US & UK Ongoing Systemic Abuses and Torture of POWS & US Accused Of Policy To Dismantle Iraqi State

“There is no doubt that this is systemic within the interrogation policy,” David Shiner said. “We know for example, that there was a policy of getting them naked. This is clearly a systemic issue. It is absolute nonsense to suggest this is a few bad apples.”

Above qoute by :David Shiner, one of the lawyers taking the current case to the High Court, says the abuse is systemic and any inquiry has to be public.

Anyway the issue of detainee abuse and torture is still an ongoing concern. There are those in the Bush/Cheney administration who were complicit in the abuse and torture of Iraqis and Afghans who still need to be put on trial for their Crimes Against Humanity and for War Crimes.

Yet Obama is still refusing to deal with this issue. In fact he appears to agree with the GOP , Neocons, Uberconservatives and the Christian Dominionists that what was done was necessary and is a US private matter.

But such abuses have been condemned by various human rights organizations and the United Nations and are pressuring the United States and the UK to take action against the perpetrators. As we have seen over the past nine years the abuse , torture, assassinations, and summary executions and the use of Shia Death Squads are not just the actions of a "Few Bad Apples " but was in fact widespread and either ignored by the US and UK governments or in fact encouraged. By not pursuing these charges diligently and arresting perpetrators over the past nine years has led to tacit approval of these illegal and immoral tactics.

Under the Bush and Obama administrations the ongoing attitude is to ignore the UN or International condemnations of such actions. In their arrogance and their belief that America can do no wrong these administrations and the US military, Pentagon, Special OPS and the CIA and FBI they believe that they are not accountable to the International Community for their illegal and immoral actions .

It appears that Obama has continued with these criminal activities as he ignores abuses by the US military and other agencies . He wants everyone to just forget about it as if it never happened which has just led to a climate in which the US military and security forces feel they have been given Carte Blanche to do whatever they feel is necessary to do in the so-called War on Terror". But this attitude and these criminal actions are in fact just fueling more hatred and distrust of America and its allies by Iraqis, Afghans, Pashtan, Pakistanis and the International Community.

Over and over again the US and its allies have shown they have no regard for the lives of the citizens of these countries . This is all just part of America's determination to call the shots and do as it pleases to maintain its Rogue Empire and World Dominance and hegemony .

We also see that Obama has continued and even extended the illegal surveillance of US citizens and those citizens of other nations around the globe.
Obama has also ramped up investigations and laying criminal charges against courageous and heroic "Whistleblowers" who see wrong being done and so go public with their information in order to make all members of the US government and its various departments accountable to the American public.

Iraqi victims of UK abuse want public inquiry, RT News, Nov. 5, 2010

Lawyers of 142 Iraqi civilians, who claim they suffered abuse by British soldiers, are pushing for the UK's High Court to allow a full public inquiry.

The allegations include torture, sensory deprivation, forced nakedness and stress positions.

The abuse allegedly took place in British-controlled detention centers in Iraq between 2003 and 2008.

The UK Ministry of Defense says it is investigating claims and there is no need for a public inquiry.

Journalist and editor Chris Ames believes that is because British military service is afraid of a public inquiry.

“The Ministry of Defence is certainly very much opposed and afraid of the public inquiry. I'm not so sure about the government and the politicians. The Secretary of Defence, Leon Fox, has said that he has an open mind if things come out that will justify a wide range of inquiries, they will allow that,” Ames told RT.


Such probes have already been launched for two similar cases involving alleged torture and killing of civilians by British soldiers.

David Shiner, one of the lawyers taking the current case to the High Court, says the abuse is systemic and any inquiry has to be public.

“There is no doubt that this is systemic within the interrogation policy,” David Shiner said. “We know for example, that there was a policy of getting them naked. This is clearly a systemic issue. It is absolute nonsense to suggest this is a few bad apples.”

The United Nations and other international human rights groups allege that from the beginning of the US invasion of Iraq the plan has been to dismantle the Nation of Iraq. This explains the massive bombardment of Iraq's infrastructure , highways, hospitals, utilities followed by attacks on its educational system and attacks which have led to a complete breakdown of Iraqi's civil society.
The Americans as we now know used Shia Death Squads using terrorist tactics, assassinations, targeted killings, torture and murder to Ethnically Cleanse whole areas of Iraq of Sunnis to defeat the insurgency.

Beyond the WikiLeaks Files: Dismantling the Iraqi State by Dirk Adriaensens, Truthout Op-Ed , Nov. 5, 2010

The United Nation's Human Rights Council in Geneva reviews the human rights record of the United States on November 5, 2010, on the occasion of the Ninth Session of the Universal Periodic Review (UPR), November 1 to 12, 2010. The following is an edited version of the presentation given by Dirk Adriaensens in Geneva on November 3.

Just days after the devastating attacks of 9/11, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz declared that a major focus of US foreign policy would be "ending states that sponsor terrorism." Iraq was labeled a "terrorist state" targeted for termination. President Bush went on to declare Iraq the major front of the global war on terror. US forces invaded the country illegally with the express aim of dismantling the Iraqi state. After World War II, the social sciences focused on state-building and development models. Little has been written about state destruction and de-development. We can now, after seven years of war and occupation, state for certain that state ending was a deliberate policy objective.

The consequences in human and cultural terms of the destruction of the Iraqi state have been enormous: notably the death of over 1.3 million civilians; the degradation in social infrastructure, including electricity, potable water and sewage systems; over eight million Iraqis are in need of humanitarian assistance; abject poverty: the UN Human rights report for the first quarter of 2007 found that 54 percent of Iraqis were living on less than $1 a day; the displacement of minimum 2.5 million refugees and 2,764,000 internally displaced people as to end 2009. One in six Iraqis is displaced. Ethnic and religious minorities are on the verge of extinction. UN-HABITAT, an agency of the United Nations, published a 218-page report entitled "State of the World's Cities, 2010-2011." Prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the percentage of the urban population living in slums in Iraq hovered just below 20 percent. Today, that percentage has risen to 53 percent: 11 million of the 19 million total urban dwellers.

also see: US Weathers Calls for Torture Probes at UN Rights Meet by Peter Capella Agence France Presse via Common Dreams.org, Nov. 5, 2010

GENEVA - The United States faced a barrage of calls to investigate allegations of torture and shut down Guantanamo Bay detention centre on Friday in its first review by the UN's top human rights assembly.

European countries joined appeals for a halt to the death penalty, and there was trenchant criticism of Washington's recent human rights record during wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as the detention and interrogation of terror suspects.

It prompted a robust defence from senior US officials at the 47-member Human Rights Council, although US Assistant Secretary of State Michael Posner acknowledged that they "were not satisfied with the status quo.

Cuban ambassador Rodolfo Reyes Rodriguez called on the United States to "halt war crimes and the killing of civilians," while Venezuela's German Mundarain Hernandez recommended that Washington "put to trial those responsible for victims of torture."

China and Russia acknowledged progress in health and education, as well as attempts to tackle what the Russian ambassador called the "more odious" human rights violations during conflicts.

But they both urged the swift closure of terror detention centres, while Russia recommended "a careful investigation of the facts in the use of torture especially in Guantanamo and Bagram" air force base in Afghanistan.

The half-day public debate came just two weeks after whistleblowing website WikiLeaks published 400,000 classified US documents on the Iraq war, reviving concern about a lack of accountability for abuse.

Koh insisted that cases had been subject to disciplinary action, although he made no mention of the broader judicial prosecution demanded by human rights campaigners.

The Washington Post reported on Thursday that former US president George W. Bush wrote in his new memoir that he personally gave the go-ahead for CIA officers to waterboard self-confessed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

The Western reaction on allegations of torture and abuse was more muted.

European countries including Britain, as well as Australia, recommended a moratorium or abolition of the death penalty, while France urged President Barack Obama to "honour his promise" in 2009 to close Guantanamo.

Koh responded: "While the commitment has not wavered, the task is complex. President Obama cannot do it alone."

A total of 172 detainees remain there, out of 242 when Obama took office in 2008, he added, insisting on the need for help from Congress, the courts and US allies willing to host ex-detainees.

After Arab countries raised concerns about "Islamophobia" in the United States, Posner acknowledged that US Muslims had also highlighted "a pattern of intolerance and discrimination" during a civil society meeting.

also see on what the midterm election results mean regarding the American initiated wars in Iraq, Aghanistan etc.

Midterm Election Results a Setback for Peace by Tom Hayden, The Nation , Nov. 5, 2010

The November election was a setback for the peace movement, not only because of the defeat of Sen. Russ Feingold but for deeper reasons.

Both parties collaborated in keeping Afghanistan out of the national election debate and media coverage - while during the period June-November alone, 274 American soldiers were killed and 2,934 were wounded on the battlefield.

(The official American toll under Obama in Afghanistan has become at least 730 deaths and 6,400 wounded; the taxpayer costs under Obama currently are $113 billion per year.)

Democratic candidates this year chose not to use Afghanistan-Iraq as an issue perhaps because they have become Obama's wars. According to the New York Times, the US even plans to orchestrate an invitation to remain in Iraq after the current 2011 deadline, but desperately wanted to keep the controversy out of the election debates.

With Republican control of the House, antiwar Democrats will have little room to hold hearings or maneuver against the wars. There were 162 House members, nearly all Democrats, who voted against funding the war or in favor of an exit strategy earlier this year, one-fourth of the House. In the Senate, Feingold authored similar legislation that obtained 18 votes, a number not likely to increase either.

The notion among some that ultra-right fiscally conservative Republicans will vote with the peace Democrats is largely a fantasy. Republicans like Karl Rove did not want to advertise their support for Obama's troop escalation this fall while they prepare to blast him for drawing down short of "victory" next July. For example, Sen. John McCain, who is planning a trip to Afghanistan, told Reuters that "this date for withdrawal that the president announced without any military advice or counsel has caused us enormous problems in our operations in Afghanistan, because our enemies are encouraged and our friends are confused over there."

and British groups and others are concerned about the USA still using barbaric practice of "The Death Penalty". The majority of Western Nations have banned "The Death Penalty" while Americans appear to be proud of such an outdated regressive punishment. The American populace seem to get a thrill out of watching someone getting a lethal injection, or being gassed or electrocuted in the same way they have that they enjoy a killing , slaughtering the citizens of other nations. Their bloodlust appears to have no bounds. Meanwhile they retreat into their know nothing Pollyanna mindset whenever they or their government are criticized by the international community. They claim they are the innocent victims and that the rest of the world is involved in a conspiracy to destroy America.
This past election shows America wants more war not less , more torture and abuse of POWS and a more strident proactive strategy to deal with the Islamic threat at home that is they want to see more roundups of Muslim Americans. Though of course according to America's shadow governments spokespersons at Fox News and the GOP they believe it is a contradiction in terms for someone to call themselves real Americans if they are in fact Muslim.

:British Group Says It's Suing to Stop Export of Execution Drug to U.S.
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3012?akid=251.45481.MRWoUI&t=10

and see via Common Dreams.org:

Karl Frisch: Fox News Wins The 2010 Election
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3026?akid=251.45481.MRWoUI&t=34

Chase Madar: Guantánamo, Exception or Rule?
http://act.commondreams.org/go/3027?akid=251.45481.MRWoUI&t=36



and so it goes,
GORD.

America's Dirty War in Iraq "Shia Death Squads" Trained & Supported By General Petraeus & US Government & Hate-filled US Citizens

UPDATE: 7:58 PM , Nov. 5, 2010

The War in Iraq has not been won by the Americans. They cannot win because the people of Iraq don't trust America or its military- they have watched as Americans treated Iraq as a Free Fire Zone and as the US unleashed "Shia Death Squads" on the Sunnis and while they unleashed shock and Awe tactics over and over agian flattening whole cities such as Fallujah as revenge for the deaths of four Blackwater/XE mercenaries. American citizens sat at home watching it all on TV and cheering each time a bomb exploded or as White Phosphorous rained down on fellow human beings So who is it has the mentality of a "Death Cult"???

And the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are no longer Bush's War or Obama's War it is now America's War supported by the American voters. 1,000,000 Dead and Counting -Americans for the most part are not hampered by feelings of guilt or shame over their ongoing slaughter of innocents.( of course they argue no Muslim or Arab etc. is an innocent)

IRAQ VET ROB SERRA SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE WAR - FREE FIRE ZONE
Aug. 20, 2007 Liveleaks US Murder INC.



Let's begin with Cenk Uygur's rant after the disappointing results of the US Mid-Term election in which the GOP and its more fanatical members won a number of seats making the GOP the dominant party in Congress.
President Obama can be blamed for not pushing ahead with progressive policies because of his desire for bi-partisan politics. Was this just an excuse so Obama could refuse to carry out such policies because he too like the GOP is beholden to the Corporate elite and the super-wealthy and to the Military Industrial Complex/ including the Pentagon, the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security and the Religious Right and the psuedo-liberals referred to as "Neo-Liberals".

"If the bums are not doing what you want then throw their asses out" or "Rip them down"
Cenk's Rant After 2010 Election Results



And another blow to the American myth of moral superiority to other nations .
American trained and supported "Shia Death Squads" in Iraq
Shia Death Squads used to butcher Sunnis and carry out "Ethnic Cleansing"
My main criticism of this documentary is that they seem unable or unwilling to connect the dots between the "Shia Death Squads" and the US military and the American government and possibly the American people who have such a prejudiced and bigoted views about Iraqi citizens . Many Americans have been so taken in by the governments and the Media propaganda attacks on Islam and on the people of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran etc. that they have come to believe that America has the right to kill as many Arabs, Muslims , Afghans , Pakistanis , Pashtan etc.

When considering this issue that often repeated phrase comes to mind : "That the only Good Indian is a Dead Indian" which was used during America's lopsided unnecessary genocidal conflict during the so-called " Indian Wars" when the American Gov't and military with the support of the American people ethnic cleansed America of its native aboriginal people til these people were no longer a threat and had little power over their own destiny.

Is the use of "Shia Death Squads" by the US military in Iraq or the US training and backing of " Death Squads " in other countries part of America's superior morality & its respect for human life. Over and over in various conflicts involving the US military and government there seems to be little interest in the "dignity "and "sacredness" of human life especially the lives of those who are not American or who are not Christian or who believe in social and economic justice which appear to be foreign notions to many Americans - for Americans "Life Is Cheap".

Doug Coe's Christian Family or Fellowship would applaud such actions and we know they have done just that. So it is no surprise that Hilary Clinton who has been associated with Doug Coe and other fanatical Evangelicals sees nothing wrong with the brutality by the Junta which she may have helped engineer in Honduras as her hero Henry Kissinger did in 1973 in Chile to put the brutal mass murdering Pinochet in power who was hailed by Americans as a hero as he had thousands beaten, tortured and then executed and thousands of others sent to secret prisons-

First from Democracy Now! Amy Goodman and America's Terrorist Activities in Iraq-nothing new they did these things in Honduras, Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Haiti

YIFAT SUSSKIND "the El Salvador option" DemocracyNow!

March 07, 2007

Seymour Hersh said recently that John Negroponte was unhappy about the similarity with the funding of the 3-16 paramilitary death squad under his watch on the USS Honduras and the "El Salvador option" in Iraq.
Negroponte is either incompetent or preparing the ground for his now predictable "plausible deniability" routine.
Jim Steele is available for after dinner speaking ($15,000 + first class travel and accommodation).

Shia Death Squads Killing Sunnis in Iraq Part 1/4. To download visit www.realitymedia.ws



Shia Death Squads Killing Sunnis in Iraq Part 2/4. To download visit www.realitymedia.ws



Bill Maher as a typical American has been the latest American media personality to attack Islam as being a violent , brutal religion at its very core. But like many Americans he can't help but adhere to Western propaganda and its overarching Mythos which claims that Western Civilization may have done wrong in the past but is now above reproach. And besides those things are in the distant past centuries ago. Well for instance Hitler, Mussolini, Franco were all Westerners. Saddam, the Shah of Iran, Pinochet (Chile). Marcos of the Philippines and on and on is the list of brutes backed by the USA and other Western Nations mainly in the name of maintaining corporate monopolies at any cost.

Bill Maher like others has bought into the anti-Islam propaganda which is promulgated by the Professional Islamophobes such as Robert Spencer and Pam Geller. He fears that Europe is undergoing Islamization and that soon America will be targeted by the so called "Stealth Jihad" and the insidious "Demographic Jihad".

This is part of what is designated as Islamophobia in which Islam is attacked as being morally bankrupt and inferior to Christianity while Christianity and Western Democracies are defended as championing human rights of all of their citizens.Even though in America this is not quite true. Black Americans and Hispanic Americans are still not treated in a fair and just manner by the white conservative dominated power-structure. The Rev. Martin Luther King's sentiments and those of Robert Kennedy and Edward Kennedy do not represent the average American's vision of America. These illustrious individuals may have believed in a "Just Society" but most Americans are motivated by fear, prejudices and bigotry.

So even Bill Maher argues that the abuses of POWS by US and British forces though they have occurred they are in fact an anomaly .

But the records show that the abuse and torture of so called "detainees" came from the White House and the Pentagon and the CIA and was a very deliberate policy and became widespread in Iraq and Afghanistan. We also now know that under ambassador John Negroponte & General Petraeus this murderous policy also affected the Shia military and police forces who were being trained by US personnel in the use of terrorist type tactics including assassinations, summary executions, abuse and torture of prisoners and setting off bombs in Mosques, public places , cafes etc. in Sunni controlled areas in Iraq. So by unleashing Shia "Death Squads" the Americans could claim to have squashed most of the Sunni insurgency.

At the time this was taking place some journalist such as Robert Fisk and Seymour Hersh reported that according to their inside sources the Americans had unleashed these "Death Squads" and were encouraging the sectarian fighting as official policy though kept secret. As Hersh pointed out he was told by one general that Iraq had become a "Free Fire Zone" as Vietnam had become in the 1960s during the undeclared Vietnam War. During that war the Americans as usual supported an unpopular corrupt brutal anti-Democratic authoritarian Regime which also indulged in summary executions, assassinations and the use of "Death Squads" and the use of Torture. But as we know American foreign policy in Latin America and elsewhere gave free reign to brutal Dictatorships, and authoritarian Regimes such as in Chile, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras , Haiti etc. America since at least the 1930s has been involved in this anti-Democracy policy of the use of force to crush any and all popular uprisings and criticisms of the governments they backed .

Seymour Hersh Describes "Battlefield Executions" in Afghanistan

May 11, 2010. Obama committing War Crimes and Crimes against Humanity just as his predecessor President Bush did.



WikiLeaks Founder Urges US to Investigate Alleged Abuse by Its Troops Julian Assange says claims in leaked documents yet to be investigated, as US faces UN grilling over human rights record by Mark Tran Guardian,UK, Nov. 4, 2010

Julian Assange says the US has not started any investigations into the alleged incidents detailed in thousands of documents published by WikiLeaks and has instead concentrated on tracking down those responsible for the leaks and on hounding his group.

Last month, WikiLeaks published 400,000 US field reports containing evidence that US soldiers handed over detainees to a notorious Iraqi torture squad. This followed a the publication of 75,000 documents in the summer revealing how coalition forces killed hundreds of civilians in unreported incidents in Afghanistan.

Assange made his comments ahead of a big diplomatic set piece in Geneva tomorrow, when America's human rights record comes under scrutiny before the UN human rights council for the first time. Every UN member is subject to what his called a universal periodic review every four years. The US is taking its moment under the spotlight seriously, sending a high-level delegation of some 30 officials to fend off expected attacks in a forum dominated by developing countries, many of them Muslim.

...While the US may brush aside attacks from the likes of Iran and Bolivia as highly partial, it cannot so lightly dismiss concerns from allies and friends. Britain, Japan, Norway have all raised concerns about the death penalty in the US.

"The UK remains concerned about the continuing use of the death penalty in the US, and particularly by evidence that the death penalty is administered in an arbitrary and discriminatory manner with an inevitable risk of miscarriages of justice," Britain said in a question submitted to the US. "Could you tell us what steps the administration is taking to address these concerns?"

Another pithy British question likely to make the Obama administration uncomfortable said: "Could you please outline the next steps needed to ensure the final closure of the detention facility in Guantánamo?"

Human rights groups have also piled in with their submissions. More than 300 activist groups, including Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union, have issued a separate 400-page report claiming that protection of fundamental freedoms has eroded since 9/11.

"Human rights advocates across America have not only documented substandard human rights practices which have persisted in the US for years, but also those that reflect the precipitous erosion of human rights protections in the US since 9/11," said Sarah Paoletti of the US human rights network.

"Whether it is migrant labourers who are excluded from workplace protections, children denied education because of the school-to-prison pipeline, or women denied equal pay in the workplace, advocates feel compelled to bring their experiences before international human rights mechanisms because the US legal system has fallen short."

A state department submission in August, written after extensive public consultation, said American was a democracy guided by "simple but powerful principles", but admits to discrimination against black people and Hispanics and a "broken" immigration system.

The author of this next article argues that even Politico couldn't resist taking corporate money and shifting the editorial policies to suit their new masters ???
So has Politico sold out to Big Business and the Economic UberConservatives ???


Bought and Paid For by Russell Mokhiber at Common Dreams.org, Nov. 4, 2010

If you think things changed on November 2, pick up a copy of today's Politico.

Which I just did.

And it sinks it just a little bit deeper.

Fundamentals still in tact.

Before November 2.

Big corporations firmly in charge.

And after November 2.

Big corporations firmly in charge.

From Congress.

To the White House.

To the press - down to your local Politico.

The November 4, 2010 issue of Politico carries about 25 articles.

Not one of which deals head on with the question of corporate crime or corporate power.

The same issue carries about 13 full page ads - at about $10,000 a page - from big corporations and lobbying groups.

Bought and paid for...

...Perversely, the only direct attack on the Washington corporate power structure comes from a full page ad from the libertarian Cato Institute, admonishing President Obama for not eliminating federal programs we don't need.

It then runs a list of ten which Cato says "we don't need," including "military overreach."

"The Constitution envisions a U.S. military that ‘provides for the common defense' of the United States, not one that serves as the world's policeman and nation-builder. By withdrawing our troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, we could save at least $125 billion next year. Eliminating other unnecessary, overseas missions would allow for a leaner force structure and defense budget, saving at least $100 billion a year without undermining U.S. security."

And another one titled "Drug War."

"Since the start of the federal War on Drugs in 1970, we've spent hundreds of billions on a futile crusade that's done little to curb drug use and much to impair our civil liberties. In fact, a Cato study showed that Portugal's decriminalization of drugs actually lowered drug-related problems. Returning drug policy to the states - where it belongs - would save at least $15 billion annually."

So, the sun did come up after November 2.

And it snuck on through the crevices of a corporate funded Cato ad.

and so it goes,
GORD.

Sarah Palin: It is " Our Morning in America" As The Radical Right Begins Their Fight In Earnest & US Backed "Shia Death Squads " In Iraq

After their success in the Midterm election the Religious Right /Christian Dominionists such as Coral Ridge Ministries immediately reminded their members that there is a long way to go in their fight to retake America to make it once again a "Real Christian Nation".

As we see this is just the first real salvos against President Obama and his administration and against all liberals and progressives in America.

They argue that the current administration has been infiltrated by radical Leftists who want to make America into a Communist/Collectivist country and so the fight must be increased not decreased .




And from Coral Ridge Ministries one of the biggest Evangelical Christian Dominionists Ministries in the US is celebrating the victories of the GOP and the Tea Party -Religious Right antigovernment factions in the mid-term elections. But Coral Ridge Ministries warns that Obama the Socialist/Communist is still in power and so they believe the fight to "Take Back America" to return it to its Christian Roots and to its roots in the US Constitution, Bill of Rights and Declaration of Independence 's vision of America as the Holy City on the Hill so it is a return to the theology and ideology as exemplified by the Founding Fathers and the first 20 to 40 years of the government of the United States. (in their view)

Here's the letter that has been sent via E-Mail out to members of the Coral Ridge Ministry

Dear (subsriber),

Thank you for standing with Coral Ridge Ministries and believers across the USA!
You saw, in the good results on Election Day, just a small part of the impact you’re making on your country.

But here’s the important truth: Tuesday’s victory in the House of Representatives proves you and I are being heard. We can make a difference. And here’s why we must keep up the fight:

President Obama and a liberal-leaning Senate are still at the helm of our nation ... pushing our beloved country down a path that leads to socialism and godlessness!
So today, we cannot rest. We must arm ourselves with knowledge and be biblically equipped to help halt our nation’s disastrous march toward socialism.

(And sticking with tradition Coral Ridge is asking for money as donations)

Please give a $15 or more tax-deductible donation now, and we’ll thank you with our critical book, Ten Truths About Socialism.

The book clearly demonstrates the dangers of this abominable system of governance—one that is a stepping stone on the way to COMMUNISM—and helps you:
Understand what socialism is and how it defies God’s Word,
Identify how our government is leading us down this crooked path, and
Communicate the truth about socialism with your friends and neighbors.
Give $15 or more and receive our insightful book, with our appreciation for your tax-deductible donation.

Your support will help Coral Ridge Ministries continue to share all across America the life-transforming ... NATION-TRANSFORMING ... truth about Jesus Christ!
Scripture warns, “There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death” (Proverbs 14:12 NKJV).

We must reverse this dangerous course, before it is too late for our beloved America!
You can be a part of the solution through your support right now ... empowering all of our ministry outreaches, such as The Coral Ridge Hour, our radio programs and TV specials, and the new Cross Examine TV program—to help Christians understand what is happening in Washington today in light of God’s Word.
Support Coral Ridge Ministries as we proclaim the truth and defend godly values through your tax-deductible donation of $15 or more now, and let us thank you with Ten Truths About Socialism.

Thank you. God bless you, and God bless America.

FPRIVATE "TYPE=PICT;ALT=Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy"
Jennifer Kennedy Cassidy
Member, Board of Directors

---------
Our Morning in America

Sarah Palin Celebrates Midterm Victories With New Video: Congratulations America! by Glynnis MacNicol ,Mediaite.com, November 4th, 2010




Sarah Palin may not have convinced many people that she’s qualified to be president but there’s no question the woman could run a major media operation. Of course, one might argue that’s exactly what she’s been doing since quitting her job as Alaska’s governor.

Behold her latest offering. A fun new video from SarahPac titled ‘Together’ featuring a slew of Tuesday’s big winners (and Palin endorsements) including: Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Nikki Haley, Sean Duffy, and Susana Martinez, also a lumberjack and a roaring grizzly bear…all set to some snappy music! Notably absent are Joe Miller and Christine O’Donnell.

Said Palin on her Facebook page: “Congratulations, America! And thank you, voters!” Said Palin in the voiceover: “We’re going to stand up, we’re gonna speak out. And it may take some renegades going rogue to get us there…This is our movement. This is our moment. This is our morning in America.”

Shorter version: In a catchy one minute vid Palin is essentially claiming credit for the GOP “tidal” wave that just took the House and at the same time putting the establishment GOP on alert. It’s a smart move and highlights perfectly Palin’s unique role in the conservative party. One suspects the GOP has more to fear from Palin’s campaign vids in the next two years than the (slim) reality of an actual presidential run. Watch below.

-----------------

Bill Maher's Remarks on Muslims via Islamophobia Watch

US TV host fears Western world will taken over by Islam Oct. 30, 2010

Those who accuse the once libertarian Bill Maher of becoming too much of a liberal apologist might want to clean their ears. Maher made a Juan Williams-esque confession on his program when he apprehensively noted that Mohammed has just become the most popular baby name in Britain.

"Am I a racist to feel alarmed by that?" Maher asked his panel. "Because I am. And it's not because of the race, it's because of the religion. I don't have to apologize, do I, for not wanting the Western world to be taken over by Islam in 300 years?"

"If you're with NPR," the conservative Margaret Hoover chimed, "You'd be fired." Hoover further stoked Maher by claiming that the U.K is saddled with a "far bigger problem" than baby names: Sharia law, which she said is creeping into England.

"Then I'm right," Maher said, taking her for her word. "I should be alarmed. And I don't apologize for it."

Bill Maher Stands By Mohammed Remarks: ‘I Don’t Need To Apologize For Being A Proud Westerner’
by Ray Rahman, Mediaite.com , Nov. 01, 2010

Bill Maher showed up on CNN to talk about comments he made on Real Time regarding the ‘alarming’ number of ‘baby Mohammeds’ in England. Maher told Wolf Blitzer that he felt no need to “apologize for being a proud Westerner,” or for being worried that “Muslim people in these [Western] societies are having babies” at a faster clip than non-Muslims.

He clarified:

And when I say Westerner, I mean someone who believes in the values that Western people believe in that a lot of the Muslim world does not. Like separation of church and state. Like equality of the sexes. Like respect for minorities, free elections, free speech, freedom to gather. These things are not just different from cultures that don’t have them. … It’s better. … I would like to keep those values here.

--------

Bill Maher's remarks about American and Western values as being superior to those of Islam have a bit of a hollow ring to them.
For instance it is America which pursued a War of Aggression on Iraq leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi citizens.
This war was unjustified and the policies pursued such as the wide use of abuse and torture of Iraqi prisoners were and are illegal and immoral.
We also now know for certain that the US policy under General Petraeus was to divide and conquer by using Shia death squads to crush the Sunni insurgency.
These death squads were trained and supported by the US military and the US government under the Bush regime and possibly under the Obama administration.
Are these part of the Western Values Bill Maher talks about and so he accepts as America's values such policies as that of abuse and torture and the use of illegal weapons such as White Phosphorous on civilian populations in Iraq or the use of unmanned Drones , that it is OK for American soldiers going out on patrol "To hunt humans" or the slaughter of civilians by US troops who believe that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are in fact part of a new Christian Crusade .

But we should consider the fact that Bill Maher is anti-all religions believing them to be a matter of irrational belief systems which give comfort to individuals and which also used to defend their actions to justify wars , killing etc. Is Bill Maher claiming that Muslim Americans are more of a threat than the Radical Religious Right's Christian Dominionists who want to set up a form of theocracy in America ???
Does Bill Maher want to single out Islam as worse or more threatening to human rights and freedom than any other religious system???

Bill Maher should pause for a moment to spend time investigating the issue and examine more closely those who are alarmed over the so-called Islamization of Europe. Does he really want to go out on a limb and be associated with the EDL and Geert Wilder and dubious characters such as Bat Ye'or, Pam Geller, Robert Spencer , David Horowitz, Andrew McCarthy,Bruce Bawer ,Daniel Pipes, Brigitte Gabriel, Walid Shoebat etc.

In considering Western values versus Islamic values for instance check out:

Torture Orders Were Part of US Sectarian War Strategy by: Gareth Porter,Inter Press Service, Nov. 2, 2010

Washington - The revelation by Wikileaks of a U.S. military order directing U.S. forces not to investigate cases of torture of detainees by Iraqis has been treated in news reports as yet another case of lack of concern by the U.S. military about detainee abuse.

But the deeper significance of the order, which has been missed by the news media, is that it was part of a larger U.S. strategy of exploiting Shi'a sectarian hatred against Sunnis to help suppress the Sunni insurgency when Sunnis had rejected the U.S. war.

And Gen. David Petraeus was a key figure in developing the strategy of using Shi'a and Kurdish forces to suppress Sunnis in 2004-2005.

The strategy involved the deliberate deployment of Shi'a and Kurdish police commandoes in areas of Sunni insurgency in the full knowledge that they were torturing Sunni detainees, as the reports released by Wikileaks show.

That strategy inflamed Sunni fears of Shi'a rule and was a major contributing factor to the rise of al Qaeda's influence in the Sunni areas. The escalating Sunni-Shi'a violence it produced led to the massive sectarian warfare of 2006 in Baghdad in which tens of thousands of civilians - mainly Sunnis - were killed.

The strategy of using primarily Shi'a and Kurdish military and police commando units to suppress Sunni insurgents was adopted after a key turning point in the war in April 2004, when Civil Defence Corps units throughout the Sunni region essentially disappeared overnight during an insurgent offensive.

Two months later, the U.S. military command issued "FRAGO [fragmentary order] 242", which provided that no investigation of detainee abuse by Iraqis was to be conducted unless directed by the headquarters of the command, according to references to the order in the Wikileaks documents.

The order came immediately after Gen. Petraeus took command of the new Multi-National Security Transition Command in Iraq (MNSTC-I). It was a clear signal that the U.S. command expected torture of prisoners to be a central feature of Iraqi military and police operations against Sunni insurgents.

Petraeus knew that it would take more than two years to build a competent Iraqi military officer corps, as he told Bing West, author of the "The Strongest Tribe", in August 2004. Meanwhile, he would have to use Shi'a and Kurdish militias.

In September 2004, Petraeus adopted a plan to establish paramilitary units within the national police.

The initial units were from non-sectarian former Iraqi special forces teams. In October, however, Petraeus embraced the first clearly sectarian Shi'a militia unit – the 2,000- man Shi'a "Wolf Brigade", as a key element of his police commando strategy, giving it two months of training with U.S. forces.

In November 2004, after 80 percent of the Sunni police defected to the insurgents in Mosul, the U.S. command dispatched 2,000 Kurdish peshmurga militiamen to Mosul, and five battalions of predominantly Shi'a troops, with a smattering of Kurds, were to police Ramadi. But a few weeks later, after the completion of its training, the Wolf Brigade was also sent to Mosul.

Hundreds of Shi'a troops from Baghdad and southern areas of the country were also sent into Samara and Fallujah.

It did not take long for the Wolf Brigade to acquire its reputation for torture of Sunni detainees. The Associated Press reported the case of a female detainee in Wolf Brigade custody in Mosul who was whipped with electric cables in order to get her to sign a false confession that she was a high-ranking local leader of the insurgency.

But an official of the U.S. command later told Richard Engel of NBC that the Wolf Brigade had been a very effective unit and had driven the insurgents out of Mosul.

The Wolf Brigade was then sent to Sunni neighbourhoods in Baghdad, where the Association of Muslim Scholars publicly accused it of having "arrested imams and the guardians of some mosques, tortured and killed them, and then got rid of their bodies in a garbage dump…"

The Wolf Brigade was also deployed to other Sunni cities, including Ramadi and Samarra, always in close cooperation with U.S. military units.

The war logs released by Wikileaks include a number of reports from Samarra in 2004 and 2005 describing how the U.S. military had handed their captives over to the Wolf Brigade for "further questioning". The implication was that the Shi'a commandos would be able to extract more information from the detainees than would be allowed by U.S. rules.

Gen. Martin Dempsey, who succeeded Petraeus as the commander responsible for training Iraqi security forces in September 2005, hinted strongly in an interview with Elizabeth Vargas of ABC News three months later that the U.S. command accepted the Wolf Brigade's harsh interrogation methods as a necessary feature of using Iraqi counterinsurgency forces.

Dempsey said, "We are fighting through a very harsh environment... these guys are not fighting on the streets of Bayonne, New Jersey." Contrary to the Western notion of "innocent until proven guilty", he said the view in Iraq was "close" to the "opposite".

Vargas reported, "For Dempsey, a big part of building a viable police force is learning to accept, if not embrace, the cultural differences."

A second stage of the strategy of sectarian war against the Sunnis came after the new Shi'a government's takeover of the Interior Ministry in April 2005. The Shi'a minister immediately filled the Iraqi police – especially the commando units – with Shi'a troops from the Badr Corps, the Iranian-trained forces loyal to the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Within days the Badr Corps, along with the Wolf Brigade, began a campaign of mass arrests, torture and assassination of Sunnis in Baghdad and elsewhere that was widely reported by news agencies.

The U.S. command responded to that development by issuing a new version of the previous order on what to do about Iraqi torture, according to the Wikileaks documents. On Apr. 29, 2005, the U.S. command issued FRAGO 039 requiring reports through operational channels on Iraqi abuse of prisoners using a format attached to the order. But no follow-up investigation was to be made unless directed by higher headquarters.

The former Minister of Interior, Falah al-Naquib, later told Knight-Ridder correspondent Tom Lasseter that he had personally warned Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other U.S. officials about the sectarian violence by Badr police commandoes against Sunnis. "They didn't take us seriously," he lamented.

In fact, the U.S. military and the U.S. Embassy were well aware of the serious risk that the strategy of relying on vengeful Shi'a police commandos to track down Sunnis would exacerbate sectarian tensions between Sunnis and Shi'a. In May 2005, Ann Scott Tyson wrote in the Washington Post that U.S. military analysts did not deny that the U.S. strategy "aggravates the underlying fault lines in Iraqi society, heightening the prospects of civil strife".

In late July 2005, when Petraeus was still heading the command, an unnamed "senior American officer" at MNSTC-I was asked by John F. Burns of the New York Times whether the U.S. might end up arming Iraqis for a civil war. The officer answered, "Maybe."

The U.S.-sponsored Shi'a assault on the Sunnis gave al Qaeda a new opportunity. In mid-2005, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, announced the creation of a special unit, the Omar Brigade, to combat the Shi'a commando torture and death squads. That led to the massive sectarian bloodletting in Baghdad in 2006, when thousands of civilians were dying every month.

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam", was published in 2006.

EDL's pro-Wilders demo in Amsterdam flops via Islamophobia Watch.com


Finland: Christian Democrat calls for discrimination against Muslim refugees Islamophobia Watch, Oct 30, 2010

Christian refugees coming to Finland should be given first preference over Muslims, according to Christian Democratic Party Chair Päivi Räsänen.

In a recent interview with Finnish university student magazine "Ylioppilaslehti", Räsänen reasons that Christians adapt to Finland better than Muslims because of commonalities in religion and culture. Muslims are at greater risk of becoming isolated in Finnish society. This can lead to radicalisation, Räsänen says.

In response to the remarks, Green Party MP Jyrki Kasvi accuses Räsänen of discrimination against members of different faiths. Writing in his blog on the Green Party website, Kasvi sees Räsänen’s stance to be in violation of international human rights, which forbid discrimination on the basis of religion.

and so it goes,
GORD.

Bill Moyers: US Democracy Under Siege By Billionaires & Their Media Propaganda Machinery -Plutocracy Anyone???

Bill Moyers "Welcome To The Plutocracy"as Billionaires Buy American Citizens' Votes



Excerpts from Bill Moyers remarks on historian Howard Zinn.

Bill Moyers is a rare breed an American journalist interested in politics and current events and in people and pursues his quest in revealing truth and who resists speaking only in "talking Points" and punchy one liners preferring to try to disentangle complex issues.

But this is becoming history as Americans allow themselves to be dumbed-down to believe whatever any Rodeo Clown or would be prophet or Billionaire or even just some angry white guy on radio TV or the internet tells them.

But real journalism in America and here in Canada as well is dying out as the CNN/ Fox News style providing entertaining babble and noise 24/7 fills the airwaves. Fox News as is well known is just a megaphone for Roger Ailes and Big Business who have taken the gloves off and peddle their snake-oil drowning out any who dare disagree with their extremely biased take on the news. Fox and its celebrated and notorious anchors Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly put their wacky conservative spin on everything while re-writing American history and just making stuff up fueling insane "Conspiracy Theories" which it appears given yesterday's election results millions of Americans have bought into.

Shades of Howard Zinn: It's Okay If It's Impossible" by Bill Moyers,November 2, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

The following remarks were prepared for delivery on October 29, 2010 as part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series at Boston University:


I was honored when you asked me to join in celebrating Howard Zinn's life and legacy. I was also surprised. I am a journalist, not a historian. The difference between a journalist and an historian is that the historian knows the difference. George Bernard Shaw once complained that journalists are seemingly unable to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization. In fact, some epic history can start out as a minor incident. A young man named Paris ran off with a beautiful woman who was married to someone else, and the civilization of Troy began to unwind. A middle-aged black seamstress, riding in a Montgomery bus, had tired feet, and an ugly social order began to collapse. A night guard at an office complex in Washington D.C. found masking tape on a doorjamb, and the presidency of Richard Nixon began to unwind. What journalist, writing on deadline, could have imagined the walloping kick that Rosa Park's tired feet would give to Jim Crow? What pundit could have fantasized that a third-rate burglary on a dark night could change the course of politics? The historian's work is to help us disentangle the wreck of the Schwinn from cataclysm. Howard famously helped us see how big change can start with small acts.

We honor his memory. We honor him, for Howard championed grassroots social change and famously chronicled its story as played out over the course of our nation's history. More, those stirring sagas have inspired and continue to inspire countless people to go out and make a difference. The last time we met, I told him that the stories in A People's History of the United States remind me of the fellow who turned the corner just as a big fight broke out down the block. Rushing up to an onlooker he shouted, "Is this a private fight, or can anyone get in it?" For Howard, democracy was one big public fight and everyone should plunge into it. That's the only way, he said, for everyday folks to get justice - by fighting for it.

Moyers explains where America has found itself in a deep economic crisis which affects most Americans but is a boon to the super-wealthy and that there is anger and resentment and free-floating anxiety which is more often than not directed at the wrong people:

...in South Carolina, they might have been lucky enough to get a job with the new BMW plant that recently opened there and advertised that the company would hire one thousand workers. Among the applicants? According to the Washington Post; "a former manager of a major distribution center for Target; a consultant who oversaw construction projects in four western states; a supervisor at a plastics recycling firm. Some held college degrees and resumes in other fields where they made more money." They will be paid $15 an hour - about half of what BMW workers earn in Germany

In polite circles, among our political and financial classes, this is known as "the free market at work." No, it's "wage repression," and it's been happening in our country since around 1980. I must invoke some statistics here, knowing that statistics can glaze the eyes; but if indeed it's the mark of a truly educated person to be deeply moved by statistics, as I once read, surely this truly educated audience will be moved by the recent analysis of tax data by the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. They found that from 1950 through 1980, the share of all income in America going to everyone but the rich increased from 64 percent to 65 percent. Because the nation's economy was growing handsomely, the average income for 9 out of l0 Americans was growing, too - from $17,719 to $30,941. That's a 75 percent increase in income in constant 2008 dollars.

But then it stopped. Since 1980 the economy has also continued to grow handsomely, but only a fraction at the top have benefited. The line flattens for the bottom 90% of Americans. Average income went from that $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008. Think about that: the average income of Americans increased just $303 dollars in 28 years.

That's wage repression.

Another story in the Times caught my eye a few weeks the one about Connie Brasel and Natalie Ford. The headline read: "Industries Find Surging Profits in Deeper Cuts." Nelson Schwartz reported that despite falling motorcycle sales, Harley-Davidson profits are soaring - with a second quarter profit of $71 million, more than triple what it earned the previous year. Yet Harley-Davidson has announced plans to cut fourteen hundred to sixteen hundred more jobs by the end of next year; this on top of the 2000 job cut last year.

...You would think the rich might care, if not from empathy, then from reading history. Ultimately gross inequality can be fatal to civilization. In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, the Pulitzer Prize-winning anthropologist Jared Diamond writes about how governing elites throughout history isolate and delude themselves until it is too late. He reminds us that the change people inflict on their environment is one of the main factors in the decline of earlier societies. For example: the Mayan natives on the Yucatan peninsula who suffered as their forest disappeared, their soil eroded, and their water supply deteriorated. Chronic warfare further exhausted dwindling resources. Although Mayan kings could see their forests vanishing and their hills eroding, they were able to insulate themselves from the rest of society. By extracting wealth from commoners, they could remain well-fed while everyone else was slowly starving. Realizing too late that they could not reverse their deteriorating environment, they became casualties of their own privilege. Any society contains a built-in blueprint for failure, Diamond warns, if elites insulate themselves from the consequences of their decisions, separated from the common life of the country.

Yet the isolation continues - and is celebrated. When Howard came down to New York last December for what would be my last interview with him, I showed him this document published in the spring of 2005 by the Wall Street giant Citigroup, setting forth an "Equity Strategy" under the title (I'm not making this up) "Revisiting Plutonomy: The Rich Getting Richer (pdf)."

Now, most people know what plutocracy is: the rule of the rich, political power controlled by the wealthy. Plutocracy is not an American word and wasn't meant to become an American phenomenon - some of our founders deplored what they called "the veneration of wealth." But plutocracy is here, and a pumped up Citigroup even boasted of coining a variation on the word- "plutonomy", which describes an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer and that government helps them do it. Five years ago Citigroup decided the time had come to "bang the drum on plutonomy."

And bang they did. Here are some excerpts from the document "Revisiting Plutonomy;"

"Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper... [and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years."

"...the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the United States - the plutonomists in our parlance - have benefited disproportionately from the recent productivity surged in the US... [and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor."

"... [and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. Because the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact."

I'll repeat that: "The dynamics of plutonomy are still intact." That was the case before the Great Collapse of 2008, and it's the case today, two years after the catastrophe. But the plutonomists are doing just fine. Even better in some cases, thanks to our bailout of the big banks.

..Looking back, it all seems so clear that we wonder how we could have ignored the warning signs at the time. One of the few journalists who did see it coming - Thomas Edsall of the Washington Post - reported that "business refined its ability to act as a class, submerging competitive instincts in favor of joint, cooperative action in the legislative arena." Big business political action committees flooded the political arena with a deluge of dollars. They funded think tanks that churned out study after study with results skewed to their ideology and interests. And their political allies in the conservative movement cleverly built alliances with the religious right - Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition - who zealously waged a cultural holy war that camouflaged the economic assault on working people and the middle class.

Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan also tried to warn us. He said President Reagan's real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Senator Moynihan was gone before the financial catastrophe on George W. Bush's watch that paradoxically could yet fulfill Reagan's dream. The plutocrats who soaked up all the money now say the deficits require putting Social Security and other public services on the chopping block. You might think that Mr. Bush today would regret having invaded Iraq on false pretenses at a cost of more than a trillion dollars and counting, but no, just last week he said that his biggest regret was his failure to privatize Social Security. With over l00 Republicans of the House having signed a pledge to do just that when the new Congress convenes, Mr. Bush's vision may yet be realized.

Daniel Altman also saw what was coming. In his book Neoconomy he described a place without taxes or a social safety net, where rich and poor live in different financial worlds. "It's coming to America," he wrote. Most likely he would not have been surprised recently when firefighters in rural Tennessee would let a home burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn't paid a $75 fee.

That's what is coming to America.

.Here we are now, on the verge of the biggest commercial transaction in the history of American elections. Once again the plutocracy is buying off the system. Nearly $4 billion is being spent on the congressional races that will be decided next week, including multi millions coming from independent tax-exempt organizations that can collect unlimited amounts without revealing the sources. The organization Public Citizen reports that just l0 groups are responsible for the bulk of the spending by independent groups: "A tiny number of organizations, relying on a tiny number of corporate and fat cat contributors, are spending most of the money on the vicious attack ads dominating the airwaves" - those are the words of Public Citizen's president, Robert Weissman. The Federal Election Commission says that two years ago 97% of groups paying for election ads disclosed the names of their donors. This year it's only 32%.

Socrates again: To remember a thing, you must first name it. We're talking about slush funds. Donors are laundering their cash through front groups with high-falutin' names like American Crossroads. That's one of the two slush funds controlled by Karl Rove in his ambition to revive the era of the robber barons. Promise me you won't laugh when I tell you that although Rove and the powerful Washington lobbyist who is his accomplice described the first organization as "grassroots", 97% of its initial contributions came from four billionaires. Yes: The grass grows mighty high when the roots are fertilized with gold.

Rove, other conservative groups and the Chamber of Commerce have in fact created a "shadow party" determined to be the real power in Washington just like Rome's Opus Dei in Dan Brown's "The DaVinci Code." In this shadow party the plutocrats reign. We have reached what the new chairman of Common Cause and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich calls "the perfect storm that threatens American democracy: an unprecedented concentration of income and wealth at the top; a record amount of secret money, flooding our democracy; and a public becoming increasingly angry and cynical about a government that's raising its taxes, reducing its services, and unable to get it back to work. We're losing our democracy to a different system. It's called plutocracy."

That word again. But Reich is right. That fraction of one percent of Americans who now earn as much as the bottom 120 million Americans includes the top executives of giant corporations and those Wall Street hedge funds and private equity managers who constitute Citigroup's "plutonomy" are buying our democracy and they're doing it in secret.

That's because early this year the five reactionary members of the Supreme Court ruled that corporations are "persons" with the right to speak during elections by funding ads like those now flooding the airwaves. It was the work of legal fabulists. Corporations are not people; they are legal fictions, creatures of the state, born not of the womb, not of flesh and blood. They're not permitted to vote. They don't bear arms (except for the nuclear bombs they can now drop on a congressional race without anyone knowing where it came from.) Yet thanks to five activist conservative judges they have the privilege of "personhood" to "speak" - and not in their own voice, mind you, but as ventriloquists, through hired puppets.

Does anyone really think that's what the authors of the First Amendment had in mind? Horrified by such a profound perversion, the editor of the spunky Texas Observer, Bob Moser, got it right with his headline: "So long, Democracy, it's been good to know you."


...Thus it turns out that many of the ads being paid for secretly by anonymous donors are "false, grossly misleading, or marred with distortions," as Greg Sargent reports in his website "The Plum Line." Go to Sargent's site and you'll see a partial list of ads that illustrate the scope of the intellectual and political fraud being perpetrated in front of our eyes. Money from secret sources is poisoning the public mind with toxic information in order to dupe voters into giving even more power to the powerful.

On another site -"thinkprogress.com" - you can find out how the multibillionaire Koch brothers - also big oil polluters and Tea Party supporters - are recruiting "captains of industry" to fund the right-wing infrastructure of front groups, political campaigns, think tanks and media outlets. Now, hold on to your seats, because this can blow away the faint-hearted: Among the right-wing luminaries who showed up among Koch's ‘secretive network of Republican donors' are two Supreme Court Justices: Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. That's right: 2 of the 5 votes to enable the final corporate takeover of government came from justices who were present as members of the plutocracy hatched their schemes for doing so.

Something else is going on here, too. The Koch brothers have contributed significantly to efforts to stop the Affordable Care Act - the health care reforms - from taking effect. Justice Clarence Thomas has obviously been doing some home schooling, because his wife Virginia claims those reforms are "unconstitutional," and has founded an organization that is fighting to repeal them. Her own husband on the Supreme Court may one day be ruling on whether she's right or not ("Play the cards fair, Reuben; I know what I dealt you.") There's more: The organization Virginia Thomas founded to kill those health care reforms -- also a goal of the Koch brothers, remember -- got its start with a gift of half a million dollars from an unnamed source, and is still being funded by donors who can't be traced. You have to wonder if some of them are corporations that stand to benefit from favorable decisions by the Supreme Court. Now guess the name of the one Supreme Court justice who voted against the disclosure provision. I'm not telling, but Mrs. Thomas can tell you - if, that is, she's willing to share the pillow talk.

And so it goes,
GORD.

GOP USA Rallying the Racist and Extremist "Know Nothings " & Meanwhile Omar Khadr: American Injustice and Canadian PM Stephen Harper 's Indifference

All Americans who are of Good Will when they vote should keep in mind how radical the GOP has become as it becomes infiltrated and controlled by Tea Part Billionaires , Nativists, and racista.

Those Americans of Good Will who believe in the American dream as outlined by Martin Luther King of a country of pluralism, diversity , helping out those in need and not just those filled with Greed should vote against these Republican fear merchants and the merchants of hate.

Update on Scott Wheeler's PR propaganda - racism, Nativism, fear mongering, the old Red Scare brought back -they compare Obama to Hitler, Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Pol Pott, Mao and every evil person who ever walked the earth .

Rachel Maddow points out the attacks on Obama boil down to -"He's Black so Be Afraid"

Message from Republicans to American voters -"White people be afraid -don't forget Obama is Black & therefore Not one of us ie not white , a secret Muslim, secret communist or even one of the Lizard People "

Rachel Maddow- GOP revives -scare white people- tactic




Omar Khadr : Canadian Citizen and designated "Child Soldier" held in Guantanamo by US government indifferent to International Law.




Barbaric Guantanamo Bay Forced Feeding Chair- for those on hunger strikes

What happened to common decency - Is this crossing the line




Guantanamo Bay : America's Shame




"...In conclusion, while those who exult in the depths to which America has sunk over the last nine years, since "the gloves came off" following the 9/11 attacks, will rejoice in Khadr's 40-year sentence (and will complain that his real sentence is only eight years), anyone who retains a shred of decency and respect for the rule of law will be more inclined to accept the words of Dennis Edney, one of Khadr's long-term Canadian civilian lawyers, who stated after the military jury announced its sentence:

The fact that the trial of a child soldier, Omar Khadr, has ended with a guilty plea in exchange for his eventual release to Canada does not change the fact that fundamental principles of law and due process were long since abandoned in Omar's case. Politics also played a role. To date, there have been in excess of 1,200 US troops killed in Afghanistan, yet it is only Omar who has been put on trial."

Today's Talking Points - ( Definition: Talking Points- Dumbing down so even Americans and conservative Canadians might be able understand)

*Justice American style
*Justice versus revenge
*Omar Khadr's "Show Trial" mere entertainment for the American citizenry
*Coerced confession after abuse and threats and a bit of torture
*American Judicial system a sham
*Trumped up charges - fabrications and lies on the part of his accusers
*And still Americans wonder why so many around the globe distrust Americans and others who hate America-
*They distrust and /or hate America for its hypocrisy
*America invades countries on a whim and wraps itself in the Flag and the Cross.
*America is the World's Greatest Bully which knows no bounds and has no shame
* Americans believe they have the right to the world's natural resources at bargain basement prices and has the right to exploit workers in foreign nations
*Americans in general favor torture , renditions, assassinations, drone attacks on family gatherings, Death Squads, rigging election campaigns at home and abroad and is anti-Democracy and will use force if necessary to oust any government that does not give free-rein to American businesses or dares to insist that the superwealthy pay their fair share to maintain a decent civilized just society for all and not just the privileged.


America once again snubs and breaches International Law and Agreements by pursuing the case against Omar Khadr , putting him on trial ;coercing him to sign an outrageous self-incriminating indictment and confession to offenses which he did not commit or did so unknowingly.

What was his crime ? His crime was that of being a child of 15 who obeyed his parents and took part in a conflict which he may or may not have understood.

Canadian Security Intelligence Service CSIS

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) plays a leading role in protecting the national security interests of Canada by investigating and reporting on threats to the security of Canada. Guided by the rule of law and the protection of human rights, CSIS works within Canada’s integrated national security framework to provide advice to the Government of Canada on these threats.

from their website CSIS

Interesting that they claim (insincerely) to respect the rule of law and human rights since they did nothing to help Omar Khadr a designated "Child Soldier" under International Law who is a Canadian Citzen being held in a foreign prison where he claims he has been abused, neglected, beaten , tortured , put into solitary confinement for breaking some minor regulation . All of these are reason for insisting on the return of Omar Khadr by the US government which is in fact breaking "International Laws" including the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Rulings and War Crimes.

CSIS officer interviews Omar Khadr in a nasty aggressive unsympathetic manner.
When Khadr tries to tell about his abuse , neglect and times spent in solitary the CSIS representative tells Khadr to stop making up stories even though he shows the officer his bruises. The CSIS guy tells him that he nor anyone else can get him out of the prison. He tells Khadr he must confess to everything the US military and CIA says he did. It never occurs to our heartless man from Ottawa that Khadr might be telling the truth. When left alone Khadr seems to shut down while just muttering and then sort of singing and rocking as if he were mentally disturbed possibly going into a regressive state of mind .

Guantanamo Bay child soldier CSIS interrogation - Omar Khadr



Odd how so many Americans including the mainstream Media in the united States and the right-wing hawks in the GOP and Democratic Party and including President Obama have shown such a lack of sympathy or empathy for a "Designated Child Soldier " in favor of getting their "Revenge" and "Their Pound of Flesh" and Justice, fairness, compassion, common decency, common sense and the rule of law be damned.

My understanding of the law is that justice is to be tempered with a little compassion but to most Americans it seems notions such as Compassion, sympathy, empathy and common decency are seen as a sign of weakness and as a character flaw in individuals. Meanwhile they preach that their nation is the chosen nation of God. That they are the "Good Guys" . But the Americans rounded up the innocent with the guilty and proceeded to treat all prisoners as if they were enemy combatants and ruthless terrorists no matter the circumstances. But we also know that the US government and military knew but did not care that the majority of prisoners at Guantanamo and at Abu Ghraib and Bagram.

If God is on America's side then the Christian God is a despicable bully and a tyrant .
who is only deserving of contempt.

The Conservatives in America including the Religious Right are always going on about family values and that children should not rebel against their parents but to obey their parents without question and yet they punish an individual who was only 15 at the time of his being a soldier and was a soldier because he obeyed his parents and others in positions of authority.

Of course the Canadian government should be ashamed of the part it played in dealing with a Canadian citizen improperly incarcerated by a foreign country ie USA. The Canadian government and its people are also guilty in allowing "a Child Soldier" to be kept incarcerated and being abused , tortured, denied due process for 9 years and treated as guilty and that it was up to him to prove otherwise.

Must the Canadian government and its citizenry continue to kowtow to the bullying of the American government . Are we becoming the 51 st state.

When a Canadian official visited Khadr he was unsympthetic towards Khadr and wanted him to confess to whateverthe American authorities claimed he had done. After 9 years he finally caved in and signed a confession under duress and after being abused and tortured. Legally this confession is useless and is not worth the paper it is written on.



Omar Khadr Jury Hammers the Final Nail Into the Coffin of American Justice by: Andy Worthington, t r u t h o u t | Op-Ed, Nov. 01,2010

...everything about the last week's events has been a travesty of justice that heaps shame upon the United States and convicting Khadr for being an "alien unprivileged enemy combatant," who was not even allowed to legitimately be in any kind of combat situation whatsoever, is an almost incomprehensible farce.

Moreover, the analysis of the last week's events as a disturbing travesty of justice is supported by the United States' ratification, in December 2002, of the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict and also by analyses of the legislation authorizing the military commissions, which reveals that the war crimes that Khadr agreed to committing as part of his plea deal are not war crimes at all.

Under the terms of the UN Optional Protocol, which deals with prisoners who are under 18 when their alleged crimes take place, signatories are obliged to "[r]ecogniz[e] the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities," and are also called upon to ensure "the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict."

.. As Lieutenant Colonel Frakt commented, "Astoundingly, according to the Pentagon, a detainee may be convicted of murder in violation of the law of war even if they did not actually violate the law of war."

In other words, then, a former child prisoner, who should have been rehabilitated rather than punished, because the responsibility for his actions lay with his militant father, was convicted on war crimes charges that were invented by Congress and were then reworked by the Obama administration so that the glaring contradiction between real war crimes and invented war crimes could be papered over with a veneer of legitimacy.

Small wonder then that, in the "Statement of Fact" that Khadr signed as part of his plea deal, he was also obliged to waive his right to appeal, in a passage that stated that he "does not have any legal defense to any of the offenses to which he is pleading guilty."

...In conclusion, while those who exult in the depths to which America has sunk over the last nine years, since "the gloves came off" following the 9/11 attacks, will rejoice in Khadr's 40-year sentence (and will complain that his real sentence is only eight years), anyone who retains a shred of decency and respect for the rule of law will be more inclined to accept the words of Dennis Edney, one of Khadr's long-term Canadian civilian lawyers, who stated after the military jury announced its sentence:

The fact that the trial of a child soldier, Omar Khadr, has ended with a guilty plea in exchange for his eventual release to Canada does not change the fact that fundamental principles of law and due process were long since abandoned in Omar's case. Politics also played a role. To date, there have been in excess of 1,200 US troops killed in Afghanistan, yet it is only Omar who has been put on trial.

Edney followed up by referring to those two polarized worlds of opinion that I mentioned at the start of this article, saying that those watching the military commission "may choose to believe that through his plea Omar finally came clean and accepted his involvement in a firefight when he was 15 years of age," or, conversely, that they may have concluded that "this was one final coerced confession from a victimized young man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time because his father placed him there.''

and so it goes,
GORD.

GOP,Tea Party & Conservative Radicals I.E. Scott Wheeler & Lt. General Boykin Still Attacking Obama & Democrats Of Having A Radical Nazis Like Agenda

UPDATE: 3:54 PM & 4:58 PM, Nov. 1, 2010



"Remember Hitler had the Brownshirts and in the Night of the Long Knives, even Hitler got scared of the Brownshirts and killed thousands of them.

So you say "are there any signs that that's happened" and the truth is yes. If you read the health care legislation which, by the way nobody in Washington has read, but if you read the health care legislation it's actually in the health care legislation.

There are paragraphs in the health care legislation that talk about the commissioning of officers in time of a national crisis to work directly for the President. It's laying the groundwork for a constabulary force that will control the population in America." quote from Lt. Gen. Boykin



GOP, Tea Party Billionaire Funded Anti-Obama Propaganda Film (ala Glenn Beck)includes incendiary rhetoric which if taken seriously by the public could at least lead to more acrimony and billigerent partisnaship leading to a Toxic political and social environment.
Are they hoping for more votes or for an outright insurgency against the Obama administration.

GOP trailer for the outrageous fear mongering conspiracy spreading Propaganda Film
Breaking Point which GOP claims is based on exhaustive research rather than what it really is which is a scattered collection of unverified attacks on Obama.
Trailer #2

GOPTrust | October 22, 2010

"The Breaking Point" is the new, explosive documentary that tells the truth about the 2008 financial crisis, the 2008 election, and the Obama administration's corruption and radicalism. Go to www.goptrust.com to view 25 minutes that will change America! Demand to see this important documentary short that uncovers the corruption and secret agenda at the heart of the Obama administration.

The paranoia and fear mongering on the part of the Religious Right and Uberconservatives of the Republican Party still using incendiary speech in attacking President Obama , his administration and his supporters calling them would be Brownshirts and as bad as Hitler and as UnAmerican and as anti-Christian and pro-Socialists. Unfortunately the Mainstream Media either ignores the truth about these "Radicals" on the right or claim that there are more than one side to any debate and that each has a right to be heard and therefore to be respected.

If this were true then we would have to take seriously the anti-Semites who deny the Holocaust/Shoah or those who believe 9/11 was an inside job
or that Obama was not born in America but in Kenya
or that the earth is only 10,000 years old rather than 4 billion years old
or that Saddam hid his WMDs prior to America's unnecessary invasion of Iraq
or that America had a great victory in Iraq when in fact Iraq is still a mess which the US created leaving appox. a million Iraqis dead
or that the Vietnam War was lost because of Jane Fonda
or that the landing on the moon was a hoax
or that the Lizard People ( from space or inside the earth ) are in control of the United Nations and other organizations and individual nations

But this is nonsense since some opinions in fact are not the result of a rational or factually based view of the world. These critics on the right are paranoid and irrational or just down right cynical in their attempts to influence American citizens and how they will vote in tomorrow's election.

Scott Wheeler and the National Republican Trust PAC still fear mongering and lying about Obama's agenda as a radical socialist out to destroy traditional America.
Wheeler mentions Soros as a supporter of progressives but fails to mention the billionaires the Koch brothers and other wealthy individuals and corporations pouring money into the coffers of Republican candidates or taking part in massive ad campaigns to attack the Obama administration and the Democrats in support of the radical right . The radical right as we have seen is made up of diverse groups who are especially in favor of the extremist Republican Tea Party Candidates and the Religious Right including Christian Dominionists, the anti-abortion Personhood activists, anti-Gay , Pro-Family , anti-immigrant Nativists and the Tenthers and other anti-government anti-tax groups. They are being funded by self-serving Billionaires who want no restrictions on their corporations that is that they be permitted to do as they please in an environment of unfettered Monopolistic Capitalism and that their tax burden be reduced if not eliminated .

They of course want to roll back all laws passed over the passed hundred years in America which they characterize as anti-Business and unAmerican such as labor laws protecting workers ie minimum wage laws, health and safety regulations , collective bargaining and regulations meant to protect the public at large and the environment.

They in principle and out of Greed and avarice want to return to the days of rapacious unfettered capitalism before there were laws protecting the public and workers from unethical or immoral practices of corporations which are guided only by the bottom line and Greed.

‘Kill Some Crackers’: GOP Group Pays Fox Affiliates To Influence Election With Anti-Obama Propaganda from Think Progress Nov. 1, 2010.

Several Fox television stations and one ABC affiliate in key battleground states are running a Republican front group’s anti-Obama propaganda as paid programming in the final days leading up to the election. The National Republican Trust PAC, run by conservative conspiracy theorist Scott Wheeler, has purchased airtime in Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, and North Carolina to broadcast its 25-minute “Breaking Point” political attack ad, starting last Friday. Using clips from Townhall.com, World Net Daily, Fox Business, CNSNews.com, and Glenn Beck, narrator E. W. Jackson invokes the boogeymen of ACORN, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the New Black Panther Party, Hamas, and Mao Tse-Tung to paint President Obama and the Democratic Party as “extreme,” “treacherous,” “socialist,” and “with hostility” towards America:

(That Obama they claim) "govern(s) outside the bounds of the Constitution.”

(with the) "clear invitation to adopt the destructive ideology of leftist revolutionaries"

(and that) "Obama displayed tendencies that some labeled socialist.”

(that )"He does not view America with an America-centric perspective, but with an outsider’s point of view, often with hostility"

(That Part of Obama's Campaign fund of 750 million ) "originated from the terrorist group Hamas, which also endorsed Obama.”

In addition to the false attacks on Obama advisers Van Jones and John Holdren, the propaganda film also repeats smears against Obama staff Anita Dunn, Kevin Jennings, Carol Browner, and Cass Sunstein. It makes the flat-out false claims that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac “caused the entire home mortgage industry crisis,” that health care reform would allow the “government to take over one-fifth of the U.S. economy,” and that there is a “growing number of scientific scandals” that are “further discrediting manmade global warming claims.” When not playing inflammatory clips of angry black people, the ad also comes to defense of the billionaire Koch brothers who fund the Americans for Prosperity, claiming “Obama has repeatedly attacked a group of private citizens simply because they wanted their voices heard.”

The video explicitly encourages citizens to vote against the Democratic Party. “As if to validate the very need for a citizens revolt, the establishment responded by alienating, undermining, and attacking their own voters,” the paid program electioneers, also mentioning the “midterm elections” and people “going to vote on November 2nd” in the context of defeating Democrats. In a video following the smear piece, Scott Wheeler promotes the National Republican Trust’s efforts:

Scott Wheeler's GOPTrust: 'Republicans You Can Trust'




Boykin Exposes Obama's Health Care Conspiracy to Build His Brownshirt Army by Kyle on October 29, 2010

This is Lt. Gen. (Ret.) Jerry Boykin, who was the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence under Donald Rumsfeld until video emerged of him explaining that we were engaged in a spiritual war against Islam that the US would eventually win because our God was bigger than their God.

Shortly thereafter Boykin retired and aligned himself with fringe Religious Right leaders by teaming up with the likes of "Christocrat" Rick Scarborough and Dominionist Janet Porter and even sharing the stage with professional anti-gay activists like Peter LaBarbera.

He also sits upon the board of Rick Joyner's "The Oak Initiative" along with people like Porter, Lou Sheldon, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, and Cindy Jacobs and he recently recorded this video for the organization explaining how his years of Special Forces training in fighting Marxist insurgencies enables him to identify the plot underway to take over America through a variety of means, including President Obama's attempt to create an army of Brownshirts loyal only to him though the passage of Health Care Reform:

Personhood Colorado: From Slavery, to Demons, to Nazis by Kyle at Right Wing Watch via People For the American Way, October 26, 2010

First, the activists behind Colorado's Amendment 62 tried to generate support for their effort by running a radio ad featuring a "former slave" speaking out against abortion.

Then they upped the ante with a web video calling President Obama the "Angel of Death."

So, of course, the next logical step is to invoke the Nazis:

A volunteer for the “Yes on 62” campaign is using graphic pictures of dying Jews in concentrations camps to get you to vote yes on the anti-abortion measure.

The Facebook page was created earlier in October; at first Parenthood Colorado told TARGET 13 that they were aware of the site and no one on staff took part in its creation.

“I’ve seen the comparison before,” said Roberto Garcia-Jones, Director of Personhood Colorado. When asked if he agreed with the concept, Garcia-Jones said, “I support the notion that what Nazis did to Jews is like what were doing to pre-borns today.”

At first Garcia-Jones was unaware of the person behind the postings, but when asked about key staffers and supporters who “liked” the site, he told us he would get one of the supporters we asked about to call us back.

A few minutes later, TARGET 13 received a call from Keith Mason, co-founder of Personhood USA. He admitted to TARGET 13 that it was one of campaign’s volunteers who created the site. Mason said, “This is not what we are about.”

Mason also said he was unaware that key staffers were made administrators of the Facebook page. After the calls, any tie to Parenthood Colorado was taken down from the Facebook page and Mason said key staffers no longer had administrative privileges

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Robert F. Kennedy, Jr at Ring of Fire radio program interviews Jeff Sharlet about Doug Coe's Bizarre organization The Family/ The Fellowship or "C" Street .
The Family is a pseudo-church which hosts The Prayer Breakfast in Washington which is for wealthy and powerful Christians in America and from around the world.
Doug Coe preaches against the notion of the caring gentle Jesus in favor of a Jesus who is a warrior or Guerrilla fighter. His notion of Jesus is that God prefers the rich and powerful over the poor and powerless.

This fits in with the evangelicals who preach the Prosperity Gospel on the one hand that is Jesus loves the prosperous and those Evangelicals who preach that Christianity is at war with Islam and all other religions not just spiritually but physically . They believe it is America's destiny as God's Chosen nation to spread the Gospel by word,by deed and by force.

Pastor Rick Warren and others preach a message similar to Doug Coe's as they insist that Christian Evangelical youth should be as fanatical and as self-assured as the Hitler Youth.

For decades in Washington, D.C., a secretive group known as The Family has been working behind the scenes to empower a few select politicians, and to influence the decisions that shape our country. Not only has this group operated in almost complete secrecy, but they've also skewed Christianity to the point where they believe that God wants us to take care of the rich and powerful more than the poor and hungry.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. talks about this secret Family in Washington with Jeff Sharlet, author of the new book "C Street: The Fundamentalist Threat to American Democracy."..

Posted October 30, 2010