FASCISM IS RIGHT NOW UP FOR A VOTE. Get off yer ass.

The end of Free Speech in America has arrived at our doorstep. It’s a new law called the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, and it is worded in a clever way that could allow the U.S. government to arrest and incarcerate any individual who speaks out against the Bush Administration, the war on Iraq, the Department of Homeland Security or any government agency (including the FDA). The law has already passed the House on a traitorous vote of 405 to 6, and it is now being considered in the Senate where a vote is imminent. All over the internet, intelligent people who care about freedom are speaking out against this extremely dangerous law: Philip Giraldi at the Huffington Post, Declan McCullagh at CNET’s News.com, Kathryn Smith at OpEdNews.com, and of course Alex Jones at PrisonPlanet.com

This bill is the beginning of the end of Free Speech in America. If it passes, all the information sources you know and trust could be shut down and their authors imprisoned. NewsTarget could be taken offline and I could be arrested as a “terrorist.” Jeff Rense at www.Rense.com could be labeled a “terrorist” and arrested. Byron Richards, Len Horowitz, Paul Craig Roberts, Greg Palast, Ron Paul and even Al Gore could all be arrested, silenced and incarcerated. This is not an exaggeration. It is a literal reading of the law, which you can check yourself here: http://thomas.loc.gov/home/gpoxmlc110/h1955_rfs.xml

The bill states:

‘…ideologically based violence’ means the use, planned use, or threatened use of force or violence by a group or individual to promote the group or individual’s political, religious, or social beliefs…

Note that this means the “planned use of force to promote a political or social belief” would be considered an act of terrorism. This all hinges on the definition of “force,” of course. Based on the loose use of logic in Washington these days, and the slippery interpretation of the meaning of words, “force” could mean:

• A grassroots campaign to barrage Congress with faxes
• A non-violent street protest
• A letter-writing campaign that deluges the Senate with too much mail
• A sit-in protest that blocks access to a business or organization
• A grassroots e-mail campaign that overloads the e-mail servers of any government department or agency

You get the idea. “Force” could be defined as practically anything. And since the “planned use of force” would be considered a criminal act of terrorism, anyone who simply thinks about a grassroots action campaign would be engaged in terrorist acts.

If you stopped someone on the street and handed them a Bible, for example, this could be considered an act of terrorism (“…use of force to promote the individual’s religious beliefs…”)

If you sent a barrage of angry letters to Washington about global warming and the destruction of the environment by the U.S. military, this could also be considered an act of terrorism (“…to promote the individual’s political beliefs…”)

If you believe in same-sex marriage and you wrote a letter threatning a sit-in protest in front of your state’s capitol building, this could also be considered an act of terrorism, even if you never carried it out! (“…planned use of force to promote a social belief…”)

The United States is on the fast track to fascism, and the Congress is working right alongside this nation’s traitorous leaders to criminalize any thoughts, words or speeches that disagree with current government policies regarding war, terrorism, domestic surveillance and civil liberties. Simply speaking out against the war on Iraq could soon be labeled a crime. Merely thinking thoughts against the war on Iraq could be considered a criminal act.

Must-see video: Naomi Wolf’s lecture on

 10 steps to fascism

There’s a video lecture you simply MUST watch. It’s by Naomi Wolf, author of The End of America. She covers this topic with great elegance and a deep understanding of history. See her video on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjALf12PAWc

Click here to see her book on Amazon.com.

In her lecture and book, Naomi reveals the ten steps to fascist, then reveals how the United States of America is pursuing all ten! This S.1959 legislation, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, represents one of the ten steps to achieve a fascist state!

It is designed to squash all opposition to the State’s ongoing march towards blatant fascism, where secret police and secret prisons dominate the law enforcement landscape, stripping U.S. citizens of all civil liberties and Constitutional protections.

Thoughtcrimes are about to become a reality in the United States of America, and Congress is pushing this through as quickly as possible so that each individual member of Congress can claim that he or she is “against terrorism.” But this bill doesn’t merely target terrorism: It targets anyone who speaks or even thinks thoughts against the U.S. federal government.

With this bill, the U.S. government is officially labeling the People of the United States as criminals. It is drawing a line in the sand and stating that from now on, it’s the Government vs. the People.

If we don’t stop this bill from becoming law, we are lost as a nation.

There is no turning back from tyranny once the government turns its own citizens into criminals, enforcing only the thoughts, ideas, words and speeches that it approves or tolerates. Everything is at stake here!

Take action now, or lose your freedoms

 forever

If you live in the U.S., it is urgent that you call your senators right now and voice your strong opposition against this extremely dangerous law.

Here are the phone numbers for the U.S. Senate switchboard:

1-877-851-6437
1-800-833-6354
1-888-355-3588
1-866-220-0044
1-866-808-0065
1-877-762-8762
1-866-340-9281
1-800-862-5530

How to do this:

1) Make sure you know the names of your Senators.
2) Call the U.S. Senate switchboard using one of the numbers above.
3) Ask to speak to the offices of your Senators.
4) Tell them you are strongly opposed to S. 1959, the Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
5) Ask for their fax number.
6) Follow up your phone call with a written, signed letter that you fax to your Senators.

Stopping this bill from becoming law is the single most important thing all Americans can do right now. If this becomes law, all free speech about health freedom, the crimes of the FDA, the crimes of the Bush Administration, America’s role in global warming and any other topics could all be criminalized. YOU could be labeled a terrorist, kidnapped by government thugs, taken from your home, thrown in a secret prison, denied access to legal representation, denied due process and essentially “disappeared” into a system of such corruption and evil that it now begins to blatantly mirror Nazi Germany.

Think it couldn’t happen here? It’s happening right now! This is exactly how it happened in Nazi Germany. First, burn the Reichstag and blame it on the “enemy.” Pass new police state laws. Disarm the people. Spread fear. Erect secret prisons and secret police. Call anyone who disagrees with you a “traitor.” Control the mainstream media. Sound familiar? This is all happening right now in the United States of Amerika, and if we don’t work to stop it, this nation will rapidly devolve into a fascist police state where no one is truly free.

We are but a few small steps away from it right now. All it would take is one dirty bomb in a major U.S. city. Bush would declare Martial Law and take over the National Guard. Troops on the streets. Anyone who writes a blog against the government would be arrested. Authors of “alternative” books would be kidnapped and have their books burned on the street. It could all happen at the stroke of a pen. The infrastructure for tyranny is in place right now, just waiting to be invoked.

Our best weapons: Non-violent protest

 and speaking the truth

How can we fight back against this onslaught of tyranny? We must use what remaining free speech freedoms we have right now to alert our fellow citizens to what’s happening. We must rise up and tell the truth while urging our representatives in Washington to resist the temptation to vote for more “anti-terrorism” legislation that only works to enslave the American people.

We must use our phones, faxes, emails and blogs to rally our friends, family members and anyone who will listen to oppose these police state laws, and we must organize mass (peaceful) protests against this government that is attempting to marginalize the rights and freedoms of our People.

We must not be lulled into a sense of false security by the purveyors of hatred and fear — the Sean Hannitys, Rush Limbaughs and Bill O’Reillys of the world. Instead, we must listen to the voices of freedom. In terms of the upcoming election for U.S. President, there is only one candidate that actually believes in freedom: Ron Paul. He needs your support to win: www.RonPaul2008.com

All the other candidates are nothing more than tyrants of different political affiliations. Ron Paul is the only candidate that truly understands the fundamentals of freedom. That’s why he’s the only real choice for our next President. Can you imagine what Hillary Clinton would do with the police state powers that Bush has now created? That’s the danger of all laws that centralize power in Washington: It’s not necessarily what today’s President will do with them, but what some future President will do with them.

That’s why it’s never good enough to say, “Well, we intend to only apply these laws to terrorists and not to U.S. citizens at home.” That may be the intention right NOW, but virtually all such laws creep into areas of enforcement for which they were never intended. Just look at the application of RICO laws which were originally designed to fight organized crime operations but are now applied to virtually anyone (and yet they are never applied to Big Pharma, which operates almost exactly like organized crime!). All these anti-terrorism laws run the danger of expanding in enforcement to the point where they are applied against the People of this country. At first, it’s only illegal for “terrorists” to think thought crimes, but before long, it’s illegal for anyone to think those same thoughts. That when the domestic arrests of authors, journalists, bloggers and thought leaders will kick off, and the country will plunge itself into outright tyrannical fascism.

Again, we’re on the track right now. This is happening, folks. You’re LIVING through an amazing chapter of history right now. You’re actually witnessing the downfall of a free nation and the rise of a superpower fascist state. You’re actually part of it.

When it’s all over, will you look back and realize you did nothing? Or will you now take a stand against tyranny and oppose these dangerous laws and lawmakers who threaten the Constitutional freedoms of you and your children?

###

About the author: Mike Adams is a natural health researcher and author with a strong interest in personal health, the environment and the power of nature to help us all heal He has authored more than 1,500 articles and dozens of reports, guides and interviews on natural health topics, reaching millions of readers with information that is saving lives and improving personal health around the world. Adams is an honest, independent journalist and accepts no money or commissions on the third-party products he writes about or the companies he promotes.  www.newstarget.com

Saudi’s are Bush’s best friends- BUT – those people beat young women to death.

Not to mention the fact that he claims we must hold Iran in check is because they are evil suppresssors of the people.  This, as his best Saudi Buds are preparing to stand by and watch a young women, RAPE VICTIM, be beaten to a pulp. These are the same Suadi’s who come to KenneBUNK PORT to wine and dine with the Bush’s.  WE ARE SO STUPID !

 I don’t know about you, but this thing with the girl, is the nail in the coffin for the Saudi’s. I think we need to rethink our overall plan. We need better, cleaner friends.

RON PAUL

Ron Paul fyi BE INFORMED – BUT I STILL LIKE THE GUY FOR THE JOB WE NEED NOW. By Joshua Holland, AlterNet Posted on November 29, 2007, Printed on November 29, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/69139/ Ron Paul has arrived, thanks in large part to the unrivaled intensity of his supporters. In the weeks since his dedicated — some say obsessive — online army organized a “money bomb” that delivered over $4 million in a single day to Paul’s war chest, his quixotic campaign has gotten a boatload of media attention. It is officially the quirky, nontraditional candidate story of the 2008 race. If the campaign pulls off the $10 million “tea party” planned for Dec. 16, the spotlight on Paul will get hotter still. With that attention comes a new level of scrutiny, as one would expect. But most of the media’s analyses don’t put the Paul “sensation” into a larger context. Often missing is the degree to which Paul’s popularity is related to Washington’s structural inability to handle the issues most important to American voters — a flaw that extends to the corporate media as well. Lacking that context, the criticism flung at the Paul campaign is superficial and distracting. Progressive bloggers have started to take notice of the insurgent campaign as well, and there’s been a spasm of critical posts slicing and dicing the Ron Paul experience. Unfortunately, too many of them have focused not on Paul’s record, his beliefs or why he’s become such a phenomenon in the race for the White House, but on his supporters, who include a nasty little assortment of feverish nativists, half-baked ultranationalists, white supremacists, New World Order conspiracy theorists, etc., in addition to the (no doubt far more numerous) ordinary, pissed-off patriotic Americans who are attracted to his candidacy. So we’ve recently discovered that Ron Paul is backed by: people minting their own “cuckoo bananas money” and members of an identity theft ring. We’ve learned that “Paul has the support of David Duke” and Stormfront has a YouTube audio commercial up supporting Paul. Also supporting him are the “Patriot” movement “nutjobs with guns and anti-government leanings” who were made famous by homegrown terrorist Timothy McVeigh. He’s loved by the owner of a Nevada whorehouse and has even gotten the nod from Hutton Gibson, Mel’s wingnut father and the man who taught him everything he ever needed to know about those damn Jews. To which I can only say: OK, folks, we get it. If we accept guilt by association as a reasonable political argument, then Paul is as guilty as they come. But not directly so. As the Wall Street Journal pointed out: The Paul campaign has a hands-off approach when it comes to supporters’ activities and political backgrounds. While grateful for the money, aides insist they aren’t responsible for what supporters do online. “We don’t know who a lot of these people are,” says Jesse Benton, a campaign spokesman … “Sometimes Ron Paul supporters get a little overpassionate and maybe a little more shrill than what some might like,” Mr. Benton says. Of course, what’s good for the goose is good for the gander, and many of the bloggers making hay out of Paul’s less savory supporters are happy to slam what the Clintons famously called the “politics of personal destruction” — the tactic, popular on the right, of turning various public figures who support Democrats into pernicious liberal strawmen whose excesses are supposedly evidence of how out of touch progressives are. But more than that, the typical analysis misses the fundamental dynamic driving Paul’s popularity. His campaign occupies that political space where right- and left-populism intersect, and that space exists only because there are significant areas of national policy where neither of the two parties, nor any of the “mainstream” candidates, have shown any willingness to represent their constituents. Polls show that a majority of Americans want a withdrawal from Iraq, but none of the leading candidates are calling for a complete pull-out. Three-quarters of Americans oppose a permanent military presence there, yet the same number believe that the United States would not withdraw even if asked by the Iraqi “government.” A majority oppose the White House’s claim that it can torture whom it likes, but the Democrat-controlled Congress confirmed an attorney general who wouldn’t say that water-boarding — prosecuted as torture by military courts since the Spanish-American War — is illegal. More Americans think K Street’s “trade” deals hurt Americans than believe they help, but among the first acts of the new Congress was to strike a new “grand bargain” with Bush on trade. Voters want to see movement on healthcare, immigration, retirement security and job outsourcing, and on all of these issues the Big Money candidates in both parties, with the possible exception of John Edwards, either stand moot or offer fluffy platitudes about change while ferociously defending the status quo. Ron Paul is a reactionary, yes, but he speaks to these and other ignored issues — speaks to voters’ growing disenfranchisement and lack of trust in government, to their fears and insecurities about the future — in a way that the rest of the field won’t, and any analysis of the Ron Paul phenomenon that doesn’t acknowledge that reality misses the heart of the story. Stick to the record Ron Paul is running for president, and I’m not suggesting that he’s somehow above criticism — an idea that Paul’s supporters often seem to embrace. His is a brand of politics well outside the American mainstream, and that’s revealed, clearly, in his legislative record. That record, and Ron Paul’s governing philosophy, provide more than enough grist for the critical mill — there’s no need to indulge in cheap shots. Paul’s libertarian impulses don’t appear to extend to the issue of reproductive choice — he’s introduced four bills, including a Constitutional amendment, defining human life as beginning with conception. That doesn’t make him a run-of-the-mill, anti-choice conservative; the L.A. Times described the measure as part of an aggressive tactic “which could effectively outlaw all abortions and some birth control methods.” Some activists say they are fed up with incremental steps — and are not interested in waiting years, or possibly decades, for a more conservative court to revisit Roe. Instead, they are out to change the legal status of embryos in hopes of forcing the Supreme Court to ban abortion. “The concept that we’re going to elect judges who will change everything has failed,” said Brian Rohrbough, a former president of Colorado Right to Life. “The logical thing is to start with personhood. … It’s the only legitimate tactic that does not involve a compromise.” The Times story noted that “every year since [Roe v. Wade], members of Congress have introduced a bill to [define human life as beginning with conception], but they never got anywhere.” On several occasions, that member of Congress was none other than Dr. Ron Paul. Paul’s proposed a number of court-stripping measures, shutting the courthouse door to discrimination suits based on sexual discrimination; he’s tried to prohibit the government from mandating a minimum wage; he’s tried to repeal the Davis-Bacon Act, which guarantees that workers on federal projects be paid a prevailing wage, and the Copeland Act, which bars kick-backs on federal projects; he has proposed freezing Social Security benefit levels and making the program fully optional, which would effectively destroy it; he has opposed measures that promote more voter participation; he would repeal key parts of American anti-trust law, gutting it; he’s tried to deauthorize most federal agencies’ regulatory powers; he’s tried to eliminate all affirmative action programs; he’s proposed altering the 14th Amendment to prohibit the children of immigrants from gaining citizenship; he’s proposed eliminating or gutting a variety of environmental legislation; he’s tried to kill the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty and submitted legislation that would pull the United States out of the United Nations 12 different times; he has tried to eradicate the Department of Education, offered legislation to end federal involvement in educating kids; and he has proposed, at various times, the abolition of most taxes on wealth as well as income and the establishment of a flat tax. All of this is legislation that he not only supported, but proposed or co-sponsored. There are also legitimate concerns about some ugly racist stereotypes that were included in a newsletter that Paul sent out in the early 1990s. Paul claims he didn’t write the words, but they were included in a publication called The Ron Paul Political Report and his supporters’ insistence that (a) he knew nothing about the content of The Ron Paul Political Report and (b) he shouldn’t be held responsible for the contents of The Ron Paul Political Report ring hollow. (As a New Yorker myself, nobody can convince me that Rudolph Giuliani isn’t the really hardcore racist in this race — he’s just a hell of a lot smoother about covering up the fact than are people like Paul.) Paul says that he’d slash the size of government by 40 percent, a dramatic restructuring by any account. As I’ve written before, people may respond positively to the idea of limited government in the abstract, but when it comes to specifics most Americans love big government and most (though certainly not all) of what it does. They want a government that will educate their children and put out forest fires and make sure that big chemical companies aren’t poisoning their water. They expect cheap student loans and meat inspections and smooth highways, and even the lowest of “low information” voters know they’re not going to get that stuff from the private sector. And it’s here where Paul deserves some respect, even from his detractors. He does, after all, have the courage of his convictions. In an era when balanced pandering has become the highest of campaign arts, Paul, unlike the rest of his Republican brethren, is perfectly straightforward about his desire to roll back much of the 20th century. As blogger David Caspian put it: “The reality is: Ron Paul, though crazy, is consistently crazy. He is not trying to hide his batshit ideas, in fact he’s running on them. And though they might not understand all of it, people like it.” Some of Paul’s supporters insist that his stark, slash-and-burn anti-governmentalism and isolationism don’t matter. As president, he’d still have a Congress to deal with, and the burden of actually having to govern would likely inject a note of pragmatism into Paul’s ideology. It’s a unique argument: Ignore my candidate’s more extreme ideas because they’ll never get past Congress. The problem is that ideology matters — it helps guide every decision one makes in office — and the president of the United States of America is, as most people grasp, a pretty powerful person. Of course, that’s an academic discussion. Regardless of his supporters’ passion or his ability to raise funds online, Paul has as much chance of winning the Republican nomination in 2008 as the average gay Mexican pornographer. He is, after all, running on an anti-war, anti-“free trade” and pro-civil liberties platform in a Republican primary. Add to that a media that’s unable to seriously cover political beliefs that fall outside the narrow discourse of mainstream Republican versus Democratic food fights, and it’s clear that Paul will not be leading his party in 2008. And while he’s no threat, he’s helped disrupt the GOP’s nomination process, adding more volatility to the polls and more issues to the debate. Plus he’s made things a hell of a lot more interesting on the GOP side. While I would never suggest reaching out to the white power movement, many of Paul’s supporters are simply disenfranchised nonvoters who have been animated, many for the first time in years, by his campaign, and that’s not a bad thing in a nominal democracy where complacency rules. Joshua Holland is an AlterNet staff writer. © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/69139/

CNN and BUSH’S really want CLINTON! Cuz she’s on the same page.

Listening to Laura Bush on CNN this morning, you would think she was Hillary’s campaign manager. Same with many of the other Repubs. They want Hillary. And it’s NOT so they think they can beat her, although that is their hope. But, the last thing they want is Obama, Edwards, or GOD FORBID, Master Kucinich. Their entire PLAN FOR THE WORLD would be put on hold- (to a small degree) and they don’t have but 5 years left to get it done, before the magical 2012 hits.

If you vote for Clinton, you are voting for Bush. Period. She  VOTED FOR THE WAR! Lest we forget. She has voted to strip us of our liberties, over and over and over.

You will not have a chance for a Do Over on Election Day. 

I am still undecided as of now over Ron Paul, and Obama or Kucinich. No I am not confused.

The greatest threat in this moment is the threat to our freedoms, through the stripping of our constitutional rights. Ron Paul is the man for the job. But, we need a little more than that. We need compassion for people, and someone who is not from Texas! I have given to his campaign, and to Obama’s, but if people think Clinton is going to get us out of Iraq, and keep us from war with Iran, you’re dreamin.

POST DEBATE CNN PANEL ALL *INSIDERS*

AS IF THEY COULD LOSE ANY MORE OF THEIR CREDIBILITY….

RE:  REPUBLICAN YOU TUBE DEBATE AND CNN’S POST DEBATE COVERAGE.

….and I think two of the six are mormon. One is the insider of ALL INSIDERS, Gergen, plus Cambell Brown, who is a softball from way back, and then there is Anderson Cooper, who I have read recently is mormon. I will be happy to apologise and retract my suspicions if I am wrong, but I don’t think so. And some sixth man they called a Democrat who I have never seen before.

So…..this is their Big League Repub Debate Line-Up? These clearly BIAS ….panel? At least Toobin, Gergen and Bennet. C’mon.

CNN IS OWNED and can no longer be considered a legitimate news organization.

CIA INFORMANT PART OF *OFFICIAL 911 STORY* ?

Alleged Trainer Of 9/11 Hijackers a CIA Informant
Sakka attempts to plug holes in 9/11 official story, claims Hanjour DID NOT  pilot Flight 77
Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The man who claims to have trained six of the 9/11 hijackers is a paid CIA informant according to Turkish intelligence specialists, who also assert that Al-Qaeda is merely the name of a secret service operation designed to foment a strategy of tension around the world.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2007/271107_cia_informant.htm

ROMNEY’S CHURCH EXPOSED ?

Im so with Romney on this one- and I’m no fan  of Romney. I don’t see why people are up in arms. No, I am not anti muslim. Read my blog for Gawds sakes !     Writer Exposes Romney’s Church of Latter-Day Hypocrisy   By Sam Stein, HuffingtonPost.com Posted on November 28, 2007, Printed on November 28, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.huffingtonpost.com//69088/ This post, written by Sam Stein, originally appeared on The Huffington Post The author of a much-discussed op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor — which charged that former Gov. Mitt Romney said he would likely not appoint a Muslim-American to his presidential cabinet – says Romney’s explanation for the comment is a flat out lie. Mansoor Ijaz, a prominent Islamic businessman, told the Huffington Post that Romney’s comments were made in reference to possible cabinet appointments and not, as the former governor has since claimed, in the context of combating Islamic extremism. “This guy is lying now to the American people,” said Ijaz. “He probably never imagined someone would come out and write a piece the way I did. And I think he made a serious mistake in judgment in trying to disown what he said.” In an oped on Tuesday titled “A Muslim Belongs in the White House,” Ijaz wrote of a private campaign event he attended in which Romney claimed he could not see how appointing a Muslim to his cabinet could be “justified” considering the group’s demographics in America. Pressed to explain his statement later in the day, Romney said it had been taken out of context. “His question was did I need to have a Muslim in my Cabinet to be able to confront radical Jihad and would it be important to have a Muslim in my Cabinet,” said Romney. “And I said, ‘No, I don’t think that you have to have a Muslim in the Cabinet to be able to take on radical Jihad anymore than during the Second World War we needed to have a Japanese-American to understand the threat that was coming from Japan or something of that nature.’ I just rejected that argument…” Reached by phone, Ijaz scoffed at such an interpretation of what transpired. “I can tell you,” he said, “that Romney’s push back, meaning his statement about the Japanese is all bullshit. He never talked about the Japanese at that point. Everything he said today is simply trying to reconfigure this item, which is he doesn’t feel there is a need to put people of Islamic faith into his cabinet.” Moreover, he added, this is not the first time the Massachusetts Republican has made off-the-cuff remarks that Muslims have found insensitive. Indeed, as reported by Talking Points Memo, Romney rejected the idea of appointing a Muslim to a high-ranking White House position at an earlier and, again, private campaign stop. Irma Aguirre, the former finance director for the Nevada Republican Party, told the Huffington Post about her experience at a Romney fundraiser roughly two months ago: “I was curious to listen to Romney, I was very impressed by him and I’m kind of undecided about whom to support. Well, at one point, they opened questions to the audience and a gentleman who was with me… raised his hand and posed a question. ‘Being that Muslims do not really trust America’s leaders, do you think it would be prudent, or would you consider having a Muslim in your cabinet as an adviser to lend credibility to the administration? His response was ‘probably not’ or ‘most likely not.'” According to Aguirre, Romney pivoted from the question into a discussion on the dangers jihadism posed to America. “I was shocked and disgusted,” she recounted. I felt like “he was assuming that all Muslims were jihadists. And later, I just kind of looked at a friend of mine who is a huge Mitt Romney supporter, she asked me, ‘Isn’t he great?’ and I said, ‘absolutely not.'” Romney’s campaign did not respond by time of publication. Sam Stein is a Political Reporter at the Huffington Post, based in Washington, D.C. © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.huffingtonpost.com//69088/

Blackwater: maybe it’s time to look at THIS!

GO NOW AND click the link below.  Read the list of clients. Then, ask WHO IS BLACKWATER?

I wrote to this person about his *LOGO* and he was not forthcoming with info. He said he did it for a client.

 SEE THE NUMBERS ON THE PAGE? THEY ARE VERY TELLING.

http://www.longedesign.com/818/

 This is deeply troubling. On so many levels.

CNN’s Glenn Beck (LDS) protected by our Gov ? IT’S ALL STARTING TO PIECE TOGETHER

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2007/261107_beck_confronted.htm

 As if this would really surprise anyone who is paying attention.

120 VETS COMMIT SUICIDE EACH WEEK

120 War Vets Commit Suicide Each Week By Penny Coleman, AlterNet Posted on November 26, 2007, Printed on November 26, 2007 http://www.alternet.org/story/68713/ Earlier this year, using the clout that only major broadcast networks seem capable of mustering, CBS News contacted the governments of all 50 states requesting their official records of death by suicide going back 12 years. They heard back from 45 of the 50. From the mountains of gathered information, they sifted out the suicides of those Americans who had served in the armed forces. What they discovered is that in 2005 alone — and remember, this is just in 45 states — there were at least 6,256 veteran suicides, 120 every week for a year and an average of 17 every day. As the widow of a Vietnam vet who killed himself after coming home, and as the author of a book for which I interviewed dozens of other women who had also lost husbands (or sons or fathers) to PTSD and suicide in the aftermath of the war in Vietnam, I am deeply grateful to CBS for undertaking this long overdue investigation. I am also heartbroken that the numbers are so astonishingly high and tentatively optimistic that perhaps now that there are hard numbers to attest to the magnitude of the problem, it will finally be taken seriously. I say tentatively because this is an administration that melts hard numbers on their tongues like communion wafers. Since these new wars began, and in spite of a continuous flood of alarming reports, the Department of Defense has managed to keep what has clearly become an epidemic of death beneath the radar of public awareness by systematically concealing statistics about soldier suicides. They have done everything from burying them on official casualty lists in a category they call “accidental noncombat deaths” to outright lying to the parents of dead soldiers. And the Department of Veterans Affairs has rubber-stamped their disinformation, continuing to insist that their studies indicate that soldiers are killing themselves, not because of their combat experiences, but because they have “personal problems.” Active-duty soldiers, however, are only part of the story. One of the well-known characteristics of post-traumatic stress injuries is that the onset of symptoms is often delayed, sometimes for decades. Veterans of World War II, Korea and Vietnam are still taking their own lives because new PTSD symptoms have been triggered, or old ones retriggered, by stories and images from these new wars. Their deaths, like the deaths of more recent veterans, are written up in hometown newspapers; they are locally mourned, but officially ignored. The VA doesn’t track or count them. It never has. Both the VA and the Pentagon deny that the problem exists and sanctimoniously point to a lack of evidence they have refused to gather. They have managed this smoke and mirrors trick for decades in large part because suicide makes people so uncomfortable. It has often been called “that most secret death” because no one wants to talk about it. Over time, in different parts of the world, attitudes have fluctuated between the belief that the act is a sin, a right, a crime, a romantic gesture, an act of consummate bravery or a symptom of mental illness. It has never, however, been an emotionally neutral issue. In the United States, the rationalism of our legal system has acknowledged for 300 years that the act is almost always symptomatic of a mental illness. For those same 300 years, organized religions have stubbornly maintained that it’s a sin. In fact, the very worst sin. The one that is never forgiven because it’s too late to say you’re sorry. The contradiction between religious doctrine and secular law has left suicide in some kind of nether space in which the fundamentals of our systems of justice and belief are disrupted. A terrible crime has been committed, a murder, and yet there can be no restitution, no punishment. As sin or as mental illness, the origins of suicide live in the mind, illusive, invisible, associated with the mysterious, the secretive and the undisciplined, a kind of omnipresent Orange Alert. Beware the abnormal. Beware the Other. For years now, this administration has been blasting us with high-decibel, righteous posturing about suicide bombers, those subhuman dastards who do the unthinkable, using their own bodies as lethal weapons. “Those people, they aren’t like us; they don’t value life the way we do,” runs the familiar xenophobic subtext: And sometimes the text isn’t even sub-: “Many terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, in Washington and Pennsylvania,” proclaimed W, glibly conflating Sept. 11, the invasion of Iraq, Islam, fanatic fundamentalism and human bombs. Bush has also expressed the opinion that suicide bombers are motivated by despair, neglect and poverty. The demographic statistics on suicide bombers suggest that this isn’t the necessarily the case. Most of the Sept. 11 terrorists came from comfortable middle- to upper-middle-class families and were well-educated. Ironically, despair, neglect and poverty may be far more significant factors in the deaths of American soldiers and veterans who are taking their own lives. Consider the 25 percent of enlistees and the 50 percent of reservists who have come back from the war with serious mental health issues. Despair seems an entirely appropriate response to the realization that the nightmares and flashbacks may never go away, that your ability to function in society and to manage relationships, work schedules or crowds will never be reliable. How not to despair if your prognosis is: Suck it up, soldier. This may never stop! Neglect? The VA’s current backlog is 800,000 cases. Aside from the appalling conditions in many VA hospitals, in 2004, the last year for which statistics are available, almost 6 million veterans and their families were without any healthcare at all. Most of them are working people — too poor to afford private coverage, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care. Soldiers and veterans need help now, the help isn’t there, and the conversations about what needs to be done are only just now beginning. Poverty? The symptoms of post-traumatic stress injuries or traumatic brain injuries often make getting and keeping a job an insurmountable challenge. The New York Times reported last week that though veterans make up only 11 percent of the adult population, they make up 26 percent of the homeless. If that doesn’t translate into despair, neglect and poverty, well, I’m not sure the distinction is one worth quibbling about. There is a particularly terrible irony in the relationship between suicide bombers and the suicides of American soldiers and veterans. With the possible exception of some few sadists and psychopaths, Americans don’t enlist in the military because they want to kill civilians. And they don’t sign up with the expectation of killing themselves. How incredibly sad that so many end up dying of remorse for having performed acts that so disturb their sense of moral selfhood that they sentence themselves to death. There is something so smugly superior in the way we talk about suicide bombers and the cultures that produce them. But here is an unsettling thought. In 2005, 6,256 American veterans took their own lives. That same year, there were about 130 documented deaths of suicide bombers in Iraq.* Do the math. That’s a ratio of 50-to-1. So who is it that is most effectively creating a culture of suicide and martyrdom? If George Bush is right, that it is despair, neglect and poverty that drive people to such acts, then isn’t it worth pointing out that we are doing a far better job? *I say “about” because in the aftermath of a suicide bombing, it is often very difficult for observers to determine how many individual bodies have been blown to pieces. Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on Memorial Day, 2006. Her blog is Flashback. © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/68713/