Amazing Quote

A quote from David Rockefeller's autobiography 'Memoirs' -
6-11-6


"For more than a century, ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will.

If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it."

Coulter Draws Fire for Bashing 9/11 Widows

By PHILIP ELLIOTT
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON - Ann Coulter, the conservative pundit with a penchant for creating controversy, caused a ruckus when she called 9/11 widows "witches" and accused them of using their husbands' deaths for their own political gain.
It is just the latest of the high-emotion, sharp-rhetoric attacks that she has leveled in four previous books and frequent appearances on cable television programs. Her firebrand style even inspired NBC's "The West Wing" to create "a blond, Republican sex kitten" in her mold.

In her latest book, Coulter criticizes the four New Jersey widows who pushed for an independent commission to investigate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed their husbands at the World Trade Center. The women also backed Democrat John Kerry's presidential candidacy in 2004.

"These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much," Coulter wrote.

Among Coulter's previous statements, she advocated the invasion of non-Christian nations after Sept. 11 and the deportation from the U.S. of "all aliens from Arabic countries." She said American Taliban John Walker should be executed to show liberals what happens to traitors. And she said the only real question about President Clinton was "whether to impeach or assassinate."

Among the most quotable Coulter:

_"To expiate the pain of losing her first-born son in the Iraq war, Cindy Sheehan decided to cheer herself up by engaging in Stalinist agitprop outside President Bush's Crawford ranch. ... After your third profile on 'Entertainment Tonight,' you're no longer a grieving mom; you're a C-list celebrity trolling for a book deal or a reality show," Coulter wrote in her TownHall.com column on Aug. 18, 2005.

_"Even if corners were cut, (Iran-Contra) was a brilliant scheme. There is no possibility that anyone in any Democratic administration would have gone to such lengths to fund anti-communist forces. When Democrats scheme from the White House, it's to cover up the president's affair with an intern. When Republicans scheme, it's to support embattled anti-communist freedom fighters sold out by the Democrats," she wrote in 2003's "Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism."

_"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building," The New York Observer quoted her as saying on Aug. 20, 2002. She clarified those remarks with RightWingNews.com: "Of course I regret it. I should have added, 'after everyone had left the building except the editors and reporters.'"

_"After all other suitable office space in Manhattan had dried up - and also after spending the weekend golfing at an all-white club in Florida - Clinton announced he would take an office in Harlem. ... As one of my friends remarked, that should be nice: Having escaped a mugging on the way to work, Clinton's female employees will then have to face an accused rapist in the office," Coulter wrote on Feb. 19, 2001.

_"The Americanization of Iraq proceeds at an astonishing pace, the Iraqis are taking to freedom like fish to water, and the possibilities for this nation are endless. It's hard to say who's more upset about these developments: the last vestiges of pro-Hussein Baathist resistance in Iraq or John Kerry's campaign manager," Coulter wrote in a June 30, 2004, column posted on her Web site.

_"(Liberals) are always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. ... Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment," Coulter said during an Oct. 21, 2005, speech at the University of Florida.

_"Abortion is the sacrament and Roe v. Wade is Holy Writ," she wrote in "Godless: The Church of Liberalism," published Tuesday.

_"We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war," Coulter wrote in a column published by the National Review Online on Sept. 13, 2001.

_"The portrayal of Senator Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't cowering in fear during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name. Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis," she wrote in "Treason."

_"Mostly the Witches of East Brunswick wanted George Bush to apologize for not being Bill Clinton," she wrote in "Godless." She was referring to the New Jersey town where two of the Sept. 11 widows live.

_"We need somebody to put rat poison in Justice Stevens' creme brulee," Coulter said in a Jan. 27 appearance at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Ark., regarding Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens. She later explained she was joking about the justice, whose votes have upheld Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision legalizing abortion.

"You want to be careful not to become just a blowhard," she said in The Washington Post on October 16, 1998.

Well, guess what...you have officially become just that. I live in New Jersey and you seem to be the only 'citizen' of the US to have these wonderful views of our political process. Could it be that you want to be dicktater number three (behind Shrub and (where's) Cheney. Do you think everyone in America is blind or stupid? The vast majority of the people of the United States would rather there were no more Republicans allowed to breath our air, so the feelings are probably mutual. The biggest thing I can see out of all this is the disintegration of the political process altogether. But maybe that's what you and the cronies want...no more votes, no more people, just you and the so-called Religious Right. Now there's a joke...Pat Robertson bench pressing a ton (that's two thousand pounds for the non-math crowd) and then he keep's repeating this to whomever will listen (sort of like you, Ann) and Shrub boy constantly saying he keeps getting direction from God (can you say Bilderberger?). We are awake and madder than hell. The only question left is how do 'ordinary people' stop this madness...maybe we need a secret society or two to counter you all.

Why it's over for America

By Noam Chomsky

An inability to protect its citizens. The belief that it is above the law. A lack of democracy. Three defining characteristics of the 'failed state'. And that, says Noam Chomsky, is exactly what the US is becoming. In an exclusive extract from his devastating new book, America's leading thinker explains how his country lost its way.
The selection of issues that should rank high on the agenda of concern for human welfare and rights is, naturally, a subjective matter. But there are a few choices that seem unavoidable, because they bear so directly on the prospects for decent survival. Among them are at least these three: nuclear war, environmental disaster, and the fact that the government of the world's leading power is acting in ways that increase the likelihood of these catastrophes. It is important to stress the government, because the population, not surprisingly, does not agree.
The remainder of Noam Chomsky's article can be read by clicking here





"The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs, is to be ruled by evil men." -- Plato -(429-347 BC)

"Anyone who tells you that 'It Can't Happen Here' is whistling past the graveyard of history. There is no 'house rule' that bars tyranny coming to America. History is replete with republics whose people grew complacent and descended into imperial butchery and chaos." -- Mike Vanderboegh : (1953- ) Alabama Minuteman

"A nation of well informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the region of ignorance that tyranny begins." -- Benjamin Franklin - (1706-1790) US Founding Father

"None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.": Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - (1749-1832)

"Most Americans aren't the sort of citizens the Founding Fathers expected; they are contented serfs. Far from being active critics of government, they assume that its might makes it right." : Joseph Sobran (1946- ) Columnist

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen." -- Samuel Adams - (1722-1803), was known as the "Father of the American Revolution." 1776

"COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These 'cowards' are to be contrasted with red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so—all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed 'courageous.'" : Chaz Bufe

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason: Ernest Hemmingway

The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service: Albert Einstein

Stop the Beast

By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 05 June 2006

To date, the Iraq War represents the fullest and most relentless application of the Bush Agenda. The "freer and safer world" envisioned by Bush and his administration is ultimately one of an ever-expanding American empire driven forward by the growing powers of the nation's largest multinational corporations and unrivaled military.
-Antonia Juhasz, The Bu$h Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time

In an annual security conference on Saturday, Donald Rumsfeld assured the audience, "We don't intend to occupy [Iraq] for any period of time. Our troops would like to go home and they will go home."

Why, then, would the United States be building an enormous embassy in Baghdad and a base so large it eclipses Kosovo's Camp Bondsteel, which had been the largest foreign US military base built since Vietnam?

The new embassy, which occupies a space two-thirds the area of the national mall in Washington DC, comprises 21 buildings that will house over 8,000 government officials. It has a huge pool, gym, theater, beauty salon, school, and six apartment buildings.

The gargantuan military base, Camp Anaconda, occupies 15 square miles of Iraqi soil near Balad. The base is home to 20,000 soldiers and thousands of "contractors," or mercenaries. The aircraft runway at Anaconda is the second busiest in the world, behind only Chicago's O'Hare airport. And, depending on which report you read, between six and fourteen more US military bases are under construction in Iraq. It doesn't appear we'll be leaving anytime soon - or anytime, really.

Bush's trumped-up war on Iraq has claimed nearly 2,500 US military lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Thousands of US soldiers suffer in military hospitals, most with head injuries, many missing limbs. Thousands more have PTSD. Our economy is in shambles from the war and Bush's tax-cuts-for-the-rich. And America's moral standing in the world continues to plummet.

So, with all the construction activity in Iraq, and with an overextended military and an under funded budget, how could the Bush administration possibly consider expanding the fight and attacking Iran? Logic and reason say it couldn't happen and shouldn't happen. But this administration has rarely paid much heed to logic and reason.

The plan to attack Iran has long been in the works. Bush gave us a preview in January 2002 when he inaugurated it into his "axis of evil." His 2006 National Military Strategy says, "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran." On Saturday, Donald Rumsfeld called Iran the world's leading terrorist nation. Does any of this have a familiar ring to it?

To understand why the US may attack Iran, one must consider the underlying motive of US militarism. The recent US strategy is calculated to maintain economic, political and military hegemony over oil-rich areas of the world. A 1992 draft of the Pentagon Defense Planning Guidance on post Cold War Strategy that was leaked to the New York Times said, "Our overall objective is to remain the predominant outside power in [the Middle East and Southwest Asia to] preserve US and Western access to the region's oil."

Truthout writer Dahr Jamail, an independent journalist who spent eight months in occupied Iraq, told a gathering at Thomas Jefferson School of Law on Friday that the US has been conducting ongoing special operations inside Iran. He cited unmanned surveillance drones flying over Iran. Jamail predicts Bush will invade Iran before the November election.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern agrees with Jamail's prediction, but thinks it will happen in June or July. "There is already one carrier task force there in the Gulf, two are steaming toward it at the last report I have at least - they will be there in another week or so," McGovern said on the Alex Jones Show.

Team Bush is following the same game plan used in the run-up to Iraq - hyping a threat that doesn't exist and going through the motions of diplomacy.

Bush & Co. are not motivated by rationality. They act in the interests of the huge corporations, at the expense of humanity. During the Bush years, oil companies have earned record profits. Dick Cheney's Halliburton has landed many of the juiciest contracts in Iraq. New Iraqi laws that US ambassador Paul Bremer put in place lock in significant advantages for US corporations in Iraq, including corporate control of Iraq's oil.

Neoconservative Thomas Friedman, in a March 1999 New York Times article illustrated by an American flag on a fist, accurately summed up US foreign policy:

For globalism to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty superpower that it is ... The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist - McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called the United States Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.

As long as we allow our government to pursue this strategy, Abu Ghraibs and Hadithas will continue to emerge, our soldiers and thousands of people in other countries will continue to die, and our economy will continue toward bankruptcy. It is up to us to stop the beast - now!



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.

Signing statements an abuse of power

(This is from the editorial page of the Asbury Park Press...seems America is waking with a vengeance!!!)
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 06/6/06
One of the most disturbing aspects of the Bush administration is its insistence on conducting so much of the nation's business in secrecy. Our political system was instituted with clear checks and balances, and forums for open political debate. It seems President Bush has little regard for checks, balances, accountability or the Constitution itself.
Recently, it was disclosed that Bush has issued more than 750 presidential signing statements. These are notations a president adds to bills he signs, declaring his interpretation of the law, and how he intends to enforce the law. In many significant cases, the president quietly noted that he would not enforce laws he signed, such as the Congressional ban on the torture of prisoners. This is an obscene circumvention of the constitutional process. This is the main reason the president has yet to issue a veto. By publicly signing a bill, then quietly issuing his intention not to follow the law, he avoids going through the political process and risk of having his veto subject to a congressional override.

Signing statements have been used periodically by presidents since the Reagan administration, but never anywhere near the frequency of Bush. Signing statements are an ill-conceived notion, and should be removed as a presidential tool. The system of three branches of government with checks and balances was instituted to avoid just this kind of abuse of power. Bush seems to be striving for something close to absolute power. He must be stopped in this blatant abuse of his sworn constitutional responsibilities.

Robert Carlisle

FREEHOLD

BACK TO THE BUNKER

BACK TO THE BUNKER

By William M. Arkin
Sunday, June 4, 2006; Page B01

On Monday, June 19, about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50 federal agencies from the State Department to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies. They will take to the bunkers in an "evacuation" that my sources describe as the largest "continuity of government" exercise ever conducted, a drill intended to prepare the U.S. government for an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The exercise is the latest manifestation of an obsession with government survival that has been a hallmark of the Bush administration since 9/11, a focus of enormous and often absurd time, money and effort that has come to echo the worst follies of the Cold War. The vast secret operation has updated the duck-and-cover scenarios of the 1950s with state-of-the-art technology -- alerts and updates delivered by pager and PDA, wireless priority service, video teleconferencing, remote backups -- to ensure that "essential" government functions continue undisrupted should a terrorist's nuclear bomb go off in downtown Washington.
Article continued on Washington Post web site.
The rest of this article can be seen by clicking this posts title at the top of page!!!
PS: This same type of drill was playing out on 9/11...a drill that simulated aircraft flying into buildings!

H.R. 4752: Universal National Service Act of 2006

109th U.S. Congress (2005-2006)
H.R. 4752: Universal National Service Act of 2006
Introduced: Feb 14, 2006
Sponsor: Rep. Charles Rangel [D-NY]
Status: Introduced (By Rep. Charles Rangel [D-NY])

This text was automatically converted from PDF format. Formatting glitches are a result of that process.

Return to Bill Status | Download PDF | Full Text on THOMAS

I




109TH CONGRESS
H. R. 4752
2D SESSION


To provide for the common defense by requiring all persons in the United
States, including women, between the ages of 18 and 42 to perform
a period of military service or a period of civilian service in furtherance
of the national defense and homeland security, and for other purposes.




IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FEBRUARY 14, 2006
Mr. RANGEL introduced the following bill; which was referred to the
Committee on Armed Services




A BILL
To provide for the common defense by requiring all persons
in the United States, including women, between the ages
of 18 and 42 to perform a period of military service
or a period of civilian service in furtherance of the na-
tional defense and homeland security, and for other pur-
poses.

1 Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
2 tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
3 SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE; TABLE OF CONTENTS.

4 (a) SHORT TITLE.--This Act may be cited as the
5 ``Universal National Service Act of 2006''.
2
1 (b) TABLE CONTENTS.--The table of contents for
OF

2 this Act is as follows:
Sec. 1. Short title; table of contents.
Sec. 2. National service obligation.
Sec. 3. Two-year period of national service.
Sec. 4. Implementation by the President.
Sec. 5. Induction.
Sec. 6. Deferments and postponements.
Sec. 7. Induction exemptions.
Sec. 8. Conscientious objection.
Sec. 9. Discharge following national service.
Sec. 10. Registration of females under the Military Selective Service Act.
Sec. 11. Relation of Act to registration and induction authority of military se-
lective service Act.
Sec. 12. Definitions.

You can read the rest by clicking on title link above!!!

What Does It Mean To Be An American?

By 'Ashamed'
6-3-6





Since we are all Americans, we are all equally blessed (or damned) by those things the world deems to be quintessentially "American." I heard a fellow on the radio this morning brand as "un-American" those persons who doubt the story of heroic passengers rising up on 9/11 to overpower hijackers to prevent their airplane being used as a flying bomb." This apparently suggests that one should at all times be "American," since being "un-American" is a terrible label to bear. But who is the arbiter of what is or isn't "American?" We all have our own opinions of what is and isn't "American," of course, including that radio DJ. But my guess is that the White House is the ultimate arbiter of what is "American" in the eyes of the world, since the administration makes and enforces American policies around the globe. So hang on to your hats. Here is what our administration has avowed to be "American.

(1) Torture. This administration even had its now-attorney general draw up a memo justifying the use of torture against prisoners, male and female, no holds barred. So when you go abroad, don't be surprised if the citizens of whatever country you enter look at you askance, since you are a torturer.

(2) Assassination. Assassinating the leaders of other nations at will, if we don't like their policies. The administration calls it "regime change," but it is outright murder, in violation of all international law. Remember the "deck of cards" showing all the Iraqi leaders the President wanted murdered? Remember all the Taliban we shot on sight? So when you go abroad, don't be surprised if the citizens of whatever country you enter look at you askance, since you are a murderer.

(3) Terrorism. We have used massive weapons of destruction to kill about 200,000 - 300,000 Iraqi civilians, mostly women and little children, in the course of effecting "regime change." What could be more terrifying than living in fear, knowing that at any moment bombs may drop out of the sky to blow your beautiful babies into little red pieces? This is ten times more than Hussein ever murdered, even by our own administration's inflated estimates. Early in the war we sent laser-guided weapons to blow up a restaurant with hundreds of families eating dinner, because we thought that one or more of the people we marked for assassination might be there. The man who pushed the button launching the bomb is a terrorist and a murderer. The man who planned that strike is a terrorist and a murderer. It is now coming out that our own military operates its own death / murder gangs, lining up and massacring Iraqi women and children to create terror. This is all endorsed by the Neocons and the Bush administration. It is now the quintessence of being "American" in the eyes of the world.

"WAIT A MINUTE," you say. "I never endorsed torture or assassination or terrorism! You can't blame me!"

Wrong. The people of a nation are always held responsible for their leader's actions. We held the German people responsible for Hitler's actions and those of the German military machine, allowing millions of German civilians to starve to death after the end of WWII, without a twinge of guilt. We punished the Japanese civilian population in months of fire bombing of Japan's major cities, barbecuing women and children in their houses, because they allowed their leaders to wage war against the US and other nations. Without a twinge of guilt. We carpet-bombed schools, hospitals, temples and regular old neighborhoods in Hanoi for months because the North Vietnamese wouldn't stop their leaders' war being conducted in South Vietnam. Without a twinge of guilt. So. You are a torturer, an assassin, a murderer and a terrorist in the eyes of the world. Yes, you. The housewife in Pacoima. The retiree in Redondo Beach. The garment worker in downtown LA. The cattle rancher in Utah. The rap singer in Detroit. Your administration has made it so. To deny it is, simply put, un-American. Will each of us have to pay for these crimes against humanity? When you look into the eyes of a Pakistani, or a Greek, or a Namibian or a Peruvian, ask yourself, what are they thinking about you? Only time will tell. When you look into a mirror, what are you thinking about yourself? In the meantime, enjoy being an American. If your conscience will allow it.