connecting*the*dots

(shot by Lisa Scheer)

What a naive lot those New Yorkers are…

Artists: Mos Def - Immortal Technique - Eminem

=============

[Mos Def - talking]
Man, you hear this bullshit they be talkin’
Every day, man
It’s like these motherfuckers is just like professional liars
YouknowwhatI’msayin? It’s wild
Listen

[Hook - Mos Def]
Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga

Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]

[Verse 1 - Immortal Technique]
I pledge no allegiance, nigga fuck the president’s speeches
I’m baptized by America and covered in leeches
The dirty water that bleaches your soul and your facial features
Drownin’ you in propaganda that they spit through the speakers
And if you speak about the evil that the government does
The Patriot Act’ll track you to the type of your blood
They try to frame you, and say you was tryna sell drugs
And throw a federal indictment on niggaz to show you love
This shit is run by fake Christians, fake politicians
Look at they mansions, then look at the conditions you live in
All they talk about is terrorism on television
They tell you to listen, but they don’t really tell you they mission
They funded Al-Qaeda, and now they blame the Muslim religion
Even though Bin Laden, was a CIA tactician
They gave him billions of dollars, and they funded his purpose
Fahrenheit 9/11, that’s just scratchin’ the surface

[Hook - Mos Def]
Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga

Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]

[Verse 2 - Immortal Technique]
They say the rebels in Iraq still fight for Saddam
But that’s bullshit, I’ll show you why it’s totally wrong
Cuz if another country invaded the hood tonight
It’d be warfare through Harlem, and Washington Heights
I wouldn’t be fightin’ for Bush or White America’s dream
I’d be fightin’ for my people’s survival and self-esteem
I wouldn’t fight for racist churches from the south, my nigga
I’d be fightin’ to keep the occupation out, my nigga
You ever clock someone who talk shit, or look at you wrong?
Imagine if they shot at you, and was rapin’ your moms
And of course Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons
We sold him that shit, after Ronald Reagan’s election
Mercenary contractors fightin’ a new era
Corporate military bankin’ off the war on terror
They controllin’ the ghetto, with the failed attack
Tryna distract the fact that they engineerin’ the crack
So I’m strapped like Lee Malvo holdin’ a sniper rifle
These bullets’ll touch your kids, and I don’t mean like Michael
Your body be sent to the morgue, stripped down and recycled
I fire on house niggaz that support you and like you
Cuz innocent people get murdered in the struggle daily
And poor people never get shit and struggle daily
This ain’t no alien conspiracy theory, this shit is real
Written on the dollar underneath the Masonic seal

(I don’t rap for dead presidents
I’d rather see the president dead
It’s never been said but I set precedents)–[Eminem]

[Hook - Mos Def]
Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga

Bin Laden didn’t blow up the projects
It was you, nigga
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]
Tell the truth, nigga
(Bush knocked down the towers)–[Jadakiss]

(Shady Records was 80 seconds away from the towers
Some cowards fucked with the wrong building, they meant to hit ours)– [Eminem]

(originally uploaded by ConjugalVisitor)

McClatchy Washington Bureau
Rumsfeld, Ashcroft received warning of al Qaida attack before 9/11
By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and John Walcott

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Attorney General John Ashcroft received the same CIA briefing about an imminent al-Qaida strike on an American target that was given to the White House two months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The State Department’s disclosure Monday that the pair was briefed within a week after then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was told about the threat on July 10, 2001, raised new questions about what the Bush administration did in response, and about why so many officials have claimed they never received or don’t remember the warning.

One official who helped to prepare the briefing, which included a PowerPoint presentation, described it as a “10 on a scale of 1 to 10″ that “connected the dots” in earlier intelligence reports to present a stark warning that al-Qaida, which had already killed Americans in Yemen, Saudi Arabia and East Africa, was poised to strike again.

Former CIA Director George Tenet gave the independent Sept. 11, 2001, commission the same briefing on Jan. 28, 2004, but the commission made no mention of the warning in its 428-page final report. According to three former senior intelligence officials, Tenet testified to commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste and to Philip Zelikow, the panel’s executive director and the principal author of its report, who’s now Rice’s top adviser.

[…]

And people called Clinton’s interview with Chris Wallace “crazed?” Sounds much more like it was a factual explosion.

(originally uploaded by Scoobymoo)

Steve | 09.29.06 - 11:52 am

I’d have to say, I once thought terrorists were just religious nuts trying to get their 40 virgins. I thought 9/11 was a cowardly, yet simplistic attack.

Today, I realize how sophisticated crashing unarmed civilian airplanes into buildings really was. That single move has our country perilously close to destruction. Why hasn’t Al Queda attacked again? Because they don’t need to. We’ll do far more damage to ourselves than some cult of nuts with AK47s ever will.

We have played right into their hands. Knowing how badly we needed to go into Iraq, and being able to foresee (unlike us) the costly aftermath, they were able to bank on us depleting our treasury. Of course, this means more cuts to social programs and schools, ensuring we will be weak in the future. Then we really go the extra mile to appease them and take away our own rights to show them just how tough we are.

We now have secret prisons and full government control of our personal lives with no court oversight. The mere mention of terrorism and you can disappear forever with no trial. Hell, who needs evidence when you have torture. With torture, it’s only a matter of time before you get whatever confession you like.

Welcome to Cold War USSR. Goverment control, fear, economy being drained to support the military, secret prisons, the works. Being the ones to set the demise of the Soviet Union in motion, you’d think we’d see this coming. I guess not. I am now convinced Al Queda did.

The top scientific minds and universities in the world are here in the US. The most advanced country in the world being beaten down by a bunch of pink unicorn zealots. How embarrassing. They aimed to make us destroy our own country out of fear. They have been more effective than I had ever imagined.

The only element of Steve’s comment that I don’t particularily agree with is his position on social programs and schools. If it wasn’t Iraq, we would’ve figured out another way to send the majority of our taxes into the military industrial complex. You know, gotta keep making the widgets.

Well, maybe not quite at this clip.

But that’s where we stand, all because 19 men — neither boogymen nor fascists, but men — armed with box cutters, simply outfoxed our minimum wage airport security defenses 5 years ago and murdered 3,000 people in the most spectacular fashion possible.

We respond not by going after the chief conspirator of the mass homicide, instead we initiate “Shock and Awe” in a pre-planned pissing contest, create a killing field in Iraq and alter the most important elements of our DNA as Americans in the guise to protect us from people who would destroy all that we stand for as Americans.

The irony sickens me.

Half a lifetime ago, I worked in this now-empty space. And for 40 days after the attacks, I worked here again, trying to make sense of what happened, and was yet to happen, as a reporter.

All the time, I knew that the very air I breathed contained the remains of thousands of people, including four of my friends, two in the planes and — as I discovered from those “missing posters” seared still into my soul — two more in the Towers.

And I knew too, that this was the pyre for hundreds of New York policemen and firemen, of whom my family can claim half a dozen or more, as our ancestors.

I belabor this to emphasize that, for me this was, and is, and always shall be, personal.

And anyone who claims that I and others like me are “soft,”or have “forgotten” the lessons of what happened here is at best a grasping, opportunistic, dilettante and at worst, an idiot whether he is a commentator, or a Vice President, or a President.

However, of all the things those of us who were here five years ago could have forecast — of all the nightmares that unfolded before our eyes, and the others that unfolded only in our minds — none of us could have predicted this.

Five years later this space is still empty.

Five years later there is no memorial to the dead.

Five years later there is no building rising to show with proud defiance that we would not have our America wrung from us, by cowards and criminals.

Five years later this country’s wound is still open.

Five years later this country’s mass grave is still unmarked.

Five years later this is still just a background for a photo-op.

It is beyond shameful.

At the dedication of the Gettysburg Memorial — barely four months after the last soldier staggered from another Pennsylvania field — Mr. Lincoln said, “we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.”

Lincoln used those words to immortalize their sacrifice.

Today our leaders could use those same words to rationalize their reprehensible inaction. “We cannot dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground.” So we won’t.

Instead they bicker and buck pass. They thwart private efforts, and jostle to claim credit for initiatives that go nowhere. They spend the money on irrelevant wars, and elaborate self-congratulations, and buying off columnists to write how good a job they’re doing instead of doing any job at all.

Five years later, Mr. Bush, we are still fighting the terrorists on these streets. And look carefully, sir, on these 16 empty acres. The terrorists are clearly, still winning.

And, in a crime against every victim here and every patriotic sentiment you mouthed but did not enact, you have done nothing about it.

And there is something worse still than this vast gaping hole in this city, and in the fabric of our nation. There is its symbolism of the promise unfulfilled, the urgent oath, reduced to lazy execution.

The only positive on 9/11 and the days and weeks that so slowly and painfully followed it was the unanimous humanity, here, and throughout the country. The government, the President in particular, was given every possible measure of support.

Those who did not belong to his party — tabled that.

Those who doubted the mechanics of his election — ignored that.

Those who wondered of his qualifications — forgot that.

History teaches us that nearly unanimous support of a government cannot be taken away from that government by its critics. It can only be squandered by those who use it not to heal a nation’s wounds, but to take political advantage.

Terrorists did not come and steal our newly-regained sense of being American first, and political, fiftieth. Nor did the Democrats. Nor did the media. Nor did the people.

The President — and those around him — did that.

They promised bi-partisanship, and then showed that to them, “bi-partisanship” meant that their party would rule and the rest would have to follow, or be branded, with ever-escalating hysteria, as morally or intellectually confused, as appeasers, as those who, in the Vice President’s words yesterday, “validate the strategy of the terrorists.”

They promised protection, and then showed that to them “protection” meant going to war against a despot whose hand they had once shaken, a despot who we now learn from our own Senate Intelligence Committee, hated al-Qaida as much as we did.

The polite phrase for how so many of us were duped into supporting a war, on the false premise that it had ’something to do’ with 9/11 is “lying by implication.”

The impolite phrase is “impeachable offense.”

Not once in now five years has this President ever offered to assume responsibility for the failures that led to this empty space, and to this, the current, curdled, version of our beloved country.

Still, there is a last snapping flame from a final candle of respect and fairness: even his most virulent critics have never suggested he alone bears the full brunt of the blame for 9/11.

Half the time, in fact, this President has been so gently treated, that he has seemed not even to be the man most responsible for anything in his own administration.

Yet what is happening this very night?

A mini-series, created, influenced — possibly financed by — the most radical and cold of domestic political Machiavellis, continues to be televised into our homes.

The documented truths of the last fifteen years are replaced by bald-faced lies; the talking points of the current regime parroted; the whole sorry story blurred, by spin, to make the party out of office seem vacillating and impotent, and the party in office, seem like the only option.

How dare you, Mr. President, after taking cynical advantage of the unanimity and love, and transmuting it into fraudulent war and needless death, after monstrously transforming it into fear and suspicion and turning that fear into the campaign slogan of three elections? How dare you — or those around you — ever “spin” 9/11?

Just as the terrorists have succeeded — are still succeeding — as long as there is no memorial and no construction here at Ground Zero.

So, too, have they succeeded, and are still succeeding as long as this government uses 9/11 as a wedge to pit Americans against Americans.

This is an odd point to cite a television program, especially one from March of 1960. But as Disney’s continuing sell-out of the truth (and this country) suggests, even television programs can be powerful things.

And long ago, a series called “The Twilight Zone” broadcast a riveting episode entitled “The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street.”

In brief: a meteor sparks rumors of an invasion by extra-terrestrials disguised as humans. The electricity goes out. A neighbor pleads for calm. Suddenly his car — and only his car — starts. Someone suggests he must be the alien. Then another man’s lights go on. As charges and suspicion and panic overtake the street, guns are inevitably produced. An “alien” is shot — but he turns out to be just another neighbor, returning from going for help. The camera pulls back to a near-by hill, where two extra-terrestrials are seen manipulating a small device that can jam electricity. The veteran tells his novice that there’s no need to actually attack, that you just turn off a few of the human machines and then, “they pick the most dangerous enemy they can find, and it’s themselves.”

And then, in perhaps his finest piece of writing, Rod Serling sums it up with words of remarkable prescience, given where we find ourselves tonight: “The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices, to be found only in the minds of men.

“For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children, and the children yet unborn.”

When those who dissent are told time and time again — as we will be, if not tonight by the President, then tomorrow by his portable public chorus — that he is preserving our freedom, but that if we use any of it, we are somehow un-American…When we are scolded, that if we merely question, we have “forgotten the lessons of 9/11″… look into this empty space behind me and the bi-partisanship upon which this administration also did not build, and tell me:

Who has left this hole in the ground?

We have not forgotten, Mr. President.

You have.

May this country forgive you.

Keep bringing the truth Keith, hard and fast — no matter what you’re called.

While you’re finding enunciating your voice, do know that you’re speaking for many of us in the process; people that don’t believe that a hundred thousand dead Iraqi’s will ever bring back our dead and our shallow innocence lost of five-years past and will only give birth to the repeat cycle of violence.

You’re speaking for a people who want justice, first and foremost, with bin Laden put away in a cell or a pine box, his choice.

Most importantly, the people you speak for don’t buy into the much marketed fear of the future, because we refuse to climb aboard a self-fulfilling prophesy to live in such a state.

The people you speak for are Americans, and we are not afraid.

Get us to 2008, Keith. We’ll take care of the rest.

(photo by Jesus’ General)

Reuters
ABC Scrambling to Change 9/11 Drama

[…]

Officials at the Walt Disney Co.-owned network said they were still tinkering with the five-hour production, titled “The Path to 9/11,” which is scheduled to air without commercial interruption in two parts on Sunday and Monday.

But ABC declined to say how the movie was being reshaped or whether any changes would address specific complaints lodged by Clinton, his former aides and congressional Democrats that the film contained numerous inaccuracies and distortions.

The Hollywood trade paper Daily Variety, citing sources close to the project, reported the network was considering canceling the miniseries altogether.

The docu-drama, which ABC says is based largely on the official 9/11 Commission Report, opens with the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York and traces subsequent events leading up to the coordinated suicide hijackings five years ago that killed nearly 3,000 people.

Much of the controversy focuses on a scene depicting CIA agents and Afghan fighters coming close to capturing al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden in the 1990s, only to have then-White House national security adviser Samuel Berger refuse to authorize completion of their mission.

An unfinished version of the film circulated by ABC to TV critics for review portrays Berger as abruptly hanging up the phone while the CIA is pressing him to approve the raid.

In letters of protest to Disney President Robert Iger, Berger and former White House aide Bruce Lindsey said no such episode ever occurred.

The executive producer of the film, Marc Platt, acknowledged to Reuters on Thursday the Berger scene was a “conflation of events.”

The film also drew denunciations from Clinton supporters for strongly suggesting his administration was too distracted by the Monica Lewinsky sex scandal to deal effectively with the gathering threat of Islamic militancy. Lindsey said the 9/11 Commission Report disputed that notion.

[…]

This is what you get when you try to cash in too early on a national tragedy.

Remember the films JFK and Pearl Harbor? Both films took tremendous license in their portrayals of actual events, but the difference is that they did so 28 and 60 years after the fact, respectively. And while each took accuracy jabs from critics, neither had to deal with this degree of criticism because the emotional scars of the American public had already healed and the people who were on watch during these tragedies were either retired or dead.

With the airing of The Path to 9/11 on the eve of the five year anniversary of the events of that day, we also happen to be stuck, knee-deep, in a war that has been proven to have no relationship to the events of that day. No matter what inaccuracies are found — from either side of the aisle — this production was bound to catch major flack for trying to feed a narrative to a still healing nation, ever so hungry for the truth, not some docu-drama version of the events leading to 9/11.

Who Made The Call To Produce This Film?

In my estimation, there are only two possible reasons why Disney/ABC would give the green light on this production at this time:

1. Karl Rove instructed his minions to write the narrative and convince Disney/ABC to produce the film
2. Disney/ABC is simply gambling on the old adage, “There is no such thing as bad PR”

As a firm believer in the power that human greed wields in shaping our world over back door conspiracies, I’m sitting pretty squarely in the second camp (though I couldn’t help using the above image of Mickey Rove; Gen. JC Christian, Patriot is a genius).

I’m betting that Disney/ABC figured that this would be business as usual, though blown up a bit due to the subject matter; you know the formula — create a controversy, sell the advertising, line the pockets and move on unscathed within a few weeks.

What they didn’t take into consideration is the age that we live in now — where blog reach is both gaining traction in the very same homes that their sugar-coated narrative is being presented, as well as influencing the presentation of popular shows on TV (The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to name a few).

When a passive audience starts to become more active in their digestion of information, these old axioms of capitalism begin to start biting mainstream marketing strategies in the ass.

To make my point, let me perform a few minutes worth of Google research… Okay, I’m back (and my own thesis has shifted somewhat after only 20 minutes). Take this bit of information from HuffPost as an example of how nutritional facts for digesting reality can change a perspective in a matter of minutes:

[…]

In fact, “The Path to 9/11″ is produced and promoted by a well-honed propaganda operation consisting of a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, he is working with a secretive evangelical religious right group founded by The Path to 9/11’s director David Cunningham that proclaims its goal to “transform Hollywood” in line with its messianic vision.

Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC contracted David Cunningham as the film’s director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). The young Cunningham helped found an auxiliary of his father’s group called The Film Institute (TFI), which, according to its mission statement, is “dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry.” As part of TFI’s long-term strategy, Cunningham helped place interns from Youth With A Mission’s in film industry jobs “so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out,” according to a YWAM report.

Last June, Cunningham’s TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled “Untitled History Project.” “TFI’s first project is a doozy,” a newsletter to YWAM members read. “Simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!” (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted yesterday but has been cached on Google at the link above).

The following month, on July 28, the New York Post reported that ABC was filming a mini-series “under a shroud of secrecy” about the 9/11 attacks. “At the moment, ABC officials are calling the miniseries ‘Untitled Commission Report’ and producers refer to it as the ‘Untitled History Project,’” the Post noted.

[…]

Hm… Maybe I was too quick to espouse my faith in greed over conspiracies? I highly doubt I’ll be going to Disneyland again. In any event, the chances of Disney/ABC walking away clean from this beaut of a mis-timed and shady production is slim to none.

The Future Of Market Accountability

As the ecosystem for delivering entertaining, informative and personalized information gains a new foothold of innovation each and every year, we’re becoming deeper and deeper immersed within the information age.

The people formally known as the audience are becoming more politically aware through osmosis these days. And the harder the mainstream, one-way channels are leveraged to message us with constructed narratives, the easier it becomes for us to unbundle the programming and filter fact from fiction — no matter our brand of politics.

An analogy: The addition of nutritional labels to food products years ago didn’t end up preventing obesity, but the presentation of nutritional meta-data sure as hell increased the potential for new forms of viable economic levers within the food industry.

As high-fat foods in the mid-nineties and high-carb foods over the past few years have taken a hit due to greater consumer awareness, low-fat and low-carb products have gained a place in the market at a higher selling point due to simple demand.

My point?

While a conglomerate like Disney/ABC can get away with producing a film with this level of empty calories here and there, as we move deeper into the online revolution, such blatant disregard for nutritious content could easily lead to the collapse of advertising arteries via brand corrosion, as an informed public is now armed with digital printing presses.

And man, is the web chock full of beating hearts willing to pump out blood or what?

Donald Rumsfeld spoke at The American Legion National Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah the other day (full transcript), attempting to solidify the position of this administration’s war on terror; that we are fighting an enemy similar to Adolf Hitler — an Islamofascist.

Analogies to the attitudes years prior to WWII ebbed and flowed with the greatest of ease from Rumsfeld, all pointing to the absolute righteousness of this administration in their self-assigned task to rid the world of the threat of terrorism.

As a resident of New York City on 9/11, I’d be extremely satisfied with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda lying in ruins before treading any deeper in potentially self-polluting waters, but apparently this administration doesn’t care what me and my former neighbors think about the matter at hand:

[…]

Over the next decades, a sentiment took root that contended that if only the growing threats that had begun to emerge in Europe and Asia could be accommodated, then the carnage and the destruction of then recent memory of WWI, could be avoided.

It was a time when a certain amount of cynicism and moral confusion set in among western democracies. When those who warned about a coming crisis — the rise of fascism and Nazism — they were ridiculed, or ignored.

Indeed, in the decades before World War II, a great many argued that the fascist threat was exaggerated.

[…]

I recount that history because, once again we face similar challenges in efforts to confront the rising threat of a new type of fascism.

Today, another enemy, a different kind of enemy, has made clear its intentions with attacks in places like New York and Washington D.C., Bali, London, Moscow and so many other places. But some seem not to have learned history’s lessons.

We need to consider the following questions, I would submit:

With the growing lethality, and the increasing availability of weapons, can we truly afford to believe that somehow, someway, vicious extremists can be appeased?

[…]

I have many thoughts on this line of reasoning, but first, take a listen to Keith Olberman’s perspective on the matter:

[…]

That about what Mr. Rumsfeld is confused is simply this:

This is a democracy, still. Sometimes, just barely. And as such, all voices count. Not just his. Had he or his president, perhaps proven any of their prior claims of omniscience — about Osama bin Laden’s plans 5 years ago; about Saddam Hussein’s weapon’s 4 years ago; about Hurricane Katrina’s impact 1 year ago — we all might be able to swallow hard and accept their omniscience as a bearable, even useful recipe, of fact plus ego.

But, to date, this government has proved little besides its own arrogance, and its own hubris. Mr. Rumsfeld is also personally confused, morally or intellectually, about his own standing in this matter. From Iraq to Katrina to flu vaccine shortages to the entire fog of fear that continues to envelop our nation, he, Mr. Bush, Mr. Cheney and their cronies have, inadvertently or intentionally, profited or benefited, either personally or politically,

And yet he can stand up in public and question the morality and the intellect of those of us who dare ask for the receipt for the Emperor’s New Clothes.

In what country was Mr. Rumsfeld raised? As a child, of whose heroism did he read? On what side of the battle for freedom did he dream one day to fight? With what country has he confused the United States of America?

[…]

Rumsfeld, in his eagerness to equate this administration’s strategy in Iraq with Winston Churchill’s call to watch Hitler and a Germany on the rise to destructive power once again, misses the mark entirely. But let’s not waste energy with generalizations; instead, let’s speak to historical fact regarding the nation of Iraq and Saddam Hussein.

The facts are that the United States of America financially backed Iraq in the early 1980’s. President Reagan sent this very same Donald Rumsfeld to speak with Saddam Hussein in December of 1983, during the peak of the Iraq-Iran war, to ensure that all was well in the struggle against that decade’s flavor of tyranny.

Only one month prior to the visit, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against both Iranian soldiers and his own people. Even though our intelligence confirmed such actions, nothing was said by Rumsfeld at the time.

Donald Rumsfeld doesn’t have a leg to stand on in a comparison with Winston Churchill. If anything, he is complicit in the build-up of aggression that “islamofascists” have against our nation.

Similarly, America, circa 1980 to 2006, is in no way analogous to a European continent that fell into conflict with a powerful, internal rogue state and their techniques of propaganda, fear mongering, terrorism, territorial occupation and mass executions.

If anything, this speech by Rumsfeld — one that holds both loaded arguments and misconstrued analogies of the highest order — is closer itself to propaganda than “the beacon of light in times of darkness” message that both he and this administration so very wishes to convince us of believing.

Olbermann, who might not speak for political analysts, but does for millions of Americans with quelled voices in this nation, put it best when he directly challenged this administration’s self-righteous claim to ownership of truth, by saying:

“And about Mr. Rumsfeld’s other main assertion, that this country faces a new type of fascism. As he was correct to remind us as how a government that knew everything could get everything wrong, so too was he right when he said that, though probably not in the way he thought he meant it. This country faces a new type of fascism, indeed.”

The only problem is that if you’re a student of history, it really isn’t that new.

(originally uploaded by cjsylvor)

(originally uploaded by Von Hutchins)

“Terrorists can be defeated simply by not becoming terrified — that is, anything that enhances fear effectively gives in to them.”
- John Mueller, Ohio State University

(originally uploaded by celebdu)

(originally uploaded by jamarju)

“I am worried that I have a finger-pointing President who quite possibly does more damage to more people every day than any traditional terrorist could do in a lifetime and most likely won’t be happy until he completely isolates America from the rest of the world, throwing all of us into a third World War.”
- Alex Sandell, Terrorists in Business Suits 2: The Second Coming

Captain America vs. The Patriot Act?

“Yesterday, Marvel Comics released the first in its miniseries Civil War, which can only be described as a gutsy comic-book series focusing on the whole debate over homeland security and tighter government controls in the name of public safety. The seven-issue series once again puts superheroes right back in the thick of real-world news, just as DC Comics has Batman battling al-Qaeda in a soon-to-appear comic and Marvel’s X-Men continue to explore themes of public intolerance and discrimination.

In Civil War, hero is pitted against hero in the choice of whether or not to side with the government, as issues ranging from a Guantanamo-like prison camp for superheroes, embedded reporters and the power of media all play in the mix as Superheroes are ordered to register as human WMDs or be branded fugitives.”

The kids are going to eat this storyline up.

I vividly remember a 1970’s Superman comic book that dealt with latch-key kids (being one myself). How much more personal and relevant is this?

I’m going comic shopping tomorrow.

These two guys hate each other, right? Then why is it that everyone else is doing all the dying?

James Westhead - BBC
Planning the US ‘Long War’ on terror

It sounds eerily like the Cold War - and that is no mistake.

The “Long War” is the name Washington is using to rebrand the new world conflict, this time against terrorism.

Now the US military is revealing details of how it is planning to fight this very different type of war.

It is also preparing the public for a global conflict which it believes will dominate the next 20 years.

The nerve centre of this war against terror is the huge MacDill airbase in Tampa, Florida.

Surrounded by white sand beaches, palm trees and two golf courses it looks more like a holiday camp than a military camp.

But inside US Central Command (Centcom) generals are planning what they call “fourth-generational warfare”.

Centcom is already responsible for operations in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa - as well as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan - and now it is planning a campaign that will eventually span the globe.

Aiming at al-Qaeda

The man behind what the US military calls its “principles of the Long War” is Brig Gen Mark Kimmitt.

Gen Kimmitt, Centcom’s deputy director of plans and strategy, told BBC News: “Even if Iraq stabilised tomorrow the Long War would continue.”

So as Centcom tries to control events in Iraq, he is also planning a strategy for “nothing less than the defeat of al-Qaeda across the world and its associated movements strung together by extremist ideology”.

To achieve victory the US military will have to change dramatically, he says.

Like the terrorists it will have to build international networks, Gen Kimmitt says, making better use of “soft power” - diplomacy, finance, trade and technology.

“I’m an artillery officer, and I can’t fire cannons at the internet,” he says, referring to what he sees as one of the key weapons of the modern age.

Instead, he argues that the US military must try to break down “old mind-sets and bureaucracies” and build new relationships with other agencies - like the FBI, the police and the state department - through what in military jargon are called “joint inter-agency task forces”.

Improved posture

The theory is that the military cannot fight alone against such a nimble and deadly foe as al-Qaeda, and must build a new kind of worldwide network as flexible and smart as its enemy.

As a result Gen Kimmitt predicts a much lower profile for traditional US forces.

He believes that will help win hearts and minds, by ending the impression that the US is occupying the Middle East.

“Our future posture is still being worked out,” he says.

“But I would like to see to the number of troops in the Middle East cut to a fraction of the current 300,000, by at least a half.”

The US military is planning a big increase in the role of special forces, the smaller, specially-trained teams able to speak local languages - including Arabic - deploy rapidly and work with the armies of other nations.

Trailer park diplomacy

Outside Centcom sits a symbol of the new approach and its complexity - a large trailer park with fluttering flags atop each trailer representing each of the 63 nations represented at Centcom, from Denmark to El Salvador.

Inside each trailer, a small team of military liaison officers shares information with their American colleagues and co-ordinates action in Iraq, Afghanistan and throughout the region.

According to an American general working with the coalition, the aim is to maintain this loose-knit arrangement to fight the global war on terror.

“We want to make it a lasting organisation,” he said.

“We don’t want it to dissolve like it did after Desert Shield and Desert Storm.”

However, America’s difficult relationship with some allies after 11 September 2001 suggests that this will be a challenge.

France and Germany, for example, opposed the war in Iraq. Rear Adm Jacques Mazars, the French representative at Centcom, says French and American forces co-operate more successfully on the ground than their politicians.

But, he said, running a coalition for a sustained period would be hard.

“On the conceptual level we can agree,” he said. “There will be a long war to be won. But on the practical level it will be harder.”

One regular cause of tension among the allies is the sharing of sensitive intelligence.

“There are some things you wouldn’t share with a neighbour and even an ally,” one senior US officer said.

There are signs that despite the difficulties, the new coalition against terror is here to stay.

The Pentagon admits its vision is not yet fully realised, but it has already started work on a new building in the MacDill complex, providing a bricks-and-mortar home for the international occupants of the trailer park.

“I can’t see there ever being a completely homogenous coalition dealing with worldwide terror,” said Col Mark Bibbey, the chief of staff of the British mission at Centcom. “The 63 nations are not signed up to the same view on everything.”

But he added: “You’ve got to start somewhere. You have to plan ahead. You have to be driving in a particular direction. If we don’t start driving now or soon, we’ll be behind the curve.”

Don’t believe this shit for a minute. We’ve been consistently at war ever since WWII. All this formal labeling does is give our administration a streamlined name for hanging their illegal wiretaps, warrentless searches and covert operations, while providing the media, publishing and entertainment industries a new topical issue to craft a narrative around.

Are the US Armed Forces currently optimized to combat a Cold War enemy? Sure. But the decentralized, agile, inconspicuous warfare that our current foes engage in has been around forever and we’ve been playing that game as well over the years. The only reason we don’t hang our hat on covert operations and the funding of rebellions that support our interests in other countries, is because that type of involvement isn’t viewed as honorable in the eyes of the civilized world.

State-sponsored or individually driven, terrorism is terrorism.

So we’re now formalizing on a name, while removing the “civil” formalities of warfare. We’ll continue to position our red coats around the world in formal lines of advancement, while sneaking in for the kill with our scrappy blue coats when the sun goes down and the townsfolk are asleep. Nothing has changed.

globeandmail
Extremists threaten peace, Clinton warns
by Bill Curry

[…]

Accusing violent fundamentalists of “religious heresy,” Mr. Clinton listed the major world faiths and said they all agree that human beings are flawed individuals in search of a divine truth.

“That’s okay. We can all live with each other believing there is truth. The trouble is whether you believe any flawed human being can be in absolute possession of that truth,” he said. “When you see this fellow [Abu Musab al-] Zarqawi who runs the al-Qaeda operation out of the Sunni section of Iraq hoping to dominate Jordan, saying his first priority is not to kill Jews, it’s not to kill Americans, it’s not to kill Westerners — his first priority is to kill Shiite Muslims and moderate Sunnis who don’t agree with him, what he calls the near enemy, you see this carried to its absurd link.”

Mr. Clinton then addressed such fundamentalists directly.

“If you believe anybody can actually completely know the truth and turn it into a political program that is completely true, then what do you need God for?” he asked. “The hope and idea of any religion is that all living human beings have imperfect knowledge and are imperfect by definition and that life is a journey toward the truth. When people short-circuit that and claim they have the truth and have a political program that’s absolutely true and if you don’t agree with me you’re less than human and I can kill you, which is what’s going on halfway around the world, that is the problem.

“If we don’t walk away from that, we’re going to tear the world apart. If we do, I believe the 21st century will be the most exciting, prosperous, interesting time the world has ever known and you don’t have the luxury of leaving that to the politicians,” he said.

[…]

Man, I miss Clinton.

Can you imagine the difference he’d make in office — with this type of a perspective — in a post-9/11 world? His quote on fundamentalist’s targeting the “near enemy” is spot on (Reza Aslan speaks of this in his book that I’m currently reading), though it would seem that neither the Bush administration nor the American press has any clue along these lines, as the only meme pumped into the media bullhorns is via the filters of the “War on Terror.”

Kent Bye and I touched upon the notion of truth in our conversation earlier in the week. If we can build social systems that aren’t organized around absolutes, and the participation levels reach a global, critical mass, we’ll go far in taming absolutist notions simply through the process of immersion and osmosis.

(via islamicate)