Logically Tortured

So U.S. President Barack Obama has released torture memos that prove the previous Bush Administration used the Justice Department to provide cover for their torture program. This, of course, is not news. Concerned insiders leaked this revelation years ago. The news is President Obama's insistence that those low level employees who did the torturing won't be prosecuted for "just following orders". (One wonders if he'll pardon those unfortunate saps who took the fall for the torture scandal at Abu Ghrahib Prison in Baghdad.) So much for the principles established at the Nuremberg trials in Germany after WW 2. I guess it's not an international war crime when certain Americans do it.

Obama deserves some credit for rightly leaving it up to Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate and bring charges against those in power who crafted the torture program, although I'm not holding my breath that Holder will feel brave enough to actually do it.

Listen to what constitutional law professor Jonathan Turley said to MSNBC's David Shuster on Tues, April 21st "In the last week or so, we've seen an effort to define a potential investigation in terms of the lawyers who wrote these memos. ... A war crime investigation does not look at the people who drove the trains -- they look at the people who told the trains to roll."

"George Bush and Vice President Cheney, the CIA director, the attorney general ... implemented, in full knowledge that it was a war crime, the torture program," Turley emphasized. "The effort to define it in terms of lawyers is something of a Beltway shift. That is, it's setting us up for failure."

According to Turley, Attorney General Eric Holder "needs to appoint a special prosecutor and not limit it as to who committed the alleged war crimes."

To emphasize this point I commend to you an article by Margaret Talev of McClatchy Newspapers, who writes that recently released documents indicate that "the small group of Justice Department lawyers who wrote memos authorizing harsh interrogation techniques were operating not on their own but with direction from top administration officials, including then-Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. "

Now you know why Cheney is so cranky - I sincerely hope his heart holds out. Cough.

It was also very refreshing to hear Turley also correctly blast the idea of a "9-11 style commission" being set up to investigate the torture program.

"God help us if the only thing we get out of this is a commission modeled on 9/11," Turley commented. "That was a commission that was really made for Washington -- a commission composed of political appointees of both parties that ran interference for those parties -- a commission that insisted at the beginning it would not impose blame on individuals. So it's the ideal Washington commission -- a commission that would investigate without any repercussions."

Well, Mr. Turley, get ready to ask God for assistance. As the recent uproar from ex-VP Dick Cheney and his media minions proves, the Corporate Establishment is desperate to keep the "Jack Bauer, Torture Works Myth" alive. They do not want a fully informed public deducing exactly WHY they needed this torture program; namely, that false confessions were elicited to legitimize the lies of 9-11 and give the Bush neo-cons the green light to fulfill their PNAC dream. It seems apparent that those who are responsible for committing, aiding and abetting these war crimes infest the political and media elite - and will work day and night to keep covering up the truth.

The sick belief that torture works when used on "Islamic Radicals" is an epidemic. Even the so-called "Liberal Media" work hard at it. For instance, all this week on Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report", they keep hammering away at the guilt of so-called "9-11 masterminds" Abu Zabayda and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Jon Stewart actually complained about the "moral conundrum" that him and his staff were in, because torture is both morally repugnant and "effective".

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann has been very good in covering the torture issue. However, he also seems not to understand that the official story about 9-11 falls apart if all the evidence has been gleaned through these "enhanced interrogation techniques".

From what I can make out, Olbermann seems to be advancing this theory : the reason why the Bushies needed to torture false confessions out of detainees was to establish a link between 9-11 and Saddam Hussein. Ostensibly, I suppose, to give them more P.R. ammunition in their push for the invasion of Iraq.

Sadly, Mr. Olbermann has yet to point out that if it wasn't for 9-11 - PNAC's longed for "new Pearl Harbour"; the invasion of Afghanistan would never have been condoned by the American people. Maybe Keith Olbermann is so sure of the official story because he's seen Colin Powell's famous "white paper". I'm sure you remember that Powell, Bush's first enabling Secretary of State (who later waved fake Anthrax around to insinuate that Iraq was behind that obvious inside job), had promised to hand over to the U.N. and the International Criminal Court documentation proving that Osama bin Laden and "Al Qaeda" were behind 9-11. He never did.

Oh well, sacred cows are best left to superstition.

Just as an aside, it is interesting to note that the FBI has no hard evidence that bin Laden was behind 9-11. More astonishingly, a Dutch legal TV show called "The Devil's Advocate" has even exonerated the former "Johnny-Come-Lately" Mujahadeen. I find it hilarious that this has made former New York Mayor (and 9-11 co-conspirator after the fact) Rudy Guiliani upset. Go get booed at Yankee Stadium again, you putz. Lie through your teeth on camera once more. Try and cash in on some more tragedy while the 9-11 first responders wither and die because you allowed them to breathe in the toxic air around ground zero. Why don't you sell off some more evidence before any forensics can be done, that's what a great prosecutor does, isn't it?

I digress.

One can understand why it's so important to the Corporate elite that the tortured confessions from Zubayda and KSM be propped up as gospel truth. Thus, you will notice that whenever these two Emmanuel Goldstein's are mentioned in the Media, a menacing picture of them is always shown super-imposed behind the newsperson - with the designation "terrorist" printed across or below the face, glaring out at the public to give them their moment of hate and fear...to psychologically deaden the viewer to the humanity of this "savage".

Yet, if one simply reads this article: Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots, by Washington Post staff writers Peter Finn and Joby Warrick ; you will find this about Zubayda...

President George W. Bush had publicly described him as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed.

Don't you hate it when facts wreck a good racist, war-mongering myth?

Wait! What about the scary, evil-looking Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession that he was the mastermind behind 9-11?

Well, as Ben Macintyre of the London Times-online writes in his excellent article, "24 is fiction. So is the idea that torture works"

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the self-confessed mastermind of 9/11, was waterboarded 183 times in one month, and “confessed” to murdering the journalist Daniel Pearl, which he did not. There could hardly be more compelling evidence that such techniques are neither swift, nor efficient, nor reliable.

So if Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's confession about Pearl's murder was false, why should we believe his confession about 9/11?

Unfortunately, there is a logic behind the use of torture. It is a disturbing kind of logic - one can call it Machiavellian, Orwellian or Kafkaesque. Simply put, it is logical for the Powers That Be to use torture when they NEED false confessions. History has proven that it is the one sure result you will get from the deplorable practice.

When you need a scapegoat, that scapegoat is logically tortured.

Live long and prosper.

Profitable Friends, Profitable Foes

by RB Ham
March 31/09

I draw your attention to the following story and a lengthy diatribe below. I'm really getting pissed off. Not even quality ganj, or jazz music or a healthy dose of qualudes washed down with Jameson's can calm the beating heat of indignation in my soul. The Four Horsemen are un-tethering their beasts and tightening their saddle winches. The planning stage for the big ride is in the last phase.

Here's a heart warming news story, from the London Guardian...

'Worse than the Taliban' - new law rolls back rights for Afghan women
Jon Boone in KabulThe Guardian

Hamid Karzai has been accused of trying to win votes in Afghanistan's presidential election by backing a law the UN says legalizes rape within marriage and bans wives from stepping outside their homes without their husbands' permission.

The Afghan president signed the law earlier this month, despite condemnation by human rights activists and some MPs that it flouts the constitution's equal rights provisions.
The final document has not been published, but the law is believed to contain articles that rule women cannot leave the house without their husbands' permission, that they can only seek work, education or visit the doctor with their husbands' permission, and that they cannot refuse their husband sex.

A briefing document prepared by the United Nations Development Fund for Women also warns that the law grants custody of children to fathers and grandfathers only.
Senator Humaira Namati, a member of the upper house of the Afghan parliament, said the law was "worse than during the Taliban". "Anyone who spoke out was accused of being against Islam," she said.

the whole sordid story

Exactly what humanitarian, idealistic, virtuous cause are Canadian and American soldiers killing and dying for? Afghan heroin production is now at an all-time high. There is also no way of getting around the fact that many members of the American puppet Karzai government are opium producers themselves, protected by our troops.

Well, those murderers and torturers at Black Ops Central need funding, don't they?
It would be funny, if it wasn't so sickeningly evil and demented.

The supposed "President of Change" Barack Obama wants MORE troops for Afghanistan? Don't worry, though. Most will be private contractors. Not like we've had trouble with them before...
Unsurprisingly, the NATO Chief - Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer ( what a handle that is!) - wants more troops from all members of the "coalition of the arm-twisted".

Death and destruction on an even wider scale will be guaranteed. They know exactly what they are doing.

Who's next, Africa? What do you think?

I'll interject here and state that I think my favourite Star Wars' character Yoda would say, "Again fooled, we are."

As most of my friends and family know, I've always been a committed Progressive/Libertarian/Social Justice kind of guy. My politics are a little eclectic, but for years I really fell for the divisive left/right paradigm..Accordingly, I've always supported the NDP here in Canada, admired the Liberal Pierre Trudeau because he stood up to Nixon, hated the Conservative Mulroney with a deep passion, etcetera. etcetera....

So, of course, when it came to looking south, I really believed that Carter -then Clinton - were on the side that I believed in. But both were ultimately compromised and used as foils to make the Left look weak and licentious. The Wobblies. The pink-tutu Dems, as Bartcop would say.

Ultimately, the whole political landscape is a well run Hegelian Psy-Op. Obama and other Democrats diss establishment Right Wing radio host Rush Limbaugh, apparently the newly appointed head of the Republican Party (forget about politicians who are anti-war, use common sense and act on their constitutional duty like Republican Ron Paul, Democrat Dennis Kucinich or Independent Bernie Sanders - the media avoids covering them with a fervour that borders on the obsessive, unless they are heaping scorn and ridicule on them. Especially Kucinich and Paul...); thus immediately giving him attention and the credibility of a popular re-actionist. Limbaugh plays his appointed role and makes the outrageous statement that, for the good of the country, he wants Obama's policies to fail. Then the "party loyalists" from each side play their part in the distraction with a back and forth mud-slinging campaign. In translation to intelligent species that may be listening in from the ether it probably sounds like this: blah, blah, blah...yadda, yadda, yadda....oink, freakin', oink....

The corporate media, meanwhile, breathlessly covers this meaningless charade back and forth and sideways. The appointed party "representatives" face off in well-choreographed verbal rhetorical exchanges and repeat talking points until they become mantras. Afterwards, like professional wrestlers, the Republicans and Democrats and their media "friendlies" go off to private parties to drink, dine and whore together; patting each other on the backs and slipping favours into each other's pockets.

Distractions to the left of me, distractions to the right. Here we are. Stuck in the middle of this Political Zoo.

Then, of course, there is the wonderful news about our economic crisis.
How about the Goldman Sachs infested White House rejecting any respite for the hard hit auto sector in North America? Automakers whom received a measly incentive-laden 25 billion (compared to the no-strings attached trillions that AIG and the big banks like J.P. Morgan and Bank of America received), are treated like beggars and top executives pressured to resign.

Yet the banksters don't have to tell Congress a thing about where the money went. It took the courageous Dennis Kucinich, in open congress, to rip into the interim assistant treasury secretary. After much exasperation, Mr. Kucinich made one of the most ominous statements I've ever heard when he remarked, "I don't think anybody questions that you're working hard, Mr. Kashkari, our question, is who you're working for."

Oh, by they way, it's no surprise that Goldman Sachs has profited quite handsomely, compared to say Lehman Brothers, directly because who has been running the show at the PRIVATE federal reserve and at the treasury during both Bush and, now, Obama's administration. Just go to opensecrets.org and you can follow the money yourself, all the way to the top if you want.

If you find yourself, like I do, looking for a way to express your outrage, it's always a good time to recall three memorable H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) quotes:

Firstly, remember that it's normal. You are not alone in feeling outrage and indignation:
Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

Secondly, it's a moral issue:
Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under.

And most notably, given the currently engineered financial destruction of the middle class, Mencken noted that...
The world always makes the assumption that the exposure of an error is identical with the discovery of truth--that the error and truth are simply opposite. They are nothing of the sort. What the world turns to, when it is cured of one error, is usually simply another error, and maybe one worse than the first one.

This quote pertains to the rather disturbing impression that President Obama, who seems to be an agent for Wall Street and the international banker cartel, is turning out to be just another Bill Clinton - smooth, slick, charismatic and totally compromised. He has very friendly relations with the top banker elite. Why, Mr. Obama is even willing to go to court to defend the corporate rights of the Bank of America!

You may remember that it was under Clinton's watch that Phil Gramm and the Free Marketeers helped eliminate the Glass-Steagall Act; which was the beginning of this derivatives scam. Another thing to consider when you listen to Obama's dire warnings about climate change and the need for a carbon tax – is that he's poised to profit from it. I think a lot of ordinary folk are starting to see through his act.

The Obama Deception, indeed.

I firmly have grown to despise being considered as a "subject of the Queen" (Canada maintains the Queen of England as our Head of State - although this role is supposed to be merely "ceremonial"). More and more, I am starting to evolve into a Canadian Republican, meaning that I firmly believe that we should break all governing ties to England. Be truly sovereign, as it were.
So, to me, it seems more than embarrassing that a President of the United States is currently on his way to my Grandpa's mother country, England, to kneel before the Queen. Oh, by the way, AIG distributed 8.5 billion dollars to Barclay's Bank in England. Has tribute been paid?

Perhaps the renowned economic historian Webster G.Tarpley is right about the consolidation of the OLD World Order...not the New World Order. Tarpley asserts that economic power may be shifting from America back to England and Europe.

Don't worry my fellow North Americans, we can now look forward to serving in other capacities if there becomes a dearth of jobs. After all, when the economy dives - recruitment for the army goes up. Crime also spikes when the economy is in stress - thus, there will be a need for more police officers. And today the blurring of the lines between the police and the military is becoming very troubling.

We've all been had, and something tells me that they're not through with us yet.

Until next time, this is RB Ham signing off.

Pleasant....dreams?

Who’s The Boss?

By RB Ham
March 27, 2009

We have been here before.

An old, unpopular and tainted regime is swept away. A new regime charges onto the scene with the rhetoric of hope, change and reform making bold promises of a fresh start.

A young, dynamic leader explodes onto the scene- with a veritable army of fanatically obsessed followers, so personally and psychologically invested in their iconic leader that they lose all rational perspective - willing to throw any semblance of logical thought out the window in exchange for the impossible chance that all that is wrong will be set right.

We have been here before.

The new regime and its fresh-faced new leader suddenly run into a series of unexpected crises and obstruction from the opposition. Promises made are reneged on, with the rationalization that you can’t change Rome in one day. Policies seemingly so different from the previously hated regime are slowly morphed into mirror images of the old ones.
Excuses are made and accepted. Blame is deflected, and the buck never stops anywhere.
The new boss ends up being very much the same as the old boss.

If we have been here before, and we know how this will all unfold, why not finally learn from our history? Wouldn’t that be something?

It used to be that the virtual monopoly the elite had on information could help carry off the illusion. Events in history were more easily covered up for longer times. Myths, legends and downright lies told to schoolchildren would become the accepted truth far more easily.

This is where we have not been before. The internet has made it possible for more people to discover the real agenda of the True Bosses working behind the scenes. If most people in the 1930’s thought that the Great Depression was just an unavoidable, unseen calamity – that is how most people today can see that our newest version of a Great Depression is a purposefully contrived grab for power, wealth and control by an international cartel of elitist bankers and their ideologically sick economic hit men.

More than ever before ordinary people are realizing that wars are engineered and vast profits made because of them. They are losing their life’s savings, houses and hope for a better future while sociopathic war profiteers are lying to them so as to use their children to prosecute further wars for perpetual profit.

We have a chance to finally have enough “awakened” people to truly put a stop to this charade.

How about actually standing up and making your voice heard? How about we refuse to fall for the same old contrived methods of dividing us and distracting us? What if we turned off the mainstream media, actually did some reading and research about the realities of our current predicament and how we got here?

It’s all possible. In this age, at this time, the people can finally put an end to the carousel of control that the power brokers and self-proclaimed “money masters” have over us.

The truth is out there and it is so easily accessible and downloadable. So easily spread far and wide.

Ironically, it could very well be that this “False Hope Paradigm” agenda of control will boomerang.

Perhaps, just perhaps, we won’t be fooled again.

http://www.infowars.com/

http://antiwar.com/

http://www.lewrockwell.com/

http://www.911blogger.com/

http://whatreallyhappened.com/

http://www.youtube.com/tinfoilhatlady