Letter Never Sent

George sent me a good link today regarding reports of members of Al-Qaida and Hezbollah operating inside Ecuador. Wow, what a surprise the US would suggest something like that. Of course, it’s complete bullshit. If I knew Hezbollah worked for the US I might believe it. In this case, consider the source, Richard “the killer” Armitage. Richard Armitage, one of the many vermin currently infesting the highest levels of government, is most famously known for illegally selling missiles to Iranian terrorists during the Iran-Contra scandal. Maybe he does have a nose for where terrorists are hiding. He has, after all, done business with them in the past. Illegal arms sales are not his only sin. He was investigated by President Reagan’s Commission on Organized Crime (1984) for alleged links to gambling and prostitution.

The real reason islamic terrorists have suddenly been discovered in Ecuador has to do with the Ecuadorans lack of enthusiasm for Bush’s ‘war on terror’. They have balked at the US using airfields in Ecuador to prosecute ‘Operation Enduring Freedom’. If this keeps up you can expect a change in government in Ecuador.

1. More on the resurrected Iran-Contra gang:

   
   “Bringing all these people who are so associated with a polarised ideological crusade that committed human rights abuses threatens to rekindle that partisanship,” said Reed Brody, legal director of Human Rights Watch in New York. “What is very unfortunate is that history has revealed American complicity in serious atrocities in the 1980s and, in effect, all these nominations may serve to rewrite history and rehabilitate a very unfortunate period of our history.”
   

2. Pakistan’s ISI and 9-11: ISI is Pakistani Intelligence. Remember how Pakistan contributed significant aid to the Taliban? Turns out the head of ISI, Lt. General Mahmoud Ahmad, came to the US on September 4, 2001 (week before WTC attack) and met with high-level US officials.

   
   Mahmoud’s meetings on two separate missions with the Taliban were reported as a “failure.” Yet this “failure” to extradite Osama was part of Washington’s design, providing a pretext for a military intervention which was already in the pipeline. If Osama had been extradited, the main justification for waging a war “against international terrorism” would no longer hold. And the evidence suggests that this war had been planned well in advance of September 11, in response to broad strategic and economic objectives.
   

3. The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire
4. The Bush Family 1920 – 2001 Ongoing Connections To Terrorism And Killing
5. From The Guardian: Friends of terrorism Bush’s decision to bring back Otto Reich exposes the hypocrisy of the war against terror

Some stuff I’ve come across today as I pored over the day’s news.

1. Bush’s Betrayal of Democracy On the coup in Venezuela.
2. The CIA and the Venezuela Coup Hugo Chavez: A Servant Not Knowing his Place by William Blum.
   
   Consider Chavez’s crimes:

   Branding the US attacks on Afghanistan as “fighting terrorism with terrorism”, he demanded an end to “the slaughter of innocents”; holding up photographs of children killed in the American bombing attacks, he said their deaths had “no justification, just as the attacks in New York did not, either.” In response, the Bush administration temporarily withdrew its ambassador.

   Being very friendly with Fidel Castro and selling oil to Cuba at discount rates. …

   The United States has endeavored to topple numerous governments for a whole lot less.
   

3. The Mysterious Death Of An Enron Exec Conspiracy? Cover-up?
4. Russia Says It Uncovers CIA Spy Ring CIA trying to steal military technology. Is this the free market at work?
5. Tax Treaties With Small Nations Turn Into a New Shield for Profits Big business shell games…avoiding taxes while you get hit with them.
6. FBI Whistle-Blower on 9-11 Cover-Up?
7. Hamid Karzai, US stooge, heads to Rome to retrieve former Afghan king. Karzai trying to save doomed puppet government. I’m impressed by the independence of the Afghan people. I guess it comes from living in such a harsh land.

With all this crap with the US and the ‘war against terror’, and with the ludicrous foreign policy of the US it might be worth reading ‘War is a Racket’ by General Smedley Butler once more.

To summarize: Three steps must be taken to smash the war racket.

We must take the profit out of war.

We must permit the youth of the land who would bear arms to decide whether or not there should be war.

We must limit our military forces to home defense purposes.

The US is building air bases around Iraq in advance of their plans for invasion. Why doesn’t the US declare war any more? War language is invoked, but it is never formally declared. I don’t get it.

This has been a pretty good week for news, what with the Bloomberg/NORML thing and now this article:

Copyright bill universally rejected

Washington — A digital-copyright bill introduced in the U.S. Senate last month has inspired howls of protest from consumers and high-tech firms who say it could slow technological advances and dictate how consumers listen to music or watch videos at home.

Well connected lobbyists and everyday users alike have flooded Congress with faxes and e-mail over the past several weeks to lodge complaints against the bill, which would prevent new computers, CD players and other consumer-electronics devices from playing unauthorized movies, music and other digital media files.

Sen. Ernest Hollings’ bill is backed by media firms such as The Walt Disney Co. These companies fear fast Internet connections and an array of digital devices such as MP3 players and CD burners will encourage consumers to seek free copies of hit singles and new movies.

Continue reading →

From National Resources Defense Council:

Confidential Papers Show Exxon Hand in White House Move to Oust Top Scientist from International Global Warming Panel

Continue reading →

Looking at this site it appears that most prominent Republicans were too good to serve their country in the military. That goes for our asshole-in-chief. Hypocrite assholes.

From MSNBC:

Economists have known for a long time that it pays to be tall. Multiple studies have found that an extra inch of height can be worth an extra $1,000 a year or so in wages, after controlling for education and experience. If you’re 6 feet tall, you probably earn about $6,000 more than the equally qualified 5-foot-6-inch shrimp down the hall.

(Note: I fucking lost my previous version of this entry while I was working on it) Secretary of State, Colin Powell, found time in his busy schedule to stop by the annual meeting of the Trilateral Commission to give a private off-the-record talk.

Delivering unprepared and off-the-record remarks, the secretary gave a review of the problems facing the Western world and discussed some details of the Mideast tour, the commission member said.

However, several members who attended the secretary’s speech declined to provide specifics of Powell’s remarks. …

In the commission’s 29-year-history, such discussions have remained closed to the public and all remarks made by speakers are off-the-record

So, essentially a bunch of unelected, unaccountable elitists get to meet privately with a senior member of our ‘elected’ government and we don’t get the privilege of knowing what exactly they’re discussing.

While I was at the Trilateral Commission’s official website I noticed that the former North American Chairman is Paul A. Volker. This is the same Paul A. Volker who is currently trying to help Arthur Andersen with their criminal problems having been caught cooking the books for Enron. Paul A. Volker, in addition to being a trilateralist, is also a former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Does that seem a little improper? You didn’t hear nothing, bub! Keep moving!

The Trilateral Commission has an interesting story behind it.

The Trilateral Commission was established in 1973. Its founder and primary financial angel was international financier, David Rockefeller, longtime chairman of the Rockefeller family-controlled Chase Manhattan Bank and undisputed overlord of his family’s global corporate empire.

Rockefeller’s idea for establishing the commission emerged after he had read a book entitled Between Two Ages written by an Establishment scholar, Prof. Zbigniew Brzezinski of Columbia University.

In his book Brzezinski proposed a vast alliance between North America, Western Europe and Japan. According to Brzezinski, changes in the modern world required it.

“Resist as it might,” Brzezinski wrote elsewhere, “the American system is compelled gradually to accommodate itself to this emerging international context, with the U.S. government called upon to negotiate, to guarantee, and, to some extent, to protect the various arrangements that have been contrived even by private business.”

In other words, it was necessary for the international upper class to band together to protect its interests, and to ensure, in the developed nations, that political leaders were brought to power who would ensure that the global financial interests (of the Rockefellers and the other ruling elites) would be protected over those of the hoi polloi.

• List of Members of Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission: I’m not sure how up to date this is.
• Trilateral Commission Books Yes, they have books. Might be worth a read to see what they’re advocating. Note: while I was checking out this book summary I noticed this passage which is interesting in relation to our government’s policy towards Afghanistan: The book includes chapters on energy policies in North America, Europe, and Japan; energy investment in Russia, Central Asia, and the Caucasus; and the energy dynamics of rapidly industrializing countries, particularly in Asia. Central Asia is exactly where the US has taken the ‘war against terror’. It is an area which western business would love to get their mitts on and there is a power vaccuum there which the US would like to fill. Look at who they’ve installed in Afghanistan, ex-Unocal employee Hamid Karzai. While else would they invade Afghanistan when all of the bombers of the WTC were Saudis?