American Dumbocracy

By CanSpeccy

The only reason Americans can look themselves in the mirror is that they are clueless and have little idea of what is being done in their name. One-third of the U.S. population actually believes that Iraq was behind 9/11 and that Bush found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Apparently, a large percentage of the U.S. population believes that Iran has nuclear weapons and that America is in danger of being attacked by Iran. No democracy can work when people take their responsibility as citizens so lightly as to be totally ignorant.

Bush supporters dismiss anyone who tells them the truth as a traitor.  Bush supporters are as dependent on propaganda as substance abusers are  on drugs and alcohol. Try weaning Bush supporters from the obvious lies  that are the basis of this administration, and they will call you every  name in the book.

They are proud to be Americans. Lies and war crimes are an American right.

And you had better shut up or those Halliburton-built concentration camps will be your new home.

Paul Craig Roberts

When Bush lost his 1978 run for Congress from West Texas against an opponent who stressed Bush's two Ivy League degrees, Bush resolved never to allow himself to be "outdumbed again."

How brilliantly Bush has succeeded. He is supported by that third of the population, and only that third, that believes his obvious lies. Anyone who knows anything, despises Bush as a war criminal and a liar.

Even the lying New York Times and the War Mongering Washington Post, even, probably, Canada's own disgusting National Pustule and its ZioCon affiliates, acknowledge that Bush's claims about Iraq's WMD, about Saddam being behind 9/11, about Saddam and the Niger "yellow cake" were all lies. When cornered, even Bush has admitted this.

Yet approximately a third of American voters still believe these stupid, transparent and vicious lies. Bush leads an administration based on lies and supported exclusively by ignoramuses and morons. What can you call a government like that? American Dumbocracy?

First published by the Canadian Spectator, June 9, 2006

PAK PM, HEADLEY AND THE CIA

By Aangirfan

Gilani (left)
Yousaf Raza Gilani is prime minister of Pakistan.

Pakistan Military Knew About Bin Laden Raid Well In Advance Of Attack

Evidence is now emerging that the Pakistani government and military not only knew of America’s plans to launch an attack on Osama bin Laden’s compound far in advance, but assisted the United States in the effort.
According to GlobalPost, the Pakistan government’s willingness to continue the narrative that they were caught totally by surprise is in response to their fear of a popular backlash among the Pakistani people were they to know that their government and military had helped the Americans execute the raid.

One senior military official, who asked not to be named because he is not permitted to speak to the press, said that Pakistani army troops were in fact providing backup support when the United States began its operations inside the compound where bin Laden had been staying, including sealing off the neighborhood where the compound was located.”
Via Global Post

Adding further support to the notion that Pakistan was in on the mission, a number of local residents have confirmed to the BBC that they were visited by Pakistani army personnel two hours before the attack commenced, ordering them to switch off the lights inside and outside their homes and instructing them to stay indoors until they were informed it was safe to come out. ...

Read more

Link from Aangirfan

Americans Are Living In 1984

By Paul Craig Roberts

The White House’s “death of bin Laden” story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama’s Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?

So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on May 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the SEALs killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.

US Higher Education Bubble Next to Burst

Source: National Inflation Association

The National Inflation Association (NIA) is pleased to officially announce that it will soon be releasing its hour long documentary 'College Conspiracy', which will expose the U.S. college education system as the largest scam in U.S. history. NIA has been producing 'College Conspiracy' for the past six months and plans to release the movie on May 15th. NIA members will be given the first opportunity to watch this must see documentary, which we hope will change the college education industry for the better.

NIA expects 'College Conspiracy' to take college education by storm and expose the facts and truth about tuition inflation to prospective college students. Almost everybody applying to college has heard the oft-repeated statistic that Americans with college degrees earn $1 million more in lifetime income than high school graduates without a degree. This is one of those statistics that gets repeated so many times that just about everybody accepts it as fact, but nobody actually does the research to confirm whether or not it is true. 'College Conspiracy' will prove once and for all if indeed this so-called statistic is true or just a myth.

If 70.1% of high school graduates enroll in a college or university, how does a college degree give you an advantage over the rest of the population? Back in the early 1960s, Americans didn't need to go to college. We were a creditor nation with a strong manufacturing base. With an unemployment rate of only 5%, jobs were available to almost everybody. Less than 50% of American high school graduates enrolled into college. For those who did attend college and graduate with a degree, it was actually something special that made you stand out from the rest of the field, because not everybody had one.

36 Statistics Which Prove That The American Middle Class Is Targeted for Destruction

The U.S. middle class is being shredded, ripped apart and systematically wiped out.  If you doubt this, just check out the statistics below.  The American Dream is being transformed into an absolute nightmare.  Once upon a time, the rest of the world knew that most Americans were able to live a middle class lifestyle.  Most American families had nice homes, most American families had a car or two, most American families had nice clothes, most American families had an overabundance of food and most American families could even look forward to sending their children to college if that is what the kids wanted to do.  There was an implicit promise that this was the way that it was always going to be.  Most of us grew up believing that if we worked really hard in school and that if we stayed out of trouble and that if we did everything that "the system" told us to do that there would be a place for us in the middle class too.  Well, it turns out that "the system" is breaking down.  There aren't enough good jobs for all of us anymore.  In fact, there aren't very many crappy jobs either.  Millions are out of work, millions have lost their homes and nearly all of the long-term economic trends just keep getting worse and worse.  So is there any hope for the U.S. middle class?
No, there is not.
Unless fundamental changes are made economically, financially and politically, the long-term trends that are destroying the U.S. middle class will continue to do so.
The number of good jobs has been declining for a long time.  The good jobs that have been lost are being replaced by a smaller number of low paying "service jobs".
Meanwhile, the cost of everything is going up.  It is getting really hard for American families to be able to afford to put food on the table and to put gas in the tank.  Health care costs are absolutely outrageous and college tuition is now out of reach for millions of American families.
Every single month more American families fall out of the middle class.  Today there are 18 million more Americans on food stamps than there were just four years ago.  More than one out of every five U.S. children is living in poverty.  Things are getting really, really bad out there.
The following are 36 statistics which prove that the American Dream is turning into an absolute nightmare for the middle class....
#1 The competition for decent jobs in America has gotten absolutely insane.  There have been reports of people actually getting down on their knees and begging for jobs.  Many Americans are starting to wonder if they will ever get a decent job again.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average duration of unemployment in the United States is now an all-time record 39 weeks....

#2 According to the Wall Street Journal, there are 5.5 million Americans that are unemployed and yet are not receiving unemployment benefits.
#3 The number of "low income jobs" in the U.S. has risen steadily over the past 30 years and they now account for 41 percent of all jobs in the United States.
#4 Only 66.8% of American men had a job last year.  That was the lowest level that has ever been recorded in all of U.S. history.
#5 Once upon a time, anyone could get hired at McDonald's.  But today McDonald's turns away a higher percentage of applicants than Harvard does.  Approximately 7 percent of all those that apply to get into Harvard are accepted.  At a recent "National Hiring Day" held by McDonald's only about 6.2 percent of the one million Americans that applied for a job were hired.
#6 There are now about 7.25 million fewer jobs in America than when the recession began back in 2007. ...

Read the other 30 statistics, which prove the American middle class is targeted for destruction

Yo! Conform or Die?

Source: YaYa Canada, May 10, 2011

Contributor: "Yo Momma"

It requires extreme mental fortitude to go against hard-wiring, and conformity is hard-wired because it can help us survive as members of "society".

Each time the US government presents the public with "evidence" that they bagged Osama, it becomes increasingly obvious that it's a hoax. And yet the US government each time is increasingly more forceful in its determination that the public accept it as truth. People who openly question are insulted and ridiculed. It seems the US government's attitude is shut up and accept it.

This all reminds me of a really good video about the effect the need for conformity has on perception: If you show 20 people a picture of an apple and ask them what they see and 19 have been instructed to say "pear", the 20th person will likely say apple at first.

If you repeat this long enough the 20th person will eventually give in to popular opinion and will say pear just to be accepted as one of the group.

The media are flooding us with disinformation and mocking anyone who questions it because they know that the need to conform will eventually kick in and the majority of people will accept it as truth.

I also think they used the same tactic with the assassination of JFK, Bobby Kennedy and MLK. They told everyone the apple was in fact a pear - over and over - until finally everyone saw a pear.

Osama's Ears and Nose

Source: SOTT, May 8, 2011

And here's a screen shot from one of the 'new' videos from the above CNN report:

Is this the same person?

Consider the two noses:

 

The real bin Laden's nose

 

'New' bin Laden's nose

But here's the real smoking gun that, in a sane world, would put an end to all of this CIA psy-ops nonsense: bin Laden's left ear:

Here's the offending ear in a new video...

Read more

Osama's ear

Source: Aangirfan, May 9, 2011


The latest Osama. Exclusive: Osama bin Laden's Nose and Left Ear

A previous Osama. Exclusive: Osama bin Laden's Nose and Left Ear

"The real bin Laden has "a pronounced deep and flattened... top outer rim of the outer ear.

"Whereas the 'new' 'bin Laden' has a rather petite ear..."

See, also, SOTT video analysis included in this report by Aangirfan

Is Hilary a Vampire?

Desert Peace, May 8, 2011

THE HILLARY ED-OUT IN BROOKLYN OP-ED

May 8, 2011 at 18:38 (Believe it or not, Censorship, Humour)

Just as vampires do not appear in photographs, neither do photos of women in ultra-orthodox newspapers ……

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Haredi Newspaper Photoshops Hillary Clinton Out Of Iconic White House Bin Laden Mission Photo

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A Yiddish Haredi Brooklyn newspaper, Der Zeitung, has printed a revisionist version of the iconic photo of the White House staff watching a live telecast of the assault on Osama Bin Laden’s hideout in Pakistan by removing Hillary Clinton and a female staffer from the picture.

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BEFORE *

AFTER

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Reporting in today’s Jerusalem Post, Jordana Horn writes:

Read More

Media Scrambles as Bin Laden Story Crumbles

By Alex Newman
The New American, May 6, 2011

While the establishment media was busy parroting President Obama’s announcement of Osama bin Laden’s supposed assassination, reporting the unsubstantiated claims as if they were unquestionable facts, much of the so-called “alternative” press was far more cautious — and accurate, it turns out. But more importantly, with the new official storyline indicating that bin Laden was in fact unarmed, bigger and much more important questions are beginning to emerge. In terms of coverage, it turns out that the skeptical approach proved far superior in terms of getting it right. Countless mainstream sources were so confident in Obama’s word that they reported many of the claims as fact without even attributing them to the President.

But the official White House narrative has been changed so many times in recent days that now it’s almost unrecognizable. There wasn‘t even a fire fight; yet this was one of the crucial elements of the original story that justified the assassination of a person the government painted as the most valuable source of information on the planet — the leader of al-Qaeda. And in reporting the statements as fact, the establishment press has officially been left with egg all over its face again.

"[Bin Laden] was engaged in a firefight with those that entered the area of the house he was in," said terror czar John Brennan. Similarly, Obama said that “after a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.” The next day, however, the White House spokesman admitted bin Laden “was not armed." Trying to save face and justify the killing of an unarmed man, the spokesman added, without elaborating, that “resistance does not require a firearm."

More than a few other important parts of the storyline have been altered, contradicted, or simply exposed as false, too. Everything from which of  bin Laden’s sons was supposedly killed to the claim that his wife was killed after being used as a “human shield” — all of it has changed for some reason or another. The transcript after Brennan’s speech was altered to change the name of the dead son. The new and improved narrative now says that not only was bin Laden’s wife not killed, but that she was not used as a human shield.

Originally the White House also suggested top officials watched the raid live through a video feed. Terror czar Brennan, for example, claimed that they “had real-time visibility into the progress of the operation.” CIA boss Leon Panetta later exposed that claim as false ...

Read more

Global Integrity Report lowers Canadian federal government's score from 80 to 75

OTTAWA - Today, Global Integrity released its 2010 Global Integrity
Report which dropped Canada from 11th to 19th out of the almost 100
countries evaluated since 2007.  The Report is the world's most
comprehensive, detailed assessment (using more than 300 indicators)
of national government accountability, integrity and democratic
process, and measures the strength of key laws and enforcement
records up to the end of 2010.

"As the Global Integrity Report makes clear, Canada's federal
government has significant loopholes in its democratic process and
government accountability systems when compared to other countries,
and weak enforcement in many areas, and so has a lot of work to do
to become the world's leading democracy," said Duff Conacher, Lead
Researcher for the Canada report, and Coordinator of Democracy Watch
and Assistant Coordinator of the Democracy Education Network.
"Government integrity continues to be undermined by loopholes that
allow for dishonesty, secret donations to some candidates and to
political party trust funds, conflicts of interest by policy-makers,
excessive government secrecy, secret, unethical lobbying, and is
also undermined by Cabinet patronage appointments, arbitrary
election calls and a flawed voting system, and lack of Prime
Minister, judicial and Senate accountability and weak whistleblower
protection and government accountability lapdog agencies."

How stupid people win debates

By CanSpeccy

If you are a total ignoramus, but wish to win a debate, here's how:



Notice, first, that Jim Corrs and Lord Christopher Monckton, however deluded they may be, offer arguments in support of the positions they take: Jim Corrs' that 9/11 could not have happened the way the US Government said it happened; Lord Monckton's that the UN International Panel on Climate Change has exaggerated the immediate threat of global warming due to anthropogenic carbon emissions. Then notice how taking this facts-plus-logic approach proved to be a disastrous blunder, as the subsequent total repudiation of their views demonstrates.

In response to Lord Monckton, an Irish Green Party representative first:

irrelevantly talks about Lord Monckton's association with Margaret Thatcher, whose visceral hatred of IRA terrorists no doubts earned her few admirers in the Republic of Ireland;

Kidnapping, Torture, and Reflections on Alleged "American Values"

Source: Mish's Global Economic Trends Analysis, Friday, May 06, 2011

I do not agree with using torture, nor do I believe the end justifies the means. The problem with both is that others can act the same way.

If the US can torture to extract vital information, then why can't Iran and every other country on the planet?

It is pure hypocrisy to think that the US has a monopoly on "justified torture". Indeed, there is no such thing as "justified torture".

This has been my position forever. I bring it up because of a post Barry Ritholtz made yesterday stipulating “Torture didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information”

“Torture [at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp] didn’t provide useful, meaningful, trustworthy information. Everyone [at the CIA] was deeply concerned and most felt it was un-American and did not work.” - Glenn L. Carle, a retired C.I.A. officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002

“The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003. It took years of collection and analysis from many different sources to develop the case that enabled us to identify this compound, and reach a judgment that Bin Laden was likely to be living there.” - Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council.

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times — repeatedly misled interrogators about the courier’s identity. ...

Barry Ritholtz went on to say "Thinking that torture is wrong is not a liberal or conservative value — it is an American value."

I sure wish Barry was correct. Sadly he is not, at least right now. Both president Bush and president Obama have condoned torture....

Read more

Pakistan Warns US Over Airspace

US then promptly murders 8 Pakistanis in drone attack
by Tony Cartalucci

Source: The Land Destroyer Blog, Friday May 6, 2011
 
Bangkok, Thailand May 6, 2011 - Much to Wired writer Spencer Ackerman's credit, amidst the first several paragraphs of his article, "First Drone Strikes Since Bin Laden Raid Hit Pakistan, Yemen," it is noted that after Pakistan's warnings and demands that the US cease and desist from violating its airspace, the US's subsequent drone attacks made the Pakistanis "look either complicit — and, hence, hypocritical — or incompetent." While the article continues by covering the official narrative citing the Soros-funded New American Foundation and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies' propagandist mouthpiece "Long War Journal," this initial moment of clarity strikes at the very center of America's use of drone attacks in Pakistan.

The global corporate-financiers that fund organizations like the New American Foundation and the FDD are quite clear in regards to their designs regarding Pakistan, and indeed all sovereign nations on earth outside their sphere of military and economic hegemony. Selig Harrison of the Soros funded Center for International Policy has published two pieces specifically calling for carving off Pakistan's Baluchistan province, not as part of a strategy to win the "War on Terror," but as a means to thwart growing relations between Islamabad and Beijing. ...

Read more

The Real Future of the Electric Car

Three stories from Autoblog Green:

First:

2012 Chevy Volt priced at C$41,545 in Canada; dealers taking orders now

by Eric Loveday (RSS feed) on May 3rd, 2011 at 3:00PM

2011 Chevrolet Volt – Click above for high-res image gallery

Chevrolet VoltAge has revealed that participating dealerships in Canada are now officially taking orders for the 2012 Chevrolet Volt. The MSRP for Chevy's plug-in up north? It starts at C$41,545 ($43,610 U.S. at the current exchange rate).

Second:

Analyst: Wireless charging of plug-in vehicles to become standard

by Eric Loveday (RSS feed) on May 5th 2011 at 11:54AM

Wireless charging of plug-in vehicles is to become standard, says Laura Marlino, deputy director at the power electronics and electrical power systems research center at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Marlino told Automotive Power Electronics conference-goers that, "We believe it's not a matter of if, but when wireless charging will be in all [plug-in] vehicles."


Which of these approaches do you think will conquer world markets when there are billions of vehicles on the road? The 43-thousand-dollar, two-ton Volt, of the little Korean buggy (price est: less than $5000), weighing under half a ton and having no need of a battery?

And Third:

That lightweight buggy can look cute -- almost:

Nebraska still working on low-speed NEV bill

by Eric Loveday (RSS feed) on May 4th 2011 at 11:56AM

GEM Peapod (RIP) - Click above for high-res image gallery

Even though highway-capable electric vehicles are here, there is still a place for NEVs. That place is, apparently, Nebraska.

Is Osama bin Laden Still Alive

By David Ray Griffin
Source: Global Research, October 9, 2009

Is Osama bin Laden still alive? I have dealt with this question in a recent little book entitled Osama bin Laden: Dead or Alive?  The present essay summarizes the main points of this book.

The Agendas Behind the bin Laden News Event

By Paul Craig Roberts
Source: LewRockwell.com

The US government’s bin Laden story was so poorly crafted that it did not last 48 hours before being fundamentally altered. Indeed, the new story put out on Tuesday by White House press secretary Jay Carney bears little resemblance to the original Sunday evening story. The fierce firefight did not occur. Osama bin Laden did not hide behind a woman. Indeed, bin Laden, Carney said, "was not armed."

Libya, the Next Step: Occupation

Unites States of Assassination: Can't Get bin Laden Kill Story Straight

Bin Laden was captured alive and then executed, 'claims daughter, 12'

Osama Bin Laden's daughter has claimed he was captured alive in his Pakistani hideout and then shot by U.S. special forces, it was reported today.

Arabic news network Al-Arabiya quoted 'senior Pakistani security officials' who said the 12-year-old saw her father executed and his body dragged to a helicopter.

A Pakistani official rejected U.S. accounts of a bloody firefight, saying: 'Not a single bullet was fired from the compound at the U.S. forces and their choppers. Their chopper developed some technical fault and crashed and the wreckage was left on the spot.' ...

Read more

FBI says, it has “No hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11”

By Garance Franke-Ruta  
The Atlantic May 3 201

 The White House Tuesday blamed "the fog of war" for conflicting statements in its recounting of the events surrounding the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden, but the history of misstatements from U.S. government officials about various combat operations raises questions about whether briefers also were subjecting us to a counterterrorism strategy and not just completely confused in their initial statements.
Consider the narrative put forward by John Brennan ...

Read more 

Plus:

The White House Can't Get Its Bin Laden Story Straight

Plus:

Bin Laden killed by masked men speaking fluent Pashtu

By Peter Osborne
The Telegraph 03 May, 2011

...Many I spoke to believed that the feared ISI – the intelligence arm of the Pakistan state – must have known that the Khans’ safe house, scarcely a kilometre from the Pakistan military academy, harboured the world’s most wanted man. In the end bin Laden may have been turned in by his captors in a grand bargain between America and Pakistan.

Mohammed Qasim, the farmer’s boy, was caught up in the momentous events that led to bin Laden’s death in the early hours of Sunday. He said that one of the US special forces helicopters landed in the field just behind his house. Masked men emerged — Qasim said they spoke fluent Pashtu.

He heard them smash their way into the Khans’ fortress, followed by the cries of alarm from women and children. Twenty minutes later, he heard the helicopters depart, bearing with them all of the reclusive Khan family, and the body of bin Laden. ...

Read full story

See review of this and much related information by Aangirfan:

It was Pak forces who attacked compound at Abbotabad

And:

How the US Blew An Earlier Chance to Get Their Hands on OBL, America's Most Wanted