Thursday, October 30, 2008

You know what blinders are right?


"Basically, blinders are used to keep the horse focused on what is in front of it. Since the horse can't see everything in it's peripheral vision, it keeps the horse from becoming distracted or scared. You will notice that blinders are used in situations where there may be a lot of distractions, such as public places."

In our society, we are all conditioned from birth to ignore civilizations destructive impact upon the world and our fellow man. There are those amongst us who have taken off their "blinders" and see what is truly happening all around us.

Have you taken off your "blinders" ?




If not, what is holding you back?

Fear?
Ignorance?
Education?
Loneliness?



Take the leap, wake up, take off your "blinders" you are not alone in the sea of sheep.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

interesting website

WELCOME TO MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR HYPOCRISY
This is what is called, in the history biz, a revisionist history. American history, at least as far as the general public knows it, is in desperate need of revision, bringing what is taught and what is said about America's past more in line with the truth.

Making the World Safe For Hypocrisy is a chronology of the largely suppressed history of the United States. It is the history that good upstanding Americans are not supposed to know.

Almost everything you read here is based on publicly available information and most historians know all about it. And yet they remain strangely silent, allowing the fantasyland, propagandized version of American history and the fatuous pseudo-patriotic nonsense spewed by politicians and the mass media to stand unchallenged.


http://mtwsfh.blogspot.com/

Thursday, October 23, 2008

Spin - by Brian Springer

Footage you were never supposed to see

Artist Brian Springer spent a year scouring the airwaves with a satellite dish grabbing back channel news feeds not intended for public consumption. The result of his research is SPIN, one of the most insightful films ever made about the mechanics of how television is used as a tool of social control to distort and limit the American public's perception of reality.

Take the time to watch it from beginning to end and you'll never look at TV reporting the same again. Tell your friends about it. This extraordinary film released in the early 1990s is almost completely unknown. Hopefully, the Internet will change that.

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Derrick's PREMISES from Endgame

Definition of Civilization
"I suddenly remembered that all writers, including writers of dictionaries, are propagandists, and I realized that these definitions are, in fact, bite-sized chunks of propaganda, concise articulations of the arrogance that has led those who believe they are living in the most advanced—and best—culture to attempt to impose by force this way of being on all others.

"I would define civilization much more precisely,and I believe more usefully, as a culture—that is, a complex of stories, institutions, and artifacts—that both leads to and emerges from the growth of cities (civilization, see civil: from civis, meaning citizen, from Latin civitatis, meaning city-state), with cities being defined—so as to distinguish them from camps, villages, and so on—as people living more or less permanently in one place in densities high enough to require the routine importation of food and other necessities of life." Endgame vol. 1, p. 17

Premise One: Civilization is not and can never be sustainable. This is especially true for industrial civilization.

Premise Two: Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.

Premise Three: Our way of living—industrial civilization—is based on, requires, and would collapse very quickly without persistent and widespread violence.

Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims.

Premise Five: The property of those higher on the hierarchy is more valuable than the lives of those below. It is acceptable for those above to increase the amount of property they control—in everyday language, to make money—by destroying or taking the lives of those below. This is called production. If those below damage the property of those above, those above may kill or otherwise destroy the lives of those below. This is called justice.

Premise Six: Civilization is not redeemable. This culture will not undergo any sort of voluntary transformation to a sane and sustainable way of living. If we do not put a halt to it, civilization will continue to immiserate the vast majority of humans and to degrade the planet until it (civilization, and probably the planet) collapses. The effects of this degradation will continue to harm humans and nonhumans for a very long time.

Premise Seven: The longer we wait for civilization to crash—or the longer we wait before we ourselves bring it down—the messier will be the crash, and the worse things will be for those humans and nonhumans who live during it, and for those who come after.

Premise Eight: The needs of the natural world are more important than the needs of the economic system.

Another way to put premise Eight: Any economic or social system that does not benefit the natural communities on which it is based is unsustainable, immoral, and stupid. Sustainability, morality, and intelligence (as well as justice) requires the dismantling of any such economic or social system, or at the very least disallowing it from damaging your landbase.

Premise Nine: Although there will clearly some day be far fewer humans than there are at present, there are many ways this reduction in population could occur (or be achieved, depending on the passivity or activity with which we choose to approach this transformation). Some of these ways would be characterized by extreme violence and privation: nuclear armageddon, for example, would reduce both population and consumption, yet do so horrifically; the same would be true for a continuation of overshoot, followed by crash. Other ways could be characterized by less violence. Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it’s not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default. Yet some ways of reducing population and consumption, while still violent, would consist of decreasing the current levels of violence required, and caused by, the (often forced) movement of resources from the poor to the rich, and would of course be marked by a reduction in current violence against the natural world. Personally and collectively we may be able to both reduce the amount and soften the character of violence that occurs during this ongoing and perhaps longterm shift. Or we may not. But this much is certain: if we do not approach it actively—if we do not talk about our predicament and what we are going to do about it—the violence will almost undoubtedly be far more severe, the privation more extreme.

Premise Ten: The culture as a whole and most of its members are insane. The culture is driven by a death urge, an urge to destroy life.

Premise Eleven: From the beginning, this culture—civilization—has been a culture of occupation.

Premise Twelve: There are no rich people in the world, and there are no poor people. There are just people. The rich may have lots of pieces of green paper that many pretend are worth something—or their presumed riches may be even more abstract: numbers on hard drives at banks—and the poor may not. These “rich” claim they own land, and the “poor” are often denied the right to make that same claim. A primary purpose of the police is to enforce the delusions of those with lots of pieces of green paper. Those without the green papers generally buy into these delusions almost as quickly and completely as those with. These delusions carry with them extreme consequences in the real world.

Premise Thirteen: Those in power rule by force, and the sooner we break ourselves of illusions to the contrary, the sooner we can at least begin to make reasonable decisions about whether, when, and how we are going to resist.

Premise Fourteen: From birth on—and probably from conception, but I’m not sure how I’d make the case—we are individually and collectively enculturated to hate life, hate the natural world, hate the wild, hate wild animals, hate women, hate children, hate our bodies, hate and fear our emotions, hate ourselves. If we did not hate the world, we could not allow it to be destroyed before our eyes. If we did not hate ourselves, we could not allow our homes—and our bodies—to be poisoned.

Premise Fifteen: Love does not imply pacifism.

Premise Sixteen: The material world is primary. This does not mean that the spirit does not exist, nor that the material world is all there is. It means that spirit mixes with flesh. It means also that real world actions have real world consequences. It means we cannot rely on Jesus, Santa Claus, the Great Mother, or even the Easter Bunny to get us out of this mess. It means this mess really is a mess, and not just the movement of God’s eyebrows. It means we have to face this mess ourselves. It means that for the time we are here on Earth—whether or not we end up somewhere else after we die, and whether we are condemned or privileged to live here—the Earth is the point. It is primary. It is our home. It is everything. It is silly to think or act or be as though this world is not real and primary. It is silly and pathetic to not live our lives as though our lives are real.

Premise Seventeen: It is a mistake (or more likely, denial) to base our decisions on whether actions arising from these will or won’t frighten fence-sitters, or the mass of Americans.

Premise Eighteen: Our current sense of self is no more sustainable than our current use of energy or technology.

Premise Nineteen: The culture’s problem lies above all in the belief that controlling and abusing the natural world is justifiable.

Premise Twenty: Within this culture, economics—not community well-being, not morals, not ethics, not justice, not life itself—drives social decisions.

Modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the monetary fortunes of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are determined primarily (and often exclusively) on the basis of whether these decisions will increase the power of the decision-makers and those they serve.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: Social decisions are founded primarily (and often exclusively) on the almost entirely unexamined belief that the decision-makers and those they serve are entitled to magnify their power and/or financial fortunes at the expense of those below.

Re-modification of Premise Twenty: If you dig to the heart of it—if there were any heart left—you would find that social decisions are determined primarily on the basis of how well these decisions serve the ends of controlling or destroying wild nature.
Endgame vol. 1, pages IX-XII

http://www.derrickjensen.org/

Friday, October 3, 2008

The bailout: Why they will get away with it



On Friday October 3rd one of the greatest crimes in history was perpetrated upon the people of America.

Among the many hundreds of examples that can be found popping upon all over the web, we find one in specific which carries enormous implications; not only for America but the entire world. The offending gem is this:

MONEY HAS JUST BEEN DEBASED TO ELECTRIC BLIPS LEGALLY.

it's true ~ >o.0<


Their Tools:

Their methods:

1. are you getting the picture?





2. watch this movie!





3. Help wake others up.

Thursday, October 2, 2008

FBI Prevents Agents from Telling 'Truth' About 9/11 on PBS

The FBI has blocked two of its veteran counterterrorism agents from going public with accusations that the CIA deliberately withheld crucial intelligence before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

read more | digg story

Earth’s Citizens Demand Disclosure

To the future President of the United States of America: Sir, you’d better stock up on supplies and strap on your boots: a storm cometh your way.On November 5th, 2008 and for a period lasting seventy-seven days, Washington D.C. will become Ground Zero in what is slated to become the largest civilian driven mailing blitz in recent history.

read more | digg story

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

How'd they get the $700billion figure?

I'm surprised no one has been asked how they came up with the $700billion figure to save Wall St. Well, here's the answer:

"It's not based on any particular data point," a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. "We just wanted to choose a really large number."

Be afraid. Be very, very afraid.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

TV NEWS - They Would Never Lie To Us - CNN 1991

THIS WAS NOT A BAD COMEDY SHOW, THIS WAS CNN 17 YEARS AGOGoogle Charles Jaco! Now, the typical idiotic reaction applied on this: "Why would they fake it? Wouldn't be easier to make real news on real places instead of faking them?"

read more | digg story

Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Revolution 101

**This is a re-post of a forum post on a private forum, source undisclosed.


Revolutionary movements are based on the idea that there is a better way of doing things (a little simplistic but still true) and that this person or group "knows" the right way to do it and is convinced that there is no other way to get there except by overthrowing the current power structure and replacing it with their own.

The purpose of this piece is to take a look at how these groups typically operate, how and why they choose the targets that they do and the various roles inside the groups themselves and the organization of the group it self.

It may be obvious, but it does need to be stated that there is a great deal of variety in almost every aspect of these groups. What I am presenting here is just a generic view, a pattern that has been observed in a large number of them. Success or failure of the group rarely depends on any one thing or the other. Almost any set up can work or fail, depending on a huge variety of factors.

In order to defend against or to defeat a guerrilla group you must first recognize that one is operating in your area, you must know what its goal is, and you must be able to defeat it on at least on a physical level (short term victory) and to be able to prove to the majority of the people who have something (whether it is material or status is not really important) to lose that you are the one that is best able to serve their needs and ensure that they get to keep what they have or get what they want(long term victory).

Groups are typically set up around an individual or a small core group of individuals, this is the command group. Below them are the various people that serve in a few distinct categories, one will be the political or public arm. Next will be the action group then the supply/acquisition group there may also be a planning group--or this may be handled by the leader(s)-and there might also be a security group.

The leader group will compose the heart and soul of the group, they will be the ones that inspire and motivate the rest. This typically revolves around a very charismatic person or group of people who are able to rally people around some cause or set of causes. This will usually be the only thing that exist in the beginning and will handle most recruiting and every thing else until the movement starts to grow.

The action group is the one responsible for the execution of all goals, this will usually be the command group in the beginning but will typically grow into a separate group who focus's on this aspect of the movement and while they may help do other things, those other things will not be their primary focus.

The supply/logistics/support group is the one that gets all the things that everyone needs to operate; they also arrange for food/shelter and so forth. This is a vital group and many groups that fail. do so because this need is not given the time and attention it needs. They may also help acquire funds but not necessarily.

The political/public arm is usually only loosely associated with the rest of the movement. They are going to be the ones that are out there making the public case for the movement. They will have ties to the underground movement, but nothing that can put them in danger of getting them detained.

This is a very basic rundown of the structure of a typical group. It is vital to remember that there is a very large number of variations, and that often it is not that clearly organized and articulated. Also in small movements everyone may do everything. It is only when movements start growing do distinct "jobs" start emerging and often they are only recognizable has such from a outside perspective. One way or another all these "jobs" have to get done or the movement will not have any chance of success.

Identifying a group operating in your area.

The sooner you are able to do this the more effective you will be at countering them (or helping them, depending on your goals). There will be definitive signs that they are there. It is sometimes harder to see these signs in an area that has tight control on the media, and in that case you have to rely on word of mouth intelligence.

The basic pattern will be that there will be someone or a group talking about how bad the government or other powers that be are and how to they are able to do it better. We have all seen this, so I will not spend any real time explaining it-just enough to say that if there is not a political element, then if there is a guerrilla movement occurring either the issues are so obvious to everyone that it doesn't need stating or they are trying to be very clever and set up a situation where they can then come in and "save the day" so to speak. This is very rarely successful and often indicates that they have outside support. Governments around the world use this method to destabilize other governments. So, in order to detect such movements you have to know what the issues in your area are, or rather what the common person perceives them to be. Next find out who is saying that they have the "solution", this will usually be obvious unless you are in an extremely repressive country and then you will have to dig for it. Finally, you have to watch for things that reinforce what they (those that are saying they can fix it) are saying. So if the opposition claims that the government is repressive, look for the situation where the cops are cracking down more so than normal and try to find out what incident caused it. If it is a shortage-based issue (not enough food, money, jobs etc) then look into what is causing this issue. If it is food, where did the food go? If it is a labor issue, is there an effort to organize? Jobs-oriented, is there something that is happening to local businesses? Poverty oriented, where is the money going? Is something specifically happening, caused by an outside force, that is causing a larger than normal expenditure of funds by those in power?

If there is an active movement in your area there will be signs. You just have to look at what opposition leaders say the issue is, and then look at the issue. You will see what they are doing to it, if you look at it in this light.

There are three stages to a classic revolutionary movement

Phase 1-terrorist/underground: this is the beginning stage. The purpose will be to prove their point and in doing so collect a large enough following to advance the "cause".

Phase 2-This occurs when the movement has gathered enough support that they are able to step up operations and seriously start to undermine the powers that be. It will be characterized by things like a definitive structure to the group, a large number of followers, the seizing and control of actual territory and the start of process of the two arms to melding into one unified group.

Phase 3-This happens when the movement is large enough to actively, openly, and directly challenge the powers that be. It will be characterized by things like the open controlling of territory, the existence of a open militaristic group that can directly and openly challenge (and at least in the minds of the leaders) defeat the security apparatus of the government or existing leadership of the powers that be in the area. This may not exist in such a neat package. The forces available to the movement may or may not be trained. They may just be the general public of a certain area that will rise up against the government at the request of the movement or it may be a standing "army" that has been training defeat the armed forces of the government. For our purposes it doesn't matter. What matters is to be able to determine where the movement is in order to help determine what kind of actions it will take.

Phase one operations will revolve around the need to grow the movement. They will tend to be things that reinforce what the movement leaders are saying, so for example in the early days of the Palestinian liberation movement kids would throw rocks at the police/military and this would lead to an escalated enforcement of the existing patrols, a series of arrest and in general a higher level of repression. The political arm would then pronounce that they are excessively repressive. This may sound overly simplistic or that it would not work, that people will see through it. But the whole movement revolves around the belief that in the affected group that there is an issue to begin with. So if the local people already feel oppressed and then the police crack down on everyone because of the actions of a few individuals, this will be enough to push those individuals who are already close to joining into joining, and to make all the rest of the locals a little more favorably disposed to the movement, thus aiding them in acquiring money, supplies, silence, places to crash and so forth.

Each action will be designed to reinforce what the movement's public arm is saying. So if it is a labor movement, a group of workers will ask for a certain benefit or a raise or something-typically this will be something that they already know will be opposed. The demand for this will grow and the situation escalated in a way that is favorable to the movement, things like slowdowns, stoppages and eventually strikes will be pursued.

When trying to predict actions that they will take, think in terms of what will advance the movement's goals. Also remember that most governments and others in control are very insecure about their power base and cannot/will not allow any threat to its power to go unchallenged. This is why they react in the way that they do, and if they are smart enough to understand this, they will be smart enough to ensure that no movement has a real chance of success. Much like the situation that exist for us in the US, they have set up a system and a sense of entitlement that virtually ensures that people who advocate for a reduced footprint have virtually no chance of gaining enough support to successfully overthrow the existing power structure.

So if it is repression that is the rallying point, try to determine what will provoke a repressive reaction, look for things like groups of young people gathering, especially aggravating rules/laws. Think of things that on the outside look innocent and no big deal to the average person, but will be seen to be threat to the power and authority of the government. Just like a spray painted slogan that is say anti-fur, will draw a much greater reaction than a slogan that promotes a certain gang or other such graffiti will hardly draw any attention unless it is massive in scale or they are caught doing it. One is a perceived has a challenge to the status quo and the other just vandalism. Being able to identify the things that are likely to draw a reaction but that appear to be no big deal, these are the likely targets. If hunger is the issue, then shipments of food and warehouses and the like are likely target. The disruption of these allows the movement to claim things like weakness, inefficiency corruption and the like. This will serve once again to push people and resources into the movement. These actions must be successful in order for the movement to grow and have any chance of success; this will not however stop groups from acting. The success of actions or goals will often make groups desperate and act from that place; this often leads to tragic consequences to the movement and those involved in it. Often in today's world we see situations such has the Palestinian situation where they essentially go back and forth between phase one and two and see the rise and fall of many groups, but all with the same end. That, in addition to a variety of other factors, makes the situation a mess and no clear cut victory for anyone is possible and making target selection and prediction a matter of guess work on both sides. In that situation there are so many outside influences that it defies all possible definitions or rationality at this point. It is also vital to remember that the things that are done and said are targeted to people in the affected areas and may or may not seem sensible to outsiders.

The transition to phase two is not a clear cut thing. The idea behind this phase is start to directly challenge the state and to show that it can be done and further embolden and thus enlarge the movement. This phase will see a continuation of the previous types of actions, an increase in the political pressures, such has demands for an election or for them to step down and so forth. The thing that sets this phase apart from phase one is that the movement starts to target more directly those things that represent the state, such as military convoys, police stations and patrols, offices of businesses and politicians that support the government-and in general, more open and conspicuous actions. These actions will be presented with statements such has, "You leave us no other choice but to do this, for the good of the people and so forth."

Once again the primary purpose of this phase is to gain an every growing support base not only in money but in people and support. They will also serve to start to undermine the government's control, at least in the minds of the populace.

So in order to predict what will be targeted, you have to think like a leader of the movement-what could you attack that would offer a realistic chance of success, allow you to grow your movement and be able to promote your position without taking too many risks?

This is a very dangerous time, for they are growing and have been successful and the temptation is to push forward to hard is very real. Many of the types of actions during this stage risk exposing members of the movement who were previously unknown to the government. This is not an issue if they are successful. But if they are not, then you have effectively neutralized or removed one or more of their people, thus weakening their cause. Governments that have experienced and survived revolutions before have learned that it is often better to lull groups into a phase two status and overexpose them-drawing out as many members of the organization as possible for one clean sweep of all of them. This is risky because if it fails then it will give a huge boost to the movement and further the perception that it (the government) is incompetent.

The actions will start small. Each success and influx of support grows into more and larger actions. This will continue until the movement has gained enough of a following that they can directly challenge the local or higher levels of government and it is too large to effectively hide. There will also come a time when these type of actions (phase 1 & 2) will start to lose effectiveness.

Phase three: Once again the timing is not a hard and fast rule. Movements will start coming into the open. They will start to control areas and start to more directly challenge the powers that be. They will contest access to certain areas or deny resources to them. This will all be leading to a direct confrontation with the government with the end result being the victory of one side or the other. This phase may take the appearance of movements taking over cities or areas of land and training a standing army, or it may be that a group is able to mobilize enough of the populace in the city/state/country to overwhelm its security forces. This phase is very obvious, and it will not take much to figure out what is going to happen. Where does the government appear weak? What can the movement do to both hurt the government and increase its own momentum? There is a real danger of stalemate here-if the forces are too evenly matched and the movement is not able to continue to grow, then it can drag out in a seemingly never ending war of attrition with the only real losers being the populace that is stuck in the middle. Columbia is a prime example of this. It is a three-way war in which, with all the outside influences factored in, all three are pretty much evenly balanced thus ensuring a never-ending war.

This is a very generic overview of classic guerrilla warfare--the theoretical side of it, anyway. Now let's set up a pretend situation so we can start getting into the details of things like target selection, counter measures and the philosophy behind target selection. For in the end the success or failure of a movement will depend on growth and growth depends on target selection.

Okay let's get specific. For this, let's create a situation where we can start to get specific, at least in the beginning.

Let's pretend that we live in a country where we have very little to no freedom of speech, religion, expression and so on. There is no real judicial system; it is overall a very repressive government (I know this is too hard to imagine). The corporate interests are the only ones that get any kind of freedom (for a cut). The government essentially is the corporate world's muscle. They are also very greedy, resulting in a situation where many do not have enough to eat, poverty is rampant, and the situation is bleak for everyone not rich or in the "in crowd". (Once again, maybe to hard to believe, but bear with me here.)

Fresh out of college a group of five decides that things just do not have to be this way. That all that would be needed to fix the situation was well known and "obvious" to anyone who wanted to look. Take out the profit factor. Establish a rule of law that is independent of everything else. Stop making people pay to live-and all the rest. This group of close friends grew up together and knew each other extremely well. They were active politically through out college and have first-hand experience with the state's brutality. They know that the solution has been put forth many times and is a very well understood idea and one that the government represses discussion of severely.

So after a time they have come to the conclusion that the time is right to act. For the moment, all that they have is themselves, but the part of the town that they live in is not cooperative with the cops so they can expect a certain amount of privacy and discretion. (This is a lot of assumptions, but short of these or some similar set of conditions there is no real chance of success to begin with.)

So now is the time to act. In order to gain more support the five have to be able to do a couple of things. First they have to get their message out, and then they have to entice the government into acting in a way that will prove them right. Finally, they have to gather a following. So they start off by feeling out the people they know, trying to determine who would be willing to do what. First they need to decide who is going to do what. Who is going to be the public face and who is going to act? This is usually an obvious choice; there are usually those who are better at one than the other. Those who are going to act will need to go underground right before their first act. They will need places to sleep, food, money to buy stuff with, and all the other things that are required to live.

So they start off feeling out their friends and associates with the goal of seeing who would be willing, or unwilling, to do what. This has to very circumspect in the beginning. This will tell them where they can start. Some actions require more physical support and materials than others. Our five determine that they can have all the room and board that they need and maybe a bit of money, but anything more is going to require proof that this is doable. Most of their friends think that the government is too strong and will stop anything that they could do to change it. So they will have to prove this wrong.

With this, they will be able to plan their first actions. This will be the time that (if they are smart) the two arms will separate and do so in a verifiable manner, making it look they have split up, ending the friendship, had a falling out-that sort of thing. This is another sign to watch for. The apparent break-up of a group for no discernable reason is often used has a cover for this stage of operations.

Okay so at this point they know what resources they have available, they have their public arm safe-at least as safe as it can be. No contact would be made with this group by anyone they do not want official attention on. They will need to set up some system of communication, though-whether it is a dead drop, a symbol or whatever-it will be simple.

Now is the time to act. Repression is often the easiest thing to provoke. Those in government will not stand for any threat-real or perceived-to their power. They will, and almost always do, feel the need to "control the situation". This is usually done by increased surveillance, round up of the usual suspects, and more controls and limitations put on the general public at large-the more flagrant and public the threat, the worse the reaction. This can be easily done. It is not, however, a painless process, for many will suffer as a result of the provocation. A couple of people slipped into an otherwise peaceful protest, or some rocks being thrown at some of the police in a public place. The "Five" decide to make their move during an upcoming workers' rights demonstration. This would be the ideal sort of event, for this is one of the groups of people who are going to be most able to relate to their cause of the Five. They will be the most directly affected by the actions of the power structure and are the ones that have the most to gain from the movement.

So they slip a couple of them into the march and break some stuff and pelt the police with rocks, etc. The police will react and crowd control being what it is will do the rest for them. Word will spread, and those that are sympathetic to their cause will move closer and closer to them. Depending on the situation, they may have to do several small scale actions before seeing any real growth. But with each success they will gain in reputation and the state will lose.

They will generally consider it best to do an above-board operation that is followed by something out of the public's eyes. The actions would done be pretty close together so that the state's reaction takes place while the public is still upset about the other action. This kind of act can be something like burning a police car or ambushing a police patrol, or an assault on a politician or corporate bigwig or their residences.

The police will think that this is in retaliation or something at least related to the march and will step up its efforts to "control the situation" the only way that they have of doing this is through increased pressure and intimidation.

It is important for the Five to be creative thinkers in these situations. They must continually ask themselves what they could do to make the situation worse. They will be asking, "What would happen if we did this or that? What is the hardest thing for them to replace? What could hurt them the most? Where are they the weakest at? We must know our area: are there rail lines that are vital to the industry? How open are they? Are there roads that are used to import vital supplies? Are they easily disrupted? Where do the political/corporate bosses live?" Here they would use caution, for two reasons. One is that there may be political leaders who are sympathetic to their cause, whom they would treat well. Secondly, if they put the others in fear for their lives too early, then they may be able to draw in additional support from the state, support that the Five are not yet ready to deal with. They need to be much stronger before they are ready to take on the A team of just about any state's counterinsurgency forces. They want to make the state uncomfortable, but not so much so that the state thinks the locals cannot handle it. This is one of the things to watch out for. If there is an increase in apparent "vandalism" directed towards politicians or corporate leaders, this could be a sign of a budding guerrilla movement.

Interdiction will be a large part of what is done in the beginning. Logs across roads, railroad lines, cut power lines-in general, small easy, quick jobs that have little long term effect but do serve to disrupt the normal day to day activities. These will be the underground actions of the group, they will go hand in hand with the aboveboard actions. You are looking for a series of events that publicly show that the state is brutal but can be defied and actions that serve to disrupt day-to-day life. This is actually an important part. If they do not disrupt day-to-day life, inertia will keep many on the sidelines irregardless of how they feel about the cause.

So our group has disrupted a protest and provoked a clash with the cops. They had previously scouted out the main railroad lines into town and the local power plant. Both go through long stretches of forest that have nothing around them for quite a ways. It was decided in the weeks before the march that they would take the following series of actions: They would disrupt the march, then two days later they would fall a couple of trees across the rail line and then three days after that they would use some creative art work to liven up the house of the president of a local manufacturing plant. Four days after that they would cut three electric power line poles. This would be followed by at least two weeks of inactivity.

By this time they should have a good feel for how the authorities and the local populace react and thus be able to start doing more specific goal-oriented actions. On the other hand, they may not have gotten the attention of the cops yet, the cops could have simply attributed it to some local punks or something of the like and thus they will have to repeat this cycle until that perception changes, it is important for them to have a good read on the local cops, how quick do they react? In what force level? Do they frequently call on outside help? Are there private security forces around? Employed by whom? How tightly are they controlled?

So after the first series of actions some effort will be made to reach out to some local groups, be they criminal, activist or whatever. This will take the form of perhaps just establishing contact and a line of communication or perhaps a heads-up for possible opportunities for them. If there are groups around, particularly groups of younger people, there may be an effort to entice them into helping with the graffiti or other types of actions.

During the "off" times resources will be gathered and targets scouted out. This will be a crucial time for anyone who wants to stop the group. They will have to be aware of what kinds of things could be targeted and be on the lookout for people scouting out targets. This not an easy thing to spot, depending on the target. They could take pictures or just do a walk around, they could be obvious or just appear to be casual passersby. The only thing that you can really do is to be on the look out for things that seem to be getting a lot more attention than normal. You also need to start building up you network of information sources; this is true no matter what side you are on. People who are good sources are hardware clerks, delivery people, street vendors, taxi cab drivers, cops, homeless, petty criminals-anyone who is in contact with a lot of people on a regular basis. These will be the people that will see and know what you need to know. You must learn how to ask questions in a round about way, ask without appearing to be asking, how to make statements that will get the kind of response that you are looking for, an example would be "man, the cops sure are out in force today" the purpose of this would be to see if the number the cops pattern of activity is normal or not. You must appear to be casual, and you must not press it. This is what you need to be on the look out for has well. Who is asking and what do they want to know?

There is a certain way of thinking that successful planners have. When most people look around they just see what is and do not pay that much attention to how things work and the patterns of activity and so forth, most people are preoccupied with living and not so much into seeing the world around them in such a manner (rightly so, for this is not a normal or healthy perspective IMHO.) Good planners, though, see things in a systematic way. They see the individual parts that make up the whole rather than seeing the whole. This is a crucial thing for the planner to develop. Once this is acquired, they will start to see patterns of behavior. They will see and understand the flow of things. Everything else is technical details, things like learning what difference the size of an electrical power line makes and how rail lines are put together and all the rest of that sort of stuff. While this is an important aspect, if they do not understand how a system flows and the like, then all that knowledge will do them no good. The planner will ask: "What does the community produce? What kind of raw materials does it need and what do other communities need from it? Is it a producer of raw material or finished goods? How does it get the material that it needs? What is the location and type of power supply? How does it move its goods out? How do people get around? Where do the local powers that be live? How evenly distributed are the cops? Are they concentrated or disbursed? What type of communication does our area rely on-are cell phones the norm? Do the authorities rely on radios, or do they also use a system of landlines? Do they have regular patrol patterns or are they more loosely structured?" These are but a few of the questions that have to be asked and answered for the group to be able to successfully operate in any given place. Once they get used to this, they will start to see things as a part of the whole. They will better understand how things fit together and which parts are more important than others. Many of the things that they do will revolve around the local business/manufacturing side of the area. There will be a lot of actions that have the main purpose the making of day-to-day operation more difficult and, even more importantly, less profitable. So while a company may have the ability to reroute a supply line or replace a shipment or what ever, each time they do that it cuts into the profit. This will sooner rather than later be directly affecting the workers and will thus create an ever greater sense of resentment, for the leadership will typically bear a significantly smaller portion of the burden than that of the average worker. So what may seem to be an insignificant action, when looked at has part of a bigger pattern, is really very important. This is also something to be on the look out for. Very often, if there is not a lot of support for a change. These kinds of actions will be done in order to create the environment where a movement is able to operate. For the truth of the matter is that unless there is a certain amount of displeasure in a given populace no revolutionary movement will ever be able to successfully operate.

The previous questions are things that really should be asked and answered before the group starts operations. For they never know when/if they will be able to be seen in public without fear of apprehension. Their operations people must be prepared to stay out of sight and basically confined to a residence for extended periods of time.

One thing that can not be stressed enough is that they can never really tell what's going to pop up during an operation. Will somebody be walking the dog, or does X have unexpected guest that are just leaving-you name it. Investigators will be alert for anything that could possibly happen and could mean that people see things that could place a culprit at the scene or at least out and about.

One of the things that good investigators do is to try to get a lot of people to tell them apparently innocent things. But with enough of this "small talk" they can put together a picture of what happened. An example may be that a neighbor saw someone leaving your house, another person seen a car that matches yours and yet another person's dogs started barking right before "it" happened. Individually these things mean nothing, but all together the cops know that at such and such time someone left your house, then around this time a car matching your car's description was seen at this location and right before "it" happened something made someone's dogs bark near the scene of "it". This will be enough to get any number of things that require probable cause, such has warrants and bringing you in for questioning and so forth. Remember that in order for the status quo to win they don't have to arrest the members of the group-they just have to make it impossible for the group to act without being caught-if they cannot act, then they cannot win. Surveillance will do the trick. This is why it is SO important for members of the group not talk to the cops at all. They will know they cannot "trick" the cops. If they lie to the cops and the cops find out, they can and will try to use that as leverage to make the guerrillas tell them things that they do not want to. They will not put themselves into that position in the first place. They will just say they don't know, or don't remember. They will be polite, act like they want to help, but just don't know anything. The successful guerilla never says anything to anyone, and has internalized the need-to-know concept-if a person does not have a very serious need to know something, then they should not be told it, and those who do "need to know" should only be told what exactly they need to know and nothing else.

So during the "break" in action that our people take they will be planning the next series of actions. Several things will influence this and future decisions about what to do. They will ask, "What was the official response to our previous actions?" If none, then they will need to repeat similar actions until a response is provoked. Almost anything the authorities can do to "tighten" control will be disruptive, and this is what they want. For even if the officials are good enough at spinning and controlling the media, this disruption will serve to further upset the populace.

So for our example, the cops have put in place a temporary ban on protests and have stepped up "presence" actions in certain areas. They have also put out feelers digging for info on any new "groups" in the area.

The decision is made that they need to start focusing on the labor side of things. So the next series of events will be something like more interdiction of the rail lines, random disruption of various bridges, and the beginnings of a harassment campaign against the local "pro business" leaders. This will be combined with very covert actions that have as their end result an increase in cost of living for the average Joe. For example, the road interdictions will disrupt supply. Costs to corporations are increased by the random downing of electrical power lines, the burning of phone exchange buildings, the possible disruption of natural gas lines, or the corruption of gasoline storage tanks. They decide to keep it simple and increase the rates of power outages and rail and road interdictions. This will be accompanied by increasingly forceful demands from labor leaders for more pay/better conditions and so on. These demands will not be met and will be issued in a slowly increasing rate. So in the beginning they may have been done once or twice a year, by the end of the third or fourth month of actions they should be up to a rate of about once a month. The goal is to put management in a position where they are not able to effectively deflect the demands. They will either have to start making concessions (which the group's other activities will make very unlikely, since all of them directly cut into the profit margins already) or do simply deny them using the standard excuses, which will provide all sorts of ammunition for the leaders of the public relations arm of the movement.

This level and type of actions will be continued until the officials start feeling the need to be continually vigilant-in other words, until they start actively and constantly guarding vital places and things. This will be the sign that the guerrillas are looking for, the one that will tell them that they are starting to have a direct and no longer minor effect on business and the state. This is when the labor movements start giving management timelines. They will also start talking about things like slowdowns, walkouts, and strikes-just thinly veiled threats or references to them. The idea is to get management thinking of the possibility of those actions and what the effects of them will have on the bottom line. You want them to start to feel the pressure, to start to think about these kinds of things in a regular and consistent manner.

This will be the time that the operations people really start to take actions that will directly effect the local economy. The sabotaging of gas storage containers, the destruction of tractor trailers, anything that while still being a small target will have a more direct effect on the local economy.

They will also need to start scouting out major targets and start the process of getting the items needed for the execution of a major event.

Good targets for them to choose at this time would be warehouses that are full of commercial goods, actually burning the houses of local leaders. Are there bridges that can be taken out easily, or at least major damaged?

Many of the newer movements at this stage will start a series of either bank robberies, hijacking trucks, and that sort of thing. There have not been enough of them to make a definitive statement on the effectiveness of them. So I will list some of the pros and cons-from the guerilla group's perspective-associated with them.

Pros-

They directly effect the daily operation of business in the local area.
They provide much needed funds and sometimes goods.
They show the vulnerability of the powers that be.

Cons-

These actions can easily be spun as purely criminal and put a negative image on their movement.
It is easy to set up traps around these targets, so the risk of being caught really goes up.
There are real risks of death and personal injury in these kinds of ops and so these risks will become an ever greater fact of life. If the movement is still small, they may not be able to afford to lose anyone yet.

These are the major things that I am aware of, I am sure that there are more that I have forgotten or not read about. Kidnapping campaigns are also typical but they are highly dangerous, resource intensive operations that have a very low success rate in places that have an intact judicial system. The only places where they have a high rate of success are those places like Columbia where the various factions control large parts of the country and have extensive networks and resources.

I think this tactic would be seriously considered if money and supplies were hard to get. If that was not an issue, then I do not think it would be considered worth the risk at this point in the movement.

This is one of those points where it is almost impossible to be specific in an example. A movement will continue these kind of actions building up momentum until the time is right to sort of push the powers that be over the edge, to use the momentum and the cumulative result of their actions to start the process of seriously undermining the real power of the government. The point of the actions that they have taken to this point was to hinder the system and to grow their base. The amount of success at this determines when and if really you move on to actions that are more than hindrances.

Another way to look at this would be reserve depletion. What the guerillas are doing in essence is forcing the powers both economic and government (in so much has there is a difference), to use up all the reserves or savings that they have, to put them in the position where they have nothing to cover any losses. This means that every loss comes straight out of the bottom line and cuts into operations. With the government, it means that they no longer have the ability to do as many things that need doing. There are too many targets to guard or too many guaranteed accounts to cover, or too many roads to fix or whatever the "it" is, the resources simply do not exist to handle it. Now it is true that at this level and time the movement is still probably still local. But in order to grow so that this same process can be carried out nationwide, they first must be effective on the local level.

A couple of things happen as they push closer and closer to that point. First is that the security forces really start cracking down in an overt and blatant way. They simply can not allow this kind of challenge to go unanswered. They must respond for you will be attacking their very bloodline. Next is that more and more of the cost is passed down the line, this will have a very serious effect on those people who live in the lower rungs of society. The working poor will almost immediately find life far more difficult to live, and they are also the ones that will be the mass that is making the demands on management. This will act to spur them on and give them greater incentive to push those demands, also setting up a situation where managements refusal to meet those demands will be seen as taking food out of their kids mouths, making the refusals a direct attack on their well-being and livelihood. This perception will be aided by other factors as well-as things tighten up many jobs and positions will be deemed unnecessary and eliminated, further angering the people. When companies start to do this the mood in those places quickly becomes one of "us vs. them", and everyone starts to wonder when they are next.

All of these things will push more and more people into the movement either directly or just as supporters.

Okay, fast forward to that time when they have been successful in stretching their local powers that be to the breaking point. It is now time for phase two. One of the things that will happen here is that they will start the process of expanding the organization-they will need to take it national at some point in time. Things get weird now, for the group may not have the support or ability to expand into more than, say, one city at a time, and may have to start from scratch in some places. They will also, if they haven't already, start drawing the attention of the feds, this will be the A team of the governments enforcers. They should by this time have a lot of experience in things like covert movement, hiding, supply acquisition and so forth. They will need that experience for they will also be very experienced and will have vastly greater resources and the ability to operate in the open. Now the fun really begins. Many groups fall at this point because they have not built secure communication systems, or secure supply situations or good operational tactics and so forth. If any of these areas have been neglected by the group, then they will be exploited against them.

So there may be a time when there are phase two type operations in one area and phase one in another, this cuts both ways, it can confuse either or both of them.

So they are expanding the area of operations and have pushed the locals to the point of either breaking or forced to being propped up by the feds. Now is the time to move to phase two style operations.

The primary difference between phase one and two is the size and scope of the targets. They are looking to both directly undermine the powers that be and to start the process of actually taking out the assets of the enemy.

Some examples of the change in targeting would be that, say, with railroad interdictions they would plan them so that the trains actually derail and wreck. They also look at starting to take out the locomotive units.

They start looking at bridges. Burning warehouses in large numbers, arson in general will be a big part of the group's operational bag. They will make a concentrated effort to attack things like police stations, patrols, military convoys. Communication lines will also be a big target. Cutting fiber optic cables, burning switching stations, destroying or ambushing the phone companies' repair trucks/crews. As always they will be looking to maximize the effectiveness of their actions. So does a major line run over a river or canyon, prime target? Can you hit a headquarters of either the police or some other political or corporate body? Mayors and city leaders also become targets at this stage. Over all what they will be doing is to weaken the existing system and more importantly to show the public at large its vulnerability. So when trying to predict targets, ask questions like what are easy targets yet ones that would make a big impact on your community.

This will be a time when operations scale up; they must start hitting bigger and bigger targets they must show that they are capable of opposing and overthrowing the existing government. So what may start has an isolated attack on trucks and individual police cars will grow into regular hijackings along certain stretches of road and frequent bombings of police stations. What may start with defacing of political/community/corporate leaders' houses may end up with assassinations of the same.

One key characteristic of this stage is exponential growth. The next stage is one of direct confrontation, so the movement must grow a lot at this stage. This will be the time when people are being forced to take a side. As the movement grows and gains momentum, the rate, kind, and tempo of operations will likewise increase, until the point is reached where they are either unable to stay hidden or are in fact in control of actual areas. There is often a time when they are unable to stay hidden but not yet able to control land, this is typically when they move the center of operations to either the country or to isolated locations. This allows semi-open operations.

Once again, you can not really put a timeline on this stage, except for the transition part of it.

There will come a time when the movement will have the numbers and support to do one of two things, either start to control areas of land and use them as training bases, or, as has been the case in recent years, control enough of the populace in the major cities to rise up and overthrow the security forces of those countries. This is called phase three and is the final phase. I will not go into it here, for it is all about military strategy and that is not the purpose of this paper.

Over all, the key to determining what will be targeted will be determined by what phase the movement is in and what will accomplish the most for the movement without compromising it. The guerrillas will need to pay attention to what is going on and look at their area in an analytical way-what are the structures that exist, what do they require to function, where are they weak, where are the bottlenecks? What would hurt the most if it was taken out? Is there an active labor movement? What groups exist in their area? Are there serious ethnical conflicts or tension? Does something happen to suddenly start to increase the existing tensions in your area?

They must have a good grasp on the pulse on their community and what is going on in it. Who are the most unhappy ones and why? They will watch for either sudden or slow changes that change this dynamic. Revolutionary movements cannot stay hidden; they must act and those actions will be visible. In today's world it may be that the powers that be do not want these actions known. So you will have to dig, was there a power outage? Why? Did a march turn into a riot, what caused that? Is there a shortage of some goods? Why? Having a good network of eyes and ears is truly invaluable; in fact the special forces community has spent a lot of effort in creating teams in likely trouble spots whose sole purpose is to set up an intelligence network, to give them some real time, real world intelligence in case it is needed. You cannot underestimate the value of this kind of knowledge. It can and is often the difference between success and failure.

Bush Administration will keep secret 'grim' Afghanistan report quiet until after election

A secret US intelligence report which says the situation in Afghanistan is "grim" will be withheld from the public until after the election, a new report says. Keeping the intelligence report under wraps would likely help Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). McCain has focused on the Iraq "surge," while US woes in Afghanistan have stayed out of the public eye.

Full Story

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Homeland Security Department Testing Thought-Crime Detector

US Department of Homeland Security is developing a system designed to detect “hostile thoughts” in people walking through border posts, airports and public places. The DHS says recent tests prove it works. Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

Full story

Friday, September 19, 2008

Find of the day

Real MIT course ~ How to Stage a Revolution

did anyone graduate ?

A Nation of Village Idiots

Don’t let them tell you this economic meltdown is a complicated mess. It’s not. Our national financial crisis is readily understood by anyone who has seen greed and hypocrisy. But we are now witnessing them on a profound, monumental scale.

Full article here

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The only solution to America’s financial woes?

With more banks failing in the last year than at any time in recent memory, one has to wonder if there is an underlying objective. How can so many financial institutions have failed to forecast and see that the current fiscal policies are completely non-sustainable? Current policies make a small group very rich very quickly and in the long term everyone else looses out. With over a dozen government bailouts pumped into the economy in the last year, when do you call it quits? But what if calling it quits is a secret objective? What if an end result is desired? What end result might it be? Let’s find out!

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Brave New Film

Simon Owens posted an interesting article titled "How Greenwald’s Brave New Films Spreads Its Political Message Online". If you liked the Micheal Moore post, have a read as this will surely interest you as well.

Sunday, September 14, 2008

New FBI rules draw civil liberties worries

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Justice Department unveiled proposed new rules on Friday for FBI investigations, changes a civil liberties group criticized for giving agents powers to investigate Americans without proper suspicion.

In its first major change in years, the Justice Department proposed a consolidated set of guidelines for domestic FBI operations, seeking to apply the same rules for criminal and terrorism cases, and for collecting foreign intelligence.

The guidelines were first adopted in the 1970s following disclosures that the FBI under J. Edgar Hoover had run a widespread domestic surveillance program that spied on civil rights activists and political opponents.

Officials said the new guidelines, which total 45 pages, were still being revised after consultations with Congress and civil liberties groups. The new rules are expected to take effect on October 1.

Justice Department and FBI officials told a news briefing the changes would allow agents in some terrorism cases to use informants, do physical surveillance and conduct interviews without identifying themselves or their true purpose.

They said such techniques currently could be used in ordinary criminal cases, but not for those involving national security, before an investigation has begun.

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern the rewritten rules had been drafted in a way to allow the FBI to begin surveillance without factual evidence to back it up.

It said that under the new guidelines, a person's race or ethnic background could be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes will institute racial profiling as a matter of policy.

ACLU Washington legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said, "Agents will be given unparalleled leeway to investigate Americans without proper suspicion, and that will inevitably result in constitutional violations."

Anthony Romero, the ACLU's executive director, said, "Issuing guidelines that permit racial profiling the day after the 9/11 anniversary and in the midst of a historic presidential campaign is typical Bush administration stagecraft designed to exploit legitimate security concerns for partisan political purposes."

Department officials said the guidelines would not allow an investigation based solely on a person's race or religion. "We are not changing our basic approach when race, religion or ethnicity may be taken into consideration," said one official who declined to be identified.

"The Department of Justice has long been concerned about the use of race or ethnicity in investigations. But it is simply not responsible to say that race may never be taken into account when conducting an investigation," spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said in a statement after the briefing.

Via: reuters

Hyperinflation Here We Come:Last Gasp of a Doomed Currency

In the latest example of financial market madness, the recent government “bailout” of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae has perversely resulted in a sharp rise in the value of the U.S. dollar. If the markets were functioning rationally, the transference of staggering new liabilities to the U.S. Treasury would have been immediately seen as catastrophic for the dollar. Instead the markets have ignored the obviously negative long-term implications and have remained fixated on the more immediate effects. However, rather than solving the problems, the government’s actions merely confirm my worst fears, and increase the chances for a hyper-inflationary outcome.

By transforming $5.5 trillion of suspect mortgage-backed securities into seemingly bullet-proof Treasury bonds, the move has sparked a relief rally in the dollar as foreign investors no longer have to worry about defaults or markdowns. In fact, to holders of Fannie and Freddie debt, it no longer matters what happens to the housing market. Home prices can drop another 50%, every single homeowner can default on their mortgage, and bond holders will not lose one dime. This has emboldened foreign investors, and temporarily increased demand for both dollars and Freddie and Fannie debt.

Had the government done the right thing and not guaranteed Freddie and Fannie debt, I believe we would now be experiencing an outright financial crisis. The dollar would be falling sharply along with real estate prices, gold would be soaring and the recession would be deepening. However, by nationalizing Freddie and Fannie, the government has merely delayed the crisis. The borrowed time will cost us dearly, as the day of reckoning will now likely involve much steeper losses for our currency.

The Freddie and Fannie takeover does nothing to address the underlying problems that forced the companies into bankruptcy in the first place. All of the bad mortgage debt still exists. In fact, based on this bailout, there will be trillions more in bad mortgages insured over the next few years. The only thing that has changed is how the losses will be distributed. Instead of falling solely on bond holders, who had chosen to invest in mortgage debt, they will now be dispersed among U.S. taxpayers and all holders of U.S. dollars, who made no such choices.

Over the next year or two, my prediction is that several trillion dollars of existing mortgages, not currently insured by Freddie or Fannie, will be transferred to the pile. Going forward the vast majority of new mortgages made to Americans will be bought by Fannie or Freddie. Therefore in a few short years the $5.5 trillion of initially transferred liabilities could grow to more than $10 trillion of new obligations for the U.S. Treasury.

The defenders of the bailout claim that Fannie and Freddie debt does not represent true obligations because they are fully collateralized by homes. But anyone with a casual interest in the current real estate market knows that homes are now only worth a fraction of outstanding mortgage debt. And that fraction gets smaller every day. My guess is that $10 trillion of federally insured mortgages could result in $2 trillion of losses, which amounts to more than $25,000 per American family.

Also, there is no reason to believe that the bailout merry-go-round will end with Fannie and Freddie. Faltering investment bank Lehman Bros. is now positioned to receive the kind of Federal backstop that smoothed the purchase of Bear Stearns back in March. Bailouts of automotive and airline companies can’t be long in coming. Once the market perceives a Federal magic wand, it becomes politically impossible to stop waving it.

In addition to adding new sources of debt in the form of mortgage backed securities, the government is also piling on debt the old fashioned way…through budget deficits. Recent projections put the 2008 deficit at $410 billion, not counting the Iraq war or any costs related to financial bailouts. It is my guess that the annual Federal budget deficit will soon approach, and then exceed, $1 trillion, and that the national debt, including actual bonds and guaranteed mortgages, will soon exceed $20 trillion. When these untenable obligations force Treasury and agency investors to shift focus from default risk to inflation risk, a mass exodus from both Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities (now Treasuries in disguise) will ensue. The stampede will trample the dollar.

When the dust settles, the Federal government will be left with staggering liabilities that will be impossible to repay with legitimate means (taxation or borrowing). To make good, they must rely on the printing press to create money out of thin air. The rapid expansion in money supply will push the dollar down mercilessly.

Right now every asset on the planet is being sold except the U.S. dollar. To me this rally looks like the last gasp of a dying currency. Just like a toy rocket ship, once the dollar runs out of fuel it will crash back down to Earth.

Via: europac

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Realistic view of US politics with Ron Paul

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Republican Rep. Ron Paul of Texas called on voters to back a third-party candidate for president Wednesday, rejecting his party’s nominee and offering equally harsh words for the Democratic candidate.

Paul, who unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination this year, told supporters at the National Press Club in Washington that he is not endorsing GOP nominee Sen. John McCain or Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama.

Instead, Paul will give his seal of approval to four candidates: Green Party nominee Cynthia McKinney, Libertarian Party nominee Bob Barr, independent candidate Ralph Nader and Constitution Party candidate Chuck Baldwin.

Paul said he’s supporting the third-party candidates because the two major parties and media had “colluded” to avoid discussing issues and falsely presenting the difference between McCain and Obama as real.

“I’ve come to the conclusion, after having spent many years in politics, is that our presidential elections turn out to be more of a charade than anything else, and I think that is true today. It is a charade,” he said.

Paul offered an open endorsement to the four candidates because each signed onto a policy statement that calls for “balancing budgets, bring troops home, personal liberties and investigating the Federal Reserve,” an aide to the congressman said.

Paul said a strong showing by the third-party candidates would express the public’s frustration with the current system.

“I have no doubt that the majority is on our side,” Paul added, citing public opinion polls. “We represent the majority of the American people.”

Paul said that he had received a call from the McCain campaign Tuesday asking for his endorsement. Paul’s response: “I don’t like the idea of getting 2 to 3 million people [Paul supporters] angry at me.”

McCain’s aides argued that the Texas Republican should endorse McCain because he would do a “little less harm” than Obama, Paul said, but “we just don’t need to do that anymore.”

“If you ever get to the point where you believe the two parties are essentially the same, if the majority is outside of the establishment, it’s not very democratic. The process is not working,” Paul said.

Paul attacked Obama, saying, “He’s not for change,” and the congressman argued that his efforts would help the Republican Party.

“If the Republican side realized what I’m trying to do, they should be funding me,” Paul said.

Paul failed in his bid for the Republican nomination, but he found a large, diverse audience for his anti-war and anti-tax messages.

The Texas congressman’s campaign was fueled by an on-line, grass-roots fundraising operation. Throughout the campaign, Paul supporters called on others to join the “Ron Paul Revolution.”

At the Republican National Convention last week in St. Paul, Minnesota, Paul supporters threw their own party in Minneapolis. iReport.com: See Ron Paul signs raised high at the “counter-convention”

Paul, who said he entered the presidential race reluctantly, told the roaring audience, “I lost my skepticism. I hope you lost your apathy.”

“I did not want to run people’s lives. I did not want to run the economy and I did not want to run the world. I didn’t have the authority to do it, and I didn’t have the Constitution behind me to do it,” said Paul, who has been in the House of Representatives for more than 30 years.

via: thecrit.com

Busted! Pollsters caught fudging election numbers

This week’s mainstream coverage of the presidential horse-race has been dominated by a series of polls showing the McCain-Palin ticket with its first stable lead over Obama and Biden. Gallup’s tracking poll, USA Today and CBS News all show the Republicans with some kind of lead over the Democratic ticket. But, interestingly, all three polls were also conducted using a higher sampling of Republican voters than in July, raising a question of methodology.

In a year in which Democrats have a lead of 11 million registered voters over Republicans, and have been adding to that advantage through a robust field operation, are pollsters over-sampling Republicans?

Despite a raft of advantages in the electorate for Democrats, in September’s first Gallup tracking poll, an equal number of Republicans and Democrats were surveyed (including “leaners”) from Sept. 3-5, compared to a 10-point Democratic identification advantage two weeks ago. That partisan makeup of the polling pool resulted in a 5-point lead for McCain in Sept. 5 tracking poll. Meanwhile, the new CBS poll features a 6-point swing in partisan composition toward Republicans, which plays some role in the poll’s two-point lead for McCain. Finally, the latest USA Today poll, which claims a four-point edge for McCain, was arrived at after a 10-point swing in partisan makeup toward GOP respondents.

Some polling experts say the changing state of party affiliation in the field is slow to be reflected in polls themselves. Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg told the Huffington Post that “when it comes to registration and turnout, the polls often do a very bad job of taking those [factors] into account,” because newly registered voters aren’t in the voter files used by firms that survey public opinion. “You could make the argument they are under-representing new registrants,” she said, which would mean that the Democrats new edge would not be taken into account.

Monday’s USA Today poll had a 48-47 split between Democrats and Republicans surveyed. That represents a nearly 10 point shift in party identification toward Republicans since USA Today’s July polling. When asked for comment, USA Today polling editor Jim Norman wrote that “it’s possible” that their latest sample includes too many Republicans. Though he added, “it’s also possible that we have too many Democrats,” because “there’s always the chance of an over- or under-representation” in polls.

Still, Norman admitted that the GOP identification in the latest survey has spiked. “The party ID in our most recent poll does show a shift away from what Gallup has been getting in earlier polls, going all the way back to 2005,” Norman said. “But previous conventions — the Republican one in 1988, the Democratic one in 1992, the Democratic one in 2000 — have also shown shifts in party ID toward the party that had the convention, and those shifts seemed to last, to greater or lesser degrees, though the election. Further, I’ve been told by Gallup that their tracking poll has shown a similar shift in party ID since the Republican convention. … I guarantee you we will be watching closely in all of our polls between now and election day to see whether there are further shifts in party ID in either direction.”

And it’s true. Gallup’s own GOP identification (including leaners) has swung six points in the last month, from 42 percent of voters to 48, according to tables provided to the Huffington Post. Meanwhile, solid and leaning Democrats have fallen from 52 to 48 percent of those polled. For political scientists who believe that partisanship is largely stable over time — and who take note of the advantage in voter registration being experienced by Democrats during the same period — the newly GOP-heavy poll samples can raise eyebrows.

Emory University political scientist Alan Abramowitz is highly skeptical of the new Gallup, USA Today and CBS polls. About the latter, which showed a statistically insignificant two point lead for McCain, Abramowitz said: “One reason for the dramatic difference between the two recent CBS polls is that the two samples differed fairly dramatically in terms of partisan composition. The first sample was 35.2% Democratic, 26.2 percent Republicans, and 38.6 percent independent. The second sample was 34.9% Democratic, 31.1% Republican, and 34.0% independent. That’s a change from a 9 point Democratic advantage to a 3.8 point Democratic advantage. That alone would probably explain about half of the difference in candidate preferences between the two [CBS] polls.”

If these polls are improperly reflecting the partisan makeup of the electorate at large, it certainly would go part of the way toward explaining anything beyond the quick “dead cat bounce” after the Republican convention. And if the convergence of polls around a small McCain lead has anything to do with sampling error, it would render any claims about a new equilibrium in the race somewhat moot.

One day before USA Today announced its new poll numbers, it also ran an Associated Press story with the headline “Democrats Post Big Gains In Voter Registration.” In that article, the AP noted that, during the primary season, “more than 2 million Democrats [were added] to voter rolls in the 28 states that register voters according to party affiliation. The Republicans have lost nearly 344,000 thousand voters in the same states.”

The article proceeded to lay out a variety of statistics that favor Democrats:

Nationwide, there are about 42 million registered Democrats and about 31 million Republicans, according to statistics compiled by The Associated Press.
The Democrats have posted big gains in many competitive states, including Nevada, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado and Florida. They have also been targeting historically Republican southern states.

Since 2006, the Democrats have added 167,000 voters in North Carolina, while the Republicans have added 36,000.

Still, that doesn’t discount the fact that Republicans have definitely made some gains. As Greenberg notes, “Sarah Palin came out and gave a really good speech. She certainly exceeded the low expectations. And then more people watched McCain’s speech than Obama. And now it appears there was a bigger bump for McCain than there was for Obama. … But there always been more room to grow his vote.” Greenberg says the prior lack of enthusiasm among Republicans could have resulted in an inflated rate of survey respondents identifying as independents. “The CBS panels show most of the movement came to McCain from undecided voters, people who were probably holding back from McCain,” Greenberg said.

Despite that, Abramowitz simply doesn’t think the overall spike in Republican sampling among all three polling firms is an accurate reflection of the electorate. “It’s just not likely,” he says. Given how important polls can be in the coverage of the race, even a slight assist to McCain during a period in which he is exciting the Republican base could help him solidify a new narrative in the race, regardless of the partisan facts on the ground.



Via: thecrit.com

Saturday, September 6, 2008

CIA drug planes - Update

The daily said it had obtained documents from the United States and the European Parliament which “show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects.”

Full story here

Friday, September 5, 2008

Michael Moore to Release Slacker Uprising for Free Online

Michael Moore says he will release his next movie free online, the "first major major film to be released in such a way," according to the Associated Press.

The film, called Slacker Uprising (trailer embedded), documents the director's 62-city tour during the 2004 U.S. presidential election, during which Moore rallied young voters to support Democrat John Kerry.

"I thought it'd be a nice way to celebrate my 20th year of doing this," Moore said of the freebie release. "And also help get out the vote for November. I've been thinking about what I want to do to help with the election this year."

Moore said the film is definitely aimed at Democrats. "This film really isn't for anybody other than the choir," he said. "But that's because I believe the choir needs a song to sing every now and then."

According to the Associated Press:

The director's last film, Sicko, leaked online and was downloaded illegally in large numbers. He says this download, offered by blip.tv, will be high-resolution and far better than "YouTube quality."

To receive the download, people can sign up at SlackerUprising.com. A "Night of a Thousand House Parties" is planned for Oct. 4, when local neighborhood screenings are hoped to be scheduled. A DVD will be released Oct. 7.

Such releases are more common in the music industry, where artists like Radiohead and Trent Reznor have experimented with alternative release and pricing schemes.

From the trailer, Slacker Uprising looks mostly like a self-congratulatory mix of archival footage -- Moore addressing auditoriums filled with college students, Moore tossing out ramen noodles and Moore trotting out stars to slam the Bush administration -- and TV news reports about the director's campaign to mobilize the youth vote.

Seen with Moore are many of the usual musico-political elite -- Eddie Vedder, Tom Morello, R.E.M., Steve Earle, Joan Baez -- and Hollywood stars like Viggo Mortensen and Roseanne Barr.

It's perhaps not the kind of movie that would have raked in millions of dollars anyway, but Moore gives the lowdown on his free download gambit.

"This is being done entirely as a gift to my fans," Moore said in a statement on his website. "The only return any of us are hoping for is the largest turnout of young voters ever at the polls in November."

via: Wired

Key 9/11 witness commits suicide

Bombs in the basement

The Daily News reported yesterday that Kenny Johannemann - a key witness in the WTC 9/11 bombings - recently committed suicide.

I call him a key witness because in spite of aggressive prodding from reporters about "the planes," he clearly called what happened on the upper floors of the World Trade Center "explosions."

More important, Johannemann reported a massive explosion in the basement of one of the Twin Towers and rescuing someone who received full body burns from an explosion that took place at the base - not the top - of the building.



MORE:
http://www.brasschecktv.com/page/424.html