American Buddhist Net

8 July 2008

In an interview with NPR on his latest New Yorker Article, titled ‘Preparing the battlefield', the renowned investigative journalist Seymour Hersh reveals more striking details of his findings on the aim of the $400 million budgeted US covert operations inside Iran. He provides valuable information on US military preparations to strike the country, on the total expansion of the Bush Administration's executive power, about the US recognition of Iran's overall positive role in Iraq and on the US support for the anti-Iran terrorist organisations Jondollah, PJAK and MEK.

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It's all those "noble lies." ABN
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Tuesday, July 08, 2008

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

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Book review of Shadia B. Drury's "Leo Strauss and the American Right" Palgrave Macmillan, February 1999

October 10, 2005
by Michael Doliner

...The visible leaders of this state are the "gentlemen." Drawn from the best families, trained to appear like leaders, imbued with the language of honor and piety, they are the Straussian State's figureheads. Although Strauss advocated a single state religion for the hoi polloi, at the top guiding the gentlemen, was a secret cabal of atheistic "philosophers." Strauss knew, and believed that all great philosophers knew, that religion is hokum. It was necessary for the masses, but not for the philosophers who, Strauss thought, would secretly rule the state. These atheistic philosophers would supply Machiavellian wisdom to the gentlemen. Drury notes that in attributing wisdom to the philosophers Strauss is not a conservative, for conservatives believe that the traditions of the society, as they have developed over time, and not these philosophers, are the repository of wisdom. The society Strauss envisions is really only "good" for these philosophers. Everyone else is forced to live in delusion. Of course, Strauss believed average people couldn't bear the truth and needed the comfort of religion, so he argued that his hierarchical state was good for them too.

Because they reason in secret, the Straussian philosophers must form a secret society in which they reveal the truth to their students, "the puppies"...

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NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) — Iraq on Tuesday said it will reject any security pact with the United States unless it sets a date for the pullout of US-led foreign troops, a proposal turned down by US President George W. Bush.

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Jul 7, 2008 at 5:45 PM PDT
By KATU Staff

SALEM, Ore. - Relax it and tax it.

That's the motto behind a new cannabis initiative that would allow Oregon's state-controlled liquor stores to legally sell marijuana to adults.

Initiative backers said their plan would send 90 percent of the proceeds from the state's sale of marijuana to Oregon's General Fund, which could lower Oregonians' state tax burden.

Smaller percentages would go to funding drug abuse education and treatment programs.

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Well-worth reading. ABN
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Naomi Wolf Mon Jul 7, 3:52 PM ET

NEW YORK - Sex crime has a telltale signature, even when those directing the outrages are some of the most powerful men and women in the United States. How extraordinary, then, to learn that one of the perpetrators of these crimes, Condoleezza Rice, has just led the debate in a special session of the United Nations Security Council on the use of sexual violence as a weapon of war.

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If true, no surprise. With politicians like this, who needs traitors? ABN
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By Pam Miles

I have firm confirmation that Nancy Pelosi is urging the Judiciary committee NOT to go forward with contempt against Rove.

Congressman John Conyers and the Judiciary staff are battling for it but this has become an infight among dems.

Time to burn up the phone lines.

800-828-0498, 800-459-1887 or 800-614-2803 toll free to congressional switchboard

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John, those aren't "fairy tales," exactly, they're "noble lies," which neocons believe they have a right to tell because they are intellectually superior to you, me, and everyone else. Of course, for them, it is a lie to say that they have been wrong about just about everything all along, including their right to tell noble lies, but that would not be a "noble" sort of lie as it would serve no greater purpose except the truth, which is ignoble when dealing with the likes of you and me. So the best thing is to just let them say whatever they want and praise them or they will get mad at you, and lie about that, too, and then take their petty revenge and lie about that. This probably does not make much sense to you (or me), but that is only because these dudes are way smarter than us so our type of reasoning does not apply. Basic rule for dealing with neocons: No matter what, they are always right, even when they disagree with each other or contradict themselves. ABN
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July 07, 2008 12:19 PM ET | John Mashek | Permanent Link

The revisionists in the Bush administration are still trying to cover their tracks on the war in Iraq. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, these officials are engaged in pure storytelling.

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Firstly, it was an obvious joke. Secondly, the Justice Department often uses “deferred prosecution agreements” to deal with corporate wrongdoing; why not use a similar process to deal with "crimes" like this? Thirdly, members of Congress never sell their votes, right? ABN
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A college student allegedly asked a minimum of ten dollars in exchange for voting at the upcoming presidential election, according to the whim of the highest bidder oneBay. Now he faces up to five years in prison and a $US 10,000 fine.

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Excellent piece, both for understanding the history of US mass media and for the kinds of forces that are now threatening a free, open, and "neutral" internet. This essay is short, clear, and straight to the point. ABN
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02 July 2008
by Bruce Dixon

The US broadcast media regime, in which greedy, amoral corporations enjoy completely free monopoly licenses to run their highly profitable businesses upon the scarce public property that is the broadcast spectrum is usually presented to us as the only “natural” and sensible media order. It is, we've all been told, the benign and logical outcome of democratic give and take and rigorous competition in a free marketplace. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Most Americans, right up to and including doctorate-level media scholars don't know that as late as the mid 1920's over forty percent of the more than 500 radio stations across the US were in the hands of not for profit, noncommercial broadcasters.

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by Angry Girl
Nightweed.com

Did you know....
1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry.

http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers.

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_company.html

http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/042804landes.html

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Very well-said. Short, reasonable, and right to the point. ABN
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Only cops and crooks have benefited from $2.5 trillion spent fighting trafficking.

By David W. Fleming and James P. Gray
July 5, 2008

The United States' so-called war on drugs brings to mind the old saying that if you find yourself trapped in a deep hole, stop digging. Yet, last week, the Senate approved an aid package to combat drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America, with a record $400 million going to Mexico and $65 million to Central America.

The United States has been spending $69 billion a year worldwide for the last 40 years, for a total of $2.5 trillion, on drug prohibition -- with little to show for it. Is anyone actually benefiting from this war? Six groups come to mind.

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Graeme MacQueen
January 11, 2008

Abstract

On September 11, 2001 there were numerous advance warnings of World Trade Center 7's collapse, and many people have argued that these warnings are evidence that the building was subjected to controlled demolition. But other researchers feel the warnings are compatible with the hypothesis of natural collapse from damage that the building sustained throughout the day. In this article I examine the arguments of one researcher, Ryan Mackey, who argues, using the oral histories of the New York Fire Department, that the collapse was natural and the warnings rational and based on direct perception. Although I agree with Mackey that the damage to Seven was serious and must be acknowledged as such, I argue that a close reading of the FDNY oral histories does not support his claims and does not remove the cloud of suspicion that hangs over the collapse warnings. The majority of FDNY members did not rationally conclude, on the basis of direct perception of damage to the building, that it was in danger of collapse; they accepted that it would collapse on the basis of what they were told.

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Even experts at the U.S. bioweapons facility at Fort Detrick think that the anthrax which was used in the 2001 attacks came from their facility:

"In an e-mail obtained by FOX News, scientists at Fort Detrick openly discussed how the anthrax powder they were asked to analyze after the attacks was nearly identical to that made by one of their colleagues...

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"[We give you] a Republic, if you can keep it." -Benjamin Franklin, on presenting the final draft of the federal Constitution, Philadelphia, September, 1787.

We haven't. ABN
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July 4, 2008

(CNN) -- How would the likes of Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin feel about the way the United States has turned out 232 years after declaring its independence?

Not pleased, a majority of Americans recently polled said.

According to a new CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, 69 percent of adult Americans who responded to a poll June 26-29 said the signers of the Declaration of Independence would be disappointed by the way the nation has turned out overall.

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June 1, 2002
by Bernard Weiner

Don't know about you, but all this who-knew-what-when pre-9/11 stuff is mighty confusing. So once again, I head to that all-purpose reference series for some comprehensible answers.

Q. I've heard all these reports about the government knowing weeks and months in advance of 9/11 that airliners were going to be hijacked and flown into buildings, and yet the Bush Administration apparently did nothing and denied they did anything wrong. They claimed the fault lay in the intelligence agencies "not connecting the dots," or that it was the "FBI culture" that failed. Can you explain?

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By the way, the lower-case "u" of "united" in the third bold line below is not a mistake. That's how they thought back then. America was a "union" of States, and no one thought of this "union" as being principally a national entity--the "United States"--as we now do today. ABN
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The Declaration of Independence of the Thirteen Colonies
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

People's Campaign for the Constitution

What is happening right now is big ISPs and big content providers are merging their businesses. Soon TV and film will all come over the internet and there will be deliberate misrepresentations of basic issues--bandwidth, copyrights, appropriate content, etc.--designed to confuse consumers to ceding first amendment rights to the big corporations. Do you trust Congress or the FCC to help you? I don't. The weakness of all of the corporate arguments is the simple fact that the internet is working wonderfully well without their control. ABN
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By Mike Finch

A net-neutrality activist group has uncovered plans for the demise of the free Internet by 2010 in Canada. By 2012, the group says, the trend will be global.

Bell Canada and TELUS, Canada’s two largest Internet service providers (ISPs), will begin charging per-site fees on most Internet sites, reports anonymous sources within TELUS.

...“By 2012 ISPs all over the globe will reduce Internet access to a TV-like subscription model, only offering access to a small standard amount of commercial sites and require extra fees for every other site you visit. These ‘other’ sites would then lose all their exposure and eventually shut down, resulting in what could be seen as the end of the Internet,” Leysen said.

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Check the paragraph in bold below. Hundreds of millions are suffering, many dying, but the report has been held back to avoid embarrassing Bush? Why does this one person have so much power that such basic information as this is kept from the world? ABN
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# Aditya Chakrabortty
# The Guardian,
# Friday July 4, 2008

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

The damning unpublished assessment is based on the most detailed analysis of the crisis so far, carried out by an internationally-respected economist at global financial body.

The figure emphatically contradicts the US government's claims that plant-derived fuels contribute less than 3% to food-price rises. It will add to pressure on governments in Washington and across Europe, which have turned to plant-derived fuels to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and reduce their dependence on imported oil.

Senior development sources believe the report, completed in April, has not been published to avoid embarrassing President George Bush.

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Don't worry, Dana, we are not afraid of the likes of KSM. Over the past 8 years, we've gotten used to hardened criminals walking free in this country. We've watched veritable hordes of them ascend to the highest positions of power, so just seeing one or two walking the streets isn't likely to cause too much of a shock.

Seriously, though, the real danger here as far as the White House is concerned is that the detainees - who have been held illegally without charges, and who have been abused and tortured during their extended stay at Gitmo - will talk. Robyn
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Friday, Jul 04, 2008
By DEB RIECHMANN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House said Thursday that dangerous detainees at Guantanamo Bay could end up walking Main Street U.S.A. in the wake of last month's Supreme Court ruling about detainees' legal rights.

The ruling, which gave all detainees the right to petition federal judges for immediate release, has intensified discussions within the Bush administration about what to do with the roughly 270 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay.

"I'm sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods," White House press secretary Dana Perino said about al-Qaida's former third in command.

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WHO survey of 17 countries finds that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use.

Bruce Mirken, AlterNet. Posted July 2, 2008.

The United States has some of the world's most punitive drug policies and has led the cheering section for tough "war on drugs" policies worldwide, but a new international study suggests that those policies have been a crashing failure. A World Health Organization survey of 17 countries, conducted by some of the world's leading substance abuse researchers, found that we have the highest rates of marijuana and cocaine use.

The numbers are startling. In the United States, 42.4 percent admitted having used marijuana. The only other nation that came close was New Zealand, another bastion of get-tough policies, at 41.9 percent. No one else was even close. The results for cocaine use were similar, with the United States leading the world by a large margin.

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There has been no problem with oil supplies, bin Laden is not king of Saudi Arabia, the US has invaded Iraq, and the cost of that incursion plus a few other factors have driven the dollar so low that oil today actually is selling for $144 a barrel. ABN
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By NEELA BANERJEE
Published: October 14, 2001

...''If bin Laden takes over and becomes king of Saudi Arabia, he'd turn off the tap,'' said Roger Diwan, a managing director of the Petroleum Finance Company, a consulting firm in Washington. ''He said at one point that he wants oil to be $144 a barrel'' -- about six times what it sells for now.

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Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen: 'A Third Front ... Would Be Extremely Stressful'

By JONATHAN KARL
July 2, 2008

Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen, who was in Israel over the weekend, issued a strong warning today about the dangers of a military attack on Iran.

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Don't bomb Iran, Bush warns Israel