Okay. So, 170,000 government employees were moved into this new ‘Homeland Security Department’. As far as I can tell the only thing new to this is a stupid Orwellian name and the fact that Bush effectively succeeded in stripping 170,000 people and an entire department of its union rights and protections. Bravo, you waterhead.
Monthly Archives: July 2002
27
Jul 02
Cheney should be dope slapped
A courier was threatened with arrest by SS (Secret Service) thugs for trying to serve Vice President Dick Cheney with a lawsuit accusing him of defrauding investors while at the helm of oil giant Halliburton. Cheney should be pilloried in the public square while wearing a tricornered hat. Do we even have public squares anymore? Ok, forget it. From Yahoo News:
Judicial Watch said its process server went the White House on July 22 to deliver the lawsuit to the vice president, who was chief executive of Halliburton from 1995 to 2000. But the group said the courier was turned away by the Secret Service and allegedly threatened with arrest.
“We have served many a lawsuit on Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Hillary Clinton when they were in the White House … Never before have our process servers been threatened with arrest,” said Larry Klayman, who serves as chairman and general counsel of the 8-year-old legal foundation that has filed a number of highly publicized lawsuits against government officials.
I’m surprised Judicial Watch has been this dogged. I admire their stance as it puts millions of dollars in Republican donations in jeopardy.
27
Jul 02
Is bin Laden dead? Does it matter?
‘Unnamed sources’ and ‘senior U.S. intelligence officials’ are now saying Osama bin Laden is dead. Does this matter? Why are they saying this now? What’s important is what our own tax-paid terrorists want you to think. Speculating whether or not bin Laden is dead only serves craven propaganda purposes. For one, declaring bin Laden must be dead because basically ‘we haven’t seen him’ diminishes his power to those that support him and his goal of disrupting US hegemony and global domination through sabotage. It also serves as a goad to provoke bin Laden or Al Quaeda to make a statement or to appear to dispel the rumors of his demise. The fact is, the US government doesn’t know shit. They like to appear as if they do, but as long as the money keeps rolling in and they can continue with their charades it doesn’t really matter to them. Hell, even if they knew for a fact that he was dead I’m pretty sure they would keep that information to themselves as long as it serves their purposes. As long as Americans can personify the ‘enemy’ and ‘evil’ they can be more easily manipulated. The same thing happened in the Gulf War with Hussein. Who was Saddam to 99% of Americans before 1991? Nothing. It wasn’t until we needed a strawman that we built him up into the big bad wolf, the Arab Hitler with his big, bushy moustache. Of course, no one thinks its significant that he was a big bud of the CIA and the US for decades. I’m just tired of the bullshit. People have such short memories.
27
Jul 02
New World Order
- US Fomenting Coup Against Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah? US must keep their vassals in line by hook or crook.
- U.S. Prepares to Expand Cuban Prison No habeas corpus. Extra-constitutional. No due process. Torture?
- Spain welcomes proposal to turn British base into NATO facility Someone tell me what the purpose of NATO is?
- Building puppet proxy army for the new American colony Afghanistan
27
Jul 02
Post-war murder syndrome?
In Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, there have been 2 murders and 2 murder/suicides by soldiers of the US Special Forces within the past six weeks. Each case involved the murder of a military wife at the hands of her husband. Can this be what happens when you spend years molding men into cold-blooded killing machines, human weapons? Once you pass the point of justifying the taking of human life for purposes of war doesn’t that make it easier to justify it further? The Army wants to make sure we understand that this is an anomaly. Any bloodthirst is, of course, channeled cleanly toward enemies of the United States.
26
Jul 02
US Torture
In the previous entry I linked to a story regarding the US’s opposition to UN rules on torture. Today there was a story in the Christian Science Monitor about how the US ships ‘terror’ suspects to countries like Egypt, Syria, and Jordan who have no problem getting their hands a little dirty. Forget about due process, forget about habeas corpus. These guys will attach car batteries to your nipples and get the information they’re looking for. It’s shameful that our government would sanction this type of behavior.
Since 9/11, according to diplomats, US officials, and press reports, several suspects have quietly been detained and sent to the Middle East:
• Abu Zubaydah, a top Al Qaeda commander, was arrested in Pakistan in March, and moved to an “undisclosed location” by the US, possibly the Middle East.
• Muhammad Saad Iqbal Madni, a Pakistani arrested in Indonesia in January, was bundled aboard a CIA Gulfstream and flown from Jakarta to Egypt.
• Mahmoud bin Ahmad Assegaf, a Kuwaiti citizen and an alleged Al Qaeda financier, was arrested by the Indonesians, and then deported – also at the request of the CIA. The Kuwaiti embassy in Indonesia says it knows nothing about the case, and that it wasn’t informed that a Kuwaiti citizen had been detained.
• Mohammad Haydar Zammar, a Syrian-born German believed to have connections to the 9/11 hijackers, was detained in Morocco in June, and reportedly, the CIA arranged for him to be sent to Syria.
• In October, a Yemeni student, Jamil Qasim Saeed Mohammed, wanted in connection with the bombing of the USS Cole was turned over to the US by Pakistan and was flown to Jordan on a US-registered Gulfstream jet.
• Jabarah Mohamed Mansur, allegedly involved in an attempt to bomb the US and Israeli Embassies in Singapore, is currently being held and interrogated in Oman.
Egypt, like the US, won’t officially comment on the detainees. Perhaps because these deportations are not done through official channels or according to extradition treaties. But privately US officials confirm the practice. And Ahmed Moussa, an internal security correspondent for the state-supported Al-Ahram newspaper group in Cairo, also confirms the detentions.
We’re talking about regimes that use torture! Torture! That’s fucked up.
26
Jul 02
Nuts
United States loses fight to block U.N. vote on torture convention. Of course, the US has been sending ‘terror’ suspects to third countries to be tortured for information so it’s not surprising they would try to block this.
25
Jul 02
Unsent Letters
I really enjoyed Veronica’s site, Unsent Letters, again today. Curiously, our sites have similar names and we’re both Texans. That’s pretty strange.
23
Jul 02
Hunt for bin Laden goes online
Cyber-pigs and cyber-feds are upturning online stones looking for bin Laden. Forgive me if I’m a little skeptical but I really don’t see bin Laden inserting steganographic secrets in porno as this article suggests. Can’t they at least show us some actual examples or evidence of this? I’m tired of hearing all these stories and news bites from nameless ‘counterterrorism experts’ and ‘unnamed government sources’. The fact is, if the government actually knew anything they would do something and parade this guy on TV for propaganda purposes.