James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.30 September 2006
A lot of intellectual rubbish has been published about the 9/11 Truth movement, but none quite as reprehensible as Matt Taibbi, "The Low Post: I, Left Gatekeeper", ROLLING STONE (26 September 2006). He begins with a blunder and ends with a travesty. He asserts that "9/11 Truth is the lowest form of conspiracy theory, because it doesn't offer an affirmative theory of the crime." But 9/11 Truth is dedicated to exposing falsehoods as well as revealing truths. If the government's account of 9/11 were true, there would be no need for an "alternative theory". We are critics of the official theory, which, in case Taibbi hasn't noticed, is itself a conspiracy theory!
Taibbi appears to be massively ignorant about the objective and scientific evidence that demonstrates the official account is not only false but cannot possibly be true. If he had visited the web site for Scholars for 9/11 Truth at st911.org, for example, he would have been confronted with extensive evidence that establishes the untenability of the government's account. Consider, for example, some key findings that are presented in "Why doubt 9/11?", which reflects elementary knowledge for those familiar with the case, including:
* The impact of the planes cannot have caused enough damage to bring the buildings down, since the buildings were designed to withstand them (as Frank DeMartini, the project manager, has observed), the planes that hit were very similar to those they were designed to withstand, and they continued to stand after those impacts with negligible effects.
* The melting point of steel at 2,800*F is about 1,000*F higher than the maximum burning temperature of jet-fuel-based fires, which do not exceed 1,800*F under optimal conditions, so the fires cannot have caused the steel to melt, which means that melting steel did not bring the buildings down.
* UL certified the steel in the buildings up to 2,000*F for at least six hours before it would even significantly weaken, where these fires burned too low and too briefly--about one hour in the South Tower and one and a half in the North at an average temperature around 500*F--to have even caused the steel to weaken, much less melt.
* If the steel had melted or weakened, the affected floors would have displayed completely different behavior, with some asymmetrical sagging and tilting, which would have been gradual and slow, not the complete, abrupt, and total demolition that was observed.
* Heavy steel construction buildings like the Twin Towers, built with more than 100,000 tons of steel, are not even capable of "pancake collapse", which normally only occurs with concrete structures of "lift slab" construction and could not occur in "redundant" welded-steel buildings, such as the towers, unless every supporting column were removed simultaneously.
* The destruction of the South Tower in 10 seconds and of the North in 9 is even faster than free fall with only air resistance, which would have taken at least 12 seconds, which, as Judy Wood has emphasized, is an astounding result that would have been impossible without extremely powerful explosives.
* The towers are exploding from the top, not collapsing to the ground, where the floors do not move, a phenomenon that Judy Wood has likened to two gigantic trees turning to sawdust from the top down, which, like the pulverization of the concrete, the official account cannot possibly explain.
* Pools of molten metal were found at the subbasement levels three, four, and five weeks later, an effect that could not have been produced by the plane-impact/jet-fuel-fire/pancake collapse scenario, which, of course, implies that it was not produced by such a cause.
* WTC-7 came down in a classic controlled demolition at 5:20 PM/ET after Larry Silverstein suggested the best thing to do might be to "pull it", displaying all the characteristics of classic controlled demolitions, including a complete, abrupt, and total collapse into its own footprint, where the floors are all falling at the same time at free fall speed.
This event was so embarrassing to the government's account that it is not even mentioned in THE 9/11 COMMISSION REPORT. Similarly for this article in the ROLLING STONE. The actual evidence of controlled demolitions at the World Trade Center is so embarrassing to Matt Taibbi's position that he doesn't bother to acknowledge its existence. That is a form of intellectual dishonesty that ought to be beneath the standards of this once-great magazine. Alternatively, if he is so ignorant that he doesn't know it exists, he was incompetent to write this article. Either way, the editors ought to have known better than to publish it.
Most of his piece, of course, is intended to satirize an alternative account. Establishing what actually happened is far more difficult than proving what did not. If anything like what he describes is the actual sequence of events, then it does have aspects of the absurd about it. But it would be perfectly consistent with the incompetence and recklessness that this administration has demonstrated repeatedly in relation to its interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, not to mention the mess it is making of America.
Bush himself has admitted that Saddam Hussein had "nothing to do" with the events of 9/11. A Senate Intelligence Committee investigation has established that Saddam was not collaborating with Osama bin Laden but actively opposing him. And the FBI has recently acknowledged that it has "no hard evidence" that connects Osama to 9/11. If it was not Saddam and it was not Osama, then who was responsible for the events of 9/11? We believe that the American people are entitled to know and we are doing our best to find out.
James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.Founder and Co-ChairScholars for 9/11 Truthhttp://www.d.umn.edu/~jfetzer/http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/ (st911.org)
What Israel Has Done to Palestinian Children With U.S. Taxpayers' Dollars
Monday, October 30, 2006
Sunday, October 29, 2006
Why the Jewish Community Should Demand 9/11 Truth
It is my belief that when the truth comes out about the attacks of 9/11/2001, we will find that Jewish people, and Moslem people, both here in America and worldwide will have been the most wronged by the false flag operation that the attacks of 9/11/2001 appeared to be.
Recently, I watched a new documentary entitled, "Protocols of Zion," on CINEMAX cable. Although the subject of anti-Semitism and neo-nazi movements worldwide is a dark and repulsive subject, I was glad to see a documentary bringing this global issue and problem into the light of day. It is important to shine the light on racism so that the world can progress on removing it from the global consciousness. So that we may all move towards a day when we are judged by the content of our character, and not suffer because of the color of our skin, our ethnicity, or religion.
It is with this same urgency for fairness and justice, inspiring me to sit down before the TV late at night when I really should have been going to bed, to watch this interesting documentary, "Protocols of Zion," that also has driven me to write this essay. As I watched this documentary I became increasingly disturbed that it gave its viewers the impression that anyone questioning the events of 9/11/2001, was suggesting that Israel, or Jewish people, perpetrated the crimes of 9/11/2001.
The film did this by showing the iconoclastic image of the 9/11 truth movement, the "Stop the 9/11 Cover Up" signs now seen throughout the internet in pop culture and political websites, while an audio overlay darkly told of how anti-Semitic and neo-nazis ideas were permeating our culture. This was very disturbing for me, because I personally helped with the original design of the "Stop the 9/11 Cover Up" signs, and raised the funds to print thousands, and send them to San Francisco and also to New York City 9/11 truth activists, where they appeared in this documentary. I, in fact, visited New York City to stand with other 9/11 truth activists at Ground Zero with the signs, which is again where the documentary shot footage of our 9/11 truth seeking action.
The documentary, "Protocols of Zion," interviews young men on the streets of American cities, who make outlandish and false claims that "4,000 Jews did not show up to work at the World Trade Center on 9/11." Again, this is ludicrous, inflammatory, and most of all absolutely false. This was a rumor that started soon after the attacks of 9/11, and no one is really sure where that rumor started. My personal belief is that it was planted by the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks.
In the 1960's there were two programs that are of particular interest here. One is Operation Northwoods, a government covert operational plan which was amazingly signed off on by the entire Joint Chiefs of Staff, calling for attacks on our own military and civilian populations for the purpose of fooling Americans into a war they would otherwise not support. The other program of the 1960's was the cointellpro operations of the FBI, whereby agents were dressed up to look like anti-war protesters, and assigned to whip up violent actions during what would have otherwise been peaceful protests, in order to cause Americans to turn away from the anti-war message the protesters were trying to share with Americans.
I believe the anti-Semitic and totally ridiculous rumors that 4,000 Jewish people did not show up to work on 9/11/2001, was part of a cointellpro operation designed to get US media, and particularly New York media to turn off its logic regarding the glaring problems with the official story of the events of 9/11/2001. For when one does actually look with clear eyes at the events of 9/11, it becomes obvious very quickly that we have been lied to, and that the facts point to an inside US govt. job with complicity at the highest levels of our government.
I believe that on 9/11/2001 Moslem people worldwide were the victims of a huge lie, and an inside US govt. act of terrorism. HOWEVER, I also believe that Jewish people became victims of the same perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, who immediately spread a baseless rumor that Jewish people were responsible, to turn Americans minds off from looking at the disturbing facts around the events of 9/11.
The very idea that a foreign government, like Israel, could have pulled off an operation of the magnitude of the events of the 9/11/2001 attacks, under the noses of the US government's top officials, presiding over the greatest multi-trillion dollar domestic and foreign intelligence organization, and largest military power the world has ever seen, is patently ridiculous. If it weren't such a tragic thing, the preposterousness of it would be laughable. Yet, it is equally ridiculous to buy the official 9/11 story that 19 rag-tag Moslems were able to pull off such a catalyzing event.
What the evidence now points to is that thermate charges were set in the WTCs days before 9/11/2001, when as Newsday reported normal bomb sniffing dog drills were not held in the days leading up to 9/11/2001. This points to an inside job, by not only those in charge of WTC security, but also by officials who had the steel quickly sent away to China and India to be destroyed before a full forensic investigation could be conducted (amid cries of foul by Fire Engineering Magazine's editor). Of course there is also the massive air defense failures of 9/11, where four commercial jet liners flew off course for nearly one and half hours over or toward the most protected airspace in the world, and not one . . . not one . . . Air Force fighter interceptor jet arrives until it is too late. And NO ONE is held responsible for this colossal failure of intelligence and defense.
It is my belief that when the truth comes out about the attacks of 9/11/2001, we will find that Jewish people, and Moslem people, both here in America and worldwide will have been the most wronged by the false flag operation that the attacks of 9/11/2001 appeared to be. The perpetrators, I believe, were willing to allow (and perpetrate) a groundswell of hatred for Moslems and Jewish people domestically and worldwide that would wound and poison our world's psyche for decades to come, as they used that chaos and distraction to control global oil resources. (See Project for a New American Century's (PNAC's) vision paper calling for this, but acknowledging that it would take a massive attack on the American homeland for Americans to support such foreign adventures. This was written before Bush's election. PNAC members included Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Fife, etc.)
One thing that documentaries and innuendo like "Protocols of Zion" failed to do, is to point out that some of the earliest organizers of the 9/11 truth movement in New York City, were Jewish people. Why does the media allow and sometimes promote the innuendo that the 9/11 truth movement is somehow anti-Semitic, and does not mention that Jewish Americans were at the forefront of the 9/11 truth efforts? Perhaps the same reason that they keep repeating that 9/11 was the work of 19 ragtag Moslem extremists who fooled the greatest intelligence and military in human history, in spite of the growing body of evidence that this was impossible and not true. Because they were fed these stories by US government officials, or those under their direction, who according to emerging evidence look increasingly guilty of treason, and the cover up of that crime.
Jewish Americans and Moslem Americans need to stand together and DEMAND 9/11 truth. American Christians need to stand with them because to sit back and watch peoples being used and abused by obvious lies, goes against everything our religion stands for. American media, and world media need to stand for and demand TRUTH, and not allow themselves to be played. I once read that Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said that propaganda was not meant to fool the intelligencia, but rather to give them an excuse. Meaning that it was more comfortable for the media, and others who should have known better, to play along with a lie, then to do the discomforting work of digging for the hard truth.
The best way for Jewish Americans to battle the dangerous disinformation and the LIES of Jewish involvement in the attacks of 9/11/2001, isn't to subscribe to "The Protocols of Zion" documentaries approach of, either through ignorance or intent, in effect defaming 9/11 truth seekers, but rather to join with legitimate 9/11 truth seeking organizations and DEMAND a full accounting of the facts of 9/11. Because in the end, the emerging facts show they most likely lead to the highest levels of the United States government.
We do not know where the anti-Semitic rumors came from after 9/11, but we do know that perpetrators of huge government crimes use cointellpro operations to distract the mainstream public from looking at real facts. If Jewish people were used as sacrificial lambs by the perpetrators of 9/11/2001, to draw attention away from their crimes, that would be a horrendous crime beyond comprehension, given what Jewish people have suffered in recent history. My father was among the first liberators of the Dachau concentration camp. That image haunted him for the rest of his life. My father would NEVER tolerate anti-Semitism, and neither would I. THAT is why I DEMAND 9/11 truth.
"Allah created nations and tribes that we might know one another, not that we might despise one another."
-- The Koran
". . . never to turn aside the stranger, for it is like turning aside the most high God."
-- The Torah
"love thy neighbor as thyself."
-- The Bible
"Full of love for all things in the world; practicing virtue in order to benefit others, this man alone is happy."
-- Buddha
"Seek to be in harmony with all your neighbors; live in amity with your brethren."
-- Confucious
"Let us walk softly on the Earth with all living beings great and small remembering as we go, that one Godkind and wise created all."
-- Native American psalm
"A man obtains a proper rule of action by looking on his neighbor as himself."
-- Hindu psalm
"Regard Heaven as your father, Earth as your mother, And all things as your brothers and sisters."
-- Shintoism; Oracle of the Kami of Atsuta
Authors Bio: By William E. Douglas, Jr., who is author of "The Amateur Parent – A Book on Life, Death, War & Peace, and Everything Else in the Universe." Bill has been a guest columnist for the Kansas City Star, The Business Journal, and other media worldwide. His past essays include, "Exposing the 9/11 Conspiracy Wingnuts," "The Explosion of the 9-11 Truth Movement -- US Media's Dirty Little Secret," "Good Night, and Good Luck - WMD, NIST, Popular Mechanics, 9/11 and Media Crimes" and also "Why the Jewish Community Should Demand 9/11 Truth."
Living in the Land of Oz-- The Blister of Lies is About to Pop -- 9/11 Reveals the Rotten Machine Behind the Curtain
September 27, 2006By Bill Douglas
This essay will reveal how the false flag operation of 9/11 will transform our nation and world away from a sick war based poverty imposing global order into an era of truth and hope that will begin a global healing unseen by humanity.
Being from Kansas and having written guest columns for the Kansas City Star, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz metaphors come naturally for me. Fortunately for my essay, the Land of Oz metaphor is dead on.
About 40 percent of Americans have now woken up to the unfolding reality that facts regarding the 9/11/2001 attacks increasingly point to complicity at the highest levels of this current Bush Administration (Scripps-Howard Poll). For that 40 percent, and growing numbers of Americans, we now find ourselves living in the land of Oz. We have seen that the "great and powerful Oz," which sent us all scurrying for duct tape and stumbling all over ourselves to give up the precious civil liberties our father's fought for . . . is a manufactured illusion run by a few rather pathetic figures in this current administration, and at the top of our media . . . hiding behind an ever thinning curtain of diminishing credibility.
We see on the Sunday morning talk shows, and the "informed" guests they have on, whether Democrat or Republican, a discussion of a "terrorist threat" that we now know has been largely manufactured by the pathetic little men behind the control room curtains. The discord this sets up in our minds and hearts is hard to bear. We feel our minds pulled back into the matrix. Their flashy TV sets and well dressed "experts" try to help us forget what we know, that 9/11 was an inside job. They ask us day in and day out, to join them in the grand illusion that the "great and powerful terrorist threat," is a reality that really does demand endless hundreds of billions of military spending, illegal wars, and the destruction of our constitutional rights and liberties.
However, ultimately it is a good thing that is happening. The good this bizarre scenario is creating, is that for the first time in decades tens of millions of Americans are realizing that the corporate media that controls 99.999999% of the information read, heard or viewed in corporate media outlets (including so called "alternative" media) is part of a grand charade. A charade meant to fool us into sacrificing our children and our neighbor's children for wars of conquest, distorted with beautiful faces, Brooks Brothers Suits, and flashy video graphics, into "wars of democracy and freedom." We are beginning to see that squeezed in that "control booth behind the curtain" of the Great and Powerful Oz, is also this corporate media, which is increasingly looking desperate and pathetic as well.
The corruption of corporate media is a long lived reality. Perhaps it began in earnest with Kennedy's assassination. Why did the media choose not to interview key witnesses who saw shots coming from the grassy knoll, and courageously tried to apprehend those shooters before being stopped by Secret Service agents who gave the shooters time to escape? Why did the corporate media begin using the term "grassy knoll" as a derogatory slap at anyone questioning obvious lies our government has spewed upon us for decades? Even now, corporate media often uses the term "grassy knoll" to attack people demanding answers regarding the events on 9/11. Yes, corporate media has been a co-criminal in attacks on American democracy for decades.
In the 1980's I went to work under the auspices of the United Nations World Health Organization in Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugee camps in Central America. In the Salvadoran camp of Mesa Grande, home to 20,000 Salvadoran refugees, I discovered "not one single" person who'd been attacked by the FMLN rebels. ALL had been attacked by the US backed Salvadoran military which had been condemned by human rights groups worldwide for their brutality.
When I returned to my home in California a writer for the Orange County Register newspaper contacted me for an interview. When she asked if there was anything I wanted to convey to the readers, I replied, "The US media is giving the impression that the refugees in the Central American wars are 'caught in a cross-fire between rebels and govt. forces.' This is NOT true. The people there are being attacked by the US backed govt. forces, and not by the rebels. Americans need to know this before they give hundreds of millions of their hard earned tax dollars to this murderous Salvadoran regime we are supporting, and that couldn't exist without us."
Days later the article came out in a full page front page section, and I was excited to see it, until I read the first line of the first paragraph, "Huntington Beach man returns from Salvadoran refugee camps, where refugees caught in a 'cross-fire between rebel forces and Salvadoran govt. forces live.'"
I called the reporter, and before I could say anything, she blurted, "I'm sorry, that was the only way we could run the story. My editor said the story had to lead with that line, or we couldn't run the story." The US media had somehow been given marching orders that editors understood, that no article could openly challenge the distorted reality the govt. wanted us to believe. As a result millions were displaced, tens of thousands murdered, and Americans picked up the bill for this monstrous policy.
More recently, months after the 9/11/2001 attacks, I became aware of disturbing facts around 9/11, including the "insider stock" trading against United and American airlines the day before 9/11, that led to a CIA connected investment house that had once been headed by the Executive Directory of the CIA, Buzzy Krongard. The current director of this institution quietly resigned the day after 9/11, with no media scrutiny at all. $5 million were made there on insider knowledge of the coming attacks the next day, and even more bizarre is that half of those "winnings" are still uncollected. These and other facts were sent out to media worldwide.
One day I received a massive number of emails from people asking for more information regarding 9/11, and the possibility it was an inside job. Stunned, I contacted one of these people to find out how they'd gotten my email address, and found that my email address had been published in a major North American newspaper. The article had begun as a "grassy knoll" "tin foil hats" hit piece on 9/11 truth seekers, but oddly it listed point by point the disturbing facts around 9/11 I had collected and sent out. Then it said if you want more information on 9/11, contact ... and they gave my email address.
I called the reporter, who immediately apologized for the "hit piece" quality of the article. He said that in order to get the facts out about the disturbing questions around 9/11, he had to write it in the form of a hit piece in order to get it past his editor. He spoke of other reporters at major papers who'd already lost their jobs for critically analyzing the events of 9/11, and this was only a few months after 9/11/2001.
So, we know that media has been manipulating our thinking for decades to justify illegal wars of aggression all over the world causing untold misery and suffering. The latest war showed Bush and the US corporate media touting the testimony of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who'd defected from Iraq. They waved his testimony to justify our illegal attack on Iraq and mass murder of Iraqi civilians. The testimony they waved was about the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Hussein's Iraq had developed. However, in that same document in the same testimony he revealed that ALL of those WMD had been destroyed before the first arms inspections years ago. He said that not only weapons were destroyed by also documents.
This is a huge revelation! Remember that Bush, et al, said that Hussein was hiding WMD because he would not produce the "paperwork." Hussein's son-in-law had testified that documents had been destroyed years before. He also testified, again, that the WMD had been destroyed. This administration, with the cooperation of the US media LIED US INTO AN ILLEGAL WAR. This is a war crime, committed by our media. There is no way they could have collectively gone blind half way down that document, to only see the WMD possession, and be completely blind to testimony in the SAME DOCUMENT that the WMD and documents had been destroyed.
Our corporate media was complicit in a crime of vast proportions. Their cover up of this information has led to the mass murder of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, thousands of US and coalition forces, and the loss of arms, legs, faces of young troops.
So, we know the corporate media has been complicit in war crimes for decades by deliberate omission of critical information. What good does that information do us?
9/11 has changed everything, but not in the way this administration's liars and their corporate media sidekicks keep trying to drum into our minds. What is different now, is that tens of millions of Americans are waking up to the fact that the flashy lights, fancy clothes, and pretty faces are part of a massive lie. They know that they were lied to about the events of 9/11, and especially that the media is covering up the awareness that those attacks were self-inflicted by elements of our own govt.
In the past, millions of Americans became aware we were lied to about the Central American wars, about the wars in South East Asia (see The Pentagon Papers), and other illegal wars and covert actions. But, the majority of Americans didn't really care that much. The media effectively hid the barbarous results of those actions from American, and perhaps most importantly, those illegal operations didn't harm Americans.
9/11 has changed everything because it was a horrendous attack "on Americans." The images of that barbaric act were emblazoned on the minds of average Americans in a way that never occurred when Salvadorans, or Guatemalans, or Nicaraguans were murdered by our covert operations. However, again and this cannot be over emphasized, the images the crimes of 9/11's horror are forever engrained into our national psyche. The criminals in our govt. needed that to get the Americans in the mood to allow illegal oil conquest wars in the Middle East and beyond. However, now that tens of millions, which will soon be a majority of Americans realize those attacks were self inflicted by members of our own govt. . . . a sleeping giant is being awakened.
Tens of millions of Americans who were able to ignore the suffering of third world people's savaged by US covert operations in the past, are now finding it "impossible" to ignore the crimes of 9/11. Their hunger for information is growing relentlessly. DVDs and books, and articles like this one, are being read and viewed by millions almost daily. They are being passed from hand to hand, and emailed across the vast internet at near light speed. The awakening of the sleeping bear of the American populace is relentless and growing, and when the bear awakens it will be angry for being awoken to this reality.
They will want to know "EVERYTHING." Which is another intriguing aspect to this unfolding future. If you look back at the crimes of our government during the illegal wars in Central America, and the Iran Contra scandal, you'll find names you recognize. Negroponte, Abrahms, Armitage, Rumsfeld, Lee Hamilton, etc. Even more interesting, if you look back at Iran Contra, and peel back the layers you find names that were associated with covert operations during the wars in Southeast Asia, Singlaub, etc. You learn very quickly that the corrupt figures and their quiet behind the scenes network perpetrating war crimes in our names, has been there behind the scenes pulling strings for decades.
What is different now, is that this administration brought all these conspirators and coup plotters forward to be at the head of our government. They were brought out of the shadows, no longer manipulating US foreign policy from the sidelines and shadows, but now running our government with their illegal tactics.
So, 9/11 is becoming the perfect storm. As Toto pulls back the curtain on 9/11, we find:
A) The illegal covert operations our govt. has wielded for decades, is fully capable of attacking our own people, and can no longer be ignored. Leading to the sleeping giant of American citizenry's awakening.
B) These decades of criminals who've corrupted US foreign policy, are now very public figures with records and statements that can be exposed as a full 9/11 investigation will demand.
C) The US media's complicity in this and past crimes against Americans and the world is being understood by a near majority of Americans who now know 9/11 was an inside job, and media is doing everything it can to hide that reality.
Yes, it is disturbing to see Toto pulling back the curtain of reality to show us that the "smart" "intelligent" "corporate" "military" "intelligence" flashing lights of government and media are an illusion. It is disturbing to learn that the perpetrators in our govt. and media are frail, flawed little men, with no more power than the smoke and mirror controls they've hidden behind the curtain. But, now we can walk out of the hall of mirrors, and into the light of day. We can find ways to create the world, we thought we were fighting for and giving our precious tax dollars for all along.
Exposing 9/11 lies, will be the healthiest thing that has happened to our world in decades. It will lead to realities being exposed, both horrible and wonderful. Once the lie machine is disassembled a new "real" media, will discuss the reality that a free energy solar, wind, geothermal economy is not only possible, but has been possible for many years (see "Who Killed the Electric Car," and "Too Hot to Handle" documentaries).
We will learn that globalization policies that have kept developing nations subservient to industrial nations who controlled technology and energy . . . are illusions. A free global energy economy will liberate the developing world from such dependency. Global conflicts over energy will be a thing of the past. Developed nations will be able to slash bloated and obscene defense budgets. Global media will begin to focus on solutions, rather than fear, war, and distracting obsessions and celebrity worship. The sleeping giant of world opinion will demand it.
While some fear the truth of 9/11 coming out, as a breakdown of society, I see great hope in it. I see that what the bible told us is the greatest truth for humanity, "the truth shall set you free."
Some places to find truth right now are:
www.st911.org
www.911Truth.org
www.wtc7.net
Once you visit these sights, you'll find an endless web of other truth resources. Once you awaken yourself and others . . . you will ask, "why hasn't the media looked at these facts, and asked questions?"
You will then see the curtain being pulled back every time you watch a TV news program, or radio program, or news article . . . that still pretends that 19 ragtag Moslem extremists fooled the greatest military and intelligence network in human history, being directed by a man in an isolated cave, to defy the laws of physics and bring down the first three steel reinforced skyscrapers in engineering history, using horrible pilots to fly like crack combat pilots striking three perfect bulls-eyes, enabled by the US Air Force failing in all normal defense procedures for nearly one and a half hours while hijacked commercial jets flew over the most protected air space in the world . . . with not one fighter interceptor jet arriving until it was too late.
The giant is awakening, and for those who "smell of sulfur" there will be hell to pay. For the majority of us, we will now have an opportunity to create a nation and world that we can truly be proud of, one that our maker would be proud of.
God bless America.
By William E. Douglas, Jr.
Reprint permission for this article is granted. You may publish it anywhere and everywhere. Please include the biography in any reprints.
Authors Bio: By William E. Douglas, Jr., who is author of "The Amateur Parent – A Book on Life, Death, War & Peace, and Everything Else in the Universe." Bill has been a guest columnist for the Kansas City Star, The Business Journal, and other media worldwide. His past essays include, "Exposing the 9/11 Conspiracy Wingnuts," "The Explosion of the 9-11 Truth Movement -- US Media's Dirty Little Secret," "Good Night, and Good Luck - WMD, NIST, Popular Mechanics, 9/11 and Media Crimes" and also "Why the Jewish Community Should Demand 9/11 Truth."
This essay will reveal how the false flag operation of 9/11 will transform our nation and world away from a sick war based poverty imposing global order into an era of truth and hope that will begin a global healing unseen by humanity.
Being from Kansas and having written guest columns for the Kansas City Star, Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz metaphors come naturally for me. Fortunately for my essay, the Land of Oz metaphor is dead on.
About 40 percent of Americans have now woken up to the unfolding reality that facts regarding the 9/11/2001 attacks increasingly point to complicity at the highest levels of this current Bush Administration (Scripps-Howard Poll). For that 40 percent, and growing numbers of Americans, we now find ourselves living in the land of Oz. We have seen that the "great and powerful Oz," which sent us all scurrying for duct tape and stumbling all over ourselves to give up the precious civil liberties our father's fought for . . . is a manufactured illusion run by a few rather pathetic figures in this current administration, and at the top of our media . . . hiding behind an ever thinning curtain of diminishing credibility.
We see on the Sunday morning talk shows, and the "informed" guests they have on, whether Democrat or Republican, a discussion of a "terrorist threat" that we now know has been largely manufactured by the pathetic little men behind the control room curtains. The discord this sets up in our minds and hearts is hard to bear. We feel our minds pulled back into the matrix. Their flashy TV sets and well dressed "experts" try to help us forget what we know, that 9/11 was an inside job. They ask us day in and day out, to join them in the grand illusion that the "great and powerful terrorist threat," is a reality that really does demand endless hundreds of billions of military spending, illegal wars, and the destruction of our constitutional rights and liberties.
However, ultimately it is a good thing that is happening. The good this bizarre scenario is creating, is that for the first time in decades tens of millions of Americans are realizing that the corporate media that controls 99.999999% of the information read, heard or viewed in corporate media outlets (including so called "alternative" media) is part of a grand charade. A charade meant to fool us into sacrificing our children and our neighbor's children for wars of conquest, distorted with beautiful faces, Brooks Brothers Suits, and flashy video graphics, into "wars of democracy and freedom." We are beginning to see that squeezed in that "control booth behind the curtain" of the Great and Powerful Oz, is also this corporate media, which is increasingly looking desperate and pathetic as well.
The corruption of corporate media is a long lived reality. Perhaps it began in earnest with Kennedy's assassination. Why did the media choose not to interview key witnesses who saw shots coming from the grassy knoll, and courageously tried to apprehend those shooters before being stopped by Secret Service agents who gave the shooters time to escape? Why did the corporate media begin using the term "grassy knoll" as a derogatory slap at anyone questioning obvious lies our government has spewed upon us for decades? Even now, corporate media often uses the term "grassy knoll" to attack people demanding answers regarding the events on 9/11. Yes, corporate media has been a co-criminal in attacks on American democracy for decades.
In the 1980's I went to work under the auspices of the United Nations World Health Organization in Salvadoran and Guatemalan refugee camps in Central America. In the Salvadoran camp of Mesa Grande, home to 20,000 Salvadoran refugees, I discovered "not one single" person who'd been attacked by the FMLN rebels. ALL had been attacked by the US backed Salvadoran military which had been condemned by human rights groups worldwide for their brutality.
When I returned to my home in California a writer for the Orange County Register newspaper contacted me for an interview. When she asked if there was anything I wanted to convey to the readers, I replied, "The US media is giving the impression that the refugees in the Central American wars are 'caught in a cross-fire between rebels and govt. forces.' This is NOT true. The people there are being attacked by the US backed govt. forces, and not by the rebels. Americans need to know this before they give hundreds of millions of their hard earned tax dollars to this murderous Salvadoran regime we are supporting, and that couldn't exist without us."
Days later the article came out in a full page front page section, and I was excited to see it, until I read the first line of the first paragraph, "Huntington Beach man returns from Salvadoran refugee camps, where refugees caught in a 'cross-fire between rebel forces and Salvadoran govt. forces live.'"
I called the reporter, and before I could say anything, she blurted, "I'm sorry, that was the only way we could run the story. My editor said the story had to lead with that line, or we couldn't run the story." The US media had somehow been given marching orders that editors understood, that no article could openly challenge the distorted reality the govt. wanted us to believe. As a result millions were displaced, tens of thousands murdered, and Americans picked up the bill for this monstrous policy.
More recently, months after the 9/11/2001 attacks, I became aware of disturbing facts around 9/11, including the "insider stock" trading against United and American airlines the day before 9/11, that led to a CIA connected investment house that had once been headed by the Executive Directory of the CIA, Buzzy Krongard. The current director of this institution quietly resigned the day after 9/11, with no media scrutiny at all. $5 million were made there on insider knowledge of the coming attacks the next day, and even more bizarre is that half of those "winnings" are still uncollected. These and other facts were sent out to media worldwide.
One day I received a massive number of emails from people asking for more information regarding 9/11, and the possibility it was an inside job. Stunned, I contacted one of these people to find out how they'd gotten my email address, and found that my email address had been published in a major North American newspaper. The article had begun as a "grassy knoll" "tin foil hats" hit piece on 9/11 truth seekers, but oddly it listed point by point the disturbing facts around 9/11 I had collected and sent out. Then it said if you want more information on 9/11, contact ... and they gave my email address.
I called the reporter, who immediately apologized for the "hit piece" quality of the article. He said that in order to get the facts out about the disturbing questions around 9/11, he had to write it in the form of a hit piece in order to get it past his editor. He spoke of other reporters at major papers who'd already lost their jobs for critically analyzing the events of 9/11, and this was only a few months after 9/11/2001.
So, we know that media has been manipulating our thinking for decades to justify illegal wars of aggression all over the world causing untold misery and suffering. The latest war showed Bush and the US corporate media touting the testimony of Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who'd defected from Iraq. They waved his testimony to justify our illegal attack on Iraq and mass murder of Iraqi civilians. The testimony they waved was about the Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Hussein's Iraq had developed. However, in that same document in the same testimony he revealed that ALL of those WMD had been destroyed before the first arms inspections years ago. He said that not only weapons were destroyed by also documents.
This is a huge revelation! Remember that Bush, et al, said that Hussein was hiding WMD because he would not produce the "paperwork." Hussein's son-in-law had testified that documents had been destroyed years before. He also testified, again, that the WMD had been destroyed. This administration, with the cooperation of the US media LIED US INTO AN ILLEGAL WAR. This is a war crime, committed by our media. There is no way they could have collectively gone blind half way down that document, to only see the WMD possession, and be completely blind to testimony in the SAME DOCUMENT that the WMD and documents had been destroyed.
Our corporate media was complicit in a crime of vast proportions. Their cover up of this information has led to the mass murder of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians, thousands of US and coalition forces, and the loss of arms, legs, faces of young troops.
So, we know the corporate media has been complicit in war crimes for decades by deliberate omission of critical information. What good does that information do us?
9/11 has changed everything, but not in the way this administration's liars and their corporate media sidekicks keep trying to drum into our minds. What is different now, is that tens of millions of Americans are waking up to the fact that the flashy lights, fancy clothes, and pretty faces are part of a massive lie. They know that they were lied to about the events of 9/11, and especially that the media is covering up the awareness that those attacks were self-inflicted by elements of our own govt.
In the past, millions of Americans became aware we were lied to about the Central American wars, about the wars in South East Asia (see The Pentagon Papers), and other illegal wars and covert actions. But, the majority of Americans didn't really care that much. The media effectively hid the barbarous results of those actions from American, and perhaps most importantly, those illegal operations didn't harm Americans.
9/11 has changed everything because it was a horrendous attack "on Americans." The images of that barbaric act were emblazoned on the minds of average Americans in a way that never occurred when Salvadorans, or Guatemalans, or Nicaraguans were murdered by our covert operations. However, again and this cannot be over emphasized, the images the crimes of 9/11's horror are forever engrained into our national psyche. The criminals in our govt. needed that to get the Americans in the mood to allow illegal oil conquest wars in the Middle East and beyond. However, now that tens of millions, which will soon be a majority of Americans realize those attacks were self inflicted by members of our own govt. . . . a sleeping giant is being awakened.
Tens of millions of Americans who were able to ignore the suffering of third world people's savaged by US covert operations in the past, are now finding it "impossible" to ignore the crimes of 9/11. Their hunger for information is growing relentlessly. DVDs and books, and articles like this one, are being read and viewed by millions almost daily. They are being passed from hand to hand, and emailed across the vast internet at near light speed. The awakening of the sleeping bear of the American populace is relentless and growing, and when the bear awakens it will be angry for being awoken to this reality.
They will want to know "EVERYTHING." Which is another intriguing aspect to this unfolding future. If you look back at the crimes of our government during the illegal wars in Central America, and the Iran Contra scandal, you'll find names you recognize. Negroponte, Abrahms, Armitage, Rumsfeld, Lee Hamilton, etc. Even more interesting, if you look back at Iran Contra, and peel back the layers you find names that were associated with covert operations during the wars in Southeast Asia, Singlaub, etc. You learn very quickly that the corrupt figures and their quiet behind the scenes network perpetrating war crimes in our names, has been there behind the scenes pulling strings for decades.
What is different now, is that this administration brought all these conspirators and coup plotters forward to be at the head of our government. They were brought out of the shadows, no longer manipulating US foreign policy from the sidelines and shadows, but now running our government with their illegal tactics.
So, 9/11 is becoming the perfect storm. As Toto pulls back the curtain on 9/11, we find:
A) The illegal covert operations our govt. has wielded for decades, is fully capable of attacking our own people, and can no longer be ignored. Leading to the sleeping giant of American citizenry's awakening.
B) These decades of criminals who've corrupted US foreign policy, are now very public figures with records and statements that can be exposed as a full 9/11 investigation will demand.
C) The US media's complicity in this and past crimes against Americans and the world is being understood by a near majority of Americans who now know 9/11 was an inside job, and media is doing everything it can to hide that reality.
Yes, it is disturbing to see Toto pulling back the curtain of reality to show us that the "smart" "intelligent" "corporate" "military" "intelligence" flashing lights of government and media are an illusion. It is disturbing to learn that the perpetrators in our govt. and media are frail, flawed little men, with no more power than the smoke and mirror controls they've hidden behind the curtain. But, now we can walk out of the hall of mirrors, and into the light of day. We can find ways to create the world, we thought we were fighting for and giving our precious tax dollars for all along.
Exposing 9/11 lies, will be the healthiest thing that has happened to our world in decades. It will lead to realities being exposed, both horrible and wonderful. Once the lie machine is disassembled a new "real" media, will discuss the reality that a free energy solar, wind, geothermal economy is not only possible, but has been possible for many years (see "Who Killed the Electric Car," and "Too Hot to Handle" documentaries).
We will learn that globalization policies that have kept developing nations subservient to industrial nations who controlled technology and energy . . . are illusions. A free global energy economy will liberate the developing world from such dependency. Global conflicts over energy will be a thing of the past. Developed nations will be able to slash bloated and obscene defense budgets. Global media will begin to focus on solutions, rather than fear, war, and distracting obsessions and celebrity worship. The sleeping giant of world opinion will demand it.
While some fear the truth of 9/11 coming out, as a breakdown of society, I see great hope in it. I see that what the bible told us is the greatest truth for humanity, "the truth shall set you free."
Some places to find truth right now are:
www.st911.org
www.911Truth.org
www.wtc7.net
Once you visit these sights, you'll find an endless web of other truth resources. Once you awaken yourself and others . . . you will ask, "why hasn't the media looked at these facts, and asked questions?"
You will then see the curtain being pulled back every time you watch a TV news program, or radio program, or news article . . . that still pretends that 19 ragtag Moslem extremists fooled the greatest military and intelligence network in human history, being directed by a man in an isolated cave, to defy the laws of physics and bring down the first three steel reinforced skyscrapers in engineering history, using horrible pilots to fly like crack combat pilots striking three perfect bulls-eyes, enabled by the US Air Force failing in all normal defense procedures for nearly one and a half hours while hijacked commercial jets flew over the most protected air space in the world . . . with not one fighter interceptor jet arriving until it was too late.
The giant is awakening, and for those who "smell of sulfur" there will be hell to pay. For the majority of us, we will now have an opportunity to create a nation and world that we can truly be proud of, one that our maker would be proud of.
God bless America.
By William E. Douglas, Jr.
Reprint permission for this article is granted. You may publish it anywhere and everywhere. Please include the biography in any reprints.
Authors Bio: By William E. Douglas, Jr., who is author of "The Amateur Parent – A Book on Life, Death, War & Peace, and Everything Else in the Universe." Bill has been a guest columnist for the Kansas City Star, The Business Journal, and other media worldwide. His past essays include, "Exposing the 9/11 Conspiracy Wingnuts," "The Explosion of the 9-11 Truth Movement -- US Media's Dirty Little Secret," "Good Night, and Good Luck - WMD, NIST, Popular Mechanics, 9/11 and Media Crimes" and also "Why the Jewish Community Should Demand 9/11 Truth."
More from Ricahrd S, aka Commie Curmudgeon
Commie Curmudgeon
I had suggested to Richard that we organize a group of like minded Jewish people to publicly and in concert renounce our "right to return" to Israhell (virtual Israhelli citizenship). I also suggested that the world is worse off for the demise of the Soviet Union and that people like Noam Chomsky who were opponents of the USSR deserve some level of blame or "credit" if they prefer for the present state of the world.
I said what many people think - that "The Empire" is an American/Jewish Empire and that Chomsly, as a 9/11 gatekeeper is part of the Jewish misinformation machine.
Richard is good for a quick response. I hope he gets on this one pronto too.
Here is Richard's reply in black and my response in red.--
Eugene,
I didn't say Chomsky was perfect or he was my god or anything. I haven't kept up with some of his more recent views (I was more interested with what he was writing in the '90s, and I've also been influenced by other writers, thinkers, etc.). However, I'm not sure I agree with your main criticisms of him...
Chomsky, like Coburn still upholds the ridiculous "magic bullet" theory of the Kennedy Assasination. He denies that JFK was about to pull out of Vietnam.
I think that between about 1921 and 1990, anybody would have been justified in rooting against the USSR.
You and Adolf Hitler.
I don't believe in an entirely "lesser evil" philosophy whereby you lend all your support to one awful system in the hopes that it will counter the other.
That's not my theory. The USSR was flawed and filled with internal contradictions (in other words, real and of this world), not "horrible" like US imperialism, murderers of millions is.
If the world was worse off after the collapse of the USSR empire, then part of the fault for that was the willingness of leftists all along to lend support to the evils and incompetence of the state capitalism which took over the USSR rather than make enough effort to build or support something different, a more real socialism or communism.
"A more real communism as found in........" (please fill in the dots, Richard.)
Though clearly, the major powers were stacked against anyone who tried; we can be reminded of that by the present anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956,
Name ten Hugarian "refugees from communism" who were activists in the movement against the Vietnam war, or for African American civil rights and self determination. Name ten who were active in the revolutionary uprisings in France in 1968. The Hungarian uprising was against socialism, real or make believe. It was for US imperialism. Show me the progressives, revolutionaries or even Greens who came to the West from that uprising.
as we were reminded not too long ago by the anniversary of the Spanish Civil War (given the impressive experiments that the anarchists built during this conflict, for a brief time).
Regarding the present situation, I don't look at things in terms of the US/Jewish empire. I look at them in terms of the empire of a reigning faction of the international ruling class that has been centered in the U.S. (though it's far more global than it used to be) and which both controls and occupies the U.S. government.
Richard, is or is not the US Congress Israeli occupied territory? Is or is not the US media overwhelmingly run by Jewish people? Do or do not Jews essentially bankroll the Democratic Party while also contributing heavily to the Republicans? Were or were not Jewish people in charge of the Pentagon until quite recently? Explain if you can the coincidence of one Jew leaving as head of the Federal Reserve to be prelaced by another, while Wolfowitz is moved from the Pentagon to head the World Bank? Do you think only nazis notice these things? Do you think it escapes soldiers in Iraq that none of their buddies are Jews yet so many of the war's cheerleaders are? Do you really think it's even politic to play ostrich on this?
I think it is wrong to look at this as a "Jewish" empire, which really puts collective guilt on all people of Jewish heritage. That just plays into the irrational thinking (centered on race, religion, tribe...) that makes it so easy for the ruling classes to turn poor and working people against each other (at the same time that they continually massacre poor and working people).
The British Empire was British even though most British people were not involved in decision making, or actively carrying out most decisions of the empire's management. Most were however junior (or even junior junior) partners in the loot. Most Jews do quite well under the Empire. Most are loath to oppose it (with quite a few very noble and honorable exceptions). Much of the official opposition and gatekeeper left groups have a large number of Jewish adherents at all levels. Many of these individuals are very honorably motivated but in fact work against their own honorable intentions. As an ex Worker's World member I can testify to this personally. What matters though are not the motives but the damage done.
Regarding your comment about the "true murderers of the people at the World Trade Center," I believe the true murderers were some 19 or so terrorists who were connected to Osama Bin Laden. I have never seen a rational argument for any other point of view. I have noticed in your blog that you might be leaning toward some 9-11 conspiracy theories, but I have no patience for that sort of thing. My stand on the 9-11 conspiracy theories is the same as what you'll find in that fine political newsletter where you advertise your blog, i.e., CounterPunch.
If I could afford to advertise my blog on CNN I would do that too. I do hope to bring attention among progressives to the depredations of the "Child Protective" monster that is loose on the ghetto streets of New York and every other city. Frankly I think it is a sign of gate keeping how the left assiduously ignores the rampant disregard for human rights, the traumatization of Black and Hispanic youths and destruction of their families done by the government in this guise, but I digress.Yours is the ridiculous conspiracy theory. Counterpunch is a day late and a dollar short to be now trying to steer wrong and speak "coherently" (and after all these years) to the growing minority turning into majority who are seeing through the offical lies and who are awakening to the viscious and implacably evil nature of the rulers of the empire. People who think it's all a game and who dream of perfect solutions to horrible problems that are really those of others anyway might find comfort in thinking that the technicians and hands on management of the Empire are incompetents who will be easy to blow away from power, or that they play by some sort of Marquis of Queensbury rules. The majority of New Yorkers and the majority of progressive thinking people in this country have left these daydreams behind.
I think it is a waste of time and energy and a terrible distraction to focus on far-fetched conspiracy theories;
Such as that it was an accident that the US Air Force stood down on September eleventh, that no high rise before or since has collapsed into its own footprints save through controlled demolition, of that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center (at five in the evening when the planes struck other buildings and not 7 WTC at nine in the morning) was caused by a kerosene fire in the basement or the lobby. Such as that 19 men led by a fanatic (CIA asset) in a cave in Afghanistan could make the US Air Force stand down.
besides, these ideas run counter to spreading a real, critical revolutionary critique of the true nature of (ruling) class interests in the capitalist system.
Those interests being to maintain power, to hold on to the loot and to expand their reach by any and all means fair or foul.
And many of these theories lend too much credit to the U.S. government and other ruling powers for their supposedly perfect ability to control what's going on. Yes, they manipulated the propaganda marvelously, and they had been building that up long before 9-11. But the only reason that most of them didn't stop 9-11 was that their whole system of government and "management" of the society is blundering, chaotic, and incompetent.
They do mange to massacre Muslims with competent effiency and to efficiently administer torture to non citizens. They do manage to make money quite well, don't they?
There will be no hope of changing things if people don't recognize that there really are many weaknesses to be found in the ability of these rulers, and that chaos, shortisghtedness and incompetence are always a central feature of "leadership" in the capitalist system.
I have no trouble renoucning any Israeli citizenship,
But it isn't on your "to do list?"
but I would also put a distance between myself and the actions of "my" government. I don't believe that because I was born in the U.S., I should feel any attachment to these "leaders" whom I never voted for, whom I never supported, and whose policies I have always opposed (even to the point of withstanding tear gas and pepper spray being fired at me constantly during the anti-corporate-globalization protests).
Bravo for that Richard. When I was younger and didn't have a bad back I also inhaled tear gas, fought cops, got arrested and beaten by the pigs and so forth. Looking back on it I'm proud but also regret the misleadership of the false flag opposition groups that helped make these sacrifices almost futile (not in the sense of leaving and upholding a legacy of struggle and sacrifice.)
Personally, I'd like to renounce U.S. citizenship with all that implies, but if I were not a U.S. citizen, I could be sent to a detention center (which might happen to me someday anyway) or I could be stuck doing jobs that are far less tolerable than what I do already, at even less than the annual income that I earn.
The "but" says it all Richard. There are advantages to being a citizen and more so to being a white one. One thing you can count on is more or less even protection of the law. I mean most likely the cops don't stop and frisk you for looking supiscious and that ACS doesn't come banging on your door at three am to wake up your kids and examine them based on some anonymous tip. I imagine you have not much or any "Jewish Community" networking options so I won't throw that in.
There are groups of Jews that specifically focus on fighting against Israeli policies. JATO (Jews Against The Occupation) is one. Maybe you'd like to get in touch with them. (I don't know all that much about what they do, though I think I've met members. You can probably find their Web site by googling...)
But if you can get together your own group of Jews to go to renounce Israeli citizenship... I can't imagine having any argument with that.
I had suggested to Richard that we organize a group of like minded Jewish people to publicly and in concert renounce our "right to return" to Israhell (virtual Israhelli citizenship). I also suggested that the world is worse off for the demise of the Soviet Union and that people like Noam Chomsky who were opponents of the USSR deserve some level of blame or "credit" if they prefer for the present state of the world.
I said what many people think - that "The Empire" is an American/Jewish Empire and that Chomsly, as a 9/11 gatekeeper is part of the Jewish misinformation machine.
Richard is good for a quick response. I hope he gets on this one pronto too.
Here is Richard's reply in black and my response in red.--
Eugene,
I didn't say Chomsky was perfect or he was my god or anything. I haven't kept up with some of his more recent views (I was more interested with what he was writing in the '90s, and I've also been influenced by other writers, thinkers, etc.). However, I'm not sure I agree with your main criticisms of him...
Chomsky, like Coburn still upholds the ridiculous "magic bullet" theory of the Kennedy Assasination. He denies that JFK was about to pull out of Vietnam.
I think that between about 1921 and 1990, anybody would have been justified in rooting against the USSR.
You and Adolf Hitler.
I don't believe in an entirely "lesser evil" philosophy whereby you lend all your support to one awful system in the hopes that it will counter the other.
That's not my theory. The USSR was flawed and filled with internal contradictions (in other words, real and of this world), not "horrible" like US imperialism, murderers of millions is.
If the world was worse off after the collapse of the USSR empire, then part of the fault for that was the willingness of leftists all along to lend support to the evils and incompetence of the state capitalism which took over the USSR rather than make enough effort to build or support something different, a more real socialism or communism.
"A more real communism as found in........" (please fill in the dots, Richard.)
Though clearly, the major powers were stacked against anyone who tried; we can be reminded of that by the present anniversary of the Hungarian Uprising of 1956,
Name ten Hugarian "refugees from communism" who were activists in the movement against the Vietnam war, or for African American civil rights and self determination. Name ten who were active in the revolutionary uprisings in France in 1968. The Hungarian uprising was against socialism, real or make believe. It was for US imperialism. Show me the progressives, revolutionaries or even Greens who came to the West from that uprising.
as we were reminded not too long ago by the anniversary of the Spanish Civil War (given the impressive experiments that the anarchists built during this conflict, for a brief time).
Regarding the present situation, I don't look at things in terms of the US/Jewish empire. I look at them in terms of the empire of a reigning faction of the international ruling class that has been centered in the U.S. (though it's far more global than it used to be) and which both controls and occupies the U.S. government.
Richard, is or is not the US Congress Israeli occupied territory? Is or is not the US media overwhelmingly run by Jewish people? Do or do not Jews essentially bankroll the Democratic Party while also contributing heavily to the Republicans? Were or were not Jewish people in charge of the Pentagon until quite recently? Explain if you can the coincidence of one Jew leaving as head of the Federal Reserve to be prelaced by another, while Wolfowitz is moved from the Pentagon to head the World Bank? Do you think only nazis notice these things? Do you think it escapes soldiers in Iraq that none of their buddies are Jews yet so many of the war's cheerleaders are? Do you really think it's even politic to play ostrich on this?
I think it is wrong to look at this as a "Jewish" empire, which really puts collective guilt on all people of Jewish heritage. That just plays into the irrational thinking (centered on race, religion, tribe...) that makes it so easy for the ruling classes to turn poor and working people against each other (at the same time that they continually massacre poor and working people).
The British Empire was British even though most British people were not involved in decision making, or actively carrying out most decisions of the empire's management. Most were however junior (or even junior junior) partners in the loot. Most Jews do quite well under the Empire. Most are loath to oppose it (with quite a few very noble and honorable exceptions). Much of the official opposition and gatekeeper left groups have a large number of Jewish adherents at all levels. Many of these individuals are very honorably motivated but in fact work against their own honorable intentions. As an ex Worker's World member I can testify to this personally. What matters though are not the motives but the damage done.
Regarding your comment about the "true murderers of the people at the World Trade Center," I believe the true murderers were some 19 or so terrorists who were connected to Osama Bin Laden. I have never seen a rational argument for any other point of view. I have noticed in your blog that you might be leaning toward some 9-11 conspiracy theories, but I have no patience for that sort of thing. My stand on the 9-11 conspiracy theories is the same as what you'll find in that fine political newsletter where you advertise your blog, i.e., CounterPunch.
If I could afford to advertise my blog on CNN I would do that too. I do hope to bring attention among progressives to the depredations of the "Child Protective" monster that is loose on the ghetto streets of New York and every other city. Frankly I think it is a sign of gate keeping how the left assiduously ignores the rampant disregard for human rights, the traumatization of Black and Hispanic youths and destruction of their families done by the government in this guise, but I digress.Yours is the ridiculous conspiracy theory. Counterpunch is a day late and a dollar short to be now trying to steer wrong and speak "coherently" (and after all these years) to the growing minority turning into majority who are seeing through the offical lies and who are awakening to the viscious and implacably evil nature of the rulers of the empire. People who think it's all a game and who dream of perfect solutions to horrible problems that are really those of others anyway might find comfort in thinking that the technicians and hands on management of the Empire are incompetents who will be easy to blow away from power, or that they play by some sort of Marquis of Queensbury rules. The majority of New Yorkers and the majority of progressive thinking people in this country have left these daydreams behind.
I think it is a waste of time and energy and a terrible distraction to focus on far-fetched conspiracy theories;
Such as that it was an accident that the US Air Force stood down on September eleventh, that no high rise before or since has collapsed into its own footprints save through controlled demolition, of that the collapse of Seven World Trade Center (at five in the evening when the planes struck other buildings and not 7 WTC at nine in the morning) was caused by a kerosene fire in the basement or the lobby. Such as that 19 men led by a fanatic (CIA asset) in a cave in Afghanistan could make the US Air Force stand down.
besides, these ideas run counter to spreading a real, critical revolutionary critique of the true nature of (ruling) class interests in the capitalist system.
Those interests being to maintain power, to hold on to the loot and to expand their reach by any and all means fair or foul.
And many of these theories lend too much credit to the U.S. government and other ruling powers for their supposedly perfect ability to control what's going on. Yes, they manipulated the propaganda marvelously, and they had been building that up long before 9-11. But the only reason that most of them didn't stop 9-11 was that their whole system of government and "management" of the society is blundering, chaotic, and incompetent.
They do mange to massacre Muslims with competent effiency and to efficiently administer torture to non citizens. They do manage to make money quite well, don't they?
There will be no hope of changing things if people don't recognize that there really are many weaknesses to be found in the ability of these rulers, and that chaos, shortisghtedness and incompetence are always a central feature of "leadership" in the capitalist system.
I have no trouble renoucning any Israeli citizenship,
But it isn't on your "to do list?"
but I would also put a distance between myself and the actions of "my" government. I don't believe that because I was born in the U.S., I should feel any attachment to these "leaders" whom I never voted for, whom I never supported, and whose policies I have always opposed (even to the point of withstanding tear gas and pepper spray being fired at me constantly during the anti-corporate-globalization protests).
Bravo for that Richard. When I was younger and didn't have a bad back I also inhaled tear gas, fought cops, got arrested and beaten by the pigs and so forth. Looking back on it I'm proud but also regret the misleadership of the false flag opposition groups that helped make these sacrifices almost futile (not in the sense of leaving and upholding a legacy of struggle and sacrifice.)
Personally, I'd like to renounce U.S. citizenship with all that implies, but if I were not a U.S. citizen, I could be sent to a detention center (which might happen to me someday anyway) or I could be stuck doing jobs that are far less tolerable than what I do already, at even less than the annual income that I earn.
The "but" says it all Richard. There are advantages to being a citizen and more so to being a white one. One thing you can count on is more or less even protection of the law. I mean most likely the cops don't stop and frisk you for looking supiscious and that ACS doesn't come banging on your door at three am to wake up your kids and examine them based on some anonymous tip. I imagine you have not much or any "Jewish Community" networking options so I won't throw that in.
There are groups of Jews that specifically focus on fighting against Israeli policies. JATO (Jews Against The Occupation) is one. Maybe you'd like to get in touch with them. (I don't know all that much about what they do, though I think I've met members. You can probably find their Web site by googling...)
But if you can get together your own group of Jews to go to renounce Israeli citizenship... I can't imagine having any argument with that.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Still more about the name change
Richard S. said...
Eugene,
I had no idea you'd take my desire to "offend" young anarchists, etc., so seriously. And being a libertarian socialist myself (which category does include anarchism, though I'm more of a libertarian Marxist/communist these days), I would have to agree that these ideas present the only hope for humanity: "socialism or barbarism"...and I would include most anarchism in the area of socialism.
However, the anarchist scene and related activist scenes do have their problems and pretensions. Maybe you haven't been exposed to them the way I have...
I didn't say that I, personally, thought being Jewish was uncool; I said that it was considered uncool in certain trendy "radical" circles...or more accurately, it's just not considered as cool as other cultural identities. I'm not kidding that people are out there pretending to be Native Americans or proclaiming Paganism because they think it's the most anarchist religion. And I don't think that making a little joke about the pretensions of young radicals is going to make a difference in whether the revolution ever comes.
But, on second thought, while I would never say that being culturally Jewish is uncool, actually believing in the religion is. Or believing in any religion, since religions are just these old fairy tales that cause much more harm than good. Though I'm not going to be prejudiced against someone for being religious, even if I would like to persuade people against such foolishness.
Chomsky? I named my cat after him in 1996. He was a big influence in terms of getting me interested in anarchism and council communism. He's not perfect, but I much prefer Chomsky to Michael Parenti.
1:55 AM
I say to Richard-
Richard,
Richard-
Is the world better off without the USSR? I think not. Chomsky was among those who "rooted" against the USSR. That whole crew deserves to take a bow now that there is no counterweight to the US/Jewish Empire.
Yes, Jewish Empire. I say that because the US is the homeland to a powerful, wealthy Jewish community whose members function as leaders, "brains" Priests (Holocaust religion) and mouthpieces of the Empire. To the extent Chomsky gave his little nudge to help bring about the post-Soviet world I put him in that group. So you see, I disagree with President Hugo Chavez.
And of course Chomsky defends Israel's "right to exist" and shields Israel and its American Jewish masters (they bankroll the most beligerent Zionist groups like Likud and tie Israel to the US and the US to Israel) from responsibilty for the Iraq war. Chomsky is also a gate keeper who defends the true murderers of the people at the World Trade Center. I could go on and on. Perhaps you've pressed a button.
Why not us two not fight though and do something progressive we can both agree on?
I've renounced on this blog my "right of return" to Israhell. I ought to make that more official and formal, as has been suggested to me here as well. Why not we get a group of like minded Jews together and go to the Israeli mission/consulate here in NYC and deliver either a unified statement or individual ones renouncing any shred or shadow of "Israeli citizenship" Having that right to return so called makes one an Israeli citizen in a sense, like it or not.
Not that I am so gung ho USA and all, but the US is where I was born and where I have legal citizenship rights. If I want another citizenship I'll go apply for it. It won't be Israhelli citizenship, that's a guarantee.
I would name my dog after Chomsky, if I had a dog.
Eugene,
I had no idea you'd take my desire to "offend" young anarchists, etc., so seriously. And being a libertarian socialist myself (which category does include anarchism, though I'm more of a libertarian Marxist/communist these days), I would have to agree that these ideas present the only hope for humanity: "socialism or barbarism"...and I would include most anarchism in the area of socialism.
However, the anarchist scene and related activist scenes do have their problems and pretensions. Maybe you haven't been exposed to them the way I have...
I didn't say that I, personally, thought being Jewish was uncool; I said that it was considered uncool in certain trendy "radical" circles...or more accurately, it's just not considered as cool as other cultural identities. I'm not kidding that people are out there pretending to be Native Americans or proclaiming Paganism because they think it's the most anarchist religion. And I don't think that making a little joke about the pretensions of young radicals is going to make a difference in whether the revolution ever comes.
But, on second thought, while I would never say that being culturally Jewish is uncool, actually believing in the religion is. Or believing in any religion, since religions are just these old fairy tales that cause much more harm than good. Though I'm not going to be prejudiced against someone for being religious, even if I would like to persuade people against such foolishness.
Chomsky? I named my cat after him in 1996. He was a big influence in terms of getting me interested in anarchism and council communism. He's not perfect, but I much prefer Chomsky to Michael Parenti.
1:55 AM
I say to Richard-
Richard,
Richard-
Is the world better off without the USSR? I think not. Chomsky was among those who "rooted" against the USSR. That whole crew deserves to take a bow now that there is no counterweight to the US/Jewish Empire.
Yes, Jewish Empire. I say that because the US is the homeland to a powerful, wealthy Jewish community whose members function as leaders, "brains" Priests (Holocaust religion) and mouthpieces of the Empire. To the extent Chomsky gave his little nudge to help bring about the post-Soviet world I put him in that group. So you see, I disagree with President Hugo Chavez.
And of course Chomsky defends Israel's "right to exist" and shields Israel and its American Jewish masters (they bankroll the most beligerent Zionist groups like Likud and tie Israel to the US and the US to Israel) from responsibilty for the Iraq war. Chomsky is also a gate keeper who defends the true murderers of the people at the World Trade Center. I could go on and on. Perhaps you've pressed a button.
Why not us two not fight though and do something progressive we can both agree on?
I've renounced on this blog my "right of return" to Israhell. I ought to make that more official and formal, as has been suggested to me here as well. Why not we get a group of like minded Jews together and go to the Israeli mission/consulate here in NYC and deliver either a unified statement or individual ones renouncing any shred or shadow of "Israeli citizenship" Having that right to return so called makes one an Israeli citizen in a sense, like it or not.
Not that I am so gung ho USA and all, but the US is where I was born and where I have legal citizenship rights. If I want another citizenship I'll go apply for it. It won't be Israhelli citizenship, that's a guarantee.
I would name my dog after Chomsky, if I had a dog.
Wednesday, October 25, 2006
More about the name change
I got this comment to my post about changing the name of this blog:
Richard S. said...
I liked the old name of your blog because you mentioned several things that are considered kind of uncool in trendy radical political blogging activist circles. I'm especially aware of this because I know too many young anarchists. And I could relate to those things...
Fat - Yeah, I'm getting a bit fat myself
Old - Well, I'm just 45 years old myself, but pretty damn old compared to all those young anarchists, and most of the bloggers too. So I welcome blogs by people who are old.
Jewish guy - Yeah, I'm also considered a Jewish guy, and also strictly because of heritage, not belief. And I know that being Jewish just isn't that cool in radical circles and hasn't been for a while. In the anarchist crowd, there are actually a lot of neo-Pagans, Buddhists and fake Native Americans (many of whom are probably also Jewish by heritage).
Lives in the Projects - No, not cool if you are a fat old Jewish guy. Actually, I like this part because I'm pretty sure I've been past the projects you live in, and on a clear day with a couple of hours free, I could probably walk over there from my place in Mott Haven.
Oh, well, I guess I'll change the name of the blog in my template soon...
10:45 PM
My reply is:
Richard, I'm not trying to tick off young radicals, revolutionaries, anarchists, people of that stripe. I like them and see them as a big part of the hope of the human race right now with all the foibles they might have.
Jewish is uncool? Tell that to President Hugo Chavez who pushed a book by a Jew named Chomsky from the rostrum of the United Nations over worldwide television, internet and radio. Tell it to the people who went out and bought that book on Chavez' recommendation. Now I have my problems with Chomsky and I would have looked for a book maybe by Michael Parenti instead, but I'm sure the Chomsky book has a lot of truths in it.
I think good people have reason to be a bit stand offish to things Jewish, and to people who talk about anti semitism. I used to be someone who thought he was a good progressive but I was really acting as an apologist for "The Jews" and was still caught up in the Judaism of "world's foremost innocent victims" and saw the world through that prism.
Maybe you are a bit still in that camp?
The last time I looked Jewish people were still active in the forefront of left activist groups and movements.
I picked the name originally because by golly I am a fat old Jewish guy who lives in the projects and I thought the name would stick in people's minds. If I thought that people whose hearts are in the right place wold be offended, well I wouldn{t have done it.
I'm mulling over the notion of letting this blog just sit for the links and reviving Democrats In Airplanes.
Richard S. said...
I liked the old name of your blog because you mentioned several things that are considered kind of uncool in trendy radical political blogging activist circles. I'm especially aware of this because I know too many young anarchists. And I could relate to those things...
Fat - Yeah, I'm getting a bit fat myself
Old - Well, I'm just 45 years old myself, but pretty damn old compared to all those young anarchists, and most of the bloggers too. So I welcome blogs by people who are old.
Jewish guy - Yeah, I'm also considered a Jewish guy, and also strictly because of heritage, not belief. And I know that being Jewish just isn't that cool in radical circles and hasn't been for a while. In the anarchist crowd, there are actually a lot of neo-Pagans, Buddhists and fake Native Americans (many of whom are probably also Jewish by heritage).
Lives in the Projects - No, not cool if you are a fat old Jewish guy. Actually, I like this part because I'm pretty sure I've been past the projects you live in, and on a clear day with a couple of hours free, I could probably walk over there from my place in Mott Haven.
Oh, well, I guess I'll change the name of the blog in my template soon...
10:45 PM
My reply is:
Richard, I'm not trying to tick off young radicals, revolutionaries, anarchists, people of that stripe. I like them and see them as a big part of the hope of the human race right now with all the foibles they might have.
Jewish is uncool? Tell that to President Hugo Chavez who pushed a book by a Jew named Chomsky from the rostrum of the United Nations over worldwide television, internet and radio. Tell it to the people who went out and bought that book on Chavez' recommendation. Now I have my problems with Chomsky and I would have looked for a book maybe by Michael Parenti instead, but I'm sure the Chomsky book has a lot of truths in it.
I think good people have reason to be a bit stand offish to things Jewish, and to people who talk about anti semitism. I used to be someone who thought he was a good progressive but I was really acting as an apologist for "The Jews" and was still caught up in the Judaism of "world's foremost innocent victims" and saw the world through that prism.
Maybe you are a bit still in that camp?
The last time I looked Jewish people were still active in the forefront of left activist groups and movements.
I picked the name originally because by golly I am a fat old Jewish guy who lives in the projects and I thought the name would stick in people's minds. If I thought that people whose hearts are in the right place wold be offended, well I wouldn{t have done it.
I'm mulling over the notion of letting this blog just sit for the links and reviving Democrats In Airplanes.
Saturday, October 21, 2006
After Pat's Birthday
After Pat's Birthday
By Kevin Tillman
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article153 65.htm
Editor's note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in
2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed
in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005,
has written a powerful, must-read document.
10/20/06 "TruthDig" -- -- It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and
elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation
I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks
with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy
of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be
thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier
would leave us without a voice… until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat
to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or
was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade
uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need
to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an
insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that Somehow our elected
leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up
secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly
holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything,
secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became
the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a
five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send
it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an
extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or
fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a
faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad
in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle
50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the
seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal
invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people
and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the
courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are
allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is
tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is
tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it
is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the
world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and
distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been
replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous,
malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people.
So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as
traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely,
they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity
and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked,
unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice.
People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.
Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman, Kevin Tillman
************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
By Kevin Tillman
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article153 65.htm
Editor's note: Kevin Tillman joined the Army with his brother Pat in
2002, and they served together in Iraq and Afghanistan. Pat was killed
in Afghanistan on April 22, 2004. Kevin, who was discharged in 2005,
has written a powerful, must-read document.
10/20/06 "TruthDig" -- -- It is Pat's birthday on November 6, and
elections are the day after. It gets me thinking about a conversation
I had with Pat before we joined the military. He spoke about the risks
with signing the papers. How once we committed, we were at the mercy
of the American leadership and the American people. How we could be
thrown in a direction not of our volition. How fighting as a soldier
would leave us without a voice… until we get out.
Much has happened since we handed over our voice:
Somehow we were sent to invade a nation because it was a direct threat
to the American people, or to the world, or harbored terrorists, or
was involved in the September 11 attacks, or received weapons-grade
uranium from Niger, or had mobile weapons labs, or WMD, or had a need
to be liberated, or we needed to establish a democracy, or stop an
insurgency, or stop a civil war we created that Somehow our elected
leaders were subverting international law and humanity by setting up
secret prisons around the world, secretly kidnapping people, secretly
holding them indefinitely, secretly not charging them with anything,
secretly torturing them. Somehow that overt policy of torture became
the fault of a few "bad apples" in the military.
Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a
five-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send
it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an
extra pad in a helmet. It's interesting that a soldier on his third or
fourth tour should care about a drawing from a five-year-old; or a
faded sticker on a car as his friends die around him; or an extra pad
in a helmet, as if it will protect him when an IED throws his vehicle
50 feet into the air as his body comes apart and his skin melts to the
seat.
Somehow the more soldiers that die, the more legitimate the illegal
invasion becomes.
Somehow American leadership, whose only credit is lying to its people
and illegally invading a nation, has been allowed to steal the
courage, virtue and honor of its soldiers on the ground.
Somehow those afraid to fight an illegal invasion decades ago are
allowed to send soldiers to die for an illegal invasion they started.
Somehow faking character, virtue and strength is tolerated.
Somehow profiting from tragedy and horror is tolerated.
Somehow the death of tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of people is
tolerated.
Somehow subversion of the Bill of Rights and The Constitution is
tolerated.
Somehow suspension of Habeas Corpus is supposed to keep this country safe.
Somehow torture is tolerated.
Somehow lying is tolerated.
Somehow reason is being discarded for faith, dogma, and nonsense.
Somehow American leadership managed to create a more dangerous world.
Somehow a narrative is more important than reality.
Somehow America has become a country that projects everything that it
is not and condemns everything that it is.
Somehow the most reasonable, trusted and respected country in the
world has become one of the most irrational, belligerent, feared, and
distrusted countries in the world.
Somehow being politically informed, diligent, and skeptical has been
replaced by apathy through active ignorance.
Somehow the same incompetent, narcissistic, virtueless, vacuous,
malicious criminals are still in charge of this country.
Somehow this is tolerated.
Somehow nobody is accountable for this.
In a democracy, the policy of the leaders is the policy of the people.
So don't be shocked when our grandkids bury much of this generation as
traitors to the nation, to the world and to humanity. Most likely,
they will come to know that "somehow" was nurtured by fear, insecurity
and indifference, leaving the country vulnerable to unchecked,
unchallenged parasites.
Luckily this country is still a democracy. People still have a voice.
People still can take action. It can start after Pat's birthday.
Brother and Friend of Pat Tillman, Kevin Tillman
************ ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ********* ***
Name Change
I've changed the name of this blog. Why?
1- Everyone tells me I'm not old.
2- I'm losing weight bit by bit.
3- I expect in a year or so not to be living in the projects any more.
4- My being of Jewish parents should not be any measure as to the validity of things I say. I claim no special right to be anti Zionist, or to be critical of Judaism and the Jewish community that any other person on earth of any other background does not have.
The URL will remain the same because I do not want to disrupt links to the site.
1- Everyone tells me I'm not old.
2- I'm losing weight bit by bit.
3- I expect in a year or so not to be living in the projects any more.
4- My being of Jewish parents should not be any measure as to the validity of things I say. I claim no special right to be anti Zionist, or to be critical of Judaism and the Jewish community that any other person on earth of any other background does not have.
The URL will remain the same because I do not want to disrupt links to the site.
Saturday, October 14, 2006
"This Day In History"
I have a feature on this blog that is called "This Day In History." Featured today is a "balanced" article about the Jewish-Israeli massacre of Palestinian Arabs in the town of Qibya in 1953.
If it needs to be said, the article, although it tried to be "neutral" or "fair", has to and cannot help but condemn Israel for that massacre long ago. The massacre was carried out by a later to be Prime Minister and a war criminal many times over named Ariel Sharon, later to be the butcher of many, many people and never to be called to account, as the United States government itself piously demanded all those 53 years ago. Even though this butcher is now in a coma and has been able to reach old age justice could still be served by a public "calling to account" of Sharon, Zionism, the organized Jewish community and all others who support Israeli crimes.
If it needs to be said, the article, although it tried to be "neutral" or "fair", has to and cannot help but condemn Israel for that massacre long ago. The massacre was carried out by a later to be Prime Minister and a war criminal many times over named Ariel Sharon, later to be the butcher of many, many people and never to be called to account, as the United States government itself piously demanded all those 53 years ago. Even though this butcher is now in a coma and has been able to reach old age justice could still be served by a public "calling to account" of Sharon, Zionism, the organized Jewish community and all others who support Israeli crimes.
Socialist newspaper dragged to court by Shady Billionaire Ira Rennert
Involved articles on ‘robbing’ pensions
NY judge throws out charges against WW
By Deirdre Griswold
Editor of Workers World
New York
Published Oct 13, 2006 8:20 PM
We’ve said all along that we have the right to call the robber barons by their true name. Now a court has affirmed it.
Judge Edward H. Lehner of the Supreme Court of the State of New York has dismissed defamation charges filed by the Renco Group against Workers World Party and its weekly newspaper, Workers World.
This ruling should give encouragement to all who stand up and speak their minds about the ferocious assault on workers’ rights being carried out across this country.
Renco, a powerful conglomerate owned by multi-billionaire Ira Rennert, had hired an expensive Wall Street law firm to claim that articles published by WW last February were “malicious, false and defamatory.”
Judge Lehner ruled that, while the articles discussed “in an impassioned manner an area of public concern—that of alleged corporate underfunding of retirement obligations owed to workers, and how parts of corporate America are purportedly depriving workers of pension rights through bankruptcy proceedings,” they were “nonactionable opinion” protected by law.
Renco and WCI Steel pensions
The first article, published in the Feb. 23, 2006, issue of this paper, was entitled “WCI Steel bankruptcy robs workers’ pensions.” It described how the workers at WCI Steel, an Ohio company which at that time was wholly owned by Renco, faced the prospect of losing millions of dollars in pension money because Renco had taken the steel company into bankruptcy at a time when its pension fund was massively underfunded. According to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., by January 2006, the pension fund was underfunded by $117 million.
A release from the PBGC Public Affairs department, dated March 30, had explained that “Under the proposed plan of reorganization filed in federal bankruptcy court, the pension plan would have been left behind by the reorganizing steelmaker.”
A second article—”You be the judge: Is Renco robbing steelworker pensions?”—appeared in this paper a week later. It reported on the Renco Group’s threat to take legal action against the paper, and reaffirmed the opinions expressed in the first article.
Rennert, owner of Renco, owns a Long Island mansion valued at $185 million, with 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms and a 200-car parking garage. The mansion alone is worth more than the amount that had been lacking in the WCI Steel pension fund.
On Feb. 3, the New York Times reported that the PBGC appeared “poised to lay claim to Mr. Rennert’s 29-bedroom oceanfront estate, along with other assets, to make sure he delivers on hundreds of millions of dollars in pensions promised to a group of steelworkers in Ohio.”
After the WW articles and the filing of a suit by the PBGC to prevent WCI’s underfunded pension plan from being shifted to the federal pension insurance program, Renco finally at the end of March agreed to give up its ownership of WCI Steel and fully fund the pension plan. The PBGC then dropped its suit.
But Renco continued to press charges against Workers World for its articles on this struggle.
Workers World was able to obtain legal representation pro bono from the prominent media law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, which submitted two briefs to the court citing abundant case law upholding the right of journalists to use “rhetorical hyperbole”—like the phrase “robbing steelworker pensions”—in expressing their opinions.
Judge Lehner found that Workers World Party, “in its scathing criticism of the pension system, employed colorful rhetoric that is the hallmark of hyperbole.”
Renco has until November to file an appeal.
A delegation from Workers World Party recently walked an informational picket line in Warren, Ohio, with workers of WCI Steel. They now have a new owner but are still fighting, this time against reduced work crews and a subsequent rise of in-plant accidents. The workers wore tee-shirts that said prominently, “WCI Steals.”
Bankruptcy as a way to rip off workers
Renco’s attorneys based their argument on a very narrow definition of the article’s use of the word “rob.” They defined robbery as “forcible stealing” accompanied by the use of or imminent threat of physical force. This was the legal basis for Rennert’s charge that the article was “malicious, false and defamatory.”
The Workers World articles did not conjure up the ludicrous image of a multi-billionaire, armed with a pistol or a knife, waylaying workers in order to relieve them of their wallets. It put the loss of pensions facing the WCI Steel workers in the context of the broad anti-labor assault by big business in the recent period.
Declaring bankruptcy has become a tactic of choice by the super-rich and their executives. Bankruptcy laws allow them to rip up union contracts and shed contractual obligations they agreed to long ago. This trend threatens millions of workers with severe poverty and/or lack of adequate health care in their old age, even after a lifetime of hard and often dangerous work.
Workers in many industries are holding their breath these days. As the first WW article pointed out, “This is an episode in a bigger story about the widespread campaign of corporations like United Air Lines, Delphi Automotive Systems and Bethlehem Steel to use bankruptcy to steal workers’ pensions.” The full articles can be found at www.workers.org.
Spread the word!
This struggle is far from over. In the meantime, Workers World relies on its readers for support. We hope you can distribute the news of this court victory far and wide so anyone who “speaks truth to power” can take strength from it. And, whether or not Renco decides to appeal the decision, and even though our excellent lawyers are not charging for their time, we need funds to pay the thousands of dollars in court costs already incurred.
Billionaires like Rennert may think it’s easy to roll over a socialist newspaper that relies on small contributions and voluntary labor to publish every week. Make a contribution to the Workers World/Pension Defense Project and help prove them wrong.
E-mail: dgriswold@workers.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
Subscribe wwnews-subscribe@workersworld.net
Support independent news http://www.workers.org/orders/donate.php
My comments:
When you do a search on Ira Rennert like I did, you find one very unsavory seeming character. multi-billionaire Ira Rennert, and when you search his connections with the Jewish community you see one more cause of "anti Semitism" and one more reason why Jews of the current generations are fleeing connections with the organized Jewish community.
NY judge throws out charges against WW
By Deirdre Griswold
Editor of Workers World
New York
Published Oct 13, 2006 8:20 PM
We’ve said all along that we have the right to call the robber barons by their true name. Now a court has affirmed it.
Judge Edward H. Lehner of the Supreme Court of the State of New York has dismissed defamation charges filed by the Renco Group against Workers World Party and its weekly newspaper, Workers World.
This ruling should give encouragement to all who stand up and speak their minds about the ferocious assault on workers’ rights being carried out across this country.
Renco, a powerful conglomerate owned by multi-billionaire Ira Rennert, had hired an expensive Wall Street law firm to claim that articles published by WW last February were “malicious, false and defamatory.”
Judge Lehner ruled that, while the articles discussed “in an impassioned manner an area of public concern—that of alleged corporate underfunding of retirement obligations owed to workers, and how parts of corporate America are purportedly depriving workers of pension rights through bankruptcy proceedings,” they were “nonactionable opinion” protected by law.
Renco and WCI Steel pensions
The first article, published in the Feb. 23, 2006, issue of this paper, was entitled “WCI Steel bankruptcy robs workers’ pensions.” It described how the workers at WCI Steel, an Ohio company which at that time was wholly owned by Renco, faced the prospect of losing millions of dollars in pension money because Renco had taken the steel company into bankruptcy at a time when its pension fund was massively underfunded. According to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., by January 2006, the pension fund was underfunded by $117 million.
A release from the PBGC Public Affairs department, dated March 30, had explained that “Under the proposed plan of reorganization filed in federal bankruptcy court, the pension plan would have been left behind by the reorganizing steelmaker.”
A second article—”You be the judge: Is Renco robbing steelworker pensions?”—appeared in this paper a week later. It reported on the Renco Group’s threat to take legal action against the paper, and reaffirmed the opinions expressed in the first article.
Rennert, owner of Renco, owns a Long Island mansion valued at $185 million, with 29 bedrooms, 39 bathrooms and a 200-car parking garage. The mansion alone is worth more than the amount that had been lacking in the WCI Steel pension fund.
On Feb. 3, the New York Times reported that the PBGC appeared “poised to lay claim to Mr. Rennert’s 29-bedroom oceanfront estate, along with other assets, to make sure he delivers on hundreds of millions of dollars in pensions promised to a group of steelworkers in Ohio.”
After the WW articles and the filing of a suit by the PBGC to prevent WCI’s underfunded pension plan from being shifted to the federal pension insurance program, Renco finally at the end of March agreed to give up its ownership of WCI Steel and fully fund the pension plan. The PBGC then dropped its suit.
But Renco continued to press charges against Workers World for its articles on this struggle.
Workers World was able to obtain legal representation pro bono from the prominent media law firm Davis Wright Tremaine, which submitted two briefs to the court citing abundant case law upholding the right of journalists to use “rhetorical hyperbole”—like the phrase “robbing steelworker pensions”—in expressing their opinions.
Judge Lehner found that Workers World Party, “in its scathing criticism of the pension system, employed colorful rhetoric that is the hallmark of hyperbole.”
Renco has until November to file an appeal.
A delegation from Workers World Party recently walked an informational picket line in Warren, Ohio, with workers of WCI Steel. They now have a new owner but are still fighting, this time against reduced work crews and a subsequent rise of in-plant accidents. The workers wore tee-shirts that said prominently, “WCI Steals.”
Bankruptcy as a way to rip off workers
Renco’s attorneys based their argument on a very narrow definition of the article’s use of the word “rob.” They defined robbery as “forcible stealing” accompanied by the use of or imminent threat of physical force. This was the legal basis for Rennert’s charge that the article was “malicious, false and defamatory.”
The Workers World articles did not conjure up the ludicrous image of a multi-billionaire, armed with a pistol or a knife, waylaying workers in order to relieve them of their wallets. It put the loss of pensions facing the WCI Steel workers in the context of the broad anti-labor assault by big business in the recent period.
Declaring bankruptcy has become a tactic of choice by the super-rich and their executives. Bankruptcy laws allow them to rip up union contracts and shed contractual obligations they agreed to long ago. This trend threatens millions of workers with severe poverty and/or lack of adequate health care in their old age, even after a lifetime of hard and often dangerous work.
Workers in many industries are holding their breath these days. As the first WW article pointed out, “This is an episode in a bigger story about the widespread campaign of corporations like United Air Lines, Delphi Automotive Systems and Bethlehem Steel to use bankruptcy to steal workers’ pensions.” The full articles can be found at www.workers.org.
Spread the word!
This struggle is far from over. In the meantime, Workers World relies on its readers for support. We hope you can distribute the news of this court victory far and wide so anyone who “speaks truth to power” can take strength from it. And, whether or not Renco decides to appeal the decision, and even though our excellent lawyers are not charging for their time, we need funds to pay the thousands of dollars in court costs already incurred.
Billionaires like Rennert may think it’s easy to roll over a socialist newspaper that relies on small contributions and voluntary labor to publish every week. Make a contribution to the Workers World/Pension Defense Project and help prove them wrong.
E-mail: dgriswold@workers.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
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My comments:
When you do a search on Ira Rennert like I did, you find one very unsavory seeming character. multi-billionaire Ira Rennert, and when you search his connections with the Jewish community you see one more cause of "anti Semitism" and one more reason why Jews of the current generations are fleeing connections with the organized Jewish community.
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
For Whites Only
http://academic.udayton.edu/RACE/04NEEDS/affirm22.htm
Race, Racism and the Law
Speaking Truth to Power!!
Vernellia R. Randall
Professor of Law
Web Editor
Upcoming Book:
Dying While Black!
Date 2003
A Long History of Affirmative Action - For Whites
Many middle-class white people, especially those of us from the suburbs, like to think that we got to where we are today by virtue of our merit - hard work, intelligence, pluck, and maybe a little luck. And while we may be sympathetic to the plight of others, we close down when we hear the words "affirmative action" or "racial preferences." We worked hard, we made it on our own, the thinking goes, why don't 'they'? After all, the Civil Rights Act was enacted almost 40 years ago.
What we don't readily acknowledge is that racial preferences have a long, institutional history in this country - a white history. Here are a few ways in which government programs and practices have channeled wealth and opportunities to white people at the expense of others.
Early Racial Preferences
We all know the old history, but it's still worth reminding ourselves of its scale and scope. Affirmative action in the American "workplace" first began in the late 17th century when European indentured servants - the original source of unfree labor on the new tobacco plantations of Virginia and Maryland - were replaced by African slaves. In exchange for their support and their policing of the growing slave population, lower-class Europeans won new rights, entitlements, and opportunities from the planter elite.
White Americans were also given a head start with the help of the U.S. Army. The 1830 Indian Removal Act, for example, forcibly relocated Cherokee, Creeks and other eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River to make room for white settlers. The 1862 Homestead Act followed suit, giving away millions of acres of what had been Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Ultimately, 270 million acres, or 10% of the total land area of the United States, was converted to private hands, overwhelmingly white, under Homestead Act provisions.
The 1790 Naturalization Act permitted only "free white persons" to become naturalized citizens, thus opening the doors to European immigrants but not others. Only citizens could vote, serve on juries, hold office, and in some cases, even hold property. In this century, Alien Land Laws passed in California and other states, reserved farm land for white growers by preventing Asian immigrants, ineligible to become citizens, from owning or leasing land. Immigration restrictions further limited opportunities for nonwhite groups. Racial barriers to naturalized U.S. citizenship weren't removed until the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952, and white racial preferences in immigration remained until 1965.
In the South, the federal government never followed through on General Sherman's Civil War plan to divide up plantations and give each freed slave "40 acres and a mule" as reparations. Only once was monetary compensation made for slavery, in Washington, D.C. There, government officials paid up to $300 per slave upon emancipation - not to the slaves, but to local slaveholders as compensation for loss of property.
When slavery ended, its legacy lived on not only in the impoverished condition of Black people but in the wealth and prosperity that accrued to white slaveowners and their descendents. Economists who try to place a dollar value on how much white Americans have profited from 200 years of unpaid slave labor, including interest, begin their estimates at $1 trillion.
Jim Crow laws, instituted in the late 19th and early 20th century and not overturned in many states until the 1960s, reserved the best jobs, neighborhoods, schools and hospitals for white people.
The Advantages Grow, Generation to Generation
Less known are more recent government racial preferences, first enacted during the New Deal, that directed wealth to white families and continue to shape life opportunities and chances.
The landmark Social Security Act of 1935 provided a safety net for millions of workers, guaranteeing them an income after retirement. But the act specifically excluded two occupations: agricultural workers and domestic servants, who were predominately African American, Mexican, and Asian. As low-income workers, they also had the least opportunity to save for their retirement. They couldn't pass wealth on to their children. Just the opposite. Their children had to support them.
Like Social Security, the 1935 Wagner Act helped establish an important new right for white people. By granting unions the power of collective bargaining, it helped millions of white workers gain entry into the middle class over the next 30 years. But the Wagner Act permitted unions to exclude non-whites and deny them access to better paid jobs and union protections and benefits such as health care, job security, and pensions. Many craft unions remained nearly all-white well into the 1970s. In 1972, for example, every single one of the 3,000 members of Los Angeles Steam Fitters Local #250 was still white.
But it was another racialized New Deal program, the Federal Housing Administration, that helped generate much of the wealth that so many white families enjoy today. These revolutionary programs made it possible for millions of average white Americans - but not others - to own a home for the first time. The government set up a national neighborhood appraisal system, explicitly tying mortgage eligibility to race. Integrated communities were ipso facto deemed a financial risk and made ineligible for home loans, a policy known today as "redlining." Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans. More than 98% went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal support in northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100 went to African Americans.
These government programs made possible the new segregated white suburbs that sprang up around the country after World War II. Government subsidies for municipal services helped develop and enhance these suburbs further, in turn fueling commercial investments. Freeways tied the new suburbs to central business districts, but they often cut through and destroyed the vitality of non-white neighborhoods in the central city.
Today, Black and Latino mortgage applicants are still 60% more likely than whites to be turned down for a loan, even after controlling for employment, financial, and neighborhood factors. According to the Census, whites are more likely to be segregated than any other group. As recently as 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in neighborhoods with a black population of less than 1%.
Reaping the Rewards of Racial Preference
One result of the generations of preferential treatment for whites is that a typical white family today has on average eight times the assets, or net worth, of a typical African American family, according to economist Edward Wolff. Even when families of the same income are compared, white families have more than twice the wealth of Black families. Much of that wealth difference can be attributed to the value of one's home, and how much one inherited from parents.
But a family's net worth is not simply the finish line, it's also the starting point for the next generation. Those with wealth pass their assets on to their children - by financing a college education, lending a hand during hard times, or assisting with the down payment for a home. Some economists estimate that up to 80 percent of lifetime wealth accumulation depends on these intergenerational transfers. White advantage is passed down, from parent to child to grand-child. As a result, the racial wealth gap - and the head start enjoyed by whites - appears to have grown since the civil rights days.
In 1865, just after Emancipation, it is not surprising that African Americans owned 0.5 percent of the total worth of the United States. But by 1990, a full 135 years after the abolition of slavery, Black Americans still possessed only a meager 1 percent of national wealth.
Rather than recognize how "racial preferences" have tilted the playing field and given us a head start in life, many whites continue to believe that race does not affect our lives. Instead, we chastise others for not achieving what we have; we even invert the situation and accuse non-whites of using "the race card" to advance themselves.
Or we suggest that differential outcomes may simply result from differences in "natural" ability or motivation. However, sociologist Dalton Conley's research shows that when we compare the performance of families across racial lines who make not just the same income, but also hold similar net worth, a very interesting thing happens: many of the racial disparities in education, graduation rates, welfare usage and other outcomes disappear. The "performance gap" between whites and nonwhites is a product not of nature, but unequal circumstances.
Colorblind policies that treat everyone the same, no exceptions for minorities, are often counter-posed against affirmative action. But colorblindness today merely bolsters the unfair advantages that color-coded practices have enabled white Americans to long accumulate.
It's a little late in the game to say that race shouldn't matter.
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
253 West 72nd street #1711
New York, NY 10023
http://www.tadp.org
212-787-7891
Race, Racism and the Law
Speaking Truth to Power!!
Vernellia R. Randall
Professor of Law
Web Editor
Upcoming Book:
Dying While Black!
Date 2003
A Long History of Affirmative Action - For Whites
Many middle-class white people, especially those of us from the suburbs, like to think that we got to where we are today by virtue of our merit - hard work, intelligence, pluck, and maybe a little luck. And while we may be sympathetic to the plight of others, we close down when we hear the words "affirmative action" or "racial preferences." We worked hard, we made it on our own, the thinking goes, why don't 'they'? After all, the Civil Rights Act was enacted almost 40 years ago.
What we don't readily acknowledge is that racial preferences have a long, institutional history in this country - a white history. Here are a few ways in which government programs and practices have channeled wealth and opportunities to white people at the expense of others.
Early Racial Preferences
We all know the old history, but it's still worth reminding ourselves of its scale and scope. Affirmative action in the American "workplace" first began in the late 17th century when European indentured servants - the original source of unfree labor on the new tobacco plantations of Virginia and Maryland - were replaced by African slaves. In exchange for their support and their policing of the growing slave population, lower-class Europeans won new rights, entitlements, and opportunities from the planter elite.
White Americans were also given a head start with the help of the U.S. Army. The 1830 Indian Removal Act, for example, forcibly relocated Cherokee, Creeks and other eastern Indians to west of the Mississippi River to make room for white settlers. The 1862 Homestead Act followed suit, giving away millions of acres of what had been Indian Territory west of the Mississippi. Ultimately, 270 million acres, or 10% of the total land area of the United States, was converted to private hands, overwhelmingly white, under Homestead Act provisions.
The 1790 Naturalization Act permitted only "free white persons" to become naturalized citizens, thus opening the doors to European immigrants but not others. Only citizens could vote, serve on juries, hold office, and in some cases, even hold property. In this century, Alien Land Laws passed in California and other states, reserved farm land for white growers by preventing Asian immigrants, ineligible to become citizens, from owning or leasing land. Immigration restrictions further limited opportunities for nonwhite groups. Racial barriers to naturalized U.S. citizenship weren't removed until the McCarran-Walter Act in 1952, and white racial preferences in immigration remained until 1965.
In the South, the federal government never followed through on General Sherman's Civil War plan to divide up plantations and give each freed slave "40 acres and a mule" as reparations. Only once was monetary compensation made for slavery, in Washington, D.C. There, government officials paid up to $300 per slave upon emancipation - not to the slaves, but to local slaveholders as compensation for loss of property.
When slavery ended, its legacy lived on not only in the impoverished condition of Black people but in the wealth and prosperity that accrued to white slaveowners and their descendents. Economists who try to place a dollar value on how much white Americans have profited from 200 years of unpaid slave labor, including interest, begin their estimates at $1 trillion.
Jim Crow laws, instituted in the late 19th and early 20th century and not overturned in many states until the 1960s, reserved the best jobs, neighborhoods, schools and hospitals for white people.
The Advantages Grow, Generation to Generation
Less known are more recent government racial preferences, first enacted during the New Deal, that directed wealth to white families and continue to shape life opportunities and chances.
The landmark Social Security Act of 1935 provided a safety net for millions of workers, guaranteeing them an income after retirement. But the act specifically excluded two occupations: agricultural workers and domestic servants, who were predominately African American, Mexican, and Asian. As low-income workers, they also had the least opportunity to save for their retirement. They couldn't pass wealth on to their children. Just the opposite. Their children had to support them.
Like Social Security, the 1935 Wagner Act helped establish an important new right for white people. By granting unions the power of collective bargaining, it helped millions of white workers gain entry into the middle class over the next 30 years. But the Wagner Act permitted unions to exclude non-whites and deny them access to better paid jobs and union protections and benefits such as health care, job security, and pensions. Many craft unions remained nearly all-white well into the 1970s. In 1972, for example, every single one of the 3,000 members of Los Angeles Steam Fitters Local #250 was still white.
But it was another racialized New Deal program, the Federal Housing Administration, that helped generate much of the wealth that so many white families enjoy today. These revolutionary programs made it possible for millions of average white Americans - but not others - to own a home for the first time. The government set up a national neighborhood appraisal system, explicitly tying mortgage eligibility to race. Integrated communities were ipso facto deemed a financial risk and made ineligible for home loans, a policy known today as "redlining." Between 1934 and 1962, the federal government backed $120 billion of home loans. More than 98% went to whites. Of the 350,000 new homes built with federal support in northern California between 1946 and 1960, fewer than 100 went to African Americans.
These government programs made possible the new segregated white suburbs that sprang up around the country after World War II. Government subsidies for municipal services helped develop and enhance these suburbs further, in turn fueling commercial investments. Freeways tied the new suburbs to central business districts, but they often cut through and destroyed the vitality of non-white neighborhoods in the central city.
Today, Black and Latino mortgage applicants are still 60% more likely than whites to be turned down for a loan, even after controlling for employment, financial, and neighborhood factors. According to the Census, whites are more likely to be segregated than any other group. As recently as 1993, 86% of suburban whites still lived in neighborhoods with a black population of less than 1%.
Reaping the Rewards of Racial Preference
One result of the generations of preferential treatment for whites is that a typical white family today has on average eight times the assets, or net worth, of a typical African American family, according to economist Edward Wolff. Even when families of the same income are compared, white families have more than twice the wealth of Black families. Much of that wealth difference can be attributed to the value of one's home, and how much one inherited from parents.
But a family's net worth is not simply the finish line, it's also the starting point for the next generation. Those with wealth pass their assets on to their children - by financing a college education, lending a hand during hard times, or assisting with the down payment for a home. Some economists estimate that up to 80 percent of lifetime wealth accumulation depends on these intergenerational transfers. White advantage is passed down, from parent to child to grand-child. As a result, the racial wealth gap - and the head start enjoyed by whites - appears to have grown since the civil rights days.
In 1865, just after Emancipation, it is not surprising that African Americans owned 0.5 percent of the total worth of the United States. But by 1990, a full 135 years after the abolition of slavery, Black Americans still possessed only a meager 1 percent of national wealth.
Rather than recognize how "racial preferences" have tilted the playing field and given us a head start in life, many whites continue to believe that race does not affect our lives. Instead, we chastise others for not achieving what we have; we even invert the situation and accuse non-whites of using "the race card" to advance themselves.
Or we suggest that differential outcomes may simply result from differences in "natural" ability or motivation. However, sociologist Dalton Conley's research shows that when we compare the performance of families across racial lines who make not just the same income, but also hold similar net worth, a very interesting thing happens: many of the racial disparities in education, graduation rates, welfare usage and other outcomes disappear. The "performance gap" between whites and nonwhites is a product not of nature, but unequal circumstances.
Colorblind policies that treat everyone the same, no exceptions for minorities, are often counter-posed against affirmative action. But colorblindness today merely bolsters the unfair advantages that color-coded practices have enabled white Americans to long accumulate.
It's a little late in the game to say that race shouldn't matter.
Peace.
Michael Santomauro
Editorial Director
253 West 72nd street #1711
New York, NY 10023
http://www.tadp.org
212-787-7891
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
hugo chavez vrs bush
Hugo Chavez Has A Way With Words. He Tells It Like it Is.
Also check out the famous documentary about the failed coup against Hugo Chavez and the uprising of the poor that stopped it on the website "New York Bolivarian Group"
Hugo Chavez Has A Way With Words. He Tells It Like it Is.
Also check out the famous documentary about the failed coup against Hugo Chavez and the uprising of the poor that stopped it on the website "New York Bolivarian Group"
Sunday, October 08, 2006
Some Changes
1- I've quit the Togethernet newsgroup. I just don't have time to read through or debate just plain racist garbage that comes along with what is useful in that group, my opinions are really quite distinct from the leader of the group, Israel Shamir (and too many of the messages) though I respect Shamir's personal courage and intellect. If I had nothing to do I might continue to indulge and I have no principled opinion that racists and pro Nazis shouldn't be debated, I just don't have the time and don't want to appear in any way to be in accord with that particular strain of "anti Zionism." I feel I have to differentiate myself from people who believe that David Duke and his Stormfront website (which I think consists mainly of pimply faced boys who excite themselves and each other with racist white supremacist online fantasies) are a positive force in the world, or that Hitler and Nazi Germany represented what was the more correct side of World War Two, as opposed to that of the USSR (that's not really irrelevant and not so ancient).
2- The taxi game is getting rougher contrary to my expectations. I have to leave my home earlier each day in order to assure myself of the opportunity of working each afternoon. Probaby it will ease up a bit after New Year's but for now that's the game: Lots of competition for taxis and therefore for access to work among casual daily lease drivers like me.
3- Marbella and I plan to visit Venezuela this winter. She hasn't seen her sisters, her cousins or dear friends in more than ten years (and they want to see her, meet me and see how her children have grown) and in fact until I came into her life she didn't even have a telephone to call them or receive calls from them with. She's now free to go there and to come back to New York where at least for the time being the lives of her children and husband are centered. That's going to cost $ that I have to go out in a taxi nightly to troll for and it puts more restrictions on my time and forces me to decide what is frivolous and what is not frivolous.
4- Amidst all this I am becoming active in the New York City Bolivarian group to the extent I can. Now my life is deeply connected with Venezuea and with the U.S.A.and I feel I owe some of my efforts to helping counter the anti Venezuela propaganda and sentiment that can ultimately lead to or be used to justify an attack and/or economic warfare against Venezuela. The two peoples, Americans and Venezuelans have only to gain from a mutually repectful relationship of commerce and mutual aid in the model of Venezuela's assistance with low cost heating oil for some of America's poor and its offer to render assistance to what was the abandoned City of New Orleans. I know that if my wife Marbella, her children and other Venezuelans I have met are typical of that nation then it is a nation of wonderful people.
2- The taxi game is getting rougher contrary to my expectations. I have to leave my home earlier each day in order to assure myself of the opportunity of working each afternoon. Probaby it will ease up a bit after New Year's but for now that's the game: Lots of competition for taxis and therefore for access to work among casual daily lease drivers like me.
3- Marbella and I plan to visit Venezuela this winter. She hasn't seen her sisters, her cousins or dear friends in more than ten years (and they want to see her, meet me and see how her children have grown) and in fact until I came into her life she didn't even have a telephone to call them or receive calls from them with. She's now free to go there and to come back to New York where at least for the time being the lives of her children and husband are centered. That's going to cost $ that I have to go out in a taxi nightly to troll for and it puts more restrictions on my time and forces me to decide what is frivolous and what is not frivolous.
4- Amidst all this I am becoming active in the New York City Bolivarian group to the extent I can. Now my life is deeply connected with Venezuea and with the U.S.A.and I feel I owe some of my efforts to helping counter the anti Venezuela propaganda and sentiment that can ultimately lead to or be used to justify an attack and/or economic warfare against Venezuela. The two peoples, Americans and Venezuelans have only to gain from a mutually repectful relationship of commerce and mutual aid in the model of Venezuela's assistance with low cost heating oil for some of America's poor and its offer to render assistance to what was the abandoned City of New Orleans. I know that if my wife Marbella, her children and other Venezuelans I have met are typical of that nation then it is a nation of wonderful people.
Friday, October 06, 2006
I'm ecstatic because my wife is now a legal resident of my country.
On Wednesday Marbella and I went for our interview with the Homeland Security folks who now run the immigration service in the US of A. We both sort of erroneously and fearfully stereotyped the gentleman who interviewed us based on our impressions of his appearance and ethnicity.
Pleasantly surprised were we. I keep learning how wrong I can be.
Not that he was any piece of cake but we were clearly a married couple that has a family and I clearly can communicate with and understand my wife even though she does not speak English. He was fair and he gave her her temporary residence based upon my petition.
Now, our advisor had told us sort of last minute that Marbella should go to NYPD headquarters and get a Certificate of Good Conduct. Me being 60 years old, I cannot do errands in the daytime and then go drive a taxicab all night, so I took off Monday night. Tuesday was the night before the interview so I wanted to be well rested and at my best so I took off Tuesday night. The interview was on Wednesday and we came home in the afternoon. I was too tired to even consider driving a taxicab all night.
When I came to work Thursday night no one said anything to me but I was assigned a taxi I'll call a penitence taxi, that brings to mind a certain song by one Adam Sandler.
I managed to survive the night a bit more tired and a bit less flush with cash than I would have liked but none the worse for wear. Driving taxi for a fleet is like that.
Pleasantly surprised were we. I keep learning how wrong I can be.
Not that he was any piece of cake but we were clearly a married couple that has a family and I clearly can communicate with and understand my wife even though she does not speak English. He was fair and he gave her her temporary residence based upon my petition.
Now, our advisor had told us sort of last minute that Marbella should go to NYPD headquarters and get a Certificate of Good Conduct. Me being 60 years old, I cannot do errands in the daytime and then go drive a taxicab all night, so I took off Monday night. Tuesday was the night before the interview so I wanted to be well rested and at my best so I took off Tuesday night. The interview was on Wednesday and we came home in the afternoon. I was too tired to even consider driving a taxicab all night.
When I came to work Thursday night no one said anything to me but I was assigned a taxi I'll call a penitence taxi, that brings to mind a certain song by one Adam Sandler.
I managed to survive the night a bit more tired and a bit less flush with cash than I would have liked but none the worse for wear. Driving taxi for a fleet is like that.
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