For archives, these articles are being stored on TheWE.cc website.
The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political,
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                          To rebel is right, to disobey is a duty, to act is necessary !
twenty
twenty
Those who desire to be rich fall into temptation
America’s False Memories — We’ve been overtaken by gangsters
Saturday 12th March 2005
by Anna Salleh
I’ve been asked to speak to you for 5 minutes or so.
Please forgive me, but I’m going to take a little more than 8 minutes.
The additional time that I’m going to steal from you is dedicated to my son, Casey, whose entire future was stolen from him.
My son was killed in Iraq on this day one year ago, the same day of April on which Martin Luther King Jr. was killed.
From a jail in Birmingham, on April 16 1963 Dr. King wrote these words: "We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence...of the good people." ...end of quote.
And the Apostle Paul said this:
"...those who desire to be rich fall into temptation...into a snare that plunges men into ruin and destruction.   For the love of money is the root of all evil."
Thirty years ago, 1975, Gerald Ford was President of the United Sates.
His Chief of Staff was Dick Cheney.
His Secretary of Defense was Donald Rumsfeld.
Paul Wolfowitz was heading-up the international arms-control end of things.
All of these positions related directly to national security.
While these men were looking after the nation’s safety, they and President Ford concluded that Iran needed to supplement its energy system by adding nuclear power.
The nuclear energy project that these men approved would have netted certain US corporations billions of dollars.
Had the Shah of Iran...a blood-bought servant of US corporate interests...not soon been overthrown by his own countrymen, the big-wigs at Westinghouse or General Electric...or perhaps both...would have amassed personal fortunes from this one project, alone.
Some of the stockholders would have also made bundles on the deal.
In 1975 my son had not yet been born.
Today he is in his grave.
Dick Cheney, on the other hand, is now Vice President of the United States, and he is materially wealthy beyond what any of us would ever pray to be.
This is the same Dick Cheney who during the months leading-up to the invasion of Iraq said that Saddam Hussein not only has stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction...more than a hundred metric tons of the deadly stuff...but he also said that Saddam Hussein was well-advanced in developing nuclear weapons and that therefore the US must invade Iraq and dethrone Saddam Hussein.
Clean, quick, and simple according to Dick Cheney.
Yet for some time now he has changed his tune.
He now says...as if he had said it all along...that the US occupation of Iraq will require years of difficult and sometimes bloody conflict before it will be stable enough to bring our loved ones home.
And too, rather than speak of Weapons of Mass Destruction, he now uses the word "democracy" a lot.
Is there yet an American who can not clearly see that Dick Cheney will say whatever is required to cause wealth and power to move to himself and to his friends?
Is there yet an American who can not clearly see that Dick Cheney...whether it be 1975 or 2005...will say whatever he thinks is required to ultimately cause wealth and power to move to himself and to his friends? ...need I defile this holy place with words like "Haliburton" and "Kellog, Brown & Root" and "torture" and "US weapons industry"?
Indeed, the Apostle Paul is correct in saying that, ultimately, the love of money leads to ruin and destruction.
Donald Rumsfeld is again Secretary of Defense.
Only yesterday, it seems, he told the whole world that Saddam Hussein has stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
He even announced to the world that he and his generals know where Saddam’s feared weapons are hidden.
He announced this only days before our loved ones risked their lives searching those very areas where he so confidently said the weapons were hidden.
Tell me, isn’t it entirely reasonable for us to assume that those very places were being surveiled every second of every day and night until the very moment when our loved ones reached those areas and began their search?
Donald Rumsfeld told us that the search would net more than a hundred metric tons.
Are we to believe that Saddam quickly assembled a caravan of 18 wheelers and loaded all this stuff up and hauled it away to some new hiding place...and that US surveillance...the best in the world....didn’t notice any of this happening?
Are we to believe that this administration was, once again, asleep at the wheel...just as they would also have us to believe that they were innocently caught off-guard on the morning of September 11, 2001?
I implore you to read some of Scott Ritter...write the name down if you need to: Scott Ritter. R..I..T..T..E..R.
I’m certain that many of you have already read his work.
His work can be found in book stores, or go to Amazon.com.
Read him and you will finally begin to understand that the horrid price we and the people of Iraq have paid to discover that Saddam’s Weapons Of Mass Destruction had already been destroyed is not due to any failure at the U.S. intelligence agencies, it is in fact a validation of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Ritter will explain to you exactly how is was that Rumsfeld was well-informed, by knowledgeable people within the Intelligence community, that Saddam had been stripped clean of such weapons, that Saddam’s ability to reconstitute such weapons’ programs had also been destroyed, and that any moves Saddam might have made in that direction would have been observed and stopped, forthwith.
Is there anyone in America who cannot yet see that Donald Rumsfeld a threat to our nation’s security
Is there anyone in America who cannot yet see that Donald Rumsfeld is a liar...that he, as with Hitler and Stalin....will say anything so long as he thinks it will help shape the world to his own liking?
Is there even one, sane adult among us who cannot see that Donald Rumsfeld is a threat to our nation’s security and to peace on our beloved earth?
Paul Wolfowitz, after months of not finding any Weapons of Mass Destruction....and after hundreds of US soldiers were killed....my son amongst them....and after tens of thousands of innocent Iraq citizens were killed....this same Paul Wolfowitz casually explained....with his kindly charade and his ever so soft voice...that a decision was made to put forth "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as the need for the invasion.
Essentially, Paul Wolfowitz admitted that he and his fellow conspirators had decided amongst themselves "...let’s just go with the bit about Weapons of Mass Destruction.
It’s the one thing that will scare the American people enough so as to cause them to get behind this invasion."
Is there yet any sane adult who's skin does not crawl when this murderous liar opens his mouth
As soft-spoken and sincere-sounding as Paul Wolfowitz is, is there yet any sane adult in this country whose skin does not crawl when this murderous liar opens his mouth and speaks?
Am I the only person in this room who clearly sees that Paul Wolfowitz is a threat to our nation’s security...and to peace on our beloved earth?"
30 years ago these 3 men gave the green light to Iran, allowing companies to go there and build a 6.4 billion dollar nuclear power facility. ...no doubt the final bill would have been at least three times that much.
Yet Dick Cheney recently said this of Iran’s current intentions to add nuclear power to their energy system:  Quote...."They are already sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas.  Nobody can figure why they need nuclear to generate energy"....end of quote.
Did these men not notice, 30 years ago, while they and their cohorts were being wined and dined by the Shah, that his opulent surroundings were bought and paid for with oil and gas that was being taken from the ground beneath their feet?
Yet these men agreed, clear back then, that Iran needed to add nuclear power to their energy system.
It is now 30 years and God only knows how many tens of millions of barrels of oil, later.
Why should we believe these men....who we know are liars....when they now say that Iran’s primary motive for wanting nuclear power is so that they can make nuclear weapons with which to destroy us and our allies?
Even now, the International Atomic Energy Agency reports that there is no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program.
The Bush administrations response?
They are trying to oust the agency’s lead inspector, Mohammed al-Baradei.
But who can forget that it was Mr. al-Baradei and the International Atomic Energy Agency who, during the months prior to the invasion of Iraq, reported that Saddam no longer had a nuclear weapons programs.
Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs....gangsters
Our country has been overtaken by murderous thugs....gangsters who lust after fortunes and power; never caring that their addictions are at the expense of our loved ones, and the blood of innocent people near and far.
We’ve watched these thugs parade themselves before the whole world as if they are courageous advocates for Christian moral values....and for the spread of democracy.
Yet we all know that they are now putting in place, all across this country, a system of voting that provides no way to validate the accuracy of the counting of the votes.
Our loved ones have been buried in early graves even as these arrogant thugs parade themselves before the entire world, insisting that democracy is worth dying for, killing for, and destroying entire cities for, all the while they are busy here at home overseeing the emplacement of an electronic voting system that invites fraud at every turn, an electronic vote-counting system that provides no way to validate the votes cast, and that, by it’s very design, prohibits recounting the votes.
For these men to not see to it that our own system of voting and vote-counting is accurate, understandable and verifiable...all the while sending our loved ones to kill and to die so as to establish a democracy in some far away place......this is just one more staggering piece of evidence that the US government is now ruled by murderous hypocrites...criminals who should be arrested, charged appropriately, confined behind bars, and then tried in a court of law...not only here in our own country, but also in all the other countries which have suffered their incomprehensible greed.
In their secret hiding places, while celebrating newly won fortunes with their fellow brass, these men must surely congratulate themselves with orgies of carnal pleasure as they mock the multitudes who are yet so blind as to mistake them for God’s devoted servants.
April 15, 2005
US Terror State War Exposed
Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Spc. Casey Austin Sheehan, KIA 04/04/04 She is co-founder of Gold Star Families for Peace. Will deliver this speech at a symposium on April 19, 2005, at the United Methodist Church in Venice, CA.

Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/sh...

Posted Friday 15th April 2005
Article written by Cindy Sheehan
Friday 15th April 2005
          
Weapons of Mass Deception
Monday 25 April 2005
By Christian Hendersonn
 
Schechter analysed the US mainstream media for his film
In the prelude to the war, the Bush administration hinted at the existence of a link between Iraq and the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
However, intelligence investigations commissioned by the White House and Congress have since determined the suggested links were false.
According to Danny Schechter, a media veteran of almost 40 years who nicknamed himself the News Dissector, the 70% figure suggests US media failed their public and led them to believe a baseless claim.
As the invasion played out on television screens around the world, Schechter "self-embedded" in his living room and examined US media coverage of the war.
He turned his conclusions into Weapons of Mass Deception www.wmdthefilm.com, a documentary film that examines how the media covered the war.
In the post-September 11 nationalistic ardour, the film concludes the US mainstream media failed to challenge Washington over its reasons for going to war, shut out anti-war voices and blurred the lines between commentary and journalism.
Aljazeera.net spoke to Schechter on the sidelines of last week's Aljazeera Television Productions Festival in the Qatari capital, Doha, where Weapons of Mass Deception was shown.
Aljazeera.net:  Why did you make this film?
Danny Schechter:  I have been a journalist since the 1960s.  And in some ways, this project grew out of a lifetime of work. I worked in radio; I worked in local television; I worked in cable news; I worked in ABC; I worked in mainstream and I worked in independent [media] so I think I had a wide range of experience.
I have also written six books about media issues, so I have had a chance to think about it more deeply; I think all that uniquely qualified me to take on this project.
Aljazeera.net:  What are you trying to do in this film?
Danny Schechter:  I try to offer some fresh insights.  I also try to speak to journalists about what this means in terms of our responsibilities to challenge and what this means in terms of democracy.
In the film, I make the suggestion that the Bush administration practices deception as part of its strategy and military strategy.
WMD accuses the US media of group think 
We know that everything they were saying about WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)and the link with Usama [bin Laden] were not true and many of us knew it then and we said so, but everyone was saying something different.
Now, with study after study they say it was "group think" in the intelligence community.  That's why they screwed up.
If there was group think in the intelligence community, what about the journalistic community?  There was group think there, too.
Aljazeera.net:  Are you influenced by Noam Chomsky and his theory of manufacturing consent?
Danny Schechter:  Noam Chomsky doesn't watch television; he is more of an analyst of the New York Times and elite journalism so I didn't go to him for an interview.
I was more interested in journalists who covered the war and how they were debating it.  So I feel that Chomsky had a brilliant analysis of media, but more of it is oriented toward print.  It doesn't always take into account the techniques of the media.
Aljazeera.net:  What do you think of Chomsky's critics who accuse him of overestimating the sophistication of media control, and that - in reality - it is more to do with day-to-day decisions and market forces?
Danny Schechter:  I don't buy the conspiracy theories of media.  I remember a group of Syrians came to our office and they said:  'We agree with you because we really know the Jews run everything.'  This was their analysis.  I said, excuse me, Rupert Murdoch is not Jewish the last time I looked.
You know the problem is corporate media and corporate-controlled media and how they operate within their framework.
Aljazeera.net:  What do you mean when you use the term post-journalism era?
Danny Schechter:  Journalism is at a crossroads.  There are many journalists today who still believe in the values of journalism but who are frustrated by the difficulty of practicing it because the companies they work for do not really respect journalistic principles.  What they are there to do is satisfy their bottom line concerns, they have closed bureau after bureau.
 
The film accuses the media of shutting out anti-war voices
There has been a pattern of dumbing down, and by dumbing it down it means people inside media are dumbing themselves down.  They are not asking good questions, they are not challenging official narratives the way they should be.
If you look at Fox News, there is very little journalism, very little reporting.  Mostly it is talk shows posing as news programmes and [they are] opinion driven, you have three times more pundits on air as opposed to journalists.  That's another sign of the post-journalism era.
Aljazeera.net:  Are blogs an alternative to mainstream media sources?
There are now 10 million blogs.  Of those, maybe 10% claim to be journalistic.  Some of the bloggers are very responsible, really challenging and doing investigative digging that mainstream media are not.

Some are motivated just by ideological concerns. Recently, for example, Eason Jordan, the former chief of news at CNN - when he said at Davos 12 journalists had been killed by US soldiers there was a big shock and he was forced to resign.  In that case, a blogger took an off-the-record meeting and just blasted it out there with out having a full record of what was said.
I think a lot of blogging can be very irresponsible and some of it is sponsored by political forces by the Republican party or the Democrat party and the like, so it has a political and ideological not a journalistic function.
But in my blog www.mediachannel.org what I try to do every day is take the top stories and report what is not being reported by comparing and contrasting.
Aljazeera.net:  You credit American journalists who helped you make this film.  Do you think many in the US media are sympathetic to your message?
Journalists review copies of the 9/11 Commission report
 
Danny Schechter:  Whenever I talk to people in the media off the record, including anchormen, people are very supportive, people slip me footage from various networks.  People are very helpful, but a lot of them are living in a lot of fear.  Everybody feels vulnerable, people have mortgages; they have families - it's difficult to be courageous.
Many American media people feel vulnerable and as if they are being bullied, they feel totally insecure.  In the culture of the newsroom, if you put your head up, it will get chopped off.  Everybody is getting along by going along and that's a dangerous kind of conformity.
Aljazeera.net:  If the US is involved in another war, how do you think it will be reported in the US media?  Do you think the media have learned from some of the mistakes of the Iraq war.
Danny Schechter:  The institutional practices have not changed.  I feel like the coverage of the elections was very similar to the coverage of the war.  The same templates are being used, the same approach, the lack of political scrutiny, the lack of other voices, the way things are being framed, the lack of investigative checking.
The American media reported the Iraqi elections as a great victory for democracy.  Everyone else reported them and asked Iraqis why they were voting and they said to get the Americans out and to end the occupation.  Their reasons are very different from the way it was presented on American televisions.  So we still have this propaganda system, in effect, but its credibility is starting to be questioned.  And I hope my film will contribute to that.
What I want to see is more journalists taking more responsibility for what they do and showing more solidarity when other journalists are shot and killed.
How many people in the American media protested the killing of Tariq Ayub [Aljazeera's correspondent slain in Baghdad by US fire on 8 April 2003]?  That was blatant, a completely blatant assassination and yet nobody said a word.  We need to challenge that and show more solidarity with other media workers.
          Aljazeera - Features
Unspeakable grief and horror
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                        ...and the circus of deception killing continues...
Most recent 'Circus of Killing' click here
— 2009
He says, "You are quite mad, Kewe"
And of course I am.
Why, I don't believe any of it — not the bloody body, not the bloody mind, not even the bloody Universe, or is it bloody multiverse.
"It's all illusion," I say.   "Don't you know, my lad, my lassie.   The game!   The game, me girl, me boy!   Takes on interest, don't you know.   T'is me sport, till doest find a better!"
Pssssst — but all this stuff is happening down here
Let's change it!
 
 







































































































































































































































































































 
 





 
For archives, these articles are being stored on TheWE.cc website.
The purpose is to advance understandings of environmental, political,
human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues.