Will the Empire end in Good Leadership or Blood?

"The silver lining is that we manage this [transition] with good leadership, consistent, sustained good leadership ... it has to be twenty to twenty-five years of good leadership. Where we gonna find that with our political process?"

"Think about 2000, I sat there as a member of the Republican party and I said to myself, My god, three hundred million people in this country and all we can come up with is Al Gore and George W. Bush! My god, how do we change that? I think that's part of the problem, that we have got to have sustained leadership. We've got to have good leadership and we've got to begin meeting these challenges."

"If we want oil, if we want gas, if we want it for our allies -- one of the things that wasn't mentioned about Mohammed Mossadeq, in '53 Truman didn't want to do it, Truman was adamantly opposed to it. Truman didn't like the CIA very much. Read his editorial in the Washington Post, December 22, 1963, right after Kennedy was assassinated. Truman says, I didn't recognize the CIA I created, that ain't the CIA I created."

"One of the reasons Eisenhower changed his mind, because Eisenhower came in opposed also, one of the reasons was a guy by the name of Allen Dulles at the CIA and a guy by the name of Winston Churchill who'd come back to power in the UK. And both were essentially saying not just that the Communists were coming ... which was kind of farcical but they were saying the Marshall Plan, the Marshall Plan and England and England. Because this money was huge, coming from the AIOC into the coffers of the Europeans and part into England. And you needed cheap oil to fuel the recovery of England and the recovery of Europe after that very cataclysmic war for them. We were the only nation essentially that was unscathed. The rest of Europe and Japan were ruined, they had to start over again. So that was part of the motivation."

"If part of the motivation is that we have to go after oil and gas in the world then, by god, we better start telling the American people about this, shouldn't we? And we should give the American people, including you here tonight, a right to vote on this! And you should have the right to say, that's not the way we want to do it."

"I believe the blueprint is the better way to do it, I believe that we should deal with world leaders, that the marketplace ... ought to designate where this goes and if it starts running out and we haven't made the transition fast enough to the basket of energy resources that we're gonna have to have it administered somehow and you don't administer -- as I was looking at doing in war planning in the US Pacific Command in the mid-'eighties by mounting the Arabian Peninsula with five million American soldiers, taking it over, putting the oil wells under the UN in a trusteeship and administering them for the world. That's not the way to do it! You need to get talking beforehand, you need to get dealing diplomatically beforehand, you need to work on the problem. You do not need bombs, bullets and bayonets! And I'm a soldier up here telling you because soldiers die, soldiers get wounded. I tell my students that the most fateful decision a President can make is the decision to send young boys and young girls to die for state purposes. And something we forget, to kill others for state purposes. Even by DoD's estimate we've killed one hundred thousand in Iraq. I think it's more like three hundred thousand. We have sent the greatest refugee problem into Syria and Jordan that the world confronts right now ... and where do you see it in an American newspaper? No one is reporting it."

"How do we Americans get out of this mess? This fiscal mess, this war instrument, the highest use mess, this business of presidents thinking that the only disciplined instrument of national power they have lives in the Pentagon? It isn't going to be because of President Obama, it isn't going to be because of national security adviser Jim Jones, it isn't going to be because of secretary Clinton, it's only going to happen if we Americans say we're fed up with it. It's only going to happen if we begin to stop doing what we've been doing for the past, I don't know, my lifetime, and I've been right there with you. We've been so damned apathetic about our government."

..."And we have allowed power to be used and misused in this country, particularly since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger. It's been going on for a long time ... Where is the debate going on, where is the discussion going on? It isn't in the Congress of the United States. There are people over there who do not even realize that we are bankrupt. They think we can continue to print money because they've been printing money for so long that that is a lifestyle for them! The only way this is going to change is from the ground up. And we will be, let me say as cynically as I can, probably the first democratic republic possessed of an empire, commercial or territorial or otherwise, to resurrect itself from the ashes because history says we're going down. That's what history says. I dare you to name a single empire in human history that has survived. It is nowhere written in stone that the American empire will be exceptional."

"So it's about time we get busy and do everything in our power to make sure that whatever is happening happens so that our posterity which we seem to have forgotten about, so that our posterity survives with some prospects for the future ... Collectively [our children] are going to have a lower standard of living. That's the reality. Whether they turn that around so that their generation [and future] generations after them even have a place that is free, that is marked by democratic principles, that looks like a well-governed republic that isn't dominated by its military, that isn't physically irresponsible, it's up to them. That's the challenge they have. We have not left them, will not leave them a great opportunity in that regard. The challenge is much greater than it was for my generation or the generations before that, in my view."

"This fiscal crisis ... is more profound than 1929 and we will see the results of that slowly over the next five to ten years. It is going to be difficult, it is going to be challenging, it is going to be extremely hard. And Afghanistan and Iraq are going to be solved in that sense ... all of these things are coming, all of these things can be dealt with, all of these things can be managed with good leadership. But most of all they require a vigilant, alert, constantly-watching , constantly-overseeing electorate. And that may be the greatest challenge of all."

US Ambassador expelled from Venezuela

CARACAS, September 11.—Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez has ordered the U.S. ambassador in Caracas, Patrick Duddy, to leave the country within 72 hours, a measure that was adopted in solidarity with Bolivia, and at the same time informed Washington of Venezuela’s decision to cut off supplies of crude oil to that nation, the AFP reported.


Evo & Hugo

President Hugo Chávez"As a gesture of solidarity with Bolivia, from this moment on, the Yankee ambassador in Caracas has 72 hours to leave Venezuela," the president said during an election campaign rally in Puerto Cabello, 120 kilometers west of the capital, for his party’s candidate for regional elections in November.

The Bolivarian leader expressed his support for Bolivian President Evo Morales, whose government is experiencing a crisis that has been incited by reactionary forces in the country. Morales had also expelled Washington’s representative in La Paz, accusing him of being behind the opposition’s maneuvers.

Chavéz’ announcement came just hours after the Venezuelan administration presented taped recordings of conversations and denounced an attempted coup d’état against Chávez, planned by active and retired military officers with the full support of the U.S. administration.

Likewise, the President announced that he would halt oil sales to the United States if the Latin American country is to become the target of an attack by the White House.

Speaking live on television, Chávez also gave instructions to his Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro to arrange for the immediate return of the Venezuelan ambassador in the United States.

The president stated that "when there is a new government in the United States," Venezuela will send an ambassador but as long as President Bush is in power, Caracas will have no diplomatic representation in that country.

The Bolivarian leader placed responsibility for the tense situation on the U.S. government, which is "behind all the maneuvers of political destabilization currently underway in Latin America," he stated.

Translated by Granma International •

Venezuela Expels Human Rights Watch Director for “Meddling Illegally”
September 19th 2008, by James Suggett - Venezuelanalysis.com

Mérida, September 19, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- The Venezuelan government expelled two employees of the U.S-based NGO Human Rights Watch (HRW), Americas Director José Miguel Vivanco and Americas Deputy Director Daniel Wilkinson, after the two presented a report that praised Venezuela's 1999 Constitution but harshly criticized the "government's willful disregard for the institutional guarantees and fundamental rights that make democratic participation possible."


Vivanco

In a press release, the Venezuelan Foreign Relations Ministry said Vivanco and Wilkinson "have done violence to the constitution" and "assaulted the institutions" of Venezuela by "meddling illegally in the internal affairs of our country."

The ministry also said the HRW report is linked to the "unacceptable strategy of aggression" of the United States government. The ministry said the expulsion of Vivanco and Wilkinson was in the interest of "national sovereignty" and "the defense of the people against aggressions by international factors."

Constitutional lawyer and National Assembly Deputy Carlos Escarrá explained to the press, "The constitution of Venezuela expresses that a foreigner with a tourist visa cannot make commentaries against the President of the Republic."

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolás Maduro warned in a press conference that "any other foreigner... who attempts to come to Venezuela and use our democratic order, with the total freedom of expression, to assault our institutions in a rude manner... will receive the same reply."

HRW's report, titled "A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela," says the two-day coup against President Hugo Chávez in April 2002 was the "most dramatic setback" to the human rights guarantees of the 1999 Constitution, but that the Chávez administration has since used the coup as a pretext to undercut those rights.

Specifically, the government has engaged in "discrimination on political grounds," "open disregard for the principle of separation of powers," and has "undercut journalists' freedom of expression, workers' freedom of association, and civil society's ability to promote human rights in Venezuela," according to the report, which bases its conclusions on interviews conducted over the past two years.

Expulsión del Director de Human Rights Watch (En Español)

Russians targeted with Bioweapons, ban Human Tissue Export

Technovelgy.com

The Russian Federal Customs Service (FSB) has banned the export from the country of all human medical biological materials, from hair to blood samples, as of May 28th. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, the ban was prompted by a report submitted to Vladimir Putin that alleges "genetically engineered biological weapons" are under development in the West.

The report was prepared by the FSB after investigation of the medical facilities in Russia that participate in research trials in association with Western pharmaceutical companies and universities ...

Read the story here and here

Ha, Ha, Ha, America

To watch Video click here on Link

What in the hell is this? Apparently, it's some sort of hybrid music video/documentary/comedy/Chinese propaganda thing featuring electro beats and an arrogant text narrator who taunts our weak American work ethic. Equal parts mesmerizing, hysterical and humiliating, this video is a sure sign that our American empire is on the ropes

War and the Police State: Complicity of the American People

Donna J. Thorne likes Patrick Henry too.

She quotes:"We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth…. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those, who having eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not..? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it might cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know.. it — now." Patrick Henry, 1775. cont

I'll give you another quote, Donna J. Thorne. "They that would give up essential liberty for a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -- Benjamin Franklin.

And a third quote from the immortal Che Lynch Guevara:

"If we, in a small point of the world map, are able to fulfill our duty and place at the disposal of this struggle whatever little of ourselves we are permitted to give: our lives, our sacrifice, and if some day we have to breathe our last breath on any land, already ours, sprinkled with our blood let it be known that we have measured the scope of our actions and that we only consider ourselves elements in the great army of the proletariat but that we are proud of having learned from the Cuban Revolution, and from its maximum leader, the great lesson emanating from his attitude in this part of the world: "What do the dangers or the sacrifices of a man or of a nation matter, when the destiny of humanity is at stake."

"Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind: the United States of America. Wherever death may surprise us, let it be welcome, provided that this, our battle cry, may have reached some receptive ear and another hand may be extended to wield our weapons and other men be ready to intone the funeral dirge with the staccato singing of the machine-guns and new battle cries of war and victory."

With Thanks to Maitreya & Nemesis News

Guerilla Girl (La guerrillera)
Frank Piasecki Poulsen
Rebelión

Un viaje a la selva colombiana para rodar la historia del ingreso y adiestramiento de una joven en las FARC: así es "Guerrilla Girl", documental producido por Zentropa, la firma de Lars von Trier, y recién estrenado en Dinamarca.

Escondido en la profundidad de la selva colombiana se encuentra un campo de entrenamiento de las Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC). El director danés Frank P. Poulsen y su equipo cruzaron la frontera clandestinamente y lograron llegar a este campamento móvil para documentar la preparación de Isabel, de 21 años, para luchar contra el régimen.

En tres meses, Isabel, que acaba de despedirse de su familia, su compañero, sus amigos, la casa y el estudio, se entrenará como combatiente guerrillera. Para ella es difícil adaptarse a la dura vida de la selva. Se demora en la ducha, y tampoco le resulta fácil sacrificar una res preñada. El cineasta demuestra un instinto notable. La cámara está presente siempre para captar todo, desde la fabricación de un fusil de palo hasta las charlas sobre las medidas anticonceptivas obligatorias para las mujeres.

La correspondencia de Isabel y su diario personal son utilizados para ilustrar la difícil transición de una vida normal a las filas de las FARC. A pesar de todo, Isabel supera el arduo entrenamiento con la ayuda de la comandancia y de sus camaradas.

El impactante documental muestra el rostro humano de los jóvenes reclutas de las FARC, blanco de la guerra de los Estados Unidos contra el "terrorismo". El equipo de Rumko estuvo a punto de ser interceptado por fuerzas militares gubernamentales, cuando se desplazaba fuera de las montañas, con su material filmico comprometedor.

"La gente se pregunta por qué Isabel dejó todo atrás por unirse a las FARC", dice el director de la película, Poulsen. "Bueno, el presidente de Colombia es un narcogángster. Su régimen asesina a la gente que se atreve a criticar su política. A lo mejor la pregunta debe ser: ¿qué estamos haciendo apoyando a este tipo?", agrega.

A journey into the Colombian forest to record the history of the induction and training of a young woman in the FARC, Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia: "Guerrilla Girl", a documentary produced by Lars von Trier’s Zentropa and recently released in Denmark.

Hidden in the depth of the Colombian forest is a FARC training camp. The Danish director, Frank P. Poulsen and his film-crew clandestinely cross the border to arrive at a mobile camp to document the preparation of 21-year-old Isabel to fight against the regime.

In three months, Isabel, who has taken leave of her family, her partner, her friends, her home and her studies, will train to be a fighting guerillera. It’s difficult for her to adapt to the tough life of the forest. She stays too long in the shower, nor finds it easy to slaughter a pregnant cow. The film director demonstrates a remarkable instinct. The camera catches everything from the manufacture of a wooden gun to chats about female contraception

Isabel’s correspondence and her personal diary are used to illustrate the difficult transition from a normal life into FARC. In spite of everything, Isabel manages the arduous training with the aid of her command and her comrades.

This impressive documentary shows the human face of FARC’s young recruits, targets in the US “war against terrorism.” Having moved outside the mountains with compromising film material, Rumko’s team were on the verge of being intercepted by government troops.

“People ask why Isabel left everything behind to join FARC,” says Poulsen, the film’s director. “Well, the President of Colombia is a narco-gangster. His regime assassinates those who dare to criticize his policies. Perhaps it would be better to ask: what are they doing supporting such people?"

GUERRILLERA
Uploaded by CUBA_SOCIALISTA

Link

"I ain’t the world’s best writer, ain’t the world’s best speller
But when I believe in somethin,'’ I’m the loudest yeller"
( WOODY GUTHRIE)

Lies My Teacher Told Me:
Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong

by James W. Loewen

Not too long ago a shocking realization hit me. Though I was an attentive history student in high school, and later earned a college degree in American history, I realized I knew absolutely nothing about the Vietnam War. How could that happen, I wondered?

How could someone who spent so much time studying history in school, and even more time studying it outside of school, be ignorant of such an important event? And more importantly, if it had slipped by me, what about others like me?

James Loewen provides the answer in Lies My Teacher Told Me. It turns out that 90 percent of high school history classes never even mention Vietnam – and those that do paint an incomplete and misleading picture. Loewen believes American students are being systematically lied to and misled in their history classes.

His book chronicles the litany of outrages perpetrated in those history classes and in our educational system as a whole. Though its unabashed left-wing perspective makes it unlikely to appeal to our country’s conservative educational institutions, Loewen’s book should be a wake-up call for anyone interested in history or education.

History, ultimately, is a selection of facts, and Loewen argues convincingly that current textbooks have chosen to include all the wrong facts. It is no wonder that most students find history boring when it is taught as merely a succession of presidents, with a pleasant little war every now and then to spice things up.

But shouldn’t students learn all aspects of our history? Instead of being spared the unpleasantness of racial violence, shouldn’t they learn that over a three-year period in the 1860s, an average of one African-American per day was murdered in Hinds County, Mississippi?

Shouldn’t American students learn that president Woodrow Wilson was a vicious racist and that the Federal government, which was integrated when he took over, had been purged of African Americans by the time he left office?

Shouldn’t they learn about the government’s kidnapping and deportation of thousands of Mexican-Americans – including many who had been born in the United States – in the 1930s? Shouldn’t they learn about the concentration camps in which Japanese Americans were confined during World War II?

Shouldn’t they learn about Paul Robeson, perhaps the most talented performing artist in American history, whose acting and singing career was prematurely ended by McCarthyism? Shouldn’t they learn that America’s foreign policy during the 20^th century consisted of violently overthrowing the government of any country that refused to bow to U.S. corporate interests? Shouldn’t they learn that the CIA, acting on behalf of the United Fruit Company, hunted down and murdered one of the century’s most important revolutionaries, Che Guevara, in 1967?

But there are no villains, Loewen points out, in American history textbooks. No American has ever done anything wrong. Bad things just “happen.” In high school history there are slaves but no slaveholders, wars but no warmongers, crimes but no criminals. After all, it might confuse students to learn that Thomas Jefferson raped slave women, or that Abraham Lincoln often used the word “nigger.”

Textbooks do a good job of covering up for American heroes, but in doing so they rob education of its greatest potential lesson: that in life, there are no easy answers. George Orwell’s 1984 was supposed to be satire, but the prediction he made in it – that history would be falsely rewritten by the government in order to remove its most distasteful aspects – has become literally true.

American history as taught in public schools is propaganda of the highest order, just like that once used in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. The result of all this, sadly, is that one can learn far more about how our society works from a single Ani DiFranco song than from an entire U.S. History textbook.

Why is history taught like this? The main reason is that textbook publishers, to ensure that their books will make money, self-censor their works to remove all material that might remotely offend someone. Because textbook adoption committees in most states are dominated by a powerful and well-organized coalition of right-wing activists, books dealing honestly with issues of race and social class have no hope for adoption. In most high schools history is not a form of education, but of indoctrination.

Textbooks’ sunny, blindly patriotic view of history discourages activism by promoting the falsehood that if one does nothing, everything will turn out fine in the end. A textbook then becomes merely a tool for preservation of the status quo – it keeps the Haves in control, and assures the Have-nots that there is no need to worry.

In Texas, state law explicitly states that “textbooks shall not contain material which serves to undermine authority.” Perhaps this is why Texas students are never taught that theirs is the only state that has fought three wars – the Texas War for Independence, the Mexican War of 1845, and the Civil War – to preserve slavery.

The most common theme in American history textbooks is the idea that the United States is a land of opportunity, and that anyone, no matter how poor, can succeed through hard work – an idea that is pure hogwash. Authors conveniently omit the statistics showing that the United States has the world’s greatest disparity between rich and poor, and that opportunities for social mobility are far fewer here than in most other countries.

Textbooks fail to chronicle how corporate influence over government has steadily increased since 1900. They ignore the fact that in order to aspire to our nation’s highest office – the presidency – one must be born white, male, and rich.

But history textbooks are utterly unconcerned with such social issues. U.S. history as taught in textbooks is nothing more than blind patriotism, a flag-waving story of American achievement. For those of us who cannot wave such a flag, it is a history that rings false.

from THE LOUDEST YELLER