A Republic, If You Can Keep It

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by Scott Horton

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Congressional investigations on various fronts are now being obstructed at every step by the Bush Administration. Word began circulating during the winter that Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who personally developed an astonishing lapse of memory with respect to any matter of interest to Congress, had authorized political appointees at the Justice Department to begin coaching political appointees in other agencies in the fine art of obstruction. They were told first that with less than two years remaining in the administration’s term, this was a time game. Therefore they should never make a prompt response, but rather should delay and seek more time. Then they should respond in a halfway fashion, offering less than the information that Congress was looking for, but what the department or agency in question thought it would serve their purposes to furnish to Congress. And then we saw ever more curious efforts at running out the clock. Oh, that official is out on vacation and can’t respond to your queries until after he’s back and has time. Or simply: we won’t allow that employee to appear and answer questions. You can’t make us. We don’t have to give reasons. The obstruction passed from crafty to crude. It has become obstruction of justice. Read more



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False Flag Fever

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by Jayne Gardener

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Do I trust my government? The only words I can say that would adequately and accurately answer that question are absolutely not!

I don’t trust them at all and haven’t for quite some time now. What sane person would?

While I will freely admit that I hated the Clintons, two of the most evil people to ever occupy the Whitehouse, in my opinion, I am even less of a fan of Bush and Co., despite the fact that I wanted him to win both times he ran for election, not so much because I thought he was so wonderful but because I preferred him over the alternative.

I also was foolish enough to believe he is a conservative, and naively unaware of the fact that he is a Christian Zionist. I didn’t understand things then as clearly as I do now, and after almost eight years of his distastrous presidency I see that he is nothing but a puppet of the Zionist co-conspirators in his administration, both Jewish and Christian. I pray for the day when he and his merry band of Israel-first Neo-Con clowns are gone. Read more



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Of Crazies, Neocons and the Enemy Within

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by Manual Valenzuela

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Beginnings

An all too familiar and ominous echo is reverberating through the American landscape, once more blasted into the airwaves, and our minds, through the Ministry of Propaganda and its merry bunch of sycophants and stenographers. For yet another consecutive year since three monolithic towers were demolished, imploded and systemically brought down onto their own footprints in a catalyzing event unleashing a new American century, Americans are hearing the fiery rhetoric of imminent danger, a cocktail of fear, terror and warmongering fed our enemy-addicted culture, aimed both at stirring conflict with Iran and conditioning our minds into accepting the coming attack on yet another Muslim nation that poses no threat to the mighty Empire.

For the Enemy Within is hard at work concocting the trigger-happy bogeyman Americans are always too eager to declare war upon, and they are working overtime, using their control of the print, radio and television media, to condition us into accepting their version of reality. Yes, the dreaded neocons are once more circling this nation like vultures, flying high above the dying carcass of freedom and democracy, ready to plunge down to Earth for a mighty feast. The reviled neocons, that plague that refuses to die, that pestilence that seemingly only increases in number, that nest of rats that lingers in our midst, is once more contorting truth and creating reality, once more beating the drums of war in continuation of their war song. The Enemy Within is softening us up, readying our minds, preparing us into accepting yet one more blitzkrieg of evil, criminality and mass murder. Read more



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Slaves to Christ and Compassion Unite: Free Markets Must Prevail

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by Jason Miller

[Warning: Satire Ahead]

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“Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.”

-John Maynard Keynes

If you’re nodding your head in agreement with Keynes and expecting validation of your opinion as you read this piece, you’re in for a rude awakening.

Forget the humanitarian, bleeding heart nonsense. Let’s reflect on the words of Thomas Sowell instead:

“Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on ‘income distribution,’ the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”

We live in reality ladies and gentlemen. Not some utopian fantasy dreamt up by the likes of idealistic dreamers like Marx and Engels. Read more



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A Guide to Understanding the US-Ruled World System

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MAPPING THE DYNAMICS OF EMPIRE AND DOMESTIC DECAY.
Rulers and Ruled in the US Empire: Bankers, Zionists, Militants (Clarity Press: Atlanta, 2007).
This book by James Petras* provides a comprehensive guide to the systemic dimensions of the US empire.

A Guide to Understanding the US-Ruled World System

A brilliant and succinct guide to the systemic dimensions of the US Empire: the social forces which rule it, the politico-economic and military means whereby US domination is assured, and the current state and possibilities of resistance.

Expanding upon his highly successful book, The Power of Israel in the United States (now available in translation in Japanese, Indonesian, German, Italian and Arabic), Petras reviews how financial capital dominates the US economy, and sets the parameters for political debate on the US role in the world economy and its implementation.

Questions of war and peace in the Middle East, however, are set not by oil interests or by finance capital, but by the Israel-Zionist power configuration, which exerts tremendous leverage over Congress, the mass media and the executive branch. This conflict of interests within the US ruling elite has led to a mounting schism. In pushing the US to engage in the disastrous Iraq war and promoting a further potentially catastrophic assault against Iran, the Zionist/militarist sector of the ruling elite has come into conflict with the interests of US finance capital, which seeks to entrench itself worldwide through the global liberalization of trade. Read more



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A Force for Evil?

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As I stated at a Manchester festival debate on Saturday, religion is the lunatic fringe of human thought - scores are murdered daily in the name of faith.

by AC Grayling*

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I don’t know whether there was intentional irony in holding a debate on the question, “Is religion a force for good in the modern world?” last Saturday, July 7, rather than some other day, 7/7 being one of the iconic dates relating to contemporary religion-inspired mass murder, but no one mentioned it from either the platform or the floor during the debate’s course. (You can listen to a recording of the debate here.)

That, in its way, is an interesting fact: we are conscious that the families and friends of those murdered in London in the 7/7 atrocity each have a life sentence of memory to bear because of it, yet the murderers did no lasting damage to the body of society as such, illustrating the futility and pointlessness of such acts, which in the end hurt individuals alone - the victims, and those who grieve - and also the cause and beliefs in whose name the atrocity was committed. For the world has changed: now when people do vile things in the name of their religion, prompted and encouraged by their interpretation of it, screaming the name of their deity as they do it, what can the reaction be but disgust, directed both at the contemptible actors themselves and the world-view they invoke. Read more



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The Road Home

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A NYT Editorial

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It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.

At first, we believed that after destroying Iraqs government, army, police and economic structures, the United States was obliged to try to accomplish some of the goals Mr. Bush claimed to be pursuing, chiefly building a stable, unified Iraq. When it became clear that the president had neither the vision nor the means to do that, we argued against setting a withdrawal date while there was still some chance to mitigate the chaos that would most likely follow.

While Mr. Bush scorns deadlines, he kept promising breakthroughs after elections, after a constitution, after sending in thousands more troops. But those milestones came and went without any progress toward a stable, democratic Iraq or a path for withdrawal. It is frighteningly clear that Mr. Bushs plan is to stay the course as long as he is president and dump the mess on his successor. Whatever his cause was, it is lost. Read more



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Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Personal Gratification: “Here There Be Monsters”

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by Jason Miller

“America does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.”

-John Quincy Adams

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While it certainly was not his intent, Adams’ assertion serves to remind us of a truth revealed by vast oceans of tears, torrential rivers of blood, and formidable piles of human remains. Leaving murder, mayhem, and misery in its wake, America does “go abroad,” but not, as Adams noted, “in search of monsters to destroy.” What Adams failed to perceive, despite living in the midst of the Native American genocide and the abject evil of chattel slavery, is that America is the monster.

Yet like most monsters that exist outside the boundaries of imagination, the printed word, celluloid, or digital imagery, the United States and its denizens ostensibly appear rather harmless and mundane. In fact, it would probably be more accurate to say that a fair number of people still perceive us as downright heroic, cloaked as we are in our beguiling raiment of freedom and democracy. Read more



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Once Upon America

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“No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices.”

Edward R. Murrow

by John Cory

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And so it goes. The 4th of July is here with its parades and “what America means to me” essays, and picnics and fireworks, and all those pretty speeches about freedom and democracy and the true meaning of Independence Day. But it is all a facade. A lie.

Modern America now spies on its citizens, conducts warrantless wiretaps, suspends habeas corpus, creates “free speech zones” to corral protestors out of sight of sensitive royal eyes, and politicizes the very justice system meant to protect people’s rights by turning it into a fraternity of God-fearing Republican conservatism. Neocon America rewards hate speech with celebrity, reviles the very immigration that built this country, and sells out to the highest lobbyist while poisoning its people. Preemptive war trumps truth, and death is glorified by those who never have to sacrifice an ounce of flesh. America has become the personal ATM machine of Bush and the GOP while their corporate cronies line their pockets with the lives of our loved ones. Read more



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“Justice for All”: Just a Sop for the Masses

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by Alice Cherbonnier*

We feel sorrow and shame for our country, which has strayed so far from the ideals on which it was founded that it hardly seems fitting that we celebrate the Fourth of July at all.

*Ms. Cherbonnier is the managing editor of The Baltimore Chronicle.

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On this nation’s Independence Day, when we’re reminded to celebrate our freedoms, let’s all pause to consider those freedoms. Are we as free and equal under the law as we were before the year 2000? Many of us, wincing under the weight of the USA PATRIOT Act, think not.

President George W. Bush’s announcement yesterday that he has commuted the prison sentence of Lewis “Scooter” Libby shows his contempt for this nation’s justice system. Of course he can override a perfectly correct federal judge’s sentence: he sees himself as the “decider,” the supreme being. He has followed this pattern throughout his time in the White House. He has shown his contempt for the legislative system with his over 750 “signing statements” delimiting and even effectively nullifying laws duly passed by Congress (the elected representatives of the people, remember?), and his contempt for the executive system, so clear in his failure to enforce duly enacted laws and regulations that he disagrees with. Why shouldn’t Bush also subvert the justice system to throw a sop to one of his friends (especially to someone who might otherwise squawk to the press if incarcerated)? Read more



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Anwaar’s articles appear simultaneously here at Truth Spring and at Soul Vibes in The Pakistan Tribune.


US loses its status as economic world power
DAVOS, Switzerland, 2008
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