Sunday, September 24, 2006
Wasteful Spending in Iraq
Ever wonder why Iraq seems to be in a worse state than before The War was started by the Bush Administration? Check out this story from The Washington Post detailing the hiring practices and priorities of the administration, and it won't be difficult to see how $18 billion went missing.
Friday, September 22, 2006
"Lie By Lie" Timeline
Mother Jones magazine has published a timeline of the string of lies from the Bush administration leading up to the illegal war in Iraq. Now they've published it online. It's a scrupulously researched and documented piece that exposes, all in one place, the perfidy, falsehood and misdirection of this corrupt government's justification for their imperialistic and corporate-led atrocity. View it NOW! Remember it when you VOTE!
Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side. -- Mark Twain
Men think they think upon the great political questions, and they do; but they think with their party, not independently; they read its literature, but not that of the other side. -- Mark Twain
Thursday, September 21, 2006
Loose Change 911
Check out this documentary at www.loosechange.com. If you've ever suspected that the government had a hand in 9/11, this is the doc for you. If you had no inkling at all that the government's explanation was anything but true, this will convince you otherwise. In any case, you can't walk away from this film without being intensely angry. For whatever reason.
Be sure to search the Internet for opposing points of view. There are many "debunking" sites online that try to prove that certain points in this movie's arguments are crazy, paranoid, or just plain wrong. So far, the points I've seen debunked are minor factual errors at best, but the documentary's main thesis still holds up. Decide for yourself.
Ours is the “land of the free”—nobody denies that—nobody challenges it. (Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.) -- Mark Twain
Be sure to search the Internet for opposing points of view. There are many "debunking" sites online that try to prove that certain points in this movie's arguments are crazy, paranoid, or just plain wrong. So far, the points I've seen debunked are minor factual errors at best, but the documentary's main thesis still holds up. Decide for yourself.
Ours is the “land of the free”—nobody denies that—nobody challenges it. (Maybe it is because we won't let other people testify.) -- Mark Twain
Friday, September 08, 2006
So Low, Down Looks Like Up
Well, the Neocons are proving--again--that they can't play fair. Or even truthfully. It's not enough for them that they have control of all three branches of U.S. government. Never mind that they screwed that up with their obvious war profiteering, corruption and pocket-lining. They still think they should win the upcoming elections, to stay in power. And they'll try anything, no matter how despicable, to make it happen.
Walt Disney Corporation/ABC is airing a program on Sunday and Monday nights, September 10 and 11, called "The Path to 9/11." It's a slanderous and fraudulent attempt to rewrite history in a way that will make the proles lap it up with a spoon: with a TV "docudrama." Except it's supposed to be "based on the 9/11 Commission Report," a specious and disingenuous distortion. Many people who were there (at the time of events that are "dramatized" in the show) have spoken up to denounce the show or spoken with the writers or spokespeople of Walt Disney/ABC to correct the errors and outright lies used in the program. But obviously, it's not the Walt Disney of old; they are going ahead with the cavalcade of lies.
Here is an extract from an email I received from Tom McMahon at the Democratic Party, with examples of outright lies from this program:
But we still know enough, thanks to news accounts and crack research, to fact check "The Path to 9/11" as a biased, irresponsible mess. Here's what you need to know:
Richard Clarke -- the counterterrorism czar for the Clinton administration, now himself a consultant to ABC News -- describes a key scene in "The Path to 9/11" as "180 degrees from what happened." In the scene, a CIA field agent places a phone call to get the go ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, then in his sights, only to have a senior Clinton administration official refuse and hang up the phone. Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, called the same scene "a total fabrication. It did not happen." And Roger Cressey, a top Bush and Clinton counterterrorism official, said it was "something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It's factually wrong. And that's shameful."
Another scene revives the old right-wing myth that press reporting made it impossible to track Osama bin Laden, accusing the Washington Post of blowing the secret that American intelligence tracked his satellite phone calls. In reality, responsibility for that blunder -- contrary to "The Path to 9/11" -- rests with none other than the arch-conservative Washington Times.
The former National Security Council head of counterterrorism says that President Clinton "approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda," and the 9/11 report says the CIA had full authority from President Clinton to strike Bin Laden. Yet chief "Path to 9/11" scriptwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, a friend of Rush Limbaugh, says the miniseries shows how President Clinton had "frequent opportunities in the '90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks -- but lacked the will to do so."
ABC asked only the Republican co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean, Sr., to advise the makers of "The Path to 9/11". The producers optioned two books, one written by a Bush administration political appointee, as the basis of the screenplay -- yet bill the miniseries as "based on the 9/11 Commission Report."
I guess The Disney Corp. feels that the phrase "based on" means to take an event from real life and "dramatize" it by using total fiction. The term "docudrama" is defined as "a fictionalized drama based primarily on actual events." Those are my italics around "primarily." Do I have to define that word, too? That means 90% shouldn't be fiction.
And besides the blatant attempt to defame the Clinton Administration and Democrats in general, there's the crude and cynical maneuver to use a national tragedy for their petty aims. It's only been 5 years, people. Memories are still fresh, lives are still shattered. People haven't "moved on." Neocons have been playing the terrorism card for the last 5 years; it's not gonna wash except among the most secluded of pinheads.
The day of the corrupt, lying, elitist, rich white guys is coming to an end (haha; I knew I couldn't say that with a straight face!). They lied their way into office, lie to the public to strike fear and make them complacent so illegal things can be perpetrated, and keep on lying in the face of the facts. Wave bye-bye to the Neocons. After November, they'll be on their way out.
I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. -- Mark Twain
Walt Disney Corporation/ABC is airing a program on Sunday and Monday nights, September 10 and 11, called "The Path to 9/11." It's a slanderous and fraudulent attempt to rewrite history in a way that will make the proles lap it up with a spoon: with a TV "docudrama." Except it's supposed to be "based on the 9/11 Commission Report," a specious and disingenuous distortion. Many people who were there (at the time of events that are "dramatized" in the show) have spoken up to denounce the show or spoken with the writers or spokespeople of Walt Disney/ABC to correct the errors and outright lies used in the program. But obviously, it's not the Walt Disney of old; they are going ahead with the cavalcade of lies.
Here is an extract from an email I received from Tom McMahon at the Democratic Party, with examples of outright lies from this program:
But we still know enough, thanks to news accounts and crack research, to fact check "The Path to 9/11" as a biased, irresponsible mess. Here's what you need to know:
Richard Clarke -- the counterterrorism czar for the Clinton administration, now himself a consultant to ABC News -- describes a key scene in "The Path to 9/11" as "180 degrees from what happened." In the scene, a CIA field agent places a phone call to get the go ahead to kill Osama Bin Laden, then in his sights, only to have a senior Clinton administration official refuse and hang up the phone. Sandy Berger, President Clinton's National Security Advisor, called the same scene "a total fabrication. It did not happen." And Roger Cressey, a top Bush and Clinton counterterrorism official, said it was "something straight out of Disney and fantasyland. It's factually wrong. And that's shameful."
Another scene revives the old right-wing myth that press reporting made it impossible to track Osama bin Laden, accusing the Washington Post of blowing the secret that American intelligence tracked his satellite phone calls. In reality, responsibility for that blunder -- contrary to "The Path to 9/11" -- rests with none other than the arch-conservative Washington Times.
The former National Security Council head of counterterrorism says that President Clinton "approved every request made of him by the CIA and the U.S. military involving using force against bin Laden and al-Qaeda," and the 9/11 report says the CIA had full authority from President Clinton to strike Bin Laden. Yet chief "Path to 9/11" scriptwriter Cyrus Nowrasteh, a friend of Rush Limbaugh, says the miniseries shows how President Clinton had "frequent opportunities in the '90s to stop Bin Laden in his tracks -- but lacked the will to do so."
ABC asked only the Republican co-chair of the 9/11 Commission, Tom Kean, Sr., to advise the makers of "The Path to 9/11". The producers optioned two books, one written by a Bush administration political appointee, as the basis of the screenplay -- yet bill the miniseries as "based on the 9/11 Commission Report."
I guess The Disney Corp. feels that the phrase "based on" means to take an event from real life and "dramatize" it by using total fiction. The term "docudrama" is defined as "a fictionalized drama based primarily on actual events." Those are my italics around "primarily." Do I have to define that word, too? That means 90% shouldn't be fiction.
And besides the blatant attempt to defame the Clinton Administration and Democrats in general, there's the crude and cynical maneuver to use a national tragedy for their petty aims. It's only been 5 years, people. Memories are still fresh, lives are still shattered. People haven't "moved on." Neocons have been playing the terrorism card for the last 5 years; it's not gonna wash except among the most secluded of pinheads.
The day of the corrupt, lying, elitist, rich white guys is coming to an end (haha; I knew I couldn't say that with a straight face!). They lied their way into office, lie to the public to strike fear and make them complacent so illegal things can be perpetrated, and keep on lying in the face of the facts. Wave bye-bye to the Neocons. After November, they'll be on their way out.
I don't mind what the opposition say of me so long as they don't tell the truth about me. -- Mark Twain
