kalaph, an Iraqi interior ministry spokesman. Fitzimons faces execution if convicted.
McClatchy reports Bombings kill dozens of people in Baghdad and northern Iraq. “Early morning bombings Monday in Baghdad and Mosul killed at least 49 people and wounded 231, the third large-scale attack on civilians in the past 10 days.”
The NY Times adds “nearly 100 people have been killed and scores wounded in Mosul and Baghdad since Friday in the worst outburst in violence since June 30, when Iraqis officially took the lead on national security and American troops largely withdrew to their bases.”
The Washington Post reports Corporate Mercenary extols the ‘art of firing’ people. Meet Kim Hall, as vice president of the Five O’Clock Club, she “coaches businesses on how to execute mass downsizings and often visits companies on the designated day to help coordinate a layoff.”
He business is “is a profitable one. The Five O’Clock Club has nearly doubled in size during the past two years, and Hall has guided more than 200 companies and 1,500 laid-off workers through downsizings in the past six months.” Her company “charges each company about $2,000 per fired employee in exchange for providing layoff victims with a year of career coaching.”
She is a paid liar. She avoids saying “unemployed.” According to her, these are “job-seekers,” or “separated employees,” or “affected workers,” or “people in transition.”
And most of all, Hall says, you remain optimistic on the phone no matter the circumstances. You never mention that 250,000 people lost their jobs in one month. Instead, you say that job loss has slowed, the market continues to recover and the economy is improving. Always improving.
The war in Afghanistan, which we are losing, is costing us $133 million a DAY. That’s right, $133 million a day. That’s over 5.5 million dollars an HOUR, every hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, forever and ever.
Why forever and ever? Because we’re losing, not winning.
Says who, you might ask? Some hand-wringing “liberal”? No, none other than General Stanley McChrystal, the warmongering, warcriminal in charge of the whole mess for the Americans.
The top American commander in Afghanistan declared that the Taliban are winning in Afghanistan in a startling interview published Monday – a striking contrast to the “Mission Accomplished” rhetoric of the Bush Administration as regards Iraq.
His remarks appear carefully tailored to lower expectations and shift public opinion in support of operations in the war-torn country where few foreign powers have ever seen victory. The Taliban ruled Afghanistan from 1996 to 2001, when they were routed by a US invasion.
Currently, US operations in Afghanistan cost taxpayers about $4 billion a month. That comes to roughly $133 million per day, or $5.5 million per hour.
Yeah, but we can’t afford anything here. California is broke, prisons are melting down as prisoners riot for hours on end, schools are firing teachers, the entire social safety net is being set afire ….. why, so we spend money instead losing in Afghanistan?
Of course this begs the question: why would the top General there actually admit to losing the war? Well of course because we’re not spending enough money there yet. And we’re not killing enough American troops! So we need more American troops to sacrifice to the volcano gods of war:
McChrystal’s interview also appeared designed to augment support for increasing troop levels in parts of Afghanistan. Since President Barack Obama took office, the Pentagon has increased the number of US troops in the country. The strategy described suggests a “hearts and minds” approach which favors securing civilian areas rather than focusing on full-frontal engagement with militants.
“It’s a very aggressive enemy right now,” the paper quoted Gen. McChrystal as saying. “We’ve got to stop their momentum, stop their initiative. It’s hard work.”
The interview also quotes unnamed US officials arguing for a further increase in US troops.
Now to win an unwinnable war? Spend more money. Kill more boys. Sure. That works every time. These people learn nothing from history. Their egos are so huge they think they cannot lose, and the only reason they are losing is because those jerks in Washington aren’t giving them what they need! Goddamn those jerks in Washington! They’re not there man, they don’t know what it’s like!
Well, here’s what it’s like for some of the Afghani people we’re spending $5 million bucks an hour killing:
Killing children doesn’t come cheap. Hell, you can’t do it here without getting in serious trouble! But in Afghanistan, you can use the highest tech weaponry in the history of mankind to kill children and it’s just A-OK and the government will keep giving you more!
I have literally lost track of the amount of comments that respond to analyses of Obama’s actions with “why are you surprised?” and “what did you expect?”
But I have to say the latest is downright hilarious.
Most of us already know the latest story about how the pharmaceutical companies, via their lobbyist, former Congressional Rep Billy Tauzin, publicized a deal they supposedly made with the White House which they claimed promised there would be no fooling around with negotiating (i.e., lowering) drug prices in health care legislation in return for a hefty investment in advertising and an $80 billion investment in the plan itself.
Caught between a pivotal industry ally and the protests of Congressional Democrats, the Obama administration on Friday backed away from what drug industry lobbyists had said this week was a firm White House promise to exclude from a proposed health care overhaul the possibility of allowing the government to negotiate lower drug prices under Medicare.
We were promised transparency in these negotiations. Of course, politial promises don’t count. Why are we surprised? What did we expect?
“Not negotiating behind closed doors, but bringing all parties together and broadcasting those negotiations on C-SPAN,” Obama explained in a Democratic debate in Los Angeles in January 2008, in language similar to many of his campaign stops.
However, the two biggest deals so far – industry agreements to cut drug and hospital costs – were reached in secret.
So now we see who has a seat at the table, not because the Obama Administration was open and transparent, but because Billy Tauzin and the pharmaceutical companies panicked when they thought Congressional Dems were going to mess up their deal and demanded assurances from the White House.
