Behind the Bin Laden Attack On America The story starts over 60 years ago with the CIA, and the secret history is now documented by John Stockwell, (former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, working for then Director of the CIA, George Bush) ... He spent 13 years in the agency. He is the highest level CIA officer to testify to the Congress about his actions. He estimates that over 6 million people have died in CIA covert actions, and this was in the late 1980's. The United States CIA is running 50 covert actions (1987), destabilizing further almost one third of the countries in the world today .John Stockwell intelligence gatherer and task force commander goes public ... When the Nicaraguan contras began to covertly fund their war against the Sandanistas by selling drugs and guns to California street gangs, the Central Intelligence Agency turned a blind eye. While black neighborhoods were being ravaged by the crack cocaine plague, CIA operatives actively participated in this devastating drug explosion, protected from prosecution by a secret agreement between the Department of Justice and the CIA. We now know that the CIA was a self-perpetuating agency, and it created the conditions to keep it growing, and to keep it in business. Other Secret Deals Gen. Gehlen (middle) was imported along with his Gestapo by the Dulles Brothers after WWII to help setup and train the CIA (operation paperclip) Reference *Secret Deals of the CIA Under President Ronald Reagan America not only increased its involvement in the Middle East by supplying arms to both Iraq and Iran in their war against each other, but America stepped up its involvement in conflicts around the world, especially South America. Reference *Secret Wars & Secret Deals Why does a war begin? CIA funding by drugs This documentary gives quite an overview of what has actually happened in the last 50 years regarding the CIA ... Here is an overview so far The Truth Behind Terror When the U.S. government sent more than 500,000 U.S. troops to invade Iraq in 1991, the operation was led by Sec. of Defense Dick Cheney. The unilateral decision to militarily invade a Muslim nation for the first time in American history was made on October 30, 1990 by George H. Bush. Reference *The Truth About Terror Bin Laden's Letter to America Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: (1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us. a) You attacked us in Palestine: (i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily. (ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this. When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them. (iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone. (b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon. (c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis; (i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so. (ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places us in a large prison of fear and subdual. (iii) These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price. (iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people. (v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you. (d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world. (e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures. (f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down. (g) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it. (2) These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!! (3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake: (a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want. (b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates. (c) Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us. (d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us. (e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us. (f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs. The American Government and press still refuses to answer the question: Why did they attack us in New York and Washington? If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and principles, so we are addressing it using the language it understands. (Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you? (1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam. (a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all. It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language. (b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it. (2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you. (a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest. We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached. (b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind: (i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives? (ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against. (iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them. (iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object. Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations? (v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich. (vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women. (vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it. (viii) And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention. (xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and*industries. (x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy. (xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom? (xii) Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All*manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others. (a)The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them - a new lesson from the 'American book of democracy'!!! (b)Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries which you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else who you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them. (c)You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of International Law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America. (d)As for the war criminals which you censure and form criminal courts for - you shamelessly ask that your own are granted immunity!! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of the Muslims praying inside. You are the ones who broke the agreement with the Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious. (e)You have claimed to be the vanguards of Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign affairs issues annual reports containing statistics of those countries that violate any Human Rights. However, all these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands the Muslims and Arabs, took them into custody with neither reason, court trial, nor even disclosing their names. You issued newer, harsher laws. What happens in Guatanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces - you hypocrites, "What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?" (3) What we call you to thirdly is to take an honest stance with yourselves - and I doubt you will do so - to discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which you yourself must adhere to. (4) We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines. (5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins. (6) Sixthly, we call upon you to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington. (7) We also call you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of sub dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you. If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: "Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And remove the anger of their (believers') hearts. Allah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise." [Quran9:13-1] The Nation of honour and respect: "But honour, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad- peace be upon him) and to the believers." [Quran 63:8] "So do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be*superior ( in victory )if you are indeed (true) believers" [Quran 3:139] The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life: "Think not of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that on them no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers." [Quran 3:169-171] The Nation of victory and success that Allah has promised: "It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it victorious over all other religions even though the Polytheists hate it." [Quran 61:9] "Allah has decreed that 'Verily it is I and My Messengers who shall be victorious.' Verily Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty." [Quran 58:21] The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil Empires like yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises your haughtiness and arrogance. If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy. This is our message to the Americans, as an answer to theirs. Do they now know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance, by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious? Reference *Full text: bin Laden's letter to America Stumble It!

US Press Silent on Brzezinski’s Warnings Of War Against Iran Watch the video ... Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Brzezinski predicts provoking war with Iran. He calls the Iraq War a Historic, Strategic and Moral Calamity. If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Why is the US press silent on Brzezinski’s warnings of war against Iran? Read more *Brzezinski Warnings of War Against Iran Zbigniew Brzezinski Ex-National Security Adviser warns Bush is seeking a pretext to attack Iran. Read more ... *Ex-National Security Adviser - Bush Seeking Pretext To Attack Iran See the Complete Brzezinski Video Archive ... *Brzezinski Video Archive Zbigniew Brzezinski Profile Born on March 28, 1928, in Warsaw, Poland, the future national security adviser to President Carter and son of a Polish diplomat spent part of his youth in France and Germany before moving to Canada. He received a B.A. and M.A. in political science from McGill University, in 1949 and 1950 respectively, and in 1953 earned his doctorate in political science from Harvard. He taught at Harvard before moving to Columbia University in 1961 to head the new Institute on Communist Affairs. In 1958 he became a U.S. citizen. During the 1960s Brzezinski acted as an adviser to Kennedy and Johnson administration officials. Generally taking a hard line on policy toward the Soviet Union, he was also an influential force behind the Johnson administration's "bridge-building" ideas regarding Eastern Europe. During the final years of the Johnson administration, he was a foreign policy adviser to Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his presidential campaign. In 1973, Brzezinski became the first director of the Trilateral Commission, a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three regions. Future President Carter was a member, and when he declared his candidacy for the White House in 1974, Brzezinski, a critic of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy style, became his adviser on foreign affairs. After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski national security adviser. Aiming to replace Kissinger's "acrobatics" in foreign policy-making with a foreign policy "architecture," Brzezinski was as eager for power as his rival. However, his task was complicated by his focus on East-West relations, and in a hawkish way in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights. On the whole, Brzezinski was a team player. He emphasized the further development of the U.S.-China relationship, favored a new arms control agreement with Moscow and shared the president and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's view that the United States should seek international cooperation in its diplomacy instead of going it alone. In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Since his time in government, Brzezinski has been active as a writer, teacher and consultant. Stumble It!

The dominant corporate media has become merely the voice of a controlled empire, devoted to the indoctrination of the public in the interests of corporate, industrial, military, and ruling powers. And now Triangles and pyramids are cropping up in some rather interesting places. Most notably, those associated with martial law programs and special police agencies. See the Special Videos ... *New World Order Special Videos Stumble It!

A Warning For Today Stumble It!

As sick as it seems, it wouldn't be the first time a US administration has furthered its own political ambitions through attacks on American citizens. The idea of using civilian casualties for political gain was codified in *Operation Northwoods, a 1960's plan by top US military brass to orchestrate terrorism in American cities and blame it on Castro, thereby creating public support for a war with Cuba. More recently, the September 2000 neocon guidebook, *Rebuilding America's Defenses, claims some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor would help speed up the process of transforming the US into tomorrow's dominant force. The Pentagon Building Consider this 911 Footage that disappeared from the media - Ultra-rare news footage from the crash site of United Flight 93 which has never been seen again since 9/11 ... As General Smedley Butler's book *War is a Racket put it - (Quote:) War has always been a racket. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. (Quote) Very little has changed since 1933 when Smedley Butler made these comments. *Our monetary system is a war system. The War Racket has a very vulnerable spot. The weakest point in the 9/11 hoax is WTC Building 7 where the illusion so carefully created can be exposed as a fraud ... See the Video *WTC7 Smoking Gun Also see ... *911 and the Evil In America video We have been lied to, mind-controlled and duped by president after president (at the behest of America’s own intelligence services) with the goal of making us mindless supporters of bloody war. Read the detailed blog with videos at ... *911 Fraud Stumble It!

The American Police State Shows Its True Colors Los Angeles May Day 2007 Without warning, cops descended into a park full of families, homeless and handicapped individuals and street cart vendors. They were merciless. For the next 30 minutes, hundreds of activists and bystanders were shot, beaten by night sticks and run out of the park. The police had no intention of entertaining requests from people who were not able to move quickly enough. They were forcefully hit on the legs until they were immobile. The cops didn't only move people out of the perimeters of the park, they chased through the park firing at anyone who might have been an obstacle. Many people were shot at from the back. Children and entire families were being violently pushed or beaten. An elderly woman cried out for help but few were willing to run back in the face of fast-approaching SWAT police. Full Report & Videos *May Day Violence at Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park *May Day Clash Brings LAPD Back Under Investigation Read More *ACLU Accuses L.A. Of Developing A Police State On Skid Row From Last Year *Los Angeles police beating caught on video Technocrati Tags Los Angeles May Day 2007, SWAT Police Stumble It!

SCREWED - The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class

Screwed The American middle class is on its deathbed. Ordinary folks who put in a solid day’s work can no longer afford to buy a house, send their kids to college, or even get sick. If you are not a CEO, you are probably screwed. Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class is an impassioned, enlightened look at American society, this time focusing on the shrinking middle class. While the radical GOP extremists have been diverting the attention of America's middle class with demagogic, divisive emotional values issues, the Republican Party has been picking their pockets, reducing their opportunities, and dismantling their support systems. As the book illustrates, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is getting screwed. The Government Investor Class Marriage The United States is in trouble. We're in danger of becoming a fascist dictatorship where big government and big business combine to rule, and where the people are considered just a source of labor. The marriage of government and the investor class has succeeded in exporting our jobs, importing illegal aliens to provide a pool of cheap labor, and thus driving down wages for all American workers and destroying the middle class. Their foreign and military policies have led us into unnecessary wars of aggression to gain raw materials and enhance profits of the global robber barons. Their trade policies have resulted in capital flight, job loss, trade deficits, and the ownership of much of our infrastructure by foreign interests. We've gotten into this fix because our presidents, of both parties, have been servants of the global investors, and because our representatives in Congress, again of both parties, have abdicated their Constitutional responsibilities and subjected themselves to an imperial presidency. Read more *Patriots USA See The Videos ... *The Undeclared War Against the middle class Thom Hartmann shows how the American middle class that was so carefully constructed by our country’s founding fathers has been systematically dismantled over the past quarter-century, and, under the guise of freeing the market, replaced by a system designed to line the pockets of the super-rich and corporations. The book shows how the US middle class is shrinking, democracy is ebbing, and both are on life support and threatened with extinction by an omnipotent corporatocracy wanting to destroy the system of government on which the nation was founded. Those in power today want to destroy what the Founding Fathers believed in, created, and handed down for all those who followed them to preserve. In its place, the current ruling class wants to replace that vision with an imperial presidency supported by a submissive Congress and compliant courts that’s no different than the repressive monarchy and aristocracy the American Revolution overthrew in the first place. Our founding fathers worked hard to ensure that a small group of wealthy people would never dominate this country. They had had enough of aristocracy. They put government to work to ensure a thriving middle class. So what happened? America has been corrupted by the notion that what serves the interests of business elites in corporate boardrooms benefit ordinary people as well. It never has, never will, and, despite the slick rhetoric, isn’t intended to. If it did, it would prevent the new US corporate aristocracy from getting richer and more powerful which it only can do at the expense of the public and especially the middle class it wants to destroy. Over the last twenty-five years, we’ve witnessed an undeclared war against the middle class. Under the guise of freeing the market, the so-called conservatives waging this war have systematically dismantled the programs set up by both Republicans and Democrats to protect the middle class and have replaced them with policies that favor the only the privileged few. In a past time many of us grew up in when working people earned a living wage, had good health insurance, defined-benefit pensions secure at retirement, were protected by unions and needed only one family wage-earner to get by on a single job. Ruled by Corporate Fascism The America of the past is now fast disappearing. Today giant corporations literally run everything. They control what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, how we get most of our essential services like health care, and the information fed us that influences how we think including our view of them, our government and the world. They even now own patents on our genetic code, the most basic elements of human life, and want to manipulate and control them like any other commodity to exploit for profit in their brave new world. The corporate goliaths also decide who governs, for whose interest, and at whose expense. They control the political process from the White House to the Congress to who gets to sit on the nation’s courts. They thus have effective control over what laws are written and how they’re interpreted by friendly judges up to the High Court. It’s called democracy but it’s one in name only serving the elite few. It’s a corruption of the letter and spirit of a true democracy that influences an unequal and unjust distribution of the nation’s resources to benefit an elite minority able to control the political process to their advantage. It operates behind a facade of fairness while working to destroy the very things it claims to represent. It’s a system of government described by investigative journalist Greg Palast in his 2003 published book - The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Those who can pay can play, but those who can’t have no say or sway. It amounts to a system under which the political game is rigged by the incestuous relationship between big business and the government it empowers to serve it. The only choice voters now have at the polls is what Ralph Nader calls the evil of two lessers (or) government for General Motors, by Dupont and for Exxon Mobil. The corporate giants today are so huge that if the 50 largest ones were nations, they’d rank among the 100 largest sovereign states in the world. They take full advantage of their size and clout to thrown their weight around and get their way on most everything they want - again at the expense of the public interest. The result of this concentrated corporate power and a government in league with it has taken its toll on the working public. Adjusted for inflation, workers today earn less than 30 years ago, the federal minimum wage at $5.15 an hour hasn’t been raised since 1997, and it’s now at its lowest point relative to average wages since 1949. It also means those earning it fall well below the poverty line, and they still have to pay a growing portion of their health insurance cost if they have an employer giving them any at all. I think many of us recognize that for all but the wealthiest, life in America is getting increasingly hard. Screwed explores why, showing how this is no accidental process. Do people or profits come first in our society? Are we a nation that is interested in advancing the public good and interest of the many? Or are we an oligarchy, in which the many must sacrifice their futures for the benefit of a privileged few? Corporations got what they long coveted - the same constitutional rights as people, but because of their limited liability status, their shareholders were protected from the obligations of their debts, other obligations, and many of the responsibilities individuals legally have. With this new status, corporations could now win many other favorable court decisions they weren’t entitled to before. They also got much regulatory relief, favorable legislation, and all the while, were and are still protected by their limited liability status. More than any other High Court decision, this one gave corporations the ability to increase their power and grow to their present size and dominance. Think of it. Corporations aren’t human, they can live forever, change their identity, reside in many places simultaneously in many countries, but can’t be imprisoned for wrongdoing and can change themselves into new persons at will for any reason. Under the Constitution, they have the same rights as people but not the responsibilities. Permanent Corporate Class War The result today is that corporations have the right to operate freely and virtually be able to do whatever they choose with impunity. Even when they’re caught breaking the law, most every time (with rare exceptions) their executives get off scot-free and the penalty assessed is a small fine that amounts to chump change. War is big business and a permanent state of it is much bigger, which is why waging many of them is so appealing to those in power today. It’s also usually a winning political issue as wartime presidents are more likely to be reelected, and they also have more power than those serving in peacetime. George Orwell knew that democracy was weakest in a state of war, and Hitler used that to his advantage to seize total power after scaring the German people with threats that didn’t exist to give him enough of it in the first place. Hartmann sounds the alarm about the dangers of war and where it may lead the nation. It drove Nazi Germany to fascism and all the horrors from it. Today we’re at the same dangerous juncture with the nation at war, fascism rising, and doing it behind the facade of compassionate conservatism and an invented Islamo-fascist terrorist threat used to scare the public to go along with a rogue president’s long war without end to combat it. Hartmann tells us we face a clear and present threat to our freedom today and it is up to us: We the People to sound the alarm (to combat it). Most people would be amazed to learn the second largest army in Iraq comes from none of the other nations supplying forces. It’s the 100,000 private contractors the Bush administration hired at an enormous cost that’s far higher than what we pay those in the military. Why do it this way and spend more? It’s another way to transfer billions of dollars from the people to big corporations to enrich them at our expense. Prisons are also being privatized and now are at a level of about 5% of their capacity in about 100 facilities in 27 states and growing. But since private prisons are a business, there’s an incentive to fill beds and keep them filled with longer sentences while minimizing services to keep costs low. It makes harsh prison life far more grim for those interned. Most insidious of all is the privatizing of elections. Hartmann calls this the ultimate crime. He cites that in 2004 more than 80% of the US vote was counted on electronic voting machines owned, programmed and operated by three large private corporations. So instead of having paper ballots counted by hand by civil servants monitored by party faithful and independent observers, we now have a secretive process that’s unverifiable and all controlled by large companies with everything to gain if the candidates they support win. It puts the ugly taint of fraud over the whole process and makes a sham out of the notion of free, fair and open elections. That’s impossible if they’re run by self-serving private corporations as they now are. Unless this practice is stopped, we’ve lost what Tom Paine said at the nation’s founding: The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery. Dumbing Down Besides being able to elect their own representatives, the electorate must also be well-informed. Hartmann quotes Thomas Jefferson who said Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press (which starts with a literate citizenry, something we’re far short of today). The data on the ability of the public to read varies, but it shows a common pattern. The US Department of Education reports about 20% of the public to be functionally illiterate which means they can’t read or write well enough to do such essential things as read a newspaper, understand written instructions, fill out a job application or do basic computational tasks, let alone be able to operate a computer. Hartmann uses other data from the National Center of Education Statistics that breaks the literacy problem into different skill-level categories, but any way it’s looked at it shows a nation inadequately able to function the way citizens must be able to do in a modern society. The quality of education today, particularly in urban schools, has deteriorated so much because of the rise in prominence of service-related industries, many of which require little formal education. There’s no incentive to correct the problem, and George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and stealth plan to privatize public education (along with everything else in the commons that never should be) will only make things worse. The Bush agenda includes so-called school vouchers that mask an intent to end the separation of church and state by allowing vouchers to go mostly to schools where the central mission is (Christian) religious education or training. The fraudulent rationale for doing it is the same one the cons always fall back on - that marketplace competition improves performance. It’s not so as in all other areas where private business replaced government-run programs the public ended up getting less and paying more for it. That’s how it is with education that’s not a commodity for sale and never should be put in the hands of for-profit companies that need to minimize costs to keep their bottom line high. The same is true for health care that should be a basic right and not a privilege available only to those who can afford the cost. But that’s not how it is in the US. This is the only country among the 36 fully industrialized democracies in the world that treats health care as a marketplace commodity. - USA Healthcare - 37th & 54th World Ranking The result is that while the country spends far more on health care than any other one (about $2 trillion in 2005 or about one-sixth of the nation’s GDP) it delivers a quality of care mediocre enough for the World Health Organization (WTO) to rank us 37th in the world in overall health performance and 54th in the fairness of health care. No one should be denied the right to good medical care, but today nearly 47 million people in the country have no health insurance and millions more are underinsured, thus denying them the essential care they deserve to have, especially when they need it most. So today with more companies reducing the amount of health insurance coverage they provide employees combined with stagnant wages rising less than the rate of inflation, increasing numbers of people can’t afford to buy protection for the most important need they can’t afford to do without. It’s created a state of social inequality seen in the Economic Policy Institute 2004 report on the State of Working America. It showed the top 1% controls more than one-third of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 80% has 16%. Even worse, the top 20% holds 84% of all wealth while the poorest 20% are in debt and owe more than they own. Just released Internal Revenue Service data shows the same imbalance. The IRS reported the share of all income earned by the top 1% of taxpayers rose to 19% in 2004 from 16.8% in 2003 and just below the 20.8% high it hit in 2000 helped by capital gains from the stock market boom of the 1990s. All this shows how unbalanced wealth and income distribution are under an economic model favoring the rich and leaving all others behind. To rectify this, the nation needs a new model that distributes the nation’s wealth more equitably and that begins with its tax code. It also needs to provide health care for all its citizens which it already does for its senior ones - a single-payer system administered by the government and allowing people to choose their own providers. But even seniors are in trouble today as the Bush administration wants to move retirees on Medicare into private for-profit plans and thus kill off a system that effectively serves the public. The private operators need to cut costs to grow their profits, but when they do it people most in need are hurt the most. The Dying Middle Class All this paints a scenario of a dying middle class heading for extinction. Good jobs are disappearing, wages are stagnant or falling making becoming middle class today, in Hartmann’s words like scaling a cliff. Those who are middle class now are hanging on for dear life but losing their grip, and those aspiring to get there find it increasingly harder to do. It can’t be done on the minimum wage or even well above it in a job that pays at the Walmart level. And it surely can’t be done without the protection unions once could provide before the Reagan war on labor began reducing their power, or in a nation that once had a strong base of high-paying manufacturing and other jobs now being lost to cheap labor markets abroad. The result in Hartmann’s words: America is regressing (and) Middle-class income has stopped growing. The problem isn’t the economy. It’s the unlevel playing field where union protection is weak, corporations are in control in league with government supporting their interests, and workplaces are run more like kingdoms with workers heading toward becoming serfs with no rights. Hartmann says the cons are winning the battle to weaken democracy by screwing over the middle class, and he offers a prescription to fight back by reclaiming the government-run programs that created a strong middle class in the first place: ... let the public again have the right to own the military (without the high-priced private contractors), prisons, and the electoral system. ... keep private for-profit companies out of education and have government run it free without phony programs that don’t work like No Child Left Behind. ... demand a national single-payer health care system for everyone based on how Medicare is run. ... demand private companies keep their hand off Social Security and keep it as a government-run retirement program and safety net for the disabled. ... demand a progressive tax system reinstating a meaningful 35% rate on corporations and a 70% rate on the richest 5% of Americans. Use the extra revenue received to repay the Social Security system and fund an economic investment program. ... demand a living wage and the right of labor to organize again unhindered by laws or business-friendly government policies restricting its ability to be treated fairly. ... demand a national energy program that puts people and the planet - not Big Oil - first. If America rebuilds its middle class, democracy will follow. But if middle-America withers, democracy will as well. Hartmann sounds the alarm - We have been conned for long enough. It’s time to take back America. Conclusion - The Road to Victory - We must get on it now. Hartmann stresses the situation is dire and the need for change is urgent. He directs his message to everyone of all political party affiliations and says It’s time We the People took back control of our government. He offers his prescription on how to do it. ... Take back the Democratic party - the party is in crisis having bought on to the agenda of the far-right Republicans. Hartmann says the solution is for progressives to join together to take back the Democrat party just like the cons took control of the Republican party with the election of Ronald Reagan. ... A third party is not the answer because of our corrupted winner take all system under which whoever gets the most votes gets all of the pie. We’re structured this way because it’s written into our Constitution which was a huge mistake by the Founders. That’s not how it is in a system of proportional representation that most other democracies have under which a party getting 30% of the votes gets the same percentage of seats in the legislature. ... Republicans also need to re-capture their party from the cons who stole it from the moderates. Today the party is run by the Ayn Rand utopians, Pat Robertson fundamentalists, and the largest and dirtiest of America’s corporate elite. They rejected the values of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and exploited working people and looted the nation’s treasury for their own self-interest leaving it for those who follow them to clean up the mess it could take a whole generation to recover from or longer. ... Change happens, sometimes slowly, and people need to band together to work actively for it which means more than just showing up for a peace (or other kind of) rally. ... Other activist tools include the most fundamental one of all - communication. Hartmann explains without two simple forms of it, the American Revolution wouldn’t have been possible. Target Internet There were the two commonly used ones then - letters to editors of newspapers who published them and pamphlets like the kind Tom Paine wrote. Today the dominant media are corrupted by their corporate control that suppresses real information in favor of only what’s friendly to the state and the corporate giants. Fortunately though, alternatives exist and must be used effectively. The internet may be the most important one as long as it remains free and open and not under the threat of corporate control which may happen if S. 2686/H.R.5252 known as the Advanced Telecommunications and Opportunities Reform Act passes that would along with other harmful provisions in it end so-called network neutrality meaning the internet freedom we now have. This bill, if passed, will be a major victory for the cable and telecom giants transforming them into gatekeepers of internet content and allowing them to charge varying rates to customers based on whatever set of rules they decide to establish. In a word, it will destroy the internet as it now is. As such, it’s crucial every effort be made to prevent this from happening. ... Don’t ignore the obvious influence we can have by communicating with our elected leaders. They pay attention, and it guides their policy-making. ... Joining a union or getting active in the union movement is crucially important to rebuilding the nation’s middle class. It’s essential unions be re-empowered through favorable legislation, and voters need to petition their legislators to work for this. Today the enemy of all working people has overwhelming but not invulnerable might. Gandhi taught us that a small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. And he inspired us saying first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. He did, and so can we. Thom Hartmann would agree that We the People can indeed win if we do enough even though it’s never easy, and the cons will fight us every step of the way with every dirty trick they know. It’s up to us to fight the better fight because we can’t afford to lose. Take heart from Thomas Jefferson and what he once said: Every generation needs a new Revolution. Today he’d likely say we never needed one more than now. References *Death Of The Middle Class *George W. Bush Is Shameless *SteveLendmanBlog Technocrati Tags Screwed Undeclared War Against the Middle Class, Government Investor Class Marriage, The Dying Middle Class, Target Internet,Founding Fathers,Greg Palast The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,Corporate Class War,Thom Hartmann,Ruled By Corporate Fascism, Lou Dobbs, Corporate Class War, Dumbing Down, American Health Care Stumble It!

Why Bin Laden Attacked America

Behind the Bin Laden Attack On America The story starts over 60 years ago with the CIA, and the secret history is now documented by John Stockwell, (former CIA Station Chief in Angola in 1976, working for then Director of the CIA, George Bush) ... He spent 13 years in the agency. He is the highest level CIA officer to testify to the Congress about his actions. He estimates that over 6 million people have died in CIA covert actions, and this was in the late 1980's. The United States CIA is running 50 covert actions (1987), destabilizing further almost one third of the countries in the world today .John Stockwell intelligence gatherer and task force commander goes public ... When the Nicaraguan contras began to covertly fund their war against the Sandanistas by selling drugs and guns to California street gangs, the Central Intelligence Agency turned a blind eye. While black neighborhoods were being ravaged by the crack cocaine plague, CIA operatives actively participated in this devastating drug explosion, protected from prosecution by a secret agreement between the Department of Justice and the CIA. We now know that the CIA was a self-perpetuating agency, and it created the conditions to keep it growing, and to keep it in business. Other Secret Deals Gen. Gehlen (middle) was imported along with his Gestapo by the Dulles Brothers after WWII to help setup and train the CIA (operation paperclip) Reference *Secret Deals of the CIA Under President Ronald Reagan America not only increased its involvement in the Middle East by supplying arms to both Iraq and Iran in their war against each other, but America stepped up its involvement in conflicts around the world, especially South America. Reference *Secret Wars & Secret Deals Why does a war begin? CIA funding by drugs This documentary gives quite an overview of what has actually happened in the last 50 years regarding the CIA ... Here is an overview so far The Truth Behind Terror When the U.S. government sent more than 500,000 U.S. troops to invade Iraq in 1991, the operation was led by Sec. of Defense Dick Cheney. The unilateral decision to militarily invade a Muslim nation for the first time in American history was made on October 30, 1990 by George H. Bush. Reference *The Truth About Terror Bin Laden's Letter to America Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is very simple: (1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us. a) You attacked us in Palestine: (i) Palestine, which has sunk under military occupation for more than 80 years. The British handed over Palestine, with your help and your support, to the Jews, who have occupied it for more than 50 years; years overflowing with oppression, tyranny, crimes, killing, expulsion, destruction and devastation. The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased. Each and every person whose hands have become polluted in the contribution towards this crime must pay its*price, and pay for it heavily. (ii) It brings us both laughter and tears to see that you have not yet tired of repeating your fabricated lies that the Jews have a historical right to Palestine, as it was promised to them in the Torah. Anyone who disputes with them on this alleged fact is accused of anti-semitism. This is one of the most fallacious, widely-circulated fabrications in history. The people of Palestine are pure Arabs and original Semites. It is the Muslims who are the inheritors of Moses (peace be upon him) and the inheritors of the real Torah that has not been changed. Muslims believe in all of the Prophets, including Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad, peace and blessings of Allah be upon them all. If the followers of Moses have been promised a right to Palestine in the Torah, then the Muslims are the most worthy nation of this. When the Muslims conquered Palestine and drove out the Romans, Palestine and Jerusalem returned to Islaam, the religion of all the Prophets peace be upon them. Therefore, the call to a historical right to Palestine cannot be raised against the Islamic Ummah that believes in all the Prophets of Allah (peace and blessings be upon them) - and we make no distinction between them. (iii) The blood pouring out of Palestine must be equally revenged. You must know that the Palestinians do not cry alone; their women are not widowed alone; their sons are not orphaned alone. (b) You attacked us in Somalia; you supported the Russian atrocities against us in Chechnya, the Indian oppression against us in Kashmir, and the Jewish aggression against us in Lebanon. (c) Under your supervision, consent and orders, the governments of our countries which act as your agents, attack us on a daily basis; (i) These governments prevent our people from establishing the Islamic Shariah, using violence and lies to do so. (ii) These governments give us a taste of humiliation, and places us in a large prison of fear and subdual. (iii) These governments steal our Ummah's wealth and sell them to you at a paltry price. (iv) These governments have surrendered to the Jews, and handed them most of Palestine, acknowledging the existence of their state over the dismembered limbs of their own people. (v) The removal of these governments is an obligation upon us, and a necessary step to free the Ummah, to make the Shariah the supreme law and to regain Palestine. And our fight against these governments is not separate from out fight against you. (d) You steal our wealth and oil at paltry prices because of you international influence and military threats. This theft is indeed the biggest theft ever witnessed by mankind in the history of the world. (e) Your forces occupy our countries; you spread your military bases throughout them; you corrupt our lands, and you besiege our sanctities, to protect the security of the Jews and to ensure the continuity of your pillage of our treasures. (f) You have starved the Muslims of Iraq, where children die every day. It is a wonder that more than 1.5 million Iraqi children have died as a result of your sanctions, and you did not show concern. Yet when 3000 of your people died, the entire world rises and has not yet sat down. (g) You have supported the Jews in their idea that Jerusalem is their eternal capital, and agreed to move your embassy there. With your help and under your protection, the Israelis are planning to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque. Under the protection of your weapons, Sharon entered the Al-Aqsa mosque, to pollute it as a preparation to capture and destroy it. (2) These tragedies and calamities are only a few examples of your oppression and aggression against us. It is commanded by our religion and intellect that the oppressed have a right to return the aggression. Do not await anything from us but Jihad, resistance and revenge. Is it in any way rational to expect that after America has attacked us for more than half a century, that we will then leave her to live in security and peace?!! (3) You may then dispute that all the above does not justify aggression against civilians, for crimes they did not commit and offenses in which they did not partake: (a) This argument contradicts your continuous repetition that America is the land of freedom, and its leaders in this world. Therefore, the American people are the ones who choose their government by way of their own free will; a choice which stems from their agreement to its policies. Thus the American people have chosen, consented to, and affirmed their support for the Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, the occupation and usurpation of their land, and its continuous killing, torture, punishment and expulsion of the Palestinians. The American people have the ability and choice to refuse the policies of their Government and even to change it if they want. (b) The American people are the ones who pay the taxes which fund the planes that bomb us in Afghanistan, the tanks that strike and destroy our homes in Palestine, the armies which occupy our lands in the Arabian Gulf, and the fleets which ensure the blockade of Iraq. These tax dollars are given to Israel for it to continue to attack us and penetrate our lands. So the American people are the ones who fund the attacks against us, and they are the ones who oversee the expenditure of these monies in the way they wish, through their elected candidates. (c) Also the American army is part of the American people. It is this very same people who are shamelessly helping the Jews fight against us. (d) The American people are the ones who employ both their men and their women in the American Forces which attack us. (e) This is why the American people cannot be not innocent of all the crimes committed by the Americans and Jews against us. (f) Allah, the Almighty, legislated the permission and the option to take revenge. Thus, if we are attacked, then we have the right to attack back. Whoever has destroyed our villages and towns, then we have the right to destroy their villages and towns. Whoever has stolen our wealth, then we have the right to destroy their economy. And whoever has killed our civilians, then we have the right to kill theirs. The American Government and press still refuses to answer the question: Why did they attack us in New York and Washington? If Sharon is a man of peace in the eyes of Bush, then we are also men of peace!!! America does not understand the language of manners and principles, so we are addressing it using the language it understands. (Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you? (1) The first thing that we are calling you to is Islam. (a) The religion of the Unification of God; of freedom from associating partners with Him, and rejection of this; of complete love of Him, the Exalted; of complete submission to His Laws; and of the discarding of all the opinions, orders, theories and religions which contradict with the religion He sent down to His Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). Islam is the religion of all the prophets, and makes no distinction between them - peace be upon them all. It is to this religion that we call you; the seal of all the previous religions. It is the religion of Unification of God, sincerity, the best of manners, righteousness, mercy, honour, purity, and piety. It is the religion of showing kindness to others, establishing justice between them, granting them their rights, and defending the oppressed and the persecuted. It is the religion of enjoining the good and forbidding the evil with the hand, tongue and heart. It is the religion of Jihad in the way of Allah so that Allah's Word and religion reign Supreme. And it is the religion of unity and agreement on the obedience to Allah, and total equality between all people, without regarding their colour, sex, or language. (b) It is the religion whose book - the Quran - will remained preserved and unchanged, after the other Divine books and messages have been changed. The Quran is the miracle until the Day of Judgment. Allah has challenged anyone to bring a book like the Quran or even ten verses like it. (2) The second thing we call you to, is to stop your oppression, lies, immorality and debauchery that has spread among you. (a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest. We call you to all of this that you may be freed from that which you have become caught up in; that you may be freed from the deceptive lies that you are a great nation, that your leaders spread amongst you to conceal from you the despicable state to which you have reached. (b) It is saddening to tell you that you are the worst civilization witnessed by the history of mankind: (i) You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator. You flee from the embarrassing question posed to you: How is it possible for Allah the Almighty to create His creation, grant them power over all the creatures and land, grant them all the amenities of life, and then deny them that which they are most in need of: knowledge of the laws which govern their lives? (ii) You are the nation that permits Usury, which has been forbidden by all the religions. Yet you build your economy and investments on Usury. As a result of this, in all its different forms and guises, the Jews have taken control of your economy, through which they have then taken control of your media, and now control all aspects of your life making you their servants and achieving their aims at your expense; precisely what Benjamin Franklin warned you against. (iii) You are a nation that permits the production, trading and usage of intoxicants. You also permit drugs, and only forbid the trade of them, even though your nation is the largest consumer of them. (iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object. Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations? (v) You are a nation that permits gambling in its all forms. The companies practice this as well, resulting in the investments becoming active and the criminals becoming rich. (vi) You are a nation that exploits women like consumer products or advertising tools calling upon customers to purchase them. You use women to serve passengers, visitors, and strangers to increase your profit margins. You then rant that you support the liberation of women. (vii) You are a nation that practices the trade of sex in all its forms, directly and indirectly. Giant corporations and establishments are established on this, under the name of art, entertainment, tourism and freedom, and other deceptive names you attribute to it. (viii) And because of all this, you have been described in history as a nation that spreads diseases that were unknown to man in the past. Go ahead and boast to the nations of man, that you brought them AIDS as a Satanic American Invention. (xi) You have destroyed nature with your industrial waste and gases more than any other nation in history. Despite this, you refuse to sign the Kyoto agreement so that you can secure the profit of your greedy companies and*industries. (x) Your law is the law of the rich and wealthy people, who hold sway in their political parties, and fund their election campaigns with their gifts. Behind them stand the Jews, who control your policies, media and economy. (xi) That which you are singled out for in the history of mankind, is that you have used your force to destroy mankind more than any other nation in history; not to defend principles and values, but to hasten to secure your interests and profits. You who dropped a nuclear bomb on Japan, even though Japan was ready to negotiate an end to the war. How many acts of oppression, tyranny and injustice have you carried out, O callers to freedom? (xii) Let us not forget one of your major characteristics: your duality in both manners and values; your hypocrisy in manners and principles. All*manners, principles and values have two scales: one for you and one for the others. (a)The freedom and democracy that you call to is for yourselves and for white race only; as for the rest of the world, you impose upon them your monstrous, destructive policies and Governments, which you call the 'American friends'. Yet you prevent them from establishing democracies. When the Islamic party in Algeria wanted to practice democracy and they won the election, you unleashed your agents in the Algerian army onto them, and to attack them with tanks and guns, to imprison them and torture them - a new lesson from the 'American book of democracy'!!! (b)Your policy on prohibiting and forcibly removing weapons of mass destruction to ensure world peace: it only applies to those countries which you do not permit to possess such weapons. As for the countries you consent to, such as Israel, then they are allowed to keep and use such weapons to defend their security. Anyone else who you suspect might be manufacturing or keeping these kinds of weapons, you call them criminals and you take military action against them. (c)You are the last ones to respect the resolutions and policies of International Law, yet you claim to want to selectively punish anyone else who does the same. Israel has for more than 50 years been pushing UN resolutions and rules against the wall with the full support of America. (d)As for the war criminals which you censure and form criminal courts for - you shamelessly ask that your own are granted immunity!! However, history will not forget the war crimes that you committed against the Muslims and the rest of the world; those you have killed in Japan, Afghanistan, Somalia, Lebanon and Iraq will remain a shame that you will never be able to escape. It will suffice to remind you of your latest war crimes in Afghanistan, in which densely populated innocent civilian villages were destroyed, bombs were dropped on mosques causing the roof of the mosque to come crashing down on the heads of the Muslims praying inside. You are the ones who broke the agreement with the Mujahideen when they left Qunduz, bombing them in Jangi fort, and killing more than 1,000 of your prisoners through suffocation and thirst. Allah alone knows how many people have died by torture at the hands of you and your agents. Your planes remain in the Afghan skies, looking for anyone remotely suspicious. (e)You have claimed to be the vanguards of Human Rights, and your Ministry of Foreign affairs issues annual reports containing statistics of those countries that violate any Human Rights. However, all these things vanished when the Mujahideen hit you, and you then implemented the methods of the same documented governments that you used to curse. In America, you captured thousands the Muslims and Arabs, took them into custody with neither reason, court trial, nor even disclosing their names. You issued newer, harsher laws. What happens in Guatanamo is a historical embarrassment to America and its values, and it screams into your faces - you hypocrites, "What is the value of your signature on any agreement or treaty?" (3) What we call you to thirdly is to take an honest stance with yourselves - and I doubt you will do so - to discover that you are a nation without principles or manners, and that the values and principles to you are something which you merely demand from others, not that which you yourself must adhere to. (4) We also advise you to stop supporting Israel, and to end your support of the Indians in Kashmir, the Russians against the Chechens and to also cease supporting the Manila Government against the Muslims in Southern Philippines. (5) We also advise you to pack your luggage and get out of our lands. We desire for your goodness, guidance, and righteousness, so do not force us to send you back as cargo in coffins. (6) Sixthly, we call upon you to end your support of the corrupt leaders in our countries. Do not interfere in our politics and method of education. Leave us alone, or else expect us in New York and Washington. (7) We also call you to deal with us and interact with us on the basis of mutual interests and benefits, rather than the policies of sub dual, theft and occupation, and not to continue your policy of supporting the Jews because this will result in more disasters for you. If you fail to respond to all these conditions, then prepare for fight with the Islamic Nation. The Nation of Monotheism, that puts complete trust on Allah and fears none other than Him. The Nation which is addressed by its Quran with the words: "Do you fear them? Allah has more right that you should fear Him if you are believers. Fight against them so that Allah will punish them by your hands and disgrace them and give you victory over them and heal the breasts of believing people. And remove the anger of their (believers') hearts. Allah accepts the repentance of whom He wills. Allah is All-Knowing, All-Wise." [Quran9:13-1] The Nation of honour and respect: "But honour, power and glory belong to Allah, and to His Messenger (Muhammad- peace be upon him) and to the believers." [Quran 63:8] "So do not become weak (against your enemy), nor be sad, and you will be*superior ( in victory )if you are indeed (true) believers" [Quran 3:139] The Nation of Martyrdom; the Nation that desires death more than you desire life: "Think not of those who are killed in the way of Allah as dead. Nay, they are alive with their Lord, and they are being provided for. They rejoice in what Allah has bestowed upon them from His bounty and rejoice for the sake of those who have not yet joined them, but are left behind (not yet martyred) that on them no fear shall come, nor shall they grieve. They rejoice in a grace and a bounty from Allah, and that Allah will not waste the reward of the believers." [Quran 3:169-171] The Nation of victory and success that Allah has promised: "It is He Who has sent His Messenger (Muhammad peace be upon him) with guidance and the religion of truth (Islam), to make it victorious over all other religions even though the Polytheists hate it." [Quran 61:9] "Allah has decreed that 'Verily it is I and My Messengers who shall be victorious.' Verily Allah is All-Powerful, All-Mighty." [Quran 58:21] The Islamic Nation that was able to dismiss and destroy the previous evil Empires like yourself; the Nation that rejects your attacks, wishes to remove your evils, and is prepared to fight you. You are well aware that the Islamic Nation, from the very core of its soul, despises your haughtiness and arrogance. If the Americans refuse to listen to our advice and the goodness, guidance and righteousness that we call them to, then be aware that you will lose this Crusade Bush began, just like the other previous Crusades in which you were humiliated by the hands of the Mujahideen, fleeing to your home in great silence and disgrace. If the Americans do not respond, then their fate will be that of the Soviets who fled from Afghanistan to deal with their military defeat, political breakup, ideological downfall, and economic bankruptcy. This is our message to the Americans, as an answer to theirs. Do they now know why we fight them and over which form of ignorance, by the permission of Allah, we shall be victorious? Reference *Full text: bin Laden's letter to America

US Press Strangely Silent On Brzezinski’s Warnings

US Press Silent on Brzezinski’s Warnings Of War Against Iran Watch the video ... Former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Brzezinski predicts provoking war with Iran. He calls the Iraq War a Historic, Strategic and Moral Calamity. If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large. A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S. blamed on Iran; culminating in a "defensive" U.S. military action against Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Why is the US press silent on Brzezinski’s warnings of war against Iran? Read more *Brzezinski Warnings of War Against Iran Zbigniew Brzezinski Ex-National Security Adviser warns Bush is seeking a pretext to attack Iran. Read more ... *Ex-National Security Adviser - Bush Seeking Pretext To Attack Iran See the Complete Brzezinski Video Archive ... *Brzezinski Video Archive Zbigniew Brzezinski Profile Born on March 28, 1928, in Warsaw, Poland, the future national security adviser to President Carter and son of a Polish diplomat spent part of his youth in France and Germany before moving to Canada. He received a B.A. and M.A. in political science from McGill University, in 1949 and 1950 respectively, and in 1953 earned his doctorate in political science from Harvard. He taught at Harvard before moving to Columbia University in 1961 to head the new Institute on Communist Affairs. In 1958 he became a U.S. citizen. During the 1960s Brzezinski acted as an adviser to Kennedy and Johnson administration officials. Generally taking a hard line on policy toward the Soviet Union, he was also an influential force behind the Johnson administration's "bridge-building" ideas regarding Eastern Europe. During the final years of the Johnson administration, he was a foreign policy adviser to Vice President Hubert Humphrey and his presidential campaign. In 1973, Brzezinski became the first director of the Trilateral Commission, a group of prominent political and business leaders and academics from the United States, Western Europe and Japan. Its purpose was to strengthen relations among the three regions. Future President Carter was a member, and when he declared his candidacy for the White House in 1974, Brzezinski, a critic of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy style, became his adviser on foreign affairs. After his victory in 1976, Carter made Brzezinski national security adviser. Aiming to replace Kissinger's "acrobatics" in foreign policy-making with a foreign policy "architecture," Brzezinski was as eager for power as his rival. However, his task was complicated by his focus on East-West relations, and in a hawkish way in an administration where many cared a great deal about North-South relations and human rights. On the whole, Brzezinski was a team player. He emphasized the further development of the U.S.-China relationship, favored a new arms control agreement with Moscow and shared the president and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's view that the United States should seek international cooperation in its diplomacy instead of going it alone. In the growing crisis atmosphere of 1979 and 1980 due to the Iranian hostage situation, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and a deepening economic crisis, Brzezinski's anti-Soviet views gained influence but could not end the Carter administration's malaise. Since his time in government, Brzezinski has been active as a writer, teacher and consultant.

The Bush New World Order Announcement

The dominant corporate media has become merely the voice of a controlled empire, devoted to the indoctrination of the public in the interests of corporate, industrial, military, and ruling powers. And now Triangles and pyramids are cropping up in some rather interesting places. Most notably, those associated with martial law programs and special police agencies. See the Special Videos ... *New World Order Special Videos

JFK A Warning For Today

A Warning For Today

Was 911 Engineered For Political Gain?

As sick as it seems, it wouldn't be the first time a US administration has furthered its own political ambitions through attacks on American citizens. The idea of using civilian casualties for political gain was codified in *Operation Northwoods, a 1960's plan by top US military brass to orchestrate terrorism in American cities and blame it on Castro, thereby creating public support for a war with Cuba. More recently, the September 2000 neocon guidebook, *Rebuilding America's Defenses, claims some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor would help speed up the process of transforming the US into tomorrow's dominant force. The Pentagon Building Consider this 911 Footage that disappeared from the media - Ultra-rare news footage from the crash site of United Flight 93 which has never been seen again since 9/11 ... As General Smedley Butler's book *War is a Racket put it - (Quote:) War has always been a racket. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives. A racket is best described, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes. (Quote) Very little has changed since 1933 when Smedley Butler made these comments. *Our monetary system is a war system. The War Racket has a very vulnerable spot. The weakest point in the 9/11 hoax is WTC Building 7 where the illusion so carefully created can be exposed as a fraud ... See the Video *WTC7 Smoking Gun Also see ... *911 and the Evil In America video We have been lied to, mind-controlled and duped by president after president (at the behest of America’s own intelligence services) with the goal of making us mindless supporters of bloody war. Read the detailed blog with videos at ... *911 Fraud

Los Angeles May Day 2007 Police Beatings

The American Police State Shows Its True Colors Los Angeles May Day 2007 Without warning, cops descended into a park full of families, homeless and handicapped individuals and street cart vendors. They were merciless. For the next 30 minutes, hundreds of activists and bystanders were shot, beaten by night sticks and run out of the park. The police had no intention of entertaining requests from people who were not able to move quickly enough. They were forcefully hit on the legs until they were immobile. The cops didn't only move people out of the perimeters of the park, they chased through the park firing at anyone who might have been an obstacle. Many people were shot at from the back. Children and entire families were being violently pushed or beaten. An elderly woman cried out for help but few were willing to run back in the face of fast-approaching SWAT police. Full Report & Videos *May Day Violence at Los Angeles’ MacArthur Park *May Day Clash Brings LAPD Back Under Investigation Read More *ACLU Accuses L.A. Of Developing A Police State On Skid Row From Last Year *Los Angeles police beating caught on video Technocrati Tags Los Angeles May Day 2007, SWAT Police

SCREWED - The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class

Screwed The American middle class is on its deathbed. Ordinary folks who put in a solid day’s work can no longer afford to buy a house, send their kids to college, or even get sick. If you are not a CEO, you are probably screwed. Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class is an impassioned, enlightened look at American society, this time focusing on the shrinking middle class. While the radical GOP extremists have been diverting the attention of America's middle class with demagogic, divisive emotional values issues, the Republican Party has been picking their pockets, reducing their opportunities, and dismantling their support systems. As the book illustrates, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class is getting screwed. The Government Investor Class Marriage The United States is in trouble. We're in danger of becoming a fascist dictatorship where big government and big business combine to rule, and where the people are considered just a source of labor. The marriage of government and the investor class has succeeded in exporting our jobs, importing illegal aliens to provide a pool of cheap labor, and thus driving down wages for all American workers and destroying the middle class. Their foreign and military policies have led us into unnecessary wars of aggression to gain raw materials and enhance profits of the global robber barons. Their trade policies have resulted in capital flight, job loss, trade deficits, and the ownership of much of our infrastructure by foreign interests. We've gotten into this fix because our presidents, of both parties, have been servants of the global investors, and because our representatives in Congress, again of both parties, have abdicated their Constitutional responsibilities and subjected themselves to an imperial presidency. Read more *Patriots USA See The Videos ... *The Undeclared War Against the middle class Thom Hartmann shows how the American middle class that was so carefully constructed by our country’s founding fathers has been systematically dismantled over the past quarter-century, and, under the guise of freeing the market, replaced by a system designed to line the pockets of the super-rich and corporations. The book shows how the US middle class is shrinking, democracy is ebbing, and both are on life support and threatened with extinction by an omnipotent corporatocracy wanting to destroy the system of government on which the nation was founded. Those in power today want to destroy what the Founding Fathers believed in, created, and handed down for all those who followed them to preserve. In its place, the current ruling class wants to replace that vision with an imperial presidency supported by a submissive Congress and compliant courts that’s no different than the repressive monarchy and aristocracy the American Revolution overthrew in the first place. Our founding fathers worked hard to ensure that a small group of wealthy people would never dominate this country. They had had enough of aristocracy. They put government to work to ensure a thriving middle class. So what happened? America has been corrupted by the notion that what serves the interests of business elites in corporate boardrooms benefit ordinary people as well. It never has, never will, and, despite the slick rhetoric, isn’t intended to. If it did, it would prevent the new US corporate aristocracy from getting richer and more powerful which it only can do at the expense of the public and especially the middle class it wants to destroy. Over the last twenty-five years, we’ve witnessed an undeclared war against the middle class. Under the guise of freeing the market, the so-called conservatives waging this war have systematically dismantled the programs set up by both Republicans and Democrats to protect the middle class and have replaced them with policies that favor the only the privileged few. In a past time many of us grew up in when working people earned a living wage, had good health insurance, defined-benefit pensions secure at retirement, were protected by unions and needed only one family wage-earner to get by on a single job. Ruled by Corporate Fascism The America of the past is now fast disappearing. Today giant corporations literally run everything. They control what we eat and drink, where we live, what we wear, how we get most of our essential services like health care, and the information fed us that influences how we think including our view of them, our government and the world. They even now own patents on our genetic code, the most basic elements of human life, and want to manipulate and control them like any other commodity to exploit for profit in their brave new world. The corporate goliaths also decide who governs, for whose interest, and at whose expense. They control the political process from the White House to the Congress to who gets to sit on the nation’s courts. They thus have effective control over what laws are written and how they’re interpreted by friendly judges up to the High Court. It’s called democracy but it’s one in name only serving the elite few. It’s a corruption of the letter and spirit of a true democracy that influences an unequal and unjust distribution of the nation’s resources to benefit an elite minority able to control the political process to their advantage. It operates behind a facade of fairness while working to destroy the very things it claims to represent. It’s a system of government described by investigative journalist Greg Palast in his 2003 published book - The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Those who can pay can play, but those who can’t have no say or sway. It amounts to a system under which the political game is rigged by the incestuous relationship between big business and the government it empowers to serve it. The only choice voters now have at the polls is what Ralph Nader calls the evil of two lessers (or) government for General Motors, by Dupont and for Exxon Mobil. The corporate giants today are so huge that if the 50 largest ones were nations, they’d rank among the 100 largest sovereign states in the world. They take full advantage of their size and clout to thrown their weight around and get their way on most everything they want - again at the expense of the public interest. The result of this concentrated corporate power and a government in league with it has taken its toll on the working public. Adjusted for inflation, workers today earn less than 30 years ago, the federal minimum wage at $5.15 an hour hasn’t been raised since 1997, and it’s now at its lowest point relative to average wages since 1949. It also means those earning it fall well below the poverty line, and they still have to pay a growing portion of their health insurance cost if they have an employer giving them any at all. I think many of us recognize that for all but the wealthiest, life in America is getting increasingly hard. Screwed explores why, showing how this is no accidental process. Do people or profits come first in our society? Are we a nation that is interested in advancing the public good and interest of the many? Or are we an oligarchy, in which the many must sacrifice their futures for the benefit of a privileged few? Corporations got what they long coveted - the same constitutional rights as people, but because of their limited liability status, their shareholders were protected from the obligations of their debts, other obligations, and many of the responsibilities individuals legally have. With this new status, corporations could now win many other favorable court decisions they weren’t entitled to before. They also got much regulatory relief, favorable legislation, and all the while, were and are still protected by their limited liability status. More than any other High Court decision, this one gave corporations the ability to increase their power and grow to their present size and dominance. Think of it. Corporations aren’t human, they can live forever, change their identity, reside in many places simultaneously in many countries, but can’t be imprisoned for wrongdoing and can change themselves into new persons at will for any reason. Under the Constitution, they have the same rights as people but not the responsibilities. Permanent Corporate Class War The result today is that corporations have the right to operate freely and virtually be able to do whatever they choose with impunity. Even when they’re caught breaking the law, most every time (with rare exceptions) their executives get off scot-free and the penalty assessed is a small fine that amounts to chump change. War is big business and a permanent state of it is much bigger, which is why waging many of them is so appealing to those in power today. It’s also usually a winning political issue as wartime presidents are more likely to be reelected, and they also have more power than those serving in peacetime. George Orwell knew that democracy was weakest in a state of war, and Hitler used that to his advantage to seize total power after scaring the German people with threats that didn’t exist to give him enough of it in the first place. Hartmann sounds the alarm about the dangers of war and where it may lead the nation. It drove Nazi Germany to fascism and all the horrors from it. Today we’re at the same dangerous juncture with the nation at war, fascism rising, and doing it behind the facade of compassionate conservatism and an invented Islamo-fascist terrorist threat used to scare the public to go along with a rogue president’s long war without end to combat it. Hartmann tells us we face a clear and present threat to our freedom today and it is up to us: We the People to sound the alarm (to combat it). Most people would be amazed to learn the second largest army in Iraq comes from none of the other nations supplying forces. It’s the 100,000 private contractors the Bush administration hired at an enormous cost that’s far higher than what we pay those in the military. Why do it this way and spend more? It’s another way to transfer billions of dollars from the people to big corporations to enrich them at our expense. Prisons are also being privatized and now are at a level of about 5% of their capacity in about 100 facilities in 27 states and growing. But since private prisons are a business, there’s an incentive to fill beds and keep them filled with longer sentences while minimizing services to keep costs low. It makes harsh prison life far more grim for those interned. Most insidious of all is the privatizing of elections. Hartmann calls this the ultimate crime. He cites that in 2004 more than 80% of the US vote was counted on electronic voting machines owned, programmed and operated by three large private corporations. So instead of having paper ballots counted by hand by civil servants monitored by party faithful and independent observers, we now have a secretive process that’s unverifiable and all controlled by large companies with everything to gain if the candidates they support win. It puts the ugly taint of fraud over the whole process and makes a sham out of the notion of free, fair and open elections. That’s impossible if they’re run by self-serving private corporations as they now are. Unless this practice is stopped, we’ve lost what Tom Paine said at the nation’s founding: The right of voting for representatives is the primary right by which all other rights are protected. To take away this right is to reduce a man to slavery. Dumbing Down Besides being able to elect their own representatives, the electorate must also be well-informed. Hartmann quotes Thomas Jefferson who said Our liberty depends upon the freedom of the press (which starts with a literate citizenry, something we’re far short of today). The data on the ability of the public to read varies, but it shows a common pattern. The US Department of Education reports about 20% of the public to be functionally illiterate which means they can’t read or write well enough to do such essential things as read a newspaper, understand written instructions, fill out a job application or do basic computational tasks, let alone be able to operate a computer. Hartmann uses other data from the National Center of Education Statistics that breaks the literacy problem into different skill-level categories, but any way it’s looked at it shows a nation inadequately able to function the way citizens must be able to do in a modern society. The quality of education today, particularly in urban schools, has deteriorated so much because of the rise in prominence of service-related industries, many of which require little formal education. There’s no incentive to correct the problem, and George Bush’s No Child Left Behind Act and stealth plan to privatize public education (along with everything else in the commons that never should be) will only make things worse. The Bush agenda includes so-called school vouchers that mask an intent to end the separation of church and state by allowing vouchers to go mostly to schools where the central mission is (Christian) religious education or training. The fraudulent rationale for doing it is the same one the cons always fall back on - that marketplace competition improves performance. It’s not so as in all other areas where private business replaced government-run programs the public ended up getting less and paying more for it. That’s how it is with education that’s not a commodity for sale and never should be put in the hands of for-profit companies that need to minimize costs to keep their bottom line high. The same is true for health care that should be a basic right and not a privilege available only to those who can afford the cost. But that’s not how it is in the US. This is the only country among the 36 fully industrialized democracies in the world that treats health care as a marketplace commodity. - USA Healthcare - 37th & 54th World Ranking The result is that while the country spends far more on health care than any other one (about $2 trillion in 2005 or about one-sixth of the nation’s GDP) it delivers a quality of care mediocre enough for the World Health Organization (WTO) to rank us 37th in the world in overall health performance and 54th in the fairness of health care. No one should be denied the right to good medical care, but today nearly 47 million people in the country have no health insurance and millions more are underinsured, thus denying them the essential care they deserve to have, especially when they need it most. So today with more companies reducing the amount of health insurance coverage they provide employees combined with stagnant wages rising less than the rate of inflation, increasing numbers of people can’t afford to buy protection for the most important need they can’t afford to do without. It’s created a state of social inequality seen in the Economic Policy Institute 2004 report on the State of Working America. It showed the top 1% controls more than one-third of the nation’s wealth while the bottom 80% has 16%. Even worse, the top 20% holds 84% of all wealth while the poorest 20% are in debt and owe more than they own. Just released Internal Revenue Service data shows the same imbalance. The IRS reported the share of all income earned by the top 1% of taxpayers rose to 19% in 2004 from 16.8% in 2003 and just below the 20.8% high it hit in 2000 helped by capital gains from the stock market boom of the 1990s. All this shows how unbalanced wealth and income distribution are under an economic model favoring the rich and leaving all others behind. To rectify this, the nation needs a new model that distributes the nation’s wealth more equitably and that begins with its tax code. It also needs to provide health care for all its citizens which it already does for its senior ones - a single-payer system administered by the government and allowing people to choose their own providers. But even seniors are in trouble today as the Bush administration wants to move retirees on Medicare into private for-profit plans and thus kill off a system that effectively serves the public. The private operators need to cut costs to grow their profits, but when they do it people most in need are hurt the most. The Dying Middle Class All this paints a scenario of a dying middle class heading for extinction. Good jobs are disappearing, wages are stagnant or falling making becoming middle class today, in Hartmann’s words like scaling a cliff. Those who are middle class now are hanging on for dear life but losing their grip, and those aspiring to get there find it increasingly harder to do. It can’t be done on the minimum wage or even well above it in a job that pays at the Walmart level. And it surely can’t be done without the protection unions once could provide before the Reagan war on labor began reducing their power, or in a nation that once had a strong base of high-paying manufacturing and other jobs now being lost to cheap labor markets abroad. The result in Hartmann’s words: America is regressing (and) Middle-class income has stopped growing. The problem isn’t the economy. It’s the unlevel playing field where union protection is weak, corporations are in control in league with government supporting their interests, and workplaces are run more like kingdoms with workers heading toward becoming serfs with no rights. Hartmann says the cons are winning the battle to weaken democracy by screwing over the middle class, and he offers a prescription to fight back by reclaiming the government-run programs that created a strong middle class in the first place: ... let the public again have the right to own the military (without the high-priced private contractors), prisons, and the electoral system. ... keep private for-profit companies out of education and have government run it free without phony programs that don’t work like No Child Left Behind. ... demand a national single-payer health care system for everyone based on how Medicare is run. ... demand private companies keep their hand off Social Security and keep it as a government-run retirement program and safety net for the disabled. ... demand a progressive tax system reinstating a meaningful 35% rate on corporations and a 70% rate on the richest 5% of Americans. Use the extra revenue received to repay the Social Security system and fund an economic investment program. ... demand a living wage and the right of labor to organize again unhindered by laws or business-friendly government policies restricting its ability to be treated fairly. ... demand a national energy program that puts people and the planet - not Big Oil - first. If America rebuilds its middle class, democracy will follow. But if middle-America withers, democracy will as well. Hartmann sounds the alarm - We have been conned for long enough. It’s time to take back America. Conclusion - The Road to Victory - We must get on it now. Hartmann stresses the situation is dire and the need for change is urgent. He directs his message to everyone of all political party affiliations and says It’s time We the People took back control of our government. He offers his prescription on how to do it. ... Take back the Democratic party - the party is in crisis having bought on to the agenda of the far-right Republicans. Hartmann says the solution is for progressives to join together to take back the Democrat party just like the cons took control of the Republican party with the election of Ronald Reagan. ... A third party is not the answer because of our corrupted winner take all system under which whoever gets the most votes gets all of the pie. We’re structured this way because it’s written into our Constitution which was a huge mistake by the Founders. That’s not how it is in a system of proportional representation that most other democracies have under which a party getting 30% of the votes gets the same percentage of seats in the legislature. ... Republicans also need to re-capture their party from the cons who stole it from the moderates. Today the party is run by the Ayn Rand utopians, Pat Robertson fundamentalists, and the largest and dirtiest of America’s corporate elite. They rejected the values of Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and exploited working people and looted the nation’s treasury for their own self-interest leaving it for those who follow them to clean up the mess it could take a whole generation to recover from or longer. ... Change happens, sometimes slowly, and people need to band together to work actively for it which means more than just showing up for a peace (or other kind of) rally. ... Other activist tools include the most fundamental one of all - communication. Hartmann explains without two simple forms of it, the American Revolution wouldn’t have been possible. Target Internet There were the two commonly used ones then - letters to editors of newspapers who published them and pamphlets like the kind Tom Paine wrote. Today the dominant media are corrupted by their corporate control that suppresses real information in favor of only what’s friendly to the state and the corporate giants. Fortunately though, alternatives exist and must be used effectively. The internet may be the most important one as long as it remains free and open and not under the threat of corporate control which may happen if S. 2686/H.R.5252 known as the Advanced Telecommunications and Opportunities Reform Act passes that would along with other harmful provisions in it end so-called network neutrality meaning the internet freedom we now have. This bill, if passed, will be a major victory for the cable and telecom giants transforming them into gatekeepers of internet content and allowing them to charge varying rates to customers based on whatever set of rules they decide to establish. In a word, it will destroy the internet as it now is. As such, it’s crucial every effort be made to prevent this from happening. ... Don’t ignore the obvious influence we can have by communicating with our elected leaders. They pay attention, and it guides their policy-making. ... Joining a union or getting active in the union movement is crucially important to rebuilding the nation’s middle class. It’s essential unions be re-empowered through favorable legislation, and voters need to petition their legislators to work for this. Today the enemy of all working people has overwhelming but not invulnerable might. Gandhi taught us that a small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. And he inspired us saying first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. He did, and so can we. Thom Hartmann would agree that We the People can indeed win if we do enough even though it’s never easy, and the cons will fight us every step of the way with every dirty trick they know. It’s up to us to fight the better fight because we can’t afford to lose. Take heart from Thomas Jefferson and what he once said: Every generation needs a new Revolution. Today he’d likely say we never needed one more than now. References *Death Of The Middle Class *George W. Bush Is Shameless *SteveLendmanBlog Technocrati Tags Screwed Undeclared War Against the Middle Class, Government Investor Class Marriage, The Dying Middle Class, Target Internet,Founding Fathers,Greg Palast The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,Corporate Class War,Thom Hartmann,Ruled By Corporate Fascism, Lou Dobbs, Corporate Class War, Dumbing Down, American Health Care