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02.12 FiveBooks Interviews > Lorraine Adams on The Truth Behind the Headlines
Ref. : Letters to the editor
02.13 Dolphins beaching in record numbers on Cape Cod
02.13 Southern Californians at risk of death from air pollution, EPA says
02.13 EPA Sued by 11 States to Enforce Standards Limiting Soot
02.13 Congress nearly eliminates funds for lead poisoning
02.10 LET’S REMAKE THE WAY WE MAKE THINGS
02.09 Cancer rates triple among New York police officers who responded to 9/11
02.08 The seed emergency: The threat to food and democracy
02.07 Bill Gates backs climate scientists lobbying for large-scale geoengineering
02.04 Your Day at the Beach Could Soon Lead to a Night at the Hospital
02.03 Obama Won't Touch Climate With a 10-Foot Pole
02.03 Komen reverses decision to cut Planned Parenthood funding
02.03 Reforming EU Deep-Sea Fisheries Management
02.02 By defunding Planned Parenthood, the Susan G Komen Foundation betrays women
02.02 Ohio Tries to Escape Fate as a Dumping Ground for Fracking Fluid
Ref. Dollars for Doctors - How Industry Money Reaches Physicians
Ref. 2010 Comparative Price Report Medical and Hospital Fees by Country - Graphics
Ref. Health at a Glance 2011 - OECD Indicators
Ref. : Why is Healthcare Absurdly Expensive in USA (Part 2) [Graphics] (Part 1 is here)
Video Health Care Systems in Less Corrupt Countries
02.07 Did Obama make the economy worse? Not according to most statistics
02.02 ABC's Iran Propaganda
02.02 The Ongoing “Foxification” of the Wall Street Journal
Daily The Daily Howler
02.13 News Corp may face US inquiry after Sun arrests at News International
02.13 Why Was No One Punished for America's "My Lai" in Iraq?
02.05 Why the AGs Must Not Settle: Robo-signing Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
02.04 THE CAGING OF AMERICA
02.03 Senate Votes To Ban Its Members From Insider Trading... Kind Of
02.13 Bill Maher: Republicans Divide America - video
02.13 The right's stupidity spreads, enabled by a too-polite left
02.12 Even Critics of Safety Net Increasingly Depend on It - Interactive Map: Where Americans Most Depend on Government Benefits
02.12 CPAC attendees more focused on the economy than their right-wing leaders - video
02.10 The Cancer in Occupy
02.10 How Opus Dei Influenced Rick Santorum
02.10 People Are Not Leaving the Labor Force
02.09 Obama, Explained
02.09 OPED: The White Underclass
02.09 EDITORIAL: A Terrible Transportation Bill
02.09 THE OBAMA MEMOS
02.06 Are Conservatives More Fearful Than Liberals?
02.04 Soaking the Poor, State by State
02.04 Reddit Co-Founder Alexis Ohanian's Rosy Outlook On The Future of Politics
02.03 SUPERBOWL XLVI: Are You Ready for Some Football???
02.03 Buffett rules: Sheldon Whitehouse introduces the Paying a Fair Share Act - video
02.02 Secrecy Shrouds ‘Super PAC’ Funds in Latest Filings
02.01 Rich Patrons Are Major Source of Romney’s Cash
02.13 EDITORIAL: The Big Money Behind State Laws
02.10 This is no bailout for Main Street America
02.10 Why the Foreclosure Deal May Not Be So Hot After All
02.10 Matt Taibbi assesses the $26 billion settlement designed to aid victims of foreclosure fraud - video
02.10 Foreclosure Deal to Spur U.S. Home Seizures
02.09 S.E.C. Is Avoiding Tough Sanctions for Large Banks
02.08 Banks Paying Homeowners to Avoid Foreclosures
02.07 App Stores Create 500,000 U.S. Jobs
02.07 The Payroll Tax Fight
02.07 Obama super PAC decision: President blesses fundraising for Priorities USA Action
02.06 How Privatizing Government Shovels Cash to Parasitic Corporations and Undermines Democracy
02.05 We’re More Unequal Than You Think – Graphic: Unequal rise in income
02.03 PRIVATE INEQUITY
02.02 The New American Divide
02.02 American Airlines proposes to end all four pension plans
02.01 Economics 101
Ref. We’re More Unequal Than You Think – Graphic: Unequal rise in income
02.03 What the Occupy movement must learn from Sundance
02.02 US plans to halt Afghan combat role early surprise Kabul
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COMMENTARY FROM ABROAD:
Ignorance is Strength
Before the invasion of Iraq, the US had Al-Qaida cornered in Afghanistan and Pakistan, marginalized, ostracized and corralled into a finite ghetto for mad Mullahs only. Today, after three and a half years of war, five hundred billion dollars of squandered treasure, nearly three thousand dead American soldiers and at least one hundred thousand dead Iraqi civilians we have done nothing more than make matters worse--infinitely worse. Bush’s Iraq adventure has been the most counterproductive policy in American history.
This pathetic regime has been unmasked as the spitting image of the dystopian tyranny in George Orwell’s prophetic novel, 1984, a fascist dictatorship organized under three sacred dictums:
Ignorance is strength.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Who leaked the NIE report? A true-blue patriotic American if the truth be known. Senator Ted Kennedy was the first off the mark to sense that it condemned Bush and Cheney’s war to the rubbish bin of history. But, we do not know who blew this particular whistle.
In the relatively recent past, Bush’s America has been blessed with a few outstanding whistleblowers modelled on Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower par excellence--who leaked the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam Era and brought the presidency of Richard Nixon to its premature close.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, two outstanding women, FBI Agent Colleen Rowley and Intelligence Analyst Sibel Edmonds, blew their whistles. Agent Rowley revealed that the FBI had failed to heed intelligence about the activities of Zacharias Moussaoui--intelligence that would have alerted the agency to the impending threat of a massive terrorist attack on US soil. Colleen Rowley is now a Democratic congressional candidate in Minnesota.
A Turkish language expert, Sibel Edmonds was hired after the attack on the World Trade Center to analyze pre-9/11 intel. What Edmonds found shocked her. She blew the whistle on the fact that--prior to 9/11--the US was holding explosive intelligence that indicated an eminent attack on a major US target. When Sibel Edmonds blew the whistle, her bosses forced her head under the bureaucratic guillotine. They fired her. Today, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Edmonds’ is suing her former employers for sacking her because she told the truth to the American people.
In Britain, Katherine Gun, an employee of Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), blew the whistle when she learned of a secret US espionage program to spy on UN delegates in New York in the run-up to the launch of the war against Iraq. First she was terminated--then she was vindicated in court.
An anonymous patriot leaked the Downing Street memo. Written by John Scarlett, the secret Downing Street “Eyes Only” document detailed the sharp shift in American policy in 2002, when British officials detected a new level of intensity in Bush’s policy vis à vis Iraq. Instead of planning for a diplomatic settlement to what was then being hyped as the Iraq crisis, the Brits noticed that we had entered a hall of mirrors--a twilight zone where diplomacy was a mere charade and all policies were being “fixed” around the inevitable axis of impending war.
In the meantime, Bush laments the inescapable fact that the war in Iraq is imposing a psychic strain on the mind of America. In official statements, he laments that Osama Bin Laden has been successful in driving a wedge between the American people and their government. Bush adamantly refuses to recognize that the wedge between the people and their government was not of Bin Laden’s making. Forged by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, Bush drove that poisonous wedge deeply into the body politic of America himself when he acquiesced to neoconservative fantasies of imperialist hegemony, a new American century through military conquest and colonial domination leading to dictatorial control of the world’s oil reserves in perpeteum.
The historical record is now perfectly clear. According to our own intelligence analysis, Bush’s war in Iraq has triggered an explosion of Islamic terrorism. Prior to this fateful turning point, the carcinoma of terror was confined to the vastness of Afghanistan and Pakistan. With the launch of the war in Iraq, the cancer of terror metastasized into a global movement predicated on the destruction of America and its front-line client, Israel.
For this tragic outcome, Bush has nobody to blame but himself.
In our immediate future, we can expect more of the same. The Bush-Cheney White House and its minions will eternally repeat their totalitarian mantras:
Ignorance is most assuredly strength;
War is indubitably peace, and
Freedom really and truly is slavery.
And so they shall always be in Brother Bush’s America.
In the web site's "who we are" section, the following is posted:
Established in 2003 the Planetary Movement Limited (PlanetaryTM) is on a mission to inform governments, media and the public about crucial issues related to the expansion and healthy growth of democracy and freedom.
PlanetaryTM works globally. We incorporate the work of existing social and political institutions and integrate our strategies within the growing network of private citizens committed to public action to achieve progress.
We build upon the work of leading social scientists and politicians, in the belief that social scientists are challenged when confronted with realpolitik and politicians need the direction of the leading intellectual trends.
Today, there is a rising tide of concern for the state of democracy. Many citizens feel alienated and disenfranchised, while many more feel let down by their political leadership and the media elites who serve them. PlanetaryTM opens a crucial channel for dialogue between the people of the world and its governments.
References:
- Spy Agencies Say Iraq War Worsens Terrorism Threat
- Sibel Edmonds: A Patriot Silenced, Unjustly Fired but Fighting Back to Help Keep America Safe
- Coleen Rowley for US Congress
- Coleen Rowley’s Memo to FBI Director Robert Mueller
- GCHQ whistleblower cleared
- The secret Downing Street Memo – Secret & Strictly Personal - UK Eyes Only
- Iraq has fuelled terror threat, US intelligence warns
- Campaign in Iraq has increased terrorism threat, says American intelligence report
- US feeling the strain of war – Bush
- How to look like a failure
- By linking Iraq with the war on terror, Bush has created a dynamic that threatens to destroy him
Republication or redistribution of Baltimore Chronicle content is expressly prohibited without their prior written consent.
This story was published on September 27, 2006.
