US transformed into neo fascist nightmare — The United States of America

A king sits upon a throne; behind stands a figure veiled in black

It signifies that which will suffer misfortune at the height of greed and whose fall will be dangerous in proportion to the height attained. Apt to depend on false powers, attempts will be made to essay feats beyond nature. Ambition will lead into dangerous positions, and at a weak moment all will fall. Let this be taken as equally affecting physical, moral, and social welfare.

Translation of La Volasfera, Taurus 23

Macabre accounts of killing of civilians are emerging through the cordon U.S. forces are still maintaining around Fallujah.

“Doctors in Fallujah are reporting to me that there are patients in the hospital there who were forced out by the Americans,” said Mehdi Abdulla, a 33-year-old ambulance driver at a hospital in Baghdad. “Some doctors there told me they had a major operation going, but the soldiers took the doctors away and left the patient to die.”

Kassem Mohammed Ahmed who escaped from Fallujah a little over a week ago told IPS he witnessed many atrocities committed by U.S. soldiers in the city.

Roll over people with tanks

“I watched them roll over wounded people in the street with tanks,” he said. “This happened so many times.”

Abdul Razaq Ismail who escaped from Fallujah two weeks back said soldiers had used tanks to pull bodies to the soccer stadium to be buried. ”I saw dead bodies on the ground and nobody could bury them because of the American snipers,” he said. ”The Americans were dropping some of the bodies into the Euphrates near Fallujah.”

Americans shot them with rifles from the shore

Abu Hammad said he saw people attempt to swim across the Euphrates to escape the siege. “The Americans shot them with rifles from the shore,” he said. ”Even if some of them were holding a white flag or white clothes over their heads to show they are not fighters, they were all shot.”

Hammad said he had seen elderly women carrying white flags shot by U.S. soldiers. ”Even the wounded people were killed. The Americans made announcements for people to come to one mosque if they wanted to leave Fallujah, and even the people who went there carrying white flags were killed.”

Shot women and old men in the streets

Another Fallujah resident Khalil (40) told IPS he saw civilians shot as they held up makeshift white flags. “They shot women and old men in the streets,” he said. “Then they shot anyone who tried to get their bodies...Fallujah is suffering too much, it is almost gone now.”

Refugees had moved to another kind of misery now, he said. “It’s a disaster living here at this camp,” Khalil said. “We are living like dogs and the kids do not have enough clothes.”

Ambulances not allowed into city

Spokesman for the Iraqi Red Crescent in Baghdad Abdel Hamid Salim told IPS that none of their relief teams had been allowed into Fallujah, and that the military had said it would be at least two more weeks before any refugees would be allowed back into the city.

“There is still heavy fighting in Fallujah,” said Salim. “And the Americans won’t let us in so we can help people.”

In many camps around Fallujah and throughout Baghdad, refugees are living without enough food, clothing and shelter. Relief groups estimate there are at least 15,000 refugee families in temporary shelters outside Fallujah.

by Dahr Jamail Baghdad http://dahrjamailiraq.com/

The government is good — the principle is the government is guided by benign intent.

Pravda November 8, 2004 By David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor PRAVDA.RU

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Born July 4, 1776 — Died November 2, 2004

To those in other nations who read this eulogy, who are still mystified by how swiftly a once great nation was transformed into a neo-fascist nightmare, and how easily a man as hateful, hypocritical, venal, bloodthirsty, warmongering, sadistic and deceitful as George W. Bush was converted into a paradigm for "moral values," all I can say is that millions in the late United States are pondering these same questions.

Perhaps the answer resides in three disturbing, yet immutable, laws of human nature.

First Law

The first law is that human beings are obsessed with bringing about their own destruction.

Ever since the first caveman picked up the first stone and bashed in the skull of his first enemy, humankind has been devising more sophisticated ways to kill.

Even though the atavistic instincts of the cave dwellers are currently masked by the veneer of neon lights and skyscrapers, the grim reality is that human knowledge has always outpaced human wisdom, and it is rare indeed when new technological advancements or discoveries are not explored for their potential use as weapons.

As long as this obsession continues, it is inevitable that warmongers will always prevail over peacemakers in the realm of political power.

Israel Occupation Government and the Eid Smile

Limbless children, babies blasted into pieces, the wounded dying on hospital floors.

'We are wading in death, blood and amputees,' says Norwegian doctor Mads Gilbert.

The US paid US Israel army fires towards populations to cause death and injury.

More than Fifteen million US dollars is given by US taxpayers each day for the military use of Israel, which presently involves the imprisonment of the remaining segregated ' Bantustan — Apartheid ' parcels of land occupied by millions of Palestinian.

Palestinians were forced from their homes 60 years ago from what is now called Israel into refugee camps in Gaza and the West Bank, Jordan and Lebanon.

While attempts have been made by the Palestinians to create a better life for themselves, these refugee camps have been forced upon them to this day by American Taxpayer funding, and Anglo American, Europe backing and banking for Israel that has propped up the forced 'state' of Israel for more than fifty years.

Illuminati, New World Order elite have been at the forefront in protecting European and American settler people who stole the land and continue to steal the remaining few segments of land from the Palestinians, in essence taking away from the Palestinians piece by piece this land over these many years.

Funding by the US Taxpayer for the enslavement of the Palestinian people continues to increase, estimated now considerably more than the previous 4 billion US dollars per year.

Second Law

The second law is that evil is the primary motivating force in human affairs.

Although George W. Bush and his minions personify all that is loathsome about human nature, they are merely the reflections of a self-loathing people repulsed by the responsibilities of living in a free country.

Edmund Burke once said, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good people do nothing."

But the madness that murdered America on November 2, 2004 proves that evil will always triumph, regardless of what good people do.

The third law is that humans are exceedingly receptive to appeals to their basest instincts, which often compels them to act in ways harmful to their personal interests.

Karl Marx believed that economic self-interest inspired people's actions and reactions in capitalist societies.

But this is only partially correct.

Although economic self-interests consistently influence the rich and powerful, they frequently fail to influence the poor and middle classes, particularly when other interests are given priority.

Lost their lives fighting to uphold the very institution impoverishing them

In the antebellum American South, for example, many white residents earned their incomes working as skilled laborers—such as blacksmiths, silversmiths, cobblers and carpenters.

But the wealthy owners of large plantations normally possessed slaves who were equally proficient in these skills.

Consequently there was no incentive to pay for work that slaves were required to perform for free.

Yet, when the Civil War erupted, many of these same white laborers lost their lives fighting to uphold the very institution that was impoverishing them.

This practice lingered into the civil rights era of the 1960s, as evidenced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s conversation with his white jailers in Birmingham, Alabama.

When they informed King of their opposition to his efforts to desegregate the city, King inquired as to how much these jailers were being paid.

He then remarked, "You are just as poorly paid as the average [African-American] man.

You should be out marching with us!"

Pravda November 8, 2004 By David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor PRAVDA.RU

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Born July 4, 1776 — Died November 2, 2004

In those few perceptive words King encapsulated how the rich, white establishment had manipulated poorer whites into accepting the concept of "white supremacy," when in reality they were being just as exploited as their African-American counterparts.

Modern-day Nero who fiddles while America burns

This practice continues today under George W. Bush, the modern-day Nero who fiddled while America burned, and who now enriches his cronies with tax cuts, oil profits and lucrative "rebuilding" contracts, while deceiving his supporters in the poor and middle classes into believing their friends and relatives are dying in Iraq for "freedom and democracy."

It would be easy for those of us who loved America to be apathetic in the wake of its death.

Why should we care how many have died and will die in Iraq when a majority of people are so willing to sacrifice their loved ones?

Why should we clamor for truth, when this majority is satisfied with illusion?

Why should we be disturbed about Halliburton profits, when this majority is gullible enough to believe Bush's lies about the war?

Why should we protest the bloodlust, butchery and bellicose braggadocio of a cabal of bullying cowards when such behaviors do not offend the "new morality?"

Why speak out at all when history has proven that activism and compassion usually destine one for scorn, blacklisting, false imprisonment, suicide or assassination?


	Television is constant propaganda

KERRY WON OHIO JUST COUNT THE BALLOTS AT THE BACK OF THE BUS

Most voters in Ohio chose Kerry.
Here’s how the votes vanished.

Monday 15th November 2004:
by Greg Palast

This February, Ken Blackwell, Ohio’s Secretary of State, told his State Senate President, "The possibility of a close election with punch cards as the state’s primary voting device invites a Florida-like calamity."

Blackwell, co-chair of Bush-Cheney reelection campaign, wasn’t warning his fellow Republican of disaster, but boasting of an opportunity to bring in Ohio for Team Bush no matter what the voters wanted.

And most voters in Ohio wanted JFK, not GWB.

But their choice won’t count because their votes won’t be counted.

The ballots that add up to a majority for John Kerry in Ohio — and in New Mexico — are locked up in two Republican hidey-holes: 'spoiled' ballots and 'provisional' ballots.

Ballots simply chucked in the garbage
OHIO SPOILED ROTTEN
— American democracy has a dark little secret.

In a typical presidential election, two million ballots are simply chucked in the garbage, marked "spoiled" and not counted.

US Israel attack on Gaza

A dive into the electoral dumpster reveals something special about these votes left to rot.

In a careful county-by-county, precinct-by-precinct analysis of the Florida 2000 race, the US Civil Rights Commission discovered that 54% of the votes in the spoilage bin were cast by African-Americans.

And Florida, Heaven help us, is typical.

Nationwide, the number of Black votes 'disappeared' into the spoiled pile is approximately one million.

The other million in the no-count pit come mainly from Hispanic, Native-American and poor white precincts, a decidedly Democratic demographic.

Ohio Republicans, simultaneously in charge of both the Bush-Cheney get-out-the-vote drive and the state’s vote-counting rules, doggedly and systematically insured the spoilage pile would be as high as the White House.

Halting hand count

Vote spoilage comes in two flavors.

There are 'overvotes' — too many punches in the cards, and 'undervotes.'

Here we find the hanging, dimpled and 'pregnant' chads created by old, dysfunctional punch card machines, in which the bit of paper covering the hole doesn’t fall out, but hangs on.

Machines can’t read these, but we humans, who know a hole when we see one, have no problem reading these cards ... if allowed to.

This is how Katherine Harris defeated Al Gore, by halting the hand count of the spoiled punch cards not, as is generally believed, by halting a "recount."

Whose chads are left hanging?

Ohio refused to fix vote-eating machines

In Florida in 2000 federal investigators determined that Black voters’ ballots spoiled 900% more often than white voters, mainly due to punch card error.

Ohio Republicans found those racial odds quite attractive.

The state was the only one of fifty to refuse to eliminate or fix these vote-eating machines, even in the face of a lawsuit by the ACLU.

Apparently, the Ohio Republicans like what the ACLU found.

The civil rights group’s expert testimony concluded that Ohio’s cussed insistence on forcing 73% of its electorate to use punch card machines had an 'overwhelming' racial bias, voiding votes mostly in Black precincts.

Victim of 20 month prevention of health care by US Israel

Blackwell doesn’t disagree; and he hopes to fix the machinery ... sometime after George Bush’s next inauguration.

In the meantime, the state’s Attorney General Jim Petro, a Republican, strategically postponed the trial date of the ACLU case until after the election.

Fixing a punch card machine is cheap and easy.

If Ohio simply placed a card-reading machine in each polling station, as Michigan did this year, voters could have checked to ensure their vote would tally.

If not, they would have gotten another card.

Blackwell knows that. He also knows that if those reading machines had been installed, almost all the 93,000 spoiled votes, overwhelmingly Democratic, would have closed the gap on George Bush’s lead of 136,000 votes.

JIM CROW’S PROVISIONAL BALLOT

Add to the spoiled ballots a second group of uncounted votes, the ’provisional’ ballots, and — voila! — the White House would have turned Democrat blue.

But that won’t happen because of the peculiar way provisional ballots are counted or, more often, not counted.

Introduced by federal law in 2002, the provisional ballot was designed especially for voters of color.

Proposed by the Congressional Black Caucus to save the rights of those wrongly scrubbed from voter rolls, it was, in Republican-controlled swing states, twisted into a back-of-the-bus ballot unlikely to be tallied.

Unlike the real thing, these ballots are counted only by the whimsy and rules of a state’s top elections official; and in Ohio, that gives a virtually ballot veto to Bush-Cheney campaign co-chair, Blackwell.

Mr. Blackwell has a few rules to make sure a large proportion of provisional ballots won’t be counted.

For the first time in memory, the Secretary of State has banned counting ballots cast in the "wrong" precinct, though all neighborhoods share the same President.

Over 155,000 Ohio voters were shunted to these second-class ballots.

The election-shifting bulge in provisional ballots (more than 3% of the electorate) was the direct result of the national Republican strategy that targeted African-American precincts for mass challenges on election day.

This is the first time in four decades that a political party has systematically barred — in this case successfully — hundreds of thousands of Black voters from access to the voting booth.

While investigating for BBC Television, we obtained three dozen of the Republican Party’s confidential "caging" lists, their title for spreadsheets listing names and addresses of voters they intended to block on any pretext.

US Israel attack on Gaza

We found that every single address of the thousands on these Republican hit lists was located in Black-majority precincts.

You might find that nasty and racist. It may also be a crime.

Before 1965, Jim Crow laws in the Deep South did not bar Blacks from voting.

Rather, the segregationist game was played by applying minor technical voting requirements only to African-Americans.

That year, Congress voted to make profiling and impeding minority voters, even with a legal pretext, a criminal offence under the Voting Rights Act.

Didn’t stop the Republicans of ’04

But that didn’t stop the Republicans of ’04.

Their legally questionable mass challenge to Black voters is not some low-level dirty tricks operation of local party hacks.

Emails we obtained show the lists were copied directly to the Republican National Committee’s chief of research and to the director of a state campaign.

Many challenges center on changes of address. On one Republican caging list, 50 addresses changed from Jacksonville to overseas, African-American soldiers shipped Over There.

You don’t have to guess the preferences registered on the provisional ballots. Republicans went on a challenging rampage, while Democrats pledged to hold to the tradition of letting voters vote.

Blackwell has said he will count all the 'valid' provisional ballots.

However, his rigid regulations, like the new guess-your-precinct rule, are rigged to knock out enough voters to keep Bush’s skinny lead alive.

Other pre-election maneuvers by Republican officials — late and improbably large purges of voter rolls, rejection of registrations — maximized the use of provisional ballots which will never be counted.

For example, a voter wrongly tagged an ineligible 'felon' voter (and there’s plenty in that category, mostly African-Americans), will lose their ballot even though they are wrongly identified.

KERRY BLACKS OUT It was heartening that, during his campaign, John Kerry broke the political omerta that seems to prohibit public mention of the color of votes not counted in America.

"Don’t tell us that in the strongest democracy on earth a million disenfranchised African Americans is the best we can do."

The Senator promised the NAACP convention, "This November, we’re going to make sure that every single vote is counted."

Victim of chemical attack by US Israel
Wounds on her broken arm will not heal

But this week, Kerry became the first presidential candidate in history to break a campaign promise after losing an election.

The Senator waited less than 24 hours to abandon more than a quarter million Ohio voters still waiting for their provisional and chad-spoiled ballots to be counted.

While disappointing, I can understand the cold calculus against taking the fight to the end.

To count the ballots, Kerry’s lawyers would, first, have to demand a hand reading of the punch cards.

Blackwell, armed with the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore diktat, would undoubtedly pull a 'Kate Harris' by halting or restricting a hand count.

Most daunting, Kerry’s team would also, as one state attorney general pointed out to me, have to litigate each and every rejected provisional ballot in court.

This would entail locating up to a hundred thousand voters to testify to their right to the vote, with Blackwell challenging each with a holster full of regulations from the old Jim Crow handbook.

Given the odds and the cost to his political career, Kerry bent, not to the will of the people, but to the will to power of the Ohio Republican machine.

We have yet to total here the votes lost in missing absentee ballots, in eyebrow-raising touch screen tallies, in purges of legal voters from registries and other games played in swing states.

But why dwell on these things?

Our betters in the political and media elite have told us to get over it, move on.

To the victors go the spoils of electoral class war.

As Ohio’s politically ambitious Secretary of State brags on his own website, "Last time I checked, Katherine Harris wasn’t in a soup line, she’s in Congress."

NEW MEXICO GOES KERRY - BUT WHO’S COUNTING?

Why single out Ohio?

So it also went in New Mexico where ballots of Hispanic voters (two-to-one Kerry supporters) spoil at a rate five times that of white voters.

Add in the astounding 13,000 provisional ballots in the Enchanted State — handed out 'like candy' to Hispanic, not white, voters according to a director of the Catholic Church’s get-out-the-vote drive — and Kerry wins New Mexico.

Just count up the votes ... but that won’t happen.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast is author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (Penguin 2004).

Oliver Shykles and Matthew Pascarella of GregPalast.com contributed to this article.

View Greg Palast’s BBC Television film, "Bush Family Fortunes," now available on DVD, at http://www.gregpalast.com/bff-dvd.htm

To receive Greg’s investigative reports click here: http://www.gregpalast.com/contact.cfm

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm? artid=393&row=0

by : Greg Palast
Monday 15th November 2004

Bellaciao collective — Bella Ciao

Pravda November 8, 2004 By David R. Hoffman, Legal Editor PRAVDA.RU

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

Born July 4, 1776 — Died November 2, 2004

But please resist this apathy.

There were many who believed the new millennium signaled the end of the world.

But with the corrupt ascendancy of George W. Bush, maybe what the new millennium heralds is the beginning of the end.

Perhaps all we can hope for is that the day after the apocalypse enough of the earth will be salvageable, so the species that replaces humankind can understand the price of folly and realize that even in humanity's darkest days there were prophets and visionaries who recognized the face of evil and warned the world against it, but whose words fell upon deadened souls and hardened hearts.

Since this is a eulogy, permit me to end on a religious note.

I believe that one of the most unjustly maligned figures in history is Judas Iscariot, the man who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver.

Judas, after all, acknowledged that he had betrayed innocent blood, and returned the silver before killing himself in remorse for his deed.

Yet the betrayers and murderers of America have not only kept the money, they have laughed at the suffering they've caused.

Christ advised his followers to ignore the specks in the eyes of others until they have removed the timbers from their own.

But, in today"s "new morality," far too many of those professing to be "Christians" deceitfully fabricate specks in their neighbors' eyes, so the world will remain oblivious to the timbers in their own.

So in our grief let us not forget that, just as America was finite, the perpetrators of evil who infest the halls of power are finite as well.

If there is atonement in eternity, then those who do evil, and those who enable them, will ultimately have to pay for their crimes.

But dark days are ahead my friends, and perhaps the best we can hope for as this maelstrom of evil engulfs us is that we do not succumb to its allure, lest we become, like those who murdered America on November 2, 2004, people without souls.

www.DemocracyNow.org — November 15th, 2004

Noam Chomsky, speaking at the 25th Anniversary of Coalition for Peace Action in Princeton, New Jersey.

...What is illustrated by this front page article and in a series of front page articles and editorials in the last few days is a principle.

The principle is that we, and we is identified with the government, not the population and - I’ll come back to this, there's a radical difference in opinion between them, but that we, the government, are always guided by benign intent.

That's kind of like an axiom.

We can make mistakes along the way, but the intention was benevolent.

Try to find an exception to that way at the left liberal end of criticism in the mainstream.

Well in conformity with these guidelines, the New York Times before had a front page think-piece on Arafat's death.

So did many other journals, but I’ll keep to the Times, they're all approximately the same.

The article begins by informing us, first paragraph again, that Arafat was both the symbol of the Palestinians' hope for a viable independent state and the prime obstacle to its realization.

He was never, it goes on, he was never able to reach the heights of President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who won back the Sinai through a peace treaty with Israel in 1979 because he was able to reach out to Israelis and address their fears and hope with his visit to Jerusalem in 1977.

That was the same story in every newspaper I looked at with slight nuances.

It was vetoed

There is a documentary record, rich as possible sources, unambiguous, and it happens to tell a different story.

But it's not allowed.

And it is not allowed because it would violate the fundamental principle that what we do is benign, we, meaning the government, not the population.

So, let's take a look at that.

The documentary record shows uncontroversially and explicitly and unambiguously that the main obstacle to the realization of the Palestinian state was Washington, and competing pretty well for second place is the New York Times and its colleagues, which have consistently “mispressed” or misrepresented the crucial facts.

And the crucial facts are not in doubt.

I’ll run through a small sample because it's brief.

Let's pick some examples.

So in 1976, the United States became the chief obstacle to a Palestinian state, very simply.

The Security Council of the United Nations debated a resolution calling for a two-state settlement, a Palestinian settlement, a Palestinian state alongside of Israel, both states having all the rights guaranteed in the international system.

This was in accord with a very broad international consensus that was supported by the Arab states, backed by the PLO and just about everybody.

And in fact by then it had crystallized as an overwhelming international consensus.

The U.S. vetoed.

It was vetoed.

They preferred expansion to peace.

The U.S. veto, incidentally, is a double veto.

It vetoes the resolution and also vetoes recording in history.

So it's out of history but it happened.

It happened again in 1980, the same resolution, the same again.

There is a long record up to the present.

It continues consistently, General Assembly initiatives from Europe, initiatives from the PLO, initiatives from the Arab states.

Whatever they are, the U.S. blocks them.

And that continues, the most recent dramatic case, there are plenty of others, was in Geneva in the year 2002.

There are a series bases for settlement along the lines of the international consensus.

It was presented by prominent Israeli and Palestinian negotiators.

It was strongly supported by almost the whole world with the notable exception the United States, which alone refused to send even a message of support as was indeed reported in the New York Times in a very dismissive article, saying, this is all nonsense.

Let's go to Sadat.

Well again, the facts are clear.

Sadat in fact did go to Jerusalem and make a proposal, but it was not - but that proposal in 1977 repeated one that he had made in 1971.

In 1971, not 1977, Sadat offered a full peace treaty to Israel in accord with official U.S. government policy offering nothing to the Palestinians.

Their rights had not yet entered the international agenda.

That was recognized by Israel to be a genuine peace offer.

They rejected it.

They preferred expansion to peace.

This is the labor government.

Expansion then meant into the northeastern Sinai.

US-appointed rulers (Allawi and Al-Yawar)
entering Falluja

www.DemocracyNow.org — November 15th, 2004

Noam Chomsky, speaking at the 25th Anniversary of Coalition for Peace Action in Princeton, New Jersey.

Important question as always is what's the U.S. going to do under Kissinger's initiative.

The U.S. decided to reject its official policy and to support Israeli rejectionism, the policy was what Kissinger called stalemate in his memoirs.

Stalemate, we prefer to stalemate not negotiations, just force.

That led directly to the 1973 war.

A very close call for Israel.

Nuclear alert.

Very close call for the world.

After that, Kissinger recognized that you cannot just dismiss Egypt as a basket case, began his famous shuttle diplomacy, that led to the Camp David agreements where indeed in 1979 the United States and Israel accepted Sadat's 1971 offer, okay.

Actually from the U.S.-Israeli point of view, a harsher offer because by that time, it included a call for a Palestinian state in accordance with a new emerging international consensus, which faced an impossible obstacle, namely the U.S. government and its median commentary.

Well, that goes down in history as a diplomatic triumph for the United States.

In real history it's a diplomatic catastrophe.

The U.S. refusal to accept a peaceful settlement in 1971 led to a terrible war, very dangerous one, years of suffering and misery with effects that still are very much there.

Published on Monday, August 28, 2006 by the Associated Press

Gore Lashes Out at Media Consolidation

by Jill Lawless

Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday ever-tighter political and economic control of the media is a major threat to democracy.

"Democracy is under attack," Gore told an audience at the Edinburgh International Television Festival.

Gore said the goal behind his year-old 'interactive' television channel Current TV was to encourage the kind of democratic dialogue that thrives online but is increasingly rare on TV.

"Democracy is a conversation, and the most important role of the media is to facilitate that conversation of democracy. Now the conversation is more controlled, it is more centralized."

He said that in many countries, media control was being consolidated in the hands of a few businesspeople or politicians.

Gore said in Italy much of the media is owned by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin has stifled dissent on television, and in South Africa, Gore said, dissent "is disappearing, and free expression is under attack."

In the United States "the only thing that matters in American politics now is having enough money to put 30-second commercials on the air often enough to convince the voters to elect you or re-elect you," he said. "The person who has the most money to run the most ads usually wins."

Gore lost the 2000 presidential election to George W. Bush in disputed circumstances. Current TV was launched last year amid much skepticism, but anticipated the tide of user-generated content now sweeping the media world.

His long-standing warnings about the threat from global warming have reached a mass audience thanks to "An Inconvenient Truth," a slick, stark movie that has become one of the most successful documentaries in U.S. history.

Gore's renewed popularity, and his high-profile book and movie tours across the United States, have spurred speculation of a White House run in 2008. He denied it again Sunday.

"I don't have any plans to be a candidate, I don't expect to be a candidate," he said. "I really do not expect ever to be a candidate again."

Gore said there was a link between control of the media and a lack of political action to control climate change.

"Questions of fact that are threatening to wealth and power become questions of power," he said. "And so the scientific evidence on global warming — an inconvenient truth for the largest polluters — becomes a question of power, and so they try to censor the information."

But it shows the advantages of owning history.

You can kind of reshape it into your own — to satisfy your own needs.

And you therefore get the first paragraph that I just read from the world's leading newspaper, front page think-piece, duplicated just about everywhere in the media, and that includes journals of opinion.

You might try to look for an exception.

The example does illustrate again the basic guidelines of commentary, media in particular, but commentary generally.

We're good, meaning the government, not the people, we accept the totalitarian notion that we identify the people with the state, so when they say we, it means the government.

The government is good.

We are good, benevolent, well-intentioned, that we seek peace and justice.

We're foiled by villains who cannot rise to our exalted level.

It doesn't matter what the facts are.

Nor that it matters what simple logic tells us.