Liten brevväxling (knappt det) med Läkemedelsverket

Kom till Sverige för några dagar sedan, och i fredags gick jag in på ett apotek för att köpa magnesiumklorid, en produkt som kan inhandlas billigt i små 33-gramspåsar i exempelvis Brasilien. (Som man kan förstå ville jag ogärna ta med något vitt pulver från Sydamerika hit.) Pulvret löser man upp i t ex en 2-liters PET-flaska vatten som man sedan dricker ett litet nubbeglas per dag av. Ett nyttigt mineraltillskott.
Magnesium saknas i raffinerat salt och lyser med sin frånvaro också i det mesta vi äter, eftersom jordarna är utarmade och all konstgödsel är av NPK-typ, dvs innehåller mest kväve, fosfor och kalium, men magnesium är viktigt för att hålla bl a kalcium och kalium på de platser i kroppen där de ska vara.
Nåväl, jag upptäcker att på svenska apotek finns magnesiumklorid att tillgå bara i förpackningar om 600 gram som kostar över 250 kronor eller i brustabletter från ACO som innehåller det "kontroversiella" eller rent ut sagt giftiga sötningsmedlet aspartam som tar bort den bittra smaken. Jag skrev alltså ett mail som jag adresserade till ACO – som ännu inte har bevärdigats svara – och till

Läkemedelsverket
Varför har ni godkänt aspartam???
Hej,

Jag skulle vilja veta varför så många svenska läkemedel (för att inte
tala om godis och läskedrycker!) innehåller aspartam. Om man googlar
på "aspartame" finner man ett fåtal artiklar från patentinnehavarna
Ajinomoto och Nutrasweet som påstår att det är fullständigt ofarligt,
men cirka 180 oberoende undersökningar från hela världen som visar att
det ger cancer hos råttor redan i moderata doser, motsvarande säg en
liten cola light/dag.

Ämnet, en biprodukt av en tilltänkt magsårsmedicin, togs fram av det
amerikanska farmaföretaget G. K. Searle & Co. kring 1980. Någon
upptäckte att det smakade sött, alltså ville man sälja det som
sötningsmedel.
Searles forskningsredovisning kring produkten var så undermålig -
något de var ökända för - att substansen 3 ggr nekades licens av FDA,
det amerikanska livs- och läkemedelsverket.
En viss Donald Rumsfeld var vid den här tiden anknuten till Searle men
blev snart minister i regeringen Reagan. "Om vi inte kan få det
godkänt den vetenskapliga vägen får vi ta till den politiska", lär
Rumsfeld ha sagt, och hux flux var chefen för FDA utbytt och aspartam
fick grönt ljus. Idag finns det i över 3000 produkter världen över.

Man behöver knappast vara läkare för att begripa att om man smakar på
något "sött" så ställer kroppen glatt in sig på att få socker och
kommer att känna sig förvirrad och lurad när den i stället får ett
ämne som den bara kan bryta ner till - hör och häpna! - fenylalanin,
formaldehyd och metanol! Och sånt ger folk till sina barn för att de
inte ska bli tjocka, fast enda sättet att undvika det är att återgå
till gammaldags mycket utelek och rörelse, och godis och läsk bara i
helgerna...

Nu undrar jag: är Läkemedelsverket ens medvetna om alla dessa
forskningsresultat som fullständigt vederlägger Big Pharma-krämarnas
påståenden om ämnets totala förträfflighet?
Eller känner man till dem men mäter i likhet med Big Pharma ämnets
nyttighet i hur många sjukdomsfall det kan orsaka som sedan måste
"behandlas" med andra mer eller mindre verksamma "botemedel"?
Vore tacksam för svar på dessa två frågor.

Mvh
Hans Berggren

och så här svarade (?) Läkemedelsverket:

-----Original Message-----
From: Sweden, Med-Info
Sent: den 3 september 2007 09:09
To: Emilsson, Hakan
Subject: FW: Varför har ni godkänt aspartam???

Hej
Kan du hjälpa mej att svar honom?
Mvh
Gunilla

d.v.s. Gunilla på Läkemedelsverket lämpade över det hela på
farmajätten Pfizers ansvarige för Medicinsk information/Drug Safety.
Han svarade:

Hej!

Tack för ditt e-mail avseende aspartam. Det är inte vi som
läkemedelsföretag som godkänner vad vi får ha för tillsatser i våra
produkter, utan det beslutas av Livsmedelsverket och Läkemedelsverket.
Om man från dessa myndigheter anser att tillsatsen, i detta fall
aspartam, är farlig att använda så förbjuder man användning av
substansen. Detta har inte skett. Det är min fulla övertygelse att
båda dessa myndigheter är väl inlästa på den vetenskapliga
litteraturen, och de har säkerligen gjort någon sorts kvalificerad
bedömning om det går att använda eller inte. Självklart kommer man att
ombepröva detta beslut om vetenskapen visar att risken övervinner den
"nytta" som aspartam ev. har som tillsats. Den mängd aspartam som
ingår i läkemedel är i allmänhet liten i förhållande till den mängd
som finns i godis och läskedrycker. Jag håller fullständigt med dig om
att man ska vara tveksam till ett alltför stort intag av aspartam -
åtminstone varnar jag mina egna ungdomar för för överdrivet
användande, dvs jag rekommenderar dom att dricka så litet läsk och äta
så lite godis som möjligt. Lagom är alltid bäst är ledstjärnan, för
att sprida ut eventuella risker så mycket som möjligt. Och läkemedel
tar man när man behöver, det är ingenting man konsumerar för att det
är gott eller smakar sött.

Jag kan själv för litet om bakgrunden till varför aspartam blev
godkänt som tillsats i USA och om den vetenskapliga litteratur som du
har läst. Därför kan jag inte och vill inte ifrågasätta det du säger.
Pfizer använder enbart substanser som är godkända att använda i
läkemedelsprodukter. Skulle myndigheterna besluta om att aspartam inte
får användas, så tar vi vårt ansvar och tar bort substansen i våra
produkter.

Med vänlig hälsning

Håkan Emilsson
Chef Medicinsk Information/Drug Safety
Medicinska avdelningen
Pfizer AB
191 90 Sollentuna
Tfn: 08-550 523 31
Mobil: 0768-89 23 31
Fax: 08-550 520 10
Email: hakan.emilsson@pfizer.com
www.pfizer.se

Jaha ja, han var ju åtminstone trevlig och tillmötesgående, även om
han tydligen tror att man är idiot om man inte kan skriva M.D. eller
att man är chef för nånting efter sitt namn, men:

"Det är min fulla övertygelse att båda dessa myndigheter är väl
inlästa på den vetenskapliga litteraturen, och de har säkerligen gjort
någon sorts kvalificerad bedömning om det går att använda eller inte.
Självklart kommer man att ombepröva detta beslut om vetenskapen visar
att risken övervinner den "nytta" som aspartam ev. har som tillsats."

Låter inte det lite osäkert önsketänkande?
Gunilla var ju helt klart inte inläst ... och "någon SORTS
kvalificerad bedömning om det GÅR att använda eller inte" ... Och att
han själv sätter "nytta" inom citationstecken och sen garderar med ett
litet "ev"... Djupt inom sig vet han precis vem som har nån "nytta" av
aspartam som tillsats. Men han vet också att om man tappar sin macka
ramlar den nästan alltid med smöret ner. Nåväl, jag svarade:

Hej Håkan, och tack för svar!

Men ganska så bedrövligt – och betecknande – tycker jag det är att
Gunilla på Läkemedelsverket måste vända sig till en representant för just
läkemedelsINDUSTRIN för att frågorna ska kunna besvaras. Det tyder
på att Läkemedelsverket i såna här fall rycker på axlarna och åberopar
sin INKOMPETENS som bortförklaring. Jag ber om ursäkt å Gunillas
vägnar att hon ska behöva besvära dig, och till henne säger jag:
Det är den här sortens frågor som du ska hålla dig inläst på och kunna
besvara, inte dyvla över på personer som arbetar för de företag som
Läkemedelsverket är tillsatt att övervaka!

Att det holländska företag som fram till i början av förra året var den
största aspartamfabrikanten i Europa har lagt ner produktionen, därför
att man "inte vill förknippas med en så polemisk produkt" (starkt
språk i dessa sammanhang), borde väl vara något att väga in i
bedömningen av medlets lämplighet för mänsklig konsumtion?

Och det faktum att licensinnehavarna Nutrasweet och Ajinomoto är
stämda inför rätta i åtskilliga olika länder, från New Mexico och
Georgia till Italien till Indien, det hade man tydligen ingen aaaning
om på svenska Läkemedelsverket. Läs på!

Och Håkan, de här nästan 180 undersökningarna som visar att aspartam
är rena giftet kommer inte från några "konspirationsteoretiker" – kan
nån vara "slumpteoretiker" idag? – utan från seriösa forskare vid
statliga universitet runt om i världen, dvs varken från
"diplomfabriker" styrda av privata intressen eller från de farmajättar
vars helt naturliga affärsintresse är största möjliga sjuklighet bland
konsumenterna.

Tänker vidarebefordra mitt ursprungliga brev till Livsmedelsverket så
får vi se om någon vet något där.

Mvh

Hans Berggren

Vi får se om fortsättning följer.

Hur ett fängelsesystem inte ska drivas

Från xymphora.blogspot.com
Säger allt om den amerianska demokratin

Monday, August 06, 2007
How not to run a prison system

The statistics in this article by Glenn C. Loury on racism and the American prison system are simply amazing. Some examples (emphasis throughout in red and green):



“Crime rates peaked in 1992 and have dropped sharply since. Even as crime rates fell, however, imprisonment rates remained high and continued their upward march. The result, the current American prison system, is a leviathan unmatched in human history.


According to a 2005 report of the International Centre for Prison Studies in London, the United States – with five percent of the world’s population – houses 25 percent of the world’s inmates. Our incarceration rate (714 per 100,000 residents) is almost 40 percent greater than those of our nearest competitors (the Bahamas, Belarus, and Russia). Other industrial democracies, even those with significant crime problems of their own, are much less punitive: our incarceration rate is 6.2 times that of Canada, 7.8 times that of France, and 12.3 times that of Japan. We have a corrections sector that employs more Americans than the combined work forces of General Motors, Ford, and Wal-Mart, the three largest corporate employers in the country, and we are spending some $200 billion annually on law enforcement and corrections at all levels of government, a fourfold increase (in constant dollars) over the past quarter century.”


and:



“One simple measure of punitiveness is the likelihood that a person who is arrested will be subsequently incarcerated. Between 1980 and 2001, there was no real change in the chances of being arrested in response to a complaint: the rate was just under 50 percent. But the likelihood that an arrest would result in imprisonment more than doubled, from 13 to 28 percent. And because the amount of time served and the rate of prison admission both increased, the incarceration rate for violent crime almost tripled, despite the decline in the level of violence. The incarceration rate for nonviolent and drug offenses increased at an even faster pace: between 1980 and 1997 the number of people incarcerated for nonviolent offenses tripled, and the number of people incarcerated for drug offenses increased by a factor of 11. Indeed, the criminal-justice researcher Alfred Blumstein has argued that none of the growth in incarceration between 1980 and 1996 can be attributed to more crime . . . .”


and:



“The punitive turn in the nation’s social policy – intimately connected with public rhetoric about responsibility, dependency, social hygiene, and the reclamation of public order – can be fully grasped only when viewed against the backdrop of America’s often ugly and violent racial history: there is a reason why our inclination toward forgiveness and the extension of a second chance to those who have violated our behavioral strictures is so stunted, and why our mainstream political discourses are so bereft of self-examination and searching social criticism. This historical resonance between the stigma of race and the stigma of imprisonment serves to keep alive in our public culture the subordinating social meanings that have always been associated with blackness. Race helps to explain why the United States is exceptional among the democratic industrial societies in the severity and extent of its punitive policy and in the paucity of its social-welfare institutions.”


and:



“In his fine study Punishment and Inequality in America (2006), the Princeton University sociologist Bruce Western powerfully describes the scope, nature, and consequences of contemporary imprisonment. He finds that the extent of racial disparity in imprisonment rates is greater than in any other major arena of American social life: at eight to one, the black-white ratio of incarceration rates dwarfs the two-to-one ratio of unemployment rates, the three-to-one ration of non-marital childbearing, the two-to-one ratio of infant-mortality rates and one-to-five ratio of net worth. While three out of 200 young whites were incarcerated in 2000, the rate for young blacks was one in nine. A black male resident of the state of California is more likely to go to a state prison than a state college.


The scandalous truth is that the police and penal apparatus are now the primary contact between adult black American men and the American state. Among black male high-school dropouts aged 20 to 40, a third were locked up on any given day in 2000, fewer than three percent belonged to a union, and less than one quarter were enrolled in any kind of social program. Coercion is the most salient meaning of government for these young men. Western estimates that nearly 60 percent of black male dropouts born between 1965 and 1969 were sent to prison on a felony conviction at least once before they reached the age of 35.”


Whether it is fighting wars for Zionism, the health care system, or the penal system, the United States can always be counted on as a cautionary example.


posted at 3:05 AM permanent link Comments (60) | Trackback

Cyniskt eller infantilt? Eller bådadera?

Från www.bestcyrano.org eller Thomas Paine's Corner

During its many bombings from Vietnam to Iraq, Washington has repeatedly told the world that the resulting civilian deaths were accidental and very much “regretted”. But if you go out and drop powerful bombs over a populated area, and then learn that there have been a number of “unintended” casualties, and then the next day drop more bombs and learn again that there were “unintended” casualties, and then the next day you bomb again … at what point do you lose the right to say that the deaths were “unintended”?

During the US/NATO 78-day bombing of Serbia in 1999, which killed many civilians, a Belgrade office building — which housed political parties, TV and radio stations, 100 private companies, and more — was bombed. But before the missiles were fired into this building, NATO planners spelled out the risks: “Casualty Estimate 50-100 Government/Party employees. Unintended Civ Casualty Est: 250 — Apts in expected blast radius.”[11] The planners were saying that about 250 civilians living in nearby apartment buildings might be killed in the bombing, in addition to 50 to 100 government and political party employees, likewise innocent of any crime calling for execution. So what do we have here? We have grown men telling each other: We’ll do A, and we think that B may well be the result. But even if B does in fact result, we’re saying beforehand — as we’ll insist afterward — that it was unintended.

It was actually worse than this. As I’ve detailed elsewhere, the main purpose of the Serbian bombings — admitted to by NATO officials — was to make life so difficult for the public that support of the government of Slobodan Milosevic would be undermined.[12] This, in fact, is the classic definition of “terrorism”, as used by the FBI and the United Nations: The use or threat of violence against a civilian population to induce the government to change certain policies.

Another example of how “the enemy” can’t be trusted to act as nice as god-fearing regular Americans … “Defense officials said they believe at least 22 — and possibly as many as 50 — former Guantánamo detainees have returned to the battlefield to fight against the United States and its allies.”[13] The Defense Department has at times used the possibility of this happening as an argument against releasing detainees or closing Guantánamo.

But is it imaginable, not to mention likely, that after three, four or five years in the hell on earth known as Guantánamo, even detainees not disposed to terrorist violence — and many of them were picked up for reasons having nothing to do with terrorist violence — left with a deep-seated hatred of their jailors and a desire for revenge?

Tidens tecken

Rigorous Intuition (v. 2.0)
What You Don't Know Can't Hurt Them.

Tuesday, July 03, 2007

Signs of the Times


Semiotics is concerned with everything that can be taken as a sign. A sign is everything which can be taken as significantly substituting for something else...thus semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used "to tell" at all. - Umberto Eco, Theory of Semiotics

I think the only people entitled to be shocked by the commuting of Scooter Libby's sentence are those who were shocked that Libby was sentenced in the first place. Or rather, that it was a second-tier player like Libby and not Rove or Cheney who appeared trussed and basted as the suckling pig of Democrats' scandalously disappointing Fitzmas. It's those constantly incredulous types who deserve the saucepan eyes at Libby's predictable catch and release.

Even so, the Internet reaction is as rich as it is predictable, and ineffectual. Instead of America's streets, America's chatrooms are filled, because its citizens have been given them for the appearance of a commons, and clatter with indignant typing. But 10 million people posting We're not gonna take it anymore! isn't a revolution. It isn't even a Twisted Sister song.

That's the bad news. The good news is it's a Leonard Cohen song.

What hath Bush wrought? If nothing else, he's made semiotics everybody's business, whether everybody realizes it or not. Under the Bush years, the signs by which Americans and much of the Western world have lived have become so evidently estranged from what they allegedly signify that they now suggest little more than the lies told by Power to maintain itself. "Freedom," "democracy," "justice": Everybody knows. Among other things, Bush is the Deconstruction President.

In The Trickster and the Paranormal, George Hansen has this to say:

It is commonly assumed that there is a simple, objective correspondence between the signifier and the signified even thought they are separate entities. It is assumed that language is only a set of names for things, events, and concepts. These assumptions are incorrect, but few recognize the extent of the implications. This lies at the heart of deconstructionism, and magic.

There is power in the act of naming, because it imbues meaning to a thing - or to an event or a concept - that has no necessary correspondence to the thing itself. This was evident even on the morning of September 11, when the event of the attacks receded behind their purported meaning even as they were still under way. And then soon after, the breathless reporting of Bush's confirmation that this means war, albeit against an abstract noun which would nevertheless cost at least hundreds of thousands of actual lives.

Demokratin och kunskapsnivån

Apropå demokraternas båda främsta presidentkandidater inför USA-valet 2008, Hillary Clinton och Barack Obama, deras bristande erfarenhet av arbete i ledande ställning – av arbete överhuvudtaget – och deras halvskrala kunskaper. Bloggkommentar till artikel från

www.washingtonmonthly.com

2007-06-09

”Kvaliteten på en kandidats administrativa meritförteckning är en angelägenhet av vikt och därmed meningslös för majoriteten av väljarna.

Gore och Kerry såg ut som professorer. Reagan såg ut som en sheriff. Väljarna finner stor tröst i tanken att allt som krävs är vanligt sunt bondförnuft, rakt snack och gåpåaranda. Att erkänna att hög intelligens, omfattande kunskaper och betydande erfarenhet är viktiga egenskaper hos en kandidat skulle tvinga väljarna att ta itu med sina egna tillkortakommanden.”

Si där. Äntligen en förklaring till att ledarna av idag, inom politiken och på andra områden, är som de är. Den enda kompetens som krävs är förmågan att övertyga andra om sin egen förträfflighet och ta hutlöst bra betalt för den, det har vi sett från Skandia till Enron, från Vita huset till Rosenbad. När sedan ingenting vettigt blir uträttat, bubblan brister, vederbörande stiger av och tar med sig sitt astronomiska avgångsvederlag och det är uppenbart för de allra flesta att det rörde sig om en storhetsvansinnig sociopat, då står nästa redan beredd att kliva in på scenen. En logisk följd av konsumtionssamhället? Och av en demokrati som inte orkat hålla fast vid tanken att skolan måste utbilda eleverna, bibringa dem just omfattande kunskaper så att de kan ”utvecklas till självständigt tänkande människor”? Så stod det i läroplanen när jag var ung. Vad står det där nu? Finns det någon som vet?

Journalism – Whores everywhere, Swinton was right.

Historiska nyheter från www.rense.com

Journalism - Whores Everywhere,
Swinton Was Right

John Swinton on the 'Free Press'
5-25-7
One night, probably in 1880, John Swinton, then the preeminent New York journalist, was the guest of honour at a banquet given him by the leaders of his craft.
Someone who knew neither the press nor Swinton offered a toast to the independent press. Swinton outraged his colleagues by replying:

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it and I know it.

There is not one of you who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand that it would never appear in print.
I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with.

Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets
looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours my occupation would be gone.

The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread.
You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an independent press?

We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."

(Source: Labor's Untold Story, by Richard O. Boyer and Herbert M. Morais, published by United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America, NY, 1955/1979.)

Extra!!! Extra!!! Texasgubbens senaste taktlösheter!!! Read all about it!!!

Från www.waynemadsenreport.com

May 8, 2007 -- Our White House sources report that the Queen's visit to the White House yesterday was a protocol disaster. Not only had George W. Bush commenced his drinking routine early in the morning, just in time for the first mid-day visit by Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, but his drunkenness continued well into the evening during the lavish state dinner.

Bush dreaded the Queen's visit and prepared for it by getting drunk. The Queen has never hidden her dislike for Bush who she considers ill-bred, impetuous, and a social boor. The Queen's dislike for Bush goes back to 1991 when he insulted her during another state visit by inquiring which of her children was the "black sheep" of her family. The Queen told him to mind his own business. The Queen was also unhappy that then-First Lady Barbara Bush failed to control her son during that visit to the White House. In November 2003, the Queen was incensed about Bush's Marine One helicopter tearing up her flower garden at Buckingham Palace and traumatizing her flock of flamingoes. Bush's communications staff also damaged expensive fabrics inside the royal residence. Bush never compensated the Queen for the damage and she had to file an insurance claim.

With that background, Bush groused about having to wear a white tie tuxedo for last night's state dinner. It took the direct intervention of Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice to convince Bush to wear the appropriate attire. During yesterday's welcoming ceremony on the South Lawn of the White House, Bush insinuated that the Queen was over 230 years old when he stated she had helped celebrate America's Bicentennial in 1776. The Queen was heard to have uttered the words, "Oh dear." Bush then winked at the Queen who was not amused by the president's antics. Bush also stated that the Queen gave him a look "that only a mother could give a child." It was not the first time the Queen had looked at Bush with an icy stare. Bush also nearly put his arm on the Queen's shoulder as he escorted her down the stairs from the red carpeted dais.

White House protocol officials remained nervous about Bush during the entire Royal visit. The Queen and Prince Phillip are sure to have much to talk about on their trip back home this evening. While the Queen was keen on visiting Virginia and the Kentucky Derby, her past dealings with the Bush family had her fearing the White House visit. Bush's boorish demeanor was in keeping with his past indiscretions around the Queen.

Liten brevväxling med högerpressen

Skrev till en ledarskribent i SvD, Claes Arvidsson, angående buskispresidentens senaste praktgroda.

Hej Claes!

Mera nytt om din fryntliga texasgubbe. Var det inte om honom du skrev
dina odödliga rader:
"Tillsammans formas en nationalism byggd kring en kärna av externt hot
med partiet som räddaren i nöden."? Eller nej visst ja, det var ju om
Hu och Milosevic.
Skit samma. Men kolla här, vilken knivskarp, intelligent analys han
gör, och så taktfull han är mot offrens anhöriga och vänner:

från www.waynemadsenreport.com

April 18, 2007 -- Speaking at a memorial service for the slain
professors and students at Virginia Tech yesterday in Blacksburg,
Virginia, President George W. Bush uttered the following about those
killed by a deranged gunman, "They were simply in the wrong place at
the wrong time." Note to George Bush: unlike your own college days,
these students were in the right place -- in a college classroom --
and were there on time. Mr. Bush usually spent his college mornings at
Yale and Harvard sleeping off hangovers from the previous night's frat
house "keggers." The fact that a lone crazy with a penchant for
writing violent plays could purchase two guns and ammunition had
nothing to do with college kids and their professors being in classes
on time but everything to do with George Bush's America, a place that
has been taken over by religious kooks with guns and Bibles in hand.
In fact, Blacksburg is an island of sanity in southern Virginia. The
same cannot be said for two colleges that bookend it on the west and
east: Jerry Falwell's Liberty University and Pat Robertson's Regent
University.

Och si! Han svarade!
Vad svarade Claes? Jo:
Så taktfullt av dig.

Jag var ju tvungen att svara:


Hej igen.

Din ironi var i tröttaste laget.
Men man blir väl trött av att ligga inbäddad i Marieberg och år efter
år försöka försvara det oförsvarbara och trumpeta vidare på trallarna
från terror-, katastrof- och rovdjurskapitalismens lögnhalsar,
hantlangare och nickedockor, dvs de som tror sig föra "befälet" på en
skuta som råttorna skulle ha lämnat för längesen, om det bara funnes
nån annanstans att ta vägen.
Inte undra på att tidningsprenumerationen var praktiskt taget gratis
sist jag var i Sverige.

... Och ja, det är synd om människorna, och de förtjänar all respekt,
särskilt alla barn...inte bara de som blir nerskjutna av enstaka
galningar med automatvapen.

Men du som är ledarskribent, skriv om den betydligt mer målmedvetna
"gallring" av mänskligheten som diskret ångar på i full fart utan att
ni journalister törs säga ett knyst. (I varje fall inte i Sverige.)
Det pågår ett de stenrikas krig mot hela mänskligheten. "Rashygien"
kallade forna tiders fascister det. De nuvarande har kommit fram till
att de inte behöver fler slavar än 4-500 miljoner. Men troligast är
att de i sin gräns- och vettlösa girighet själva stryker med på
kuppen. (Liksom naturligtvis du och jag och alla andra som oavsett om
vi erkänner det eller ej "hyllar samma västerländska värden", läs
"pengar= makt=rätt".)

Googla på "depleted uranium", – och våga se på bilderna av barnen! –
"Morgellon's disease", "nanotechnology", "chemtrails" och "ethylene
dibromide" för att bara ta några exempel på vapen som med ert tigande
samtycke (eller är det ovetenhet?) används inte bara mot "islamistiska
terrorister som hatar vår frihet" – borde väl egentligen vara "hatar
oss för de friheter vi tar oss"? – utan mot allt levande på jorden,
och främst mot den amerikanska befolkningen! Ty i Texasgubbens rike
har Dr Strangelove & Co fullkomligt fria händer. Och de ÄR garanterat
bindgalna.

Visste du t ex att 60% av alla USA:s bin har dött under det senaste
året? (Inga bin = ingen mat, det påpekade Einstein redan för 60 år
sen. Fenomenet, som kan ha samband med genmanipulerade grödor, har
även spritt sig till Europa, det kan man läsa om i exvis Der Spiegel.)
Eller att det amerikanska miljövårdsverket EPA har LAGT NER sitt
bibliotek för att spara ynka 2 miljoner dollar? (Räcker till några
timmars krig i Irak.)
Eller att antalet döda i lungcancer i USA är 10 ggr högre idag än
1997? Detta sedan de allra flesta människor har SLUTAT röka!

Hur sånt kan komma sig vore en journalistiskt berättigad fråga, eller
hur? Förutsatt att pressens roll var att sakligt och opartiskt
informera allmänheten så att människor kan fatta välgrundade beslut, i
stort som smått. Demokrati, alltså. Men jag vet, "den ekonomiska
verkligheten är en annan". Och jag talar väl för döva öron. En klen
tröst i eländet, men en som ändå inger ett visst hopp om att du kanske
en dag ska skåda ljuset, dvs skymta verkligheten, är att du tydligen
storknade tillräckligt på dina egna ord för att idas svara. Så
taktfullt av dig.
Bästa hälsningar
Gonzo Long

Om det brasilianska samhället och våldet

Cristovam Buarque has a Ph.D. in economics. He is a PDT senator for the Federal District and was Governor of the Federal District (1995-98) and Minister of Education (2003-04). Last year he was a presidential candidate. You can visit his homepage ¿ www.cristovam.com.br ¿ and write to him at mensagem-cristovam@senado.gov.br

Enough Already

Cristovam Buarque
www.cristovam.com.br

Enough already of all the cruelty. Of bus passengers burned alive, of young people killed, of assaults, kidnappings, massacres. And of the daily acts of violence that do not even make it into the news.

Enough already of a reality that looks like a scene from a horror movie. Enough already of a society that remains shocked only for a few days¿until Carnaval, the World Cup, the next scandal.

Enough already of the violence factory hidden in our social and economic model. Of the brutal inequality that divides our population into those included and those excluded, separated by a poorly disguised Nazi-type system of ¿apartition.¿

Enough already of promising to reduce the age at which youths are tried as adults and promising to adopt the death penalty, without assuming responsibility for the needed revolution in our social structure.

Enough already of our contribution to global warming. Also, enough already of the lie of saying that that problem can be solved without a profound reform of the development model.

Enough already of commemorating the enrollment of 95% of Brazilian children in school without asking what has become of the other 5% and when only a third of those enrolled will finish high school and only half of these with a minimally satisfactory quality of education.

Enough already of the lie of giving the name ¿schools¿ to the degraded buildings where we deposit our children for so few hours per day.

Enough already of our administrations forgetting their campaign promises, ignoring the most serious problems. Of a penal and judicial system that protects bandits¿both street and white-collar criminals¿who have access to expensive lawyers.

Enough already of a Congress divorced from the people who elected it, one forming voting blocs along party lines and not around ideas, proposals, actions. Enough already of the lie that democracy is merely the right to speak, even though nothing of relevance is said to confront the problems.

Enough already of the moralists calling for ethics in the politicians¿ behavior while at the same time forgetting to demand ethics in setting policy priorities.

Enough already of an economy that grows little and in the wrong direction without respect for the ecology, creating neither employment nor sustainability, one that neither pulls us out of backwardness nor breaks the vicious circle of inequality that binds and shames us.

Enough already of the included rich people who blame the excluded poor for the disgrace of inefficiency, of criminality, of environmental destruction, of lack of education. As if in the past it were the slaves who were to blame for the lack of liberty.

Enough already of blaming the poor for the violence when they themselves are the majority of its victims. Enough already of seeking simplistic solutions that change nothing.

Enough already of the difficulty of rigorously punishing the brutal killers of a child who happened to be in the same car as his mother and those responsible for almost a million deaths by violence in the last 25 years.

Also, enough already of thinking that punishing those bandits is sufficient, as if others with the same degree of bestiality would not replace them. As if the problem were the violence itself and not what is causing it.

Enough already of seeking justice after the crimes have been committed and not seeking the peace that would stop the violence. Enough already of the individualistic, corporativist egotism that impedes the country from seeing itself as a whole, from looking to the future, from defining its course.

Enough already of the indifference and of the arguments attempting to conceal the true causes of the greatest of the crimes¿the crime of egotism that divides our country and impedes the construction of our Nation.

Enough already of pretending that Brazil does not need a revolution or of fleeing from it, adopting small palliatives.

Also, enough already of articles.

Ett par iakttagelser av Wayne Madsen

Från www.waynemadsenreport.com
March 15, 2007 -- A couple of observations.

Former "Al Qaeda" number 3 man, Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, is reportedly confessing to a number of terrorist attacks at his Military Commission trial (Combatant Status Review Tribunal in Pentagon "Newspeak") in Guantanamo Bay. He claims responsibility for 9/11 "A to Z." He also claimed he planned the 1993 World Trade Center van bombing, Richard Reid's attempted shoe bombing of a trans-Atlantic flight from Paris to Miami, the Bali bombing, an attack on an Israeli-owned hotel in Mombasa, Kenya and an attempted missile attack on an Israeli passenger plane at Mombasa airport. Mohammed also claimed that he was behind attempted attacks on the Library Tower in Los Angeles, the Sears Tower in Chicago, the Empire State Building in New York, the New York Stock Exchange, the Panama Canal, NATO headquarters in Brussels, Israel's port of Eilat, nuclear power plants in the United States, U.S. embassies in Indonesia, Australia, and Japan, Israeli embassies in Australia, Azerbaijan, Philippines, and India, Big Ben in London, and London's Heathrow Airport. He also claimed that he was behind plots to assassinated Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf, Pope John Paul II, President Jimmy Carter, and President Bill Clinton (why is it that Democrats are always targeted by these terrorists?) Left off the list were the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya (Mohammed must have been on vacation then) and the USS Cole (that was Sudan's doing according to a Federal judge in Norfolk, Virginia).

Tomorrow, Mohammed may claim responsibility for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, the murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, Avian flu, the sinking of the Andrea Doria, and the Challenger and Columbia disasters.

***

There was apparently a proposal at the recent America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) meeting in Washington to invite Israel to join the United States as the 51st state. Delegates rejected the idea after they learned that Israel would be limited to only two U.S. Senators.

Heeeere's Justice! (Den amerikanska smygfascismen är inte född igår!)

Från alltid tankeväckande Jeff Wells ochhans www.rigint.blogspot.com

Try to imagine Jay Leno devoting an entire Tonight Show to Michael Ruppert, and the topic of Dick Cheney's role in the attacks of 9/11. Or David Letterman conversing for an hour with Dr Nick Begich, co-author of Angels Don't Play this HAARP, on the weaponization of the ionosphere.

Because as bizarre and unlikely as those scenes would be, 37 years ago this month, Johnny Carson spent 50 minutes with New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison - and millions of Americans - on the subject of the state-sanctioned murder of John F Kennedy.

Audio files of Carson's Garrison interview can be downloaded from this page, but a big note of caution: distortion makes them all but unlistenable. If anyone knows of better quality samples (or even better, video), please let me know.

Considering today's total absence of serious mainstream dialogue regarding controversial subjects, the first thought that might come to some of us is Man, the past rocked! Well no, it didn't, regardless of how tempting it is to succumb to ill-founded nostalgia whenever we can rightly say Man, the present sucks! The awful truth is that America's media was compromised then as well, and riddled with Intelligence assets doing Mockingbird journalism. (See, for instance, James DiEugenio's essays regarding the obstruction of the Garrison investigation and the exposure of Jim Phelan in The Assassinations.)

In its favour, the media wasn't yet so dumbed down and concentrated in the hands of a few defense contractors. And on that account, Garrison was able to tell a prickly and incredulous Carson:

The function of the Warren Commission was to make the American people feel that the [JFK assassination] had been looked into so that there would be no further inquiries, so that the American people would not find out the involvement of elements of the Central Intelligence Agency, so that they would think the matter was closed.

Carson was uncomfortable with Garrison's material, and his performance so querelous and off-key that NBC issued a press release that said "the Johnny seen on TV that night was not the Johnny we all know and love. He had to play the devil's advocate, because that makes for a better program." Apparently Johnny was furious at the apology, and vowed Garrison would never be on his show again.

Not that there was much chance of a return visit, anyway. Carson and NBC had to be shamed by Tonight Show guest Mort Sahl into extending an invitation in the first place.

As Garrison tells it, in On the Trail of the Assassins:

The articulate satirist, who was spending an extended period of time in New Orleans helping the office in a variety of ways, was well aware of my problems communicating with the people through the news media. Even the simplest press conference involved a process of "translation," so that what came out in the media never seemed to be precisely what I had said. Sahl, being in show business, had access to places I did not, like the Johnny Carson show. One night when he was on the program, the conversation drifted to the subject of the assassination and my investigation. Suddenly Sahl turned toward the audience and asked if they did not think Carson should invite me to be a guest on the show so that I could explain my side of the case. The response was so demonstrably affirmative that it left Carson and the network with no alternative. A few days later I received a telegram of invitation, which I promptly accepted.

Sahl is one of my favourite undersung heroes of the Sixties, for having spent the capital of a successful career in the Quixotic pursuit of justice for the murderers of America.

From the cover of Time


to "conspiracy monger"


That strikes me as the trajectory of an honourable man.

There's an interview with Sahl a couple of months later in 1968, before the epochal one-two of Dr King and Robert Kennedy, that is as prophetic as anything I've read from that time:

ARGO: Why is the truth behind the assassination of President Kennedy the last chance of America for its survival?

SAHL: Because the evidence developed by District Attorney Garrison indicates that certain people had to take President Kennedy's life in order to control ours. In other words, as Richard Starnes of the New York World-Telegram said, the shots in Dallas were the opening shots of World War III. There's been a great change in this country since Kennedy. I'm afraid a great deal of our hope was interred with his remains.

...

ARGO: What would you say are the roots of this whole era?

SAHL: Fascism. It started with the death of Roosevelt. They moved in and they negated every treaty we made with every world leader who didn't fit the fascist/militarist mold. We went back on our word. As David Schoenbrun says very well, "I am not a dissenter for saying this. Those who betrayed American policy are the dissenters." We've gone back on the dream of national independence and we were the model for the rest of the world. Then when they followed our model, we attacked them for it. Shameful. No one has a right to stain the American flag. And unfortunately, we have people in this country who did it. If America goes, it will surely be an inside job.

...

ARGO: Why is the trial that Mr. Garrison's pursuing really the trial of the American people?

SAHL: Because we have to decide. Once the neo-fascists became bold enough to slay the President on the street, they showed their hand. They showed how arrogant they had become. Now it's a question of symptom. That crime was a national symptom. If we can turn our back on that, we will pay a terrible price. That will be the end of this democracy. As a matter of fact, it's been dying since Kennedy's death. We have to cleanse our soul. It's much the same as the French when they regained their national honor, not by framing Dreyfus, but by admitting that they did.

ARGO: What does Garrison mean: "The key to the whole case is through the looking glass. Black is white; white is black"?

SAHL: He means that the first thing the government did when the President was killed was to ratify his death and to appoint a group of honorable men to initial a fraudulent report. To eventually say there is no fourth bullet, even though there's a fourth bullet hole. The man was shot at from three sides, but there was only one side. In other words, the government decrees it is so. And that eventually the government may be forced to form a Ministry of Truth which will rule there was no John Kennedy, if it becomes convenient. That's what he means. When Lyndon Johnson says to us, as an example, "We have continually keep up brush fire wars to protect the peace." Well, that's Orwell. War is peace, and peace is war, and love is hate. And you finally sell it just that way; the contradiction. And you do it by making the American people mad because those are the mouthings of a madman. We can be driven mad; it's the same virus that bit the Germans.

Rest in peace, Johnny Carson.

Mort Sahl, where have you been?

Brasiliansk ekonom visar USA vad humanism och logik vill säga

Läs och njut, för det är minsann inte varje dag en brasiliansk senator och ekonom ger amerikanerna en så elegant och belevad tillrättavisning!

Under en debatt vid ett universitet i USA fick förre guvernören, förre utbildningsministern och nuvarande senatorn Cristóvam Buarque frågan vad han ansåg om internationaliseringen av Amazônia. Den unge amerikanske frågeställaren inledde med att han förväntade sig ett svar av en humanist, inte av en brasilianare.

Så här svarade senhor Cristóvam Buarque:

”Som brasiliansk medborgare skulle jag helt enkelt argumentera mot internationaliseringen av Amazônia. Hur mycket våra regeringar än har misskött detta arv, så är det vårt.

Som humanist, och medveten om vilka risker för en förödelse av miljön som Amazônia är utsatt för, kan jag tänka mig att det internationaliseras, liksom också allt annat som är viktigt för mänskligheten.

Om Amazônia av humanistiska och etiska skäl bör internationaliseras, då bör vi också internationalisera all världens oljereserver. Oljan är lika viktig för mänsklighetens välfärd som Amazônia är för vår framtid. Trots detta förbehåller sig de som äger oljereserverna rätten att öka eller minska utvinningen och höja eller inte höja oljepriserna.

På samma sätt bör de rika ländernas finanskapital internationaliseras. Om Amazônia är en resurs som tillhör hela mänskligheten, då får inte urskogen brännas ner av en ägare eller ett land. Att bränna ner Amazônia är lika allvarligt som den arbetslöshet som orsakas av det globala spekulationskapitalets godtyckliga beslut. Vi kan inte tillåta att de finansiella reserverna används till att bränna ner hela länder för att tillfredsställa ett fåtal människors girighet.

Och innan vi internationaliserar Amazônia skulle jag vilja se en internationalisering av alla världens stora museer. Louvren bör inte tillhöra enbart Frankrike. Varje museum i världen vakar över de vackraste verk som den mänskliga anden har skapat. Detta kulturarv kan lika lite som det amazoniska naturarvet tillåtas manipuleras och hanteras efter en ägares eller ett lands godtycke.

Nyligen beslöt en japansk miljonär att ta med sig en målning av en stor mästare i graven när han dog. Hellre borde den målningen ha internationaliserats.

Under FN:s nu pågående session organiserar man ett Millennieforum, men vissa länders presidenter har haft svårighet att medverka på grund av pinsamma incidenter vid inträdet i USA. Därför anser jag att New York i egenskap av säte för Förenta Nationerna bör internationaliseras. Åtminstone Manhattan borde tillhöra hela mänskligheten. Liksom Paris, Venedig, Rom, London, Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia, Recife, varje stad med sin speciella skönhet och sin historia i världen, borde tillhöra hela världen.

Om USA vill internationalisera Amazônia därför att det är för riskabelt att lämna det i brasilianarnas händer, låt oss då internationalisera USA:s hela kärnvapenarsenal, eftersom de har visat att de är kapabla att använda dessa vapen och vålla en ödeläggelse som är tusentals gånger värre än de beklagansvärda svedjebränderna i Brasiliens skogar.

Jag stöder tanken att världens återstående urskogar internationaliseras i utbyte mot skuldbördan. Låt oss använda detta kapital till att garantera att varje barn i världen får möjlighet att ÄTA och gå i skolan! Låt oss internationalisera barnen och behandla dem alla, oavsett vilket land de är födda i, som ett arv som förtjänar hela vårldens omvårdnad. Som humanist kan jag försvara att världen internationaliseras. Men så länge världen behandlar mig som brasilianare kommer jag att kämpa för att Amazônia ska förbli vårt. Och bara vårt!”

Av uppenbara skäl publicerades inte det här uttalandet.

"My people are American. My time is now."

Citatet ovan är från George Gerschwin, 1926. Gerschwin var icke-troende, hade inte ens genomgått bar mitzvah, och hans uttalande stämmer mycket vä överens med vad sir Edwin Montagu, den ende judiska medlemmen av det brittiska kabinettet sa några år ridigare apropå Balfourdeklarationen, där planerna på en judisk stat i Palestina först tog form: I consider myself a British citizen. All my life I've been trying to get out of the ghetto, and now you want to put me back in there again."

Lenni Brenner redogör för det faktum att den "judiska" befolkningen i USA är de som minst stöder någon religion. Ett försvinnande litet fåtal av dem som identifierar sig som judar kallar sig zionister och ett ännu mindre fåtal av dessa står för en mycket stor del av kampanjbidragen till de två stora kapitalistiska partierna.


(......) A personal experience tells it all about liberals and Zionism. In 1971, the Vietnam-era National Peace Action Coalition asked me to draw in Eldon Clingen, the Liberal Party member of the New York City Council from Manhattan. We had been in the Socialist Party's youth In the 1950s. He joined the Libs on assignment but subsequently involved himself in Democratic Party politics, without changing party registration. But, as he was "Mr. Clean Air" for his leadership in the anti-pollution effort, the Libs asked him to be their Council candidate.

He was pleased to get his Lib faction involved. We chatted. I mentioned that lower-case liberals, against war in Vietnam, shot passing Arabs, even camels, to get Jewish votes.

"Oh, you have me wrong. I'm of Christian descent, and when I think of the terrible things Christians have done to Jews, I say I can't do enough for the Jews."

I told him that the next time he called for more 'enough' for Israel, he should write a check to me because, although I'm a Jew, I don't get any of that 'enough.'

"OK, I'll tell it like it is: In order for a liberal – and I mean a lower-case liberal – to win in New York, he must have the Black, Puerto Rican and Jewish votes because he can't get the Irish or Italian vote. They are locked away with the right-wing. But Blacks and Puerto Ricans don't give us money. So don't tell me about terrible things Israelis are doing to Palestinians. It would upset me. But I'm not going to break with my meal ticket."

The moral of the story is that, while it is crucial to talk about oil industry domination of US foreign policy, it is just as crucial to talk about Zionist funding and its enormous influence on domestic politics. The discussion of both factors must be within a context of insisting that ordinary Americans, Jew or gentile, are fools if they continue to support parties that are so obviously funded by the rich.

Far from being afraid of discussing Zionist funding, it should be a major point in any critique of private contributions. Jews are less than 2.5% of the people. Zionists are now considerably less than 22% of all Jews. (My current estimate is ca. 10%.) And rich campaign contributors are a minority of Zionists. Yet we have an overwhelmingly gentile Congress that is emphatically more pro-Zionist than the majority of Jews.

Far from being a diversion of public attention from the capitalist nature of American politics, as some leftists fear, talking about Zionist money is one of the best ways of making that point. Because of the civil rights struggle and other battles, equality for all races, religions, nationalities, has become part of the broad American value system. Because of this, my percentage estimate of the Jewish proportion of the 400 richest Americans (80), which, trust me on this, is shared by serious scholars, has an automatic tendency to shock. But isn't capitalism is about inequality? It is absurd to think that a system that sanctifies inequality could be egalitarian in the ethno-religious distribution of wealth.

All that is necessary to make the important point that it isn't Jewish contributions but Zionist slush that is offensive, is to cite the fact that we now can see that the Zionists are a minority of Jews. Talk about the oil industry and Zionist contributions at the same time, and people will get the correct idea that we are trying to explain a complex problem in detail.

Let's go further. What US support for Israel and support for Saudi Arabia additionally have in common is that both regimes are theocratic states. An atheist of Jewish background should be concerned if we talked about Israel and didn't talk about Saudi Arabia. So the moral of the story is talk about both. Additionally, everyone now sees a growing alliance between the Zionist establishment and the so-called Christian Zionists. These fanatics support Israel because of their lunatic notion that the creation of Israel means that Christ is coming, any minute now, to save a Christian America, and send all those atheist Jews, and atheist gentiles, to hell. Hitherto, the Jewish establishment could at least be relied on to resist attempts to convert America into a 'Christian' government. But, with the new alliance on foreign policy, that resistance is getting weaker and weaker. The Christian right now reasonably expects an increase in Zionist votes and funding for their candidates. Indeed it is a central tenet of Jewish neo-con politics that it is unreasonable to expect perpetual Christian Zionist support for Israel, unless they get something back in return.

In other words, we are now in a complex political crisis with profound domestic and international consequences. A complex situation can't be dealt with in a one-sided manner. We have no choice but to examine all parts of the situation. If we denounce all the criminals, Americans, Arabs, Christians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, for their crimes, from a democratic secular perspective, in a scientific manner, the Zionists and their Democratic and Republican patrons can say anything they want. An educated public will see that we don't want to deny anyone their rights. On the contrary, they will see that we want to extend human equality and secularism, here and in the Middle East.

Lenni Brenner is editor of 51 Documents: Zionist Collaboration with the Nazis, and a contributor to CounterPunch's new book The Politics of Anti-Semitism (AK Press). He can be reached at BrennerL21@aol.com.

Pirater på hugget, Jolly Roger i topp

Följande är från kanadensisk författaren Jeff Wells www.rigint.blogspot.com och har ett par år på nacken men kan vara bra att veta. Rätar ut vissa frågetecken. Kolla även t ex "Bill and George: Happy at last" på samma sajt

Thanks to Cryptogon for hosting an mp3 of the recent BBC Radio 4 documentary on Skull and Bones.

Most of the material will be familiar to those who've tried to educate themselves about the shadowy old boy network of privileged Yalies, but here's something I hadn't heard before: in the presidential papers of George HW Bush is a letter from John Kerry, which he'd signed with the traditional salutation of the Bonesman bond, "Yours in 322."

New, but not surprising. As Alexandra Robbins revealed in Secrets of the Tomb, Kerry has been an active adult recruiter for S&B (in 1986 he tried to "tap" a reluctant Jacob Weisberg, future editor of Slate, who was shocked that a liberal senator could support such an organization), and is said to use "322" as a mnemonic device. And of course his wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, is the widow of a Republican Bonesman, Senator John Heinz.

For many - too many - Skull and Bones means either It's the Illuminati! or It's a frat house! (The latter charge has become increasingly shrill since Kerry became the presumptive Democratic nominee.) While it's true that founder William Russell was greatly influenced by Germanic secret societies, particularly the Bavarian Illuminati, I think it's a mistake to get hung up on the legacy of Adam Weishaupt. More revealing, and more enduring, is the legacy of the opium trade.

Samuel Russell, William's cousin, founded Russell and Company in 1823. Its business was to purchase cheap opium in Turkey and smuggle it into China, where it was strictly prohibited. Americans were competing for narco dollars with the British, who were importing higher quality Indian grades, and were founding family fortunes in the process. Russell's chief of operations in Canton was Warren Delano Jr, the grandfather of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Russell's early investors included John Cleve Green, who financed Princeton, and Joseph Coolidge, whose son organized United Fruit which tied together the colonial interests of many New England families, and grandson Archibald Coolidge who co-founded the Council on Foreign Relations. And then there's the Forbes family - the Forbes in "John Forbes Kerry" - who "took drug smuggling to its highest level of profitability and left a legacy that extends into modern times," as Steven Sora writes in Secret Societies of America's Elite.

Skull and Bones - established in 1832 and incorporated in 1856 as the Russell Trust - was sustained by opium money, and established its influence through its ability to place graduates in key positions in the lucrative global drug trade.

Sora advances the thesis that the secret business of societies such as Skull and Bones has been to facilitate the accrual of criminal wealth by a privileged pirate class through such means as drug-running, slave-trading and arms-dealing. Knowing this history, we can make more sense of how a supposedly distinguished family such as Bush can be mixed up in so many stories of drug-running, weapons-smuggling and money-laundering. In the context of the opium trade, the CIA's stuffing Golden Triangle heroin in the corpses of GIs killed in Vietnam and protecting the importation of crack to America's inner cities reads suddenly like business as usual.

That both George Bush and John Kerry are Bonesmen may be nothing but a fluke of the American overclass. That in 2003, George Bush appointed a Bonesman, William H Donaldson, to head the Securites and Exchange Commission, the regulatory body responsible for investigating charges of 9/11 insider trading, is no fluke. That Donaldson is a longtime friend of the Bush family, and classmate of fellow Bonesman and terrorist money launderer Jonathan Bush, is no joke.

Skull and Bones remains to some a silly issue, but an issue it will remain so long as the question "Do you know General Russell?" can send an old boy into a trance faster than "Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"

posted by Jeff at 1:52 AM

Krig mot Iran? Njae...

Hittade följande hos eminenta www.xympjora.blogspot.com

Saturday, January 27, 2007
A trick to fool the Lobby?
Israel’s demographic problem continues to worsen, with immigration to Israel hitting an 18–year low. Anyone crazy enough to move to Israel now would have to be the craziest of the crazy settlers, meaning that the percentage of the certifiably insane continues to grow, meaning that Israeli politics will only grow worse and worse as the voting population continues to de-evolve.

Of course, there are two other parts to the demographic problem, both well hidden. The first is the growth in the Arab population. The second is the amount of immigration of Jews out of Israel, away from the insanity. This latter phenomenon is obviously occurring, as the Jewish population from Israel in places like Berlin and Moscow continues to grow. Some just quietly return to Brooklyn. Canada is now accepting Jewish refugees from Israel (Canada should send a ship over called the ‘HMCS St. Louis’ to pick them up). Of course, the people who are leaving are the sane and smart ones, further reducing the combined political intelligence of the remainder. Just think what would happen if Israel were to find itself in even more dire circumstances. Israel would be ‘wiped off the map’ not by war, but by the steady decline in population as its residents slowly come to their senses.

There is a school of thought that the United States will enter into a war on Iran tricked by Israel. Israel will conduct an attack on Iran, another military failure, but the effective counterattack, by Iranian missiles (with the help of an insurrection by Hamas and Hezbollah missiles), will prompt the Americans to enter the fight to assist its ‘ally’ (despite the fact that the ‘ally’ would be completely responsible for bringing the counterattacks on itself).

We’ve seen this plan once before, less than a year ago. Israel was supposed to win easily in Lebanon. When it didn’t, the neocon/Israeli Plan II was to have the Americans enter to assist Israel, preferably by attacking Syria on the pretense that Hezbollah’s missiles were coming from Syria. As you will remember, the doom and gloom in the neocon ranks was occasioned by the fact that the Americans did nothing, just sat on their hands and watched Israel get its ass kicked. There were even dark conspiracy theories raised about how the Americans tricked Israel into a disaster in Lebanon, by encouraging it and giving it the green light, and then failing to support it.

What if the American Establishment – you know, the guys Noam says rule the world who were embarrassed by Bush when he refused to pay attention to the reasonable suggestions of their advisers – has a trick up its sleeve? What if the plan is a version of Lebanon? We know the Lobby runs Washington. Israel is becoming an albatross to the Empire (or, rather, even more of an albatross than usual), but the Lobby is too powerful to stop. Let the Lobby, arrogant and full of itself, shoot itself in the foot. Let the Lobby goad Israel into attacking Iran, all on the basis that the Lobby power is so huge that it will be able to force the Americans into the war. When the Iranian missiles start to fall, the Americans . . . do nothing. There will be screams from the usual Lobby catamites, but they will fall on deaf ears, just like happened with Lebanon. The Iranian missiles wouldn’t ‘wipe Israel off the map’, but they would go a long way to evening up the power relations in the Middle East, and would accelerate the demographic problem and cure America’s parasite problem. Do you think Israel can afford to conduct an attack on Iran relying on American help when such help has already been denied and when its failure to appear might mean the end of Israel as a viable state?

En lobby som skjuter sig i foten i stället för total världsbrand ...

Idag samlas förhoppningsvis hundratusentals amerikaner i Washington för att protestera mot kriget.
I morgon får vi säkerligen läsa i de inbäddade pappersdrakarna att de var på sin höjd femtitusen och terrorister allihop, varföre myndigheterna måste reagera med sitt nya vapen för "crowd control" en Humveemonterad mikrovågsändare från Raytheon som ger de jäkla kommunisterna en rejäl näsbränna om den inte bländar eller helsteker dem. Kan bli vissa juridiska problem förstås, eftersom det är svårt att kalla ev. drabbade nunnor eller metodistpastorer för terrorister ...

Gonzolong von Weltschmerz

Nu har jag inte bloggat nånting sen juni förra året, och kanske är det bra att inte ta så illa vid sig av allt som händer utan istället försöka inta en mer stoisk hållning. Skadligt för levern att vara arg.
Å andra sidan: "What you don't know can't hurt them", som kanadensiske författaren Jeff Wells så riktigt påpekar i sin utmärkta www.rigint.com Nu är jag alltså tillbaka med den här, som jag hittade på www.globalresearch.ca
Paul Craig Roberts var biträdande finansminister under Reagan, och när till och med en sån kapitalistlakej skriver något som det nedanstående förstår man att Bushligan och sionistlobbyn börjar få jävligt bråttom att ställa till världskrig för att rädda sitt eget skinn en stund till ...

Impeach Bush—Stop Iran Invasion

by Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, January 15, 2007
VDARE.COM - 2007-01-12

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When are the American people and their representatives in Congress and the military going to wake up and realize that the US has an insane war criminal in the White House who is destroying all chances for peace in the world and establishing a police state in the US?

Americans don’t have much time to realize this and to act before it is too late. Bush’s "surge" speech last Wednesday night makes it completely clear that his real purpose is to start wars with Iran and Syria before failure in Iraq brings an end to the neoconservative/Israeli plan to establish hegemony over the Middle East.

The "surge" gives Congress, the media, and the foreign policy establishment something to debate and oppose, while Bush sets his plans in motion to orchestrate a war with Iran.

Suddenly, we are hearing Bush regime propaganda that there are Iranian networks operating within Iraq that are working with the Iraqi insurgency and killing US troops. This assertion is a lie and preposterous on its face. Iranian Shi’ites are not going to arm Iraqi Sunnis, who are more focused on killing Iraqi Shi’ites allied with Iran than on killing US troops. If the Iranians wanted to cause the US trouble in Iraq, they would encourage Iraqi Shi’ites to join the insurgency against US forces. An insurgency drawn from 80% of the Iraqi population would overwhelm the US forces.

CBS reports that the news organization has been told by US officials "that American forces have begun an aggressive and mostly secret ground campaign against networks of Iranians that had been operating with virtual impunity inside Iraq." To manufacture evidence in behalf of this lie to feed to the gullible American public, US forces invaded an Iranian consulate in northern Iraq and kidnapped 5 consulate officials, claiming the Iranians were part of plans "to kill Americans." In typical Orwellian fashion, Secretary of State Condi Rice described Bush’s aggression against Iran as designed to confront Tehran’s aggression.

Iraqi government officials in the Kurdish province and the Iraqi foreign minister have refused to go along with Bush’s propaganda ploy. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari announced that the Iranian officials were no threat and were working in a liaison office that had Iraqi government approval and was in the process of being elevated into a consulate.

The Iraqi foreign minister said that US troops tried to seize more innocent people at the Irbil airport but were prevented by Kurdish troops.

The Kurds, of course, have been allies of the US forces, but Bush is willing to alienate the Kurds in the interest of provoking a war with Iran.

If Bush is unable to orchestrate war with Iran directly, he will orchestrate war indirectly by having US troops attack Iraqi Shi’ite militias. Bush has already given orders for US troops to attack the Iraqi Shi’ite militias, who oppose the Sunnis and have not been part of the insurgency. Obviously, once Bush can get US troops in open warfare with Iraqi Shi’ites, the situation for US troops in Iraq will quickly go down hill. Bush will be able to blame Iranian Shi’ites for arming Iraqi Shi’ites that he can say are killing US troops.

Bush has also ordered the Persian Gulf to be congested with two US aircraft carrier attack groups. There is no military or diplomatic reason for even one attack group to be in the Persian Gulf. If Bush fails to orchestrate a war with Iran by kidnapping its officials or by attacking Shi’ite militias, he can orchestrate an event like the Tonkin Gulf incident or have the Israelis pull another USS Liberty incident and blame the Iranians.

The Tonkin Gulf incident was used by the Johnson administration to deceive Congress and to involve the US in the Vietnam War. Johnson alleged a North Vietnamese attack on US warships.

In 1967 Israel attacked and destroyed the US intelligence ship Liberty, because Liberty’s crew had picked up proof that Israel had initiated the war with Egypt and intended to attack Syria the next day. Some have speculated that Israelis hoped their attack on the Liberty could be blamed on Egypt and used to draw the US into the war against Egypt.

In 2003 the Moorer Commission [see here [PDF] and here], headed by Admiral Tom Moorer, former Chief of Naval Operations and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, concluded:

"That in attacking the USS Liberty, Israel committed acts of murder against American servicemen and an act of war against the United States."

"That fearing conflict with Israel, the White House deliberately prevented the U.S. Navy from coming to the defense of USS Liberty."

"…the Captain and surviving crew members were later threatened with court-martial, imprisonment or worse if they exposed the truth; and were abandoned by their own government."

"That due to the influence of Israel’s powerful supporters in the United States, the White House deliberately covered up the facts of this attack from the American people."

"That a danger to our national security exists whenever our elected officials are willing to subordinate American interests to those of any foreign nation, and specifically are unwilling to challenge Israel’s interests when they conflict with American interests."

On the 30th anniversary of Israel’s destruction of the liberty, Admiral Moorer said that Israel attacked the Liberty because Israel knew that the intelligence ship could intercept Israel’s plans to seize the Golan Heights from Syria, an act of Israeli aggression to which the US government was opposed. Admiral Moorer said, "I believe Moshe Dayan concluded that he could prevent Washington from becoming aware of what Israel was up to by destroying the primary source of acquiring that information--the US Liberty.”

Moorer reports that after a 25 minute air attack "that pounded the Liberty with bombs, rockets, napalm and machine gun fire . . . three Israeli torpedo boats closed in for the kill . . . the torpedo boats’ machine guns also were turned on life rafts that were deployed into the Mediterranean as well as those few on deck that had escaped damage."

Admiral Moorer says, "What is so chilling and cold-blooded, of course, is that they [Israel] could kill as many Americans as they did in confidence that Washington would cooperate in quelling any public outcry."

The US invasion of Iraq and the looming US attack on Iran are proof that Israel has even more power over the White House today.

Bush has many ways to widen his war in the Middle East. His brutal aggression against Somalia has largely escaped criticism for the war crime that it is. On January 11 the US National Intelligence Director told Congress that Hezbollah in Lebanon may be the next US threat. Just as he lied to the entire world about Saddam Hussein and Iraq, Bush is lying about Iran. Bush and the neoconservatives are frantic for war with Iran to get underway before the US Congress forces a US withdrawal from the failed adventure in Iraq.

Bush’s entire "war on terror" is based on lies. The Bush Regime, desperate to keep its lies covered up, is now trying to prevent American law firms from defending the Guantanamo detainees. The Bush Regime is fearful that Americans will learn that the detainees are not terrorists but props in the regime’s orchestrated "terror war."

On January 13 the New York Times (editorial) said that "Cully Stimson, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for detainee affairs, tried to rally American corporations to stop doing business with law firms that represent inmates of the Guantanamo internment camp." Stimson alleged that it was "shocking" that American law firms were "representing detainees down there." He suggested that when corporate America got word of if, "those C.E.O.’s are going to make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms. We want to watch that play out."[Round Up The Usual Lawyers]

The only reason for the Bush Regime’s policy of indefinite detention without charges is that it has no charges to bring. The detainees are not terrorists. They are the Bush Regime’s props in a fake war that serves as cover for the Regime’s hegemonic policy in the Middle East.

The only action that can stop Bush is for both the Democratic and Republican leadership of the House and Senate to call on the White House, tell Bush they know what he is up to and that they will not fall for it a second time. The congressional leadership must tell Bush that if he does not immediately desist, he will be impeached and convicted before the week is out.

Can a congressional leadership that lives in fear of the Israel Lobby perform this task?

All the rest is penny-ante. Revoking the Iraqi War Resolution as Rep. Sam Farr has proposed or requiring Bush to obtain congressional authorization prior to any US attack on Iran simply lets Bush and his Federalist Society apologists for executive dictatorship claim he has commander-in-chief powers and proceed with his planned aggression. Cutting off funding is not itself enough as Bush can raid other budgets. Non-binding resolutions of disapproval are meaningless to a president who doesn’t care what anyone else thinks.

Nothing can stop the criminal Bush from instituting wider war in the Middle East that could become a catastrophic world war except an unequivocal statement from Congress that he will be impeached.

Bush has made the US into a colony of Israel. The US is incurring massive debt and loss of both life and reputation in order to silence Muslim opposition to Israel’s theft of Palestine and the Golan Heights.

That is what the "war on terror" is about.


Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan Administration.

Copyright Creators Syndicate, Inc.

Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts


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Bilderbergmöten och andra debutantbaler för påläggskalvar inom nyhögern

Efter att ha konstaterat att Paris Hiltons kärleksliv är hemligare än Bilderberggruppens möte i Kanada nyligen bjuder xymphora på följande iakttagelse:

Från www.xymphora.blogspot.com 2006-06-26

”… Listan över deltagare har blivit så lång att det är omöjligt att hålla ett verkligt hemligt möte. Hur ska Richard Perle och David Rockefeller kunna samtala om vilken sorts gevär som bör användas för att blåsa huvudet av Hugo Chavez när de är omgivna av svärmar av dussinpolitiker och byråkrater?

Bilderbergkonferensen har degenererat till ett möte där halvviktiga människor får chansen att känna sig verkligt viktiga genom att bli inbjudna att frottera sig med verkligt mäktiga människor. Den är ett sätt för människor vars egenvärde är beroende av att de tjänar viktiga personer att dryga ut sin CV. Dess verkliga syfte är nu att fungera som debutantbal för framtida extremhögerpolitiker som visas runt i gruppen så att man kan vara säker på att de inte i hemlighet är rosenröda kommunistbögar utan värdiga att installeras som nästa generations politiska ledare.

Vurmandet för bilderbergare och liknande är ett uttryck för den ena av de två vanligaste typerna av konspirationsteori. Länge har den vanligaste konspirationsteorin varit att hela världen styrs av en identifierbar kabal — aristokrater, judar, frimurare, Illuminati, the Council on Foreign Relations och/eller bilderbergare. Idén uppstod vid samma tid som demokratin började ta över politiken och baserades på antagandet att elitgrupper skulle konspirera bakom kulisserna för att återfå kontrollen över den makt de förlorat. Den Stora Konspirationen bidrog till att förklara varför maktens förankring hos folket inte föreföll göra saker och ting bättre och inte tycktes minska penningaristokratins makt och rikedomar.

Den typen av konspirationsteori är nonsens, uppenbart nonsens, och gör stor skada på vad jag menar vara den verkliga konspirationsteorin, nämligen den enkla tanken att politiska brott är brott, precis som alla andra slags brott, och ska utredas enligt normala utredningsmetoder och bestraffas med användande av det reguljära rättsväsendet. Den verkliga konspirationsteorin kanske inte leder till ett nytt Utopia, men den skulle bidra en hel del till att säkerställa att demokratiska politiska system fungerar så som de är avsedda att fungera, och att den vanliga människans intressen inte går förlorade bakom plundrarkapitalisters och krigsprofitörers. Fokuseringen på bilderbergare och liknande distraherar oss från den verkliga uppgiften för handen och ger ammunition åt dem som vill hindra oss från att använde de metoder vi faktiskt har tillgång till för att förbättra världen.”

Brev till svenska pressen

Häromdagen lät Vita huset via Condoleanza Rices UD meddela att Brasiliens regering ”inte gör tillräckligt mycket i kriget mot terrorn”, dvs inte har utdelat de totala dråpslag mot demokrati och rättsstat som de terrorlagar innebär som Blair, Bodström och Europas övriga pudelpolitiker är så angelägna om att införa. Regeringen Lula har vad jag vet inte bevärdigat sig med att svara. Lika bra det, jamar man inte med Bushjuntan så är man emot den, det har chefschimpansen själv sagt. I Sydamerika har man inte glömt vad amerikanska regeringar är kapabla till när ”fel” människor kommer till makten genom fria, demokratiska val. Morden på Allende i Chile och Albeniz i Guatemala är bara två exempel på modern amerikansk demokratiexport.

Men nu är det inte om presidentmord jag vill tala utan om det ”allmord” som ångar på i form av ett ”lågintensivt kärnvapenkrig” — det fjärde i ordningen sedan 1991— som USA i all tysthet för mot i första hand Iraks och Afghanistans civilbefolkningar, mot amerikanska soldater och deras familjer och på längre sikt mot allt levande på planeten, medan journalistkåren i de allra flesta fall frotterar sig med makten och rullar tummarna när de inte skriver om hur man får bort sittfläsket med Viagra. ”Utarmat uran” låter väl kraftlöst, tamt och ofarligt, eller hur? Och använder man det i vapen slipper man ju dessutom problemen med slutförvaring av radioaktivt avfall och andra tråkigheter. Man slipper på lång sikt problem överhuvudtaget ….

Nu har detta av nyhetsbyråerna och journalistflertalet ihjältigna krig mot allt liv på jorden fotograferats och ”fått ett ansikte”, som det heter, om man nu kan kalla det ett sådant, och det är min förbannade plikt som läs- och skrivkunnig och er som journalister att rapportera om den ohyggliga katastrof som hänger över oss alla och våra eventuella efterkommande.

Bilderna av de missbildade barn som föds i allt större antal i Irak, Kosovo, Afghanistan och nu även i USA och Storbritannien lär knappast få upplagesiffrorna för era pappersdrakar att skjuta i höjden — det sköter ju Big Brother-gäng, huliganer och mindre högt uppsatta skurkar åt er på löpen — men ni kan åtminstone forska, skriva själva, bedriva verklig journalistik och hänvisa läsarna till de platser på nätet där de här oerhört viktiga nyheterna finns, så länge nätet får vara fritt, vill säga. Vilket är långtifrån självklart. Studera exempelvis

www.rense.com/general70/deathmde.htm eller
www.rense.com/general70/stupd.htm eller
www.globalresearch.ca , där det bland mycket annat sakligt och välunderbyggt material finns tre artiklar av Doug Westerman, ”Depleted Uranium — Far Worse Than 9/11” , Leuren Moret, ”Planet Earth As Weapon and Target” och Chris Floyd, ”Hideous Kinky: Moral Nullity as Normality in Pentagon Plans”. Och www.waynemadsenreport.com är den överlägset bästa källan om man vill veta vad som händer bakom kulisserna i Washington

Food for thought, som de säger. Om nu någon ids leva kvar i ”det verklighetsbaserade samhället” eller tänka längre än näsan är lång. Det är ju så mycket behagligare att låta bli…

Jag är övertygad om att majoriteten av era läsare, oavsett tidningens partifärg, redan innerst inne förstår att den nuvarande amerikanska regeringen inte bara är korrumperade politiker som måste ställas inför rätta utan skvatt galna psykopater och massmördare, ja, terrorister, som måste beredas livstids slutförvaring, gärna i Abu Ghraib eller Guantanamo, men framför allt långt från den makt de så girigt klamrar sig fast vid. Och hur många nembutal måste man ta per kväll för att kunna sova och slippa mardrömmar om man vet sig vara medlöpare och hantlangare till ett sådant hyde? Ty: ”Den som tiger samtycker”. Det tror jag mig ha hört långt innan mr Bush talade om för mig var jag står.

Torture Works

By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.

Does torture work? Can foul means prevent a fouler catastrophe and thus redeem themselves by producing a greater good? Of course not, but those in power need discussions like this to continue, to give them a fig-leaf of official respectability. Consider this testimony by Ana Valdes.

I have been following with attention and curiosity the discussion about torture, if torture works, how it works, and why we are still using it, despite our declaration that we live in a civilized world. As one who has been tortured, I can say, yes, torture works, not because of the pain inflicted, or the feeling of loneliness and despair, but because torture acts at a level of consciousness we seldom have access to.

I was 19 years old when I was tortured, in Uruguay, at that time one of South America's most 'exemplary' countries, with a long tradition of democracy and legality. Uruguay, a country with a small army and without any military conscription, demanded several CIA agents to train its military in torture and pressure. The agent who trained my countrymen in torture was the American Dan Mitrione. He was executed by guerrillas in 1971. Afterwards, a swarm of agents came to our country to 'take the reins', vindicate Mitrione, and dismantle the guerrilla force.

We were tortured by people we knew. I was raised in a family with several members in the military. I was beaten and tortured by friends of my uncles and my cousins.

Some years ago, I went to church in Spain and confessed (I am a freelance Catholic, I accept some aspects of the Church and its doctrine, but about others I am critical or skeptical). I didn't know the priest was a member of Opus Dei, the Catholic right-wing sect who supported Franco and Pinochet. He asked me why I have not been in confession for so many years, so I told him briefly about my four years in jail, and my exile in Sweden. He asked me how I felt about the men who interrogated me. I was a bit struck by his question ... up until that time, I had not given them much thought. Yet he insisted, and so I said "Today, I am not sure how I feel. I can accept that many of them believed they were right, and that torture or pressure were only methods to gather information, but ..." He interrupted me and said: "But you should love the people who tortured you. They did it to save your immortal soul. If you died under torture, you should go directly to heaven. They were good Catholics, and only wanted to save you from the devil, and from Marxism." Torture is still in my body as a memory and as a trace. It's still a challenge for me to discover the reasons why friends of my uncles, and good Catholics, could torture and kill, and still go to church on Sundays. (1)

* * *

I have never read a more succinct justification for abandoning religion. The falsity of Catholicism, Judaism, Islam and all other denominational "higher power" cults is vividly expressed right here: "But you should love the people who tortured you. They did it to save your immortal soul. If you died under torture, you should go directly to heaven. They were good Catholics, and only wanted to save you from the devil, and from Marxism."

Thus, love Tomas de Torquemada and the Inquisition; love the Falangist and Franco's death camps; love Himmler, the German SS and the Nazi officials running the death-camp nation of Poland -- most "good Catholics" and "good Lutherans"; love the CIA-backed Latin American fascists (see the Costa Gavras' film on Dan Mitrione, "State of Siege"); love Pinochet (see Costa Gavras' film "Missing"); love the Salvadoran and Guatemalan Armies, especially after dark when they prowled as death squads; love the CIA-proxy Nicaraguan Contras who targeted rural school teachers and doctors for torture and death; love the US "interrogators" in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, Bagram, and other shadowy locations; they are all good Catholics, or Episcopalians, or Methodists (like Bush and Cheney), or Baptists, or "Christians" of one kind or another, who go to churches, sing hymns and spout pieties of a "superior god" they share with Jews, a god deemed likely to win against the inferior god of the devilishly heathen Muslims, who yet seem capable of finding the exact same divine love and inspiration in their hearts to torture, shoot and behead other human beings whose presence on Earth they find offensive because they are "Shia" or "Sunni," or worse yet a Christian convert who "renounced Islam," or perhaps was a wife or daughter who was raped and now deserves stoning to preserve the male "honor" (as many Pakistani wives and daughters found out after the 1971 India-Pakistan war over Bangladeshi independence).

Yes indeed, with a Sky-God whose power on earth is mediated by a male hierarchy there is always an excess of fatal love for those who do not fit into the divinely attributed social structure, and our mullahs and inquisitors and South Dakota legislators and priests must exert full control over the frightening power of unrestrained woman, birthing, life and thought, or "all" will be lost to "the devil" and "Marxism." Better YOU (never they) die and "go directly to heaven" -- guaranteed even better than the lifetime of your car's tires -- than to upset this finely honed hierarchy of domination and denial. GOD IS MURDER.

Torture exists because some people are "better" than others by virtue of their power, which they invariably declare a right descending from a Divinity that favors them as Its agent, Its "disciple," Its "servant." They are merely "soldiers in the Army of Christ," men who humbly submit to Allah and man His jihad, all to bring you into alignment -- defined by your betters -- with the "will of God." Priests are the executioners of the human soul, the headsmen of human intellect, stunting and poisoning the growth of human potential. Camus describes how Catholic priests blessed the barrels of the rifles of Falangist firing squads executing Republican prisoners during Spain's Civil War (1936-1939) and the following dictatorship.

Objectively, there is no compelling reason why a person of any religious or non-religious view should be more or less likely to be a torturer. But, as one looks at the sweep of history it is clear that torture follows religion, because torture is cruelty practiced by fear and ignorance. As one moves to social groups more firmly based on the Enlightenment (post-Renaissance humanism and socialism) and Buddhism (as a philosophy and psychology more than a devotional religious practice and sectarian division) one moves away from the likelihood of torture. And don't tell me about Communist torture until after you have read Camus's book "The Rebel" and understand that Stalinism was just another man-made religion -- as they all are.

We have Stalinism in the USA right now, just as they had it in Imperial Rome, just as they had in Pharaonic Egypt; we have become our own gods: Hail Pharaoh!, Hail Caesar!, Greetings Comrade Chairman!, I'm blessed to meet you Mister President! Our Church is the State, our leaders are our gods, we obey the divine will. Who can contend with that? Who can say our acts are not the implementation of Divine Good? That we have this power PROVES it is just, it is ordained, and we who implement it, who submit to it, are blessed, "saints" in rapture.

When torture "works," we have reached the point of deep decay along a path of descent laid out by both Lord Acton and Euripides: "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely;" "whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." When torture "works" it is time to tear everything up and start over.

Leave the churches, the synagogues, the mosques and the patriot-church of government; real justice and real humanity are to be found outside them. Salvation is in seeking your full human potential in association with others similarly involved. Because there is no "higher power," nor "purpose" nor "intelligent design" to the universe, life is "empty" as the Buddhists say; and this is "marvelous" because it means every life is of equal value, and the fulfillment of that life is to be found in what its individual chooses to fill it with. Isn't this truly marvelous?, you are free to seek your fulfillment in your own manner, and it will have the same cosmic significance as any other life. Goodness is not a product of external control and compulsion -- let alone torture -- it is an outgrowth of the individual effort at fulfillment. We "make good" by "being good" in the same way we "make peace" by "being peace," by being the living embodiment of "goodness" and "peace" to the experience of others. Our actions may be breast-feeding a baby, packing a school lunch, or devising an economic development plan for a nation.

Similarly, we can act out goodness by dismantling the churches, the religions, the governments, the corporations and the economics that torture humanity.

Manuel Garcia, Jr. is a physicist who studies fluid flow, electricity and energy. He can be reached at: mango@idiom.com



Notes

[1] Ana Valdés, posting to the International Justice Watch Discussion List, 25 March 2006

Three years of goddamn

From www.rigorousintuition.blogspot.com

They ask me if I feel remorse and I answer, Why of course:
There's so much more I could have done if they'd let me - Nick Cave

There's a lot I want to say about a number of things, but I can't seem to find those words until I scream some others.

Have you read the Iraqi police report of last week's little Helter Skelter outside Tikrit? From Knight Ridder:

At 230 of 15/3/2006, according to the telegram (report) of the Ishaqi police directorate, American forces used helicopters to drop troops on the house of Faiz Harat Khalaf situated in the Abu Sifa village of the Ishaqi district. The American forces gathered the family members in one room and executed 11 people, including 5 children, 4 women and 2 men, then they bombed the house, burned three vehicles and killed their animals (map coordinates 098702).

They were:

Turkiya Muhammed Ali, 75 years
Faiza Harat Khalaf, 30 years
Faiz Harat Khalaf, 28 years
Um Ahmad, 23 years
Sumaya Abdulrazak, 22 years
Aziz Khalil Jarmoot, 22 years
Hawra Harat Khalaf, 5 years
Asma Yousef Maruf, 5 years
Osama Yousef Maruf, 3 years
Aisha Harat Khalaf, 3 years
Husam Harat Khalaf, 6 months

(Signed)

Staff Colonel Fadhil Muhammed Khalaf
Assistant Chief of the Joint Coordination Center

3/16/2006

Three years into this atrocity circus, and the already pathetic annual demonstrations against the war are shrinking and growing quieter. Understandably so. As I've said, we're habituating to it. Meanwhile, the vicarious revolutionaries were in the theatres getting a fix of serotonin from V for Vendetta. "When are they going to ban the movie?" I've actually read, as though anything that keeps people off the streets and on their asses were a threat to those who own both the streets and their behinds. Winning the weekend box office does not a revolution make.

Husam Harat Khalaf, 6 months. She probably had a tooth or two coming in. She must have been wailing as the strangers shouted foreign words to her family and pointed those shiny black things, and at the noise that they made. Unless she was the first.

If all we can do is feel bad, and think we've accomplished something by having been moved, then perhaps we deserve to be judged with Husam's murderers. Because then we're scavenging the losses of others and making them our own, garlanding ourselves in tragedy, building an anti-war sentiment upon how upsetting it is to us. In that event, we won't be seeking justice, we'll just be looking to feel better. And the illusion of action will be more satisfying than its ambiguous reality.

Information warriors. Jesus Christ, how precious of us.
posted by Jeff at 8:58 AM 11 comments