Maturin42's Blog

We Are Still Paying the Price for Ignorance and Apathy

2011-09-07T20:18:00.001-07:00

Watching Anderson Cooper last week, I heard what Cooper apparently thought was breaking news - firefighters and first responders to the 9/11/01 events in New York are 19 percent more likely to develop cancer than those who weren’t there. This comes as no surprise to those of us who have followed the arc of this story, beginning with the fact that when Larry Silverstein leased the former Port Authority site, it was known to have a huge asbestos problem, which precluded a permit for controlled demolition of the out-of-date structure, due to the health risk it entailed.
After the disaster, Christine Todd Whitman, speaking for the Bush Administration, rapidly declared the lower Manhattan air “safe to breathe”. It was clearly not safe, as illustrated by the respiratory and other problems, including deaths and disabilities suffered ever since by those who responded to the disaster and later labored on the pile. Independent tests showed high levels of asbestos and other toxins in the dust that blanketed lower Manhattan.
So approaching the tenth anniversary of the defining incident of the 21st century, and the lies that kicked off what appears to be the irreversible decline of our economy, our political system, our international reputation, and our way of life, we get a real-time view of the results of official lies and cover-up. As has become commonplace, those who are responsible for the lies are still living the good life, never having ever been seriously questioned about the lies that, in some estimates, will eventually cause a death toll greater than that of the so-called attacks. Certainly our actions taken on the basis of responding to the event have cost lives, world-wide, many times our losses on that day.
On 11 September, 2011, a large number of experts will assemble in Toronto, Ontario, CA to hear, and present, a distillation of the most weighty evidence that 9/11/01 was never seriously investigated, and that the version of events presented by the 9/11 Commission and other government-appointed agencies does not conform to the evidence. Evidence will be presented before an international panel headed by Ferdinando Imposimato, the Honorary President of the Supreme Court of Italy. If you want to inform yourself about this panel, or the vast amount of evidence of the proportions and duration of the apparently successful psychological operation against the people of the U. S. and the world, consult Google for the “Toronto Hearings” and Amazon for the works of Dr. David Ray Griffin.

Maturin42

Response to LTE, Daily Times, 5-19-2011

2011-05-21T14:12:00.000-07:00

Re: Multifaceted approach is needed if we truly wish to solve our nation’s debt problem - S. Lee Smith, May 19, 2011

When Spring, and the feistiness of Wisconsinites in the face of autocratic heavy-handedness by Scott Walker caused the needle on my hope-meter momentarily to twitch, along comes S. Lee Smith to remind me that conservative snake oil still sells, and that their larder is well stocked with really bad ideas, thanks in no small part to a concerted and effective campaign by monied interests and the corporate media outlets to ensure that we get both the Republican AND the Tea Party point of view. Mr. Smith, if he was a regular reader of the Daily Times back when the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq were just underway, may have seen one of my letters pointing out that starting expensive wars more calculated to enrich war profiteers and Dick Cheney than serve the vital interests of the United States, and doing it off the books while cutting taxes, appeared to be speeding us down the road to perdition - economy-wise. Well, here we are.

The “solutions” named by Mr. Smith, mainly consisting of Koch brothers’ wish-list items, are mostly not solutions at all, unless the goal is to accelerate our transition to third-world status - a country of hungry, ill-educated, ill-housed, unemployed peasants squatting among the ruins of our decayed industrial base, ruled over by a robber baron class. Is Mr. Smith’s memory so short that he cannot recall that the Bush regime inherited a budget surplus which he promptly presented to his rich buddies in the form of generous tax cuts, on the repeatedly disproven theory that they would create jobs? They did. In China, and Bangladesh, and India, while our infrastructure and economy trended steadily down until the bottom fell out in 2008.

Flinging wads of money at Wall Street was, we were told, necessary to head off a global financial debacle. The chosen players on Wall Street promptly recovered and awarded themselves huge bonuses, but as high unemployment numbers continue to take their toll on families and young people struggling to find ways to support themselves, the middle class appears an endangered species. The wealthy continue to prosper and the gap between rich and poor grows wider, continuing our march toward a feudal society lorded over by corporations.

The Bush deficits were caused by ill-advised tax cuts exacerbated by un-paid-for wars and unprecedented growth in government. Return to Clinton tax rates, and stop the wars, reduce military spending to that appropriate for defense, not empire-building. Punishing poor people isn’t the answer any more than awarding more tax cuts to rich people. And lying to ourselves about who or what attacked us on Sept. 11, 2001 is one of the things that got us where we are.

Shelton F. Lankford
Salisbury

Excuse my interruption, but...

2011-05-07T10:29:00.000-07:00

The last thing I would want to do is be a buzz-kill for the only really good chest-thumping, shoot-in-the-air, “we’re number 1”, party since the days of Shock and Awe, but I feel the need to point out a couple of things that may otherwise get overlooked. Some may recall my claim that Osama has been dead for some time. According to several European newspapers, he died in Dec. 2001 from a lung ailment. At the time, and continuing right up to the recent raid on the Abbottabad compound, the FBI had maintained that the evidence connecting him to the attacks of 9/11/01 was insufficient. “No hard evidence connecting him to the crime” were the words Rex Tomb, FBI spokesperson used. What changed? On Mayday, 2011, late at night, the following events: The CIA and Special Forces on orders of Obama, raided a residential compound 7 days before, I mean that evening, and Seal Team 6 had a fierce firefight, or not, with Osama, or a woman being used as a shield, or not, and shot the terrorist mastermind, or financier, practically in the act of planning new attacks on the homeland of the USA, then spirited his body out to a ship, sailed to an undisclosed location at sea (my personal belief it was in the Gulf of Tonkin) and dumped him overboard, in order to comply with strict Muslim sensitivities, all within a very few wee hours of the morning, after conducting exhaustive and conclusive DNA tests, in what must be record time to make sure that he was “really most sincerely dead”. I have left out some of the variations on the story. The mainstream media immediately joined in a mighty chorus to sing the praises of the “gutsy” call by the Commander in Chief who did his obligatory victory lap around ground zero. Seal team 6 is hailed as heros, medals all around, and the 2012 elections are a foregone conclusion.

Karl Rove famously said that they - the Neocon cabal of the Bush II era, could “create their own reality”. Turns out their reality disintegrated pretty quickly in the face of revelations that WMD’s, nuclear programs, and welcoming of liberators were products of whole cloth, and bore no relation to facts. A lame attempt was made to credit Mr. Bush with setting up the recent action, but that got quickly drowned out by the mighty tsunami of talking points that engulfed the cable shows. It even pushed Donald Trump into the background - not an easy accomplishment. Turns out Rove and company were pikers! Reality creation is a growth industry. At least we are manufacturing something.

After the raid, all the talk about insufficient evidence and the anemic numbers of Al Qaeda melted away. All of a sudden, Al Qaeda was a mighty host, still dangerous to us and our friends, and Bin Laden was, right up to the end, large and in charge. He was always in charge and we must have been nuts to doubt it. Now we can declare ourselves victorious in the waronterra, but first we must guard against the retaliation that is bound to come since we killed Osama, so we have to continue to bankrupt ourselves for a few more decades to keep everyone safe. And here is some white powder just to keep you from getting cockey.

The questions surrounding 9/11/01 are just as valid as ever. The explosives residue in the Manhattan dust is every bit as damning as it was the day the results of the analysis were published. The evidence on the ground at the Pentagon is no more supportive of an airliner crash that it was when CIT teased the threads of the only plausible explanation out of the eyewitness testimony of the only witnesses in a position to know. The juggled timelines of the various generations of NORAD revisions are no more persuasive than they were the first three times they told them, and the stink of standdown and cover-up still hovers over the whole dismal affair. Pantomiming a hollywood-style “24” raid on a forgotton boogeyman didn’t change that.

Have they given up yet?

2010-10-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

When President Obama's friend and legal scholar, Cass Sunstein, authored an essay about ways the government might deal with a steadily growing 9/11 Truth Movement, I read it eagerly to find out what we might expect from this "liberal" administration. It was already evident that the policy of "containment by ignoring" would continue to apply, and that no investigative efforts were forthcoming. When Prof. Sunstein seemed to be suggesting that blatantly unconstitional measures to counter the truth movement - a cointelpro for our time - would be appropriate, I discussed it with friends familiar with the '60's programs against the anti-war crowd, and we all pretty much agreed that it was highly likely that such programs were already in place and had been for some time. Most who have written in discussion groups on 9/11 Truth are accustomed to the one or two trolls that always seem to show up to drop little disinformation pellets among the offerings and are always there to keep the controversies alive. I don't offer that as proof, simply as an observation growing out of many years of participation in such discussions - Amazon reviews being one such place. Having been a long-time fan of Dr. Griffin, and having read Dr. Sunstein's piece, I ordered the book in order to close the loop, not expecting to learn a great deal.

I was pleasantly surprised. Dr. Griffin's careful analysis suggests a line of argument that makes it almost possible to believe that Sunstein's essay deliberately contained its own pre-planted explosives, requiring only a slight twist of the argument to turn it back on itself, blowing the entire structure of the official myth to smithereens. To those of us who have steeped for years in the strong brew of evidence that the official myth is unstable and is sustained only by a brittle structure of power and inertia propped up by a calcified and corrupt media establishment, it is like finding the cherry cordial in the center of an otherwise unremarkable piece of candy. Nicely done, Dr. Griffin!

To say that this book destroys the arguments of the sustainers of the 9/11 official myth is to put it mildly. It may be that the myth sustainers think they have won and don't even feel a need to respond to this book. I notice that apparently not a single reviewer is on hand (to date) to offer any of the usual ad homenim attacks or insults in defense of the official myth. The silence is somewhat spooky and a bit unsettling. I am aware that they have long since run out of ideas - can it be that they have finally realized it?

Professor Sunstein's name has been spotted on lists associated with possible Obama Supreme Court nominees. Those of us who consider such a possibility with the revulsion appropriate to the idea of a big fan of undermining popular opinion by government cointelpro-style actions ascending to the bench (yet again!) should breathe a bit easier knowing the original essay and this devastating treatment reside in Professor Sunstein's file.

Is Living a Lie Bad For the Country?

2010-09-08T17:57:00.000-07:00

On the 9th anniversary of the 9/11 debacle, there are events taking place in many cities to point out the continuing absurdity of a 9-year war based on a collosal lie - that we were attacked on 9/11 by a raggedy bunch of Islamic fanatics.
The evidence says otherwise.

Did Muslim fanatics somehow plant enough nano-thermite in the World Trade Center to level the place? Where would they get it? It comes out of secret laboratories, like Lawrence Livermore. See http://journalof911studies.com/.

I spoke to a friend this week about 9/11 and asked him what he knew about Building 7, the Soloman Brothers building.
His answer was approximately “Building What???” Everyone knows about the towers. Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper adjacent to the World Trade complex, took the plunge at 5:20 on 9/11/2001, after most of its few mysterious fires were burning out. Never hit by a plane, It went down in the exact fashion of an old Las Vegas casino, complete with a count-down. It achieved free-fall for 2.3 seconds by the government’s own measurements (after a high school physics teacher pointed it out to them). Free-fall means that the steel offered NO resistance. That is only possible by use of explosives to get the building supports out of the way.

So, this weekend, think about what it means that we have never had a real investigation of 9/11/01.
Could it possibly be that believing and living by a collosal lie is bad for us?

Daily Times can't handle this much 9/11 Content

2010-09-08T17:53:00.000-07:00

Let us not speak falsely now, the hour is getting late... Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

Nine years have passed since the debacle of 9/11/01, when the unthinkable happened. My mourning for the lives lost is abstracted. I did not know any of the almost 3000 people who died. I have since become friends at long distance with some of the survivors, and learned the stories of those who labored on the steaming pile, searching in vain for a miraculous survivor, then shifting to the grim job of sorting out bits of the victims from the pulverized debris. Some of those workers are, even now, fighting to survive the effects of repeated exposure to air the EPA fraudulently termed “safe to breathe” - a political judgment fatally substituted for science.

If all goes as planned, I will stand on the steps of New York City Hall on Thursday, 9 September, and deliver a version of this message to a contingent of press, alongside a distinguished Danish scientist who, with 8 other scientists from the U. S. and other countries, analyzed dust samples from Manhattan that revealed fragments of a military-grade, high-tech explosive, and tell-tale signs of the combustion of that explosive. We will be joined by a celebrated actor, and a well-known political activist, and we will be calling, again, for a real investigation of the events of 9/11.

This research, repressed first-responder testimony, video, and other evidence shows beyond any reasonable doubt that the towers were brought down by a controlled demolition so powerful that the masonry, furnishings, concrete floor pans, office equipment, and the people still inside were pulverized. The steel infrastructure of the towers - massive columns that stood up to an intense fire in 1975 with no damage whatever, were blasted apart. Steel beams were thrown up to two football fields away horizontally, impaling themselves in surrounding buildings. Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper not struck by a plane, was announced on the BBC as having collapsed at 5:00 PM EDT while the building smoked live on the screen behind the spokesmodel. The video was taken down just in time to prevent the miracle of the predicted collapse coming true on live TV, when Building 7 finally did come down at 5:20 in text-book controlled demolition style.

My mourning for the country I live in is not abstract, but real and very immediate. Since the unsolved crime of 9/11/01, I have seen our republic descend into darkness, as we used the lie of 9/11 to justify aggression abroad and repression at home. We officially become a torture state. Accountability for egregious crimes at the highest levels is non-existent. Only a whistle-blower who attempts to interfere or throw light on their actions needs to worry. The “made men” running this protection racket on America never have to fear, because the people are asleep or frightened into silence.

Only when the truth of 9/11 is uncovered will we begin to heal.

Prepared as an OP ED for Sept. 11 to the Daily Times. The DT made the decision that they just couldn't squeeze in this much 9/11 content on 9/11, and cut me to a 250 word letter to the editor, in the following post. SL

Jesse Ventura on American Conspiracies

2010-05-16T10:26:00.000-07:00

I was not always a big fan of Jesse Ventura. I am certainly no fan of wrestling - never have been, and big, loudmouthed superpatriots are not my cup of tea either. Jesse was formerly a big fan of the right wing, but the corruption and fantasies spun by and around the 2nd Bush dynasty found in Jesse a fundamentally honest man who, it turns out, has a brain. A good one. He reads - a lot - and when something doesn't make any sense, he looks further into it, which is a good practice for anyone, and you might say is a fundamental duty of American citizens who want to see our country live up to the ideals that were ingrained in us way back in grammar school. Those ideals are worth striving for, but that does not mean that you have to cling without question to the unadulterated crap that passes for the accounts of the landmark events of our history.

In the version of contemporary history being foisted on the American people, conspiracies have no basis in fact. They rarely happen, and they are never, ever, the product of the actions of our government. The word only gets exercised when its pejorative meaning is trotted out, coupled with "theories" or "theorist" to cast aspersions on alternative views of events. It is used as code to discredit alternative views of events and those who would consider them.

Jesse and his co-author Dick Russell have taken on several of the dominent myths surrounding events that arguably changed the course of the history that us seasoned veterans of that history either were taught in school or lived through. He does so in a blunt and forceful way that makes it readable and engaging. It appears to be well researched, and, in contrast with Jesse's companion television series of a similar title that aired on TruTV, is relatively free of the bombast and dramatic flourishes that, to my mind, somewhat marred that production. I questioned whether his tendency to fall back on testosterone-soaked bombast to punctuate his points would undermine the facts he was bringing out.

I have followed Jesse's public pronouncements since he returned from his NBC-financed "exile" in Mexico, where he was paid to breathe by the network which found the subject matter of his infant TV series, " Jesse Ventura's America" not cool. So not cool that they bought out his contract and said "do what you want just stay off TV". So he used the money to finance a two-year vacation and a villa in Mexico. He returned, and got a lot of attention with his questioning of 9/11. His celebrity meant he was sought by the talking head shows of mainstream media but he had the disturbing tendency to ask questions his hosts preferred remain unasked or unmentioned on their light entertainment shows.

If you have no clue what I am talking about, pick up American Conspiracies and read. If you can't handle Howard Zinn's "A People's History of the United States", this is a more digestible nugget.

If your mind can't handle alternative views of this country we all love but which some of us love enough to look at without rose-tinted lenses, then turn on the TV and forget I said anything.

American Conspiracies by Jesse Ventura A Review by Liam Scheff
www.lewrockwell.com
"People prefer to be lied to ably, than be told the truth, boldly. We prefer a colorful and clever story to a documentary filled with sharp and damning evidence; we prefer gossip to investigation. Human kind delights in metaphor when facts get in the way of our passions and pursuits. "

AE911Truth.org Milestone Critical Mass?

2010-03-14T20:57:00.000-07:00

Visit AE911truth.org and search youtube for the news conference held last weekend.

Richard Gage's organization has blossomed to more than 1000 professional architects and engineers, and over 7000 other supporters. This press conference presents an overview of the Truth movement and asks why the accumulating evidence seems to resonate in other countries but isn't considered "news" in the country in which it happened and has the most devastating effect (unless you count Iraq and Afghanistan). That is a question that should be asked of every reporter and editor and every news outlet in the U. S.

The answer you will get, if you get one at all, I guarantee, will make reference to "conspiracy theories" even though in most 9/11 Truth events, evidence is offered but theory is not. A new investigation is what is wanted by the overwhelming majority of those who have researched and questioned 9/11.

Part 6/6 is a statement by Eric Lawyer, founder of Firefighters for 9/11 Truth. He outlines what normal procedures dictate in any case of this nature, but which were not followed. The wreckage was protected from unauthorized access but was trucked away and disposed of with unseemly haste. In the guise of "protecting the families" the crime scene was despoiled and disappeared.

More later.

Report on the Insurgency

2010-03-11T12:15:00.000-08:00

I have been away from this blog for almost a year. For this I apologize. I will try to be a more faithful writer in the future. Thanks for visiting. SFL

An insurgency has been taking shape in recent weeks, blooming several places in the world like the first flowers of Spring. There are signs of it in some outlets of the mainstream media; signs that take one of two forms: straight news stories and hit pieces. The hit pieces are exemplified by the recent editorial in the disgraceful and disgraced Washington Post, which leveled a charge that an influential and well-respected member of the ascendent Democratic Party of Japan has ideas about the 9/11 attacks that are "too bizarre, half-baked and intellectually bogus to merit serious discussion." They follow with the briefest of sketch of a few of the doubts expressed by Mr. Fujita, calling them "fantastic". Offering no refutations of the ample evidence that 1,114 (to date) architects and engineers have found persuasive, including the peer-reviewed paper by an international panel of scientists that establishes the prolific presence of military-grade explosives and its residue in well-documented Manhattan dust samples, they depend primarily on name-calling - a certain indicator that they are out of ideas. The editorial concludes with dark hints that Japan's relationship with the U. S. is at risk from "tolerating" elements like Mr. Fujita.

The other type of story is exemplified by an article in Germany's second most-read weekly business magazine, "Focus Money" entitled "We Do Not Believe You!" which surveys the 9/11 Truth Movement and concludes that there is substance to the charges of a cover-up and government complicity in the attacks. Similar stories and news interviews have appeared in Britain, Canada, Denmark, France, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Japan, and Russia.

In Japan, the doubts about the War on Terror, spurred in part by Mr. Fujita and public appearances by David Ray Griffin and Richard Gage, founder of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, have resulted in a policy shift by Tokyo away from active participation in their supporting role in which they refueled American warships transiting the Indian Ocean in support of operations in Afghanistan. Mr. Fujita raised the question why Japan had not done its own investigation of 9/11 in which 24 Japanese nationals died. We Americans might ask the exact same question. The "investigation" of 9/11 by the Commission began with the assumption that the plot line that appeared almost simultaneously on the lips of the remarkably perceptive pundits assembled at the various studios in Manhattan to make background chatter while the deadly charade was played out was, by golly, exactly the way it happened, and the 118 first responders who heard and felt explosions all over the Trade Center complex were mistaken and misguided. Besides, they were not assembled to "point fingers", unless it was away from the highly suspicious actions of the administration before, during, and after the event. And if they could hang it on Jamie Gorelick for erecting that darned wall that ensured that mum's the word when feeling the urge to share information with other parts of our national security apparatus, well, all the better! And our detractors say government can't keep a secret.

Well the secret is getting around, so much so that Obama's appointee to the cabinet post concerned with communications and regulatory affairs, Harvard's Cass Sunstein, in his recent scholarly head-scratcher, "Conspiracy Theories", waxes academic about such theories and theorists, and concludes that doubts about the candor of the Bush administration and its henchmen when talking about 9/11, automatically place the doubter in that category whether they have advanced a theory or not. He was moved to recommend that, in order to squelch the "Truther" movement, infiltrators and agents penetrate the movement, and provide some informational diversity (read "propaganda") rendering alternative interpretations of events "indefensible". Does this ring a bell with any of you veterans of the '60's anti-war movement? I don't suppose it would occur to Prof. Sunstein to recommend that Justice investigate the issue of several tons of military grade explosive residue in the pyroclastic powder of the World Trade Center. Some actual coming clean on the evidence surrounding 9/11 would make for very welcome "informational diversity", I expect.

Cleaning Up after Elephants

2009-03-30T09:34:00.000-07:00

Posted 3/28/2009 2:43 PM EDT
James Carville, the best evidence for human-animal hybrids existing I can think of, (I am thinking catfish) came up with a pretty good political slogan. “The worst job in the circus is cleaning up after the elephants”. The phrase conjures up the huge piles of dung left by the Bush administration after their eight years of malfeasance, warmongering, and assaults on our democracy and our Constitution. It’s a nice thought that the Democrats coming into a strong majority status in both houses and an off-the-chart popular president would set to work quickly to dispose of the worst stinkers, like the Patriot Act, illegal wiretapping, the leftover wars, and the Gitmo gulag, and set to work investigating to see what we DON’T know about other crimes that they were more successful at hiding. We might expect to see the video records released showing what really happened at the Pentagon on 9/11, a true independent investigative body with real teeth and access to administration records, witnesses, and subpeona power to shine a light on the controversies around 9/11/01 that researchers have documented ad nauseum.

Well, it has not happened, and it appears unlikely to happen. Using the excuse of a financial crisis (precipitated by another September 11th in 2008) the new guys (many of whom helped create some of the bigger piles) are content to just work around the mess or push it around without getting rid of it, or to decorate it with some embellishments of their own. You never know when you’ll need a big, steaming, pile of crap. We have other things to do, like beefing up our presence in Afghanistan to prevent the Afghan people from working their own will on their government. The handy label of Al Qaeda - “The Base”, referring to the CIA database of names that comprised the genesis of that “organization” that appears to be more of a full-employment plan for the military industrial complex than an actual terrorist movement, is thrown about to avoid having to identify any real indigenous political causes that might impel the action of the various people we occupy, bomb with Predator drones, or otherwise exploit. It gives us license to do pretty much what we want anywhere in the Muslim world. Thanks to 8 years of Bush propaganda efforts, Muslim is pretty interchangeable with terrorist in the minds of people who don’t read or think and look to Fox News to get information.

The Obama cheerleaders are managing to maintain a cheerful countenance in the face of the fading of their hopes for reform that could roll back the worst of the Bush actions and the total disinterest of the administration in seeking justice for the long catalog of crimes that have yet to be investigated or prosecuted. Rove roves free. Cheney is not a fugitive, but appears on television to rub our noses in his dictatorial usurpations. Seymour Hersh drops a huge bombshell in a University of Minnesota appearance that looks like potential probable cause if anyone cares, alleging that the Vice President ran a covert assassination squad from the White House, unanswerable to the Pentagon, JCS, or anyone but the VP. If true, it would constitute a monstrous crime, eclipsing most others with the possible exception of planning and execution of 9/11/01 itself (for which Cheney is a prime suspect). It was a one-night news story that made some newspapers on the inside pages, and provoked no interest from our Congressional watchdogs. One trick learned by the Bush 41 White House was how to run covert operations off the books. Iran-Contra used drug money to finance terrorism against unfriendly regimes in Central America. They were discovered, a big stink was raised, and some folk were tried, convicted, and pardoned, and wound up back in the Bush 43 cabal doing business at the same old stand. And it doesn’t even raise any eyebrows that count.

Some cleanup!

The Latest September 11

2009-02-18T12:40:00.000-08:00

We have seen hints and allegations about the likelihood that Obama would be "tested" early in his term, a rumor kicked off by his loyal VP candidate (and Israel's Best Friend Forever) Joe Biden, and picked up as a campaign theme by Republicans who somehow thought that it would conjure up visions of danger and make the American voter think of voting for them. Why that should be the case is a huge mystery, but what the heck, they didn't have very many themes from which to choose.

The worst financial crisis in our country's history has some very curious aspects. Rep. Paul Kanjorsky, in January, described on C-Span how the crisis was kicked off. An electronic "run on the bank" that occurred last September, in which about $550 billion dollars was withdrawn from money markets over about a two hour time span. It was stopped by the FED who opened up their window and pumped money into the market until they decided they could not do it, stopped the operation, and raised the account guarantee to $250,000. It is estimated that, had they not done that, by 2:00 that afternoon, $5.5 trillion would have left the system, and the economy of, not just the United States, but the world, would have seized up.

But what was the date?

Rep Kanjorsky never identified the date of this run on the bank, but the briefing of Congress took place on Sept. 15th, and Paulson and Bernanke identified the incident as "last Thursday".

"LAST THURSDAY WAS SEPTEMBER 11TH" when the speaker is speaking on Sept. 15th, when most people learned of the unprecedent financial crisis. It took place between 9:00 and 11:00.

Does that date and time ring a bell?

What was the nature of the last highly memorable Sept. 11th? We all knew what was happening on that date. It took place on television, and 3000 people died. And by the time that date expired, anyone with a pulse had the date engraved permanently in their long-term memory, and they knew who the highly authoritative talking heads on all the channels knew for certain caused it. It was allegedly a muslim fanatic named Osama bin Laden and his wild-eyed followers.

September 11, 2008 was a little different. If you look through the contemporaneous accounts you see great pains being taken to play down the actual date of the financial Sept. 11 that took place in 2008. Even Wikipedia, which recites week by week the happenings during the crisis glosses over the actual time and date of the initiation of the event and only refers to it as "the second week in September". And, although our computer systems can track every cent that flows through financial accounts, and identify who did what and exactly when the identity of those who initiated the electronic run on the bank, which threatened to bring down the world economy, remains a mystery! No discussions, no mainstream media source has even hinted at it. None of the blabbers on the cable channels have even mused about it.

Like the alternative explanations of September 11th, 2001 that might indicate that a huge amount of counter-evidence that shows that 19 arabs with box-cutters could not and did not bring down the twin towers - the center of the western world's financial system - mum's the word. Tin foil hat references are ready to be placed on anyone's head who dares to challenge the official conspiracy theory of that September 11th.

Could there be any clearer signpost indicating that a continuity of purpose connects those two dates, 7 years apart? Except on the 2008 version of that date, anyone suggesting that a scruffy bunch of arabs carried out the attack on our financial lifeblood would be instantly laughed off the stage. Only those with complete dominion within the system and huge resources could even approach the type of attack that took place last September.

And we have not heard a single word from any mainstream media or governmental source to suggest there is the slightest curiosity anywhere in government as to the source of the most recent attack on our financial system. Just as there is not the slightest curiosity in government or media about what really occurred in Sept. 2001.

I wonder what that means. Does anyone else?

Barry Jennings on 9-11

2008-09-18T12:57:00.001-07:00

Barry Jennings' account exposes the official lie about 9/11 and Building 7.

more about "Barry Jennings on 9-11", posted with vodpod

House voting to send impeach resolution to Judiciary

2008-06-11T19:45:00.001-07:00

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to send articles of impeachment against President Bush to the Judiciary Committee for review.

read more | digg story

Elias Davidsson Petitions UN for 9/11 Truth

2008-04-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

Abstract
On 11 September 2001 approximately 3,000 people1 were killed in the United States in what was variously designated as a terrorist attack, an act of war or a crime against humanity. It was also a gross violation of human rights. Yet, the truth on this event remains elusive. No person has been convicted for this crime. Part I outlines the moral and legal foundations for the right to the truth and the obligations of states to adequately investigate human rights violations. Part II examines whether the investigation of the events of September 2001 has been effective in terms of promptness, thoroughness, impartiality, independence and transparency. The author concludes that the investigation of this mass murder has been grossly deficient both in terms of means and results: It failed to establish the identity of the perpetrators, the tools of the crime and the circumstances of death of most victims.

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Beyond The Speed Of Lies - Rand Clifford

2008-04-23T19:12:00.001-07:00

Obvious murder, "mysterious" plane crashes, "suicides", freak accidents—or simply ruined careers for the lucky...since 9-11 they continue to whittle away at opposition to America’s plans for world domination via perpetual war. We are losing the battle for our nation largely because few even realize our only real war is internal.

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9/11 Pentagon Foundation Irreconcilable With Data

2008-04-23T12:03:00.001-07:00

03/15/08 - The lack of foundation damage at the Pentagon is irreconcilable with the official reports and is strong physical evidence contradicting the 9/11 official story.The ASCE Building Performance Report has meticulously documented the damage to the building and has come to the conclusion that all damage from the alleged plane impact was..

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Fourteen Points of Agreement: World Trade Center Destruction

2008-04-20T20:07:00.001-07:00

Open Civil Engineering Journal publishes letter by scientists Steven E. Jones, Frank M. Legge, Kevin R. Ryan, Anthony F. Szamboti, James R. Gourley, who hypothesize that on 9/11, World Trade Center Towers 1, 2 & 7 were brought down by controlled demolition

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Arlington Topography, Obstacles, AA77 Approach Impossible

2008-03-13T20:16:00.001-07:00

Arlington Topography, Obstacles Make American 77 Final Leg Impossible03/13/08 - "Beware The Ides Of March" could not be a more appropriate introduction to this article as it appears the government story regarding the events at the pentagon is officially dead.... Arlington's unique topography and obstacles along American 77 "final leg" to the pent

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The Name of the White Rose

2008-02-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

Do you know what the original “White Rose Society” was?

They were a student/activist group in Nazi Germany in the ‘30’s, working against the Nazi regime. They were dedicated, they were committed, they were fearless.

They were beheaded. They were rounded up, tortured, and convicted of their “crimes” of speaking out against the racist, militaristic society that they suddenly found themselves living in when a democratic republic was taken over by authoritarian thugs masquerading as protectors of the people. They saw the restrictions on civil liberties and the increasing militarism of the Nazi regime, and the endless wars conducted in the name of self-defense, and when they decided to resist, they were faced with a brutal, utterly ruthless regime that had progressively shaken off checks and balances that were there. Torture was an integral part of their methodology, as is is in every authoritarian regime. This was blandly accepted by most of the ordinary citizens of Germany because they could not believe how brutal and ruthless their leaders could become and the worst abuses were done out of sight of the general public. Milton Mayer, in “They Thought They Were Free”.

"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security.” The Bush/Cheney administration is the most secretive and least forthcoming in my memory.

Our country was brutally attacked on 11 September. Three thousands of our citizens were lost in those attacks, and hundreds of rescue workers and first responders are suffering horribly from the effects of breathing a toxic atmosphere at ground zero, where the people who were charged with making that determination suppressed knowledge that the air was unfit to breathe.

More than a year and a half passed before any official attempt to review what had happened despite the fact that the events of that day were utterly unprecedented, and were very far from being understood by anyone, and apparently least of all by those who were charged with conducting an ‘investigation’. A congressional probe was cut short without much in the way of investigation, and when a Commission was put together, primarily at the insistance of the families, it was staffed by insiders and individuals with fairly obvious conflicts of interest. Limits on its access to information rendered them powerless to confront alleged perpetrators due to secrecy and they had to accept the government’s word on what interrogation, now revealed to have been under waterboarding torture, turned up. The tapes of those sessions were recently revealed to have been destroyed.

Why should the American people blandly accept the word of the Bush/Cheney administration for anything important? Have they amassed a sterling record for candor and openness? I don’t think even the most rabid partisan could defend a claim like that. They have paid journalists to propagandize unpopular programs, they cherry-picked intelligence reports to support pre-ordained war plans, documented in the Downing Street Minutes, and other sources. Yet on the most crucial events of our young 21st century, if not our lives, we are expected to accept a highly compromised inquiry that left many, many stones unturned and mounds of evidence unaccounted for in an explanation that essentially rubber-stamps the planted propaganda that was spread in the first 48 hours after the events.

It is inconceivable to many Americans that our govenment could turn on us in the way that the Nazis did to ‘30’s Germany. But in a sense, they already have and were doing so before 9/11. Illegal evesdropping began before 9/11, and continued afterwards. Habeas Corpus has been rendered meaningless, and if you are deemed by the administration to be an “enemy combatant”, your goose is pretty well cooked. How long will it be before the next “attack” on American soil that will justify martial law and even more draconian measures “for our protection”.

Some Of The Outrageous Lies About 9/11

2008-02-08T20:04:00.001-08:00

We must not vote for anyone who does not speak out about the lies and deceptions regarding 9/11, the removal of all electronic voting machines from the election process and the termination of the Federal Reserve Bank. Of course, there must be term limits and only public financing of national elections.

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The Planes of September

2008-01-01T14:25:00.000-08:00

The Planes of September
by Shelton F. Lankford

We all can remember the planes of September
 How everything changed on that day. 
The drama unfolded, the buildings exploded 
And agents were spinning away

Creating a tale of the evil nineteen
 And their sponsor who lives in a cave 
With the artifacts placed at the scene of the crime
 And a suitcase and will that were saved

By missing the flight that their owner was on 
Though the manifests don’t show the names
 Of the alleged miscreants who in Allah’s name 
Caused so many to perish in flames.

Do you question the tale of the magic nineteen, 
Those modern-day pirates who came
 To partake of lap-dances and cocaine-fueled parties 
Wreaking havoc in Mohammad’s name?

It’s written in stone now, the legend is frozen
 It’s blessed by the powers that be. 
Though it could not have happened the way that they said 
To raise questions is rank heresy.

Some eight of the nineteen appear still alive
 And Osama apparently perished 
In December ‘01, never charged with the deed, 
As a villian, his image is cherished

By those who desire all their subjects inert
 And trembling in absolute fear.
 And looking to leaders to preserve our lives
 Now that terror and danger are near

Be afraid, be afraid, be very afraid, 
We hear it again and again, 
But is that the way that true free men behave?
 Or should we not count it a sin?

To again see unspeakable crime covered up
 And again see the guilty go free 
A convenient scapegoat was ready again 
Like November nineteen sixty three

The towers that fell on that September morn 
Blew apart as not witnessed before 
In a high-rise on fire, regardless the heat,
 With explosions on every third floor

Just forget it, they say, we must get on with life
 We just cannot afford to look back 
Then we march off to war using that as excuse
 For conducting “preemptive” attack.

It’s a brand new “Pearl Harbor”, it sanctifies us 
Even though our objective is oil,
 Our resources grow scarce, and we cannot sustain 
This lifestyle with what’s left in our soil.

So we murder and bomb and irradiate them 
With projectiles of nuclear waste.
 And we liberate them so that our corporations 
Can buy up their assets with haste

How much of our souls have we bartered away
 Our wasteful lifestyle to preserve?
 Will we ever regain the respect that we’ve lost 
For losing our collective nerve?

Permitting a drama played out in New York 
And DC by men not who they seem 
A false-flag operation that appears to exceed 
All of PNAC’s extravagant dreams

Until we the people demand the whole truth  
And accounting for deeds that were done. 
We must share in the guilt that will never diminish
 Until we see justice is done.  

© 2007 Shelton F. Lankford

Responding to some reaction to my posts

2007-11-26T11:55:00.000-08:00

Let's see, who did I blame? Whose head is in the sand? I am asking questions, examining things that don't add up, advocating that my fellow citizens resist accepting propaganda and lies but do some checking and figure out why our country is going the way that has marked despotic regimes everywhere, even in our own lifetimes. Naomi Wolf
[ http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,2064157,00.html ]
recently released a book in which she iterates ten steps that characterize a government trying to take a society from democracy to dictatorship.

These steps are:
1. Invoking a terrifying internal and external enemy - real or imaginary. Al Qaeda is a CIA creation, tailor made for the GWOT.
2. Creating a gulag - a prison system outside the rule of law.
3. Develop a thug caste - Blackwater and private security firms and the new "militarized" police that reach for the taser first and often.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system. A characteristic of every communist regime and every fascist regime - spying on citizens.
5. Harrass citizen's groups - Herding protesters into "free speech zones" and arresting anyone who speaks out. Infiltrating citizen groups and expanding the definition of "terrorist" to include people opposed to the government policies.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release. An anti-war march will get you on the list targeted for searching at airports. (Correction, Jasamc - I have not tried to fly since going public. I strongly suspect I am on a list because several of my acquaintances who have engaged in public dissent are on the list. There are 70,000 + American Citizens on that list. That's some list!)
7. Target key individuals. Purges of U. S. Attorneys? Harassment of whistleblowers.
8 Control the press. Buying pundit opinions, going after those who offer opposition. Outing Valerie Plame.
9. Dissent equals treason. Conflating opposition to war and raising of questions about 9/11 with lack of patriotism and aiding the enemy.
10. Suspend the rule of law. Start with the neutering of the Justice Department by appointing a toady to the job and purging those who are more committed to the law than their party. Ignore efforts to apply checks and balances.
This government has taken all ten steps. We are probably more resilient than Italy and Germany in the '30's but these steps are working with some. You can read some of them on these very pages.

Think about it.

Circumstances demand new investigation of 9/11

2007-11-26T11:54:00.000-08:00

One aspect of 9/11 doesn't get mentioned much or get the attention it should, in view of the enormous implications.

I speak, of course, of the incredible weakness in our engineering and construction standards, as represented by the collapse of threesteel-framed skyscrapers in a fire.

Before 9/11, we used the term "fireproof" to convey that steel-frame construction would maintain structural integrity if a fire broke out. In fact, the north tower suffered a serious fire in 1975 of several hours' duration, covering 65 percent of the 11th floor; the steel frame took it in stride and did not even require replacement.

But when the towers were struck by aircraft, although designed to withstand that type of damage, they behaved strangely. The jet fuel (kerosene) burned out quickly,but the residual fire caused global collapse -- the first in history of such a building. Other high-rise buildings have burned longer and hotter, yet did not collapse.

Now, three on the same day belonging to the same real-estate mogul turned into powder and twisted steel, or took a "Las Vegas dive."

Trees fall all the time. It happens for a variety of reasons -- wind, saws, fire, even explosives. But should a giant sequoia suddenly disintegrate into a pile of sawdust, we would think it worth investigating.

World Trade Center Buildings 1, 2 and 7 were designed to stand up and they did -- until suddenly the towers disintegrated into powder and Building 7 imploded.

Real investigation, anyone? See http://AE911truth.org.

BRAD BLOG; Sibel Edmonds Article 'Disappears' from Google News

2007-11-02T19:21:00.001-07:00

It seems our Monday Exclusive on "gagged" FBI Whistleblower Sibel Edmonds has disappeared from Google News..A simple news search for "Sibel Edmonds" at Google no longer offers the rather blockbuster story, in which it's announced that she is now challenging American mainstream media television outlets to allow her to tell her story uncensored

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Martin Sheen Questions Official 9/11 Story

2007-10-29T11:05:00.001-07:00

Actor Martin Sheen questioned the collapse of the WTC twin towers as well as Building 7 and NORADs response to the 9/11 attacks during an anti-war march this past weekend in Los Angeles.

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Seven CIA Veterans Challenge 9/11 Commission Report

2007-09-23T15:51:00.001-07:00

Seven CIA veterans have severely criticized the official account of 9/11 and have called for a new investigation.These seven stand out in the truth community because they are expert at evaluation of evidence. Everyone must make up his own mind, but when individuals of this caliber from the intelligence community speak out this forcefully, it behooves every citizen to take heed and to inform himself.

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Why collapse the buildings?

2007-09-22T14:39:00.000-07:00

A 9/11 Denier, with whom I have been exchanging forum entries, says that collapsing the buildings was unnecessary to the purposes if the plotters wanted to do a Pearl Harbor type event. This is my response.

Posted: Fri Sep 21, 2007 11:41 pm Post subject: Why collapse the buildings?
Islamists had been implicated in a previous attack on the WTC. Although the FBI had a double-agent inside and actually supplied the explosive used (they provided a real bomb instead of the fake bomb expected by their agent) the plotters actually detonated it and killed a lot of people. No war ensued. The planes hitting the buildings was a powerful symbol but if only a few hundred died, it probably would not have provided the "pearl harbor" effect - feelings of helpless rage and desire for revenge we all felt that day. Why were those evacuating from the South tower after the North tower was hit told to go back to their desks? Only by assuming that a high death toll was required to accomplish their aims does it make any sense. When the buildings fell it provided the powerful visual of a symbol of our world financial leadership crumbling - a threat felt by everyone. This was psychological warfare played on a grand scale

But the WTC was in private hands, and had been for 6 weeks.

How does $4.6 to 7 billion dollars sound to you as a motive? Actually, the motive is much more than that. Larry Silverstein, a dual citizen of the U. S. and Israel*, on the day he signed a 99 year lease on that property became liable for asbestoes cleanup costs of about $800 million. In addition to this, the estimate for the disassembly of the towers was $15 billion. On at least two occasions, the port authority's request for a permit for demolition of the towers had been denied due to risk to adjacent properties and the asbestos issue. They would have been required to unbuild the buildings from the top down.
The WTC was a big white elephant, uncompetitive in the real estate market and had never been in private hands until Mr. Silverstein purchased the lease from the Port Authority for a $124 million down payment, of which he only spent $15 million. He also had additional protection on the deal, in that if anything happened to the buildings, he would be released from any further obligations. He got his money back AND he held all the cards. He immediately insured the buildings against terrorist attacks specifically. He argued after the attacks that he should collect $7.1 billion because there were two separate attacks. The court agreed but the payout was set at $4.6 billion.

In short, the only way Silverstein would have ever expected to recoup his costs on the trade center was the way it actually happened. The liability hung over this deal like a dark cloud and it had to be known from the beginning. But when the 'terrorist attack' took place, Silverstein's worries were over. He made a huge financial killing on a very low 6 week investment, was released from any obligations under the original deal, was still free to rebuild on the spot, which immediately became the hottest real estate in town (he rebuilt bldg 7 almost immediately, although the tower site is still undeveloped)

Edit: This was added later, since I should have thought of it but didn't until discussing it with my wife later. She mentioned the motive of destruction of evidence. The aircraft wreckage was primarily inside the buildings. There is considerable controversy over those aircraft - were they under the control of pilots - hijackers - who had demonstrated very little skill in flying light aircraft. Since nothing was heard from the assigned pilots after the aircraft were seized the use of remote control to steer the planes into the WTC has to be considered. (See operation Northwoods for precedent). A seasoned airline pilot with thousands of hours in the same type aircraft attempted, along with some of his students, to repeat the flight profile into the WTC in a simulator. He was able to hit the tower one time out of ten. His students could not hit it at all. If the aircraft had been modified - or if drones were used from the beginning - destroying the buildings would have obliterated the evidence of the modified planes. If you are doing a false-flag operation pretending that it is a terrorist attack, then you can't afford to have investigators poring over the wreckage of the plane. As it turned out, the steel and other wreckage was disappeared quickly and the black boxes, initially reported as found, were reported as not recovered.
End of edit.

The winners:
Silverstein - $4.6 billion profit with no financial downside.

PNAC - A New Pearl Harbor - just what they wanted.

Administration - they got a convenient group to focus the desire for revenge upon - Islamists and a new kind of war - a perpetual campaign against a para-military tactic - terror.

Airlines - several billions in bailout funds from the taxpayers.

The Military Industrial Complex. - lots of war profits to come, new weapons systems and new contracts for a new kind of military. Teeth provided by the soldiers and airmen and tail provided by an endless parade of war profiteers like Halliburton

Republicans - a basis for a permanent republican majority - a War President for a couple of terms and probably two more after him.

Guiliani - the "hero" who was warned that the towers were about to collapse but didn't warn his police or fire officials.

Big Oil - they get to execute Cheney's plan to divvy up Iraq assets.

Al Qaeda - new prestige in the world among those who already hate the U. S.

The insurance companies - Although they may look like losers they win because their premiums go up across the board for terrorism insurance, they will recoup the losses and then some.

And finally, Israel - what could be better than to have the world's only remaining superpower super pissed off at all the countries that surround you and threaten you? You are best buds with the baddest cat on the block and you no longer have to worry about Iraq, Syria, Iran, Egypt, or any Islamic country, and the Palestinians have lost any leverage they ever had with the U. S.

The losers:
The WTC victims

The passengers on the airliners

The firefighters and policemen

The victim's families

The rescue workers who are slowly choking to death due to deadly air at ground zero.

The entire population of the U. S. goes into post-traumatic shock

The constitution and Bill of Rights - the patriot act was ready to go before the attacks, not in reaction to it. The Congress was stampeded.

Islam - framed for something they did not do.

Human rights in general. The US ceased to be a beacon and example of a democratic society and became a torture state, a violator of the Geneva Convention, an adversary of the United Nations, and a practitioner of aggressive warfare against countries who did not attack us.

* In addition to Lucky Larry, several prominent members of the new Bush government were dual citizens. Philip Zelikow, Douglas Feith, Michael Chertoff, Richard Pearle, Dov Zakheim (controller of the Pentagon where on 10 Sept. 2001 $2.3 trillion of Pentagon funds had been reported as unaccounted for. The attack took out the accounting offices, out of which the investigation was being run)

If you can't conceive of people evil enough to plan and execute something like this, think back to something that happened in my lifetime - the German 'final solution'. If you can study the rise of Adolph Hitler, the Reichstag fire, the paranoia encouraged among the Germans for defense against their neighbors, the Enabling Act, which bypassed legislative authority and hastened the slide into a dictatorship, and not think of 9/11 and the Patriot act, you have a tighter rein on your thoughts than I.

I am not saying they are just like the Nazis. (Prescott Bush was one of Hitler's bankers and was implicated in the attempted coup against Roosevelt in 1933) I am saying that the parallels are there and that in pre-war America, Nazi sympathizers included the grandfather of Bush 43. The Neocons are largely deciples of Leo Strauss, mostly outspoken Zionists, and are believers in rule by elites and the ends justifying the means.

When I use the term Zionist, I refer not to "the Jews" or even the state of Israel. I am talking about American or dual citizens who place the interests of Israel above those of the United States. AIPAC is their lobby and they own a good chunk of the U. S. Congress, Republican and Democrat. Dick Cheney is a big supporter of AIPAC, and vice versa.
_________________
"A nation of sheep must beget a government of wolves"- Bertrand De Juvenal
maturin42@blogspot.com

How Serious are the Democrats About Opposing Giuliani?

2007-09-18T09:18:00.000-07:00

by Shelton F. Lankford

Rudy Giuliani is running on a platform of being the smart George W. Bush who was large and in charge on 9/11 in New York City. Why this should invoke anything other than condemnation and ridicule from thinking Americans is a mystery rivaling anything I have seen in popular culture. But Rudy is running on that platform, so let’s examine it for a few moments.

Rudy’s image that day is mostly based on the news footage of him walking rapidly through the devastated New York streets with an entourage of syncophants and hangers-on, clutching a dust-mask and barking orders. The reason he was doing that instead of taking up his post at the center of a communications network that coordinated city response to the attacks of that day, is because he had overruled most of the advice and counsel regarding the placement of his multi-million dollar Emergency Operations Center from which a response to a crisis of this nature could be directed. Most advice was to place it in Brooklyn, and experts warned that the World Trade Center, having once been a terrorist target, and literally the highest profile buldings in the city, likely would be again. But Rudy, heavily influenced by Jerome Hauer, his Director of Emergency Management, knew best, and so the EOC was placed on the 23rd floor of WTC Bldg. 7, after extensive modifications and reinforcements had been installed to provide environmental isolation and fortification against blast and other threats. This was the logical place for the Mayor to locate on the morning of the most serious attacks on American soil since the Civil War.

The Mayor never went there on 9/11, but instead set up a temporary command post at 75 Barkeley street - across West Street from Bldg. Seven. What did he know that kept him from going to his EOC? While the planes had damaged the tops of the towers and they were on fire, the possibility that they might collapse had to be considered remote, because nothing like that had ever happened. Building 7 was not damaged at that time. The Towers were designed to absorb such a blow and remain standing.

Here is Giuliani’s account, broadcast on 11 September, 2001 by ABC News:
"I--I went down to the scene and we set up headquarters at 75 Barkley Street, which was right there with the police commissioner, the fire commissioner, the head of emergency management, and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was going to collapse. And it did collapse before we could actually get out of the building, so we were trapped in the building for 10, 15 minutes, and finally found an exit and got out, walked north, and took a lot of people with us."

This year, confronted by protestors at a public appearance in New York, his account is somewhat different. The protesters wanted to know why, if he was warned of the imminent collapse of the buildings, firefighters and police officers inside the buildings were not warned to evacuate. Rudy, forgetting that modern devices called cameras and recorders exist, replied, saying "I didn't realize the towers would collapse." He later added, "No one that I know of had any idea they would implode. That was a complete surprise." Notice that his denials take the form of “I didn’t realize...” instead of “I was not warned”.

As the man says - “Were you lying then or are you lying now?” I can think of a few reasons why he would be lying now. Foreknowledge of an event with no precedent in history bespeaks either extraordinary prescience, or insider knowledge. Since FEMA had the foresight to locate in New York the night before for a “drill” scheduled for Tuesday, is it unreasonable to believe that they would have coordinated with the Mayor? The evidence of the deliberate destruction of the WTC complex by controlled demolition is overwhelming (See AE911truth.org for the particulars) and FEMA is a strong suspect as the one who pushed the buttons. Since it would have been bad form to blow up an important personage like the Mayor, his warning was most likely a courtesy - one insider to another. The warning did not originate from fire officials, some of whom were inside the building and died in the collapse, although it was noted that the temporary CP located inside the South tower mysteriously cleared out very shortly before the building exploded.

So the great leader of 9/11 is either an incompetent who used poor judgment or a liar and traitor to his own people about whom he had no thoughts at all when danger was upon them, or both. One would think that such a record would cause one to shrink from the public spotlight, but not Rudy.

In either case, it isn’t much of a recommendation for a candidate for President of the United States. It is much more of a reason to question him closely under oath in a court of law to determine if he should join Dick Cheney and others central to the false-flag attacks on America that day in the dock to show cause why the American people should not demand justice for their crimes.

The Democrats, while discomfited by the attacks on their front-runners by the Giuliani campaign, oddly avoid any mention of this bald-faced lie or the implications presented by it. You see, it involves opening a can of worms with 9/11 on the side, and according to the new rules of conduct apparently understood by everyone but written down nowhere, one does not mention 9/11 and insider knowledge in the same breath. It just is not done in polite political circles. This rivalry business must only go so far. So we must all voice our faith in the orthodoxy that Osama and the 19 caused 9/11 and anything else is just Conspiracy Theory. While this comes dangerously close to requiring a "religious test" for high office, something forbidden by Article VI, Section 3 of the Constitution, failure to declare for it is akin to professing atheism for a candidate. The harpies of Fox News and other lame-stream outlets would descend en masse upon your head should you break this rule, and the other candidates would join the chorus.

As long as our politics are confined to the narrow field described by two parties, both controlled by insiders, and committed to keeping things pretty much as they are, with the bulk of our wealth going to the M/I complex and corporate welfare and the crumbs being squabbled over by the rabble, thus it shall ever be. The river Denial runs deep through our land and our politics.

It's a sad fate for what used to be the beacon of freedom for the world.

9/11 Explains The Impotence Of The Anti-war Movement

2007-09-16T14:50:00.001-07:00

The anti-war movement has proven impotent to stop the war in Iraq despite the fact that the war was initiated on the basis of lies and deception. The anti-war movement stands helpless to prevent President Bush from attacking Iran or any other country that he might demonize for harboring a future 9/11 threat.

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What can you learn from a Crappy movie?

2007-09-15T09:25:00.000-07:00

Last evening, I surfed through the On-Demand channels and came across a Sci-Fi movie from about 1989 called "Millenium". It's a terrible movie about time travel and starts with a horrendous midair collision between two jumbo jets. They crashed, and littered the countryside with flaming debris, and Kris Kristofferson is the high-powered investigator dispatched from DC to head up an investigation that involves hundreds of people, all working diligently to collect every scrap of the aircraft and painstakingly reconstruct them in a couple of hangars near the crash sites.

That's how they used to do things. Even when two aircraft banged together in midair and came crashing to the ground, they went to work to learn all there was to learn about the cause. They wanted to nail it down in order to learn from it. What did we learn from 9/11's air crashes?

Four airliners allegedly crashed that day. The NTSB "investigation" was subordinated to the FBI. After the Flight Data Recorders from New York were reported to have been found, they were mysteriously lost again. None of the wreckage was matched with maintenance records, or if it was it was kept secret, and no positive proof has been offered that the equipment that was associated with those flights was what was claimed. For years after 9/11 the tail numbers of the aircraft were carried on the books of the airlines involved. American Flight 11 was carried until 1/14/2002, on which date it was reported as destroyed. American Flt 77, (Pentagon) registration was cancelled 1/14/2002 for the same reason. United Flight 175, which hit the South tower was carried on the books until 9/28/2005 at which time it was listed just as "cancelled". United Flt. 93 carries the same date of deregistration but, like Flt 175, it also doesn't even list the aircraft as having been destroyed, just "cancelled".

Flight data recorders were reportedly retrieved from the Shanksville aircraft and the Pentagon aircraft, allegedly. The Pentagon aircraft FDR raw data was, apparently accidentally provided to Pilots for 9/11 truth by NTSB, I would guess under the assumption that, without the data frame, it would be useless to a bunch of lay-people. They underestimated the tenacity and ingenuity of the Pilots and they got help from a company that makes the FDR.

An analysis of the raw data supplied by NTSB shows that the aircraft in question could not have hit the Pentagon. It was still 273' above the ground in the last frame of data. Its position and altitude placed contact with the street lights and the Pentagon itself outside the realm of possibility for that aircraft, given its altitude and airspeed. It could not have maneuvered to strike any of the things it was alleged to have hit. In addition, the course, position, and heading information places it well to the West of the flight path required to match up with the impact damage to the light poles and the penetration trajectory of the building. Either NTSB provided false data or the account of the aircraft hitting the Pentagon is false.

In the case of Shanksville, the startling lack of aircraft wreckage, the very small crater with no evidence visible of an air crash, coupled with the absence of a normal investigation and attempt to reassemble the aircraft adds to the suspicion. The FDR data from Shanksville is in the possession of Pilots for 9/11 truth and is being analyzed at present. NTSB refuses to elaborate on either the Pentagon or Shanksville data. They say only that they provided a "work product" to the FBI and any comment will have to come from them.

The NTSB has an online listing of aviation accidents from the past ten years at http://www.ntsb.gov/Publictn/A_Acc1.htm
None of the 9/11 flights are listed in this database.

In addition to the unusual handling of the aircraft part of this horrendous and very pivotal day in history, the investigation into the behaviour of the World Trade Center buildings and the Pentagon is very puzzling. The debris was spirited away by FEMA in what can only be described as very strange treatment of a crime scene, particularly one which cannot be definitively said to be solved, since the government has yet to present their promised case against the alleged hijackers and Osama Bin Laden has not been charged with the crime.

But beyond the crime scene nature of the cleanup in New York, the buildings themselves exhibited very strange behavior for steel-framed skyscrapers. They disintegrated symmetrically, the towers from the top down, very suddenly, and Bldg 7 in a classic controlled demolition fashion. The official story says fire and impact damage from the aircraft caused it. It was the first such collapses in recorded history, despite the fact that other steel-framed hi-rise buildings had suffered much longer, hotter fires and remained standing. NIST was assigned to do a building performance report. They have yet to offer any explanation for Bldg 7, but instead of going to the forensic evidence from the wreckage for the towers, they relied on a computer simulation in which they could tinker with the parameters. Only when using parameters far outside the range of any reasonable estimate of the temperatures encountered by the steel could they induce anything approaching the collapse that was observed.

The fact that three buildings exhibited first-ever-in-history behavior, all belonging to the same leaseholder, all newly acquired property (July 2001), all heavily insured specifically against terrorist acts, and representing a windfall profit of billions ($4.5 b) to the owner, should, it would seem, raise some suspicions. This property But leaving aside the possible arson and mass murder, the implications for the construction industry are huge and would merit, it would seem, an exhaustive and very public investigation. Nothing of the sort occurred. As George Benton noted, the editor of Fire Engineering magazine called the investigation a "half-baked farce".

The WTC suffered a severe fire between the 9th and 16th floor, including the core columns, and it lasted over three hours, burned hotter, since it broke windows, unlike the 9/11 fires, yet it caused no serious structural damage and the trusses were still in use on 9/11.

My point is that in the days when government agencies like the FAA and NTSB existed to provide a public service, the response to untoward events was quite different than it is when the agencies exist to provide cover to a criminal enterprise masquerading as a government. It ought to make you think about the likely future of our republic.

LTE Salisbury Daily Times June 07

2007-06-19T21:08:00.001-07:00

Reactions to my letter about open questions surrounding 9/11 events were not unexpected. They ranged from dripping sarcasm from know-nothing, knee-jerk defenders of anything Bush, to Democrats scrambling to dissociate themselves from a “conspiracy theorist”.

The general theme was that I, by asking questions and challenging the government explanation, am unpatriotic and/or unhinged. I offered no theories - although I privately make some logical deductions. Our government has offered one conspiracy theory: that Osama sent 19 jihadists on a mission to destroy the Trade Center and Pentagon. They also somehow got our government to schedule up to six military exercises in the Northeast to confuse FAA and NORAD and divert our air defenses; induced three skyscrapers to blow themselves up with all ten characteristics of controlled demolition, got FBI counterterrorism officials to stonewall inquiries into the terrorists’ preparations, and somehow prevented NORAD from scrambling air defenses for about 90 minutes. Then Rudy Guiliani disposed of the physical evidence immediately.

And I am the conspiracy theorist?

Reading the attacks on me, one might think I am isolated in my skepticism.

Wrong.

According to a May, 2006 Zogby poll, 42% of Americans believe there was a cover-up, and 45% think Congress or an international tribunal should re-investigate. Seventy percent of those aware of Bldg. 7, believe it requires investigation. There is dead silence from corporate media. Freedom of speech is wonderful, apparently, provided you only use it to support the government. A new, honest, investigation is required.

See www.patriotsquestion911.org for more information.

LTE Salisbury Daily Times

2007-05-20T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here is where the trouble started:
In “V for Vendetta”, the police inspector asks his assistant a question about a terrible attack for which terrorists were blamed. “If our government were behind the deaths of thousands of our citizens, would you want to know?”

Apparently there are many among us who would answer “no”. My reason for saying so is that even with a growing body of evidence pointing to the attacks of 9/11 as something much more sinister than the legend that was created well before the smoke had cleared in Manhattan and Virginia, and carved into stone by the 9/11 Commission Report, Americans are mostly silent.

Space constraints prevent a recitation of the evidence here. I can only say that in the literally hundreds of books and web sites devoted to 911 truth, it is well-documented. David Ray Griffin, a theologian by profession, has built a case in several books that thoroughly discredits the official account. Is the death of 3000 Americans in the attacks, and more than that in the falsely justified wars that followed, something that we can just shrug off? Bin Ladin, the alleged instigator, is not even wanted for the 911 attacks - no such charges appear on his wanted poster. Did Bin Ladin stand down NORAD? Did he block FBI investigations before 9/11, then promote those who did? Did he plant explosives in the WTC? Did he suspend the laws of physics on 9/11? Did he make billions in profits from insurance on the WTC?

We need the truth.

Shelton F. Lankford
Salisbury

Nov. 22 and Sept. 11 - A review

2007-02-25T19:35:00.001-08:00

A society of sheep must in time beget a government of wolves.- Bertrand de Juvenal
The Decider, willing to expend our last soldier to defend democracy in Iraq while destroying it here, is one of the latest Americans to realize that he has run the bus into the ditch. Two years of spinning wheels later (and many more casualties on all sides) he is desperate to get it out of the ditch so it can continue over the cliff. The pathology that is driving him can only be guessed at by the lay-person.
I submit that in the corrupt fantasy-land our government has become, we are seeing the fruits of willful ignorance by the American people more than 40 years ago, who accepted without significant protest a blatant cover-up of a governmental coup. The murder of John F. Kennedy at the hands of organized crime, cooperating with rogue elements of the government of the United States, was papered over. Farfetched accounts of a crazed lone gunman were enshrined as gospel, and anyone questioning it became a “conspiracy theorist” - automatically discredited by the application of the term. The formula worked so well then that it was applied twice more for Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King. These operations always have a patsy (there should be a picture of L. H. Oswald in the dictionary next to the word) who is situated to take the blame, which is immediately assigned. The Presidential Commission, in the case of really big lies, puts the finishing touches on the package. In 1963, the assassination led to the escalation of the Vietnam conflict and a wall with 58,000 names, to the great profit of the arms merchants.
As for our misbegotten Iraq adventure, we got there by virtue of another such operation - 9/11, a spectacular crime, where we again had an instantly identified group of suspects, none of whom were Iraqi, a reluctant “official investigation” that glossed over and falsified events in order to reinforce the prefabricated official account, glaring discrepancies that point to the lies, and a sheep-like acceptance by the American people, despite widespread beliefs (up to 84% according to a CBS/NYT poll) that we are being lied to. The fact that the official conspiracy theory defies several laws of physics and contradicts contemporary photographic and eyewitness evidence is officially ignored. It’s just the way things work here in a country that seems infinite in its capacity to tolerate official deception.
Shelton F. Lankford

Peak Oil and the Eastern Shore

2006-04-20T17:41:00.000-07:00

Professor John Crisp authored an Op-ed piece in the Salisbury Daily Times that called Peak Oil a worse threat than Global Warming. This was in response to that piece.

Professor John Crisp (“There may be a fate worse than global warming” DT 4/20/06) calls attention to a problem that may indeed live up to this billing, at least in immediacy. In the same issue, a Grapevine suggested that we can solve our energy problem by “bartering a barrel of food for a barrel of oil”. Apparently the writer was not aware that the production of that food in our current agri-business model, is highly dependent on that barrel of oil. About 10 calories of energy is used to produce 1 calorie of food, as we currently do it. On our PAC 14 show “BackTalk”, (Comcast PAC-14, Tues. 7:00 PM and other times) we have presented two shows in the past year that examined the phenomenon of Peak Oil. Salisbury University physics professor Andy Pica talked about the science behind the Hubbert Peak and the projections of the scientists who have studied the likely effects of a declining supply of oil in a world in which demand is increasing. It isn’t a pretty picture, and our doing practically nothing to anticipate the effects or to buy time with which to address solutions makes it worse.
BackTalk’s peak oil shows are available on Google video (http://video.google.com/ - search for BackTalk) and have been viewed a total of over 3200 times online. In countries where media is less corporate, there is more discussion of the issue. Recently a Canadian citizen requested a DVD for use in a community discussion of the coming energy crisis, and ways to prepare for it.
Apparently, those who handle the reins of our economy have decided that here in the U. S. it is more in their interest to let us hit the wall at 100 miles per hour than to recognize the problem and begin preparing for it. Certainly the energy companies see it as being to their advantage to just let the prices climb as high as possible, seeing how each successive oil shock fattens their purses.
The Key is Sustainability. But also ignored in this almost total media blackout is the fact that the impending oil crunch and the global warming phenomenon combined represent a huge opportunity if we act in time. Weaning ourselves from our oil habit and addressing what we can do to avoid making warming worse are two sides of the same coin. It also involves reversing the unsustainable trend toward globalization, as mentioned by Mr. Crisp. Surviving the energy crunch will depend on communities marshalling their resources and coming together to reestablish local ties of mutual support. The Eastern Shore is blessed with good land, expertise in farming, and other resources that make it possible for us to prepare for the coming crisis. We should begin to plan now and inventory our assets, build the local networks of cooperation, and start the power-down. Agriculture will have to change back to food production instead of the mindless growing of corn and soybeans; good for ADM or Cargill - bad for the land. My friend Jay Martin - a Nanticoke organic farmer - demonstrates that growing nutritious organic food without depending on petrochemicals and oil-derived pesticides is practical, results in better food, and improves the land with each crop.
The key question is whether we, as a community, have the foresight, wisdom, and courage to buck the national trend and band together to prepare for the coming storm.

Note to Rep. Bennett Bozeman

2005-05-19T12:11:00.000-07:00

The following letter was sent to Maryland Delegate Bennett Bozeman following a brief conversation about electronic voting and the issues around that problem.

Representative Bennett Bozeman
Delegate, District 38B

Rep. Bozeman:
I enjoyed your presentation to the Democratic Club last evening, and
appreciated you talking with me briefly after the meeting. I am the
organizer of Salisbury Democracy for America, and one of the producers
of "BackTalk", on PAC-14. I and a few others of us are scheduled to go
to a meeting of a new national organization fighting the
corporatization of our voting machinery.

The web site and statistical analysis I was talking about can be found
at http://uscountvotes.org/, and the specific analysis of the
Edison-Mitofsky exit polls can be downloaded here:

http://exit-poll.net/election-night/EvaluationJan192005.pdf

This report, entitled Response to the Edison/Mitofsky Election System
2004 Report shows the little-known and almost unreported fact that the
polling organization adjusted their observed exit polls that showed
Kerry winning by using "actual" tabulated votes to water down the poll
data. Edison/Mitofsky assumed that the reported data from the polls
reflected the real voter intent and never questioned whether there
might be something wrong with the reported vote. This is in glaring
contrast to the administration reaction to similar circumstances in
Ukraine where exit polls were used to challenge the validity of the
vote and actually caused a re-vote.

This report also explodes the "shy republican" theory initially
advanced to explain the exit poll data showing a 3% Kerry victory that
turned into a 2.5% Bush win at the polls, by using the pollster's own
data to show that the more Republican the district, the higher response
rate.

What this has to do with electronic voting - and non-paper methods of
tabulating votes in general - is that there was a strong correlation
between the exit polls and actual results in those jurisdictions using
paper ballots and where recounts could be conducted. In key states
where no meaningful audit capability existed, a strong shift toward
Bush was observed. (5.5% on average)

The report concludes its summary as follows:

"Well-documented security vulnerabilities and accuracy issues have
affected voting equipment as far back as the late 1960s, and history
shows that partisan election officials have long possessed the power
to suppress and otherwise distort the vote counts. The recent and
ongoing proliferation of sophisticated computerized vote recording and
tallying equipment, much of it unverifiable and hence "faith-based",
dramatically augments the opportunities for wholesale and
outcome-determinative distortions of the vote counting process. That
the lion's share of this equipment is developed, provided, and
serviced by partisan private corporations only amplifies these serious
concerns. THE FACT THAT, IN THE 2004 ELECTION ALL VOTING EQUIPMENT
TECHNOLOGIES EXCEPT PAPER BALLOTS WERE ASSOCIATED WITH LARGE
UNEXPLAINED EXIT POLL DISCREPANCIES ALL FAVORING THE SAME PARTY
CERTAINLY WARRANTS FURTHER INQUIRY (emphasis mine). The absence of any
statistically-plausible explanation for the discrepancy between
Edison/Mitofsky’s exit poll data and the official presidential vote
tally is an unanswered question of vital national importance that
demands a thorough and unflinching investigation." --Response to the
Edison/Mitofsky Election System 2004 Report, USCountvotes.org web site.

The dominance of technology in vote-counting raises suspicion at every
node in the process. Lack of routine validation of the numbers
reported by the equipment is a weakness that can be exploited in any
number of ways - "Back Doors" into tally machines or databases, trojan
horse programs that can be introduced by maintenance activities, or
rogue software that is incorporated as sleeper chips or modules that
can be activated by remote signal or a touch-screen pattern are all
well-understood by computer experts, but not much at all by the
lay-person (accounting for the overwhelming opposition of computer
experts to the e-voting movement, unless they are SELLING the
equipment). Essentially, the further the technology departs from marks
on paper that are counted by humans who watch each other, the more
opportunities there are for electronic mischief that is undetectable to
the outside observer. In most races, the larger the margin in the
reported results, the less likely anyone is to check any part of it.
The friends of honest elections are transparency of the process (the
more technology, the less transparency), non-partisan election
officials, and an audit process that routinely checks on reported
results. The enemies are partisanship, layers of opaque technology, and
lack of audit ability or no use of routine audits.

To the people who understand the issue, the lack of governmental
action, especially by Democrats, is incomprehensible. Many of us are
convinced that if the trend toward e-voting continues, Democrats will
be a permanent minority party, and most campaign funds will be wasted
money.

Thank you,

Shelton F. Lankford

Join Democracy for America at http://dfa.meetup.com/242/
Watch "BackTalk" on Comcast Channel 14 (PAC14)
on Thursday night at 7:00 PM
http://dfasalisbury.home.comcast.net/

Defending the Peaceniks

2005-03-17T08:56:00.000-08:00

A peace group on the Eastern Shore posted an ad in a local paper. It provoked an angry letter from a person who differed on the war, claiming they did not "support the troops". His letter is below this post. I could not resist a reply, and I apologize for the length of the post.

Andrew,
I hope you don't mind if I chime in on this subject.
I was a U. S. Marine for 20 years. I fought in Vietnam, and came out of that a little cynical, but basically thought that we were still the good guys - fighting the communists, and all that. I retired in 1984 as a Lieutenant Colonel. Since then I have learned some things I didn't know or preferred not to think about.
We were lied into that war as well, perhaps with the best of intention, but the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a fabrication to justify building up forces to intervene in a civil war.
Even that has little in common with the the situation in the middle east. While Afghanistan could possibly be justified on the grounds that they harbored the people who attacked us (the validity of that theory is far from established) the invasion of Iraq was for oil. There is a reason why the neo-conservatives running our government picked three oil executives to head their government. There is a reason why Dick Cheney still holds the makeup of the Energy Task Force a secret from the American people. There is a reason why the Project for a New American Century called, in 1998, for a "New Pearl Harbor", which it received in 2001 on Sept. 11. There is a reason why our great leader has close ties to the Bin Laden family. There is a reason why we can't seem to capture a 6'4" Arab who needs dialysis. There is a reason why our radio dial was taken over by propagandists that make Father Coughlin look like a rank amateur. The Neo-Cons needed 9/11 in order to justify to the American people, something they could not otherwise justify - an invasion of a sovereign, oil-rich country that presented no threat to us. That is why the Bush administration didn't lift a finger to stop the 9/11 attacks. Instead several key players took active measures to prevent discovery of the plot. Dave Fracas, an FBI agent, was the recipient of two key memos from the field in the months prior to the attack. He received the Colleen Rowley memo pleading for permission to examine the laptop of Zacharias Moussoui, the so-called "20th hijacker" - which was stonewalled and refused, and the Phoenix Memo, in which the Phoenix agents were screaming about arab men taking flight lessons but who showed no interest in learning to take off or land - which, as a jet pilot, I can tell you is always the primary concern of every legitimate student pilot. Mr. Fracas sat on those memos right through August, 2001, until it was too late, stopping any chance that it could have triggered a warning of the impending attack.
There is one other key piece of information about Mr. Fracas. He was promoted following the attacks. Don't take my word for it - look it up. In fact, every person who had a duty to protect America on 9/11 - and who managed to fail at the task in a spectacular fashion - has been promoted or otherwise rewarded (Tenant got the Medal of Freedom after presiding over the "worst intelligence failure in American history???" The only people who have been punished are those who stood up and told the embarrassing truth - like Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, and John O'Neill. Rice, who lied and said "nobody could imagine planes flying into buildings", is Secretary of State. In fact there is plenty of evidence that plenty of people in and out of our government had imagined that very thing. Mr. Cheney, who was given the job of heading the counter-terrorism task force, did not meet once pre-9/11. He met with the secret Energy Task Force about 8 times in the same period. Our fearless leader got out of town for the month prior to the attacks and John Ashcroft stopped flying on commercial airlines.
In what universe, except where the bad guys have taken over and are bent on empire would any of those facts make any sense? Not that there were not plenty of warnings anyway. Recently, it was revealed that there were 57 separate warnings leading up to 9/11 that the FAA sat on. See a pattern there? The coverup of the inconvenient facts is one of the best pieces of evidence that the administration is culpable. One of my most profound disappointments in the America people is that they accepted this disgraceful charade without rising up in anger and demanding an accounting. Distracted by Michael Jackson and the Scott Peterson case, I guess.
Michael Ruppert, a former LAPD Detective, in his book "Crossing the Rubicon - The Decline of the American Empire at the end of the Age of Oil" lays out the evidence that the Bush Administration assisted the plotters of 9/11.(Mr. Ruppert runs a web site < www.fromthewilderness.com/ > that also has much of this evidence. I know that to someone like yourself, that seems unthinkable, but if you examine the record, consider the actions of the President on that day, and look at how the Kean commission distorted the evidence and falsified the timeline of the attacks to cover up the fact that our air defenses were crippled and prevented from doing the job of protecting our skys, you are left with few other options.
Anyone who suggests this has been fitted for a tinfoil hat by the Corporate media, and Bush and the neo-cons. So where do we stand? We have a president who was defeated by the voters in 2000, but placed in office by his daddy's cronies - who are rich and powerful reactionaries. We have a war to seize 10% of the world's known oil reserves based on a series of lies and distortions. We have another election which returned the same cabal to power for a second term in which the exit polls showed a landslide for his opponent, but, thanks to the absence of a paper trail in certain key "swing states", we can't check to see whether votes were actually switched. We have the same conditions that led to millions in the street of the Ukraine that overthrew an illegitimate regime, being ignored by the "liberal" American press, TV networks, and Cable News. There is your "true democracy". We have not had a democracy in this country for 5 years, and frankly I question whether we can ever get the reigns back in the hands of the voters. And we have the unmistakable pattern of programs put forward by this administration that consistently rewards the multinational corporations at the expense of the ordinary American, and thanks to wrapping themselves in the flag they have disgraced, they make ordinary people identify with THEM as the patriotic ones.

It is enough to make you sick, or fighting mad. It had both effects on me.

If I understand you right, a just war is one that the U.S. happens to be fighting, no matter where or why?

Obviously, as a Marine, I was not opposed to war to defend my country. But now I find that my country has been seized by people who represent values I was taught from the cradle up to oppose and to fight. In the period following World War II, we tried Nazis in Nuremburg. The American judge, in front of whom they were called to account, told them the following. (Paraphrase) - You are not being tried because you lost the war, but because you STARTED the war. By that measure, George W. Bush is a war criminal, almost 1600 of the troops you profess to support and around 100,000 Iraqis - purple finger or not - have paid the price. We don't plan to pull out any time soon. We have oil assets to protect and exploit. The U. S. is building some 14 permanent bases - significantly clustered around the oil wealth- that will hold about 110,000 soldiers (some of them may be private contractors) in order to protect what we have seized. $9 BILLION of Iraqi oil revenues have gone missing (MISSING!) under the administration of Halliburton - Dick Cheney's old company.

I am not an active member of ES Peace and Justice, but I support their cause in this instance, and in general. Since I started to question our foreign policy, I find it is not something that you can easily put down. There is a famous Marine from the 1930's, General Smedley D. Butler who, as one of his last public acts, blew the whistle on a plot by a group of wealthy, right-wing industrialists to overthrow Franklin D. Roosevelt's government in a fascist power grab. They had contacted him in hopes he would lend his leadership to the plan. Thanks largely to him, the plot was foiled. Interestingly, the plot was largely in reaction to the the New Deal, a key part of which was establishment of Social Security, which BushCo is working very hard to dismantle at the behest of the same type of people. General Butler concluded that "War is a Racket" (look on Amazon for the book of that title), and that he had served as little more than a Bully Boy for Wall Street in Haiti and South America. I have pretty much concluded the same thing.

I am the organizer of a group called Salisbury Democracy for America. We put on a TV show each week on PAC-14 on Comcast cable in Wicomico. We meet the first Wednesday of each month in the Wicomico library at 7:00 PM. I urge you to come out and discuss your views with us. Calling the people who see the truth about Iraq and question the policy that led us there unpatriotic, while giving a traitorous and vicious gang of neo-fascists a pass just because they have learned how to package and sell their empire-building as "defense" is not productive and just demonstrates a profound ignorance of the ugly facts.

You obviously care about the issue, but your anger is directed in the wrong direction if you love what this country once stood for. You "support the troops" and buy that formulation as a reason not to think about how the troops got where they are. You buy the conflation of supporting the troops with supporting the reasons for the war. I am sure that in the '30's, the Germans were being urged by Herr Schicklegruber to "support the troops" when they were storming through Poland and France. According to him (Hitler), God was on their side, too. You have to listen to the propagandists on the right, like Rush and Sean pretty hard to still feel good about what is being done in our name - oh, and also pretty much turn off your own brain - otherwise it could make you sick to your stomach. We DO support the troops. Bush and Rumsfeld have pretty thoroughly demonstrated that they do not, when they send them in ill-equipped, extend National Guardsmen far beyond their obligation, and tell people whose enlistments are up that they are trapped in Iraq as long as it takes, all to protect the real beneficiaries - Halliburton and the companies we brought in to loot the country.
Like the group you are vilifying, I want God to bless the whole world, not just America. But if He does, it might get a little rough for us for a while.

Care to discuss it? Come on out to our next meeting on 6 April. Take the red pill, Neo.

Shelton F. Lankford
maturin42@comcast.net
Salisbury Democracy for America
443-365-9037

" A Republic, if you can keep it."

Benjamin Franklin, in answer to a question as to what type of government the framers had created.

"A man who is honestly mistaken, when presented with the truth, either ceases to be mistaken, or ceases to be honest."
Anon.

Andrew Krumm's letter to the ESP&J:

"Eastern Shore Peace & Justice Society,

I was reading my Eastern Shore News today and saw your article in the paper.
I must say I was truly amazed. I didn't know that their was that type of unpatriotic
organization or society or what ever you call your group on the Eastern Shore. I must tell
you I can't stand people when they say war is not the option. I would not have even
wated my time to write this e-mail if it wasn't for the slogan/title at the top of the article.
I know every one doesn't agree on the war in Iraq and that is ok. That is what we call a "true democracy."
It's "war is not a family value" that bothers me. By now you have probably deleted this message but I'll say my peace anyway. If it wasn't for war you wouldn't even be able to write article such as these. If it wasn't for war I wouldn't be writing to you to disagree. Just think if our founding fathers before the Revolution had said oh "war is not a family value" we can't FIGHT for our independence. What about during WWI & WWII. What if we had said you know what war is not a family value lets have peace. Well needless to say we would either still be under the british tyrants or more than likely we would all be speaking Japanese or German right now. Robert E. Lee stated "It is well that war is so terrible otherwise we would grow to fond of it" But Lee realized that war was necessary for freedom from oppression. To summarize it war is not a pretty thing, that is why it is always a last resort. Sometimes war is absolutely necessary for survival and freedom. It is because of this is the reason why America is that "beacon of liberty." Everyone does not agree on Iraq but we need to stop throwing the blame on others and we need to start supporting our troops. We all want them home, but they are over there protecting us from terror. It is better for them to fig! ht the terrorist 1000's of miles away in Iraq then in the cities of New York City. I think I have said enough. Thanks for you time if you finished reading this. God Bless America and God Bless our troops.

Sincerely,
Andrew Krumm "

Social Security being diverted to the wealthy

2005-01-03T10:51:00.000-08:00

RE: "U.S. government should leave Social Security funding alone," Dec. 27

Alvin Gentry, while reaching a correct conclusion, missed the point on Social Security funding. This administration has as its aim the destruction of the low-overhead (1 percent) administration of our national safety net, with substitution of a scheme whereby administration supporters in the financial community can get their hands on the trillions of dollars that flow through the system and break off a few chunks for themselves along the way.

By raising big campaign bucks for Republicans, the investment community assured itself a piece of a pie that has heretofore been administered by dull bureaucrats on a government salary, to whom there was no advantage to manipulate the funds or cheat recipients of the payouts.

Now, if the administration gets its way, those dollars or some portion of them will be administered by the same people who brought you Enron, Tyco, Worldcom and Global Crossing, who believe it is their due to fly around the world in private jets with gold-plated fixtures to visit their palatial villas in posh watering holes.

You can't do that on 1 percent. In announcing the "crisis" (one would think he would not have to go all the way to 2042 for a crisis, given the current state of health care, increasing poverty and job migration), President Bush ruled out the only thing that makes sense -- raising the upper limit on earnings subject to the payroll tax (ensuring a regressive tax remains so).

We don't even have to go through with Bush's plan to see the likely result. Great Britain has already gone down that road and seen its social security overhead rise to 5 percent. Argentina privatized its social security system and wrecked its economy on the resultant debt.

Some of the more clear-eyed economists believe our economy is already headed for a cliff, on the basis of the gigantic deficits already accumulated by the guns and butter and corporate welfare administration of George W. Bush.

This scheme, coupled with our promised endless war, ought to finish off the American dream once and for all, while making the world even safer and more profitable for billionaires.

You all voted for that, didn't you?

George W. Bush, having been "re-elected" has good reason to believe at least half the American people are sound asleep and will not interfere with his plans.

Shelton Lankford

Salisbury

Letter to Keith Olbermann

2004-11-10T19:27:00.000-08:00

Keith Olbermann
Countdown
MSNBC

Mr. Olberman:
I heard you opine that since the margin of victory is so high, that the voter irregularity story is a "local" story.

Take a look at the technology and the corporations involved. ES&S and Diebold are virtually the same company - founded by brothers, the Urosevich brothers, Bob and Todd. and those two companies are involved in the counting of 80% of the ballots cast. And it isn't just the touch-screen machines, it is also the optical scanners that count the paper ballots. Did you read Thom Hartmann's article on the pattern that shows big variances in Florida counties where Kerry lost support from Democrats in huge numbers - but only in those counties counted by optical scanners?

Put the patterns together and you can easily figure out that if you are counting 80% of the vote, you could throw a percentage of the votes in every race in every jurisdiction to the President above what he earned, and come up with a popular vote lead, then concentrate on the swing states to ensure enough to put you over in electoral college. By simply reversing a percentage of the votes for one candidate to the other in small enough numbers so that suspicion was not likely to be aroused, it could reverse a lot of votes.

I am not saying that is what happened (although it fits the facts), but you can't pretend, when you see these patterns and look at exit poll data where the exit polls are wrong only where you can't check the results that it doesn't stink to high heaven. You would only have to fudge the number a little over 3% to get the results we now are looking at. It also tracks with the exit poll data. Exit poll data is almost always dead on, and the inconvenient fact that you left out of the analysis tonight is that it would be much harder to fake, because it exists in black and white and it can be easily audited. Not so our ephemeral vote on electronic equipment with no paper trail.

I believe it was Stalin who said that he didn't care who voted as long as he got to count the votes. I think that is the attitude of the Republican party, who seemed hell-bent on setting up the conditions that led to this debacle, often with the cooperation of Democrats.

No country in its right mind would turn its vote over to a corporation - but we did, in the face of the warnings that Bev Harris and several other groups have been putting out for over a year now and that have been studiously ignored by the mainstream media, in favor of the latest on the Scott Peterson trial or travails of Michael Jackson.

I appreciate you continuing to cover this mess, but PLEASE don't minimize the abuse potential. And for God's sake, put Bev on to discuss it. Nobody knows it like her. Or Thom Hartmann. From his appearance tonight, my guess is that Alterman couldn't find his ass with a map.

Also, wouldn't you think that some Republican somewhere would be the least bit concerned about this abuse potential? If they had not won, would they? Would they have any grounds to protest? Democrats have been beside themselves with worry over the issue for most of this campaign. Republicans kept the bill to require paper trails bottled up in committee. Doesn't that tell you SOMETHING!

Thanks,
SFL

Letter to Sen Mikulkski

2004-11-06T16:39:00.000-08:00

Sen. Mikulski:
Congratulations on your victory last Tuesday. It was a bright spot in a very gloomy day. Your yard sign graced my lawn, and was replaced once after it was stolen.

I am writing you to urge you to support in any way you can an investigation into the electronic voting discrepancies in Tuesday's election. The theft of the election by the exploitation of voting machines without a paper trail is the only rational explanation for the discrepancy between the exit polls and the reported results that averaged +5% for Bush in swing states that used those machines. In other states, such as Maine and New Hampshire that do not use unverifiable voting means, exit polls were very accurate. It is my understanding that in no case did a discrepancy between exit polls and machine totals break in favor of Sen. Kerry. It was also mysterious that those discrepancies did not hold in states that were not closely competitive. I also find it suspicious that media outlets apparently changed their models for exit data during the post-election coverage in order to make it more compatible with the reported totals.

In my mind, this issue dwarfs any other facing our country, and places the viability of democracy in doubt. Based on what I know now, I shall regard this election as stolen until I am proven wrong. I urge you to take whatever measures you have at your disposal to fight for a full and complete investigation.

Thank you,

Shelton F. Lankford
LtCol. USMC (Ret.)
410-742-2542

If you liked paperless voting...

2004-11-06T16:30:00.000-08:00

News Flash:
DIEBOLD TO REMOVE RECEIPTS FROM ATMS

Bouyed by the spectacular success of paperless, no-audit-trail voting machines in the November 2nd Presidential election, Diebold has decided to remove all paper receipts from their ATM machines, since it is obvious that they are not needed, and are an unnecessary expense.

On Thursday, Wally W "Wally-boy" O'Dell, Diebold's CEO, was quoted as saying "Diebold has earned the trust of the American people to such an extent that the expensive printing of receipts - pieces of paper recording transaction details that depositors and ATM users could produce in case of a dispute - can be avoided, increasing profit margins for the bank. The low error rate in our voting machines - under 10% in many cases - has inspired the confidence in the company's products that makes this all possible. Most bank customers are content to just let us handle their money and tell them how much they have."

"We showed those fancy-pants exit-poll junkies last Tuesday, when we recorded vote totals that showed exit polls to be wildly inaccurate, except for those backwards states like New Hampshire, who cling to the archaic notion that paper audit trails are required. Or Maine, where (snort) PAPER ballots were used. In those rare instances, exit polls were dead-on accurate, but luckily, Ohio went without a paper trail, and there the exit polls and pre-election polls were WAY off", said Mr. O'Dell. "Who knew that people would lie to a pollster about their vote like they obviously did?"

"Our engineering staff has conducted experiments, and have conclusively proven that presence of our machines will actually skew exit polls toward liberals and cause those polls to under-represent the conservative candidate's supporters. While they have not been able to pinpoint the cause for this, or how it happens, the effect was dramatically demonstrated in Tuesday's election."

Mr. O'Dell also took the opportunity to announce his intention to run for Senate in 2006, emulating Senator Chuck Hegal, (R) of Nebraska, who was famously elected on the voting machines his company made. "Chuck's success in the Senate has proven that voting machine executives have the right stuff, when it comes to political office. He even won a substantial number of black votes in Nebraska - something that Republicans had found difficult in past elections. That proves the confidence people have in the technology"

According to some experts, within 6 years, 25% of the Senate, some governorships, and perhaps other higher offices, could consist of former voting machine executives, clearly a talented group with untapped political skills.

Diebold announced that, in further cost-cutting measures, they also intend to phase out the cameras that record who uses the ATM, since it is well known that only the account holder could possibly access accounts through the layers of security they have installed. "Our security is based on Microsoft's best, most secure, 1997 version of their Windows Mee operating system, and can't be hacked, unless you are proficient in the use of ctl-alt-del, and the ordinary person just isn't that computer literate", said Mr. O'Dell. "Plus, the screens have the great primary-color graphics, popular with the younger people."

Asked to comment, several ATM users expressed some doubts about the move. Mr. Herman Fretzer, of Columbus, Ohio, said "Well, votes are one thing - it's only politics and democracy after all, but my money is valuable, and I am not sure I want to trust it to a black box that doesn't give me a receipt or anything to show what happened inside the machine."

In a separate news release, Bank of America stated that they would be installing the new machines in all their branches, and that monthly detailed statements would be discontinued. Mr. Eumus Trussme, Bank of America spokesman said "The statement will be replaced by a monthly e-mail telling each depositor how much money he or she has. It really saves them time, when they don't have to worry about pesky details, like cancelled checks and running balances, or reconciling at the end of the month. People appreciate that kind of convenience. The revolution of automation in the voting process has ushered in a new era of infallibility for automated processes, and we consider it a mandate to make changes that will improve our bottom line."

A sampling of Bank of America depositors were surveyed, and most just wanted to know whether they would still be offered a choice between a toaster and a blender for opening a new account with at least $100.

Letter sent to Senator Zell Miller (D [HA!], GA) 9/2/04

2004-09-02T10:37:00.000-07:00

To Sen. Zell(out) Miller:
Your defection from honesty is noted. Your speech to the RNC last night was the most disingenuous - no, let's say it plain - dishonest public display I can recall in my lifetime. You have abandoned principle, party, and adherence to fact.

Do these words look familiar?

"My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders – and a good friend.
...
'In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington.

"Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so.

John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment. Business Week magazine named him one of the top pro-technology legislators and made him a member of its 'Digital Dozen.'"

They should. They are yours.
Ref. < http://miller.senate.gov/speeches/030101jjdinner.htm >

And you call John Kerry a flip-flopper? Wow!

Are you working to assume the mantle of the late Strom Thermond? Good progress, if you are.

SFL

Examples for our Young People

2004-08-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

I heard a lot of talk during the Clinton presidency about what an example he set for America's young people. I won't defend Clinton's conduct. The fact that it was even a subject that the nation's youth could discuss was largely due to the vendetta conducted by the Republicans who insisted that a tawdry personal affair was a subject suitable for public discussion and to be paraded on national TV 24/7.

I then reflect on what example George W. Bush is providing to our youth.

The next time your son or daughter don't actually lie about what they have been doing, but mislead you into thinking they are doing one thing, then do another, could it be that they are following George's example in the leadup to the Iraq war?

The next time they swagger around and pretend to be something they are not, could it be because of "Mission Accomplished".

The next time they run up the credit card and try to disguise the fact, or claim that something they want costs x, when it really costs several times x, and they hide the truth from you, could they be following Dubya's example on the Medicaid bill?

The next time they spread lies and rumors that slander one of their playmates and don't set the record straight, could it be copying the Swifties, Karl Rove's surrogates in the 527 community?

The next time they steal money from the baby and give it to one of their friends to curry favor from them, could they be emulating George W's tax plan?

The next time they participate in ganging up and beating up a playmate, could they just be playing Tom Delay's game to gerrymander the Democrats out of existence in Texas?

The next time they leak a family secret that does real harm to you, could they be emulating the "senior administration official" that leaked Valerie Plame's CIA identity or exposed the only Al Qaeda operative acting as our agent.

You get the idea.

George has made a career of the following:
Evading personal responsibility
Insider trading
Capitalizing on family connections and wealth
Sneak attacks by anonymous or shadow groups on any opponent
Lying to get his way
Violence as a first resort
Wrapping himself in the flag to cover screwups
Mangling logic and the English language

Some example!

Former Texas Lt. Governor - on the record

2004-08-31T07:15:00.000-07:00

The link < http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/08/ale04040.html > has a short video (Quicktime format) by former Lieutenant Governor of Texas Barnes. He is the one who got George W. Bush into the Texas Air National Guard, leapfrogging hundreds of applicants to get this underqualified, over-privileged Bush scion into a safe place where he could party out the Vietnam war. He now regrets this action. In the video, he expresses his disdain for the politics that can trash the reputation of a genuine patriot while the chickenhawk sails on, basking in the admiration of an adoring but sadly misguided "base" of those who would trade their democracy for the role of imperial power.

Mr. Barnes has it right. There is no comparison between these two men in terms of their service to the country.

On the other hand, I do not expect the country to recover in my lifetime from the damage to its institutions, reputation, and economy inflicted by Mr. Bush and his gang of radicals masquerading as conservatives.

Going after the Vets

2004-08-30T13:15:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush - distancing himself from the slime attacks on John Kerry, has stopped short of repudiating the Swift Boat Veterans for making up crap. These attacks have succeeded in their purpose - raising questions about Kerry's impressive record to allow the spinmeisters of the Republican Noise Machine to talk about Bush's military record as though it were actually comparable.

Let's look at the last three political campaigns in which George W. Bush had something at stake on a national level.

His South Carolina primary race in 2000 was characterized, some say won, by a push poll, conducted by someone allegedly outside the Bush campaign, who called South Carolinians and suggested that John McCain had fathered a black baby, his Bangledeshi adopted daughter, out of wedlock. They also attacked his daughter personally. Bush benefitted by it but would do nothing to stop it.

In Georgia, Max Cleland, a triple amputee from Vietnam, was compared to Osama Bin Laden and Sadamm Hussein by the Republicans in support of yet another draft dodger, Saxby Chambless. It had the Karl Rove attack machine fingerprints all over it.

And now it is John Kerry's turn.

How fortunate for George W. Bush that all his political opponents have the characteristic of appearing to have honorably served their country but have a very vocal and well-financed group who step forward to set the record straight. It is uncanny. In the case of John Kerry's attackers, the distance was not quite as far as they would have had you believe, since two Bush campaign figures, one of them his legal counsel, have been shown to be directly connected to the Swifties for fiction. These attacks on actual vets were done on behalf of a man who basically said his choices were to use his Dad's influence to go to the head of a very long line and learn to fly or "shoot out his eardrum with a shotgun". Never one to put himself in harms way, he chose to do what 800 others were ahead of him for, and he entered the Texas ANG about 12 days after making the decision. Wow!

Meanwhile, the following questions about Mr. Bush's character go unanswered.

1. How did he spend his time when he was said to have been in Alabama on a political campaign? People on the campaign said he only came in once or twice, contributed nothing, and was full of hot air. He wasn't at his ANG unit - nobody saw him, including his Commanding Officer. He went to the dentist once, but that hardly accounts for the three month period. He didn't get his flight physical, and was subject to being disciplined for that failure. His motive for missing it might have been his inability to pass a drug test. He was reputed to have used cocaine heavily during this time and there is strong suspicion that he was in rehab. That would make sense, but he won't talk and the Bush family has been very good at covering their tracks and sealing records while they have held the reigns of power. Also, public records that are supposed to be inviolate have gone missing with regularity when it pertains to the Shrub.

2. Why was George not prosecuted or even investigated for the obvious insider trading of Harken Oil Stock while he served on their board? Why is nobody in the supposed "liberal" press exposing his huge profits on the stock just before the financials were restated, where he was specifically warned by company counsels that he would be subject to insider trading charges if he did so. The stock tanked, George walked away with about $800k, and nobody did anything, since Dad was Prez.

3. What has George W. Bush ever done on his own that would indicate he was fit to lead a scout troop, much less the free world? Here is the real question. He is asking for four more years after accomplishing the following: Leading us into a war of choice - something we supposedly hung war criminals in Germany for, but he gets a pass and is contending for reelection. Wrecking the best economy in the world and converting massive surpluses into even more massive deficits in record time. Completing a term in which his party held all the reins of power without passing one single piece of legislation whose primary beneficiary was the ordinary American.(1) Every single one of them was for some special interest - mostly large corporations, or well-represented industries, such as HMO's or pharmaceutical companies.

Yet it looks like the Republicans stand a fair chance of prevailing in the coming elections.

Can anybody PLEASE tell me why? If you are just cynical and believe that George is just more likable or seems like a nice man, just tell me that. As it stands it does not make any sense at all. I hear people talk about him as though there were something to admire. All I see is a man who has proven himself a coward, a fraud, and a mean-spirited incompetent. In contrast to better men who have been slimed by him or his surrogates, nor have there been any demonstrations of true character or leadership. Exercise of naked power is not leadership.

(1) Congressman Tom Tancredo of Colorado was challenged on the Thom Hartmann show earlier this year to name one piece of legislation sponsored and passed by Republican and signed by Bush that benefitted ordinary Americans instead of Corporations. It didn't even have to be exclusive - in other words, it could also benefit corporations. He could not think of one then. Mr. Hartmann then invited his audience to come forward. Not one could think of anything that would fit that description.

Dangers of Defaming a War Hero

2004-08-24T07:37:00.000-07:00

In response to David Ignatius' OpEd piece in the Washington Post of 8/24/2004.

David Ignatius in his Op-Ed piece says that, at some point, the public may ask Karl Rove: "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"
Karl Rove answered that one a long time ago, when he unleashed his flying monkey brigades after John McCain and Max Cleland. The conduct of this White House in the outing of Valerie Plame and reportedly exposing the only double agent in Al Qaeda, has amply demonstrated that there is nothing they will stop at to hold onto political power. Their failure to condemn the lies coming out of the SBVT campaign is only the latest piece of evidence of an administration nearly devoid of decency, integrity, or respect for those who have amply demonstrated those qualities. I can only hope that the American public can take their eyes off "reality TV" long enough to realize that this gang has gone back to the same well too often and reject this despicable tactic at the ballot box.

Kerry's Service

2004-08-10T16:47:00.000-07:00

Message sent to the following recipients:
WBOC (CBS-16)
Message text follows:

Shelton Lankford
28166 Pathfinder Court
Salisbury, MD 21801

August 10, 2004

If John Kerry got off the airplane in Vietnam, it puts him head and
shoulders above George W. Bush, in terms of doing his duty for his
country. Now come the so-called Vietnam Veterans for Truth to play the
flying monkey brigade to Carl Rove's Wicked Witch and attack John Kerry's
record of service. The people in this group did not serve with Kerry -
those guys are all campaigning for him - and some did not even lay eyes on
him in country, but they carry the water for this chicken-hawk regime to
smear an American hero. You should not carry thier ad, or if you must, you
should allow someone to counter it by presenting the undisputed facts of
the case. As a Vietnam veteran myself, I respect both Kerry's service and
his resistance to the war on his return.

Sincerely,

Letter to the Salisbury Daily Times

2004-08-10T16:45:00.001-07:00

Message sent to the following recipients:
Salisbury Daily Times
Message text follows:

Shelton Lankford
28166 Pathfinder Court
Salisbury, MD 21801

August 10, 2004

[recipient address was inserted here]

[recipient name was inserted here],

The Bush Attack Machine is at it again. I was thoroughly disgusted with
the attacks on John McCain in South Carolina in 2000. That attack by the
Bush team did more than anything else to show me his character and alert
me to the danger he would be in office. He has managed to surpass even my
worst fears. Now we see the same outfit launching a remarkably similar
attack on John Kerry. As in the McCain case, facts are on the other side
of their malicious slurs. As a Vietnam veteran, I repudiate this phony
group, joining those who really served with Kerry to support his election.
Send this phony cowboy and his Machiavellian henchmen back to Texas in
November.

Sincerely,

Shelton F. Lankford
410 742-2542

Letter to Post - Network Coverage of Convention

2004-08-02T06:34:00.000-07:00

Letter to Editor, Washington Post, Published 8/3/2004

ABC News President David Weston [“Don’t Blame the Networks,” op-ed, July30] defended the failure of the networks and their cable outlets to carry the Democratic Convention on the grounds that the audience might not watch it. That rings hollow when the programming that is offered instead is a warmed-over pile of garbage. And when I did find a major network carrying the convention, I was more likely to get some idiot with a wireless microphone interviewing a spin artist from the Republicans than a straightforward account of what was happening on the floor or an interview of substance with any of the key figures.

One thing that has been forgotten is that the airwaves are a part of the commons belong to the American people. There used to be an obligation on those who use the commons to present responsible accounts of events of vital importance to the country. A compliant administration is letting the networks ignore this obligation.

SHELTON F. LANKFORD
Salisbury

The Best Explanation of our Political Landscape

2004-07-29T12:26:00.007-07:00

Go to http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0616-09.htm

Bill Moyers, perhaps the last respected Journalist in America outlines what is happening in America. He lays out the connection between the awful influence of Corporate money on politics, and how the political influence bought by this money has produced the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. It should be required reading for anyone who seeks to understand the Bush administration and what the Republicans, particularly stand for. And lest you think it is only Republicans, the infection has spread to the Democrats as well, just not quite as quickly or as thoroughly.

Please read this column.

The Florida Recount

2004-07-12T11:14:00.000-07:00

Today, out running errands in preparation for our cruise to Alaska, and being in Salisbury, MD, I turned on the radio, and not liking the selections being played on NPR, I switched to AM, and there was Rush, bloviating about Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11, specifically about how Moore lies in his movie about the Florida recount in 2000. He cites conclusions by the group that commissioned a study of the ballots that were not counted in Florida that he claimed showed Bush winning by every standard. That didn't sound right to me, because of several reports that I had read. Now I have been told by unsympathetic relatives to "get over it", but gosh darn it, no matter how I try, things like Rush's lying, deceptive hogwash get me all riled up again and tear off the scab.

http://democrats.com/display.cfm?id=181%20 goes back to the original data related to the uncounted vote, the undervote, the hanging and dimpled chads, and the felon lists, and demonstrates that the Miami Herald and the Media Consortium both applied some very curious spin to achieve a result for Bush that is not supported by any legitimate interpretation of the original data. Check it out and see if you can square what the data shows with what Rush said. (If you flash on the source being democrats.com and say, well there you go - it's biased - just read the data and then tell me who is biased).

If you follow the link above, the information is there to make up your own mind, or at least to show where Moore gets his case. Greg Palast has also extensively documented the theft of the election.

And finally, the last item on that page is a picture. It identifies the Rethuglican mob that rioted at the Miami Canvassing board and shut down the recount. It indentifies the people involved in the "spontaneous" demonstration. What isn't said and you may not know is how they got to Florida.

They were flown to Florida in the Corporate jet belonging to Enron Corporation and Ken "Kenny-boy" Lay, George W. Bush's largest contributor. That plane was also George W. Bush's campaign plane during his unsuccessful run for the Presidency (had the vote been correctly counted).

Score - Moore 1, Rush 0

George W's Values

2004-07-11T09:06:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush has criticized the Democratic candidates for President on the basis that they are not aligned with the values of the American people, unlike himself and his puppeteer, Dick "**ck you" Cheney.

Let's see, George. What values would that be?

Are you talking about conservative, small government, fiscally responsibile, support the working man, non-interventionist values?

Can't be that, because you have expanded government and its ability to interfere in the lives of American citizens in the name of protecting us from shadowy "terrists", who have not made a move in this country since 2001, when you received a clear warning and went on the longest vacation in American Presidential History.

In order to finance a huge giveaway to your millionaire and billionaire buddies, you borrowed a record amount of money from our posterity, and want to make those giveaways permanent, even though your own Fed chairman warns that you endanger our economy and the health of our currency. You have supported policies that steadily export the jobs of ordinary Americans, and reassure India and China that you will do nothing to stop the steady migration of jobs their way. You have conducted the most unilateral, interventionist foreign policy in our history, breaking the long-held tradition of this country by waging a preemptive war on a weak and almost defenseless country, who were described by your Secretary of State as being "in a box". I don't see a lot of signs of those values in the way you have run your government.

Are you talking about the values of personal responsibility and integrity, respect for the truth, and equal justice?

Can't be that one either. Personal responsibility is hardly the hallmark of your group. Given the most collossal intelligence failure in American history, and a whole series of missteps that has so far cost over 1000 dead coalition soldiers and countless Iraqis dead and wounded, NOBODY HAS BEEN FIRED! In fact, all your guys have been praised as having done a superb job. George Tenent, who headed the primary intelligence agency, after leaving his job was praised as having done a "superb job". That means you endorse the "slam dunk" case he made for going to war.

Even though you thought to ask your Justice department, hey, would it be OK for me to authorize torture for our prisoners in the war on terrism? When they twisted the logic around to reach the conclusion you were looking for, and Rummy sent out word to "take the gloves off" and you transferred the General from Gitmo to Gitmo-ize the Abu Ghraib prison, and you allowed civilian contractors (who you, by executive order relieved from any accountability and placed outside the reach of any court) to conduct the interrogations of prisoners, and you placed slightly trained Guardsmen under those contractors, and then you incentivized the contractors to get more material which led to more contracts, which led to more pursuasive means, which led to more coerced information... well, you get the idea. It was just a few grunts that caused all the problems.

What would it take to get someone fired? Oh, wait. I know! Telling the truth about the deceptions and double dealings of your administration will get your butt out the door in a heartbeat. The chief Medicaid actuary was threatened with firing if he told Congress the real cost of the gigantic giveaway to pharmaceutical corporations - some of your largest financial backers - otherwise known as the Medicaid Reform bill. Paul O'Neill would surely have been fired if he had written his book about your lack of any form of policy process in the White House. In fact, an unusual volume of former "superb" players on your staff or in government have, after exposing inconvenient truths about pre-9/11, your tax cut policies, or any number of embarrassing flubs by your crowd, been publically and loudly denounced by your political hit men on Faux news and as many other outlets as you can find. I suppose that you know that a firing would probably lead to another embarrassing book.

Well, does that bring us down to religion and family values?

On this one, I have to say that you have framed the argument so that if we take you at your word, you appear to be a genuine religionist - if there is such a word. You go through the motions, attend the prayer breakfasts, pray quite openly, suck up to Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, and Bob Jones University. You invoke the name of God often, but then it gets a little scary. If one of my neighbors confided in me that he was ordered by God to kill the guy two doors down, I think he would be picked up for observation and likely subjected to a psychiatric exam, at the very least. Yet when you told the Prime Minister of Israel that God told you to strike Afghanistan, and you did, and then he told you to go after Sadaam, and you struck him, nobody much batted an eye. It was not widely reported in the press.

Then there was the matter of consultation with end-days experts before forming the policy of the U. S. toward Israel. Elliot Abrams assured you, after checking, that Gaza had no biblical significance, so sacrifice of that strip of land would not have to be undone before the rapture. The fact that you believe that end times are approaching is also alleged to have helped form your environmental policies and accounts for your lack of heed to the rate at which we are using up the earth's natural resources - particularly oil. We won't need it!

To me, that is just scary. I don't have any issues with people in Government having a personal faith. It is a little comforting to me to have them at least acquainted with the teachings of Jesus, or even Buddha, or even Mohammad, as long as it is tempered by at least retaining touch with and a secular understanding of the world we live in. I would want their experience to be wide and deep, which I understand yours is not. When the President of all the people of America starts talking about receiving instructions from God directly and personally, I want them to undergo a medical and psychiatric workup, at the very least, since they hold the trigger for Armageddon - literally.

I won't speak for Jesus, but I really doubt that he would have a) set records for the number of people executed under his watch while governor, or b) make jokes about signing a death warrant, as you did about Carla Faye Tucker on the eve of her execution. He might also have had some problems with executing mentally defective people and juveniles - unlike yourself.

You have cynically positioned yourself on the wedge issues on the side of the religious right. Marriage is defined as a union between man and woman and it says so in the bible, so you gays just sit down and shut up, and I will change the constitution if I need to to set it in concrete. If you succeed, you will be the first modern President successfully to sponsor writing discrimination INTO the Constitution. You have scoured the countryside for the most cynically neanterthal right-wingers to appoint to the judiciary. Jurists with the most bizarre understanding of the role of government and the duty of courts to protect the rights guaranteed us in the Constitution have been sought out for the Federal bench - giving you a rich field of knuckle-draggers to choose from for your next Supreme Court nominee. This is the most frightful thing about the prospects of your next term. Overturning Rowe v. Wade will just be a starter. John Ashcroft will run amok with the Patriot act with nothing to stop him. The establishment of one-party, one-viewpoint, one philosophy rule will be complete, and it will last for the next ten years. And you will do this while your hired shills of right-wing radio shriek to the heavens about "activist" liberal judges making law.

If you want to see activist judges, just wait until the Bush appointees truly dominate the Supreme Court.

These values you point to don't seem to be those of the America I know, based on the way they reflect in the actions of your administration and your party. Those that John Kerry and John Edwards talk about are more in line with what I want my country to be. You can take yours back to Texas with you when you leave in January.

Martha we hardly knew you

2004-07-10T08:34:00.000-07:00

Martha Stewart has lost her appeal for a new trial and it appears she is to do hard time. She was very publicly prosecuted to show how tough this government is on white-collar (lace-collar?) crime. The fact that she is an outspoken Democrat might have something to do with it, I don't know. Her offenses, however, pale to insignificance in light of the curiously unpublicized financial transgressions of our misleader in chief who dumped his stock in the Harken oil company shortly before it took a huge plunge in 1990. You can read about it at

http://www.hypocrites.com/article9157.html .

You may ask yourself why a huge deal was made of Martha's crime (not insider trading, but lying to cover it up), when Mr. Bush has never been hauled before a court or investigative body to explain his foresight in anticipating the loss of over $800,000 of his value in a company on whose board he served, and bailing out, selling his stake to a person whose identity has not been disclosed. Martha's $47,000 looks kinda puny at this point, does it not? The fact that the future President (and the current President's son) was specifically warned that such action might trigger an insider trading charge did not deter him. Remember, he is a strong and determined leader.

Does this lack of prosecutorial zeal look a little funny to you, when you consider that the Republican Javerts in Congress pressed an investigation at a cost of $70 million taxpayer dollars of the Clintons over a land deal in Arkansas in which they lost money? The only "crime" they could come up with was a tawdry White House sexual escapade, and then only by hauling the President up and arranging for him to lie very publicly about the private matter.

If the Democrats controlled either house of Congress right now, can you imagine how different Mr. Bush's life might be?

John McCain - It's a Sad Day

2004-07-10T08:06:00.000-07:00

This is a letter submitted to John McCain on 9 July. I knew John McCain slightly - he was a flight instructor in Beeville, Texas in 1967 when I was in advanced jet training in the Marine Corps. I have followed his career and admired him as a principled man, tempered by his horrific experiences in Vietnam.

Submitted through John McCain's Senate web site. 9 July, 2004

John, I have written you in the past, inspired by your willingness to buck the trend of the Republicans and the administration in their sellout of the American people in favor of Corporate influence and their wrong-headed march into a militaristic, imperial foreign policy.

I even urged you to consider joining John Kerry to overthrow this administration in November. Your decision not only to condone, but to support actively this corrupt administration means to me that you place politics above principle. By praising George W. Bush's "moral clarity", you have tainted your own. How you could praise the moral clarity of a cabal that attempted to destroy your reputation by excrable campaign tactics in South Carolina is beyond my ken. I have always described you as someone whose integrity was beyond reproach. You are the only one who could have destroyed that view, and you have done it, sacrificing principle for your party. This country needs your leadership and you have abdicated.

It is a sad day.

(SFL)
LtCol. USMC (Ret.)
Flight Student, Beeville TX, 1967

Teddy and Chappaquiddick - Save it

2004-07-07T08:56:00.000-07:00

In response to a forwarded message reminding me about Teddy and Chappaquiddick.

Ron, I think you and I are going to be unreconciled politically this year. Bush started out in a hole with me during the 2000 election and has gone down steadily from there, with the single exception of the invasion of Afghanistan, which I supported. Since then, the record of the administration and the congress under Republican control has been a steady and unremitted sellout of the American people to their Corporate sponsors. I am near despair because there does not seem to be anyone in Congress or the White House representing the interests of the average American, and the media - totally in the control of 6 corporations, as opposed to the 50 or so when you and I were growing up - avoids the real story of the sellout like a plague. And our two-party system has locked us into a choice between the wimpy Democrats and the totally corrupt and toxic Republicans. Wave Chappaquidick all you want, it's old news, and Ted Kennedy is actually one of the people who are trying to hold the tide of Corporate control of all aspects of our lives. I have not always thought that, but Bernie Sanders has won me over. We are living as serfs in a Corporate feudal state, courtesy of the Democratic Leadership Council and the Republican party.

Thanks to Bush, the guy who makes his living clipping coupons and cashing his dividend checks pays a lower percentage of his income as taxes than the guy who is trying to support a wife and four kids on $50k a year. That guy probably does not have health insurance, or pays a lot for it. His health care costs are higher than any other country in the world, but his next baby is more likely to die an infant in this country than in 12 or so other developed countries in the world. His job, if he has one, is likely being evaluated to be shipped overseas to China or India by the Corporation who controls it, where he will be placed in direct competition with a worker who makes $3.00 a day. His union has been busted by right-to-work laws put in place for that purpose, and he is alone against a corporation whose sole value is profit and who answers to nobody, the government having been bought out. With a few thousand campaign contributions, magically, environmental restrictions are lifted, anti-trust measures have their teeth pulled, and even corporate welfare prevents horrendous management from failing. The corporation, which used to pay about 15% of tax revenues now pays about 7%, but that is still too much, so they move their headquarters to Bermuda or the Cayman Islands, and avoid U. S. taxes altogether. Meanwhile our hero gets a job a Walmart, where he makes a fraction of his old $50k salary, has no benefits at all, and if he saves real hard, he may be able to buy cheap sneakers made in China. Our trade deficit builds exponentially, representing a direct threat to our economy. Our hero continues to pay taxes to finance wars in which his sons, but not those of the feudal lords, are at risk, and to finance the tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires and more Corporate welfare. His kids go to a school where, due to No-Child-Left-Behind, he studies to pass tests, but doesn't get much of an education, thus preparing him splendidly to be propagandized by Rush, Bill O'Lielly, Ann Coulter, Niel Boortz, and Sean Hannity into voting for those who are doing this to him in the name of Patriotism and family values. All of this propaganda comes from the Heritage foundation, or right-wing think tanks like it, financed by Richard Mellon Scaife and Joseph Coors, and spewed out daily in talking points for the Southern Command and the "No-Spin Zone". And if he starts to suspect that he is voting against his own interests and for those who are making it impossible for the middle-class in America to exist, he will get Chappaquidick and "liberal bogey-men" waved in his face.

Billionaires are an expanding class in America
Millionaires are an expanding class in America
Middle-class is a shrinking class in America
Poverty is on the rise in America
Job growth is not keeping up with the number of people entering the work force
George W. Bush is on track to be the first President since Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs in his Administration
Between them, the Bush dynasty has not created A job.
$70 million was spent by the Republicans attempting to pin something on Bill Clinton over a failed land deal and a tawdry sexual escapade - unsuccessfully.
The Bush white house has committed treason - actual treason - by spitefully outing a CIA agent, ironically who was trying to track actual Weapons of Mass Destruction, and whose husband told an inconvenient truth that embarrassed the President who lied in the State of the Union Address. The white house has stonewalled the investigation.
George W. Bush, a reputed conservative, has run up the highest deficit in American history. He is borrowing money from Kaleb to pay off his Rangers.

I could go on, but I suspect I have said more than you want to hear, and none of which you will agree with. But you knew this was a hot button for me. It is crystal clear to me that our country has been hi-jacked by neo-con zealots that bear no resemblance whatever to an actual conservative.

You are a smart guy, Ron, but if you are buying the crap the right wing is pumping out now, you need to look deeper. Liberals and progressives are our only hope. The good things in America throughout our history have been accomplished by liberals. If you can name me one thing since 2000 that has been done by the Republican party that is primarily for the American people and not for some Corporate or other special interest, you will have done what one Republican Congressman has not been able to do.

I will leave it there. Chappiquidick used to be a big deal to me, 20 years ago. He has rehabilitated himself many times over by resisting the steady erosion of the American Dream at the hands of Corporate power.
Hang in there, Teddy.

What is Holding Him Up?

2004-07-02T09:17:00.000-07:00

What is holding George W. Bush up? He is like Wiley Coyote after he runs off a cliff. He hangs in the air a few seconds.

I have engaged in a running dialog with my siblings over the last several months, in a, so far, less than successful attempt to convince them that George W. Bush's administration, aided and abetted by the Republican majority, is dangerous to American democracy and must be removed in November. I have been totally mystified by the attitudes I have run into, which, I understand from the polls that are announced almost daily, are still shared by about half of the citizens of the U. S.

The more I think about it, the more I believe that their viewpoint has practically nothing to do with agreement with what the Bush administration has done (or not done) in the 3.5 years they have been in office, but what they believe Bush, Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld ARE. Presented with unarguable facts about the Republican assaults on our institutions, they make excuses, or attack the source (left-wing media or a disgruntled employee), but don't challenge the facts.

I believe they have created the image of Bush according to what they want to see in their leader. They ignore the reality of the man and project on him a God-fearing, earnest, brave, down-home image that is created and sustained by a carefully prepared and controlled branding campaign by the marketeers who created and sustain this Presidency.

I have repeatedly asked them, but I have yet to hear them offer any substantive defense of the current administration's actions or policies, or their many flagrant breaches of acceptable political conduct. (See 1, below, for a partial enumeration) Comebacks usually consist of slams against Democrats in general and John Kerry, in particular, expressing a general distaste for the man.

I don't know any of my siblings who would agree with or defend many of these actions or measures implemented by the administration and their Congressional allies. Yet they defend the President and his party and excuse them.

It's like the news interview of a person who, upon hearing of a neighbor who has been revealed to be a serial killer, describes him as a "nice guy".

Although the persistence of this attitude is puzzling among otherwise rational people, I believe I know one factor. When I can bring myself to listen for a 5 minute stretch (that is the absolute limit I can stand) to the daily bloviating of the right-wing talk parade of convicted or potentially convicted felons that comprise the bulk of that parade, I believe that they are the ones who have institutionalized rationalization of the indefensible and partisanship in the face of overwhelming evidence of misdeeds and lies that would have had Bill Clinton's head on a pike. Their daily recitation of half-truths, outright lies, and distortions, all from the same list of talking points, utterly bereft of any honest analysis or debate, has made it respectable to disregard evidence that a point of view is just wrong. Fox news can offer "analysis" of wildly distorted "facts" without challenge because there is no need to offer any countervailing viewpoint. The "uniter, not a divider" has produced a nation that is so polarized the public discourse takes place in two parallel stovepipes that never encounter each other. We have grown accustomed to discussions between the far right and the not-quite-as-far right, sometimes with a tame, nominal "liberal" thrown into the mix as a punching bag (see Alan Colmes). This passes for balance and fairness in the world of cable news and political mud wrestling shows. One can hardly blame the average viewer or listener from coming away with the idea that the left is out of ideas and has no answer to the Hannity's Ann Coulters or Laura Ingrahams. You have to work pretty hard to dial up Air America or Radiopower.org, and stay near your computer to listen to any ideas left of center in most markets. This may change, and there is some evidence that it is slowly changing, but the dialog will still take place in parallel stovepipes, with the audience seeking those they agree with already.

Bill Clinton was, to some people, one kind of person, therefore his one documented lie to the American people was a matter rising to high crimes and misdemeanors, even though it only affected his private life. George W. Bush, being another kind of person, and his administration have told 237 (at last count) documented lies about Iraq < http://www.house.gov/reform/min/features/iraq_on_the_record/ > and they get a pass from Congress and the American people.

Because to his base, he is a good man, with a good heart, and he is defending us against "terrists", and besides, conservative = good, liberal = bad. Everything else is just details. Despite mounting evidence that our middle east policy, and its manifestation in Iraq, can only be described as inept, a majority of Americans feel that Mr. Bush is better to lead us against terrorism than John Kerry.

The latter has demonstrated exceptional moral strength in standing up for his convictions, as well as physical courage under fire. Our President demonstrated only a willingness to take advantage of family and social advantages to avoid any obligations, and a positive talent at finding investor after investor among his father's friends and those currying favor with the 41st president to grow a fortune based on business deals (some that would have made Martha Stewart green with envy) with nary a profit in sight.

I am aware of similar attitudes exhibited in the past by "yellow dog Democrats" who refused to consider an alternative to tax-spend-elect politics so often identified with that party, so it isn't confined to Republicans. But I get the uncomfortable feeling that with the capture of the public airwaves by the right that a sea change has occurred in the way America carries on political discourse.

While I understand that distortions of the public debate occur during election years, I can't even begin to understand an intellect (or moral compass) that looks at John Kerry's military record and George W. Bush's non-record and say that the guy who showed physical and moral bravery, recognized by multiple awards for heroism under fire and demonstrated by unpopular opposition to a war that almost all now agree was a huge mistake, can somehow be found wanting in leadership qualities when compared with the scion of a powerful politician who failed to even meet the minimal attendance obligations of the "Champagne Unit" of the Texas ANG, and whose sole act of leadership that bears any scrutiny consists of his standing on smoking rubble and swearing revenge through a bull horn. Staying the course with a man who led (or lied) us into the middle of a swamp, with no plan or apparent idea how to get us out seems the height of folly.

The stakes of this election are no less than the soul of America. There have been pivotal elections before in our history, but it is hard to come up with one on which more of our freedom and our fortune is at stake. If the Bush administration would play so recklessly with our world reputation, the lives of our troops, and the future of our environment when they are faced with running for reelection, what will they do when they have no need to moderate those policies in preparation for a new election?

It is hard to imagine.

(1) A partial list of the transgressions of the Bush II administration and his Republican allies.
* Pressing for round after round of "tax cuts" that offer chump change to middle class Americans, while lavishing huge windfalls to the top 1% of Americans, even when it became clear that by doing so, the move would produce budget deficits as far as the eye can see and our children and grandchildren would be paying them back, while simultaneously telling us that we have no choice but to cut social security and medicare benefits.
* Egregiously retrograde environmental policies and repeated appointments to oversight positions in watchdog agencies of lobbyists representing the economic interests seeking to overthrow the protections to our water, air, and natural resources.
* Their policies on energy, developed in secrecy and apparently with participation or domination by the likes of Ken Lay, selling out the security of the country to big oil, coal, and nuclear.
* Their horrific Medicare "reform" that amounted to an implementation of the wish list of the pharmaceutical and insurance industry and use of the taxpayer's money to "sell" this package to us in thinly disguised political commercials for the incumbent President.
* The threatening and intimidation of the chief Medicare actuary to prevent him from disclosing, prior to passage of the bill, that the actual cost of the Medicare reform bill would not be $395 billion but $155 billion more than that, which would have rendered it unacceptable to the the few real conservatives left in the Republican-dominated Congress, had they known.
* The wee hour arm-twisting and outright bribery and extortion of members of congress to get the Medicare bill passed.
* Their march to an ill-advised war, with a case that has fallen apart under the facts and the weakness of which were apparent to many - some in the administration - prior to the war.
* Their treasonous "outing" of Valerie Plame for partisan revenge against her diplomat husband for telling the truth counter to a mendacious lie by the President in the state of the Union message.
* The inexplicable reaction of Mr. Bush in the classroom on 9/11 to the news that we were under attack, in which, with the full knowledge that we were undoubtedly under attack, he continued with a photo op, asking questions of the children about the story about a pet goat.
* Their massive no-bid giveaways to cronies in Halliburton, Bechtel, and the Carlyle group amid myriad conflicts of interests and mounting evidence of war profiteering.
* Continued cover-up and denial of the Sept. 13 Saudi Airlift which spirited 140-160 prominent Saudis and members of the Bin Laden family out of the country with the obvious (but denied and uninvestigated) complicity of the highest authorities in the land, when even charter transportation for a heart for a transplant patient was being denied permission to fly.
* The institutionalization of war profiteering by cronies and political sponsors by privatizing everything in sight related to logistical support of the troops.
* Appointment of a fundamentalist religious zealot to the office of Attorney General of the United States, whose stated law enforcement priorities appear more driven by the agenda of the religious right than the constitution or threats to our safety or well-being.
* Our President's inexplicably resistance to answering questions before a 9/11 commission he was practically forced to appoint to investigate the worst security lapse in our modern history.
* His refusal to appear before that commission without his VP by his side, and not under oath.
* Stonewalling of the Commission on their request for documents relevant to the investigation, even those from the Clinton White House turned over and released by the Clinton administration to the Bush White House.
* Refusal of his "team of adults" to consider plans for the post-invasion Iraq drawn up by professional planners, including the Army War College, that would have avoided many of the difficulties encountered by the occupation forces.
* Their claims prior to eventual release, that the report of 6 August, 2001, to the President entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U. S." had nothing to do with terrorists planning to strike in the U. S.
* Steamrolling and forced retirement of senior professional military leaders who disagreed with the neo-conservative chicken-hawks' wishful thinking on Iraq (Gen. Shinseki, Army; Gen. Anthony Zenni, USMC).
* One insider after another stepping forward and telling the world through books and essays the nature of this Presidency, from the incurious attitude of the commander-in-chief to the almost complete absence of substantive discussions of policy, to outright breaches of constitutional authority ($700 million diverted from the war in Afghanistan to prepare in secret for the invasion of Iraq).
* Failure of the president to consult with even his own senior staff prior to deciding to launching a preemptive war for the first time in our history.
* Producing a tax code that taxes people who live off the proceeds of wealth - stock dividends at a lower rate than ordinary working Americans.
* In the name of anti-terrorism, rendering us vulnerable to countless acts of additional terrorism, by fulfilling the predictions of the still-at-large leader of the terrorism effort, by invading an oil-rich Arab country without provocation.

Richard Clarke and the Saudi Airlift

2004-07-01T12:17:00.000-07:00

Something does not add up. Richard Clarke now says he alone authorized the Saudi Airlift after 9/11. That is at variance with his testimony to the Commission investigating 9/11, during which he says it went through a "decision process" after being cleared by the FBI. The FBI essentially said "Who? US?". Clarke made no mention of the fact that Prince Bandar met with George W. Bush prior to the airlift and it doesn't take a genius or a bread-crumb trail to directly connect that meeting with the departure of the prominent Saudis. Why would the Bush administration then pretend that the flights did not occur? The whole thing smells. If they don't like Michael Moore's presentation of the facts, let them come out with an explanation and their own version. So far it looks like they are attempting to ignore the issue and issuing only enough contridictory information to confuse us, then waiting for our notoriously short attention span to do the rest.

November can't get here fast enough.