The Bush administration has released a directive called the National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive. The directive released on May 9th, 2007 has gone almost unnoticed by the mainstream and alternative media. This is understandable considering the huge Ron Paul and immigration news but this story is equally as huge. In this directive, Bush declares that in the event of a "Catastrophic Emergency" the President will be entrusted with leading the activities to ensure constitutional government. The language in this directive would in effect make the President a dictator in the case of such an emergency.

This new directive will of course be supported by the unconstitutional Executive Orders, Patriot Act (enemy combatant status for dissenters, etc.), the Military Commissions Act, the suspension of Habeas Corpus (http://restore-habeas.org/), FEMA camps, etc.  The "Catastrophic Emergency" would of course most likely be another act of state-sponsored terrorism, like 9/11 (although not likely to be the same type, i.e. planes into buildings…) releasing Avian Flu is more probable.  Whatever it is, it will "result in extraordinary levels of mass casualties, damage, or disruption severely affecting the U.S. population, infrastructure, environment, economy, or government functions" according to the post on whitehouse.gov

                                                                                                                                                                      

 

Here's info on the new "Detention Centers" being built in the US for "an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs."  Well which is it, for immigrants OR new programs?  And what are these "new programs"?  Homeland Security refuses to explain, and how believable is an emergency influx of immigrants that would require new detention centers being built throughout the U.S.?  Thats B.S.  Wake up people, we need to impeach them NOW before things get worse (as in more state-sponsored terror like 9/11 and the illegal detention of "enemy combatants", aka peace activists).  The police-state "round-ups" they have been doing to Immigrants could easily be expanded to US citizens now that these detention centers are waiting to be filled.

Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US

Sources:
New America Media, January 31, 2006
Title: "Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps"
Author: Peter Dale Scott

New America Media, February 21, 2006
Title: "10-Year US Strategic Plan for Detention Camps Revives Proposals from Oliver North"
Author: Peter Dale Scott

Consortiium, February 21, 2006
Title: "Bush's Mysterious 'New Programs'"
Author: Nat Parry

Buzzflash
Title: "Detention Camp Jitters"
Author: Maureen Farrell

Community Evaluator: Dr. Gary Evans
Student Researchers: Sean Hurley and Caitlyn Peele

Halliburton's subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the United States.

According to a press release posted on the Halliburton website, "The contract, which is effective immediately, provides for establishing temporary detention and processing capabilities to augment existing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Detention and Removal Operations (DRO) Program facilities in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S., or to support the rapid development of new programs. The contingency support contract provides for planning and, if required, initiation of specific engineering, construction and logistics support tasks to establish, operate and maintain one or more expansion facilities."

What little coverage the announcement received focused on concerns about Halliburton's reputation for overcharging U.S. taxpayers for substandard services.

Less attention was focused on the phrase "rapid development of new programs" or what type of programs might require a major expansion of detention centers, capable of holding 5,000 people each. Jamie Zuieback, spokeswoman for ICE, declined to elaborate on what these "new programs" might be.

Only a few independent journalists, such as Peter Dale Scott, Maureen Farrell, and Nat Parry have explored what the Bush administration might actually have in mind.

Scott speculates that the "detention centers could be used to detain American citizens if the Bush administration were to declare martial law." He recalled that during the Reagan administration, National Security Council aide Oliver North organized the Rex-84 "readiness exercise," which contemplated the Federal Emergency Management Agency rounding up and detaining 400,000 "refugees" in the event of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the U.S.

North's exercise, which reportedly contemplated possible suspension of the Constitution, led to a line of questioning during the Iran-Contra Hearings concerning the idea that plans for expanded internment and detention facilities would not be confined to "refugees" alone.

It is relevant, says Scott, that in 2002 Attorney General John Ashcroft announced his desire to see camps for U.S. citizens deemed to be "enemy combatants." On February 17, 2006, in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld spoke of the harm being done to the country's security, not just by the enemy, but also by what he called "news informers" who needed to be combated in "a contest of wills."

Since September 11 the Bush administration has implemented a number of interrelated programs that were planned in the 1980s under President Reagan. Continuity of Government (COG) proposals—a classified plan for keeping a secret "government-within-the-government" running during and after a nuclear disaster—included vastly expanded detention capabilities, warrantless eavesdropping, and preparations for greater use of martial law.

Scott points out that, while Oliver North represented a minority element in the Reagan administration, which soon distanced itself from both the man and his proposals, the minority associated with COG planning, which included Cheney and Rumsfeld, appear to be in control of the U.S. government today.

Farrell speculates that, because another terror attack is all but certain, it seems far more likely that the detention centers would be used for post-September 11-type detentions of rounded-up immigrants rather than for a sudden deluge of immigrants flooding across the border.

Vietnam-era whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg ventures, "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next September 11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters. They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantánamo."

Parry notes that The Washington Post reported on February 15, 2006 that the National Counterterrorism Center's (NCTC) central repository holds the names of 325,000 terrorist suspects, a fourfold increase since fall of 2003.
Asked whether the names in the repository were collected through the NSA's domestic surveillance program, an NCTC official told the Post, "Our database includes names of known and suspected international terrorists provided by all intelligence community organizations, including NSA."

As the administration scoops up more and more names, members of Congress have questioned the elasticity of Bush's definitions for words like terrorist "affiliates," used to justify wiretapping Americans allegedly in contact with such people or entities.

A Defense Department document, entitled the "Strategy for Homeland Defense and Civil Support," has set out a military strategy against terrorism that envisions an "active, layered defense" both inside and outside U.S. territory. In the document, the Pentagon pledges to "transform U.S. military forces to execute homeland defense missions in the . . . U.S. homeland." The strategy calls for increased military reconnaissance and surveillance to "defeat potential challengers before they threaten the United States." The plan "maximizes threat awareness and seizes the initiative from those who would harm us."

But there are concerns, warns Parry, over how the Pentagon judges "threats" and who falls under the category of "those who would harm us." A Pentagon official said the Counterintelligence Field Activity's TALON program has amassed files on antiwar protesters.

In the view of some civil libertarians, a form of martial law already exists in the U.S. and has been in place since shortly after the September 11 attacks when Bush issued Military Order Number One, which empowered him to detain any noncitizen as an international terrorist or enemy combatant. Today that order extends to U.S. citizens as well.

Farrell ends her article with the conclusion that while much speculation has been generated by KBR's contract to build huge detention centers within the U.S., "The truth is, we won't know the real purpose of these centers unless 'contingency plans are needed.' And by then, it will be too late."

UPDATE BY PETER DALE SCOTT
The contract of the Halliburton subsidiary KBR to build immigrant detention facilities is part of a longer-term Homeland Security plan titled ENDGAME, which sets as its goal the removal of "all removable aliens" and "potential terrorists." In the 1980s Richard Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld discussed similar emergency detention powers as part of a super-secret program of planning for what was euphemistically called "Continuity of Government" (COG) in the event of a nuclear disaster. At the time, Cheney was a Wyoming congressman, while Rumsfeld, who had been defense secretary under President Ford, was a businessman and CEO of the drug company G.D. Searle.

These men planned for suspension of the Constitution, not just after nuclear attack, but for any "national security emergency," which they defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: "Any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States." Clearly September 11 would meet this definition, and did, for COG was instituted on that day. As the Washington Post later explained, the order "dispatched a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington, activating for the first time long-standing plans."

What these managers in this shadow government worked on has never been reported. But it is significant that the group that prepared ENDGAME was, as the Homeland Security document puts it, "chartered in September 2001." For ENDGAME's goal of a capacious detention capability is remarkably similar to Oliver North's controversial Rex-84 "readiness exercise" for COG in 1984. This called for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to round up and detain 400,000 imaginary "refugees," in the context of "uncontrolled population movements" over the Mexican border into the United States.

UPDATE BY MAUREEN FARRELL
When the story about Kellogg, Brown and Root's contract for emergency detention centers broke, immigration was not the hot button issue it is today. Given this, the language in Halliburton's press release, stating that the centers would be built in the event of an "emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S.," raised eyebrows, especially among those familiar with Rex-84 and other Reagan-era initiatives. FEMA's former plans 'for the detention of at least 21 million American Negroes in assembly centers or relocation camps' added to the distrust, and the second stated reason for the KBR contract, "to support the rapid development of new programs," sent imaginations reeling.

While few in the mainstream media made the connection between KBR's contract and previous programs, Fox News eventually addressed this issue, pooh-poohing concerns as the province of "conspiracy theories" and "unfounded" fears. My article attempted to sift through the speculation, focusing on verifiable information found in declassified and leaked documents which proved that, in addition to drawing up contingency plans for martial law, the government has conducted military readiness exercises designed to round up and detain both illegal aliens and U.S. citizens.
How concerned should Americans be? Recent reports are conflicting and confusing:

• In May, 2006, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began "Operation Return to Sender," which involved catching illegal immigrants and deporting them. In June, however, President Bush vowed that there would soon be "new infrastructures" including detention centers designed to put an end to such "catch and release" practices.
• Though Bush said he was "working with Congress to increase the number of detention facilities along our borders," Rep. Bennie Thompson, ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, said he first learned about the KBR contract through newspaper reports.
• Fox News recently quoted Pepperdine University professor Doug Kmiec, who deemed detention camp concerns "more paranoia than reality" and added that KBR's contract is most likely "something related to (Hurricane) Katrina" or "a bird flu outbreak that could spur a mass quarantine of Americans." The president's stated desire for the U.S. military to take a more active role during natural disasters and to enforce quarantines in the event of a bird flu outbreak, however, have been roundly denounced.

Concern over an all-powerful federal government is not paranoia, but active citizenship. As Thomas Jefferson explained, "even under the best forms of government, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny." From John Adams's Alien and Sedition Acts to FDR's internment of Japanese Americans, the land of the free has held many contradictions and ironies. Interestingly enough, Halliburton was at the center of another historical controversy, when Lyndon Johnson's ties to a little-known company named Kellogg, Brown and Root caused a congressional commotion—particularly after the Halliburton subsidiary won enough wartime contracts to become one of the first protested symbols of the military-industrial complex. Back then they were known as the "Vietnam builders." The question, of course, is what they'll be known as next.

Additional links:
" Reagan Aides and the Secret Government," Miami Herald, July 5, 1987, http://fpiarticle.blogspot.com/2005/12/front-page-miami-herald-july-5-1987.html

"Foundations are in place for martial law in the US," July 27, 2002, Sydney Morning Herald, smh.com.au/articles/2002/07/27/ 1027497418339.html

"Halliburton Deals Recall Vietnam-Era Controversy: Cheney's Ties to Company Reminiscent of LBJ's Relationships," NPR, Dec. 24, 2003, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1569483

"Critics Fear Emergency Centers Could Be Used for Immigration Round-Ups," Fox News, June 7, 2006, http://www.foxnews.com/ story/0,2933,198456,00.html

"U.S. officials nab 2,100 illegal immigrants in 3 weeks," USA Today, June 14, 2006, http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2006-06-14-immigration-arrests_x.htm

More related news:  Bush "revises" the Insurrection Act

"On September 30, 2006, the Congress modified the Insurrection Act as part of the 2007 Defense Authorization Bill. Section 1076 of the new law changes Sec. 333 of the "Insurrection Act," and widens the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States to enforce the laws. Under this act, the President may also deploy troops as a police force during a natural disaster, epidemic, serious public health emergency, terrorist attack, or other condition, when the President determines that the authorities of the state are incapable of maintaining public order. The bill also modified Sec. 334 of the Insurrection Act, giving the President authority to order the dispersal of either insurgents or "those obstructing the enforcement of the laws."

The new law changed the name of the chapter from "Insurrection" to "Enforcement of the Laws to Restore Public Order."

In a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law (1).

It does so by revising the Insurrection Act, a set of laws that limits the President's ability to deploy troops within the United States. The Insurrection Act (10 U.S.C.331 -335) has historically, along with the Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C.1385), helped to enforce strict prohibitions on military involvement in domestic law enforcement.

With one cloaked swipe of his pen, Bush is seeking to undo those prohibitions. Public Law 109-364, or the "John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007" (H.R.5122) (2), which was signed by the commander in chief on October 17th, 2006, in a private Oval Office ceremony, allows the President to declare a "public emergency" and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to "suppress public disorder."

Non-Violence is the foundation of a revolution against a violent system.  Fascism is inherently violent since it must suppress the will of the people.  This can be clearly seen in recent history with the stealing of the 2000 election, followed by Bush, Inc. engineering the attacks of 9/11, the illegal Iraq war, increased police brutality against peaceful protestors, etc. and the stealing of the 2004 election, etc.

Some non-physical violence is very subtle and harder to be aware of, behavior in personal relationships for example.  Other violence, like physical violence, is much easier to determine as being wrong in most cases.  Or the fact the Bush Administration is comprised of war criminals: having executed a war of aggression against a nation that posed no threat, is very clear and straight forward.  Or the fascist tactics that brought them into office in the first place, the 2000 Supreme Court installation, and the rigging of the electronic voting machines in the 2004 election, illegal torturing, detentions and domestic spying, etc.  All of this is not debatable, it is just the facts, and yet because the media presents them to us as a legitimate government, many citizens go along with it and don’t rise up and demand their removal from power.  Bush, Inc. people belong behind bars, yet they are given control of our tax dollars and military to use for their own selfish, destructive and misguided agenda.

            So as Americans living in the year 2006 we have been presented with some very clear knowledge between good and evil, right and wrong.  In all aspects of life, acting upon this knowledge is what brings personal, social and spiritual progress.

Many of those that believe the propaganda ridicule, or do worse, to those that speak the truth.  If the typical republican knew that 9/11 was an inside job, would she/he still support Bush?  Of course not.  Most people don’t support mass murder for profit and power, that’s why they needed to “manufacture consent” through the 9/11 attacks.  Its sad to me when I’m confronted by Bush supporters about my writing or even wearing an Impeach Bush pin, or for my bumper-stickers, and their entire viewpoint is based on lies and propaganda.  The Corporate/Fascist State has furthered disunity and breaking up of community through disinformation or “counter-intelligence”, as I discuses in Part2 of this essay.

The saying “Its dangerous to be right when the government is wrong” holds true today, when war criminals are spying on peace activists, it’s a twisted 1984 reality we live in.  Even worse perhaps is resistance to productive action and independent investigation by fellow activists.  For example, some activists(?) say those pointing out the massive evidence that 9/11 was an inside job are actually  distracting us from the “real” problems (which are usually never expanded on), yet by discouraging 9/11 Truth research they are actually the ones serving the status-quo, since 9/11 truth holds the most promise for having the war criminals in out government put on trial.  So we have a possible scenario of officials posing as activists calling real activists officials: in the 60’s this was done regularly by the FBI against activists through their Counter Intelligence Program (cointelpro), and is a tactic of the Bush Administration as well, referred to as “snitch jacketing” - the false accusation that a hard working activist is an agent provocateur. Knowing this is going on is enough to discourage even the most energetic and compassionate citizen.  We are confronted with a world incomprehensibly insincere, undercover cops pretending to be activists, fascist murderers pretending to be public servants, gossiping slanderous low-level individuals pretending to be friends…  All of this generates an environment that discourages unity, love and true friendship through distrust, confusion and desperation.

The main task remains to discover what is the actual truth, what is really good, what is really evil, to eat the apple from the Tree of Life, although the modern myth of Adam and Eve would have us believe this is the undoing of humanity (caused by a woman, of course).  So if your unsure whether some idea, theory or piece of information is true or not, investigate and meditate.  This was the strategy of Shakyamuni Buddha, which led to his enlightenment.

            And as for friends, fellow activists etc., and whether they’re trustworthy or not I think the biblical saying that “you shall know them by their fruits” is very helpful.  Do they act on the principles they claim to adhere to?  Do they walk the talk?  Do they bring negativity or positivity, do they encourage non-violence or violence? Unity or distrust? In making this evaluation we most also take into consideration that we all have faults, and if we were all living ideally we would probably all be enlightened.  There is also the more common and probable situation that individuals in your life are simply unhealthy to your personal progress and happiness due to their habits, lifestyle, apathy, etc.  They are not working for the CIA, they are just living off-target lives that are going to badly influence your own.  This brings up the importance of being part of  a positive supportive community of friends and neighbors (not restricted to one location of course), a Sangha, (not necessarily Buddhist in nature), as I discussed in part 2.

In wondering how to best deal with the problem of insincere individuals I often think back on the stories of the lives of Siddhartha Gotama and Jesus of Nazareth.  Both were surrounded by many sincere friends and followers, but were also in the company of those insincere.  Yet both Siddhartha and Jesus continued on with what they were doing, in their work for the bettering of humanity and promotion of selfless service and compassion for others.  And so should we not become overly concerned about impious insincere individuals that may or may not exist.  We should return to the root solutions for the tribulations we face: increased freedom and compassion, in all of their forms, and seek out and enjoy the company of others interested in the same. 

Getting back to the year 2006, if you do not find the evidence overwhelming that 9/11 was an inside job, as I and millions of others do, that’s fine.  But there must be some issue that you can stand up for, election system reform, living wages, universal healthcare, industrial hemp legalization, clean energy, drug law reform, independent media, wildlife habitat preservation, WTO/IMF/World Bank/ Federal Reserve reform, etc.  I list many other policies and affiliated organizations in the Progressive Manifesto for this purpose.  I still think that we must strike at the root of evil as Thoreau said, and the roots of this current evil empire are the stealing of the elections and the engineering of 9/11, so that’s what I focus on. 

So in conclusion, if it increases freedom and compassion in our minds and/or society we should nurture and support it, if it does the opposite we should discourage and work against it.  These principles can be the base of our decisions, ranging from diet, work, lifestyle, consumerism, relationships, etc.  By always returning to them we can more often avoid the grey area that hinders progress, and instead eat of the apple of knowledge and begin our journey back to truth; living more conscious, mindful, aware, and happy lives in which we can more fully enjoy the fun and beautiful things in life: loving relationships, art, music, dance, nature… a return to the paradise that we have been kept from for far too long.

Eating The Apple
by Colin Denny Donoghue
(updated Martin Luther King Jr. Day, 2008)

Our culture is filled with mythology. Some well-known myths may actually not be as innocent and harmless as is commonly believed. If we take time to think about the myths that pervade our culture, and how they may influence our lives, we can discover underlying meaning and messages that actually disempower us greatly and misdirect us from real spiritual and political truth. By becoming aware of this, we can free ourselves from mental ties that keep us from progress, both personal and political. Here I will focus on perhaps the most well known myths of all, that of Adam & Eve, and the Savior of Humanity, to show how they may actually be doing much more harm than good for our civilization through reinforcing sexism, patriarchy and disempowerment. I will give new positive ways to interpret these myths so that we can reclaim them in the interest of peace, justice, and enlightenment.

The traditional story of Adam and Eve defies common sense. Why would knowing the difference between right and wrong be bad? Has history or your own personal experience shown that to be true? If right was known from wrong early on and acted on, much of the horrific history of human civilization could have been prevented. (Examples that instantly come to my mind include: the South’s continued support for slavery in the 1800’s, 1930’s Germany, early Vietnam War, Iraq/Afghanistan invasions, the 2000 US Presidential election theft by Bush/Cheney, …etc.)

The same goes for our personal lives, where we often ignore the crucial truth of harm and/or exploitation being committed (in a relationship, at the workplace, animal neglect/abuse, etc.) and by ignoring it, we allow the harm to continue and possibly get worse. (A pervasive example of this is the massive human consumption of meat and dairy, that causes massive suffering and violence to billions of animals every year. Check out GoVeg.com.)

How can we have progress without a sense of what's right or wrong? Isn't that what progress always really is? A progression from the bad to the good in varying degree?

The story of the “forbidden fruit” is a centuries old piece of misinformation used to continue the status-quo paradigm that does not encourage the questioning of authority or the progress of humanity. By telling us that having the knowledge of good and evil is bad, this story reinforces mass disempowerment of the People. This is real Orwellian phenomena, saying the good is evil and the evil is good. Furthermore, when we accept other's claims of what's right and wrong, especially from society's official "authorities", even when it defies common sense, we allow ourselves to be complicit with destructive policies, ideology and actions that cause massive harm to others and our environment. (Going along with the propaganda delivered by the mass media concerning 9/11, the elections, Iraq, and the lack of viable energy alternatives come to mind as current examples). When we allow others to tell us "this is right" (ex. the war) and this "wrong" (ex. dissent), we not only voluntarily disempower ourselves and keep our minds from comprehending the true reality, we become sheep led by wolves.

This intentional misdirection of our understanding of Truth has also been accomplished through the “savior” mythology, where only one person, with supernatural powers, can “save” the world, and the rest of us are said to be just powerless “sinners”. This mythology is very pervasive and influential yet most don’t recognize its power; even the popularity of characters like Superman show that American culture subconsciously accepts the idea that we need a supernatural savior to combat evil and injustice (so we might as well remain apathetic consumers). In the latest Superman movie, "Superman Returns" (2006), the references to Jesus are blatantly obvious, even the title brings to mind the "Second Coming" when Jesus will "Return to Earth". At one point in the movie Superman flies over the Earth in a clearly crucified position, and he is also referred to as "My only son, sent to save humanity" by his other-worldly Father, and even refers to himself at one point as a savior when talking to Lois Lane: "You wrote that the world doesn't need a savior, but every day I hear people crying for one."

In the book of the great movie "What The Bleep Do We Know?", which discusses the hidden power within each of us, the authors speak to the point of the disempowering nature of savior mythology on page 204 (emphasis added): "One of the basic tenants of Christianity is the notion that 'Jesus will save me' [and that we are all] 'sinners born in sin' and screwed from the get-go. It is difficult to imagine a more disempowering idea."

Whether you admire and follow the teachings of Jesus as a historical, mythological, or religious figure, a more intelligent (and probably accurate) interpretation of the actions of Jesus of Nazareth is not to simply believe in him as the sole savior of the world, (which really makes no sense at all, since there was not worldwide revolutionary positive change after his death), we should instead look at his actions as those that we each need to imitate (in the socio-political context that modern Christianity has all but completely eliminated, notable exceptions include Liberation Theology and the perspectives expressed in books like “Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 9/11: A Call to Reflection and Action” by David Ray Griffin & “Saving Christianity from Empire” by Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer), so that the numbers of those resisting tyranny, hypocrisy, corruption and empire will be great enough so that we really can have worldwide revolutionary positive change. The tyrants of the world cannot crucify every rebel, so to speak, so the reason that injustice/fascism/tyranny continues is because not enough people become active in resisting it. From a Liberation Theology perspective one could say not enough people are imitating the actions of Jesus in the sense described in Ephesians 6:12:

"For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world-rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual hosts of wickedness in high places."

The brilliant African-American scholar Cornel West also gets to this crucial point, in a modern context, in his book "Democracy Matters":

"Let us not be deceived: the great dramatic battle of the twenty-first century is the dismantling of empire and the deepening of democracy... we must remember that the basis of democratic leadership is ordinary citizens' desire to take their country back from the hands of corrupted plutocratic and imperial elites.  This desire is predicated on an awakening among the populace from the seductive lies and comforting illusions that sedate them and a moral channeling of new political energy that constitutes a formidable threat to the status quo."

Another relevant perspective from the book "7th Seal: Hidden Wisdom Unveiled":

"Are the Romans in actuality alive and well today, continuing to suppress the greater truths, effecting the prevention of the resurgence of a spiritualy aware and soul aligned civilization?"

Basically, it has always been the few oppressing the many, therefore it can be seen as a problem of actualizing, or empowering, the masses (that means you, unless you support oppression/destruction), who have been tricked into believing false mythology and ideology that deliberately disempowers them, along with being subject to more direct physical tools of disempowerment like poverty/overworking/lack of free time, hunger, sickness and illiteracy.  All of this serves the destructive status-quo paradigm, it gives it the power to continue on. Additionally, if you spend much of your time thinking of cultural pop icons, luxury consumer goods, etc., you are allowing yourself to be distracted from where real meaning and satisfaction can be found in life. You are allowing yourself to be disempowered by those who would be happier if you were a simple-minded consumer who never questioned or spoke out against unjust authority.

Today, we have the Bush Administration telling us that they will protect us from the “evildoers,” and hoping we wont do any critical thinking, or care that they've abolished the Bill of Rights, rigged our elections, etc.  Again Cornel West says it well:

"At this moment our imperialist elites are casting themselves as the defenders of our democracy."

Bush, Inc. are certainly hoping we wont take the next step after seeing through their deceptions, actually resisting their assault on our freedoms, environment, health and democracy. They are sending the message "Just trust Big Brother and everything will be ok"… In this way they make themselves as another savior figure that we permit to disempower ourselves once again… In the book “Jesus and Empire” the author Richard Horsley writes: “In the Roman imperial world, the ‘gospel’ was the good news of Caesar having established peace and security for the world. Caesar was the ‘savior’ who had brought ‘salvation’ to the whole world.” The parallel between the Roman and American Empire is very poignant in this sense: Bush/Cheney claim to be saving us from the terrorists; we must recognize when history repeats in this destructive and deceptive way. Chris Hedges, author of “American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America” described the modern American Fundamentalist Christianity that is aligned with the Neo-conservative movement as “essentially about disempowerment” in an interview with Amy Goodman on her Democracy Now! Radio program (democracynow.org 02/19/07). This is a key point, as I previously stated; both empire, and religion serving empire, function mostly to disempower the populace through various means so resistance is kept to minimal levels. Gloria Steinem, the well know Feminist leader and author writes in her book “Revolution from Within” that self-help/new age books often have “an important message about the worth of each human being, but with little mention of the external structures that undermine this worth in order to assure their own authority.” These external structures that disempower people in order to insure the continued dominance of the status-quo are too often overlooked as somehow separate from the issue of personal liberation, instead of being recognized and named as the barriers that they are.

In the book Great Mystics & Social Justice: Walking on The Two Feet of Love, Susan Rakoczy unsheathes the false dichotomy between personal and social transformation that many modern Christians, Buddhists, philosophers, "spiritual" people, etc. ignorantly accept: "Two Temptations are enticing. One is to plunge into activism without a spiritual grounding. The other, especially insidious, is to take a deep breath, close the doors of the churches on the problems of society, and focus on a private experience of religion. For some, a "Jesus and me" religiosity is very satisfying since it allows them to seek personal holiness without attention to those outside their religious circle. This, however, is a corruption of the gospel, whose basic principle is love of God and love of neighbor."

Returning to the mythology of Adam and Eve, Eve is made to be the villain, the cause of the “Fall of Man”, yet another example of patriarchal sexist distortion of religious and historical truth, demonizing women as was done to Mary Magdalene, made to be a prostitute. And then of course there is the non-sensical Trinity, which has a Father and Son, but the necessary Mother is missing, replaced by the “Holy Spirit”.

The story of Adam & Eve would make much more sense if Paradise was lost because they stopped eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and departed to the gray area of lies and deception of the “Devil”. A loving “God” would have never said don’t eat from this tree, but eat and live by the knowledge you gain, and remain in the Garden of Eden, Paradise. Why did Adam and Eve become ashamed of their nakedness AFTER eating of the knowledge of good and evil? If we are made in the “image of God” why would our naked bodies be something shameful?? It was because they STOPPED eating of the knowledge of good and evil that they became ashamed, they no longer knew our nakedness was good, they were banished for listening to the Devil who stayed on the Tree of Knowledge to discourage them from eating the fruit, to convince them that they would be fine without that knowledge. The characters of God and the serpent have been reversed to serve the sexist patriarchal oppressive status quo; supporters of this backwards ideology are the authors of our modern story of Adam and Eve, surely not “God”. We are told heaven is the joyful peaceful place in which God’s presence is experienced so fully that all who are there gladly do “God’s Will.” What would this will be? Would it be for carrying out trivial assignments and duties, like a king’s servant? Or would it make more sense that it would be to bring peace, love and justice to your surroundings? “God’s will” would certainly consist of the latter if we are to remain consistent with everything that is said of this God, so then in the setting of Eden it makes more sense that one would want to eat the apple of the knowledge of good and evil, so that one could then act on that knowledge and always choose the right over the wrong. By doing so, one would remain in “Paradise” or “Heaven”, gladly doing God’s will, since that is what would make one’s existence most enjoyable, satisfying and “heavenly.” Therefore God's will and love and justice are inseparable, and those are inseparable from human happiness. In politics the Will of the People, or the majority is usually for greater compassion and justice, while the will of the few who bring fascism and tyranny have the opposite motivation: the desire for personal wealth and power. So the former is equivalent to the will of God(dess), while the latter can be thought of as the will of the Devil, producing evil in the world (as done by groups like the Bush Administration, etc).

Martin Luther King Jr. ate the apple when he declared segregation to be an evil, Gandhi ate the apple when he declared the British occupation of India to be an evil, (along with countless other examples of people declaring and facing real evil, not the bullshit propaganda that people have always been fed by tyrants) and by their so doing, humanity progressed. So the “apple” is in reality our inner conscience, which we discover through bringing our attention inward. This inward-looking practice is disrupted by countless distractions and disturbances like corporate advertising and our “entertainment” filled culture; we are being constantly distracted from our inner self, which serves the status-quo paradigm perfectly.

The Buddhist (not exclusively of course) practice of mindfulness and contemplative/concentration building meditation is a well developed practice for re-directing our attention inwards and discovering our conscience, or eating the metaphorical apple. Yet even Buddhism has been corrupted by post-modern nihilism with a completely unjustified emphasis on the doctrine of emptiness/no-self, that the Buddha himself warned would lead one astray if taken as ultimate truth. Modern “Buddhists” have done exactly what was warned against, and have strayed into a non-dualist, non-judgmental perspective on the world, similar to modern “Christianity” that tells us good works are meaningless, and only by saying a certain prayer and attending church regularly will one find salvation, through a single individual (Jesus), in the afterlife (the current life being regarded as a "lost-cause"). This is a belief system that is completely disempowering to the individual. It puts their focus and faith in something that is essentially imaginary, so that one doesn't take the actions necessary in the real world to ensure their freedom, peace and happiness. Another tenet of some distorted modern branches of so-called Christianity is the emphasis on a “Judgment Day” where a divine being will appear out of thin air and cast judgment on mankind. This of course discourages everyday people from making their own judgments and attempting to hold those guilty of great crimes against humanity accountable for their actions. Again we must wait for a superman to bring justice to earth, to tell us what is right and what is wrong, we cannot do it ourselves. This savior mythology is completely compatible and compliments the garden of Eden mythology that tells us eating from the apple of knowledge of good and evil is blasphemous, and that we should leave all justice seeking to “God” an imaginary figure who does not currently exercise this power on earth, but "don’t worry" say the apocalyptic Christians, "he will come soon", just keep waiting, and do nothing to fight injustice, and don’t you dare consult your conscience and common sense, remain disempowered and subservient to the status-quo system of thought that you have been conditioned by.

Another Christian tradition that may directly concern the Garden of Eden mythology is the modern “Christmas Tree”. I’ve read the suggestion that Christmas trees may actually be symbolic of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which I personally find intriguing. In this re-working of the imagery of the tree, real apples would be hung from the tree instead of ornaments, and family members would give the apples to one another, recognizing that gaining the knowledge of good and evil was a crucial part of the religious/spiritual path.

Ultimately and for practicality however, what is most important is the truth. Most people will automatically respond in the proper way to a situation once they know the full truth of it; our inner nature is good and is always with us, despite the negativity that usually covers it. That's why propaganda and misinformation is the main tool of the creators/supporters of any destructive system/paradigm. The focus in activism, and personal life, should be what the full truth is, the "right" or "wrong" of it follows that, it is technically secondary. In order to "eat the apple" in the real world, to act knowledgeably using our conscience, we need the best and most factual crucial information we can find. The main purpose of propaganda is to prevent people from acting on their conscience based on the facts. Instead, they attempt to use our own conscience against us, by appealing to our compassionate nature through Orwellian slogans like "Support Our Troops", "The War on Terror", "No Child Left Behind", etc. The crucial information we need to evaluate with our conscience is for the most part not coming from our government or the mass media, so where do we find it? How do we see through the lies and misinformation and find crucial truth? For the political/social truth, the short and practical answer is truthful independent media/books/documentaries/speakers, etc. and one's personal investigation. For the spiritual truth, whatever your personal practice may be, your own personal investigation and experience should be the authority. The Buddha said repeatedly to trust your own experience to see if his Eightfold Path is effective (basically a path of Loving (morality–>peace–>concentration–>insight–>happiness), which can be found in all traditions) and to not take his word for it, try it and see for yourself.

Truth has great power; when it is revealed it is a force in itself, because it activates our compassionate inner nature, our conscience . Satyagraha, a term Gandhi coined for his overall activist strategy, is translated as “truth-force” and “insistence upon the truth”. Satya (the truth)+ Agraha (to insist upon) = Satyagraha. We must each become a Satyagrahi, a practitioner of Satyagraha, in our personal lives as well in our socio-political reality, in order for there to be genuine and lasting progress.

I believe it is a 50/50 effort, internal and external revolution is needed; fighting fascism while practicing a path to enlightenment simultaneously. Because life is both personal and political, the inner and the outer, and we need to work for the progress of both to find satisfaction, and reduce our own suffering, while we help reduce the suffering of others simultaneously. Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Jesus, the Buddha, etc. all emphasized non-violence as the wisest and most practically beneficial behavior to adopt for personal and political behavior/policy. We need to center our lives AND our politics around non-violence/Ahimsa. Bush/Cheney, and all other fascist rulers throughout history represent the exact opposite, producing harmful and destructive policies, which is just furthering suffering, anguish and disharmony on Earth, as well as sabotaging our spiritual journey towards peace, wisdom and happiness.

So if the apple reveals the differentiation between violence and nonviolence in all acts and behavior, then ceasing from harm is the first stage in becoming skilled in the ways of the opposite of harming: healing and giving pleasure. Practices such as massage therapy, nutrition/natural medicine/disease prevention, tantra, yoga, etc. then all become areas of utmost importance and significance. With more time to focus on healing and pleasure in a post-backwards society, we can learn more about our bodies and Nature, diagnose and treat health problems naturally and more effectively, and realize our full potential for health and happiness.

This so-called "elite" sometimes use more direct methods than mythology and propaganda to disempower the masses, like sickness/disease being spread intentionally, or even assassination of social-justice leaders; this is a matter of historical fact. Ill-health is extremely disempowering of course, so physical fitness and health is a necessary component of the Path to empowerment/peace/happiness; good health is also needed for active resistance to fascism, oppression, etc. Not taking care of your body is another type of behavior that supports the continuation of the status-quo; there will be no revolution if all the revolutionaries are sick and in massive financial debt.  Maybe that's part of the reason why Bush, Inc. have done nothing to improve health care in America, and instead support industries that put toxins/radiation in out air, water and food?  Or why the unconstitutional and criminal monetary system run by the corporate-run Federal Reserve is allowed to stay in place, driving us further and further into debt?  (See part 3 of the groundbreaking film "Zeitgesit" for more on that: http://zeitgeistmovie.com/)

We need to stand against wickedness when we become aware of it, we need to “eat the apple”, or “the red pill” (to use Matrix terminology), and share it with others. You must hold some conviction in order to do this however and have factual knowledge to base your conviction on. Today it is very unpopular to speak of right and wrong of course, it is very uncool especially amongst young Americans. And in academic circles non-dualism, or post-modern moral-relativism, is the fall back position for many “intellectuals” who deconstruct every argument and then stand for nothing, certainly not social justice. I have found that if you hold any convictions (even very altruistic ones) some status-quo supporters compare you to all extremists, like some right-wing Christian speakers who have turned Christianity completely upside down. Saying the war in Iraq is wrong is to speak common sense and the will of the majority, the view is not extreme because it is in agreement with the facts and the majority of people on earth. Neo-conservative (fascist) ideology is not the will of the People. If we had a real democracy, Bush/Cheney could never have stolen the elections (read Fooled Again by Mark Crispin Miller for starters) as they did, the war would have never happened, nor would have 9/11 because the people who engineered it wouldn’t have been in the necessary positions of power (read David Ray Griffin's books on 9/11 for starters on that topic). If the People know the real truth they will speak and vote for the peaceful and just solution, that is why the fascists in power must rig the elections and tell the People lies and propaganda, undermining the compassionate and rational choice of the People. Democracy and truthful independent media really are the answer but so many say “look at how bad America is, democracy doesn’t work”. That's an opinion based on the false assumption that America IS a democracy, which it is certainly not! It's not even a representative republic! The fact that Bush and Cheney are still in office is proof of that! True Democracy and true representation allow the debate of right and wrong to be conducted by the majority, which ensures the elimination of elitist/special-interest control.

When you watch a bill being debated at your state legislature, you’re often watching a debate over whether the bill will ultimately serve the majority of the population (be good) or serve only the interests of the already powerful and wealthy few (be bad). The well-informed majority is almost always on the side of the less harmful bill and policy, since that is in their own interest (as well as due to sincere compassion for others), it is almost always those few that represent the interest of the uncaring “elite” who stand in opposition.

So if ultimately it is our conscience that shows us the difference between right and wrong, some might say then, that morality is completely subjective and relative, different for each individual. If this were completely true however, how would we progress together as a society? Aren't there actually some "core values" that most sane individuals would agree are "right"? Concerning personal interaction, no action is necessarily always bad, it depends on the circumstance, but that does not mean that morality is always relative! The truth is one should hold a Relative Absolutism, that is, certain actions, in certain situations, can be 100% wrong, like the examples highlighted in this essay. We must consult our conscience on a continual basis (eat the “apple”), through mindful awareness, and decide what is the least harmful and most just action (or non-action) to make. The Buddha called such action that leads to Liberation "skillful" or "wholesome". Some actions in certain situations are certainly more positive and skillful than others, and there is a way for consistent discernment, that does not accept a completely "non-dualist" perspective on human behavior:

"Skillful actions are those that create the causes for happiness, such as actions motivated by loving-friendliness and compassion. Any action that comes from a mind not currently filled with greed, hatred, or delusion brings happiness to the doer and to the receiver. Such an action is therefore skillful or right." - Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness, p.28

Our conscience is most clearly perceived when we are fully in the present moment; being fully in the Now also removes us from the disempowering/negative egoistic thought of the past and future, allowing us to be "aware of our awareness" which allows our peaceful (even blissful) inner nature to be experienced. There really is Power in the Now (as explained well by Ekhart Tolle in his books "The Power of Now" and "Stillness Speaks"), which can counter all the disempowerment I've been discussing .

Consulting one's conscience on everyday relations with family, friends, co-workers, etc. is certainly very important; our personal interaction with others has direct effect on their lives, in varying degrees of positivity or negativity. Of course the practice is difficult and we will make mistakes often, but with discipline we can rise to a higher level of being.  For example, personally I have not been living by the ideals presented in this essay due to my negative habits, etc. but I continue to strive towards them because I believe in their benefits, for myself and others.  First we must clarify and refine the direction, or the Way, before we can make progress.  That is my intention with presenting these ideas here.

Yet shouldn't consulting our conscience on the actions, policies, and messages given by our dominant authority figures and socio-economic/political systems, that effect far more people than we do in our personal lives, also be given priority. Isn’t that in fact what we are told Jesus did, when he denounced the hypocrisy and violence of the dominant religion and political empire of his day? So today we must be aware of those same destructive forces that live on in the current destructive status-quo paradigm. If you can see the blatant truth of the evil of the Bush Administration, act on it. Write your reps and say you want Bush/Cheney removed from office. Every person does make a difference. If the truth about the elections were known nationwide immediately and then the truth about 9/11 being an inside job was also known nationwide, would we have the “war” in Iraq, would we have the destruction of our constitutional rights? Of course not! If we had “eaten the apple” we could have prevented all this destruction, injustice, and massive suffering.

Here is another quote that uses the terms "soul' and "inner compass" in place of conscience or "apple", but the message is really the same:

"The major threat to external control is our internal guidance system -- our souls. To us, our souls are our best friends and most trusted guides. But to the control paradigm, they're the enemy -- what has to be removed in order for external control to work. Only when we're sufficiently disconnected from our inner compass will we follow outer demands." -"The Paradigm Conspiracy" by C. Largent and D. Brenton (highly recommended), p.9,

When we are connected to our conscience/soul/spirit/higher-self we also become connected to an outside world that becomes much more interactive, through synchronicity/guidance and positive circumstances that follow an inner transformation. When we become happier, healthier, and more at peace through a "Joyful Rebellion" against the destructive status-quo, we also may discover our passion for Life that had been covered in negativity and inner/outer oppression. Kenneth MacLean, author of "The Vibrational Universe", in an interview in Evolve! magazine said: "[P]assion is discouraged simply because it is such a high vibration/emotion relative to the society at large, and there is a genuine fear [by authority figures] that a passionate person is a dangerous person. There is a concern that our society would be turned upside down if people were allowed to find their own way without direction from the authorities." Indeed, and a society that is Orwellian/backwards should be turned upside down! When our "leaders" are taking us in the opposite direction to where we should be headed, revolutionary change is needed.

Eating the Apple, consulting our conscience, is only the first step of course, action is the second. Knowledge is only valuable if acted upon. For example, knowing of The Law of Attraction/Manifestation (described well in the film “The Secret”, derived from the ancient tribal practice called Huna), which is all about self-empowerment and taking responsibility for oneself, it's pretty much the opposite of the savior mythology belief; it only benefits the individual who becomes more conscious of their thoughts and really focuses on the positive possibilities rather than the negative.

In conclusion, Adam and Eve, in this perspective, would have stayed in Paradise by always choosing the positive over the negative; by acting in accordance with the knowledge they gained from the apple (their conscience), thereby always choosing good over evil, experiencing that it was always to their own benefit, bringing them continued happiness. The same holds true in the real world, right here, right now.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The most destructive Myth of all, the 9/11 Myth:

Is this proof of communication with Aliens? (CLICK HERE FOR FULL ARTICLE)

At the end of this amazing article there is a link to a response from someone with SETI who attempts to show why this is probably a hoax, I found his points very inadequate, I will elaborate here:

Point 1: He says "they could leave information on paper, as a CD, or in whatever form is convenient. Any such scheme would convey orders of magnitude more information than a wheat carving." 

A piece of paper, a CD??  How would we know that came from another planet?  I could leave a CD on your doorstep that said "From ET", but I could not create an enormous intricate and scientifically coherent response to a radio transmission (that was intended to be picked by Aliens, REMEMBER?) in a field.  Discounting all crop circles as "fakes" is ridiculous, some are fake, but they are obviously so, the rest are mathematical masterpieces that appear instantly with no sign of human involvement on the ground (with proof of radiation exposure in the crop, etc)  And that’s why it makes more sense that it was extraterrestrial in origin, which would be what ET would want to be obvious, wouldn’t they?

Point 2: "How come they look like us?"  Well the image of the alien has 2 eyes, 2 arms and 2 legs, but otherwise is much smaller and the head and eyes are very different.  The communication says they are SILICON BASED and have 3 STRANDS OF DNA!  Thats pretty damn different!  But besides that, why must they be so different looking from us?  Who are we to say evolution wouldn’t be similar on a different planet?  The current scientific consensus is that it probably WOULD be similar to our own.

Point 3: His third point is on how unlikely that any alien would have picked up the transmission in the first place, citing the human technology needed to pick it up.  Who is he to assume that the aliens don’t have MORE ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY THAN WE DO that could have picked up the signal more readily????  Isn’t this basic common sense??

Point 4: Here he states that is unlikely that their DNA would be so similar to ours: "How curious (and unlikely!) that theirs would match ours so closely!"  Again why is it so unlikely?? There is no evidence to say that the response of a 3 strand DNA is too close to our own, and is therefore not likely.  That’s absurd.

Point 5: He says crop circles "have failed the baloney test".  Many scientists that Ive seen in documentaries and read of would disagree with that statement.  Many reputable scientists have concluded that most crop circles WOULD BE IMPOSSIBLE TO PRODUCE FROM THE GROUND USING HUMAN TECHNOLOGY IN THE TIME-SPAN OF THEIR CREATION AND NOT LEAVE ANY TRACE OF ENTERING OR LEAVING THE FIELD, ETC.

IN CONCLUSION, I THINK WE SHOULD NOT DISREGARD ALL CROP CIRCLES AS HOAXES; THERE IS GOOD REASON TO BELIEVE THAT THEY MAY ACTUALLY BE A FORM OF COMMUNICATION FROM EXTRATERRESTRIALS.

Also check out:

A riveting 10-page summary of Disclosure, www.WantToKnow.info/ufocover-up10pg

To view military, government witnesses testifying on UFO cover-up online, click here

The Disclosure Project, a nonprofit research project working to fully disclose the facts about UFOs, extraterrestrial intelligence, and classified advanced energy and propulsion systems. We have over 400 government, military, and intelligence community witnesses testifying to their direct, personal, first hand experience with UFOs, ETs, ET technology, and the cover-up that keeps this information secret.

In Annual Human Rights Report, Amnesty International Says U.S. “Unrepentant About Global Web of Abuse”

Thursday, May 24th, 2007
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/24/143235

Amnesty International is accusing the United States of turning the world into a global battlefield in the so-called war on terror. That charge appears in Amnesty's new report on the state of human rights around the world. The authors of the Amnesty report write “The U.S. administration’s double speak has been breathtakingly shameless. It is unrepentant about the global web of abuse it has spun in the name of counterterrorism.’’ We speak with Amnesty International USA executive director Larry Cox. [includes rush transcript]

Amnesty International is accusing the United States of turning the world into a global battlefield in the so-called war on terror. That charge appears in Amnesty’s new report on the state of human rights around the world. Amnesty is calling for Guantanamo to be shut down, for senior government officials to be held accountable for authorizing torture, and for an end to the practice known as extraordinary rendition. The authors of the Amnesty report write: “The U.S. administration’s double speak has been breathtakingly shameless. It is unrepentant about the global web of abuse it has spun in the name of counterterrorism.’’

Amnesty’s report also highlighted human rights abuses around the globe, including in Sudan, the Occupied Territories, Iraq, Russia and Zimbabwe. The report states that Israel killed more than 650 Palestinians last year, three times the number of Palestinians killed in 2005. Half of the Palestinians killed last year were unarmed civilians. The Palestinian death toll included 120 children. During the same period, Palestinian militants killed 27 Israelis – including 20 civilians and one child.

As for Iraq, Amnesty found that “the worst practices of Saddam’s regime – torture, unfair trials, capital punishment and rape with impunity – remained very much alive.” Larry Cox is executive director of Amnesty International USA. He joins us in the firehouse studio.

* Larry Cox. Executive director of Amnesty International USA.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT

This transcript is available free of charge. However, donations help us provide closed captioning for the deaf and hard of hearing on our TV broadcast. Thank you for your generous contribution.
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JUAN GONZALEZ: Amnesty International is accusing the United States of turning the world into a global battlefield in the so-called war on terror. That charge appears in Amnesty’s new report on the state of human rights around the world. Amnesty is calling for Guantanamo to be shut down, for senior government officials to be held accountable for authorizing torture, and for an end to the practice known as extraordinary rendition. The authors of the Amnesty report write, “The U.S. administration’s double speak has been breathtakingly shameless. It is unrepentant about the global web of abuse it has spun in the name of counterterrorism.’’

AMY GOODMAN: Amnesty’s report also highlights human rights abuses around the globe, including in Sudan, the Occupied Territories, Iraq, Russia, Zimbabwe. The report states Israel killed more than 650 Palestinians last year, three times the number of Palestinians killed in 2005. Half the Palestinians killed last year were unarmed civilians. The Palestinian death toll included 120 children. During the same period, Palestinian militants killed twenty-seven Israelis, including twenty civilians and one child.

As for Iraq, Amnesty found “the worst practices of Saddam’s regime -- torture, unfair trials, capital punishment and rape with impunity -- remained very much alive.”

Larry Cox is executive director of Amnesty International USA. He joins us in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

LARRY COX: Thank you for having me.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you think are the most important issues you want to highlight right now?

LARRY COX: Well, I think you’ve already highlighted them. I think the most serious challenge we have to human rights in practice and to the idea of human rights is unfortunately the open defiance by the United States, not because it’s the worst country in terms of human rights violations, but because its example is so powerful. It is a superpower, and when it openly defies human rights in the way that it has, openly violates the most fundamental human rights and justifies those violations, it spreads around the globe. It has a terrible impact.

AMY GOODMAN: You start with the Military Commissions Act.

LARRY COX: Well, the Military Commissions Act sort of brings together many of these practices: holding people without access to a court, without charging them, without trying them; setting up military commissions that can use evidence that has been obtained through coercion, that no normal court would accept; denying habeas to people, one of the oldest protections and a very important protection against abuse and against torture around the world. These are all practices that historically the United States in recent decades has criticized severely, when other countries have carried it out. Now, we’re doing it.

So where is our moral authority? Where is our credibility, when we got to Egypt, for example, and say, “You should not have military commissions,” when we go to Egypt and say, “You should not be carrying out torture,” when we have, in fact, sent people to Egypt knowing that they would be tortured?

JUAN GONZALEZ: You say in the report that far too many leaders are trampling freedom and trumpeting an ever-widening range of fears, fears of being swamped by migrants, fears of being blown up by terrorists, and fears of rogue states with weapons of mass destruction. What about this issue of fear and its impact on populations not raising questions about any of this?

LARRY COX: Well, this is the central reality of the world we’re now in, where fear, instead of being met -- and there are, of course, legitimate fears that people have -- but instead of meeting those fears with effective ways of dealing with the causes of that fear, fear is being manipulated. Fear is being used, fear is being exaggerated, in order to justify what is, in fact, unjustifiable. You see it around the globe. You see it in China, where, you know, every time someone is arrested now, it’s terrorism. You see it in Russia, where, again, the threat of the conflict in Chechnya is now being used to widely justify restrictions on civil society. This use of fear is one of the most frightening aspects of the world we’re now living in.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Cox, the Bush administration has been fiercely critical of Amnesty's findings. On Wednesday, State Department spokesperson, Tom Casey, was asked about the report.

REPORTER: Have you read the Amnesty International report, which suggests that in the war on terror the United States has been eroding human rights around the world?

TOM CASEY: Well, George, I think people will take a good look at the report. Certainly, I don’t think anyone’s had an opportunity to review it in depth. Pretty clear that Amnesty International thought that we’d make a convenient ideological punching bag, and that’s something that isn’t, unfortunately, new.

I think we personally wish that Amnesty International would have been a little more willing to do things like try and help out the Iraqis, as they dealt with the trials of some of the worst war criminals who have been around for the last fifty years. And I think if you look at the report, unfortunately, it reads quite a bit more like a political document than a sort of honest review of human rights throughout the world.

AMY GOODMAN: That was the Bush administration. Your response, Larry Cox?

LARRY COX: Well, there’s nothing unusual about these kinds of attacks. We’ve been getting these kinds of attacks from governments all around the world every time we criticize their human rights violations. We don’t engage in ideology. We engage in facts. Now, we have, unfortunately, a very sad collection of facts about the United States. The United States has openly admitted having secret detention sites, even said it boastfully, and that it will continue to have secret detention sites, where people are kidnapped and taken. No one knows where they are. These are not things that Amnesty International has invented. These are the words of the President of the United States.

We know that if we criticize strongly what a government is doing when a government is doing something wrong, that we’re going to get these kind of attacks. There’s nothing really new about them. It’s just a very sad comment that instead of responding to these concerns, which are not Amnesty’s concerns alone, but virtually every UN body -- every other independent human rights organization around the world has raised the same charges. So you have to attack the entire body of human rights experts around the globe if you’re the United States, because we're all saying the same thing.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And in terms of the ability of the United Nations to have any kind of impact on the human rights situation around the world?

LARRY COX: Well, the United Nations depends upon leadership. And one of the reasons that we are so adamant about what the United States is doing is the way it has weakened the ability of multilateral organizations like the United Nations to play an effective role. That’s most striking in the case of Darfur, where the world has stood by and watched, as, you know, massive human rights violations take place, and issued statements, but has not been able to put troops on the ground that can protect people. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is another one, where, you know, there has been no really effective move to correct a situation which continues to deteriorate. And US leadership has been so undermined by US practice that it’s hard to imagine how the US can now play a constructive role.

AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute. You highlight unlawful killings by US forces outside the USA, and here at home, you talk about ill treatment in jails in police custody.

LARRY COX: Yes, that’s right. We're not only concerned about what is happening abroad, but we’re also concerned about the violations of human rights here in the United States. We have documented numerous cases where people are being ill-treated in prisons in the United States. And, in fact, there’s a link between, for example, what happens in maximum-security prisons inside the United States and the kinds of treatments that we have seen at Abu Ghraib or in Guantanamo. So it’s very important that the commitment to human rights means a commitment to human rights everywhere, not only abroad, but here at home, as well.

AMY GOODMAN: Larry Cox, I want to thank you very much for being with us. Larry Cox is the executive director of Amnesty International USA. We will link to the Amnesty annual report on our website at democracynow.org.

www.democracynow.org

Fascism. 

As in the USA.  My blog posts, the book "Fooled Again" by Mark Crispin Miller (in my books section), the documentaries "American Blackout" and "Hacking Democracy", and the article below help explain how Fascism has taken root in the USA, if you are willing to listen to truth that hasnt come to you from the mainstream media.  (CSPAN BookTV actually did cover Miller's book ------->

...and also covered a 9/11 Truth conference on American Perspectives ------>

...CSPAN has been an exception to the rule)

June 2, 2007

HOW BUSH BACKERS CHEATED KERRY OUT OF WHITE HOUSE

By Sherwood Ross

President Bush carried Ohio, Iowa, and New Mexico in 2004 because vast numbers of ballots cast by minorities for Democrat John Kerry in those states were never counted, an investigative reporter says.

In New Mexico, which Bush won by 5,988 votes, 33,981 ballots were not counted; in Iowa, which Bush won by 10,059 votes, 36,811 ballots were not counted; and in Ohio, which Bush won by 118,599 votes, a whopping 239,127 ballots were not counted.

According to reporter Greg Palast, (a former fraud investigator before turning reporter for BBC-TV) polls of voters leaving the voting booths revealed all three states had gone for Kerry by margins of two to four percent.  Yet the official count later gave them all to Bush by one or two percent.

Q: So what happened?  A: Nationally, a total of 3-million votes were never counted  --- a high percentage of them cast by African-Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, and other minorities. Palast spells out how it was done in his new book, “Armed Madhouse”(Plume):

2004 saw the introduction of the new “provisional ballot.” The Black Caucus wanted them so that a voter could get a ballot even if the voter’s name did not appear on the rolls. In theory, the “provisional” would be marked, then kept aside and reviewed after the polls closed.

Under the “Help America Vote” Act of 2002, signed by President Bush, States were required to give out provisional ballots to those who wanted them.

But, Palast says, the law “does not require states to count them.” Thus, of 3,107,490 provisional ballots handed out on election day, 2004, 1,090,729 were trashed. “..the provisional voters who were rejected had a dark hue,” the Palast says, and there were enough of them to swing the three States to Bush.

Besides provisional ballots, there were 1,389,231 “spoiled” ballots, cast by voters who may not have punched their card hard enough or whose “x” was too hard to read, Palast says.  “We know that a bit more than half, about three-quarters of a million of those uncounted votes, were cast by African-American voters,” Palast states. How does he know? Well, almost all provisional ballots rejected “were from 25 ‘urban’ areas. Any guesses about the color of the urb?”

Finally, 526,420 absentee ballots never got counted, either, and “In swing states, absentee ballot shredding was pandemic,” Palast discovered.

In Ohio’s Cuyahoga county, you can superimpose a map of the precincts with high numbers of “spoiled” votes over a map of African-American neighborhoods. They’re practically identical. Indeed, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission found only 1.6% of ballots by white voters were rejected.  But 14.4% of ballots cast by Black voters got trashed.

What’s more, on Voting Day, the Republicans “launched a massive multimillion-dollar campaign of mass challenges of voters in Black precincts, concentrating on Ohio,” Palast writes. The attack was a legal no-no as the Republican National Committee had signed a no-race-baiting decree in 1981 pledging it would never again engage in this shoddy tactic. Besides Ohio, the GOP challenged thousands of African-American voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Another trick used in the 2004 swindle was to not fix broken voting machines --- the sort that mutilated ballots--- and plant them, as Ohio Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell did, in minority precincts. Did the bad machine spoil your ballot? Too-o bad!  In New Mexico, nine out of 10 ballots that were rejected were cast by non-Anglo voters, Palast said.

Still another ploy is the undervote:  In Jacksonville, Fla., a Republican voting supervisor removed several machines from Black precincts. This was also done in Ohio, were Blacks and students waited in some precincts for seven hours or longer to vote. Many discouraged voters walked away, never counted. Palast said this reduced Kerry’s net vote in Columbus, Ohio, alone by an estimated 9,000+ votes.

As for absentee ballots, in Arapahoe County, Colorado, three times more absentee ballots mailed to Democrats “failed to return” as compared to Republican ballots. As for those that were returned, a total of 526,426 absentee ballots from around the nation were received but not counted, Palast said. And guess what? In strong Kerry precincts, “voters were 265% more likely to have their absentee ballots tossed out than voters in Bush-majority precincts.”

“Absentee balloting in the USA is the greatest expression of mass faith since the Hebrews walked across the Red Sea bed trusting the Lord would keep the waters parted,” Palast writes. “The difference is, in 2004, the absentee voters mailed their ballots to Pharaoh’s clerks.”

The above are just some of the deceits used to cheat Senator Kerry out of the White House in 2004. If you doubt Mr. Bush would steal a national election, keep in mind he has deceived the American people about Iraq’s WMD, lied to the public that his underlings do not torture prisoners, trashed President Nixon’s honorable stand on germ warfare, scrapped President Reagan’s good work against nuclear proliferation, and politicized the Federal government, subordinating the public good to what’s best for his Republican chums. My hunch is in 2008 a lot of thoughtful Republicans will cross over to vote Democratic. The big question is, who will count their votes?

P.S. And speaking of a level playing field for all income groups, what about switching election day from a week day, when so many people have to work, to a weekend, when wage-earners can get away from their jobs? And why isn’t it mandatory for voter registration forms to be published in all newspapers so readers can fill them out at home at their leisure?

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/genera_sherwood_070602_how_bush_backers_che.htm

Please watch this and then decide for yourself.  I have two other excellent videos, "9/11 Mysteries" and "9/11 Press for Truth" below on my blog, that give even more solid evidence.  How can we ignore this information if we have compassion for others?  Shouldn't we demand justice for the victims and also to prevent something like this from happening again?

Cindy Sheehan: Twin Towers' Collapse Looked Like Controlled Demolition
Anti-war icon supports move for new investigation into 9/11

Anti-war icon Cindy Sheehan has gone public on her support for the 9/11 truth movement after she told a radio show that the collapse of the twin towers looked like a controlled demolition and that there should be a new investigation into the terrorist attacks.
Here's the Full Article