The Anti-Empire Report

February 3rd, 2009
by William Blum
http://www.killinghope.org/ (I've read Killing Hope, and some other stuff too)

Change (in rhetoric) we can believe in.

hat tip to Left I on the News

Why are you still here? Click on the title link. This guy knows the history of American foreign policy, and no, not the crap they try to shove down your throat in your basic high school American History class.


The War on Terror is a Hoax
By Paul Craig Roberts
February 04, 2009
...If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events....

...Yet, the neocons, who are the Americans most hated by Muslims, remain unscathed.

The “war on terror” is a hoax that fronts for American control of oil pipelines, the profits of the military-security complex, the assault on civil liberty by fomenters of a police state, and Israel’s territorial expansion...

...The great mystery is: why after 60 years of oppression are the Palestinians still an unarmed people? Clearly, the Muslim countries are complicit with Israel and the US in keeping the Palestinians unarmed...

The truth. It's chunkylicious today. Chew on that fer a spell.

For more on the Byzantine politics of the Middle East and the West
read Treacherous Alliance By Trita Parsi

Reading now

Books of the Times The C.I.A.’s Missteps, From Past to Present

By MICHAEL BESCHLOSS
Published: July 12, 2007

CIA Statement on “Legacy of Ashes”
August 6, 2007


Legacy of Ashes - the undoing of the CIA
The anatomy of a discredited organization
By George Smith, Dick Destiny → More by this author
Published Wednesday 29th August 2007 07:49 GMT

Book Review At the beginning of the Nineties, this journalist went through the Central Intelligence Agency's hiring process. The process took about a year to complete, its length and rigor attributed to the great importance of its classified mission plus a purported desire to get just the right kind of people - America's best.

In any case, that was the story.

CIA Bans Water-Boarding in Terror Interrogations
September 14, 2007 5:00 PM
By Brian Ross, Richard Esposito & Martha Raddatz

Hmmm, let's see here. How long did it take to figure out that it might not be a good idea to use waterboarding?

This quote is from William Blum's "Killing Hope" (C) 2004 p. 129

At the US Navy's schools in San Diego and Maine during the 1960's and 1970's, the course had a different name. There the students were supposedly learning about methods of "survival, evasion, resistance and escape "which they could use as prisoners of war. There was in the course something of survival in a desert, where students were forced to eat lizards, but the naval officers and cadets were also subjected to beatings, jarring judo flips, "tiger cages" ---hooded and placed in a 16-cubic-foot box for 22 hours with a coffee can for their excrement--and a torture device called the "waterboard": the subject was strapped to an inclined board, head downward, a towel placed over his face, and cold water poured over the towel; he would choke, gag, retch, and gurgle as he experienced the sensation of drowning, just as was done to Vietcong prisoners in Vietnam, along with their tiger cages.
A former student, Navy pilot Lt. Wendell Richard Young, claimed that his back as broken during the course and that students were tortured into spitting, urinating, an defecating on the American flag, masturbating before guards, and, on one occasion, engaging in sex with an instructor. #41

#41 Newsweek 22, March 1976, pp 28, 31.

The United States and Its Comrade-in-Arms, Al Qaeda.

AUGUST 13, 2012
The United States and Its Comrade-in-Arms, Al Qaeda.
Tales of an Empire Gone Mad
by WILLIAM BLUM

I keep William Blum's "Killing Hope" close for referral purposes, and I've read "Legacy of Ashes". I've read "The Third Chimpanzee" so I certainly don't believe that any nation state or ethnic group is going to do any better with the amount of power that the US has wielded for the last 60 years.

I'm with Batty. Or I am batty. Or something.

Bad news

Oil prices gush to new highs
3/10/2008
9 hours ago
...New York's main contract, light sweet crude for April delivery, soared over 107 dollars a barrel for the first time and then crossed 108 dollars, striking an all-time high of 108.21 dollars...

Economic woes lead to retail retrenchment
3/10/2008
Amid belt-tightening, many chain stores are struggling

Spitzer scandal stuns Wall Street
By Nick Godt, MarketWatch
Last update: 5:51 p.m. EDT March 10, 2008
One question hanging is governor's involvement in bond-insurer bailout

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) -- Many on Wall Street were stunned and some apparently were pleased by a Monday report linking New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer to prostitution, while stocks showed little immediate reaction.

Oh puhleeeeeze, if they were stunned why is this the first sentence in the article?

"Lots of people on Wall Street didn't like him because he went after certain people -- heads of firms, analysts and [former New York Stock Exchange chief Richard] Grasso," said Donald Selkin, head of equity at Joseph Stephens.


Anybody see Juno? When she goes into labor she sputters "Fuckity Fuckity Fuckity!"

This country is imploding, & most of the world is doing the golf clap.
Why?
Maybe we don't know enough of our own history?

Sorrows of Empire

Killing Hope

The Shock Doctrine


American Theocracy

Or maybe we just had our turn, eh?

Top twenty books and movies for me in the last 6 years

Since September 11, 2001 I have been on a quest. I do not have much of a formal education. My high school education was kind of a joke and that's another whole story and I'm not going there. I took a few community college classes. A bachelor's degree seems like just another of my parent's unrealistic expectations for me.

The quest has been for knowledge. I know I'm not he only American who wondered "Why do they hate us so much?" during the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center. I was pretty sure I had a clue about why the attack on the Pentagon.

Obviously I'm not well traveled. A few trips to Mexico does not a world traveler make. Until 2002 I had seen very little of my own country. That's not to say I hadn't met and developed working relationships with immigrants from many different countries. It's amazing how poorly we treat our immigrants. I worked with people with advanced skills and experience who were forced to work in unskilled labor jobs in this country because their English skills weren't sharp enough to pass the licensing exams here. I've never been to New York but I've heard the New York cabbie stories.

I've been reading, watching documentary DVDs and trying to find out why they hate us enough to blow us up every chance they get made me wonder which ones that every jr. high kid should watch or read. I started out with a list of ten, which quickly grew to twenty, with a regular TV show thrown in for maintenance purposes.

Top twenty media sources that helped this American pull her head out of her butt, and not be such an ignorant clown.

1. The Corporation (DVD documentary)

2. I'm sorry I can't remember the name of the book, but it was a book on the modern history of Israel. Something striking to me was one page that had four maps on it that showed the growing territory of Israel, the shrinking Palestinian territories. You know, shit that ain't on the six o'clock newz here in Murika. Like most of these, it was available through the City Library system.

3. The Arms of Krupp 1587-1968: The Rise and Fall of the Industrial Dynasty That Armed Germany at War by William Manchester.

4. Planet of Slums by Mike Davis (along with realistic sex education of course, this book will make the little shits think before they start breeding)

5. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins

6. Guns Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond (the book, I never saw the PBS special)

7. The Prize by Daniel Yergin (yeah, I missed the PBS special on this one too)

8. Killing Hope by William Blum

9. The End of Suburbia (DVD documentary)

10. Secrets of the American Empire by John Perkins

11. Fahrenheit 9/11 DVD by Michael Moore

12. Why We Fight a documentary by Eugene Jarecki

13. The Best Democracy Money Can Buy by Greg Palast

14. A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

15. The Opium Wars The Addiction of One Empire and the Corruption of Another
by W. Travis Hanes, Frank Sanello

16. The Sorrows of Empire by Chalmers Johnson The trilogy is important, but if you only can buy one of the three, this is the one.

17. The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond

18. Armed Madhouse by Greg Palast

19. Breaking Rank by Norm Stamper

20. And finally, save Friday night (oh Tivo it fer chrissakes) for PBS NOW , and Bill Moyers Journal.

movies and reading

Watched The Great Gatsby (Redford version) with a friend. I've never read the book and he said that he wanted to read it again. I rolled my eyes and said "Oh look , rich people people behaving badly and getting away with it, how original." The woman Gatsby was in love with reminded me of Paris Hilton, brainless and rich and pretty, so what? Uninteresting to other women, that's for sure . Frankly, I hated the character, and ever since Rosemary's Baby, and knowing she was married to somebody three times her age and then to Woody Allen, Mia Farrow makes my skin crawl. No, I don't want to read the book, the dialogue in the movie was ridiculous. Why torture myself twice?

Anyway, I sort of wondered out loud why I don't read much fiction any more. I'm reading Colby Buzzell's "My War, Killing Time in Iraq." I'm only about 75 pages in but so far I love it. This kid cracks me up. There's some really funny stuff in it and he's from California. I'm from the suburbs in San Diego and this town is one big military base. I get it...


What I don't get is this:
White House: 3.5 percent pay hike unnecessary
By Rick Maze - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday May 16, 2007 17:34:13 EDT

... Update: 170 pages in I have the same love-hate thing going that I've always had with military guys. Maybe that's because some of them treat the local girls like whores, even when they aren't. The military trains misogynists. Military towns train misandrists.


Update 2 3:19 PM 5/18/2007 Finished the book. Immediately heard Randi Rhodes talking about this:
VA bonus recipients sat on boards that oversaw payments By HOPE YEN
Associated Press Writer
Thursday, May 17, 2007

and this:

Troop Pay Raise That Bush May Veto Amounts To $6/Month To Average Soldier In Iraq

*sigh*