Religion itself is the fount of most evil

"Everyone is being blamed, from the obvious villainous duo of George W Bush and Tony Blair, to the inaction of Muslim “communities”. But it has never been clearer that there is only one place to lay the blame and it has ever been thus. The cause of all this misery, mayhem, violence, terror and ignorance is of course religion itself, and if it seems ludicrous to have to state such an obvious reality, the fact is that the government and the media are doing a pretty good job of pretending that it isn’t so.

Bush’s fundamentalist Christian insanity seems temporarily forgotten, and there is much talk of moderate Islam as if this is a jolly good thing, when in fact, in tandem with all other world religions, very much including Bush’s, it is a Dark Ages nonsense that should, of course, be tolerated and its adherents protected and permitted to practice it peacefully, but falls a very long way from meriting respect. The age of enlightenment freed reasoning humans from the shackles of crudely hewn anthropomorphic gods, leaving these man-made deities to serve those who wished to keep them alive for the purposes of comforting self-delusion, social control – particularly the control of women – and the validation of power, violence and aggression."

Let the Reframing Begin

Remember when you first heard the phrase “weapons of mass destruction”, and then WMD? I can’t remember exactly when it was either, but when I first heard it I felt it was a clever “framing” which would eventually lead to deception. What followed was a series of lies relating to these WMD which were used to rationalize an elective war.

When the phrase “War on Terror” got started, I thought it was just another American “War on X”. Poverty, Drugs, etc. Everyone should have known you can’t have a war on a tactic. But Bush insisted. And now the reframing has begun. I wonder why?

WASHINGTON, July 25 - The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, senior administration and military officials said Monday.

In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation's senior military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice.

Administration officials say that phrase may have outlived its usefulness, because it focused attention solely, and incorrectly, on the military campaign.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution." He said the threat instead should be defined as violent extremists, with the recognition that "terror is the method they use."

Although the military is heavily engaged in the mission now, he said, future efforts require "all instruments of our national power, all instruments of the international communities' national power." The solution is "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military," he concluded.

Administration and Pentagon officials say the revamped campaign has grown out of meetings of President Bush's senior national security advisers that began in January, and it reflects the evolution in Mr. Bush's own thinking nearly four years after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mr. Rumsfeld spoke in the new terms on Friday when he addressed an audience in Annapolis, Md., for the retirement ceremony of Adm. Vern Clark as chief of naval operations. Mr. Rumsfeld described America's efforts as it "wages the global struggle against the enemies of freedom, the enemies of civilization."

The shifting language is one of the most public changes in the administration's strategy to battle Al Qaeda and its affiliates, and it tracks closely with Mr. Bush's recent speeches emphasizing freedom, democracy and the worldwide clash of ideas.

"It is more than just a military war on terror," Steven J. Hadley, the national security adviser, said in a telephone interview. "It's broader than that. It's a global struggle against extremism. We need to dispute both the gloomy vision and offer a positive alternative."

Could it be because you can lose a war? but a "struggle" goes on and on....

Pants on Fire

From the Ironic Times

honesty

The Crookeder Crook

Nixon was a small-minded man with a complex of problems that lead him to criminal behavior and his downfall. Nixon was a crook.

Bush is a small-minded man with a complex of problems that lead him to self-destructive behavior, but he wants to bring us along with him. Bush is a sociopath, and much more dangerous.

As usual, the Daily Kos nails it.

"There is no ethic, law, decency or national interest that trumps the political fortunes and powers of the GOP in Rove World. Indeed, in that sense, this is the most corrupt Administration since Nixon. Unfortunately, unlike the Nixon Administration, it appears that there is and was not one competent official involved in GOVERNING rather than politics in the Bush Administration. This combination of incompetence and lack of respect for law, ethic, truth and decency has proven a disastrous combination, leading to the worst administration in American history. And I say this without hyperbole."

Bush is going down! (or am I dreaming?)

Leave Rove Alone

Many are calling for the resignation or firing of Karl Rove. I say we leave him alone as he is one of the keystones of the Bush administration and will bring the whole sordid mess down when he is indicted. Fitzpatrick, the Special Prosecutor, is carefully building a case much larger the Valerie Plame outing. His findings will reveal the entire story of how we were lied to in order to convince us that the war in Iraq was necessary. As Andrea Mitchell said this morning on the Imus show, “how do you spell impeachment?”

Whose Last Throes?

Allawi: this is the start of civil war

Hala Jaber, Amman

IRAQ’S former interim prime minister Iyad Allawi has warned that his country is facing civil war and has predicted dire consequences for Europe and America as well as the Middle East if the crisis is not resolved.

“The problem is that the Americans have no vision and no clear policy on how to go about in Iraq,” said Allawi, a long-time ally of Washington.

In an interview with The Sunday Times last week as he visited Amman, the Jordanian capital, he said: “The policy should be of building national unity in Iraq. Without this we will most certainly slip into a civil war. We are practically in stage one of a civil war as we speak.”

Bali

Updated: 8:38 p.m. ET July 9, 2005
Associated Press

New York and Washington. Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, Madrid. And now London.
When will it end? Where will it all lead?

The experts aren’t encouraged. One prominent terrorism researcher sees the prospect of “endless” war. Adds the man who tracked Osama bin Laden for the CIA, “I don’t think it’s even started yet.”

An Associated Press survey of longtime students of international terrorism finds them ever more convinced, in the aftermath of London’s bloody Thursday, that the world has entered a long siege in a new kind of war. They believe that al-Qaida is mutating into a global insurgency, a possible prototype for other 21st-century movements, technologically astute, almost leaderless. And the way out is far from clear.

In fact, says Michael Scheuer, the ex-CIA analyst, rather than move toward solutions, the United States took a big step backward by invading Iraq.

The Mogambo Guru

You've got to read this guy for straight up analysis presented in a humorous style. Go Mogambo!

The Puke Point
by The Mogambo Guru
June 28, 2005


-I am in full lock-down mode here at the Mogambo Bunker, and I gotta tell ya that I look pretty sharp in my camouflage Speedo and these bandoliers of ammo across my chest. The reason that I am so frantic is that the growth in Total Fed Credit has gone to zero for over a month now. This is, for me, the ultimate in bad news.

The lack of growth in Fed Credit is bad news because, as Peter Zihlmann of P. Zihlmann Investments explains, "The present expansion is the longest running expansion on record. It has surpassed all other economic expansions before it. The driving force behind it is the rapid growth of the money supply and the explosion of credit that has accompanied it." Many people are saying that the money supply is anemic, too, but that is not exactly true. In fact, M3 has accelerated over the last month above its trend for the last few years, although the monetary base has pretty much leveled off.

And later…

And if that wasn't enough, in the last week foreigners have suddenly stopped buying our debt through their accounts at the Fed. And the banks have suddenly divested themselves of $74 billion in government debt. In one week! One! And the banks got rid of another $11.5 billion in "other securities", to boot!

And further on…

And so the people are upset? Hahahaha! The state has debased and destroyed their money, but they are not upset about that. The state has grown itself to be, literally, half the entire economy, but they are not upset about that. The state has now installed so many taxes on so many things that they have driven up prices, but they are not upset about that. The state has indebted every citizen alive, and citizens who are not even born yet, so heavily that the debt cannot ever be paid back, but they are not upset about that. The state has encouraged that all the retirement accounts of everyone be put into the stock and bond markets, and they have lost money for years, but they are not upset about that. The state has gradually eaten away at every liberty, piece by piece by piece, but they are not upset about that. They have allowed the Constitution to be gutted, bit by bit by bit, but they are not upset about that. But maybe force them to move out of their houses, and they are, all of a sudden, upset about that! Hahahaha!

Tech Note: Google Earth

You've got to try this out. Download the software and fly over your house.

"A 3D interface to the planet

Google Earth – Explore, Search and Discover

Want to know more about a specific location? Dive right in -- Google Earth combines satellite imagery, maps and the power of Google Search to put the world's geographic information at your fingertips.

Fly from space to your neighborhood. Type in an address and zoom right in. "

Another Peek at Peak Oil

I was getting ready to write an article about how I consistently make the mistake of being too early in my projections ( I thought the peak in the Denver real estate market was 2000 ). Then I ran across this article.

Oil 'will hit $100 by winter' Worst-ever crisis looms, says analyst

Surging demand to keep prices high
Heather Stewart, economics correspondent
Sunday July 3, 2005
The Observer

Oil prices could rocket to $100 within six months, plunging the world into an unprecedented fuel crisis, controversial Texan oil analyst Matt Simmons has warned.

After crude surged through $60 a barrel last week, nervous investors were pinning their hopes on a build-up in US oil-stocks to depress prices in the coming months.

But Simmons believes surging demand will keep prices bubbling well above $50. 'We could be at $100 by this winter. We have the biggest risk we have ever had of demand exceeding supply. We are now just about to face up to the biggest crisis we have ever had,' he said.

Please don't execute me for treason. It was only a little leak.

It's About Time

Some of us have been wondering when and if the Valerie Plame “outing” scandal was going to break. It looks like it is now beginning. Could Karl “Doughboy” Rove be the traitor, as we long suspected?

"Now that Time Inc. has turned over documents to federal court, revealing who its reporter, Matt Cooper, identified as his source in the Valerie Plame/CIA case, speculation runs rampant on the name of that source. Lawrence O'Donnell, senior MSNBC political analyst, now claims that at least two sources have confirmed that the name is--top White House mastermind Karl Rove.

What we're going to go to now in the next stage, when Matt Cooper's e-mails, within Time Magazine, are handed over to the grand jury--the ultimate revelation, probably within the week of who his source is.

"I know I'm going to get pulled into the grand jury for saying this but the source of...for Matt Cooper was Karl Rove, and that will be revealed in this document dump that Time magazine's going to do with the grand jury."

'Tis to Laugh

Every once in a while something astounding is actually funny. Click on title to watch the video of a very talented dog.

Deja Vu

Why does all of this talk about training the Iraqi forces seem so familiar?

Those of us old enough to remember the War in Vietnam can’t forget the constant talk back then that all we had to do was train up the South Vietnamese and then we could leave. Hahaha! Take a look at the time period on the cover of this book by Brigadier General James Lawton Collins, Jr.

And while we are on the topic, didn’t the Iraqis have a 400,000 man army before the first Gulf War?

British "Deep Throat"?

Apparently, we have to wait for the British “Deep Throat” to reveal the documents that prove Bush lied his way into the Iraq War. Of course we knew that already but more and more proof keeps leaking out of the Brit’s teapot.


The Sunday Times - Britain
June 12, 2005

Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’
by Michael Smith

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

“US plans assume, as a minimum, the use of British bases in Cyprus and Diego Garcia,” the briefing paper warned. This meant that issues of legality “would arise virtually whatever option ministers choose with regard to UK participation”.

The paper was circulated to those present at the meeting, among whom were Blair, Geoff Hoon, then defence secretary, Jack Straw, the foreign secretary, and Sir Richard Dearlove, then chief of MI6. The full minutes of the meeting were published last month in The Sunday Times.

The document said the only way the allies could justify military action was to place Saddam Hussein in a position where he ignored or rejected a United Nations ultimatum ordering him to co-operate with the weapons inspectors. But it warned this would be difficult.

“It is just possible that an ultimatum could be cast in terms which Saddam would reject,” the document says. But if he accepted it and did not attack the allies, they would be “most unlikely” to obtain the legal justification they needed.

The suggestions that the allies use the UN to justify war contradicts claims by Blair and Bush, repeated during their Washington summit last week, that they turned to the UN in order to avoid having to go to war. The attack on Iraq finally began in March 2003.

The briefing paper is certain to add to the pressure, particularly on the American president, because of the damaging revelation that Bush and Blair agreed on regime change in April 2002 and then looked for a way to justify it.

There has been a growing storm of protest in America, created by last month’s publication of the minutes in The Sunday Times. A host of citizens, including many internet bloggers, have demanded to know why the Downing Street memo (often shortened to “the DSM” on websites) has been largely ignored by the US mainstream media.

The White House has declined to respond to a letter from 89 Democratic congressmen asking if it was true — as Dearlove told the July meeting — that “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” in Washington.

The Downing Street memo burst into the mainstream American media only last week after it was raised at a joint Bush-Blair press conference, forcing the prime minister to insist that “the facts were not fixed in any shape or form at all”.

John Conyers, the Democratic congressman who drafted the letter to Bush, has now written to Dearlove asking him to say whether or not it was accurate that he believed the intelligence was being “fixed” around the policy. He also asked the former MI6 chief precisely when Bush and Blair had agreed to invade Iraq and whether it is true they agreed to “manufacture” the UN ultimatum in order to justify the war.

He and other Democratic congressmen plan to hold their own inquiry this Thursday with witnesses including Joe Wilson, the American former ambassador who went to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore for its nuclear weapons programme.

Bush Main Squeeze Provides 61% of Iraqi Suicide Bombers

"In a paper published in March, Reuven Paz, an Israeli expert on terrorism, analyzed the lists of jihadi dead. He found 154 Arabs killed over the previous six months in Iraq, 61 percent of them from Saudi Arabia, with Syrians, Iraqis and Kuwaitis together accounting for another 25 percent. He also found that 70 percent of the suicide bombers named by the Web sites were Saudi. In three cases, Paz found two brothers who carried out suicide attacks. Many of the bombers were married, well educated and in their late twenties, according to postings."

Wasn’t it weird how we knew who perpetuated 9/11 so soon after it happened? 15 of the 19 were Saudis and we flew the “good” Saudis out first? And Oh, I almost forgot, who financed George’s first oil company way back when? And that's just the tip of the oil berg.

Come on people, what is it going to take?

Dying Soldiers Shipped to Germany Not Counted

by Brian Harring, Domestic Intelligence Reporter

U.S. Military Personnel who died in German hospitals or en route to German hospitals have not previously been counted. They total about 6,210 as of 1 January, 2005.

The ongoing, underreporting of the dead in Iraq, is not accurate. The DoD is deliberately reducing the figures. A review of many foreign news sites show that actual deaths are far higher than the newly reduced ones. Iraqi civilian casualties are never reported but International Red Cross, Red Crescent and UN figures indicate that as of 1 January 2005, the numbers are just under 100,000.

Note: There is excellent reason to believe that the Department of Defense is deliberately not reporting a significant number of the dead in Iraq. We have received copies of manifests from the MATS that show far more bodies shipped into Dover AFP than are reported officially. The educated rumor is that the actual death toll is in excess of 7,000. Given the officially acknowledged number of over 15,000 seriously wounded, this elevated death toll is far more realistic than the current 1,400+ now being officially published. When our research is complete, and watertight, we will publish the results along with the sources.

In addition to the evident falsification of the death rolls, at least 5,500 American military personnel have deserted, most in Ireland but more have escaped to Canada and other European countries, none of whom are inclined to cooperate with vengeful American authorities. (See TBR News of 18 February for full coverage on the mass desertions)

This means that of the 158,000 U.S. military shipped to Iraq, 26,000 either deserted, were killed or seriously wounded. The DoD lists currently being very quietly circulated indicate almost 9,000 dead, over 16,000 seriously wounded and a large number of suicides, forced hospitalization for ongoing drug usage and sales, murder of Iraqi civilians and fellow soldiers , rapes, courts martial and so on – Brian Harring

War Criminals

So, what does it mean? It means that our president and all of his administration are war criminals. It's as simple as that. They lied to the American people, have killed and injured and traumatized thousands of American men and women doing their patriotic duty, killed at least 100,000 Iraqi civilians, destroyed Iraq's infrastructure and poisoned its environment, squandered billions and billions of our tax dollars, made a mockery of American integrity in the world, changed the course of history, tortured Iraqi prisoners, and bound us intractably to an insane situation that they have no idea how to fix because they had no plan, but greed and empire, in the first place.

What does it mean? It means that everyone in this administration should be impeached. It means that our Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins and our Congressmen Tom Allen and Mike Michaud should call for immediate impeachment. They were lied to by their president, voted for war, and are thus complicit in the multiply betrayals of the American people unless they stand up now for the truth.

Pot Calls on Kettle

SINGAPORE, Saturday, June 4 - Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in an unusually blunt public critique of China, said Saturday that Beijing's military spending threatened the delicate security balance in Asia and called for an emphasis instead on political freedom and open markets.

What I Think Is Going To Happen

Predicting the future is a fool’s game, and I have often been proven to be a fool, so I feel qualified to give it a whirl.

1. The price of gasoline is going to continue going up, with occasional gaps up and slower declines from time to time. As $3 and then $4 per gallon is approached, consumption will show a small but increasing decline. Conservation will catch on.

2. Commerce will contract during this decline as the cost of doing business for all oil driven enterprises, e.g. farming, transportation and plastics, increases and more companies go under.

3. Increased joblessness, homelessness, hopelessness, suicide rate, and crime, all as natural consequences of the noose tightening on the necks of the workers, with stagnant wage increases, and in many cases, wage decreases, as illegal aliens continue to flood into the US.

4. The price of gold will continue to try to go up, but will be held back by bullion banks and their cohorts at all nations’ central banks. To say that the gold market is rigged is to understate the case. Of course it’s rigged, that’s why they call it the central bank.

5. Eventually these banks will be unable to offset the rising demand. Gold will gap up in an eye-popping fashion. Silver will do the same, and eventually outpace gold in terms of percentage gain. The silver demand growth is much greater than that of gold and will continue to grow.

6. Electrical brown-outs and then rolling blackouts will increase, and become the norm in the US.

7. Housing prices will continue their slow slide down, foreclosures will jump (46% of mortgage holders have some form of Adjustable Rate Mortgage), and homes will be boarded up.

8. Eventually Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, and the Federal Pension Insurance Program will go under. Huge accounting “frauds” will be unearthed.

9. An event will occur which will be the tipping point of a major currency, financial and stock market crash; NASDAQ 800, DOW 4000. Even the hyper-hedgefunds will stop buying Treasuries.

10. This event will probably involve the global oil distribution network. Gasoline will gap up to $8 to $10 per gallon.

11. As petrochemical fertilizer becomes too expensive to use, The Great American Breadbasket will return to its original condition as The Great American Desert.

12. Global delivery of goods to the fat American consumer will cease. Wal-Mart will collapse as Chinese goods become very expensive, especially when the remimbi is un-pegged from the dollar. (Are the Chinese waiting to unpeg as the coup de gras to the crashing dollar?

13. The dollar decline will have continued throughout this unfolding, and inflation will have jumped up at some point, prompting the Fed to jump interest rates to 1980’s levels, and higher.
World-wide recession, and then depression, will set in.

14. Today’s third-world countries will suffer less shock, as they are less dependent upon oil.

15. Regional wars will continue and increase.

16. The “Only Superpower in the World” will be stretched so thin it will collapse, as long supply lines become untenable. Long before this, however, the draft will have been reinstated and the people will take to the streets.

17. As food disappears from the grocery store shelves, riots break out in the cities, police attempt but are unable to quell, and there is no National Guard to call in as they are all abroad fighting the Oil Wars.

18. People begin to flee the cities as the store of resources is used up.

19. Those currently living the furthest from the high-rise high-tech centers will fare the best. Communities currently off the grid will thrive.

20. The human and domestic animal die-off will begin. Corporate enterprise will cease.

21. High level organization will cease and power will descend to the tribal level. Warlords with gangs will roam freely.

22. Those currently living with the land and off the grid will have to organize to protect their holdings. Trespassers will be shot.

23. Those with survival skills will survive. Self-sufficiency will be key.

24. All solar panels will wear out.

25. Centralized electricity generation and distribution will cease.

26. Globalization will cease.

27. The 100-year Fossil Fuel Frenzy will come to an end.

28. Global warming will continue, sea levels will rise up to 19 feet, but the natural balance will out. This will take hundreds of years, but life on earth will continue and thrive.

29. Off the grid will be the norm, as the grid will devolve.

30. Humans who band together in tribes will rediscover their humanity. The extended family will form the basis for the tribes.

31. All knowledge will not be lost, and we will not all live in caves.

32. Barter and trade will be the standard, but gold and silver money will still be currency. US dollars will be tinder.

33. Just as all other civilizations have failed, so will ours. What evolves to replace it will be interesting, but the Fossil Fuel Frenzy civilization was a one-off phenomenon, and will not reoccur.

34. As 90% of the humans die, peace and tranquility will eventual come to the planet. The human cancer with its uncontrolled growth will be defeated. Humans will again be part of nature. Tribal war will become ceremonial, and the coup stick will be popular.

34. It's all good...except for one thing. Depleted uranium. The entire globe will suffer "gulf war syndrome" due to the 2000 tons of atomized uranium placed in the atmosphere by the US during this war.

35. Cancer rates will climb to 50% by 2020.

36. Most babies born will die from their deformities. Those that do not may have evolved immunity.

We can only hope.

Note: These are not my original ideas. Original sources are contained in past blogs.