On-air awakening

It is not often you get to hear someone wake up ON AIR to the complete puppet show that is our political system. But this is a delightful example. Talk show host Mark Larsen interviews Mitt Romney and blows a fuse. It's beautiful.

Final score: Romney 0, Paul 1

BBC documentary on the attempted US coup, 1930s

It was plotted by a number of powerful American industrialists. And guess who was in the group? Prescott Bush, Dubya's grandfather. Hmm.... They were going to install an openly fascist regime after deposing FDR. Unfuckingbelievable. This is not fringe stuff, this is real history.

Part One:

Here is the rest of the documentary: Part Two | Part Three

Hacking Democracy

Here's a jaw-dropping HBO documentary on the problems with electronic voting machines.

Facism

Actually, if you pay attention to the news, it kinda *is* that obvious.

Naomi Wolf's 10 Steps to Fascism vs. Stephen Colbert

This is some great stuff.

"Clergy Response Teams" employed by US government to quell martial law unrest

This article has to be one of the most insane things I've ever read.

The US Government will employ "Clergy Response Teams" trained to quell unrest in the event of martial law.

What.
The.
Fuck.

Wake up, people!

Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared

Could martial law ever become a reality in America? Some fear any nuclear, biological or chemical attack on U.S. soil might trigger just that. KSLA News 12 has discovered that the clergy would help the government with potentially their biggest problem: Us.
Charleton Heston's now-famous speech before the National Rifle Association at a convention back in 2000 will forever be remembered as a stirring moment for all 2nd Amendment advocates. At the end of his remarks, Heston held up his antique rifle and told the crowd in his Moses-like voice, "over my cold, dead hands."
While Heston, then serving as the NRA President, made those remarks in response to calls for more gun control laws at the time, those words live on. Heston's declaration captured a truly American value: An over-arching desire to protect our freedoms.
But gun confiscation is exactly what happened during the state of emergency following Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, along with forced relocation. U.S. Troops also arrived, something far easier to do now, thanks to last year's elimination of the 1878 Posse Comitatus act, which had forbid regular U.S. Army troops from policing on American soil.
If martial law were enacted here at home, like depicted in the movie "The Siege", easing public fears and quelling dissent would be critical. And that's exactly what the 'Clergy Response Team' helped accomplish in the wake of Katrina.
Dr. Durell Tuberville serves as chaplain for the Shreveport Fire Department and the Caddo Sheriff's Office. Tuberville said of the clergy team's mission, "the primary thing that we say to anybody is, 'let's cooperate and get this thing over with and then we'll settle the differences once the crisis is over.'"
Such clergy response teams would walk a tight-rope during martial law between the demands of the government on the one side, versus the wishes of the public on the other. "In a lot of cases, these clergy would already be known in the neighborhoods in which they're helping to diffuse that situation," assured Sandy Davis. He serves as the director of the Caddo-Bossier Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness.
For the clergy team, one of the biggest tools that they will have in helping calm the public down or to obey the law is the bible itself, specifically Romans 13. Dr. Tuberville elaborated, "because the government's established by the Lord, you know. And, that's what we believe in the Christian faith. That's what's stated in the scripture."
Civil rights advocates believe the amount of public cooperation during such a time of unrest may ultimately depend on how long they expect a suspension of rights might last.

"To save America we need another 9/11" WTF!?

This op-ed has to be the STUPIDEST thing I've read in a very long time.

America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater.

What would sew us back together?

Another 9/11 attack.

The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda.

Is there any doubt they are planning to hit us again?

If it is to be, then let it be. It will take another attack on the homeland to quell the chattering of chipmunks and to restore America's righteous rage and singular purpose to prevail.

The unity brought by such an attack sadly won't last forever.

The first 9/11 proved that.

All I can say is "Oh My Fucking God".

Many thanks to Anonymous poster #1 who pointed me to this followup article by the same asshat who wrote the above op-ed. What a fucking moron.

Money, banking, and the Federal Reserve

This video clearly explains why the US economy has steadily declined over the past several decades, fueled by the devaluation of the dollar by the actions of the Federal Reserve.

The Federal Reserve is neither a Federal agency (it's owned by private, international banking interests) nor a Reserve (they actually *lend* us the money we use in circulation (which doesn't exist in the first place), and charge us interest for its use!

You will find no clearer, succinct explanation of why our economy teeters on the edge of ruin, likely to collapse utterly....very soon.

Sentient world: war games on the grandest scale

The US Department of Defense is running a very-large-scale simulation of the entire world, including mathematically simulated inhabitants.

The DOD is developing a parallel to Planet Earth, with billions of individual "nodes" to reflect every man, woman, and child this side of the dividing line between reality and AR.

Called the Sentient World Simulation (SWS), it will be a "synthetic mirror of the real world with automated continuous calibration with respect to current real-world information", according to a concept paper for the project.

"SWS provides an environment for testing Psychological Operations (PSYOP)," the paper reads, so that military leaders can "develop and test multiple courses of action to anticipate and shape behaviors of adversaries, neutrals, and partners".

SWS also replicates financial institutions, utilities, media outlets, and street corner shops. By applying theories of economics and human psychology, its developers believe they can predict how individuals and mobs will respond to various stressors.

Yank a country's water supply. Stage a military coup. SWS will tell you what happens next.

"The idea is to generate alternative futures with outcomes based on interactions between multiple sides," said Purdue University professor Alok Chaturvedi, co-author of the SWS concept paper.

As I've been saying: very big bird swarms.

Bush is one emergency away from total control of the US

All he needs is a single emergency to declare himself Supreme Commander. Expect such an emergency in the next couple of months, probably fast on the heels of any sudden devaluation of the US dollar.

Architect Richard Gage analyzes the collapse of WTC 1, 2 and 7

And concludes it's almost certainly controlled demolition in every case. I found his lecture quite compelling.

King Dubya destroys the Fifth Amendment

A recent executive order signed by our Dictator In Chief seems to nullify the Fifth Amendment AND grant him the power to confiscate the possessions of anyone who criticizes the war in Iraq. WTF? This asshole -- and his entire crew -- needs to be thrown in fucking prison and tried for war crimes and treason.

Here's an interesting evaluation of the new executive order.

A trip down the memory hole

How to create an angry American? Simply recall the lies that passed for truth.

Zeitgeist: The Movie

Feel the urge to swallow a horse-sized Red Pill? Then watch this movie.

We don't have long to wait now

I can sense it.

Dubya now has all the "authority" he needs to take complete control of this country. All he lacks is an excuse. You can bet they've got something up their sleeve. Just like September 11, only bigger and better.

All you have to do is listen to the neocon shills to know something's afoot.

Are you ready for The Day After?

That hot new neoconservative philosopher named Plato

The neoconservative movement, based on the principles of Machiavelli and Leo Strauss, probably gets its seminal ideas from a certain reading of Plato, suggests Simon Blackburn in his book "Plato's Republic". Alex Koppelman's complete interview with the author can be read here.

Twenty-four hundred years ago, Plato wrote a book called "The Republic," in which the famed teacher Socrates and his pupils discuss the ingredients of an ideal government. They decide that there is a higher realm than mere physical reality, that it is the duty of a small cadre of enlightened, elite citizens called "guardians" to become philosopher kings, and that only these rulers can grasp what is truly real and Good. Over the years, "The Republic" has been invoked to justify everything from authoritarian elitism to liberalism, but during the 20th century, neoconservative godfather Leo Strauss reinterpreted it to his own political philosophy, with its controversial assertion that it's OK for the enlightened elite to tell "noble lies" in the service of the Good. Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz actually took courses on Plato from Strauss at the University of Chicago; other neoconservative hawks with Straussian genes include Richard Perle, Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan and Iraq and current ambassador to the U.N.; and Bill Kristol, neocon pundit and co-founder of the Weekly Standard.

...Leo Strauss [saw] him as in some sense endorsing the idea that it's a dog-eat-dog world. This was kind of a covert message, Strauss thought, of [Plato's] text. Strauss thought that this covert message or esoteric message was supposed to be perceived only by a number of people of special illumination, amongst which he included himself, of course. And that was the ideology that eventually became American neoconservatism, the view that the servants of the state are entitled to do anything -- to lie, to manipulate, to foment war, to destabilize neighboring states, to disguise their actions under a hypocritical cloak of goodness. So it's an extreme example of realpolitik, which I think is just a 180 degree misreading of what Plato is about. But it just shows that you can put down the clearest words on the page and it will be read saying the opposite.

The events of September 11, 2001 bear all the hallmarks of the most audacious "noble lie" ever told. It was a christmas gift tailor-made for the newly elected neoconservatives, a "New Pearl Harbor" giving them license to transform the US into an outright Empire. I can only hope people wake up from this carefully crafted deception before it's too late.

The most sacred photograph I know of

...is the image of this lone man blocking a tank column in Tiananmen Square, 1989. You can learn more about this moment in history from PBS's Frontline documentary on The Tank Man.

Spying on the Homefront: PBS documentary

Spying on the Homefront is a new PBS documentary from the Frontline series. You can watch the entire episode online.

Everybody's a suspect. And if you're good, we won't bother you. And if you look a little strange, then you might get on a watchlist.

I also re-recommend their excellent The Persuaders.