I planned on doing a story on the fact that we are the enemy as I have said a million times now and homeland security funding was being cut 50% as we are being thrown to the dogs while the chief idiot now has a choke hold on us when I was sent this.
The War on Terror is a front for placing surveillance and police control mechanisms in America. Billions have been funneled into local police departments to beef up intelligence gathering and detainment facilities. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) maintains in-depth records on every American including purchases, travel and web activities. DHS monitors all communications through involvement with telecommunications companies and maintains a national privatized police force through contracts with mercenary groups like Blackwater USA. These private mercenaries can be called upon any time the local officials fail to carry out government orders.
The War on Terror is a front for placing surveillance and police control mechanisms in America. Billions have been funneled into local police departments to beef up intelligence gathering and detainment facilities. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) maintains in-depth records on every American including purchases, travel and web activities. DHS monitors all communications through involvement with telecommunications companies and maintains a national privatized police force through contracts with mercenary groups like Blackwater USA. These private mercenaries can be called upon any time the local officials fail to carry out government orders.
DHS routinely conducts mass arrests in coordination with local police department. These are conducted under the name Operation Falcon and are dress rehearsal for future crackdowns on potential enemies of the state. The three Operation Falcon exercises conducted in April 2005, April 2006 and October 2006 netted 30,110 fugitives. Why does the DHS need to practice coordinated mass arrests and detentions. Who provides the detainees names? Is this the ultimate goal of the Terror Watch Lists which as of this writing contains 750,000 American names? If this is truly a foreign terrorist threat why so many American citizens.
It is interesting that the bulk of the money spent on deterring terrorists in the United States is directed towards surveillance and tracking of American citizens. If DHS was truly interested in foreign terrorists then they would secure the boarders and inspect the tons of cargo coming into our ports. A person with a vial of small pox could walk across our northern or southern boards at any time. A large nuclear device could easily be smuggled into an American city in a cargo shipping container from anywhere in the world. Why not invest these billions on a border fence or border surveillance system. Perhaps hire inspectors to investigate the millions of cargo containers coming into the country.
Clearly there is no foreign terrorist threat. The real threat comes from a displaced and unhappy population of American citizens, forced onto the streets by a lack of jobs, foreclosures and runaway gas prices. Up to this point in American history the government has never needed to track their own citizens. What has changed?
Nothing has changed, we are the enemy. Bush needs terrorists as an excuse to control us and take our America as he builds his version and prepares to take on the world in his Forever War to prosecute his new world order. With that said we are increasingly on our own to defend ourselves while Bush concentrates on monitoring us his real enemy!
The Bush administration intends to slash counter terrorism funding for police, firefighters and rescue departments nation-wide by more than half next year, according to budget documents obtained by The Associated Press. New York would be hard hit by deep cuts, according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The plan would eliminate programs for port security, transit security and local emergency management operations in the next budget year.
Nothing has changed, we are the enemy. Bush needs terrorists as an excuse to control us and take our America as he builds his version and prepares to take on the world in his Forever War to prosecute his new world order. With that said we are increasingly on our own to defend ourselves while Bush concentrates on monitoring us his real enemy!
The Bush administration intends to slash counter terrorism funding for police, firefighters and rescue departments nation-wide by more than half next year, according to budget documents obtained by The Associated Press. New York would be hard hit by deep cuts, according to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The plan would eliminate programs for port security, transit security and local emergency management operations in the next budget year.
The move comes a year after New York saw a nearly 40-percent cut in its anti-terrorism funding by the Homeland Security Department. The move was decried by city officials including Mayor Michael Bloomberg as a political maneuver. Long Island Congressman Peter King, a Republican, called this year's proposal a "very grave mistake" that "goes totally in the wrong direction," and vowed to do what he could to stop it. Democratic Senator Charles Schumer said targeting essential Homeland Security programs, which protect Americans more than much of the money spent in Iraq shows -- in his words -- how "out of touch this administration's priorities are.
" The Homeland Security Department wants to provide $3.2 billion to help states and cities protect against terrorist attacks in 2009, but the White House said it will ask Congress for less than half -- $1.4 billion, according to a Nov. 26 document. One document says the president does not believe previous homeland security grants have been well spent and does not believe the nation's highest-risk cities have satisfied security needs. Bush cuts State Homeland security funding 50%
**This is President Bush's last budget, and the new administration would have to live with the funding decisions. WTF, this idiot just doesn't stop and doesn't give a damn how stupid he looks or sounds as he pursues his agenda against us.
8 comments:
Had a very long day as this cuminated with an estate sale we have been preparing for a week. I will be back to getting around tomorrow I hope. I got this out and now I am going to rest.
Thanks Larry
This is typical Bush:
Jobless men pay $500 bribes to join the police. Families build houses illegally on government land, carwashes steal water from public pipes and nearly everything the government buys or sells can now be found on the black market.
Painkillers for cancer (from the Ministry of Health) cost $80 for a few capsules; electricity meters (from the Ministry of Electricity) go for $200 each and even third-grade textbooks (stolen from the Ministry of Education) must be bought at bookstores for three times what schools once charged.
“Everyone is stealing from the state,” said Adel Adel al-Subihawi, a prominent Shiite tribal leader in Sadr City, throwing up his hands in disgust. “It’s a very large meal, and everyone wants to eat.”
Corruption and theft are not new to Iraq, and government officials have promised to address the problem. But as Iraqis and American officials assess the effects of this year’s American troop increase, there is a growing sense that, even as security has improved, Iraq has slipped to new depths of lawlessness.
One recent independent analysis ranked Iraq the third most corrupt country in the world. Of 180 countries surveyed, only Somalia and Myanmar were worse, according to Transparency International, a Berlin-based group that publishes the index annually.
And the extent of the theft is staggering. Some American officials estimate that as much as a third of what they spend on Iraqi contracts and grants ends up unaccounted for or stolen, with a portion going to Shiite or Sunni militias. In addition, Iraq’s top anticorruption official estimated this fall — before resigning and fleeing the country after 31 of his agency’s employees were killed over a three-year period — that $18 billion in Iraqi government money had been lost to various stealing schemes since 2004.
The collective filching undermines Iraq’s ability to provide essential services, a key to sustaining recent security gains, according to American military commanders. It also sows a corrosive distrust of democracy and hinders reconciliation as entrenched groups in the Shiite-led government resist reforms that would cut into reliable cash flows.
In interviews across Baghdad, though, Iraqis said the widespread thieving affected them at least as powerfully on an emotional and moral level. The Koran is very clear on stealing: “God does not love the corrupters,” one verse says. And for average Iraqis, those ashamed of the looting that took place immediately after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the current era of anything-goes is particularly crushing because almost no one can avoid its taint.
For many, it is not a question of getting rich. Theft and corruption have become survival tools, creating a spiral of dishonest transactions that leave nearly everyone feeling dirty.
Abu Ali is a 23-year-old Sunni with a soft middle and a common tale. Identifying himself by only a nickname, which means father of Ali, he said that he, his wife, his elderly mother and six relatives fled their home in eastern Baghdad last year after receiving death threats from Shiite militias. First they rushed to Diyala Province, and when that turned violent, they moved back to a safer area of Baghdad — broke and desperate.
A major breadwinner for his family, Abu Ali needed a job. And like many Iraqis, he saw only one employer hiring: the government. A neighbor who was a police officer suggested joining the force. Abu Ali asked how, noting that recruits outnumbered positions. The answer was simple: a $500 bribe.
Abu Ali borrowed the money a few months ago and found his way to a cellphone shop downtown, where, he said, a man in his late 20s welcomed him inside. The man identified himself as a police captain and seemed at ease with the transaction. His wealth sparkled all around.
“He had a silver Mercedes,” Abu Ali said. “He was wearing a thick gold chain and a gold watch.”
Abu Ali tried to bargain for a lower fee, but failed, handing over the cash and filling out official forms. In return, he said, he received a blue card stamped “Ministry of the Interior,” which declared him an accepted member of the police force. The man with the gold chain told him to watch for an announcement in the local paper that listed the names of newly accepted recruits, and to bring the card to his first day of training.
“How do I know I’ll really get the job?” Abu Ali said he asked. “He told me, ‘I’ve put in 70 or 80 people already. Don’t worry about it.’”
Five months later, Abu Ali’s name appeared in the newspaper. At the police academy in September, he said, he discovered that most of his class was from Sadr City and that everyone paid $400 to $800 to join.
“There’s not a single person among the 850 people in my class who joined for free,” he said.
His commanders, he added, also now collect the salaries of recruits who quit, a payout of more than $100,000 a month. “No one can stop it,” Abu Ali said. “Corruption runs from top to bottom.”
What about this Jim:
A country governed by a despot is an inverted cone.
– Samuel Johnson
Mr. Bush is not disappointed in them. Quite the contrary. He’s envious. Although sharing their goals, he is far less successful than they. They have shown how democracy works in an ideal world. Mr. Bush, of course, has the misfortune to be the President of the United States that is not an ideal democracy notwithstanding his efforts to make it so.
On November 21 Mr. Bush gave ABC news an interview during the course of which Perez Musharraf’s name came up. Describing Mr. Musharraf, Mr. Bush said that he “truly is somebody who believes in democracy.” According to reports, the reporter interviewing Mr. Bush asked if there was any line Mr. Musharraf should not cross to which Mr. Bush said: “He hasn’t crossed the line. As a matter of fact, I don’t think that he will cross any lines.” Mr. Bush went on to say that it was a good sign that on the same day he was being interviewed Mr. Musharraf had released thousands of people from jail. (The reporter could have asked Mr. Bush if it was so good for Mr. Musharraf. to release people from jail why Mr. Bush didn’t follow his lead and let some folks out of Guantanamo who have no business being there. He might have gone so far as to point out to Mr. Bush that releasing people from jail who should not be in jail was not half as good for democracy as the act of putting them in jail was bad for democracy.
Here are some of the things Mr. Musharrraf has done to demonstrate his belief in democracy. On November 3 he declared a state of emergency. He suspended the constitution, shut down 58 independent news stations and replaced all the justices on the Supreme Court. Their replacement was necessary because they were about to rule that his election as president in October was invalid. By removing them and replacing them with justices who would do his bidding he was able to perpetuate democracy in Pakistan. (The shut television stations were told they could reopen if they adhered to a government code of conduct that was imposed because, said Mr. Musharraf: “We want to bring some responsibility to them.” Among other things, a journalist can go to prison for 3 years if coverage “ridicules” the president or other government officials.) In response to criticism from Condoleezza Rice about the imposition of martial law before elections scheduled in January Mr. Musharraf said that martial law was the best way to insure free and fair elections.
The other of Mr. Bush’s good friends, whom Mr. Bush resembles more than we realized when we elected him, is Russia’s Vladimir Putin. At the conclusion of Mr. Putin’s visit to the Bush compound in July, Mr. Bush, praised Mr. Putin. He said: “Here’s the thing, when you’re dealing with a world leader, you wonder whether or not he’s telling the truth. I’ve never had to worry about that with Vladimir Putin.” Returning the complement Mr. Putin said that common democratic values are important for both countries. He said that Russia and the United States face the same problems that have “to do with the relationship with the media; it has to do with human rights” said he. We know how that’s playing out in Bush’s America. Here’s how it’s played out in Russia.
Putin’s term as president is drawing to a close. Parliamentary elections are to take place in Russia in December. Mr. Bush was disappointed in his hopes that Republicans would have a majority in Congress following the 2006 elections. Mr. Putin is not taking any chances that his party, United Russia, will suffer the fate of the Republicans. At a recent campaign rally he stirred up his supporters saying: “Regrettably, there are those inside the country who feed off foreign embassies like jackals and count on support of foreign funds and governments, and not their own people.” Not content with railing against his opponents, on November 24 a rally was held against Mr. Putin, and the riot police beat and then arrested those who attended, including Garry Kasparov, the former chess champion and leader of Other Russia, one of the opposition parties. Mr. Kasparov was charged with organizing an unsanctioned protest and resisting arrest and sentenced to 5 days in jail. In the southern Republic of Ingushetia three Moscow television journalists and a human rights activist were reported attacked by armed, masked men as they went to cover an opposition rally.
If this column leads the reader to believe that Mr. Bush likes all despots, it has erred. Mr. Bush has no use for Hugo Chávez of Venezuela who has likened Mr. Bush to the devil. But for that comparison, Mr. Bush would probably find it in his heart to say good things about him as well.
Political language has to consist largely of euphemisms . . . and sheer cloudy vagueness.”
- George Orwell -
H.R 1955: the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007 recently passed by the House-a companion bill is in the Senate-is barely one sentence old before its Orwellian moment:
It begins, “AN ACT - To prevent homegrown terrorism, and for other purposes.”
Those whose pulse did not quicken at “other purposes” have probably not read George Orwell’s essay, “Politics and the English Language,” or they voted for the other George both times.
Orwell’s jeremiad on the corruption of the English language and its corrosive effect on a democracy was written two years before his novel 1984 spelled out in chilling detail the danger of Newspeak, which renders citizens incapable of independent thought by depriving them of the words necessary to form ideas other than those promulgated by the state.
After its opening “tribute” to Orwell, H.R 1955 is strategically peppered with Newspeak regarding the establishment of a National Commission and university-based Centers of Excellence to “examine and report upon the fact and causes of violent radicalization, homegrown terrorism, and ideologically based violence in the United States” and to make legislative recommendations for combating it.
The “sheer cloudy vagueness” of H.R 1955, as well as its terror factor, may account for its bipartisan 404-6 House vote but how, in an era informed by the Bush-Cheney administration’s egregious assault on the Bill of Rights, can the phrase “other purposes” fail to raise the “National Terror Alert” from its current threat level of “elevated” to “severe.”
Future “other purposes” will undoubtedly be justified by the Act’s use of the term “violent radicalization,” which it defines as “the process of adopting or promoting an extremist belief system for the purpose of facilitating ideologically based violence . . .” or by the folksy, Lake Wobegonesque “homegrown terrorism,” defined as “the use, planned use, or threatened use, of force or violence by a group or individual born [or] raised . . . within the United States . . . to intimidate or coerce the United States, the civilian population . . . or any segment thereof . . . [italics added].”
In the service of some self-serving “other purposes,” will “extremist beliefs” become any belief the temporary occupants of the White House consider antithetical and threatening to their political agenda?
Will “ideologically based violence” or the use of “force” become little more than the mayhem resulting after a peaceful protest, daring to move beyond the barbed wire of the free speech zone, is attacked by a truncheon-wielding riot squad armed with tear gas, German Shepard dogs and water cannons?
Will the unarmed, constitutionally protected dissenters who are fending off blows or dog bites, or who are striking back in self-defense become “homegrown terrorists” and suffer draconian sentences for their attempt to “intimidate or coerce” the state with free thought and free speech?
A clue to future “other purposes” may lie in the Act’s parentage. The proud House “mother” of the Patriot Act’s evil twin is Rep. Jane Harmon (D-CA), chair of the Homeland Security Intelligence Subcommittee. Rep. Harmon has admitted to a long and productive relationship with the RAND Corporation, a California based think-tank with close ties to the military-industrial-intelligence complex. RAND’s 2005 study, “Trends in Terrorism,” contains a chapter titled, “Homegrown Terrorist Threats to the United States.” Is this Act a bastard child?
Keep in mind that the RAND Corporation was set up in 1946 by Army Air Force General Henry “Hap” Arnold as “Project RAND” sponsored by the Douglas Aircraft Company. Keep in mind also that Donald Rumsfeld was its chairman from 1981 to 1986 and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Dick Cheney’s felonious former chief of staff, and Condoleezza Rice were trustees. Enough said!
RAND maintains that “homegrown terrorism” will not be the result of jihadist sleeper cells. Rather, it will result from anti-globalists and radical environmentalists who “challenge the intrinsic qualities of capitalism, charging that in the insatiable quest for growth and profit, the philosophy is serving to destroy the world’s ecology, indigenous cultures, and individual welfare.”
Further, RAND claims that anti-globalists and radical environmentalists “exist in much the same operational environment as al Qaida” and pose “a clear threat to private-sector corporate interests, especially large multinational business.” Therein lies the real “other purposes.”
Predictably then, H.R. 1955 is not about protecting homegrown Americans. That protection is only incidental to its “other purposes” of protecting homegrown corporate interest and its unconscionable manipulation of the American political process to fill its coffers. Any thought or speech or action- however protected it might be by the Bill of Rights-that threatens corporate hegemony and profit will no doubt suffer the “other purposes” clause of the Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act.
Anyone doubting the Orwellian nature of a “bastard child” that equates anti-globalists and environmentalists with al Qaida terrorists will do well to read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” and to acquaint themselves with the fate of Winston Smith in 1984.
A modern day 1984.
Larry you are unbelievable! Where do you find all this stuff? you know, it isn't funny but corruption is a hallmark of bush's mis-Administration amd the cost of conducting business around him.
That is why the insistance of no ocersight. It just kills me we are destroying the entire Muslim world and denying it. You have to wonder how much of the $trillions in debt Bush has created have been lost to corruption!
Larry
You know,the US, Pakistan, Russia, and others are no longer Democracies. Bush has set one hell of an axample that others have now taken the lead on.
Bush will do something to stay in power, Musharraf already has, and Putin thinks he can lead next term as the PM. You know Chavez and others are doing the same thing.
Everybody is trying to stay in power to fight Bush's Forever war. I think it was two crows that did a story on Norwy. That was pretty cool. Norway is the only Democracy that I can see in the world today and I hope they can keep it.
Larry
Everything is so convoluted and confusing. It is all unbelievabe! This is one hell of a future for us and the entire world that has been purposely created as the world tries to invoke their new order instead of Bush's.
We are all in serious trouble and must stay together. You know, especially under this mis-Administration but everything is purposely vague, convoluted, and confusing, so that a hidden agenda can be followed and we will all be screwed.
Rove is the master of this underhanded crap and it started during Nixon. Bush as used it magnificently and now Democrats and the entire world are doing it but it is too late.
Bush doesn't see anything wrong with Musharraf's actions because Bush is likely headed down the same path. One of the best things for democracy in American would be if Musharraf were arrested and removed from office.
See: NSPD-51 and the Potential for a Coup d'Etat by National Emergency
http://www.concordbridge.net/NSPD-51.htm
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