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Sideswept Bangs, Bad Music, And The Undermining Of The Constitution |
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By: Ban Tasers
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Yesterday, it was widely reported that bin Laden "resisted" his capture and "engaged in a firefight" with U.S. forces (leaving most people, including me, to say that his killing was legally justified because he was using force). It was also repeatedly claimed that bin Laden used a women -- his wife -- has a human shield to protect himself, and that she was killed as a result. That image -- of a cowardly through violent-to-the-end bin Laden -- framed virtually every media narrative of the event all over the globe. And it came from many government officials, principally Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser, John Brennan. Those claims have turned out to be utterly false. From TPM today: It was a fitting end for the America's most wanted man. As President Barack Obama's Deputy National Security Adviser John Brennan told it, a cowardly Osama bin Laden used his own wife as a human shield in his final moments. Except that apparently wasn't what happened at all. Hours later, other administration officials were clarifying Brennan's account. Turns out the woman that was killed on the compound wasn't bin Laden's wife. Bin Laden may have not even been using a human shield. And he might not have even been holding a gun. Politico's Josh Gerstein adds: "The White House backed away Monday evening from key details in its narrative about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, including claims by senior U.S. officials that the Al Qaeda leader had a weapon and may have fired it during a gun battle with U.S. forces." Gerstein added: "a senior White House official said bin Laden was not armed when he was killed." Whether bin Laden actually resisted his capture may not matter to many people; the White House also claimed that they would have captured him if they had the chance, and this fact seems to negate that claim as well. But what does matter is how dutifully American media outlets publish as "news reports" what are absolutely nothing other than official White House statements masquerading as an investigative article. And the fact that this process continuously produces highly and deliberately misleading accounts of the most significant news items -- falsehoods which endure, no matter how decisively they are debunked in subsequent days -- doesn't have the slightest impact on the American media's eagerness to continue to serve this role." (-Glenn Greenwald) "Our killing of Saddam Hussein has been followed by years of war and hundreds of thousands of pointless deaths. Our attempts to kill Muammar Gadaffi have killed his children and grandchildren and will end no war if they eventually succeed. Our attempts to kill Osama bin Laden, including wars justified by that mission, have involved nearly a decade of senseless slaughter in Afghanistan and the rest of the ongoing global "generational" war that is consuming our nation. The Taliban was willing to turn bin Laden over for trial both before and after September 11, 2001. Instead our government opted for years of bloody warfare. And in the end, it was police action (investigation, a raid, and a summary execution) and not the warfare, that reportedly tracked bin Laden down in Pakistan. After capturing him, our government's representatives did not hold him for trial. They killed him and carried away his dead body. Killing will lead only to more killing. There will be no review of bin Laden's alleged crimes, as a trial would have provided. There will be no review of earlier U.S. support for bin Laden. There will be no review of U.S. failures to prevent the September 11th attacks. Instead, there will be bitterness, hatred, and more violence, with the message being communicated to all sides that might makes right and murder is the way in which someone is, in President Obama's words, brought to justice. Nothing is actually resolved, nothing concluded, and nothing to be celebrated in taking away life. If we want something to celebrate here, we should celebrate the end of one of the pieces of war propaganda that has driven the past decade of brutality and death. But I'm not going to celebrate that until appropriate actions follow. Nothing makes for peace like ceasing to wage war. Now would be an ideal time to give that a try. Our senseless wars in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Libya must be ended. Keeping bin Laden alive and threatening, assisted in keeping the war machine churning its bloody way through cities and flesh for years. No wonder President Bush was, as he said, not interested in tracking bin Laden down. Ending the wars was our moral duty last week exactly as this week. But if the symbolism to be found in the removal of a key propaganda piece can be combined with the recent overwhelming U.S. support for ending the wars, to actually end the wars, then I'll be ready -- with clean hands and with no nasty gleam of revenge in my eye -- to pop open the champagne." (-David Swanson) "We spend roughly $3000 for every American each year on the U.S. military. There is a theory that the reason for this is that the military-industrial complex controls our foreign policy, in much the same way that the medical-industrial complex controls our health policy, and Wall Street’s money-industrial complex controls our economic policy. That public opinion is simply irrelevant. Maybe. But public opinion since 9/11 has been skewed by the real fear that many Americans have felt. Urged on, of course, by certain parasites in the body politic who want us to believe that they are the only ones who can save us from the threat. In George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four, the fundamental basis for the totalitarian state that he portrays is the fear and hatred of the foreign enemy, Oceania. A siege mentality, brought about by endless war. I hope that the death of Osama Bin Laden will mean the death of the siege mentality. The end of the perceived need for foreign occupations, and the end of foreign occupations. I hope for peace." (-Alan Grayson) I believe when it comes to DC dirty politics, when it comes to the new world order machine, and when it comes to US presidents, timing is everything and there are no such things as coincidences. The one billion dollar question always remains the same: what’s the real game-what’s the real deal. Considering the mainstream media’s sensationalism and propaganda tactics and their cemented role as an extension of the establishment, one must step back and take in the entire landscape, the context, connections, and of course, the timing. Only after that, after putting the pieces together, instead of dumbly, staring at the images spread before us by the media, we have a chance to get a grasp of the reality-facts; or at least a chance to come up with real questions." (-Sibel Edmonds) "The media serve the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in a manner supportive of established privilege, and limiting debate and discussion, accordingly." (-Noam Chomsky) "Let’s review what Barack (Nobel Peace Laureate) has done since achieving the office of POTUS: On day three, he ordered his first drone bombing strike in the tribal regions of North Pakistan thus murdering a reported 36 civilians. Since that day, the US has used this tactic of abject terror 192 more times resulting in hundreds of civilian deaths. In the four years the Bush stain used this tactic of terror it was used 43 times. In this area, Obama is definitely an overachiever. Let’s stay with Afghanistan—Obama has tripled troop strength there, and according to justforeignpolicy.org, since Obama has taken office, 910 us troops have been killed in Afghanistan, compared to 575 in seven years that Bush was president. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not defending the Bush Stain, I am just pointing out that in some aspects that of Obama is far worse. He promised during his campaign that if he were elected POTUS, he would 'end the war in Iraq.' He even said, 'You can take that to the bank.' What we don’t know is if that was one of the banks that failed since the bailouts began in 2008, with Obama’s avid support. Well, troop strength in Iraq is down, while almost 6000 Americans are working at the embassy in Baghdad that is 104 acres huge. Does it seem like we are leaving Iraq any time soon and what do we need an embassy the size of Vatican City in a country that we supposedly are in the process of leaving? Besides Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, the Nobel Laureate has started a new bombing war in Libya where the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (drones) is also happening. The day before Osama bin Laden was allegedly killed by US Navy SEALS, the UN/NATO/US violated the 'no fly zone' by going out of it to Tripoli and killing one of Qaddafi’s sons and three of his grandchildren. Is that the plan, there? Bloomberg News (not exactly a leftwing source) says that 'thousands' have been killed since the bombing campaign two months ago and hundreds of thousands have fled the country. Obama, like Bush before him, is a disgusting 'Deather,' but if one doesn’t believe someone who has already lied about so many things that makes one a 'Deather?' The Bush/Obama freak show didn’t invent using 'convenient' enemies, nor did it invent killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people exploiting these enemies. It’s not that I don’t believe Obama about Osama because he’s Obama, I don’t believe him because he is just one in along line of butt-naked Emperors." (-Cindy Sheehan) "The pervasive enviornmental violence of air pollutants has imperiled health, safety, and property for many decades....Air pollution (and it's fallout on soil and water) is a form of domestic chemical and biological warfare. The efflux from oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, oxides of nitrogen, particulates, and many more contaminants amounts to compulsory consumption of violence by most Americans. There is no escape from such violent ingestions, for breathing is required." (-Ralph Nader) "One of the cardinal rules of being a president is that you don’t decree private citizens guilty of crimes before they’ve been adjudicated of having been convicted of a crime." (-Glenn Greenwald on Barack Obama declaring that Manning "broke the law") "We have the top 1% earning more income than the bottom 50%. The top 400 individuals in this country own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans." (– Bernie Sanders) "Corporations can now prevent consumers and small business owners from exercising what is often their only real option for challenging companies that defraud them by millions or even billions of dollars: banding together to file class action lawsuits." (– David Arkush, Public Citizen) "Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." (-George Orwell) "We are engaged, right now, in an unprecedented degree of class warfare, and the wrong class is winning!" (-Bernie Sanders) |
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USA! USA! USA! USA!
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"Looking in the eyes of the diamonds and the spies and the hip Who's sponsoring the crack ghetto? Who's lecturing who's in the know and in the don't know..." (-Joe Strummer) |
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GET DOWN MOSES...
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When was the last time we saw a real rockstar? Oasis? Marilyn Manson, maybe? A punk with some integrity? Hmm...TV Smith and Steve Jones...Jayne County....Jello Biafra...and Billy Bragg, I guess. What was the last band that mattered? Probably, Manic St. Preachers. Few of the solipsistic oldsters have noticed how long it's been, since they last wrote a decent song. 'It seems like 97, 98 percent of the surviving PUNK generation are only concerned now, with expanding their brands and bragging about their dumb businesses. They never seem to tire of lording over their followers, and soliciting endless compliments about their restaurant/tattoo-parlour/hotsauce/clothing-line/muscles/autobiography/publishing company/movie appearance, etc. It never gets old, all the navel gazing, and having their asses kissed, but why do we still call these people punks, if they've done nothing but sniff their own arm-pits, for the past twenty years? All these Spin Magazine Corporate-Punk celebs just make me miss "Flipside" and "Maximum Rocknroll", and real D.I.Y. little, five dollar, all ages, punk bands! Vive Le punk Globe!
I'll leave you today with these thinking points compiled by Peace Activist Cindy Sheehan:All the apathetic ex rebels on the increasingly lucrative, nostalgia circuit, don't want to talk about the Constitution, or what happened to Building Number Seven, if it was all just "eleven Ay-rabs with box-cutters, unaided by any country's black ops boys", or the TSA gropings, or LRad/Tear-gas/G20-style riot squads and their FEMA drills, on college campuses, in Wisconsin? If any historical FACT brings them slight discomfort, or anxiety, or calls upon them to take any action, they go into automatic, knee-jerk, tough-guy, Bill O'Reilly denial. "See no evil, hear no evil..." 'Happy to spew nationalist, racist, frat-boy, murderous, pro-war bullshit, AND to hit on teenage emo chicks, trading on their long lost laurels, but they don't wanna know about the Patriot Act, media-whitewashes, or participate in any ickky anti-war movements, cause ya see, it's all about our "celebrity". Celebrity is the opiate of the social networking sites. So irritating to witness these former "rabble rousers" buying in to the corporate death-machine, and it's "big lies", just because they own some property, or have some stuff. You are not your stuff. The big-media blacklists truth tellers, true talents, story-telling songwriters....and strategically institutionalizes every puppet whore, who lip synchs along with the stale, auto-tuned, illuminati-muzak. I can NOT BELIEVE a punk would watch TV and believe it, in the long, long shadows of Pat Tillman, Jessica Lynch, the U.S. psy-op's hiring Kuwaiti's to pose as Iraqi's pulling down that statue of Hussein. Official story, after official story, debunked, but unless big-news anchors admit that many suspiciously-timed "events" are indeed, painstakingly staged by the U.S. psy-ops, and corporate marketing wonks, many dupes still prefer to cling bitterly to their false flag attack induced fears and gung-ho football team narratives about freedom fries, lone gunmen, and underwear/shoe-bombing, "Islamic", "terrorist", "threats". If you really wanna aggravate one of these "USA!" chanters, point skyward and ask them who's protecting them from the shit being visibly sprayed down on them. Who's piloting those planes? Pakistani's? Man, it hurts losing people like Ari Up and Poly Styrene, because these apathetic, greedy, tedious, cowering, remaining, capitalist, fame-whores are becoming less attractive, everyday. A buncha Fat Axls, masturbating to their own bloated reflections, in their bullshit fame bubbles. That's the bully death culture, not punk. We're all brainwashed from birth, in this country, to unconditionally, "respect the robe", "respect the badge", worship the rich, salute the flag, "support the troops", but tell me WHO protects and serves, defends, or represents YOU? What happens when all those guys who lined-up and vowed to "defend the Constitution" are suddenly being deployed to strip you of your civil liberties, and human rights? WHAT THEN? The Department of Homeland Security advised property owners, management companies and businesses that a terrorist threat could come in the form of an individual acting as a "lone wolf," according to the Washington Business Journal. WHO, exactly, are these scary, domestic boogiemen? Ron Paul supporters, according to Jesse Ventura's censored series, "Conspiracy Theory". Check out the FEMA episode that can still be seen on Youtube. Who else? Peace activists? Organic gardeners? The Amish? People who send each other links to Black Agenda Report dot org, legitgov dot org, or Project Censored? Enviornmentalists, Truthers, peace activists, hard partying college students, Bradley Manning supporters, human rights advocates? The Code Pink Ladies? People who sign petitions to defend unions, and are skeptical of the "Official Stories"? Instead of ending the occupations, it looks like Brand Obama is doubling-down on their Patriot Act, torture camps, TSA porno-scanners, warrantless wire-taps, Monsanto executive appointments to our regulatory agencies, tear-gas cannisters, stormtrooper paramilitary homeland security drills, and bombs on Libya. You see Skull and Bonesman, John Kerry and war-hawk, Hillary Clinton, both mumbling at podiums about the need to continue their fictionalized wars of aggression and criminal occupations. One million and a half are dead in Iraq, a million more in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya...all for Cheney's cronie's corporate profits. They got John "Orange Alert" Ashcroft working for Blackwater, now. Gameshow watching, Sam's Club chicken wings gobbling, big truck driving, Americans stubbornly insist their government never employs drama. Their TV would never lie to them. That their "heroes" are "defending their freedom". Which freedom is that? To choose what they eat at Appleby's? What about the Fourth Amendment? Habeas Corpus? Posse Comitatus? Julian Assange calls Facebook the most effective tool of espionage ever devised: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMWz3G_gPhU&feature=player_detailpage#t=110s "FACT: Osama bin Laden and al Qaida were constructs of the CIA. FACT: The US armed the Mujahadeen and the CIA trained it during its resistance against the occupation and violence of the USSR. FACT: OBL NEVER claimed responsibility for 9/11. FACT: The Taliban was willing to extradite him to a neutral third country after 9/11, if the US showed proof that he was guilty of “masterminding” 9/11. The US refused and commenced bombing. FACT: Any of the wealthy, Saudi, bin Laden family that was in the US on 9/12/2001, was flown out of the country, although all other flights were grounded. FACT: Pakistani politician and hardly a wild radical told David Frost in an interview dated November 2, 2007, that he had already been murdered. FACT: Up until May 2nd, 2011, the supposed new death day of OBL, the FBI didn’t even list him as one of the Ten Most Wanted for 9/11—hmmm, interesting? FACT: The US admits to presenting a fake photograph of the dead again OBL to the world. FACT: Millions of people are dead, displaced, wounded, tortured, imprisoned, or heartbroken since 9/11/2001, and the perpetrators of these crimes, the Bush Stain, are running around freely, arrogantly, and wrongly. Why would the president who can pronounce “nuclear” boldly lie to the world (again) about the US’s convenient enemy? Because the distraction of the Royal Wedding is over and Obama’s policies were beginning to reek? Even people who chastised me for being against the humanitarian bombing of civilians were starting to come around.
The economy is in the toilet and partially due to the new US misadventure in the oil producing world, we are paying four-dollars plus per gallon for fuel. The ongoing Fukushima disaster is too scary for us to think about so we needed something to be jingoistic over and to buy Chinese made American flags so we could dance in the streets? Many wagging tongues have exulted over the fact that this “triumph” assures Obama’s reelection in 2012—I guess that means that A) He won’t need to raise the one billion dollars his campaign is seeking, and B) The new re-killing of OBL was his campaign kick-off. I am disgusted beyond belief that the persons responsible for my sons death are being protected by Obama’s DOJ, but I am freaking amazed that everyone doesn’t sprinkle a healthy dose of skepticism on the pronouncements of Empire by now. Why didn’t Osama get re-executed during Bush’s regime? Because after 2005, he had negative credibility—the same people who are celebrating OBL’s newest murder would have recognized the lies for what they are. Well, the only thing some of us can be grateful for is the fact that this has to be the last time that Osama dies—the Empire shot its wad on this one—but does this mean that I don’t have to take my shoes off and be physically molested every time I fly, now? Is the US war of terror against the Arab world now over? All I do know is that this Empire is the Empire of Death—and to call someone who questions the fables, a “Deather” is just blatant demonization and a reactionary response to fortify the fraud." |
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