Five Fold Today The Spoils of Corruption - He Shall Hide Me in His Pavillion - Bush Signs the Reichstag Fire Decree - Trained to Kill - 'Stability First': Newspeak for Rape of Iraq - Soldiers Say Support the Troops by Bringing Them Home - I Am About To Rush Forth

November 3rd, 2006

The Spoils of Corruption

By Charles Sullivan

11/01/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- Like many Americans, since early childhood I was taught that good always triumphs over evil. But as I grew older and acquainted myself with the history of my country, my perspective became less naïve and better informed. My perceptions of reality were altered forever, and I am forced to live, like so many of my readers, with the burden of knowledge that often makes reality painful to bear.

America could have been very different, but it has become a land of unfathomable corruption. It is a place where money rules and lords power over everyone and every process. Corruption has lodged itself in every tissue and every organ of our societal institutions, and riddled them with crippling disease. Perhaps more than any organ it has blinded our ability to see what is before us.

The root of corruption stems from America's love affair with private wealth and conquest. We are a culturally shallow and spiritually deprived people who seem incapable of discerning truth from fairy tales. This may be a matter of convenience for some and a survival mechanism to others.

There are three primary cultural pillars that are the underpinning of our society: government, media, and religion. It is widely assumed that these institutions exist to serve the people. Whatever their intent when they were birthed in the minds and hearts of their creators, these institutions were subverted and used to subdue and control the masses; to make them subservient to power. Virtually everything we believe about America is contradicted by the evidence, but too many of us are unwilling to come to grips with reality, which thus assures the continuation of a brutal and tortuous history of murder and conquest.

In a wonderful essay titled The Problem is Civil Obedience, historian Howard Zinn wrote, "I start from the supposition that the world is topsy-turvey, that the wrong people are in jail and the wrong people are out of jail, that the wrong people are in power and the wrong people are out of power..." Zinn, as usual, sums up the situation perfectly. But the great majority refuses to see things as they really are. They prefer fairy tales to truth that is too painful for them to acknowledge and to bear; and so the charade continues.

Those on the far right of the political spectrum are fond of saying that America is a Christian nation, when, in fact, nothing could be farther from the truth. The framers of the Constitution, especially Thomas Jefferson, took great pains to keep America from evolving into a Theocracy. Even so, religion should provide a moral compass that steers its participants away from corruption and moral morass. Yet with only a comparatively few exceptions, religion is used against its followers. It serves wealth and power, and keeps the masses ignorant, and subservient to the hierarchy of the church, which is in collusion with the money changers in government.

Organized religion, like the mainstream media and the government, is controlled by the wealthy and powerful. It serves the high priests of capitalism and is little more than an enabler of corruption and conquest. Let us not forget that Manifest Destiny was driven by a puritanical zealotry that resulted in the ethnic cleansing of a continent. The collusion of religion with material wealth lends a false aura of moral authority to disingenuous and misguided human behaviors that follow immoral government into war after war. Thus the rich continue to exploit the working people for the benefit of the ruling class.

At some point in our history Jesus of Nazareth was supplanted by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. The Jesus who despised the wealthy and believed in service to the poor, who in anger overturned the tables of the money changers, no longer exists within the American psyche. Unlike Jesus, Robertson and Falwell believe in accruing wealth to themselves and in assassinating their enemies. They work hand in hand with the morally bankrupt leadership that has invaded and occupies 135 of the world's 192 nations. The genuine article has somehow given way to the counterfeit, and too many of us are unable to tell the difference.

In a purer form organized religion-in this case Christianity, would be revolutionary and radical; and it would serve as a bulwark against the accumulation of private affluence in favor of public service, and a massive redistribution of wealth and power. It would find itself, like any conscientious individual, in formal opposition to the conventions of government and society, rather than an enabler of them. But that clearly is not the case these days.

The church, like all things American, more closely resembles a for profit corporation than a place where human souls are instructed in righteous behavior and healed.

Similarly, the naïve among us broadly assume that the mainstream media exists to inform the people, and thus serves as a countervailing force against corruption and malfeasance. In truth the corporate media serves those in power rather than holding them accountable to the people. While it was not always so, the mainstream media, like organized religion, is used to program public perceptions-to steer us away from truth and to perpetuate fairy tales that extol the virtues of bribery, violence, and greed. It makes useful idiots of those who cannot think for themselves and persuades them to act like fools in the eyes of the world.

From the days of Tom Paine we have regressed to an era in which news anchors are rewarded for their loyalty to political regimes by being awarded positions in government. Tom Paine and the spirit of public service have given way to Tony Snow and Katie Couric, and the creation of media celebrities. The boundary between government and media, between church and state and corporate power, no longer exists. They are all interchangeable parts in a machine that makes a mockery of social justice and human freedoms.

Gone are the days of radical, revolutionary religion in America. Gone are the days of Thomas Jefferson and Samuel Adams, when a just and Democratic Republic seemed possible. Gone are the days of Tom Paine and the militant press that challenged corrupt power. The hands of time are no longer moving forward; we have reversed them. Once again the dark ages loom large on the horizon before us like an unseen iceberg in the chill dark of an Atlantic night.

Charles Sullivan is a photographer, social activist and free lance writer residing in the hinterland of West Virgina.

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He Shall Hide Me in His Pavillion

Dorothea Montague
     
I say unto you, My people, do not let fear encompass you in the light of great trials and tribulation which are coming upon the world. Did not prophets of old foretell of great tribulation to come at the end of the age. I am calling each one of you who are Mine to come unto Me and receive My guidance and direction for you in the midst of tribulation.

Yes, My precious ones, you shall encounter tribulation but am I not greater than any tribulation? As you remain close to Me I shall protect you and use you to be a light to a lost and dying world. Does not My Word say...

For in the time of trouble He shall hide me in His pavillion; in the secret place of His tabernacle He shall hide me; He shall set me high upon a rock. (Psalm 27:5)

O, My people, trust in Me with all your hearts and I will guide you onto the path I desire that you tread. You know not of the power and anointing I shall give you to minister unto the people. Even in the midst of turmoil in the world yet you shall minister to those who cross your path.

Yes, My people, the media is speaking forth fearful words of what shall come upon the earth but as you willing ly seek for My will in your lives you shall accomplish great things for Me. You, My people, shall be the channels through whom I shall bring revival across your land and you shall be the channels through whom the new converts shall be taught of Me. I shall raise up pastors, teachers and prophets from your midst to minister to them so that they, too shall go forth and bring people into My kingdom.

O, My people, I am calling you to pray for My direction in what I desire you to do to prepare for disasters which shall come upon you as part of troubled times. There is much that you can do in preparation for those times, which will help you to endure them. You need only ask and I shall give you clear guidance. You must consider those who do not know Me but who will have great needs in these times and be willing to help them. It is in the midst of helping them that they shall seek and find Me as their Saviour and Lord.

Men's hearts failing them from fear and the expectation of those things which are coming upon the earth, for the powers of heaven will be shaken. Now when these things begin to happen, look up and lift up your heads, because your redemption draws near. (Luke 21:26, 28)

Yes, My people, you shall encounter disasters and destructions in the days to come but fear not for My plan for the world shall be accomplished. Lift up your heads for your redemption draws near.

NewWineToday@Aol.Com

Bush Signs the Reichstag Fire Decree

Larisa Alexandrovna

With a flip of the wrist, Bush signed into law the anti-Habeas Corpus, pro-torture law (cleverly repackaged as the Military Commissions Act of 2006), signaling with it the end of American democracy.

For the Bush family it was simply another day - like any other day - for the entitled nobility, who take from others that which does not belong to them.

The Bush dynasty was always filthy rotten, with not a single member of the imperial family ever doing an actual honest day's work in their pathetic and miserable blue-blooded lives.

On October 17, 2006, however, the latest Bush scoundrel outdid his kin at sucking the marrow of this nation and signed into law that which our founding fathers would have called treason, essentially taking the people's rights of liberty, justice, and property solely for himself. What Mr. Bush signed was, in essence, the final assault of a carefully orchestrated, six year long war on the Constitution of the United States.

Much like his predecessor, Paul Von Hindenburg - who rose to power on the family fortune, with fabricated credentials such fortune can purchase, and went on to end German democracy by signing the Reichstag Fire Decree and ushering in the silent dictatorship - Bush signed into law that which grants him the power to be judge, jury, and executioner.

With such power granted, there is no room for turning back, as all roads of justice and freedom have been measured out and blockades have been erected in the event that a sleeping public might wake to find themselves pillaged and raped.

And how is such a vulgarity of power-lust greeted by those in attendance at the signing? With applause and with rounds of hand shakes signaling a mission accomplished, the wrong mission of course, but that need not matter any longer.

To add insult to injury, when Bush was finished with his butchery, this half-witted crook had the audacity, the sheer nerve, to claim that he was slitting the throat of America in the memory of those who died on September 11, 2001:

"And now, in memory of the victims of September the 11th, it is my honor to sign the Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law." (Applause).

Yes, those in attendance not only applauded the man who cannot be bothered to govern or to attend to any business beneficial to the health and vitality of this nation, they actually cheered the destruction of this country and allowed Bush to claim the memory of those who died because of his very own indifference.

The irony is as ugly as it is irrelevant to the majority of the American public, sedated, strung out, and watching reality on the television because they are too lazy or cowardly to actually live life or fight for something real.

When the President evoked the memory of my neighbors and friends who died due to his decisive vacationing and stay-the-course golfing, in order to remind those he will no longer protect of those he already failed to protect, his words rang as a threat to me. I heard him and my stomach dropped straight into the earth, leaving no room for hope. I heard a threat and it rang on my walls and ears like an alarm, a man riding on a horse in the middle of the night, screaming "The Constitution is dying, the Constitution is dying."

But first, a matter of treason:

I am certain that my right-wing fellow Americans will no doubt soil themselves silly and cite Biblical curses at me for daring to label their beloved leader a traitor to the United States of America. But he is not only a traitor, he is an aristocratic wannabe despot who is so mentally deranged, that he believes that God tells him to go out and spread Americana into the world, and in the process murder hundreds of thousands of people abroad and destroy thousands of lives at home. Does that sound like something a sane person would do, or even attempt to justify, in public by evoking Jesus, the complete antithesis to these activities?

But treason, often overused by the fanatical right - not unlike their counterpart, the fanatical suicide bombers (apparently the only difference being that the latter group blasts their way into heaven while the former group is merely lifted by a magic carpet ride) - is a term that exists for a reason. It exists to identify those who would destroy this country for whatever reason and do so using illicit means and in concert with declared enemies of the United States.

Since the President so often evokes the memory of those his actions helped place in their graves to begin with in order to wage war against the Constitution, then his own failures and subsequent corruption must be addressed in order to reclaim the voices of our lost Americans who can no longer speak for themselves.

If he insists on reminding us of an enemy, unidentified, lurking just at the edge of our collective eye, hazy and out of sight, but there, waiting to take America as bounty and murder all of us in our beds, then let us first examine what such an enemy might accomplish before, during, and after the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Before September 11th, Bush was warned over and over that an attack on the United States was coming, even in what manner and by whom. Yet, never one to be productive, the coked-out drunkard of a mock President spent most of his time on vacation.

Would the attackers have succeeded in their evil deed if the President and his cabal actually cared to protect us, even a little? Would it not be accurate to say that, just as with Katrina, it was in fact not only the original event, but the reaction of those in leadership that caused such a massive loss of life on US soil?

The terrorists attacked because no one stopped them from attacking, making the President and his cronies, in part, directly responsible for thousands of deaths. Just as with Katrina, in which one event did some of the damage, it was the second and by far more important action that did the most damage. In both instances, the President and his crummy ideologues aggravated and exacerbated that which was first preventable and after, even manageable.

After the first plane hit, Bush thought it wise to do a photo-op instead of checking with his officials to see if something was, perhaps, wrong.

If this President and his mob had actually for a moment put country before politics, and acted immediately to secure the air, would the second plane have ever made it to its target?

After the second plane hit and after he was told by his chief of staff that "the nation is under attack," this sorry excuse of a leader did not bother to even ask "Nuclear?"

Imagine for a moment what would have happened if it had been a WMD attack that Bush, so stay-the-course, ignored? Had this been a nuclear attack, his nearly 10 minutes of face time and cowardice would have resulted in an American wasteland and made him the king of a new Chernobyl.

But even after the second plane hit, the President did nothing to secure the air or his citizens and through this decisive inaction, causing unprecedented damage to this nation.

He failed over and over to do his job, before the attack, during the attack, and even after the attack, when he did not reprimand, fire, or even slap gently on the wrist a single person in any government agency who failed to do their own job to prevent such a tragedy.

This man chose to give his friends and donors jobs, and then refused to fire the incompetent and corrupt, choosing once again politics over national security and his duty to us, the citizens he was tasked with protecting. But the assault did not end there, by any measure, because no sooner had the victims landed into death than Mr. Bush forced the Environmental Protection Agency to give an "all-clear" on the air quality at ground zero

Bush's all-clear order alone was an act of war on the American public, the American people. Knowing full well that the air was not safe, the President ordered those with the authority to ascertain safety to lie to the public and march more Americans into a city sized coffin.

And yet, without an ounce of humility or regret, this President and his fascist party dared to dance on the graves of those who died by evoking their memories in order to perpetuate their own lies and to destroy more and more lives.
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Fathom this for a moment if you can, the sheer perversion of it, and see if this is what our founding fathers might call treason. The Pinto mentality of cost analysis, that is to say, political gain vs. the loss of life is what the fascist state excels at, not a democracy.

But instead of removing from office the monstrosity of this entire gang of thugs and lunatics, our Congress gave this President more power to inflict more harm by passing an outright violation of the Constitution in the form of the perversely named PATRIOT Act.

Yes, by all means, reward a strangler by giving him a gun by which to expedite his murders.

The Unlimited Power to Protect Us, from what or whom?

Who exactly are we being protected from? If it is supposedly the alleged mastermind of September 11, Osama bin Laden, then why was he allowed to vanish from the face of the earth when we had him cornered in Tora Bora and his henchmen from Konduz?

And why is he now appearing in Republican campaign ads all over the country, as the star of fear and somehow a warning against voting for Democrats?

Is there a logical explanation for such failure? Is is it quite simply the obvious, that once again politics take priority over national security and that a dead Osama does little to energize the GOP base? Is it possible that the President allowed Osama to escape so that he can continue conjuring up his image as needed? Yes, it is possible, and given the moral depravity of this administration, it is likely.

Yes, by all means, give a murderer with a gun an imaginary missile to use and then stand idly by while he launches it at the innocent public in order to frighten them away from their own Constitution.

We did not secure Afghanistan, contrary to popular propaganda, not by a long shot. Instead, we pulled a drive-by shooting type war, where we hit a few targets and left the enemy, the Taliban, largely in control and made worse a drug plague dragging that nation into the underworld. Instead of attacking those who harbored our enemy, those who would not surrender our enemy after the attacks of September 11, we attacked a sovereign nation who did nothing to us and murdered nearly one million people. What can something like this be called? Shock and Awe?

Yes, I am shocked at the rogue insanity of the Bush regime and I am in awe of our Congress' lack of oversight at the so obviously criminal.

By all means, hand a man with a God complex the keys to this nation's survival because political consultants don't think impeachment will be popular during the mid-term elections. Does anyone in Washington every actually work once elected or are they all indefinitely running for reelection?

The politics of shame

And yet this man has the indecency to invoke those whom he failed to protect, avenge or in any way provide justice for, in order to make into law that which will deny those of us who have managed to survive this administration the very basics of Constitutional protection. How is this not obscene? How is this not treason, all of it?

Those who are about to die salute you (do they have a choice?)

On October 17 2006, surely a day that will live in infamy, when you, Mr. Bush, said that:

"The bill I'm about to sign also provides a way to deliver justice to the terrorists we have captured. In the months after 9/11, I authorized a system of military commissions to try foreign terrorists accused of war crimes. These commissions were similar to those used for trying enemy combatants in the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and World War II. Yet the legality of the system I established was challenged in the court, and the Supreme Court ruled that the military commissions needed to be explicitly authorized by the United States Congress"
- did you stop to consider what it is that you actually dribbled out of your twitching mouth?

This statement is so grotesque, so vile, that it is almost impossible to address without resorting to violence. It is almost incomprehensible when one considers not only what the maggot of a half-wit said, but the comparisons he made with another grotesque time in history. Consider it, if you can, and see if your mind can withstand the absolute slap against morality and reason.

The President of the United States conjured up a legal framework, without any authority to do so, to try those whom he found guilty of "war crimes," he says, despite the fact that at least 70,000 people, were simply kidnapped, tortured, raped, and in some cases murdered without ever having been put on trial and for crimes they had never committed. The only things these people had in common were their Middle-Eastern sounding names, the color of their skin, and their religious background.

The trials of Nazi war criminals, however, delivered judgment against those who did what? Kidnapped, tortured, raped, and murdered innocent people based on the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, their given names, and their religious practices.

Then consider how absolutely misguided and morally vacuous this man is when he dares to insinuate that his own "judgments" and "methods" are similar to those used to try WWII war criminals, that is, those whose actions resulted in crimes against humanity.

Have you, sir, lost your #@*&^%!! idiotic mind?

In sum, yes, you have and took the nation's soul with it!

In ordering Operation Copper Green, through which you, Mr. Bush, ordered the capture, torture, rape, and murder of countless people at your secret concentration camps, you committed the very crimes for which you would be the enemy combatant standing trial, the war criminal standing trial at The Hague. It is not you who would be the judge, Mr. President, or the prosecution, or the jury, in trying enemy combatants and delivering some form of justice to those who have thus far been so unjustly treated.

Mr. Bush, if this was World War II, your father would be fighting the enemy, and he would be fighting an enemy not unlike his own son.

And, as though drugged on perma-kool-aid, Mr. President, you actually said:
"One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America. He didn't get his wish."

No, you are right Mr. Bush, that person, whoever he was, could not have achieved what you have managed to achieve through dereliction of duty, complete criminality, and absolute abuse of power: the destruction of the Constitution and the greatest loss of life on US soil since the Civil War.

You, Mr. Bush, could not be bothered with the duties of governance, and in doing so, you let the attacks of 911 cause the damage that they did, attacks that could have been avoided, and damage and loss of life that was preventable.

You failed to do your job, Mr. Bush, not the terrorists.

Yet instead of feeling some sense of responsibility or humility in the light of such a catastrophe, you, Mr. Bush, moved on and evolved from the Decider who would not do his job to protect this nation to a murderer who gave an illegal order to have the air at ground zero declared safe.

The terrorists did not declare the air at Ground Zero safe; you did that Mr. Bush, knowing full well it was not.

And with the appetite that only such depravity could feed, you attacked another nation, killing nearly a million innocents, all the while illegally capturing, torturing, raping, and murdering those whom you found to be a threat.

This, Mr. President, is almost exactly what those who stood on trial for war crimes and crimes against humanity did, and yet you have the nerve to compare those trials to your own criminal activity? You dare to evoke those whom you helped put in their graves as a reason to still murder others?

No suicide bomber could have done what you, Mr. Bush, have so devilishly achieved and now stand proud of, to a clapping gaggle of people who cannot or will not take the time to comprehend that which they are so willing to celebrate.

But perhaps we can be thankful for small favors, in that the Decider did not extend his memorial signing of the pro-death, pro-torture, anti-humanity bill to the victims of Katrina and the loss of New Orleans. Perhaps there is still left one group of the murdered whom we can mourn without having their memories degraded and robbed.

In this brave new America, where we all once dreamed together, we have little left to protect and hold dear, and that little is usually the pieces and parts of those destroyed by the Bush administration, not some random "enemy combatants" who could never have caused the devastation in New Orleans the way a crony-appointing bigot had.

Even after there were only the dead left, this President robbed them of all dignity by watching as they rotted in the streets for weeks and weeks, while he attended fundraisers and ate cake.

Even terrorists would treat their own dead with more honor than how the American dead in New Orleans were treated by their President and his party. No terrorist group, not 19 men, not even endless attacks could have caused, what you have done, Mr. Bush, in damaging and dishonoring America.

These crimes, and others not listed, together present nothing short of direct war on the United States of America and the Constitution, and that is treason. There is no other way to describe these actions and reactions to events.
To simply claim dereliction of duty may have been applicable to the attacks of September 11. But not to direct orders, such as the EPA order and the order to march to war with Iraq. One cannot call it dereliction of duty when the President knew that Katrina was coming, knew how bad it would be, knew that he had appointed unqualified cronies to protect those in the path of the storm, and still, knowing all this, went on vacation.

One cannot call it incompetence when, for nearly a week, the entire world watched in horror as Americans died in America and the President could not be bothered, the Vice President was house hunting, and the National Security Advisor was buying shoes.

One cannot call it American democracy when our dead are not buried and are left to rot in the streets. One cannot call it Constitutional when the President puts himself and his henchmen above the law or creates laws that absolve him of his Constitutional constraints or criminal activities. One cannot call it simply a high crime when the President takes away that which is not his to take, our freedom, our justice, our Constitutional protections. We surpassed high crimes at Ground Zero and since then, there is only one word that can be used to describe what has transpired and that word is treason.

The signing of the pro-torture, pro-murder, anti-humanity, unconstitutional law called the Military Commissions Act is but the final direct, frontal assault on America by a tyrant and his misanthropic gang of criminals, and it is yet another act of treason, applauded and lauded. And just like with the Reichstag Fire Decree, it may well be the final wound that causes the fall of the American experiment.

The Constitution is dying, The Constitution is dying, The Constitution is dying...(Applause.)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/larisa-alexandrovna/bush-signs-the-reichstag-_b_32295.html

Trained to Kill

David Grossman

How the military increases the killing rate of soldiers in combat is instructive, because our culture today is doing the same thing to our children. The training methods militaries use are brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and role modeling. I will explain these in the military context and show how these same factors are contributing to the phenomenal increase of violence in our culture.

Brutalization and desensitization are what happens at boot camp. From the moment you step off the bus you are physically and verbally abused: countless pushups, endless hours at attention or running with heavy loads, while carefully trained professionals take turns screaming at you. Your head is shaved, you are herded together naked and dressed alike, losing all individuality. This brutalization is designed to break down your existing mores and norms and to accept a new set of values that embrace destruction, violence, and death as a way of life. In the end, you are desensitized to violence and accept it as a normal and essential survival skill in your brutal new world.

Something very similar to this desensitization toward violence is happening to our children through violence in the media--but instead of 18-year-olds, it begins at the age of 18 months when a child is first able to discern what is happening on television. At that age, a child can watch something happening on television and mimic that action. But it isn't until children are six or seven years old that the part of the brain kicks in that lets them understand where information comes from.

Even though young children have some understanding of what it means to pretend, they are developmentally unable to distinguish clearly between fantasy and reality.

When young children see somebody shot, stabbed, raped, brutalized, degraded, or murdered on TV, to them it is as though it were actually happening. To have a child of three, four, or five watch a "splatter" movie, learning to relate to a character for the first 90 minutes and then in the last 30 minutes watch helplessly as that new friend is hunted and brutally murdered is the moral and psychological equivalent of introducing your child to a friend, letting her play with that friend, and then butchering that friend in front of your child's eyes.

And this happens to our children hundreds upon hundreds of times.

Sure, they are told: "Hey, it's all for fun. Look, this isn't real, it's just TV." And they nod their little heads and say okay. But they can't tell the difference.

Can you remember a point in your life or in your children's lives when dreams, reality, and television were all jumbled together? That's what it is like to be at that level of psychological development. That's what the media are doing to them.

The Journal of the American Medical Association published the definitive epidemiological study on the impact of TV violence. The research demonstrated what happened in numerous nations after television made its appearance as compared to nations and regions without TV. The two nations or regions being compared are demographically and ethnically identical; only one variable is different: the presence of television. In every nation, region, or city with television, there is an immediate explosion of violence on the playground, and within 15 years there is a doubling of the murder rate. Why 15 years? That is how long it takes for the brutalization of a three- to five-year-old to reach the "prime crime age." That is how long it takes for you to reap what you have sown when you brutalize and desensitize a three-year-old.

Today the data linking violence in the media to violence in society are superior to those linking cancer and tobacco. Hundreds of sound scientific studies demonstrate the social impact of brutalization by the media. The Journal of the American Medical Association concluded that "the introduction of television in the 1950's caused a subsequent doubling of the homicide rate, i.e., long-term childhood exposure to television is a causal factor behind approximately one half of the homicides committed in the United States, or approximately 10,000 homicides annually." The article went on to say that ". . . if, hypothetically, television technology had never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United States, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults" (June 10, 1992)......

Every parent in America desperately needs to be warned of the impact of TV and other violent media on children, just as we would warn them of some widespread carcinogen. The problem is that the TV networks, which use the public airwaves we have licensed to them, are our key means of public education in America. And they are stonewalling.

In the days after the Jonesboro shootings, I was interviewed on Canadian national TV, the British Broadcasting Company, and many U.S. and international radio shows and newspapers. But the American television networks simply would not touch this aspect of the story. Never in my experience as a historian and a psychologist have I seen any institution in America so clearly responsible for so very many deaths, and so clearly abusing their publicly licensed authority and power to cover up their guilt.

Time after time, idealistic young network producers contacted me from one of the networks, fascinated by the irony that an expert in the field of violence and aggression was living in Jonesboro and was at the school almost from the beginning. But unlike all the other media, these network news stories always died a sudden, silent death when the network's powers-that-be said, "Yeah, we need this story like we need a hole in the head." Many times since the shooting I have been asked, "Why weren't you on TV talking about the stuff in your book?" And every time my answer had to be, "The TV networks are burying this story. They know they are guilty, and they want to delay the retribution as long as they can." As an author and expert on killing, I believe I have spoken on the subject at every Rotary, Kiwanis, and Lions Club in a 50-mile radius of Jonesboro. So when the plague of satellite dishes descended upon us like huge locusts, many people here were aware of the scientific data linking TV violence and violent crime.

The networks will stick their lenses anywhere and courageously expose anything. Like flies on open wounds, they find nothing too private or shameful for their probing lenses--except themselves, and their share of guilt in the terrible, tragic crime that happened here.

A CBS executive told me his plan. He knows all about the link between media and violence. His own in-house people have advised him to protect his child from the poison his industry is bringing to America's children. He is not going to expose his child to TV until she's old enough to learn how to read. And then he will select very carefully what she sees. He and his wife plan to send her to a daycare center that has no television, and he plans to show her only age-appropriate videos.

That should be the bare minimum with children: Show them only age-appropriate videos, and think hard about what is age appropriate.

The most benign product you are going to get from the networks are 22-minute sitcoms or cartoons providing instant solutions for all of life's problems, interlaced with commercials telling you what a slug you are if you don't ingest the right sugary substances and don't wear the right shoes.

The worst product your child is going to get from the networks is represented by one TV commentator who told me, "Well, we only have one really violent show on our network, and that is NYPD Blue. I'll admit that that is bad, but it is only one night a week." I wondered at the time how she would feel if someone said, "Well, I only beat my wife in front of the kids one night a week." The effect is the same.

"You're not supposed to know who I am!" said NYPD Blue star Kim Delaney, in response to young children who recognized her from her role on that show. According to USA Weekend, she was shocked that underage viewers watch her show, which is rated TV- 14 for gruesome crimes, raw language, and explicit sex scenes. But they do watch, don't they? Education about media and violence does make a difference. I was on a radio call-in show in San Antonio, Texas. A woman called and said, "I would never have had the courage to do this two years ago. But let me tell you what happened. You tell me if I was right.

"My 13-year-old boy spent the night with a neighbor boy. After that night, he started having nightmares. I got him to admit what the nightmares were about. While he was at the neighbor's house, they watched splatter movies all night: people cutting people up with chain saws and stuff like that.

"I called the neighbors and told them, 'Listen: you are sick people. I wouldn't feel any different about you if you had given my son pornography or alcohol. And I'm not going to have anything further to do with you or your son--and neither is anybody else in this neighborhood, if I have anything to do with it--until you stop what you're doing.' " That's powerful. That's censure, not censorship. We ought to have the moral courage to censure people who think that violence is legitimate entertainment.

One of the most effective ways for Christians to be salt and light is by simply confronting the culture of volence as entertainment. A friend of mine, a retired army officer who teaches at a nearby middle school, uses the movie Gettysburg to teach his students about the Civil War. A scene in that movie very dramatically depicts the tragedy of Pickett's Charge. As the Confederate troops charge into the Union lines, the cannons fire into their masses at point- blank range, and there is nothing but a red mist that comes up from the smoke and flames. He told me that when he first showed this heart-wrenching, tragic scene to his students, they laughed.

He began to confront this behavior ahead of time by saying: "In the past, students have laughed at this scene, and I want to tell you that this is completely unacceptable behavior. This movie depicts a tragedy in American history, a tragedy that happened to our ancestors, and I will not tolerate any laughing." From then on, when he played that scene to his students, over the years, he says there was no laughter. Instead, many of them wept.

What the media teach is unnatural, and if confronted in love and assurance, the house they have built on the sand will crumble. But our house is built on the rock.

If we don't actively present our values, then the media will most assuredly inflict theirs on our children, and the children, like those in that class watching Gettysburg, simply won't know any better.

There are many other things that the Christian community can do to help change our culture. Youth activities can provide alternatives to television, and churches can lead the way in providing alternative locations for latchkey children. Fellowship groups can provide guidance and support to young parents as they strive to raise their children without the destructive influences of the media. Mentoring programs can pair mature, educated adults with young parents to help them through the preschool ages without using the TV as a babysitter.

And most of all, the churches can provide the clarion call of decency and love and peace as an alternative to death and destruction--not just for the sake of the church, but for the transformation of our culture.

Excerpts. Complete article at http://www.illuminati-news.com/trained-to-kill.htm

'Stability First': Newspeak for Rape of Iraq

By Pepe Escobar

 "Stay the course also means don't leave before the job is done. And that's ... we're going to get the job done in Iraq. And it's important that we do get the job done in Iraq." - George W Bush, October 11

10/26/06 "Asia Times" -- - - Iraq is not simply a US electoral issue. It's a human tragedy of biblical proportions. Hence the urge at this point to situate the tragedy in a historical context.

In AD 750 the Abbasid Dynasty "de-Bedouinized" Islam by defeating the Ummayad Dynasty based in Damascus. The culture of the Abbasid court ceased being Arab-only and started to include Persia and the Turks. Islam turned into a universal religion, no more constrained by geography. "Baldach" - that's what European travelers called Baghdad up to the late 18th century - was catapulted to the center of the world.

From AD 786-809, under fabled Haroon al-Rashid - who established relations with Tang Dynasty China and the "illiterate emperor" Charlemagne - Baghdad gave the world astronomy, alchemy, hydraulics, diplomacy, fiscal administration and the postal service. Up to the early 12th century it remained the most important intellectual center in the world.

Baghdad had been under siege by the Assyrians and later by Cyrus the Great from Persia. But it was only in 1258 that Baghdad was sacked for the first time by what was then the equivalent of Desert Storm - the Mongols riding their lightning-quick horses under the command of Hulagu, Genghis Khan's grandson. Legend has it that he erected a pyramid of 700,000 skulls out of his victims.

In 1401, another foreign invader, the Turco-Mongol Tamerlan ("Timur the Lame"), devastated Baghdad yet again. In 2003, after the devastation of "shock and awe", came the Christian armies of President George W Bush. From the beginning the comparisons with Hulagu and Tamerlan were vivid in the popular imagination. Over time, Baghdadis - Sunni or Shi'ite - were saying, we will dictate our rhythm and impose ourselves over the occupiers. This is already happening.

Quagmire Iraq is not a 21st-century video game of Arabs playing extras in a slow-motion Armageddon. This is a wrenching story with rivers of real blood and a terrible accumulation of real corpses. The story was engineered in Washington - and the plot would not be advancing were it not for the United States. The US bears all the moral and legal responsibility for the destruction of the fabled former capital of the caliphate and the de facto Western flank of the Arab nation.

It is in this context that the current avalanche of Iraq-related newspeak in the US should be placed.

The recent bloody holy month of Ramadan in Iraq has reflected the hellish mechanism unleashed by the invasion and occupation - the daily, gruesome banquet of death provoked by state-sponsored terror, counterinsurgency, stoked by sectarian hatred or the total collapse of the social contract.

This logic of extermination of a society and culture was inbuilt in the process since March 2003. In fact, the systematic annihilation of 2-3% of the entire Iraqi population, according to a study by The Lancet, not to mention the 1 million people displaced since March 2003, follow the more than 500,000 children who died during the 1990s as victims of United Nations sanctions. Iraq has been systematically destroyed for more than 15 years, non-stop.

And it gets worse, because for the Bush administration all this death and destruction is just a minor detail in the "big picture".

In a perverse replay of what happened in the Vietnamese jungles, the Pentagon lost the asymmetric guerrilla war raging in the Sunni belt. Sunni Arabs are totally alienated. Seventy percent are in favor of attacking the occupiers, no holds barred. No wonder Saddam Hussein is still popular. This month, about 500 Sunni Arab tribal chiefs and former Ba'ath Party officials in the police, army and intelligence got together in al-Hindiya, 25 kilometers west of Kirkuk, to pledge allegiance to Saddam, qualified as "supreme combatant and legitimate president".

It's true that Saddam's regime had already started to disintegrate from the inside after the Gulf War of 1991 - a process coupled with the devastating effects of UN sanctions. The resulting loss of civic spirit accelerated the re-tribalization of Iraq. Even as tribal affiliation nowadays is the only way to solve any problem in Iraq, for the silent majority what really matters is security: nobody is troubled by perceived (by the West) Sunni and Shi'ite divisions; and most Arabs, Kurds and Turkmen share plenty of social, cultural and commercial interests. Contrary to Western-propagated myth, Iraqi civil society as a whole - apart from a few factions - abhors civil war.

The coalition of the drilling
World public opinion must switch to red alert. The real, not virtual, future of Iraq will be decided in December. The whole point is a new oil law - which is in fact a debt-for-oil program concocted and imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This is the point of the US invasion - a return on investment on the hundreds of billions of dollars of US taxpayers' money spent. It's not war as politics by other means; it's war as free-market opening by other means - full US access to the epicenter of the energy wars and the perfect geostrategic location for "taming", in the near future, both Russia and China.

Very few observers have detailed what's at stake. In US corporate media the silence is stratospheric.

US Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman duly landed in Baghdad this past summer, insisting that Iraqis must "pass a hydrocarbon law under which foreign companies can invest". Iraqi Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahristani was convinced, and said the law would be passed by the end of 2006, as promised to the IMF.

No wonder: the Green Zone US Embassy colossus has always made sure that the US controls - via well-paid Iraqi servants - the Petroleum Ministry, as well as all key management posts in key Iraqi ministries. The draft hydrocarbon law was reviewed by the IMF, reviewed by Bodman and reviewed by Big Oil executives. It was not and it will not be reviewed by Iraqi civil society: that was left to the fractious Iraqi parliament - which can be largely bought for a fistful of dinars.

The Bush administration needs somebody to sign the law. The nation of Iraq as it emerged out of British imperial design is an artificial construct that can only be "tamed" by a hardcore strongman a la Saddam. It has to be "our" strongman, of course: when Saddam started to act independently he was smashed. Insistent rumors of a US-engineered coup to replace the hapless current premier Nuri al-Maliki have surfaced of late. Poor Maliki, if he clings to a minimum of integrity, can't possibly sign the oil law. Enter the Washington/Green Zone-backed strongman a la Saddam: a likely candidate is former interim premier Iyad Allawi, who ordered the destruction of Fallujah in late 2004.

No matter what happens in the US mid-term elections next month, this is the post-December scenario: Iraq enslaved by the IMF; Big Oil signing mega-lucrative production sharing agreements (PSAs); "partial" troop withdrawal; relentless guerrilla warfare; further disintegration; open road to partition.

Vast swaths of the US electorate have now understood how the whole Iraqi adventure has been built on lies: lies about the causes of war, lies about the methodology of war, lies about the terrible consequences of war. Inevitably, the current media-targeted avalanche of Iraq-related newspeak had to be also meaningless. This includes "phased withdrawal", "empowering" the Iraqi government, "putting security ahead of democracy" and "partitioning Iraq". Surrealism in international relations would reach new highs (or lows) with the US ordering by decree that a sovereign nation must dismember itself. Compared with it, the current carnage in Baghdad - which is already divided anyway - would be a Disney flick.

There's more: the Shakespearean despair over "Redeploy and Contain" or "Stability First" - newspeak coined by Bush family consegliere James Baker's Iraq Study Group, staffed with plenty of pro-war neo-conservatives. A notorious casualty of the newspeak war seems to be "stay the course" - replaced, according to Press Secretary Tony Snow, by "a study in constant motion". Anyway, the winner - after the mid-term elections - will be "Stability First", which is basically a remix, with a horn section, of "stay the course".

How can Americans - and world public opinion - be engaged in serious, meaningful debate when the Iraq tragedy is reduced to a mere catch phrase? This incoherent whirlwind, this "study in constant motion", is the travesty that passes for Iraqi policy debate among educated elites.

Another reading is more ominous. It spells the Bush administration and its attached elites losing control - of everything. And that's how they can become even more dangerous. On October 19, Vice President Dick Cheney once again stated that the only way out in Iraq was "total victory". A recent historical parallel is nothing but gloomy. When the US was confronted with defeat in Vietnam, it did not "Redeploy and Contain": on the contrary, death and destruction were extended to Laos and Cambodia. Baker's "Stability First" might contain undisclosed subtexts.

"Total victory", in Cheney's world view, means that the Bush administration was not, is not and will never be interested in Iraqi, or Middle Eastern, "democracy". What matters is control of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on the planet, 112 billion barrels of it in proven reserves plus 220 billion barrels still to be exploited, at a cost as low as US$1 a barrel; a cluster of sprawling military bases; the largest embassy/fortress-by-the-Tigris in the world; and the indispensable client regime.

In sum: a "Coalition of the Drilling" secured by the Pentagon's Long War apparatus. It's up to ancient and proud Baghdad to spoil the party. Baghdad survived and buried Hulagu. Baghdad survived and buried Tamerlan. Baghdad may as well survive and bury George W Bush.

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15414.htm

Soldiers Say Support the Troops by Bringing Them Home

Active-Duty Troops Send Messages to Congress Opposing War in Iraq

by Mike Gudgell

They are not pacifists.

They don't represent a political party, and you won't see them at an anti-war rally.

Most say they are proud Americans. They are proud to serve and wear the uniform of the U.S. military.

But they are against the war in Iraq, and they are speaking out about it.

Organizers say it's the first anti-war movement of its kind in the active military since the Vietnam conflict.

"An Appeal for Redress From the War in Iraq" is an Internet initiative to get active-duty military to send this message to political leaders:

As a patriotic American proud to serve the nation in uniform, I respectfully urge my political leaders in Congress to support the prompt withdrawal of all American military forces and bases from Iraq. Staying in Iraq will not work and is not worth the price. It is time for U.S. troops to come home.

It is a legal way for soldiers, Marines and sailors to protest the war.

Active-duty military cannot publicly express its personal views.

"We are not urging any form of civil disobedience or any thing that would be illegal," said Navy Seaman Jonathan Hutto, speaking on the phone, off duty and out of uniform. "We are saying to our active-duty family that you have a right to send an appeal to a Congress member without reprisal."

The "Redress" initiative does not require a membership, and comments are not made public.

"Anyone who has been in the military knows there are informal means for punitive actions," said one soldier, who was reluctant to give a name. "We do have a voice and we pay attention and we want people to listen to what we say."

One activist said that despite the restrictions, "anytime intelligence is mixed with bravery you'll have someone who is going to speak out."

The response to the movement has been "amazing," one organizer said. The group had 65 messages to political leaders a few days days ago. Now the group has more than 10 times that number.

"If people want to support the troops, then they should support us coming home," said Marine Sgt. Liam Madden, one of the organizers of the movement.

He cites the absence of weapons of mass destruction and the lack of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda for his opposition to the war.

One soldier, who feared reprisal and would not disclose a name, believed in the war at the beginning: "We were taking out an oppressive regime."

But it is different now.

"I don't think that the American public realizes just how many soldiers and service members in general really do have reservations about what is the actions going on over there. … It's very hard. These soldiers seeing all this tribal fighting, ethnic fighting going on around them. … There is not really anything you can do to stop this," the soldier said. "You are talking about thousands and thousands of years of history here, and it's very frustrating for them to go. … Risking their lives on a daily basis and not seeing any tangible results for their actions."

A few hundred notes of protest represent a small percentage of the 1 million men and women in uniform.

Organizers say it's just the beginning.

"It's the snowball effect and eventually that ball's going to get rolling," said one soldier who ran security on convoys in Iraq.

"Once they start seeing momentum going forward and more and more service members coming out, they will be much more inclined to come out as well."

"Redress" founder Hutto says that during the Vietnam conflict more than 250,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen wrote political leaders to oppose the war.

But the troops in Vietnam had mostly been drafted, and it's unclear whether there is the same sort of broad-based opposition to the Iraq war among today's all-volunteer Army.

Hutto says it remains to be seen whether there is opposition to the war among active soldiers at a level comparable to that of the Vietnam era, because the movement has just gotten started.

"We aren't supposed to organize groups," Hutto said. "It's a culture that you don't get engaged in the process. … You are given orders. What we are doing is untraditional, unorthodox and unprecedented."

There are formal organizations of Iraq veterans that oppose the war.

Iraq Veterans Against the War has chapters in nine cities, an elected board of directors, and an outreach program. There are 300 members nationwide.

According to organizer Michael Blake, it is difficult for active military to come out against the war.

"There's a need to justify the loss of friends or the people they've killed," he said.

Blake also believes the culture of the military prevents soldiers from questioning what they are called up to do.

"If you don't support everything they tell you, then you're considered a traitor or terrorist and you're against your brothers that are still there -- but this is just not true," he said.

Several former generals have come out against the war, and a dozen or so servicemen and women have refused to serve in Iraq, but "Redress" is the first national movement organized by active military that oppose the war.

The protest notes will be taken to Congress on Martin Luther King Day early next year.

One soldier sees no conflict in her opposition to the Iraq war.

"We are very proud to be serving our country," the soldier said. "I wouldn't take back my service for anything. I'm very proud to wear this uniform and to do my part to help this country that I'm a citizen of. … And that's something I take pride in and don't want to tarnish or diminish."

"It's everybody's duty to support democracy," Madden said. "We do it much more effectively when we exercise these rights than we do in Iraq."

© Copyright 2006 ABC News Internet Ventures

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1027-03.htm
http://www.appealforredress.org/

I Am About To Rush Forth

Steven Bliss

I am about to rush upon My people. My power is to come upon My children. I am releasing new zeal for My kingdom. I am freely flowing upon those who will serve Me in obedience.

New ways are being to be exhibited. New thought patterns that you've not yet experience are being created. They are being released to bring children from the streets instantly into the kingdom.

There is a coming release of My glory as your imaginations and feet move in concert with My word.  The written word will become alive. It will leap from the page and into your experience. There will be those who will live-out the living word, experiencing what I have already written; experiencing what is ever-occurring within My kingdom.

I am releasing new warriors to do My bidding. If you are asking for Me, then draw closer to Me. In this nearness I will overpower you love.  There is no fear in love as I rush with purity over My people. It is time for the greater things to be released.  It is time for the greater deeds to be done. It is time for a release of purity within My power to flow forth. I am sending you forth.

There is no need to ask: I am sending you forward.  I will supply what is needed, but I need those who will walk forth.  Signs and wonders will follow those who walk when I whisper into there ear. Great releases of healing authority will flow forth as My presence gushes forth.

I am calling forth those who know Me into a new action. Listen for direction.  I am calling for the placing of new lieutenants to walk forth; new officers who teach without pride; new friends that show and share My ways.  My Spirit is being poured forth in limitless flow. I am sending rivers to overflow the dry lands. There will be new streams to bring water to the parched and dying. I am calling forth those who will share the bread of My truth. It will feed the multitudes.

My healing presence will flow freely where I am shared. Sin and shame will be destroyed where My friends walk in obedience.

godsfire@woh.rr.com

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