Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Anyway You Look At It. . .

Every Single Thing Predicted By Us Reality-Based Americans. . .

About this administration's policies, and lies, has been proven correct, and in most areas have proven to be far worse than predicted.  But yet, so far, Americans have continued to allow them to "Stay The Course" - Without any real revolt, without any punishment.

And That, Says It All.  Now Doesn't it?


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How much longer will you personally allow it to continue?

How much more destruction, and deaths, will occur while you are "deciding?"

"Do Something!"


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Monday, August 29, 2005

Let's See. . .

Oil Is $70/Barrel - It Was $30/Barrel When The Oil Barons Took Office
by The Old Hippie Because The Reality Of The Allowing Does Not Allow My Silence


They Are Still There People.

America is still allowing them their profitable freedom of destruction.

How many more deaths, how much more destruction, before America stops them?


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The whole of the world is watching. . .

Watching to see if we, the masses of America, will continue to allow the "allowing," will continue to remain silent, and opportunistically silenced, so that their, (our?,) murderous imperial insanity can continue to -"stay the course"- of its global destruction of lives, environments, and freedoms - for their profits.

If we continue this allowing - We will deserve what happens.


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Friday, August 26, 2005

If You Still Don't Get It. . .

All Of It Has To Do With Oil, All The Rest Is Manipulative Profiteering
by The Old Hippie Because Knowledge Is The Key To Knowing And Understanding


[ It Is Not So Much The Oil Itself, As Much As The Reality Of The End Of It ]


Peak Oil:
- The Beginning Of The Coming Resource Wars

Part I - Slippery Slope
Part II - Bridging the Gap
Part III - Riding Down the Curve

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Did you read it all?  Good. Of course all that is going on isn't just simply the oil - Ahhh, if only the world was that simple, but alas it's not.  But the peaking of the oil, worldwide, is at the core of, and only the beginning of, the coming resource wars.  The main resources being; oil, water, food, and wood.

More Recommended Readings For: "If You Still Don't Get It. . ."

"Ahh. . .  Reality. . .

"Okay - Okay - I get it now. . ."

"Just More Proof Of. . ."

"Let's Get This Straight. . ."

"WAKE THE FUCK UP!"


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Thursday, August 25, 2005

The Weeks Best of "Says It All". . .

The Purposeful Manipulative "Lies" Are Not "Mistakes," or "Incompetence," They Are Highly Profitable, And Americans Have Allowed Them To Be Quite Successful, Which Explains Bush's, And His Cohort's, Inability To Hide Their Ubiquitous Smirky Sneers. . .

by The Old Hippie Because The Insanity Is Still Being Allowed - Images Link To Original Articles

Bullshit Protector

Bill Moyer, 73, wears a "Bullshit Protector" flap
over his ear while President George W. Bush
addresses the Veterans of Foreign Wars.
(AP Photo/Douglas C. Pizac)

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Pat Robertson Calls For Chavez's Assassination - White House and Evangelicals Silent
(Yahoo - 615,000 links) - (Google - 189,000 links) - [ as of 8/24/05 - 12:30pm ]

Ads On Arlington National Cemetery gravestones
The gravestones of fallen Americans buried at Arlington National Cemetery
during the Iraq war era show a change in style from earlier conflicts, in
Arlington, Va., Friday, July 1, 2005.  Unlike earlier wars, nearly all
Arlington National Cemetery gravestones for troops killed in Iraq or
Afghanistan are inscribed with the operation names, such as 'Operation
Iraqi Freedom' and 'Operation Enduring Freedom', which the Pentagon
selected to promote public support for the conflicts.
(AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)


Allowed Lies

Which is the "exploiter," and which is actually hurting America more?
[cartoon by Nick Anderson]


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Tuesday, August 23, 2005

It Continues. . .

Even In The Light Of The Revealed Reality Of Exposed Lies, It Continues
compiled by The Old Hippie Because It Must Be Stopped - Not Studied


Even though there are lights at the ends of some of the tunnels, that have finally come on,
it continues to get worse for so many, too many - But yet the "allowing" continues unabated.

The "Trillion Dollar War" of greed is allowed to continue, now for 4 to 12 more years.
The exposed "Big Lies"/"Noble Lies" are allowed to continue to distort reality.
The attack, by sycophants, of the dissent of grieving gold-star parents is allowed to continue.
The deaths of our young in Iraq, the troops, are allowed to continue unabated.
Both America and Iraq are being allowed to continue to become irrational Theocracies.

The time of study, analysis, of the "allowing," is over - It must be stopped.  Has to be stopped, or quite simply, the reality is it will only get worse - much worse - irreparably worse.

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"Do Something."

This Modern World


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Monday, August 22, 2005

Bombshells #4. . .

A Select Few Bombshells That Clears Much Of The Manufactured Fog
compiled by The Old Hippie Because I Truly Believe It Might Help


Your Right   1.  Ex-Marine Says Public Version of Saddam Capture Fiction
          [A former U.S. Marine who participated in the capture] - WHAM-TV


  2.  Bush's Other Iraq Invasion - Alternet.org

  3.  This Paper For Oil Economy - Truthout.org

  4.  US Backs Down on Islamic law in Iraq - The Sunday Herald

  5.  Oil Prices Climb More Than $2 Per Barrel - AP via Yahoo

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  6.  Global Warming: Will You Listen Now, America? Independent/UK

"I don't think there's any doubt left for anybody who actually looks at the science.  There are still some holdouts, but they're fighting a losing battle.  The science is overwhelming."


  7.  A New Taliban Has Re-Emerged In Afghanistan - Knight Ridder

  8.  Vets See Protests As Attack On Policy - Pensacola News-Journal

The story, from a town with a sizable military population, notes that "If there's growing sentiment against the war in Iraq, many area veterans of the fight aren't taking it personally.  Vets see the opposition as a protest against policy, not them or their service."



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Sunday, August 21, 2005

You Know. . .

Some Events Divide Out Those Who Can, Or Can't, Handle The Truth
by The Old Hippie Because I Can Handle The Truth


The Reactions to Cindy Sheehan, from both sides, says it all.

A grieving, but strong, American mother, whose oldest child was killed April 4, 2004, in this war, and whose marriage was also ripped apart by the stresses of the grief of the loss, simply standing up for what she honestly sees as the truth. . .

"I believe that George lied and he knew he was lying... - ...He lied and made us afraid of ghosts that weren't there.  Now he is using patriotic rhetoric to keep the U.S. military presence in Iraq: Patriotic rhetoric that is based on greed and nothing else." - - - "Why are our young people fighting, dying, and killing in Iraq?  What is this noble cause you are sending our young people to Iraq for?  What do you hope to accomplish there?  Why did you tell us there were WMDs and ties to Al Qaeda when you knew there weren't?  Why did you lie to us?  Why did you lie to the American people?  Why did you lie to the world?  Why are our nation's children still in harm's way and dying everyday when we all know you lied?  Why do you continually say we have to 'complete the mission' when you know damn well you have no idea what that mission is and you can change it at will like you change your cowboy shirts?"

Ms. Sheehan is not the first parent who lost a child in a war, or to protest the war that killed her child, or the first to call the leaders of her nation liars, or to question the cause that her child died for.  These parents have existed in every war in written history.  What makes Cindy Sheehan's standing protests unique - are the reactions - of her nation's citizens to her spoken truths.

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From the right:
Incredible, and vile, attacks of her patriotism, and motives.

From the left:
Support, to a fault.

Kind of says it all - Right?


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Saturday, August 20, 2005

Interesting Times?

No, These Times Are Too Extraordinary And Improbable To Be Believed
by The Old Hippie Because Even As A Realist, I Find These Times Incredible, at best


Time To But It All Together

It wasn't so much conspiracy, even though there was/is some of that involved, but rather more of an opportunistic manipulation of events, not only by "the ends justify the means" ideologues, but also by "the ends justify the means" uber-profiting corporations, and also by the opportunistic alignment of "better to rule in hell, than serve in heaven" sociopathic sycophants, that has brought all of us to this time that is "too extraordinary and improbable to be believed," which is the definition of the word. . . incredible.

So, no, we don't live in interesting times, we live in incredible times.

The following is a simple historical timeline of the complex events, and the resultant opportunities, manipulations, reactions, and realities that have brought us to this incredulous time. . .


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[ Note: All listed "events" are linked to unbiased sources of information concerning the events, (or least as unbiased as I could find, not always easy to do.)  I start this timeline in 1886, with the Supreme Court case of "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company."  There are, of course, earlier events of significance, but this one event set the course that has lead us to this incredible time of the reality of global corporate rule. ]

1886 - "Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company"

One of the points made and discussed at length in the brief of counsel for defendants in error was that "Corporations are persons within the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States." Before argument. . .

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE said:  "The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which forbids a State to deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws, applies to these corporations.  We are all of opinion that it does."

"There was no history, logic or reason given to support that view," U. S. Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas was to write 60 years later.  But it was done anyway.  By applying the 14th Amendment to corporations, the court struck down hundreds of local, state and federal laws that were enacted to protect people from corporate harm.

1892 through 1933 - "The Great Depression"

Speculation in the 1920s caused many people to by stocks with loaned money and they used these stocks as collateral for buying more stocks.  Broker's loans went from under $5 million in mid 1928 to $850 million in September of 1929.  The stock market boom was very unsteady, because it was based on borrowed money and false optimism.  When investors lost confidence, the stock market collapsed, taking them along with it.


1910 - "The New Nationalism"

The old nationalism, he claimed, [Theodore Roosevelt] had been used by sinister, special interests.  He now proposed a New Nationalism of dynamic democracy that would recognize the inevitability of economic concentration; to counter the power of the giant corporations, Roosevelt proposed bringing them under complete federal control, so as to protect the interests of the laboring man and the consumer.

The importance of the speech lies less in its immediate campaign connotation than in the fact that it contains the political and intellectual kernel of the modern American welfare state.


morally treasonal


1933 through 1938 - "The New Deal"

The president [FDR] called a special session of Congress on March 9 [1933].  Immediately he began to submit reform and recovery measures for congressional validation.  Virtually all the important bills he proposed were enacted by Congress.  The 99-day (March 9-June 16) session came to be known as the "Hundred Days."

On March 12, 1933, Roosevelt broadcast the first of 30 "fireside chats" over the radio to the American people.  The opening topic was the Bank Crisis.  Primarily, he spoke on a variety of topics to inform Americans and exhort them to support his domestic agenda, and later, the war effort.  During Roosevelt's first year as president, Congress passed laws to protect stock and bond investors.


1939 through 1945 - "World War II"

Without a doubt, a key player in the cause of World War 2 was the powerful Adolf Hitler.  But the major source of Hitler's power came from a chemical cartel called I.G. Farben, (the name is an abbreviation of the complete name: Interssen Gemeinschaft Farben.)  The importance of I.G. Farben's support for the Socialist movement was pointed out in a book about the cartel, in which it is stated:  "without I.G.'s immense production facilities, its far reaching research, varied technical experience and overall concentration of economic power, Germany would not have been in a position to start its aggressive war in September, 1939."


1942 - "Doing Business With The Enemy"

After the seizures in late 1942 of five U.S. enterprises he managed on behalf of Nazi industrialist Fritz Thyssen, Prescott Bush, the grandfather of President George W. Bush, failed to divest himself of more than a dozen "enemy national" relationships that continued until as late as 1951. . .


1950 through 1953 - "The Korean War"

Perlman itself is a diversity case in the Second Circuit under Indiana law.  The facts took place during the Korean War.  At time, especially during war, wage and price controls are imposed by the federal government, and the Korean War was one of those times.  When those controls are imposed, you get startling results concerning the exemptions.  In both World War II and the Korean War, employee fringe benefits such as pension and profit sharing plans as well as Blue Cross/Blue Shield were exempt from wage and price controls.  Furthermore, government contractors making those payment were allowed to recoup them as cost from the federal government.  The federal government treated those costs as legitimate.  Out of these wars sprouted employer-paid Blue Cross/Blue Shield and pension/profit-sharing plans because during both periods companies needed every able-bodied worker they could find and they could not raise the wage level to attract more workers.  They couldn’t raise wages, but they could pay fringe benefits.


1950 Through 1957 - "The McCarthy Era"

McCarthy was originally a supporter of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal.  However, after failing to become the Democratic Party candidate for district attorney, he switched parties and became the Republican Party candidate in an election to become a circuit court judge. - - - McCarthy's first years in the Senate were unimpressive.  People also started coming forward claiming that he had lied about his war record.  Another problem for McCarthy was that he was being investigated for tax offences and for taking bribes from the Pepsi-Cola Company.  In May, 1950, afraid that he would be defeated in the next election, McCarthy held a meeting with some of his closest advisers and asked for suggestions on how he could retain his seat.  Edmund Walsh, a Roman Catholics priest, came up with the idea that he should begin a campaign against communist subversives working in the Democratic administration.

McCarthy thought this was a great idea. . .


1961 through 1963- "America'a 1st Involvement In The Vietnam War (1945-1975)"

In November 1960, the young Massachusetts senator John F. Kennedy was elected U.S. president.  When he took office in January 1961, his administration portrayed itself as a break from the older traditions and as the “best and brightest,” with former Rhodes Scholar Dean Rusk as secretary of state, renowned businessman Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense, and academic McGeorge Bundy as national security advisor.  The president also appointed his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general.  This group would remain Kennedy’s key advisors, especially in matters relating to Vietnam, throughout his entire time in office.


1960 through mid-1970s - "The Civil Rights, Free-Speech, and Antiwar Movements"

During the 1960s era, many movements arose due to the active voices of young adults in colleges and universities. They acknowledged the need for social reform, and aggressively fought for civil rights. Their activities were able to encourage communities to become involved and many movements intermixed with their agenda. Included were the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s’ that aspired to gain racial equality for people, the Free Speech movement that sought to gain political activist rights on college campuses, and also the Anti-Vietnam War Movement which favored peace over war. The radical impulse of activist students led to an era of many social movements, which was pivotal due to its extensive effect.


1963 - "The Assassination Of John F. Kennedy"

During his electoral battle tour in the south of the States, John F. Kennedy visited Dallas (Texas) on November 22, 1963.


May 22, 1964 - "Lyndon B. Johnson's 'Great Society' Speech"

The Great Society was a set of domestic programs enacted in the United States on the initiative of President Lyndon B. Johnson. - - - Johnson summarized his goals in a speech at Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1964, basing it loosely on the largely successful New Deal instituted by Franklin Roosevelt.  A main focus of the Great Society social reforms an "end to poverty and racial injustice".  One component that transformed American politics was the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Another Johnson success was the establishment of the Department of Housing and Urban Development.


August 4, 1964 - "To Start A War: The Tonkin Gulf Incident"

on August 4, the USS Maddox and another ship, the USS Turner Joy reentered the gulf, near where the Maddox had its "confrontation" just two days earlier.  But in the middle of tropical storm both ships experienced massive electronic malfunction. The captains of both ships 'assumed' they were being fired upon and began a counter attack, even though no evidence can prove they were in any way attacked.  This incident was taken by the United States government as provocation to enter the war, which had been strongly backed by the US Military for some time.


- "From Heresy to Dogma: An Institutional History of Corporate Environmentalism" -

Rated one of the top 10 books on business and the environment by TOMORROW magazine, December 1998.  Few contemporary movements illustrate the dynamics of institutional change quite as dramatically as that of corporate environmentalism.  'From Heresy to Dogma' takes an in-depth look at the evolution of corporate environmentalism for a unique perspective: that of industry itself.  Here is an analysis of corporate change in the U. S. chemical and petroleum industry drawn not from law or economics, but rather from the realm of organizational behavior, an area of academic research all too absent from the debate over this socially important issue. Scholarly, accessible, and engaging, ' From Heresy to Dogma' provides the type of rigorous academic analysis critical in an era when 'political correctness' can cloud the logic of rational discourse.  More important, it draws from that analysis to present a compelling--and sometimes controversial--prognosis for the future of corporate environmentalism.  This is history as only an accomplished organizational theorist could present it, filled with provocative new insights into the collective psyche of corporate America.


1965 - "President Johnson Signs Medicare Into law:"

Between assignations, President John F. Kennedy in 1963 sends a bill to Congress to create Medicare, a medical-hospital insurance plan financed through Social Security.  First envisioned by President Harry S. Truman, the plan provides for low-cost hospitalization and medical insurance for the elderly.  It isn't passed till the middle of 1965, when it becomes a pillar of President Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.  By 1998, Medicare would cover 37 million people and spend over $200 billion annually, providing one-fifth of all the money spent on U.S. health care.


1966 - "Ronald Reagan Elected Governor of California"

As president of the Screen Actors Guild, Reagan became embroiled in disputes over the issue of Communism in the film industry; his political views shifted from liberal to conservative.  He toured the country as a television host, becoming a spokesman for conservatism.


April 4, 1968 - "The Assassination Of Martin Luthur King"

A small-time thief named James Earl Ray shot Martin Luther King from the bathroom of the flophouse across from where King was staying.  Allegedly, Ray balanced on the edge of a bathtub, rested his rifle on the window sill, and fired a single shot that with trained-sniper perfection entered King in the head.  No witness saw Ray shoot, although one claimed he saw a man leaving the bathroom around that time.  A bag was found in front of a store near the rooming house, and the bag had a rifle sticking out of it.  The rifle bore James Earl Ray's fingerprints.


June 5, 1968 - "The Assassination Of Robert F. Kennedy"

Coverage of the shooting and its aftermath continued to be broadcast until the early evening of 5 June, when networks began switching back to programs "already in progress."  ABC opted not to broadcast a professional baseball game and instead had a special report on "The Shooting of RFK."  Other networks informed viewers that regular programming would be interrupted occasionally to provide updated reports of Kennedy's condition.  Early on the morning of 6 June, a news conference was held to announce Kennedy's death.  His funeral was televised on 7 June, and highlights were televised on 8 June.


1970 - "Ronald Reagan Re-Elected Governor of California"

During the People's Park protests, he sent 2,200 National Guard troops onto the Berkeley campus of the University of California.  Reagan made it clear that the policies of his administration would not be influenced by student agitation, saying "if it takes a bloodbath, let's get it over with, no more appeasement."  When left-wing SLA terrorists kidnapped Patty Hearst in Berkeley and gave a list of demands that included free distribution of food to the poor, Reagan suggested that it would be a good time for an outbreak of botulism.  After the media caught wind of the comment, he apologized.


The 1970's - "A Time Of Incredible Change For America"

The chaotic events of the 60's, including war and social change, seemed destined to continue in the 70's.  Major trends included a growing disillusionment of government, advances in civil rights, increased influence of the women's movement, a heightened concern for the environment, and increased space exploration.  Many of the "radical" ideas of the 60's gained wider acceptance in the new decade, and were mainstreamed into American life and culture.  Amid war, social realignment and presidential impeachment proceedings, American culture flourished.  Indeed, the events of the times were reflected in and became the inspiration for much of the music, literature, entertainment, and even fashion of the decade.

During the 1970's the United States underwent some profound changes.  First a Vice President and then a President resigned under threat of impeachment.  The Vietnam War continued to divide the country even after the Paris Peace Accords in January 1974 put an end to U.S. military participation in the war.  Roe v. Wade legalized abortion.  Crime increased despite Nixon's pledge to make law and order a top priority of his presidency.  Increased immigration followed passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which reformed an earlier policy that favored western Europeans.  People from Third World countries came to this country in search of economic betterment or to escape political repression.  Women, minorities, and gays increasingly demanded full legal equality and privileges in society.  Women expanded their involvement in politics.  The proportion of women in state legislatures tripled.  Women surpassed men in college enrollment in 1979.  However, the rising divorce rate left an increasing number of women as sole breadwinners and forced more and more of them into poverty.  African-Americans also made their presence felt as the number of black members in Congress increased, and cities such as Los Angeles, Detroit, and Atlanta elected their first African-American mayors.  Affirmative action became a controversial policy as minorities and women asserted their rights to jobs and quality education.  Native Americans began to demand attention to their plight.  In 1975 the Indian Self-Determination Act encouraged Indians to take control of their own education and promote their tribal customs.


1980 - "Ronald Reagan Elected President of the United States"

Reagan's first attempt to gain the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 was unsuccessful.  He tried again in 1976 against the incumbent Gerald Ford, but was narrowly defeated at the Republican Convention.  He finally succeeded in gaining the Republican nomination in 1980.  The campaign, led by William J. Casey, was conducted in the shadow of the Iran hostage crisis; some analysts believe President Jimmy Carter's inability to solve the hostage crisis played a large role in Reagan's victory against him in the 1980 election.  Other issues in the campaign included double-digit inflation and unemployment, lackluster economic growth, instability in the petroleum market leading to a return of gas lines, and the perceived weakness of the U.S. national defense.

In the 1970s and 1980s, many of the industrial giants in the United States, Europe, and Japan became global companies; they no longer wanted to claim allegiance to any country in the world.  By becoming global companies they could force nations to compete with each other to attract their companies to build factories in their countries.  By the 1980s, these global companies, now often called Transnational corporations (TNCs) were aggressively using this strategy of globalization to blackmail countries into reducing their costs and increasing their profits.

Reagans Economic Strategy (to aid the TNCs in their goals)
It was in this Reagan Administration that the "incoporation of America" began in ernest.  The major moves by the "Reaganomics" to aid the TNCs was as follows:

1. To cut taxes on the wealthy and large corporations

2. To reduce government regulations on the environment, worker-safety, and product-safety

3. To provide billions of dollars in tax incentives and subsidies to TNCs

4. To crush labor unions and keep the minimum wage low

5. To support massive increases in immigration to the United States

6. To support American companies in moving their factories to Mexico and China

7. To bankrupt the government by creating a massive national debt

8. To reduce government support for healthcare, children, the poor, and the disabled

9. To work closely with TNCs to create "global free trade" and weaken national governments' ability to manage their economies

10. To reduce the standard of living and quality of life of most Americans

But the larger conclusion isn't that it was President Reagan or President Bush or the Republicans that are responsible for these disastrous policies.  Clearly, both the Democrats and the Republicans have supported these policies that have caused the standard of living and the quality of life for most Americans to decline.  We can't blame Reagan or the Republicans or even Clinton and the Democrats for what both American political parties are responsible for.  As a result of these policies, as Phillips argues, the wealthy and large corporations got richer.  With this increasing wealth and success, large corporations, the wealthy, and TNCs are in an even stronger position to blackmail countries into supporting their continued success and profits at the expense of their peoples' standard of living, the health and safety of their environments, and their quality of life.


1984 - "Reagan Re-Elected President in a Record Lanside"

1984 was a banner year for corporate profits.  They were up 26% over 1983, reaching an all-time high of $286 billion.  Their share of national income fell just short of 10%, the highest level since 1978.

Despite this spectacular rebound in profitability, 1984 was yet another banner year
for corporate tax avoidance.

Last year, we released a widely-circulated study, Corporate Income Taxes in the Reagan Years, which examined the profits and federal income taxes of 250 corporations in the years 1981, 1982 and 1983.  With the addition of the 1984 data, the full story of corporate tax avoidance during President Reagan’s first term can be told.  It is a story of unparalleled corporate success at beating the federal tax collector.

The synoptic of the Reagan years are tax cuts for the wealthy, the build-up of the military, the reduction of the regulation of corporations, and his not "knowing of" the Iran-Contra events under his nose.


1988 - "The 1st 10 Worst Corporations List Published"

CORPORATE CRIME and violence is, by all indications, a far more serious problem, in terms of victimization, than all street crime combined. Yet there is no effective international police organization dealing with corporate crime. INTERPOL does not have a corporate crime data base and the United Nations does not arrest chief executives of major multinationals for reckless homicide. A "Ten Most Wanted List" for corporate criminals is needed. Police intelligence agencies could use such a list to draw attention to wrongdoers and to focus the nation's attention on the lessons of right and wrong. To get the ball rolling, Multinational Monitor presents "The 10 Worst Corporations of 1988."


1988 -"George H. W. Bush Elected President"

While at Yale, he joined the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and was elected President.  As a Senior he was, like his son George W. Bush (1968) and his father Prescott S. Bush (1917), inducted into the Skull and Bones secret society in 1948, helping him to build friendships and political support.  Joining the Skull and Bones a year after him at Bush's request was William Sloane Coffin, a fellow classmate from the Phillips Academy.  Throughout their lives, they remained friends despite political disagreement, as Coffin became a notable anti-war activist of the political left.

He married Barbara Pierce on January 6, 1945.  Their marriage produced six children: George W., Pauline Robinson ("Robin") (1949–1953, died of leukemia), John (Jeb), Neil, Marvin, and Dorothy Walker.  The family has built on Bush's political successes, and those of his father Sen. Prescott Bush, with his son George W. Bush's Governorship of Texas and subsequent election as president, and his son Jeb Bush's election as Governor of Florida.  The Bush political "dynasty" has been compared to that of John Adams and the Kennedy family.  Bush's maternal grandfather was George Herbert Walker Sr., the founder of G.H. Walker & Co.  Bush's uncle George Herbert Walker, Jr. is the current head of the company.  Bush's first cousin George Herbert Walker III is the U.S. ambassador to Hungary.

Bush ventured into the highly speculative Texas oil exploration business after World War II with considerable success.  He secured a position with Dresser Industries.  His son, Neil Mallon Bush, is named after his employer at Dresser, Neil Mallon, who became a close family friend.  Dresser Industries, decades later, merged with Halliburton, whose former CEOs include Dick Cheney, George H. W. Bush's Secretary of Defense and, as of 2005, Vice President of the United States.


1992 - "The Best Republican Produced By The DLC - Clinton Elected"

...because corporations are the richest sector of society, their greater financing overwhelms similar efforts by Democrats.

Their efforts have clearly succeeded.  By 1992, corporations formed 67 percent of all Political Action Committees (the lobbyist organizations that bribe our government), and they donated 79 percent of all campaign contributions to political parties.  (4) In two landmark elections -- 1980 and 1994 -- corporations gave heavily and one-sidedly to Republicans, turning one or both houses of Congress over to the GOP.  Democratic incumbents were shocked by the threat of being rolled completely out of power, so they quietly shifted to the right on economic issues, even though they continued a public façade of liberalism.  Corporations went ahead and donated to Democratic incumbents in all other elections, but only as long as they abandoned the interests of workers, consumers, minorities and the poor.  As expected, the new pro-corporate Congress passed laws favoring the rich: between 1975 and 1992, the amount of national household wealth owned by the richest 1 percent soared from 22 to 42 percent.

The Cold War ended in 1991, depriving conservatives of their traditional enemy, the Soviet Union.  But a new target for their hatred emerged in 1992 with the election of a Democratic president, Bill Clinton.  The right wasted little time re-aiming their antagonism from the external to the internal enemy.


December 17, 1992 - "NAFTA, and April 15, 1994 - GATT Are Signed Into Law"

...the new GATT stakes are bigger, and the dynamics of the agreement are qualitatively different, than with NAFTA for a number of important reasons.  While NAFTA only involves three nations, the Uruguay Round would involve most of the countries in the world and affects more than four- fifths of world trade.  The Uruguay Round would create a standing organization, known as the World Trade Organization (WTO ), to administer global trade rules and provide a structure for developing new rules.  The WTO would be a major new international organization with significant powers, and would maintain a legal personality like the United Nations or the World Bank.  And although the United States would be the most powerful player in the World Trade Organization, it would have a far less dominant role than it does in overseeing NAFTA.  This is due both to the larger number of member countries in GATT and the fact that the two most powerful U.S. trading powers, Japan and the European Union, will be members of the WTO.


[ More to come very soon. . . Research takes time. . . ]

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Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Signs Of Awakening. . .

Finally, Signs Of More And More Americans Are Coming Out Of Denial
by The Old Hippie Because, Even Though It's Too Late For So many, It's Never Too Late


Signs of the Awakening. . .

Support for, and attack of, Cindy Sheehan.  (Google 2.4M  -vs-  Yahoo 10.8M [as of 8/19])

The, hard to accept, realization that the Iraqis, we Americans, and the rest of the planet, really are much worse off now, than before we Americans allowed "our" lying corporatists murderous thieving "Christian leaders" to invade a nation that was of no threat to us, and had not attacked, or even threatened to attack, us.  An attack supported by most of the trusting/naive/apathetic Americans, based on the belief of purposefully manufactured fears from the profitable lies - Lies, not mistakes, not incompetence - but blatant, now obvious to most, lies - Lies that served to deceive, and to profit - Lies that were/are shockingly successful.

The incomprehensible trillions of dollars they have pocketed, still are, and will in the future, that will never be repaid, that will go, in the end, unpunished, at the cost of so many lives. . .  Is the shame of this nation's citizens, that has allowed to this destructive insanity to reach this point.

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If you think the reality is different, please let me know.


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Sunday, August 14, 2005

The Week's Best "Says It All". . .

Someone Tell The President The War Is Over
by Frank Rich, NY Times Op-Ed - August 14, 2005


Bar None, the best "Says It All" article of the past week.  A truly good Sunday read.

Full Original Article Link Here - Enjoy.
  [if original gone, see "Below The Fold"]

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Someone Tell the President the War Is Over

By Frank Rich


Like the Japanese soldier marooned on an island for years after V-J Day, President Bush may be the last person in the country to learn that for Americans, if not Iraqis, the war in Iraq is over.  "We will stay the course," he insistently tells us from his Texas ranch.  What do you mean we, white man?

A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him.  The approval rate for Mr.  Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968.  (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.)  On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.

But our current Texas president has even outdone his predecessor; Mr.  Bush has lost not only the country but also his army.  Neither bonuses nor fudged standards nor the faking of high school diplomas has solved the recruitment shortfall.  Now Jake Tapper of ABC News reports that the armed forces are so eager for bodies they will flout "don't ask, don't tell" and hang on to gay soldiers who tell, even if they tell the press.

The president's cable cadre is in disarray as well.  At Fox News Bill O'Reilly is trashing Donald Rumsfeld for his incompetence, and Ann Coulter is chiding Mr.  O'Reilly for being a defeatist.  In an emblematic gesture akin to waving a white flag, Robert Novak walked off a CNN set and possibly out of a job rather than answer questions about his role in smearing the man who helped expose the administration's prewar inflation of Saddam W.M.D.'s.  (On this sinking ship, it's hard to know which rat to root for.)

As if the right-wing pundit crackup isn't unsettling enough, Mr.  Bush's top war strategists, starting with Mr.  Rumsfeld and Gen.  Richard Myers, have of late tried to rebrand the war in Iraq as what the defense secretary calls "a global struggle against violent extremism."  A struggle is what you have with your landlord.  When the war's über-managers start using euphemisms for a conflict this lethal, it's a clear sign that the battle to keep the Iraq war afloat with the American public is lost.

That battle crashed past the tipping point this month in Ohio.  There's historical symmetry in that.  It was in Cincinnati on Oct.  7, 2002, that Mr.  Bush gave the fateful address that sped Congressional ratification of the war just days later.  The speech was a miasma of self-delusion, half-truths and hype.  The president said that "we know that Iraq and Al Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade," an exaggeration based on evidence that the Senate Intelligence Committee would later find far from conclusive.  He said that Saddam "could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year" were he able to secure "an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball."  Our own National Intelligence Estimate of Oct.  1 quoted State Department findings that claims of Iraqi pursuit of uranium in Africa were "highly dubious."

It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight.  Among them were the 19 marine reservists from a single suburban Cleveland battalion slaughtered in just three days at the start of this month.  As they perished, another Ohio marine reservist who had served in Iraq came close to winning a Congressional election in southern Ohio.  Paul Hackett, a Democrat who called the president a "chicken hawk," received 48 percent of the vote in exactly the kind of bedrock conservative Ohio district that decided the 2004 election for Mr.  Bush.

These are the tea leaves that all Republicans, not just Chuck Hagel, are reading now.  Newt Gingrich called the Hackett near-victory "a wake-up call."  The resolutely pro-war New York Post editorial page begged Mr.  Bush (to no avail) to "show some leadership" by showing up in Ohio to salute the fallen and their families.  A Bush loyalist, Senator George Allen of Virginia, instructed the president to meet with Cindy Sheehan, the mother camping out in Crawford, as "a matter of courtesy and decency."  Or, to translate his Washingtonese, as a matter of politics.  Only someone as adrift from reality as Mr.  Bush would need to be told that a vacationing president can't win a standoff with a grief-stricken parent commandeering TV cameras and the blogosphere 24/7.

Such political imperatives are rapidly bringing about the war's end.  That's inevitable for a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start.  Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11.  Within hours of that horrible trauma, according to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies," Mr.  Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan.  It was easier to take out Saddam - and burnish Mr.  Bush's credentials as a slam-dunk "war president," suitable for a "Top Gun" victory jig - than to shut down Al Qaeda and smoke out its leader "dead or alive."

But just as politics are a bad motive for choosing a war, so they can be a doomed engine for running a war.  In an interview with Tim Russert early last year, Mr.  Bush said, "The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me, as I look back, was it was a political war," adding that the "essential" lesson he learned from Vietnam was to not have "politicians making military decisions."  But by then Mr.  Bush had disastrously ignored that very lesson; he had let Mr.  Rumsfeld publicly rebuke the Army's chief of staff, Eric Shinseki, after the general dared tell the truth: that several hundred thousand troops would be required to secure Iraq.  To this day it's our failure to provide that security that has turned the country into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Mr.  Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it.

The endgame for American involvement in Iraq will be of a piece with the rest of this sorry history.  "It makes no sense for the commander in chief to put out a timetable" for withdrawal, Mr.  Bush declared on the same day that 14 of those Ohio troops were killed by a roadside bomb in Haditha.  But even as he spoke, the war's actual commander, Gen.  George Casey, had already publicly set a timetable for "some fairly substantial reductions" to start next spring.  Officially this calendar is tied to the next round of Iraqi elections, but it's quite another election this administration has in mind.  The priority now is less to save Jessica Lynch (or Iraqi democracy) than to save Rick Santorum and every other endangered Republican facing voters in November 2006.

Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not higher terrorist body counts, not another battle for Falluja (where insurgents may again regroup, The Los Angeles Times reported last week).  A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now.  There will be neither the volunteers nor the money required to field the wholesale additional American troops that might bolster the security situation in Iraq.

WHAT lies ahead now in Iraq instead is not victory, which Mr.  Bush has never clearly defined anyway, but an exit (or triage) strategy that may echo Johnson's March 1968 plan for retreat from Vietnam: some kind of negotiations (in this case, with Sunni elements of the insurgency), followed by more inflated claims about the readiness of the local troops-in-training, whom we'll then throw to the wolves.  Such an outcome may lead to even greater disaster, but this administration long ago squandered the credibility needed to make the difficult case that more human and financial resources might prevent Iraq from continuing its descent into civil war and its devolution into jihad central.

Thus the president's claim on Thursday that "no decision has been made yet" about withdrawing troops from Iraq can be taken exactly as seriously as the vice president's preceding fantasy that the insurgency is in its "last throes."  The country has already made the decision for Mr.  Bush.  We're outta there.  Now comes the hard task of identifying the leaders who can pick up the pieces of the fiasco that has made us more vulnerable, not less, to the terrorists who struck us four years ago next month.


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Friday, August 12, 2005

Again, Says It All. . .

Some Simple Events Speak Louder Than All The Complex Explanations
by The Old Hippie Because Sometimes The Complex Obvious Has To Be Simple To Be Heard


Reuters - Oil Hits $65 Per Barrel

Cindy Sheehan - "This is George Bush’s Accountability Moment"

"September 11 = Party time with country superstar Clint Black!  Bring your coolers and sparklers!  All lovingly sponsored by the Department of Defense, Lockheed Martin, and Subway restaurant!" -- (headline quote from P.O.A.C.)

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[ In the category of "Says It All" and "It Couldn't Happen In America?" ]
[ From This Modern World - August 11, 2005 - A direct cut & paste. ]

Tom Tomorrow:
Sixteen tons and what do you get


In its ongoing effort to crush what's left of organized labor in this country, the NLRB has ruled that employers can tell you who and who not to spend your free time with:

It is a regular pastime for co-workers to chat during a coffee break, at a union hall, or over a beer about workplace issues, good grilling recipes, and celebrity gossip.  Yet a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allows employers to ban off-duty fraternizing among co-workers, severely weakening the rights of free association and speech, and violating basic standards of privacy for America's workers.

So how did the NLRB decide to weaken fundamental workplace protections?  Security firm Guardsmark instituted a rule directing employees not to "fraternize on duty or off duty, date, or become overly friendly with the client's employees or with co-employees."  In September 2003, the Service Employees International Union filed unfair labor practice charges with the NLRB against Guardsmark, claiming that the company's work rules inhibited its employees' Section 7 rights.

Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act grants workers the right to "self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations…and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection..."  While the law allows employers to ban association among co-workers during work hours, Guardsmark's rule was broader in that it applied to the off-duty association of co-workers.

On June 7, 2005, the Board ruled 2 to 1 that Guardsmark's fraternization rule was lawful.  1 The Board majority argued that workers would likely interpret the fraternization rule as merely a ban on dating, and not a prohibition of the association among co-workers protected by Section 7.  But the dissenting member of the Board pointed out that since the rule already mentions dating, workers would understand fraternization to mean something else.  She noted, "the primary meaning of the term 'fraternize…[is] to associate in a brotherly manner'…and that kind of association is the essence of workplace solidarity."


More.


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Thursday, August 11, 2005

Knowing Helps. . .

It May Take Effort, But Knowing Helps, In Ways Not Always Understood
compiled by The Old Hippie Because Knowing Reality Is The Only Hope


Patriot "Of Hoisting and Petards" - Stan Goff - 8/10

"Cindy Sheehan" - Google (143k)  -vs-  Yahoo (839k)

"Turning Points? " - Jules Witcover - 8/10

"Rage Against the Killing of the Light" - Norman Solomon - 8/10
"First they ignore you.  Then they laugh at you.  Then they fight you.  Then you win."
  --  Gandhi

"New Iraq, Guantanamo Prison Abuses Revealed" - Brendan Coyne - 7/29

"Beyond the Voting Rights Act" - Jeff Milchen - 8/8

"Arar Fights to Keep Torture Suit Against U.S. Government" - Democracy Now! - 8/10

"Fueled by Uncertainty" - Drum Major Institute & Bloomberg.com - 8/6

"Halliburton Sold Nuclear Reactor Components to Iran (!)" - FreePress.org - 8/10


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Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Taking Bets. . .

Who will Bush have arrested first: Osama Bin Laden, or Cindy Sheehan?

Just curious. . .  I personally think that there's a 99.99% chance it will be the obviously brave, and patriotic gold-star mom camped out by his ranch, and not the person whom we all know attacked us, and openly celebrated his "re-election."

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If you are one of "those" Americans that hasn't a clue, click here.

Or here.


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Monday, August 08, 2005

I Mean Seriously. . .

How Can ~1/2 Of America Still Believe They Aren't Murderous Thieves?
by The Old Hippie Because It Is Proven To Be So Un-Denial, But Yet So Many Still Deny


Maybe I'm missing something in the mix, but I find it hard to realize that, still, after all that has been proven, exposed, and openly discussed in the public arena, that nearly half of the nation still believes that this administration cares about them, their lives, their livelihoods, their freedoms, their liberties, their hopes. . .  That they are in the slightest way concerned about anything other than their monetary and imperial profits.

I mean seriously, come on people, these are true murderous lying thieves of the most dangerous ilk, and they are destroying the American Constitutional Democracy right in front of your denying eyes.  Thousands of people around the world, including nearly 2,000 young Americans, have been killed, not to mention the thousands upon thousands of injured, almost all of which were/are innocent of anything, other than being in the way.

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It isn't even like it's "maybe," or "could be."  The cold hard exposed, and proven facts are that they not only allowed, but encouraged, sadistic torture, and murder - of not only adults, but children as young as 8 years old, in their world wide network of military prisons, (that our own Pentagon has publicly stated on the record, that possibly 70%-80% are innocents that were swept up in broad nets of arrests, a fact verified by the Red Cross,) and then re-defined our laws to "legalize" it.

Is it possible that almost half of this nation doesn't know that China is buying 1-billion dollars worth of U. S. Treasury Bonds - a day?  And that almost all of that money, like the entirety of the trillions that was in the U.S. Treasury in 2000, and all of the billions from the tax-cuts, did go into the pockets of the very few, and still is going into their pockets?

The "fact" that impeachment is "debatable" is amazing to me.  Impeachment would be a slap on the wrist to these murderous thieves, because even if this nation actually drags itself out of its denial, and impeaches these scum - They will keep the money - And none of the real players will be put behind bars for all of the deaths and destruction their crimes caused, outside of a few scapegoats, and most will be able to walk comfortably, with unrestrained smirks, into secure "positions of responsibility" within the global corporations that now control most of the governments of the planet.

I guess what amazes me the most - Is the cowardly lack of revolt.


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Sunday, August 07, 2005

Short Sunday Summary. . .

Currently The Best Short Summary Of Our Reality I've Found.
by Juan Cole, Professor of History at U. of Michigan - August 2, 2005


Fisking the "War on Terror"


"Once upon a time, a dangerous radical gained control of. . ."

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It is short - I didn't cut & paste it here - Please, go read it. . .


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Friday, August 05, 2005

He's Gone. . .

Robert Novak Has been Suspended By CNN - "Indefinitely" -

Novak Is Gone

[Click on image for direct link to the video (Quicktime)]


Links to the articles. . .

*  At  Media Matters  *  At  journalism.nyu.edu  *  At  Truthout.org  *

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Nothing Else - Couldn't have happened to a "better" guy. . .


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Thursday, August 04, 2005

Today, I Am 58. . .

58% Of America's Last Century, Post WWII To The Present. . .
by The Old Hippie Because It Is My B'Day. . .


I have seen the unthinkable, what I thought was impossible, happen, as have all Americans in my age bracket.  I have seen our peaceful nation of, by, and for the people, that fought, and won, a war of conviction against fascists, turned into a dangerous and feared globally dominate bully - of, by, and for a tiny few arrogantly smirking sociopathic corporatists thieves, of the enhanced-theocratic-fascist ilk.

I have seen my nation being shown the proof of this, clearly, public record in-your-face proof of this reality, and have watched, bitched about, ranted over, written about - the incredible and impossible-to-accept fact - that my nation's citizens have not done, so far to date, anything of real effect or impact, about it, or them.

The denial, and still lingering apathy, enables it to continue to worsen.  And I am seriously beginning to believe it may be too late to turn it back around.  I truly never thought I would live long enough to witness my beloved American Constitutional Democracy destroyed from within by its own citizens.  But it seems I have. . .  Happy birthday to me.

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And For Those Whom Have Forgotten History. . .

"The national government will maintain and defend the foundations on which the power of our nation rests.  It will offer strong protection to Christianity as the very basis of our collective morality.  Today Christians stand at the head of our country.  We want to fill our culture again with the Christian spirit.  We want to burn out all the recent immoral developments in literature, in the theatre, and in the press — in short, we want to burn out the poison of immorality which has entered into our whole life and culture as a result of LIBERAL excess during the past years."

-- taken from: The Speeches of Adolph Hitler, 1922-1939, Vol. 1, Michael Hakeem, Ph.D.
   London, Oxford University Press, 1942), pp. 871-872


"The [senior Bush] aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community."...  I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism.  He cut me off."

"That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued.  "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.  And while you're studying that reality – judiciously, as you will – we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out.  We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

(Ron Suskind talking to senior Bush advisor, The New York Times Magazine)

"Those Who Make Peaceful Revolution Impossible
Will Make Violent Revolution Inevitable. . ."

John F. Kennedy, In a speech at the White House, 1962

This Modern World


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Wednesday, August 03, 2005

Really Want To Know?

Then, By All Means - Read This. . .
a book review by Thom Hartmann, and the book by Ravi Batra


Greenspan's Fraud:
- How Two Decades of His Policies Have Undermined the Global Economy


Read the review by Thom Hartmann, then do not fail to read this book - Seriously - That is, if you really want to know what happened, and is still happening to us.


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Nothing else - Just read it.


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Monday, August 01, 2005

Bombshells #3. . .

A Select Few Bombshells That Clears Much Of The Manufactured Fog
compiled by The Old Hippie Because I Truly Believe It Might Help


Your Right   1.  Board to Death - Adbusters.org
         FYI:  118 Board Members [of Top 10 Media Corporations]
                   Sit On The Boards of 288 Other Major Corporations


  2.  The Debate That Wasn't - Alternet.org

  3.  The BuzzFlash Interview Harry Reid - August 1, 2005

  4.  Lawyers Guns And Money - Greg Palast

  5.  We Are Still Allowing. . . - Michrel L. Standefer

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  6.  Video:  “Most Insidious of Traitors” by George Bush's Father Himself

  7.  A New Blacklist for "Excuse Makers" - Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has urged the U.S. government to create blacklists of condemned political speech--not only by those who advocate violence, but also by those who believe that U.S. government actions may encourage violent reprisals.  The latter group, which Friedman called "just one notch less despicable than the terrorists," includes a majority of Americans, according to recent polls. - [emphasis mine, not author's]


  8.  U.S. Evicted From Air Base In Uzbekistan - Washington Post via Michael Moore

  9.  A Guide to Living with Terrorism - Le Monde via WatchingAmerica.com


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