It's not going to be OK

[averagejoe]

Very, very good Steelrules.

Nebula
The beginning of subliminal control
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4iMwEZ8_-s

The dumbing down of society.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbtYBTavMOI

[peaceseeker]

Liberals are Useless
by Chris Hedges
Posted on Dec. 7, 2009

'Liberals are a useless lot. They talk about peace and do nothing to challenge our permanent war economy. They claim to support the working class, and vote for candidates that glibly defend the North American Free Trade Agreement. They insist they believe in welfare, the right to organize, universal health care and a host of other socially progressive causes, and will not risk stepping out of the mainstream to fight for them. The only talent they seem to possess is the ability to write abject, cloying letters to Barack Obama—as if he reads them—asking the president to come back to his “true” self. This sterile moral posturing, which is not only useless but humiliating, has made America’s liberal class an object of public derision.

I am not disappointed in Obama. I don’t feel betrayed. I don’t wonder when he is going to be Obama. I did not vote for the man. I vote socialist, which in my case meant Ralph Nader, but could have meant Cynthia McKinney. How can an organization with the oxymoronic title Progressives for Obama even exist? Liberal groups like these make political satire obsolete. Obama was and is a brand. He is a product of the Chicago political machine. He has been skillfully packaged as the new face of the corporate state. I don’t dislike Obama—I would much rather listen to him than his smug and venal predecessor—though I expected nothing but a continuation of the corporate rape of the country. And that is what he has delivered.' ...

[peaceseeker]

Wall Street Will Be Back for More
Posted on Jan 10, 2010
By Chris Hedges

'Corporations, which control the levers of power in government and finance, promote and empower the psychologically maimed. Those who lack the capacity for empathy and who embrace the goals of the corporation—personal power and wealth—as the highest good succeed. Those who possess moral autonomy and individuality do not. And these corporate heads, isolated from the mass of Americans by insular corporate structures and vast personal fortunes, are no more attuned to the misery, rage and pain they cause than were the courtiers and perfumed fops who populated Versailles on the eve of the French Revolution. They play their games of high finance as if the rest of us do not exist. And it is a game that will kill us.' ...

[peaceseeker]

Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction

Posted on Jan 24, 2010
By Chris Hedges

[Bejvas]

Good one!

Democracy in America Is a Useful Fiction

Posted on Jan 24, 2010
By Chris Hedges

[babybunnies]

You forget about the additional items such as "The War on Drugs" and "The War on Terror".

Why does modern society allow Governments around the world to wage war on concepts, rather than specific targets? These "wars" will go on forever with no end in sight. INGSOC will get its perpetual war so it can tell the people how well it is doing against the enemy.

I'd definitely say we're playing out the 1984 scenario, but with one difference. In Orwell's 1984, the people KNEW they were being controlled. In Obama/Brown/NWO's 2010, the people are ignorant to their plight, either burying their heads in the sand ignoring it all or not having enough of a voice to make people listen.

I truly think that people such as David Icke, Ralph Nader, Dr Ron "Audit the Federal Reserve" Paul are all visionaries who say it like it is. Other folks such as Glenn Beck and Alex Jones are a little more extreme but have some valid points. The reason they get shouted down is the fact that the people in charge of the whole situation are terrified of the public finding out the truth until it is too late to do anything about it, which is a situation we will find ourselves in very soon.

Too many people say all the time "oh, I don't watch politics - that's boring" or "I don't watch the news". That's what the NWO want - so long as politics is portrayed as so boring and financial markets are portrayed as being so complicated no one will pay attention to what's really going on.

People would rather pay attention to Paris Hilton, Brangelina, The New Orleans Saints in the Superbowl, who traded who in the NHL, and other petty things that are the big distraction that they need to get their work done in the background.

EVERY time there is a big news event, pay attention to Parliament and Congress and watch what they do while they think the world's not watching. There's usually some sort of amendment, bill introduced in the Senate, sanctions imposed, weapons traded by big Government, a UN decree or any number of world changing events that don't get recorded in the main stream media because Paris Hilton got out of a car with no underwear on, or because the mainstream media feel that the world needs 4 weeks straight of Michael Jackson stories.

Most of the world's population are sheep led by whatever the mainstream media tells them. The NWO doesn't need things like HAARP to subject the world's population to mind control experiments - they have a much more powerful medium through television and media.

You're right. Things aren't going to be OK, and it might already be too late to change this.

[Nebula]

I truly think that people such as David Icke, Ralph Nader, Dr Ron "Audit the Federal Reserve" Paul are all visionaries who say it like it is. Other folks such as Glenn Beck and Alex Jones are a little more extreme but have some valid points. The reason they get shouted down is the fact that the people in charge of the whole situation are terrified of the public finding out the truth until it is too late to do anything about it, which is a situation we will find ourselves in very soon.

Excuse me? Alex Jones is more extreme than David Icke? Huh?

Alex Jones is either a certifiable nutbag or a genius marketer (I haven't decided which). David Icke, on the other hand, believes the rulers of the world are actually lizard aliens in disguise who are controlling the world. That's beyond certifiable nutbag.

[peaceseeker]

The Creed of Objectivity Killed the News
Posted on Feb 1, 2010
By Chris Hedges

'Reporters who witness the worst of human suffering and return to newsrooms angry see their compassion washed out or severely muted by the layers of editors who stand between the reporter and the reader. The creed of objectivity and balance, formulated at the beginning of the 19th century by newspaper owners to generate greater profits from advertisers, disarms and cripples the press.' ...

[peaceseeker]

I Call It Murder
By Cynthia McKinney

February 02, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- They shot this Black man in his genitals and in his back. It sounds like a hate crime to me. How else could one describe it?

Well, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it was self-defense. But how many times have we heard self-defense by cops used as a cop out?

Well, what about Amadou Diallo? Amadou Diallo was murdered on February 4, 1999 by New York Police Department (NYPD) cops who mistook a wallet for a gun. They claim that they thought he was going to shoot them and so they shot him in self-defense. One officer fell as if he had been shot. 41 bullets later, Amadou Diallo had been shot 19 times. Young Amadou was only 24 years old. He could survive the itinerant life of an African trading family, moving from Africa to Asia, but he couldn’t survive the mean, racist streets of America. And the killer cops went free. Diallo’s mother and step-father settled with the City of New York for $3 million in a lawsuit alleging wrongful death, racial profiling, and violation of Amadou’s civil rights.

Kathryn Johnston was 92 years old when she was murdered by Atlanta Police Department (APD) officers who claim that they shot her in self-defense after narcotics officers broke into her home on November 21, 2006 using a “no-knock” warrant. Police forced their way into Johnston’s home and claimed to have found a stash of marijuana there. The APD officers claimed that she had injured them with her rusty revolver. Sadly, it was all lies. Later, it was learned that the Atlanta Police officers were actually injured by friendly fire after discharging their firearms 39 times; that they planted marijuana in the Johnston basement; lied on the drug warrant authorizing the raid; invented an informant justifying the raid; and pressured an actual drug informant to lie for them. Atlanta’s lying, killer cops did serve time–either for manslaughter, conspiracy to violate Johnston’s civil rights resulting in death, or perjury. The three officers were also required to reimburse the Johnston estate the $8,000 cost of her burial.

In the wee hours of November 25, 2006, Sean Bell was murdered in a hail of 50 bullets fired by officers in the New York Police Department. Bell was celebrating his upcoming wedding and was leaving the club where he had just held his bachelor party. Police opened fire after they suspected the victim had a gun. Bell was struck 4 times in the neck and torso and died from his wounds. When no gun was to be found, they concocted a mystery witness who could possibly have had a gun. New York’s killer cops were acquitted on all charges.

Although Diallo, Johnston, and Bell were Black, Blacks in the United States are not the only ones who can be victimized by murderous U.S. law enforcement. While on a visit to Cuba, I had the opportunity to meet and apologize to the widow of Filiberto Ojeda Rios, a leading Puerto Rican Independentista. Wanted by U.S. authorities for actions stemming from his belief that Puerto Rico was a U.S. colony that should be independent, Ojeda Rios was murdered on September 23, 2005, shot by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) at his home. An FBI press release stated that Ojeda Rios opened fire on the FBI and that the FBI retaliated, but that claim was not substantiated by an Inspector General’s report that noted that the FBI opened the attack on Ojeda Rios with a “flash bang” device. Ojeda Rios shot 10 times and the FBI fired one hundred times. Ojeda Rios was struck in the lung by a single sniper’s bullet, fell to the floor, and bled to death over 12 to 15 hours with no medical help allowed to save his life.

The United States government wanted to investigate the Aryan Nations, a white supremacist organization in the United States, and solicited Randy Weaver to become an informant. He turned them down. After a series of incitements and retaliations, Federal agents trespassed on Ruby Ridge, Weaver’s home in Idaho, incited a response from the Weavers, two of whom left the house to see what was happening, and by the end of the ordeal, Weaver had lost two family members–his wife, Vicky and his 14-year-old son, Sammy; his dog; while another family member, Kevin Harris, had been wounded. Randy Weaver was shot in the back. Justifying its attack on the Weavers, the U.S. government claimed that Weaver and Harris had fired at a government helicopter. At trial, the jury believed that Federal Agents shot and killed the Weaver dog, then shot and killed Sammy, prompting Harris to shoot and kill one of the agents. The government awarded Randy Weaver $100,000 and one million dollars for each of three children. Although Harris had killed a U.S. agent for which a jury had acquitted him of murder charges because he had fired only after having been fired upon, the federal government awarded him $380,000 in settlement.

Now, although examples are rife in the Black and Latino communities of ordinary citizens finding themselves at the wrong end of a police muzzle for minor or no infractions, it should be clear that as long as government officials are out of control, no one is safe. That’s why we all should be outraged and public about excessive force no matter where it happens or who the victim might be.

That’s why I support the young people who are still facing charges from the fallout from the Oscar Grant New Year’s Day murder. Remove police violence and one would not even have an Oakland 100. And quite frankly, with Oakland under the leadership of my former colleague, Ron Dellums, I’m surprised that this issue had not been more forthrightly dealt with prior to Grant’s murder.

This all brings me to the January 30 report on the murder by the FBI of a Detroit Black man who was also an Imam. The case seems to have all of the ingredients of the worst of the above cases: the use of informants, law enforcement claims of self-defense or firing in retaliation for being fired upon, and failure to call for medical assistance after a fatal shooting. The FBI also refuses to release what kind of weapon the Imam had. And more troubling is the autopsy that reportedly shows that Imam Abdullah was shot in the genitals–a vintage, racist attack on black men used by White men during the days of U.S. slavery and even after the U.S. Civil War; and in the back–I suppose that was self-defense, too. Imam Abdullah, with the help of an FBI informant, was led to a warehouse where he was shot by the FBI 21 times. At a press conference, FBI Special Agent Andrew Arena commented, “I take full responsibility for what occurred that day. And I have to be judged: I’ll be judged by you. I’ll be judged by the community. I’ll be judged by my bosses in Washington D.C. as far as the Justice Dept., and quite frankly, God someday.”

The sad fact of the matter is that too many killer cops are still walking around free. Sadly, many continue to serve as law enforcement officials, able to carry out their crimes against the community again and again. Yes, they all will face God’s judgment when they die, but it would be nice to get some justice here on earth, too. The Obama Justice Department has the opportunity to exact justice on behalf of communities besieged by rogue, killer cops. The verdict is not looking good, unfortunately, on whether the Obama Justice Department will serve the American people much-needed, long-delayed justice or whether certain perpetrators and their law enforcement departments will be given yet another White House pass.

Cynthia McKinney was a presidential candidate for the Green Party in the 2008 election.

[peaceseeker]

The Terror-Industrial Complex

Posted on Feb 8, 2010

By Chris Hedges

'The conviction of the Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui in New York last week of trying to kill American military officers and FBI agents illustrates that the greatest danger to our security comes not from al-Qaida but the thousands of shadowy mercenaries, kidnappers, killers and torturers our government employs around the globe.

The bizarre story surrounding Siddiqui, 37, who received an undergraduate degree from MIT and a doctorate in neuroscience from Brandeis University, often defies belief. Siddiqui, who could spend 50 years in prison on seven charges when she is sentenced in May, was by her own account abducted in 2003 from her hometown of Karachi, Pakistan, with her three children—two of whom remain missing—and spirited to a secret U.S. prison where she was allegedly tortured and mistreated for five years. The American government has no comment, either about the alleged clandestine detention or the missing children.' ...

[peaceseeker]

Ron Paul telling it like it is...

A Dire Warning from Dr. Ron Paul


Words about the 'Hollywood Machine' by John Pilger...

Why The Oscars Are A Con
By John Pilger - February 10, 2010


At a loss for words about this - scary indeed...

Man sodomized with Taser will receive six-figure settlement
By Carlos Miller - February 10th, 2010

[peaceseeker]

Calling All Rebels

Posted on Mar 8, 2010
By Chris Hedges

'There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.' ...

[peaceseeker]

Welcome To The World’s First Murdochracy

By John Pilger

'March 10, 2010 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Adelaide is Australia’s festival city. Its arts festival is currently in swing. Polite debate, aesthetics and high-octane wine are putting the world to rights. With one exception. Adelaide is where Rupert Murdoch began his empire. The voracious trail starts here. No statue stands; his is a spectral presence, controlling the only daily newspaper, even the printing presses. Across Australia, he owns almost 70 per cent of the capital city press and the only national newspaper, and Sky Television, and much else. Welcome to the world’s first murdochracy.

What is a murdochracy? It is where the fealty and augmentation of Murdoch’s editors and managers are undisguised, an inspiration to his choir on seven continents, where even his competitors sing along and wise politicians heed the Murdochism: “What’ll it be? A headline a day or a bucket of sh*t a day?”

While the veracity of this celebrated remark is sometimes disputed, its spirit is not. Stricken with pneumonia, the former prime minister John Howard dragged himself out of bed to pay obeisance to the man to whom he owed many empty buckets. His successor, Kevin Rudd, scurried to an obligatory audience with Murdoch in New York prior to his election. This is standard across the planet. Before he took power, Tony Blair was flown to an island off Queensland to stand at the blue Newscorp lectern and pledge Thatcherism and media de-regulation to the jowled figure nodding in the front row. The next day, the Sun lauded Blair as one who “has vision [and] speaks our language on morality and family life”.

Murdoch knows that little separates the main political parties in Australia, Britain and America. He plays the man. In 1972, he backed Australia’s Gough Whitlam who revealed a radical reformer, even threatening to expose America’s spy bases. A furious Murdoch swung his newspapers against Whitlam with stories so outrageously skewed that rebellious journalists on The Australian burned their newspaper in the street. That has never been repeated.

Dominant themes in the Australian murdochracy, sport and celebrity gossip aside, are the promotion of war and jingoism, American foreign policy, Israel and a paternalism toward Aborigines, the world’s most impoverished indigenous people, according to the UN. This antiquated cold warring is not due entirely to the Murdoch press, of course, but the agenda is. When the Indonesian tyrant General Suharto was about to be overthrown by his own people, the editor-in-chief of The Australian Paul Kelly led a delegation to of editors of most of Australia’s principal newspapers to Jakarta. With Kelly at his side, the mass murderer, whom the Murdoch papers promoted as a “moderate”, accepted the tribute of each.

Murdoch’s most unabashed, if entertaining retainer is Greg Sheridan, foreign editor of The Australian. On one his adoring trips to the United States, home of Murdoch HQ, Sheridan wrote, “The US is the greatest possible argument for media deregulation. Every morning, I flick between Fox, CNN and MSNBC as I eat my cereal … why did it take so long for pay TV to get to Australia? …” He was referring, as if instinctively, to his master’s pay TV company, Foxtel. As for terrorism, Sheridan blames “Pilgerist Chomskyism” for “ideologically fuelling the followers of Osama bin Lenin, sorry Laden.”

One of the most effective campaigns in the Australian murdochracy has been the whitewashing of a bloody colonial past, including a series of attacks on the distinguished chronicler of the Aboriginal genocide, Professor Henry Reynolds, and the director of the National Museum of Australia, Dawn Casey, for having dared to present the truth about indigenous suffering. Australia’s great maverick historian, the late Manning Clark, was smeared by Murdoch’s Courier-Mail as a Red agent, then as a fraud, in much the style that Murdoch’s London Sunday Times smeared the Labour MP Michael Foot as a Soviet agent.

Something similar awaits those who question the manipulation of the remembrance of Australia’s blood sacrifice for imperialism, old and new. Aimed at the young, a maudlin “new patriotism” reaches an annual climax on April 25, the anniversary of the first world war disaster at Gallipoli known as Anzac Day. The message is undisguised militarism promoting the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Thus, Prime Minister Rudd says, absurdly, that the military is Australia’s highest calling.

Such false flags are flown constantly for Israel, which sees a stream of Australian journalists sponsored and paid for by Zionist groups. The result is apologetic reporting of murderous actions that evokes the great appeasers like Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times in the 1930s. The debate about state war crimes has all but bypassed Australia. That a former and current British prime minister have been summoned before the Chilcot enquiry in London is viewed with bemusement as nothing like it would happen here. Yet John Howard, who also invaded Iraq, holds something of a record for having claimed 30 times in one speech that he knew Saddam Hussein had a “massive programme” of weapons of mass destruction.

The national broadcaster, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, has long been intimidated by the Murdoch press in the obsessive manner of the campaign waged against the BBC. Funded directly by governments, the ABC has none of the nominal independence and protection of Britain’s system of a TV licence fee as the resource for public broadcasting. Last year, HarperCollins, owned by Murdoch, was awarded a lucrative “partnership” with the ABC’s publishing arm, ABC Books.

In 1983, there were 50 major corporations dominating the world’s media. By 2002, this had been reduced to nine. Rupert Murdoch says that eventually there will be three, including his own. If we accept this, media and information control will be the same, and we shall all be citizens of a murdochracy.'

http://www.johnpilger.com

[peaceseeker]

Beyond Orwell: The Electronic Police State, 2010
by Tom Burghardt

'A truism perhaps, but before resorting to brute force and open repression to halt the "barbarians at the gates," that would be us, the masters of declining empires (and the chattering classes who polish their boots) regale us with tales of "democracy on the march," "hope" and other banalities before the mailed fist comes crashing down.

Putting it another way, as the late, great Situationist malcontent, Guy Debord did decades ago in his relentless call for revolt, The Society of the Spectacle:

"The reigning economic system is a vicious circle of isolation. Its technologies are based on isolation, and they contribute to that same isolation. From automobiles to television, the goods that the spectacular system chooses to produce also serve it as weapons for constantly reinforcing the conditions that engender 'lonely crowds.' With ever-increasing concreteness the spectacle recreates its own presuppositions."

And when those "presuppositions" reproduce ever-more wretched clichés promulgated by true believers or rank opportunists, take your pick, market "democracy," the "freedom to choose" (the length of one's chains), or even quaint notions of national "sovereignty" (a sure fire way to get, and keep, the masses at each others' throats!) we're left with a fraud, a gigantic swindle, a "postmodern" refinement of tried and true methods that would do Orwell proud!

Ponder Debord's rigorous theorem and substitute "cell phone" and "GPS" for "automobile," and "Internet" for "television" and you're soon left with the nauseating sense that the old "infobahn" isn't all its cracked up to be. As a seamless means for effecting control on the other hand, of our thoughts, our actions, even our whereabouts; well, that's another story entirely! '...

[peaceseeker]

Dissent and enemy "belligerents"

http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/827.html

'Enemy belligerent

Just when you think things can't possibly get any worse, John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, two epic examples of self-propelled human garbage, have come up with this: "enemy belligerents."

What is an "enemy belligerent?"

No one knows. There is no such term in legal language, but here's what can happen to you if you are declared one:

1. arrest without charge
2. arrest without a crime having been committed
3. indefinite detention without legal rights
4. "interrogation" (which in the US now means torture.)

How do you get declared an "enemy belligerent?"

The president declares that you are one. That's it.

Did you know that the vast majority of people arrested, detained indefinitely, and tortured by the US in Guantanamo were random people picked up to fill arrest quotas?

By the way, McCain and Lieberman say they cooked this up in response to the "underwear bomber." '