Zap Iran - then what?

Suppose someone does something very daft - in a global sense - anytime soon. What would be the repercussions?

This two-part article by a retired brigadier general of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, former chief of their Intelligence Service, lays out the likely scenario -

Part 1: Striking The US where It Hurts
Part 2: The Assassin's Mace

Propaganda of the Desperate

Fear... and terror. If you're afraid enough you will comply (though if you do, there'll be some more fear along soon to make you comply some more).

This terrible enemy could strike at any moment, and it's YOU he's aiming at. He's coming into your homeland and he's purchased some suitcase bombs. All that has happened so far is nothing to what you will see next. Unless you vote for the Party.

No, it's not a Marvel Comics episode featuring supervillain Mikhail Rasputin working for the Dark Beast, it's a Republican election campaign video - complete with clicking tock... heartbeats... and explosion -

Vote Republican or Die!

This is the text from the video, which is displayed with photos of OBL, Zarkawi, etc:

"What is yet to come will be even greater."

"With God's permission we call on everyone who believes in God... to comply with His will to kill the Americans."

kill the Americans

They will not come to their senses unless the attacks fall on their heads and until the battle has moved inside America."

inside America

"We sent people to Moscow, to Tashkent, to other central Asian states, and they negotiated. And we purchased some suitcase bombs."

suitcase bombs

"Our message is clear - what you saw in New York and Washington and what you are seeing in Afghanistan and Iraq, all these are nothing compared to what you will see next."

nothing compared to what you will see next

"What is yet to come will be even greater"

These are the stakes. Vote November 7th.

How to drive the message home: Invoke 9/11.
This is a call to Americans to monitor the vote: Video the Vote 2006.


We've been here before -

1930s Nazi anti-Jewish propaganda, from der Sturmer -

"They will attempt to fight Germany until it bends to their will or is forced to its knees. They will stop at nothing. They will lie and slander, and continually attempt to incite the whole world against Germany."

From “A Cockroach Cannot Give Birth to a Butterfly” and Other Messages of Hate Propaganda".

FREE HUGS

If you're old enough to remember that 'love and peace' feeling from the 'flower power', 'make love not war' days before big business grabbed us by the long hair and flung us shorn and greedy into the 21st century, then you'll love this video (a true story) and its superb soundtrack, 'All the Same' by Sick Puppies.

Juan Mann: One Love

(... tears to my eyes)

Open-Minded but Also Skeptical

From Oregon Mail Tribune
October 24th article:

'Ken Becker is a bright, educated and progressive fellow who normally scoffs at conspiracy theories.

But the Talent resident isn't scoffing at those who believe the truth has yet to be told about the Sept. 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.

Becker, 52, is the founder of "9/11 Truth Now," an independent grassroots group demanding an independent criminal investigation into 9/11.

"I'm open-minded but I'm also skeptical — I'm not a conspiracy theorist," said the married father of two. "I have a family. I have my own business. I'm an Eagle Scout.

"But 9/11 raised so many questions that have never been answered by our government," he added. "I don't know what happened. But I do know we need to find out."

The group is sponsoring the Oregon premiere of "9/11: The Myth and The Reality," a documentary film that will be shown Saturday evening in the performing arts center at Crater High School in Central Point.'


'"It felt early on that we were putting our lives on the line for even taking about it," he added. "These questions are now accepted by an increasing number of people. We're a long ways from total acceptance. But people are having their doubts now (about the official explanation)."

Becker said the local group has about a dozen people in its core with roughly 150 on its e-mail list. He said those who question the official 9/11 explanation can no longer be written off as so many conspiracy kooks.

"Only 16 percent of Americans think the Bush administration is telling the truth about 9/11," Becker said, citing a recent New York Times-CBS poll. "That's huge."

There is also a growing disenchantment with mainstream media's exploration of the issues, he said,

"I've always thought we live in a democracy and that news is news," he said, noting he no longer feels that way.

"There is a whole lot of information our press doesn't cover," he added. "So we are becoming our own media. For-profit journalism has come at the expense of truth."'

You can watch Dr David Ray Griffin's "9/11: The Myth and the Reality" on Google Video.

To read a transcript or download an mp3: click here.

"Reading makes a country great!"

About The New York Times/CBS News poll

L'expérience de Milgram

The Milgram experiment shows how far most people will go in causing pain to another when instructed to do so by someone in authority. (Over 60% will do as instructed; over 90% if there is a colleague with them who complies fully.)

Reading of the violence done to captives over the years, both by criminals and the military, I conclude that the only safe thing is to do everything possible to avoid giving them power over you in the first place. Once they have that power, they are free to vent their anger, their frustrations, their plain meanness and murderousness, on you.

It is critical that we understand the implications of Milgram's findings to current times. In the name of 'anti-terror', security forces are being increased and restrictive laws enacted, with martial law contingencies and talk of internment camps. That means more people with more power over us.

This video shows a participant undergoing the experiment:
L'expérience de Milgram.

The experiment explained in Wikipedia:

"In response to a newspaper ad offering $4.50 for one hour's work, an individual turns up to take part in a psychology experiment investigating memory and learning. He is introduced to a stern looking experimenter in a white coat and a rather pleasant and friendly co-subject. The experimenter explains that the experiment will look into the role of punishment in learning, and that one will be the 'teacher' and one will be the 'learner'. Lots are drawn to determine roles, and it is decided that the individual who answered the ad will become the 'teacher'.

The learner is taken to a room and strapped in a chair and an electrode is placed on his arm. The teacher is taken to an adjoining room and instructed to read a series of questions. If the learner gets the answer correct, then they move on to the next word. If the answer is incorrect, the teacher must administer a shock to the learner.

The generator has 30 switches, each labeled with a voltage from 15 up to 450 volts, rated from 'slight shock' to 'danger: severe shock'. The final two switches are labeled 'XXX'. The teacher must increase the shock each time the learner misses a word in the list. In fact, the learner is an actor and does not actually receive a shock."

More on the Milgram experiment:
A lesson in depravity, peer pressure, and the power of authority.

Milgram wrote, in the article "The Perils of Obedience":

"The legal and philosophic aspects of obedience are of enormous importance, but they say very little about how most people behave in concrete situations. I set up a simple experiment at Yale University to test how much pain an ordinary citizen would inflict on another person simply because he was ordered to by an experimental scientist. Stark authority was pitted against the subjects' [participants'] strongest moral imperatives against hurting others, and, with the subjects' [participants'] ears ringing with the screams of the victims, authority won more often than not. The extreme willingness of adults to go to almost any lengths on the command of an authority constitutes the chief finding of the study and the fact most urgently demanding explanation."

"One theoretical interpretation of this behavior holds that all people harbor deeply aggressive instincts continually pressing for expression, and that the experiment provides institutional justification for the release of these impulses. According to this view, if a person is placed in a situation in which he has complete power over another individual, whom he may punish as much as he likes, all that is sadistic and bestial in man comes to the fore."

"This is, perhaps, the most fundamental lesson of our study: ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear, and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority."

One of the goals of the experiments was to see if ordinary Americans would obey immoral orders, as many Germans had done during the Nazi period.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Postscript (from Wikipedia):

"Six years later (during the height of the Vietnam War), one of the participants in the experiment sent correspondence to Milgram, explaining why he was 'glad' to have been involved despite the apparent levels of stress:

'While I was a subject [participant] in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority. ... To permit myself to be drafted with the understanding that I am submitting to authority's demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself. ... I am fully prepared to go to jail if I am not granted Conscientious Objector status. Indeed, it is the only course I could take to be faithful to what I believe. My only hope is that members of my board act equally according to their conscience...'"

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Update, Nov 18, 2006: Google Video appear to have removed the video showing the actual Milgram experiment. There is, though, this one of a Twilight Zone episode. This, apart from the beginning and ends of the episode, is a fairly accurate portrayal of Milgram's experiment:
The Twilight Zone - Milgram's Experiment

'The Long Screwdriver'

The management of Operation Iraqi Freedom

'The long screwdiver' was how Paul Bremer described the control of operations in Iraq from the Pentagon, in a critical year over 2003/04.

You can see the startling errors of the occupation in this excellent Frontline video: The Lost Year In Iraq.
(You can judge the level of Bremer's success by his difficulty in finding a way to leave Iraq without getting killed.)

'Sovereignty Lite' in Iraq

"Iraq is sitting on a mother lode of some of the lightest, sweetest, most profitable crude oil on earth, and the rules that will determine who will control it and on what terms are about to be set."
See: Bush's Petro-Cartel Almost Has Iraq's Oil.

You can lead a horse to the water, but you can't make it drink

With training, uniforms and humiliation you can make a new Iraqi army, but you can't make the soldiers think like American soldiers.
See this short video from the Guardian: Iraq: The Real Story.

"Like with the Proverbial Frog"

Extract from The Anti-Empire Report.
Some things you need to know before the world ends,
by William Blum.

"Three billion years from amoebas to Homeland Security

'The Department of Homeland Security would like to remind passengers that you may not take any liquids onto the plane.
This includes ice cream, as the ice cream will melt and turn into a liquid.'

This was actually heard by one of my readers at the Atlanta Airport recently; he laughed out loud. He informs me that he didn't know what was more bizarre, that such an announcement was made or that he was the only person that he could see who reacted to its absurdity.

This is the way it is with societies of people. Like with the proverbial frog who submits to being boiled to death in a pot of water if the water is heated very gradually, people submit to one heightened absurdity and indignation after another if they're subjected to them at a gradual enough rate. That's one of the most common threads one finds in the personal stories of Germans living in the Third Reich.

This airport story is actually an example of an absurdity within an absurdity. Since the 'bomb made from liquids and gels' story was foisted upon the public, several chemists and other experts have pointed out the technical near-impossibility of manufacturing such a bomb in a moving airplane, if for no other reason than the necessity of spending at least an hour or two in the airplane bathroom." (see earlier post: Getting 'through the Cookery without Starting a Fire in the Lavvie')

"Britain now No 1 al-Qaida target - anti-terror chiefs"

That's the headline to this article in today's Guardian. Can you believe it? This is the same 5-year old propaganda and the media are still reporting it like good little lambs.

The instigators of this propaganda are now treating us like a bunch of absolute fools, Britons. Wake up. This is just the old scare stuff peddled over again. But beware, those who produced this press report could well be up to something themselves. (Are Visor Consultants running a mock attack in your area? When's Rudy Giuliani next visiting the UK? These are some of the questions we could be asking in order to avoid a 'coincidence'. Info: Guiliani and Visor Consultants)

The sub-head is "Officials say group sees July 7 attacks as 'just the beginning' of UK campaign". But on April 9th 2006, we were informed "Al-Qaeda not linked, says government".

A challenge: Name one person in the world who's been charged for carrying out 'al-Qaeda' work. And don't say Moussaoui - look at this short video. And don't say bin Laden, either. FBI says, “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”. (Source: teamliberty.net)

For all the cries of 'sleeper cells', where has there been one? Bush was gonna hunt them down - 60 or more 'sleeper cells' over America. How many were there? - NONE. See video: Power of Nightmares, part three.

Sharpen up, research and shout it, there's something going on. And whatever it is, it'll mean new, more restrictive laws and 'security measures'.

Our liberty is at stake.

Whilst you're thinking about it, you might like to add this into the mix. It's a report of a remark by Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair about internment camps. Now worry.

Image: Poster from WWI

The Martial Law Precaution

Back in mid 2001, when none of us were thinking of terrorist attacks on the USA, troops were being trained for the "coming conquest of America under martial law".

On September 7th 2001, George and Jeb Bush signed orders preparing for martial law in Florida. And on September 11th, George signed an order giving the Florida Department of Law Enforcement "The authority to direct all state, regional and local governmental agencies, including law enforcement agencies,..."

Now, in such a scenario, wouldn't you wait in the classroom until you knew it was all clear to come out?

The training of the troops: Gold Digest

The signing of the orders: WorldNet Daily

Spotting the Rotters

Here's some tips on sorting out the truth from the lies in the official reports of what's been happening on our planet over the past many years.

From an article by Dr Peter Dale Scott at the Centre for Research on Globalization.

...using the 9/11 Report as evidence – evidence of what is being suppressed. We can use it in this way because some parts of the Report are accurate and reliable. This base line of reliability helps define other parts of the Report which are misleading, and in a few places I believe dead wrong. These relevant omissions and deceptions should be taken as clues as to what is being suppressed, and where the hidden truth lies.

I shall talk of the Report’s occasional resistance to the truth. Let me give an easy and incontrovertible analogy from the Warren Report. The Warren Report got many things right; but it also minimized the links between Jack Ruby and organized crime. This resistance was a clue that Ruby in fact was crime-related and that this was important.

We find similar symptomatic resistance in the 9/11 Report.

1) Here is an easy example: the identity of the hijackers. The FBI had distributed a list naming 18 of the 19 alleged hijackers by 10 AM on 9/11. Within two weeks the identities of at least six of the hijackers were unclear; as men in Arab countries with the same names and histories, and in some cases the same photographs, were protesting that they were alive and innocent. In response to these protests, FBI Director Robert Mueller soon acknowledged that the identity of several of the suicide hijackers was in doubt. But there is no discussion of this problem in the detailed treatment of the alleged hijackers in the 9/11 Commission Report.

2) WTC-7. This is obviously a big area of doubt, as you have just heard. The Report’s solution was not to mention WTC-7 at all. And yet Kean and Hamilton, the 9/11 Commission Co-Chairs, have the nerve to claim in their new book that after the Report “those believing conspiracy theories now had to rely solely on imagination, their theories having been disproved by facts.” In other words, they are still covering up that there was a cover up.

Inevitable War

Former UN Weapons Inspector Scott Ritter:

“The path that the United States is currently embarked on regarding Iran is a path that will inevitably lead to war. Such a course of action will make even the historical mistake we made in Iraq pale by comparison.”

Scott Ritter on "Target Iran: The Truth About the White House’s Plans for Regime Change” at Democracy Now!

Habeus Corpus

United States Constitution
Article One, Section Nine:

"The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it."

(This Latin phrase literally means 'produce the body'. It is an ancient English legal concept that empowers judges to order imprisoned persons to be brought into court to determine if they are being legally held.)

Bush's new terror law protects detainees from blatant abuses during questioning, such as rape, torture and "cruel and inhuman" treatment, but does not require that any of them be granted legal counsel. Also, it specifically bars detainees from filing habeas corpus petitions challenging their detentions in federal courts. Bush said the process is "fair, lawful and necessary."

The American Civil Liberties Union said the new law is "one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history."

Source: MSNBC

Keith Olbermann's comments:
Death of Habeas Corpus: “Your words are lies, Sir.”

Iraq's Oppressors are Now the Oppressed

In their former dominant position, the Sunnis in Iraq controlled the government, the economy and the military. Now, the tables are turned, and their existence is threatened by the Shia backlash.

This article provides an excellent background to the internecine killing in Iraq: The Civil War Myth.

Extract:

"In 2003, the apparatus of Sunni domination, was taken apart. Sunni Arabs no longer held nearly all the senior military, police and government jobs. The Sunni Arab secret police force(s) were disbanded, as was the army. For the first time in over three centuries, the Sunni Arabs of Baghdad were not in charge, and they did not like it. They have been resisting this change in status ever since. But in the last three years, things have only gotten worse for the Sunni Arabs. The new government (dominated by Kurds and Shia Arabs, who are 80 percent of the population) has created an army and police force. So not only are the Sunni Arabs outnumbered, but they are confronted with an army and police force controlled by their enemies.

And it gets worse, because the Sunni Arab dictatorship got worse as time went on. The last 10-15 years of Saddam's rule were particularly horrible for the Kurds and Shia Arabs. There were massacres and constant terror from Saddam's secret police. So not only are the Sunni Arabs now outnumbered, and facing over a quarter million soldiers and police they do not control, they are also on the receiving end of revenge attacks by millions of enraged Kurds and Shia Arabs.

This is not the recipe for civil war, it's the prelude to massacre and mass expulsion. Of the Sunni Arabs. In Iraq, everyone is aware of this, but too many foreigners, including many who should know better, just don't get it."

A 21st Century Hero - Supernanny

The most valuable skills in all human society are currently being shown on UK and US TV in the programme 'Supernanny'.

Supernanny, Jo Frost, is an extremely skillful corrector of children's bad behaviour. Her special tool is the 'naughty seat', where children must sit for a minute for each year of their age when they have behaved badly; then apologise properly to get a good hug. The 'naughty seat' is not all though, she also understands the psychology of children and their place in the family. Children are not to be shouted at or spoken to in anger.

The change in the families over the course of the programme is amazing to behold. At the start you see parents with drawn, sad faces, whose relationship has worn thin, and who are barely able to cope with their wildly-behaved children. At the end of the programme there is a happy family. You see it in the mother's face: relaxed and attractive. You see it in the father: he's in love with his partner again and helpful. And the children are happy, well-behaved and play together.

Now, if all families could have the benefit of Jo Frost's skills and power, think what a society we'd have. Happy families: happy people.

Supernanny Café

UK: Supernanny on Channel 4
USA: Supernanny on ABC

Doors Slam Shut

Death and Cover-Up in the UK

"Every time we ask a question, the door slams shut."

"The true scale of Britain's hospital superbug problems emerged today as a leading hospital trust admitted that a 'hypervirulent' infection had claimed the lives of at least 49 patients - and possibly as many as 78 people - in the space of nine months.

The superbug Clostridium difficile (C. difficile), which can cause severe illness and death in patients who have undergone surgery, appears to be at unprecedented levels."

"Sylvia Greaves died in Leicester Royal Infirmary in May after being admitted with leg ulcers. Her children discovered that she had caught the superbug only after it was given as a cause of death on the death certificate.

Her son, Barry Calow, told a local newspaper that the family was horrified to find their mother had been treated on an open ward and no special precautions had been taken. 'We just want to know why this happened,' he said. 'Every time we ask a question, the door slams shut.'"

Source: The Observer.

That's the sort of country the UK has become - people die, you ask a question and 'the door slams shut'.

Billions of pounds spent on killing people illegally in other countries whilst inncocents at home continue to die because of dirty wards and shortage of beds.

Ask a question about why we're at war at all: answer, 'terrorism'. Based on what? answer, '9/11 and 7/7'. Ask a question about the 7/7 bombings - the door slams shut. In the USA, the grieving families after 9/11 ask questions - the door slams shut. Do we know the truth about either? NO WE DON'T!

Meanwhile, innocent people at home and abroad are still dying.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Death and Incompetence in the UK

Whilst those billions are spent on a spurious war, increased security and anti-terrorist policing, measures for the real safety of innocent people at home continue to be neglected.

"Angelika... should have been attending her final mass today before returning home to Poland tomorrow. Instead police were last night expected to confirm that the body found in the grounds of the church on Friday night was that of the 23-year-old."

"Last night police were still trying to trace convicted sex offender Peter Tobin. The 60-year-old, who had worked as a handyman at the church for the past six weeks, was the last person to be seen with Angelika. Police questioned him on Monday night about her disappearance, but he gave them a false name, age and address before disappearing the following day."

"In 1994 Tobin was jailed for 14 years for a vicious sexual attack on two 14-year-old girls. He had held the two teenagers at knifepoint in his Hampshire flat, forced them to ingest sedatives and then raped one of them while she was partially conscious. Tobin began sexually assaulting the second girl and only stopped after he was interrupted by his six-year-old son, who was at home at the time."

"On Tobin's release, he was supposed to be being monitored by parole officials and his local social services. It is understood Tobin moved to Paisley in December 2004. He should have informed police and the Parole Board about any change of address."

"Yesterday afternoon the police refused to disclose any more details, other than that forensic examinations were continuing at the church. They also renewed their appeal to Tobin, urging him to come forward."

Source: The Observer