In October 1999 Duncan Bridgeman and Jamie Catto embarked on a crazy adventure - going around the world for six months with a couple of DVcams, a Powerbook G3, a digital mixer, a few good mics, and a powerful sense of serendipity - which resulted in a phenomenal DVD and CD called 1 Giant Leap. When I first heard the CD in 2003 I felt it was the perfect album to celebrate the spirit of the new millennium, serving as a cogent artistic and cultural counterforce to the Project for a New American Century.
January 6th is what some folks call Epiphany (according to the official story, it's the day the Three Magi were guided by a flashing star to the 12-day-old infant Christ). It's also the eve of my birthday. So what better way to mark the beginning of a yet another solar orbit than to share a special moment from 1 Giant Leap with whoever lands on this blog.
There's a superb feature on how Duncan and Jamie went about producing 1 Giant Leap. Below is a brief excerpt detailing the technical aspects of Bridgeman and Catto's stupendous accomplishment.
HAVE LAPTOP, WILL TRAVEL: 1 Giant Leap's Portable Studio Setup
The initial work on 1 Giant Leap's tracks was done on Eilean Shona off Scotland in Emagic's Logic Audio running on Duncan's 400MHz G3 Powerbook laptop. A variety of hardware was used, including an Emu sampler and numerous synths, such as a Roland JV2080 and JD800, a Korg Prophecy, Wavestation and Wavestation AD, and an Oberheim Matrix 1000, as well as guitars and basses. These were all recorded into the laptop as audio before Duncan and Jamie left the UK.
The G3 400 laptop running Logic Audio also formed the heart of the 1 Giant Leap portable setup. Two AKG C1000 condenser mics, and Shure SM57 and 58 dynamics, plugged into a compact Roland VM3100 digital mixer, the stereo digital output of which plugged into a Digigram VXPocket PCMCIA soundcard in the G3 Mac (the VXPocket was, for a while, the only PCMCIA I/O card suitable for use with laptops). "I only had a stereo input to the computer, and it meant I had to balance all the mics quite carefully in the mixer, but it wasn't much of a problem, as it was only at the beginning that we attempted to record groups of people — we soon realised that it wasn't really practical."
For monitoring, Duncan took five pairs of Sony headphones, and a Yamaha DJX keyboard with built-in speakers, which he'd had modified. "Whenever I put a jack into it, it killed the internal sounds, and whatever I put in came out of the speakers. So I used the keyboard for monitoring. I'd come straight out of the laptop, into the DJX, and then I'd have my headphones in the back of the DJX. My contributors would all be listening to headphones, and I'd play them a bit of whatever music I had at that moment. I could juggle the mix and control what they had to react to; sometimes I'd only give them one thing, if I particularly wanted them to listen to that."
The Yamaha DJX also doubled as a table, onto which Duncan usually put the G3 laptop. "I had it all worked out. I had a guitar with me in a flightcase, so I could sit on that, and get my legs under the DJX, which had a metal panel on top with velcro for the laptop to sit on so that it wouldn't fall off... the Roland mixer was down at my side, and in the metal box that I took, there was a MIDI interface, so I could play MIDI in from the DJX into Logic, and a half-rack Roland JV1010. There were no proper virtual instruments then, you see, so the JV1010 was my main synth for composing on the road.
"I had 12V battery belts, with 12 elements, like cameramen wear, and I fed that into the metal box. That powered the DJX, the laptop, the mixer, and the JV1010. The power requirements weren't too bad — I could work for about five or six hours before the belt pack was exhausted."
The visual side comprised two cameras (operated by 1 Giant Leap's cameraman Ben Cole and Jamie's girlfriend Jessica Howie), a tripod, and a circular blue screen, so the background could be replaced later at the video-editing stage.
"And that was it! Oh no, it wasn't — there was also a mic stand. That was a bastard to carry around..."
I'm having the worst damn week of my whole damn life so I'm going to write this while I'm pissed off enough to do it right.
I am SICK of all this bullshit people are writing about the Iraq war. I am abso-fucking-lutely sick to death of it. What the fuck do most of you know about it? You watch it on TV and read the commentaries in the newspaper or Newsweek or whatever god damn yuppie news rag you subscribe to and think you're all such fucking experts that you can scream at each other like five year old about whether you're right or not. Let me tell you something: unless you've been there, you don't know a god damn thing about it. It you haven't been shot at in that fucking hell hole, SHUT THE FUCK UP!
How do I dare say this to you moronic war supporters who are "Supporting our Troops" and waving the flag and all that happy horse shit? I'll tell you why. I'm a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he's coming home in a box. [Read the rest]
"A cigarette hung from his mouth in the manner of John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart, his grime-covered face showed the exhaustion of battle.This image of US Marine Lance-Corporal Blake Miller, taken by a Los Angeles Times photographer during the battle of Fallujah, instantly captured the public imagination and for a while he was known simply as Marlboro Man. But 15 months after that photograph appeared in more than 100 US newspapers, the 21-year-old is back from Iraq, back on civvy street and he is talking about the trauma of what he experienced and the scars he still bears, physical and mental. The once unquestioning Marine is now also questioning whether US forces should be in Iraq." (Andrew Buncombe)
CLERMONT COUNTY, Ohio - Target 5 has discovered that an alarming number of U.S. troops are having severe reactions to some of the vaccines they receive in preparation for going overseas.
"This is the worst cover-up in the history of the military," said an unidentified military health officer who fears for his job.
A shot from a syringe is leaving some U.S. servicemen and women on the brink of death.
"When the issue, I believe, of the use of the vaccine comes out, I believe it will make the Walter Reed scandal pale in comparison," said the health officer.
Lance Corporal David Fey, 20, has dialysis three days a week. His kidneys are failing, his military career is over, and he feels like his country abandoned him.
"I can't look at my old pictures. I really can't," said Fey. "I start looking at my old pictures, and I start crying."
The US media is virtually silent on a new scientific study that estimates the Iraqi death toll from the US war at 655,000. The study, conducted by Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health and funded by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was posted 11 October 2006 on the website of the British medical journal, the Lancet.
The study is the only systematic estimate of the number of Iraqi civilians and military personnel to have died as a result of the US invasion and occupation to be brought to the attention of the American and international public. Unlike previous estimates, which were based on reviews of media reports or tallies made by the US-backed Iraqi government, the Johns Hopkins study was carried out by Iraqi physicians who interviewed - often at great personal risk - nearly 2,000 families spread across the country, utilizing standard and widely used statistical methods to arrive at an objective estimate of the death toll from the war and occupation. The vast majority of the reported deaths were substantiated by death certificates.
The researchers further estimated that about 600,000 of the deaths were due to violence in some form, including gunshots, air strikes and bombings. They concluded that US and allied military forces directly caused at least 31% or 186,000 of the violent deaths. [Read the rest]
A new definition of beachhead: salam, shalom, pax, paz, paix, paco, heiwa, amani, mir, ping, fred, peace! First posted 10 May 2007
Dick had an enormous heart; too bad it wasn't ticking
right. It was a real problem finding the right organ to
replace his dysfunctional heart. Finally a farmer in Idaho
offered this mutant potato, which perfectly fit a man
of Dick Cheney's stature.
WASHINGTON, March 25 — Former US Vice President Dick Cheney was recovering yesterday after undergoing heart transplant surgery, a once risky procedure whose survival rates have improved over the years.
The 71-year-old Republican, who wielded unprecedented power as vice president during the George W. Bush administration’s war on terrorism, was in the intensive care unit at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Virginia.
Cheney, who has suffered five heart attacks, the first at age 37, had been on the cardiac transplant list for more than 20 months before he received the heart from an anonymous donor.
“Although the former vice president and his family do not know the identity of the donor, they will be forever grateful for this lifesaving gift,” the spokeswoman, Kara Ahern, said.
According to the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, about 88 per cent survive the first year after heart transplant surgery and 75 per cent survive for five years. The 10-year survival rate is about 56 per cent.
Cheney’s transplant followed a series of procedures in recent years to extend the use of his heart. Cheney had bypass surgery in 1988 and later had two angioplasties. In 2001, he had a defibrillator implanted in his chest.
He had a heart pump implanted in 2010 to compensate for worsening “end-stage” congestive heart failure. He said after the operation he was considering whether to seek a full heart transplant.
Waitlist
During Cheney’s eight years as vice president from 2001 to 2009, he pushed a “go it alone” world view that enraged his critics and dogged him long after he left public life.
Cheney was a strong advocate for the 2003 invasion of Iraq and was among the most outspoken of Bush administration officials warning of the danger from Iraq’s suspected stockpile of weapons of mass destruction. No such weapons were found.
In recent years, Cheney has appeared increasingly frail in public.
So, this is Cheney's idea of "a change of heart"? Dick, you shoulda listened to your mama and become a poet. Now, all you'll get is a million Iraqis dancin' on your grave.... and everyone who died on 9/11 will be waiting to greet you on the other side.
We don’t like our evil to be banal. Ten years after Columbine, it only now may be sinking in that the psychopathic killers were not jock-hating dorks from a “Trench Coat Mafia,” or, as ABC News maintained at the time, “part of a dark, underground national phenomenon known as the Gothic movement.” In the new best seller “Columbine,” the journalist Dave Cullen reaffirms that Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris were instead ordinary American teenagers who worked at the local pizza joint, loved their parents and were popular among their classmates.
On Tuesday, it will be five years since Americans first confronted the photographs from Abu Ghraib on “60 Minutes II.” Here, too, we want to cling to myths that quarantine the evil. If our country committed torture, surely it did so to prevent Armageddon, in a patriotic ticking-time-bomb scenario out of “24.” If anyone deserves blame, it was only those identified by President Bush as “a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values”: promiscuous, sinister-looking lowlifes like Lynddie England, Charles Graner and the other grunts who were held accountable while the top command got a pass.
We’ve learned much, much more about America and torture in the past five years. But as Mark Danner recently wrote in The New York Review of Books, for all the revelations, one essential fact remains unchanged: “By no later than the summer of 2004, the American people had before them the basic narrative of how the elected and appointed officials of their government decided to torture prisoners and how they went about it.” When the Obama administration said it declassified four new torture memos 10 days ago in part because their contents were already largely public, it was right.
Yet we still shrink from the hardest truths and the bigger picture: that torture was a premeditated policy approved at our government’s highest levels; that it was carried out in scenarios that had no resemblance to “24”; that psychologists and physicians were enlisted as collaborators in inflicting pain; and that, in the assessment of reliable sources like the F.B.I. director Robert Mueller, it did not help disrupt any terrorist attacks.
The newly released Justice Department memos, like those before them, were not written by barely schooled misfits like England and Graner. John Yoo, Steven Bradbury and Jay Bybee graduated from the likes of Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Michigan and Brigham Young. They have passed through white-shoe law firms like Covington & Burling, and Sidley Austin.
Judge Bybee’s résumé tells us that he has four children and is both a Cubmaster for the Boy Scouts and a youth baseball and basketball coach. He currently occupies a tenured seat on the United States Court of Appeals. As an assistant attorney general, he was the author of the Aug. 1, 2002, memo endorsing in lengthy, prurient detail interrogation “techniques” like “facial slap (insult slap)” and “insects placed in a confinement box.”
He proposed using 10 such techniques “in some sort of escalating fashion, culminating with the waterboard, though not necessarily ending with this technique.” Waterboarding, the near-drowning favored by Pol Pot and the Spanish Inquisition, was prosecuted by the United States in war-crimes trials after World War II. But Bybee concluded that it “does not, in our view, inflict ‘severe pain or suffering.’ ”
Still, it’s not Bybee’s perverted lawyering and pornographic amorality that make his memo worthy of special attention. It merits a closer look because it actually does add something new — and, even after all we’ve heard, something shocking — to the five-year-old torture narrative. When placed in full context, it’s the kind of smoking gun that might free us from the myths and denial that prevent us from reckoning with this ugly chapter in our history.
Bybee’s memo was aimed at one particular detainee, Abu Zubaydah (right), who had been captured some four months earlier, in late March 2002. Zubaydah is portrayed in the memo (as he was publicly by Bush after his capture) as one of the top men in Al Qaeda. But by August this had been proven false. As Ron Suskind reported in his book “The One Percent Doctrine,” Zubaydah was identified soon after his capture as a logistics guy, who, in the words of the F.B.I.’s top-ranking Qaeda analyst at the time, Dan Coleman, served as the terrorist group’s flight booker and “greeter,” like “Joe Louis in the lobby of Caesar’s Palace.” Zubaydah “knew very little about real operations, or strategy.” He showed clinical symptoms of schizophrenia.
By the time Bybee wrote his memo, Zubaydah had been questioned by the F.B.I. and C.I.A. for months and had given what limited information he had. His most valuable contribution was to finger Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the 9/11 mastermind. But, as Jane Mayer wrote in her book “The Dark Side,” even that contribution may have been old news: according to the 9/11 commission, the C.I.A. had already learned about Mohammed during the summer of 2001. In any event, as one of Zubaydah’s own F.B.I. questioners, Ali Soufan, wrote in a Times Op-Ed article last Thursday, traditional interrogation methods had worked. Yet Bybee’s memo purported that an “increased pressure phase” was required to force Zubaydah to talk.
As soon as Bybee gave the green light, torture followed: Zubaydah was waterboarded at least 83 times in August 2002, according to another of the newly released memos. Unsurprisingly, it appears that no significant intelligence was gained by torturing this mentally ill Qaeda functionary. So why the overkill? Bybee’s memo invoked a ticking time bomb: “There is currently a level of ‘chatter’ equal to that which preceded the September 11 attacks.”
We don’t know if there was such unusual “chatter” then, but it’s unlikely Zubaydah could have added information if there were. Perhaps some new facts may yet emerge if Dick Cheney succeeds in his unexpected and welcome crusade to declassify documents that he says will exonerate administration interrogation policies. Meanwhile, we do have evidence for an alternative explanation of what motivated Bybee to write his memo that August, thanks to the comprehensive Senate Armed Services Committee report on detainees released last week.
The report found that Maj. Paul Burney, a United States Army psychiatrist assigned to interrogations in Guantánamo Bay that summer of 2002, told Army investigators of another White House imperative: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq and we were not being successful.” As higher-ups got more “frustrated” at the inability to prove this connection, the major said, “there was more and more pressure to resort to measures” that might produce that intelligence.
In other words, the ticking time bomb was not another potential Qaeda attack on America but the Bush administration’s ticking timetable for selling a war in Iraq; it wanted to pressure Congress to pass a war resolution before the 2002 midterm elections. Bybee’s memo was written the week after the then-secret (and subsequently leaked) “Downing Street memo,” in which the head of British intelligence informed Tony Blair that the Bush White House was so determined to go to war in Iraq that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.” A month after Bybee’s memo, on Sept. 8, 2002, Cheney would make his infamous appearance on “Meet the Press,” hyping both Saddam’s W.M.D.s and the “number of contacts over the years” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. If only 9/11 could somehow be pinned on Iraq, the case for war would be a slamdunk.
But there were no links between 9/11 and Iraq, and the White House knew it. Torture may have been the last hope for coercing such bogus “intelligence” from detainees who would be tempted to say anything to stop the waterboarding.
Last week Bush-Cheney defenders, true to form, dismissed the Senate Armed Services Committee report as “partisan.” But as the committee chairman, Carl Levin, told me, the report received unanimous support from its members — John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman included.
Levin also emphasized the report’s accounts of military lawyers who dissented from White House doctrine — only to be disregarded. The Bush administration was “driven,” Levin said. By what? “They’d say it was to get more information. But they were desperate to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq.”
Five years after the Abu Ghraib revelations, we must acknowledge that our government methodically authorized torture and lied about it. But we also must contemplate the possibility that it did so not just out of a sincere, if criminally misguided, desire to “protect” us but also to promote an unnecessary and catastrophic war. Instead of saving us from “another 9/11,” torture was a tool in the campaign to falsify and exploit 9/11 so that fearful Americans would be bamboozled into a mission that had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. The lying about Iraq remains the original sin from which flows much of the Bush White House’s illegality.
Levin suggests — and I agree — that as additional fact-finding plays out, it’s time for the Justice Department to enlist a panel of two or three apolitical outsiders, perhaps retired federal judges, “to review the mass of material” we already have. The fundamental truth is there, as it long has been. The panel can recommend a legal path that will insure accountability for this wholesale betrayal of American values.
President Obama can talk all he wants about not looking back, but this grotesque past is bigger than even he is. It won’t vanish into a memory hole any more than Andersonville, World War II internment camps or My Lai. The White House, Congress and politicians of both parties should get out of the way. We don’t need another commission. We don’t need any Capitol Hill witch hunts. What we must have are fair trials that at long last uphold and reclaim our nation’s commitment to the rule of law.
CAIRO — Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom here that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too.
Many in Cairo see the attacks as part of an anti-Muslim plot.
This is not the conclusion of a scientific survey, but it is what routinely comes up in conversations around the region — in a shopping mall in Dubai, in a park in Algiers, in a cafe in Riyadh and all over Cairo.
“Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.”
It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.
“The United States should be concerned because in order to tell people that there is a real evil, they too have to believe it in order to help you,” said Mushairy al-Thaidy, a columnist in the Saudi-owned regional newspaper Asharq al Awsat. “Otherwise, it will diminish your ability to fight terrorism. It is not the kind of battle you can fight on your own; it is a collective battle.”
There were many reasons people here said they believed that the attacks of 9/11 were part of a conspiracy against Muslims. Some had nothing to do with Western actions, and some had everything to do with Western policies.
Again and again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs — like themselves — could possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States. But they also said that Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policy proved that the United States and Israel were behind the attacks, especially with the invasion of Iraq.
“Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.”
The rumors that spread shortly after 9/11 have been passed on so often that people no longer know where or when they first heard them. At this point, they have heard them so often, even on television, that they think they must be true.
First among these is that Jews did not go to work at the World Trade Center on that day. Asked how Jews might have been notified to stay home, or how they kept it a secret from co-workers, people here wave off the questions because they clash with their bedrock conviction that Jews are behind many of their troubles and that Western Jews will go to any length to protect Israel.
“Why is it that on 9/11, the Jews didn’t go to work in the building,” said Ahmed Saied, 25, who works in Cairo as a driver for a lawyer. “Everybody knows this. I saw it on TV, and a lot of people talk about this.”
Zein al-Abdin, 42, an electrician, who was drinking tea and chain-smoking cheap Cleopatra cigarettes in Al Shahat, a cafe in Bulaq, grew more and more animated as he laid out his thinking about what happened on Sept. 11.
“What matters is we think it was an attack against Arabs,” he said of the passenger planes crashing into American targets. “Why is it that they never caught him, bin Laden? How can they not know where he is when they know everything? They don’t catch him because he hasn’t done it. What happened in Iraq confirms that it has nothing to do with bin Laden or Qaeda. They went against Arabs and against Islam to serve Israel, that’s why.”
There is a reason so many people here talk with casual certainty — and no embarrassment — about the United States attacking itself to have a reason to go after Arabs and help Israel. It is a reflection of how they view government leaders, not just in Washington, but here in Egypt and throughout the Middle East. They do not believe them. The state-owned media are also distrusted. Therefore, they think that if the government is insisting that bin Laden was behind it, he must not have been.
“Mubarak says whatever the Americans want him to say, and he’s lying for them, of course,” Mr. Ibrahim said of Hosni Mubarak, Egypt’s president.
Americans might better understand the region, experts here said, if they simply listen to what people are saying — and try to understand why — rather than taking offense. The broad view here is that even before Sept. 11, the United States was not a fair broker in the Arab-Israeli conflict, and that it then capitalized on the attacks to buttress Israel and undermine the Muslim Arab world.
The single greatest proof, in most people’s eyes, was the invasion of Iraq. Trying to convince people here that it was not a quest for oil or a war on Muslims is like convincing many Americans that it was, and that the 9/11 attacks were the first step.
“It is the result of widespread mistrust, and the belief among Arabs and Muslims that the United States has a prejudice against them,” said Wahid Abdel Meguid, deputy director of the government-financed Al Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, the nation’s premier research center. “So they never think the United States is well intentioned, and they always feel that whatever it does has something behind it.”
Hisham Abbas, 22, studies tourism at Cairo University and hopes one day to work with foreigners for a living. But he does not give it a second thought when asked about Sept. 11. He said it made no sense at all that Mr. bin Laden could have carried out such an attack from Afghanistan. And like everyone else interviewed, he saw the events of the last seven years as proof positive that it was all a United States plan to go after Muslims.
“There are Arabs who hate America, a lot of them, but this is too much,” Mr. Abbas said as he fidgeted with his cellphone. “And look at what happened after this — the Americans invaded two Muslim countries. They used 9/11 as an excuse and went to Iraq. They killed Saddam, tortured people. How can you trust them?”
In The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, Bugliosi presents a tight, meticulously researched legal case that puts George W. Bush on trial in an American courtroom for the murder of nearly 4,000 American soldiers fighting the war in Iraq. Bugliosi sets forth the legal architecture and incontrovertible evidence that President Bush took this nation to war in Iraq under false pretenses—a war that has not only caused the deaths of American soldiers but also over 100,000 innocent Iraqi men, women, and children; cost the United States over one trillion dollars thus far with no end in sight; and alienated many American allies in the Western world.
As a prosecutor who is dedicated to seeking justice, Bugliosi, in his inimitable style, delivers a non-partisan argument, free from party lines and instead based upon hard facts and pure objectivity. A searing indictment of the President and his administration, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder also outlines a legally credible pathway to holding our highest government officials accountable for their actions, thereby creating a framework for future occupants of the oval office.
Vincent Bugliosi calls for the United States of America to return to the great nation it once was and can be again. He believes the first step to achieving this goal is to bring those responsible for the war in Iraq to justice.
HAPPY "INTERDEPENDENCE DAY" TO ALL MY AMERICAN FRIENDS & VISITORS. WE IN MALAYSIA HAVE TO DEAL WITH OUR OWN FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD HOODLUMS-IN-GOVERNMENT TOO! NOW READ WHAT MY BUDDY SWAMI BEYONDANANDA HAS TO SAY...
How We Can Break the Soundless Barrier and Bring Down the Irony Curtain
by Steve Bhaerman (July 3, 2008)
"We no longer have a free press. We have a brainwashing machine stuck on spin."
In case you missed it, there was a front page story two weeks ago that most newspapers - like our own "liberal" San Francisco Chronicle - treated as a no-page story. While those of us in the Bay Area were offered a front page analysis of Tiger Woods' injury and the latest doings of penguins at the zoo, a former commanding general in Iraq accused the Bush Administration of war crimes.
You didn't hear about it? Well, obviously you weren't supposed to. In the preface to a report prepared by Physicians for Human Rights, Maj. General Antonio Taguba (USA-Ret.), who led the U.S. Army's investigation into the Abu Ghraib detainee abuse scandal, wrote: "After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account."
So, let's see. An American general accuses the Commander-in-Chief of committing war crimes, and it doesn't even make the news. The last time an American general accused the President of committing war crimes was ... uh ... never. In other words, something truly new happens, and it's not even "news." Our so-called "free press" is free to report freely on any story it likes, provided it doesn't rock the ship of state. I've said it before, but it - sadly - bears repeating. The main difference between the corporate media and Pravda is that the Soviet citizens knew they were being lied to.
We no longer have a free press. We have a brainwashing machine stuck on spin.
So if we're wondering why impeachment and war crimes have gotten no traction, well ... welcome to Not-See America, where the press makes it easier and easier for Americans to "not see" what should be all too obvious. Fortunately, as the "up-wising" continues, Americans across the political spectrum are waking up and wising up. Unfortunately, they are finding their voices intentionally silenced by a media monopoly that does more than "cover" the most important stories of our day - it smothers them to death. I guess that's what they mean by "blanket coverage."
However, there is one way to break the story of the most dangerous and toxic regime in American history through the "soundless barrier." It can be done without demonstrations (one of the lessons the powers in power learned in the Vietnam War is to pay no attention to them), petitions, civil disobedience, fasting, etc. It is using the two weapons we the people still have in our arsenal - the marketplace and the meeting place.
Vincent Bugliosi, the former Los Angeles County prosecutor who helped convict the Manson family and wrote a book about it, Helter Skelter (touted as the # 1 True Crime Bestseller of all time) has written a new book called The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. In it, he lays out what the book jacket describes as "a nonpartisan argument, free from party lines, based upon hard facts and pure objectivity." In other words, the very book America needs right now. Needless to say, finding a review of this book ... well, it's like finding those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.
[Illustration: Abu Ghraib 37 (2005), by Fernando Botero]
Former U.S. Attorney-General Alberto Gonzales squirms all the way through a senatorial inquiry into judicial improprieties despite his false front of braggadocio. It would be gratifying to see Malaysia's A-G Abdul Gani Patail in the hot seat - but we may have to import a few articulate senators! Gonzales eventually resigned but the reek of absolute rot still lingers over the White House.
And this is why:
Found this video on brasschecktv.com where you can also view another bombshell titled "How we got George Bush". Greg Palast's evidence of election fraud has been completely ignored in the U.S. by the news media. This critically important news has appeared in the headlines of newspapers all over the world, except for one place - the United States!
BBC investigative journo Greg Palast received 500 confidential emails from White House Witchdoctor Karl Rove by mistake - and learned that more than 3 million votes had been deliberately and fraudulently "spoilt" in the 2004 Presidential election. The mastermind behind it all was Resident Wormtongue Karl Rove, who was recently forced to resign lest he be impeached for perjury over the Valerie Plame CIA scandal. One by one the crooks in the White House are abandoning the sinking ship of state.
What are the mind-boggling implications of this amazing exposé by Greg Palast? First, this is irrefutable proof that George W. Bush won the 2004 election by fraudulent means and is therefore a fraudulent president. "We have a fictitious war started by a fictitious president," quipped doco-maker Michael Moore during his Academy Award acceptance speech.
Second, this strongly implies that he probably pulled the same trick in the 2000 election where he was named the winning candidate by a panel of rightwing-leaning judges (read the sad story here) with close links to the Nixon and Reagan administrations. It can easily be demonstrated that there was a multi-level conspiracy involving the pro-Israel mainstream media to put another Bush in the White House in order to implement the Project for the New American Century.
What is the Project for the New American Century (PNAC)? It spells P-E-R-P-E-T-U-A-L-W-A-R which translates as virtually limitless gains for well-connected defense contractors (like Dick Cheney's pet corporation, Halliburton and George H.W. Bush's Carlyle Group) - and infinite losses for everybody on the wrong side of the ideological fence. Using 9/11 as an excuse (an increasing number now view the atrocity as a false-flag operation), the Bush-Cheney regime launched pre-emptive attacks on Afghanistan, followed by Iraq. Next target: Iran!
If Dick Cheney's nefarious scheme to launch a sneak attack on Iran in early September 2007 hadn't been foiled by whistleblowers in the U.S. Air Force, the entire world would have been plunged into another devastating cycle of senseless destruction and ruin. Check out this chilling report:
B-52 Stratofortress armed with AGM 129 Cruise missiles
Someone, operating under a special chain of command within the United States Air Force, just stole a nuclear weapon.
On August 30, 2007, for the first time since 1968, nuclear warheads in combat position were carried by an American bomber. Numerous international treaty provisions were violated in the process.
That Thursday, a B-52H Stratofortress flew from Minot Air Force Base (AFB) in North Dakota to Barksdale AFB in Louisiana while carrying twelve cruise missiles. Either five or six of those missiles were armed with nuclear warheads.
Cruise Missiles
The missiles on the B-52 were AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile units, specifically designed to be launched from wing pods of B-52H planes.
A total of 460 units were manufactured by Raytheon. A total of 394 units are currently maintained by the Air Force. Apparently, 38 are to be modernized and upgraded in Fiscal Year 2008 and the other 356 are to be decommissioned pursuant to the 2002 Moscow treaty.
Raytheon has publicly announced the AGM-129 missiles are to be modified to accomplish a "classified cruise missile mission." This has widely been interpreted to mean conversion to bunker-busters, most likely for use in Iran. This widely accepted explanation is being used to explain why armed cruise missiles are being flown in American airspace.
Nuclear Warheads
The AGM-129 was specifically designed to deliver a W-80 nuclear warhead. The W-80 weapon has a variable yield capability, of 5 to 150 kilotons. For comparison purposes, the bomb used on Hiroshima was 13 to 15 kilotons, or equivalent to 13,000 to 15,000 tons of TNT explosive. News Stories and Flawed Explanations
The story of the B-52 flight was first reported by Army Times, owned by Gannett, on Wednesday September 5. Gannett relied on information provided by "anonymous officers." The story was picked up by Yahoo! Wednesday morning, published by USA Today and The Washington Post, and then quickly spread.
In response, the Pentagon quickly spread an official explanation.
The Air Force admitted to an inadvertent error: The intent was to transport ACMs without weapons. According to military officers, the nuclear warheads should have been removed before the missiles were mounted on the pylons under the wings of the bomber.
In the words of the Pentagon:
"There was an error which occurred during a regularly scheduled transfer of weapons between two bases. The weapons were safe and remained in Air Force control and custody at all times."
For almost the first time in the history of the nation, the military has publicly and promptly admitted it "made a mistake". This in itself is truly astounding.
To reinforce the military's claim that a mistake was made, a system-wide stand-down was ordered for September 14.
That official explanation was quickly explained away. The mistake was made intentionally, so a "deliberate leak" of a secret operation could occur.
The CIA and the Office of Counter-Terrorism in the State Department explained that Barksdale AFB is a "jumping off point" for re-supply of the Middle East.
The "deliberate leak" was intended to serve as a veiled warning to Iran. This deliberately misleading explanation is evidently intended to lead the public or Iran or both to logically conclude the missiles are bound for Iran.
Bluntly, State and the CIA converted a whistleblower leak by true American patriots into a deliberate leak by official Washington, to scare Iran.
By this means Washington has led the public to forget or overlook the real issue.
To begin, the multiple official explanations reek to high heaven. They collectively read suspiciously like flimsy cover stories concocted in hasty desperation. And no amount of pretty lipstick will be able to make the official explanations pretty.
Transportation Violations
More conflicting explanations followed. These missiles are part of a group scheduled to be decommissioned. This would explain why they were shipped out of North Dakota.
But the missiles were not transported on their way to decommissioning. Missiles are normally decommissioned at Davis-Monthan AFB at Tucson. Nuclear weapons are decommissioned at the Department of Energy's Pantex facility near Amarillo, Texas, accessed through Kirkland AFB in New Mexico.
And military policy requires minimization of the number of flights made with nuclear weapons aboard. So the weapons should not have been mounted on the missiles, flown to Louisiana, un-mounted and flown to New Mexico.
The mode of transportation is also a major issue not defused by official explanations. Per standard operating procedures, or SOPs, both missiles and nuclear warheads are transported primarily by air, in specially modified C-130s or C-17s. Under no peacetime circumstances do military SOPs allow transport of nuclear weapons mounted in cruise missiles mounted in combat positions on combat planes.
Department of Defense Directive Number 4540.5, issued on February 4, 1998, regulates logistic transportation of nuclear weapons.
By delegation of Commanders of Combatant Commands, movement of nuclear weapons must be approved by commanders of major service commands.
Commanders of Combat Commands or service component commanders must evaluate, authorize and approve transport modes and movement routes for nuclear weapons in their custody.
The Air Force is required to maintain a Prime Nuclear Airlift Force capability to conduct the logistic transport of nuclear weapons.
Under SOPs, combat planes with combat-ready nuclear weapons can only be flown on the authority of the Commander-in-Chief, the Joint Chiefs of Staff or the National Military Command Authority.
All of these transportation regulations were flagrantly violated on August 30. Handling Violations
Violations of regulations concerning handling of the nuclear weapons in North Dakota are worse.
A sophisticated computerized tracking system is used for nuclear weapons. Multiple sign-offs are required to remove the weapons from their storage bunkers.
The AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missile was designed to carry nuclear weapons. No non-nuclear warhead is available for this missile. So the only possible error could have been loading nuclear warheads on the missiles instead of practice dummies.
The practice warheads have standard blue and yellow signs declaring "Inert, non-nuclear". The nuclear warheads have at least three distinctive red warning signs. This error is therefore highly improbable, absent tampering with signage.
Nuclear weapons are transported from the storage bunker to the aircraft in a caravan that routinely includes vehicles with machine guns front and rear and guards with M-16s. All steps in the process are done under the watchful eyes of armed military police.
Rules require that at least two people jointly control every step of the process. If one person loses sight of the other, both are forced to the ground face-down and temporarily "placed under arrest" by observant security forces. All progress stops until inspections are made to assure the weapons weren't tampered with.
All nuclear weapons are connected to sophisticated alarm systems to prevent removal or tampering. They could only be removed from the storage bunker by turning the alarm off. And the squad commander clearly would not have authority to turn off the alarm.
The Impossible Mistake
Bluntly, the mistake of loading nuclear weapons on a combat aircraft in combat-ready position is simply not possible to make. Safeguards are far too stringent and far too many people would be involved. Particularly given that the mounting was in violation of policy that's been in place without exception for almost 40 years.
No discipline is expected to be meted out. The New York Times tried to imply the commanding general had been fired. Actually, the squad commander in charge of munitions crews at Minot was "relieved of duty pending an investigation." He has not been removed from his position or disciplined. The crews involved have been "temporarily de-certified pending corrective actions or additional training" but have not been disciplined. No mention has been made of the wing commander.
Note carefully: These actions amount to nothing at all. The wing and squad commanders are still in place and the crews can easily be re-certified.
Successful Confusion
Washington's efforts to confuse the public have been successful. Attention has shifted from the crucial issue.
This news has already become non-news. The September 14 stand-down will momentarily become news, followed by announcements of more stringent restrictions, improved safeguards and additional training. The public always has been and always will be safe. One of the major issues will be avoided:
Someone in an irregular chain of Air Force command authorized loading and transport of nuclear weapons.
And that would never have been done without a reason. Given the magnitude of regulatory violations involved, the reason must be extremely important.
The Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2000, the year George W. Bush stole the presidency
The paramount issue will be avoided, if necessary with repetition of the reassurance that the Air Force was in control at all times. The weapons were only missing during the 3.5-hour flight.
At Barksdale, the missiles were considered to be unarmed items headed for modernization or the scrap heap, and of no particular importance. They were left unguarded for almost ten hours.
According to one report, almost ten hours were required for airmen at Minot AFB to convince superiors that the nuclear weapons had disappeared. According to information provided to Congress, this time lapsed before airmen at Barksdale "noticed" the weapons were present. News reports will continue to overlook this fact also.
Even here the focus is on time. The number of missiles and warheads issue was overlooked.
Early news reports spoke of five nuclear warheads loaded onto the bomber. Apparently, this information was provided from Barksdale.
That number was later updated to six weapons missing from Minot, apparently based on anonymous tips provided to Military Times by people at Minot. This information has also been forgotten.
Conclusion
Six nuclear weapons disappeared from Minot AFB in North Dakota.
Five nuclear weapons were discovered at Barksdale AFB in Louisiana.
Which leads to my chilling conclusion:
Someone, operating under a special chain of command within the United States Air Force, just stole a nuclear weapon.
What next?
The answer has been provided several times, most recently by CIA Director and General Michael Hayden. On September 7, dressed in full military uniform, Hayden told assembled members of the Council of Foreign Relations:
"Our analysts assess with high confidence that al-Qaida's central leadership is planning high-impact plots against the U.S. homeland."
"We assess with high confidence that al-Qaida is focusing on targets that would produce mass casualties, dramatic destruction and significant aftershocks."
An eye for an eye. Use of nukes will justify use of nukes. A perfect excuse to wage nuclear war against Iran.
I suspect Hayden is absolutely correct, except for his mistaken identification of the "central leadership" that is planning detonation of a nuclear weapon on American soil.
Inside a B-52 Stratofortess cockpit at Minot AFB
AND NOW FOR A CHILLING TWIST TO THIS HIGH-LEVEL PLOT: Mystery surrounds deaths of Minot airmen Sat, 22 Sep 2007 23:10:30
Six members of the US Air Force who were involved in the Minot AFB incident, have died mysteriously, an anti-Bush activist group says.
The incident happened when a B-52 bomber was "mistakenly" loaded with six nuclear warheads and flown for more than three hours across several states, prompting an Air Force investigation and the firing of one commander.
The plane was carrying Advanced Cruise Missiles from Minot Air Force Base, N.D, to Barksdale Air Force Base on August 30.
The Air Combat Command has ordered a command-wide stand down on September 14 to review procedures, officials said.
The missiles, which are being decommissioned, were mounted onto pylons on the bomber's wings and it is unclear why the warheads had not been removed beforehand.
In addition to the munitions squadron commander who was relieved of his duties, crews involved in the incident, including ground crew workers had been temporarily decertified for handling munitions.
The activist group Citizens for Legitimate Government said the six members of the US Air Force who were directly involved as loaders or as pilots, were killed within 7 days in 'accidents.'
The victims include Airman First Class Todd Blue, 20, who died while on leave in Virginia. A statement by the military confirmed his death but did not say how he died.
In another accident, a married couple from Barksdale Air Force Base were killed in the 5100 block of Shreveport-Blanchard Highway. The two were riding a 2007 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, with the husband driving and the wife the passenger, police said.
"They were traveling behind a northbound Pontiac Aztec driven by Erica Jerry, 35, of Shreveport," the county sheriff said. "Jerry initiated a left turn into a business parking lot at the same time the man driving the motorcycle attempted to pass her van on the left in a no passing zone. They collided."
Adam Barrs, a 20-year-old airman from Minot Air Force Base was killed in a crash on the outskirts of the city.
First Lt. Weston Kissel, 28, a Minot Air Force Base bomber pilot, was killed in a motorcycle crash in Tennessee, the military officials say.
Police found the body of a missing Air Force captain John Frueh near Badger Peak in northeast Skamania County, Washington.
The Activist group says the mysterious deaths of the air force members could indicate a conspiracy to cover up the truth about the Minot Air Base incident.
NOTE: The original report appeared here. However, Rense.com has since disputed some details, to wit: Adam Barrs was killed on July 5 in a car crash, almost TWO MONTHS before the August 30th B-52 event; and First Lt. Weston Kissel died in a motorcycle crash in Tennessee on July 20, SIX WEEKS BEFORE the August 30 B-52 event.
Air Force refused to fly weapons to Middle East theater By Wayne Madsen – WMR Sept. 24, 2007
WMR has learned from U.S. and foreign intelligence sources that the B-52 transporting six stealth AGM-129 Advanced Cruise Missiles, each armed with a W-80-1 nuclear warhead, on August 30, were destined for the Middle East via Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana.
However, elements of the Air Force, supported by U.S. intelligence agency personnel, successfully revealed the ultimate destination of the nuclear weapons and the mission was aborted due to internal opposition within the Air Force and U.S. Intelligence Community. Yesterday, the Washington Post attempted to explain away the fact that America's nuclear command and control system broke down in an unprecedented manner by reporting that it was the result of "security failures at multiple levels." It is now apparent that the command and control breakdown, reported as a BENT SPEAR incident to the Secretary of Defense and White House, was not the result of a command and control chain-of-command "failures" but the result of a revolt and push back by various echelons within the Air Force and intelligence agencies against a planned U.S. attack on Iran using nuclear and conventional weapons.
Acknowledgments: my gratitude to "A" (former U.S. Army Intelligence officer serving in Vietnam) for keeping me updated with his Daily Shit report! :-)
"We control the United States. And the Americans know it." ~ Former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon
"Our oath of office is to “protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Might I suggest that this includes a rogue president and vice-president? Certainly we are bound to carry out the legal orders of our superiors. But the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) which binds all of us enshrines the Nuremberg Principles which this country established after World War II. One of those Nuremberg Principles says that we in the military have not only the right, but also the DUTY to refuse an illegal order. It was on this basis that we executed Nazi officers who were 'only carrying out their orders.'
"I contend that should some civilian order you to initiate a nuclear attack on Iran (for example), you are duty-bound to refuse that order. I might also suggest that you should consider whether the circumstances demand that you arrest whoever gave the order as a war criminal." ~ Col. Robert M. Bowman, in an open letter to the Pentagon
Robert M. Bowman (born 1934) was a Director of Advanced Space Programs Development for the U.S. Air Force in the Ford and Carter administrations, and a former United States Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missions. He holds a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.
This video clip produced by MadTV has been a big hit on YouTube for weeks now. I'll just blog it here so I can look at it whenever I want. Good one, eh? [Embedding has been disabled, so you have to watch it by clicking on the YouTube link.]
And... oh, here's W's official response to the iRack vid ;-)...
"The attack on 911 was planned, organized and committed by treasonous perpetrators that have infiltrated the highest levels of our government." - Colonel Guy S. Razer USAF (ret.) / Pilots for 911 truth
"They promised you a 100-year war. We promise you they won't succeed." - 911 Truth Movement
[That was more or less my own take on it when I first learned about two planes crashing into the WTC on September 11, 2001. "Hmmm, the New World Order mob is getting real desperate, to pull a dangerous stunt like this!" was what I thought - and since that day I've been waiting for the American public to wake up from the hideous and hellish nightmare their Great Neo-Nazi Leaders have herded them willy-nilly into. Incredibly, almost half the U.S. population seems to have swallowed the CNN/Fox News spin lock, stock, and barrel. They actually supported Dick Cheney's plan to destroy the fictitious bogeyman "Al Qaeda" by bombing Afghanistan (and later Iraq) to smithereens. Perhaps the Moment of Truth is finally approaching....]
If you live in America, or have American friends, please click here, and alert them about this, thanks.
Photo by Richard Ecclestone
Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman
