Must read: Powerful Secrets

(Vanity Fair) " There's the secrecy; the C.I.A. link; the crypt-like headquarters, called "the Tomb"; the bizarre rituals; and the roster of alumni, who include three presidents, two Supreme Court chief justices, and scores of Cabinet members, senators, and congressmen. No wonder Skull and Bones, most famous of Yale's undergraduate clubs, is a conspiracy theorist's delight. With two Bonesmen vying for the presidency-John Kerry was tapped in 1965, George W. Bush two years later- ALEXANDRA ROBBINS cuts through the Skull and Bones mystique to reveal its true hold on both candidates.
There are certain sure signs of spring at Yale. Dogwood trees blossom across New Haven. The daffodils on Old Campus bloom. Freshmen turn their speakers to face the courtyard and blast music while they kick Hacky Sacks and throw Frisbees on the green. And a certain group of upperclassmen participate in a quiet but frenzied one-night ritual known simply as Tap Night.
Each of Yale's six major secret societies elects its members on the same night in April of the prospective members' junior year. In April of 1965 and 1967, respectively, John F. Kerry and George W. Bush received the same fateful call to the same mysterious organization: the undergraduate club perhaps mythologized more than any other by the outside world, Skull and Bones.
It's no secret that Skull and Bones, which elects 15 Yale juniors annually to meet in a crypt-like headquarters called "the Tomb," is no mere college club. The fact that the 2004 presidential election is a Bones-versus-Bones ballot raises eyebrows not just because it brings to light that, despite their ideological differences, both candidates come from the same echelon of American society but also because it's a bit astounding that a club with only about 800 living members has seen so many of them reach prominence. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day speculating about the group that has been called everything from "an international mafia" to "the Brotherhood of Death."
They are not completely wrong. Skull and Bones really is one of the most powerful and successful alumni networks in America. Alumni, or "patriarchs," return often to the Tomb, where connections are made and favors granted. Some classes have "Pat Night," an event where patriarchs mingle with "knights" (undergraduate members) and circulate job offers. Among its roster, Bones counts three U.S. presidents, two Supreme Court chief justices, and scores of Cabinet members, senators, and congressmen. Bonesman president William Howard Taft named two fellow Bonesmen to his nine-man Cabinet.
More good news for the fanatics: there is a strong link between Bones and the C.I.A. In Bush and Kerry's day, the agency was known as an "employer of last resort," says a Bonesman from the 1960s, since so many Bonesmen went on to join. "If you couldn't get a job elsewhere, you could go there if you wanted to." Because of the high numbers of Bonesmen in the C.I.A. and in the Time Inc. empire (Time-magazine co-founders Henry Luce and Briton Hadden were members), these organizations were "explicitly willing to take" Bonesmen seeking employment.
Many Bonesmen who had become C.I.A. operatives and government officials returned to the Tomb and discussed highly classified matters, as National-Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy reportedly did. "The things that fascinated me at Pat gatherings were the level of penetration ... and how open they were about talking in the Tomb," says a Bonesman who graduated in the 1980s. "They talked about foreign operations at the time, the stuff that became Iran-contra. The level of trust was startling. It was like once you were trusted enough to get in, people just talked openly."
Other illustrious alumni include Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer David McCullough; former New York Times general manager Amory Howe Bradford; actor James Whitmore; Morgan Stanley founder Harold Stanley; J. Richardson Dilworth, manager of the Rockefeller fortune; former Major League Baseball deputy commissioner Stephen Greenberg; and Walter Camp, the father of American football. During World War II, Bones' Henry Stimson, the secretary of war who often consulted fellow Bonesmen railroad heir W. Averell Harriman and poet Archibald MacLeish, hired four other Bones members for his War Department-Robert Lovett as assistant secretary of war for air, Artemus Gates as assistant secretary of the navy for air, George Harrison as a special consultant, and Harvey Bundy as his special assistant. In this respect, those in the conspiracy crowd who link Skull and Bones to the building of the atomic bomb are not entirely off base: Bonesmen were involved with its construction and deployment.
To be sure, it is an elite group. But while some members come away only with close friendships and peculiar college memories, others take Bones so seriously that they purposefully spread self-aggrandizing rumors about the society to fuel a culture of mystery. Some go as far as to threaten reporters. "The guys who take it really seriously are typically the ones who have lived the myth-the second- and third-generation Bonesmen who campaign to get in, and once they get in it's almost a religious fervor," the 1980s Bonesman says. Many Bonesmen spoke for this article only on condition of anonymity because, as one puts it, "I don't want to get in trouble with those guys." (Neither the White House nor the Kerry campaign returned repeated calls for comment.)
On April 28, 1967, the current president of the United States felt a clap on his shoulder. Contrary to numerous reports, Bush was not tapped by his father (although alumni occasionally participate in "tap"). By the time he got to Yale, Bush had several relatives in Skull and Bones, including his father and grandfather, but it was David Alan Richards who was assigned to tap him, likely because they both lived in the residential college Davenport. Richards met Bush in the Davenport courtyard, wearing his Tiffany gold Skull and Bones pin. "I was told that was my man. I smashed him on the shoulder, barked at him, 'Go to your room,' and followed my instructions," says Richards. "Now it's a matter of some embarrassment because I'm such a Democrat."
(A knight tells a prospective member to go to his room in a nod to Yale's early days, when Tap Day was held in a courtyard in front of an audience of hundreds. Once in private, the Bonesman intones, "At the appointed time tomorrow evening, wearing neither metal nor sulfur, nor glass, leave the base of Harkness Tower and walk south on High Street. Look neither to the right nor to the left. Pass through the sacred pillars of Hercules and approach the Temple. Take the right book in your left hand and knock thrice upon the sacred portals. Remember well, but keep silent, concerning what you have heard here.")
Richards's Bones experience-he was a knight in the class of 1967-intersected both Bush's (1968) and Kerry's (1966). "I have the odd feeling of being a center of the hinge," says Richards, now a real-estate attorney in New York. Of the election process, he says, "It's like picking the American soldiers for a World War II movie-one Jew, one Italian, one American Indian. You want a mix. You don't want everyone to be an Andover preppie who played lacrosse. Did we feel pressure (to elect Bush)? Are you aware of legacies when you're voting? Yeah. But he was well known to two intersecting circles. In my club there were three members of the fraternity D.K.E. and three people in Davenport, and he had the legacy going back several generations. I don't think W. was particularly interested in joining, but it was part of the family life. Do I believe reports that his father encouraged him to do it, as opposed to going into an underground (society) to drink? It's likely. I suspect family pressure was put on him."
Some of those relatives, including Bush's father and grandfather, attended his initiation in the Tomb, says Richards. "All I will say about his initiation," another patriarch who was present says, "is that he caught on pretty quickly and I was pleased with his response." The society is so secretive about Bush's time in Bones that the scrapbooks from his year-each class keeps candid brown-paged scrapbooks to memorialize the experience-have been sealed so knights can't read them. "If those scrapbooks were as obscene as ours were, it's a good thing for the White House and for the society," a Bonesman of that period muttered.
Bones largely presented a departure from Bush's usual college escapades. No alcohol is allowed inside the Tomb, and much of the time inside is spent on debates and delivering "life histories," or oral autobiographies. When George H. W. Bush gave his life history in the fall of 1947, he focused on his military service, married life with Barbara, and his hope to "have an impact in public service," one of his clubmates says. George W. Bush, by contrast, spent most of his presentations in the Tomb speaking about his father-reportedly in "almost God-like terms."
Life histories, as well as initiation rites, the rumored "Connubial Bliss" ritual, and the twice-weekly meetings, all occur in the Tomb. The Tomb has been the Skull and Bones haunt since 1856, when Daniel Coit Gilman, the founding president of Johns Hopkins University, incorporated Bones as the Russell Trust Association, now re-incorporated as RTA. A three-story Greco-Egyptian monolith of brown sandstone, "the T," as Bonesmen refer to it, sits on High Street in the middle of the Yale campus. No non-members-"barbarians," in Bones lingo-are allowed to enter. Inside the Tomb, the halls have been decorated by renowned architect John Walter Cross (a Bonesman) with pieces by distinguished painters such as J. Alden Weir (a barbarian). Dozens of skeletons and skulls grip the walls, surrounding such items as a mummy, gravestones-including one labeled "Tablet from the grave of Elihu Yale (the school's namesake) taken from Wrexham churchyard"-and war memorabilia.
The dining room, which members call "the boodle," is the most impressive chamber in the Tomb, decorated with engraved silver and bronze skulls and 30-foot-high windows that overlook a lush courtyard. The room is blanketed by portraits of the most illustrious Bones alumni, including William Howard Taft; Supreme Court chief justice Morrison Waite; Kerry's classmate Dick Pershing, who was killed in the 1968 Tet offensive; and, as of 1998, former president George H. W. Bush. The skulls and crossbones stamp everything from skull-shaped crockery to exit signs printed with letters composed of tiny skulls. Light shines through the gaping eye sockets of skulls bordering otherwise elegant fixtures. There are grand fireplaces on either side of the room which double as goals for the violent soccer-hockey hybrid Bones sport known as "boodleball."
One of the most avid boodleball players of his year was John Kerry. Kerry, along with Dick Pershing, David Thorne (a publishing executive in Massachusetts), and Fred Smith (the founder of FedEx) played boodleball as often as possible. The game, which involves a half-deflated ball and frequently leaves Bonesmen bleeding, is supposed to be played in the dining room only after it is cleared of couches and other furniture. "The four of us were the core of the boodleball group," says Thorne. "Freddie Smith was a maniac, and Dick broke his toe once. There were a lot of very hard obstacles in the way and we didn't bother moving them."
Kerry came to treasure his boodleball teammates more than the men on his college teams. By all accounts Kerry, who may have felt like an outsider as a Catholic at St. Paul's, his extremely Waspy Episcopalian prep school, thrived at Yale. He was president of the Political Union, a debater, and an athlete who played soccer, ice hockey, and lacrosse. He was friendly with about half a dozen members of his 1966 Bones class before they entered Bones, and was tapped by his St. Paul's friend John Shattuck, who would go on to be an assistant secretary of state under Clinton.
In the Tomb, Kerry bonded closely with the other knights and often steered conversations toward Vietnam and politics. Kerry helped Smith resurrect Yale Aviation, once an influential naval-air-reserve unit founded by Bonesmen during World War I. "Bones was one of the most meaningful parts of his life because of the focus and intensity that came from that experience: the regularly scheduled meetings, the amount of time you formally and informally spend with a group of people that created a bond, and a focus you don't get out of other activities like athletic teams. He remains very close to the guys. Most of us would go out of the way to help each other, no questions asked," says Thorne, Kerry's closest friend and former campaign manager, who became Kerry's brother-in-law when Kerry married Thorne's twin sister, Julia. (Kerry's second wife, Teresa, had become the daughter-in-law of a Bonesman when she married her first husband, Senator John Heinz.)
Other Bonesmen say Kerry was "delighted" by Skull and Bones because it built and cemented strong friendships. Fellow Bonesman Chip Stanberry (1966) was Kerry's partner for three years on Yale's debate team, but he says the friendship didn't grow close until they went through Bones together. "We think of politicians as garrulous and backslapping. John was private and reserved. He was shy to jump into a crowded circle of four guys having a beer. People therefore mistook him as aloof," Stanberry says. In the protective environment of the Tomb, however, Kerry "relaxed, he was more natural. He broke out of whatever that shy, reserved part of his person was. John took it seriously, and it meant a lot to him. Of course, John took everything seriously."
As are all matters relating to Bones, the origin of the society is shrouded in mystery. The most plausible story has Yale student William Russell, later a Civil War general and Connecticut state representative, studying abroad in Germany in 1832. He returned to Yale dismayed to find that Phi Beta Kappa, until then a secret society, had been stripped of its secrecy in the anti-Masonic fervor of the time. Incensed, Russell grabbed some big men on campus, including future secretary of war Alphonso Taft, and formed an American chapter of a German society. The group was founded on the legend that when Greek orator Demosthenes died, in 322 b.c., Eulogia, the goddess of eloquence, arose to the heavens. Originally called the Eulogian Club, the society holds that the goddess returned to take up residence with them in 1832.
Hence the importance of the number 322 to Bones members-Kerry has used 322 as a code, and Thorne uses 322 as his phone extension; W. Averell Harriman used it as the combination of the lock on a briefcase carrying dispatches between London and Moscow-and the obsession with the goddess Eulogia. Members open a shrine to her at Thursday- and Sunday-night meetings, and regularly sing "sacred anthems" about her.
Both 322 and Eulogia are central symbols in the society's initiation. When an initiate approaches the Tomb for the ceremony, the front door creaks open and knights immediately cover his head with a hood. After a brief stay in "the Firefly Room," a pitch-black living room in which his hood is removed to reveal the lit cigarettes the patriarchs wave to resemble fireflies, he is whirled throughout the building and the grounds.
The heart of the ceremony is in Room 322-the Inner Temple, or "I.T." There, a group of knights (led by a distinguished patriarch known for the evening as Uncle Toby, dressed in a distinctive robe) awaits the initiate, wearing masks and various costumes, including the Devil, Don Quixote, Elihu Yale, and a Pope with one foot sheathed in a monogrammed white slipper that rests on a stone skull. Other knights are dressed as skeletons, and patriarchs line the halls, where their solemn duty is to yell so loudly they scare the new member.
One by one, each neophyte is led into the I.T., where he's shoved around to various features of the room, including a picture of Eulogia, and forced to do things such as read a secrecy oath repeatedly, kiss the Pope's foot, and drink "blood" from "the Yorick," a skull container usually holding red Kool-Aid. Finally, the initiate is shoved to his knees in front of Don Quixote as the shrieking crowd falls silent. Quixote taps him on the left shoulder with a sword and says, "By order of our order, I dub thee Knight of Eulogia."
Soon after initiation, each knight is assigned a Bones name, which the society will call him from then on. There are three ways to acquire a nickname: receive one from a patriarch who wishes to pass his down, as Bankers Trust head Lewis Lapham (father of the Harper's editor of the same name) passed "Sancho Panza" to political adviser Tex McCrary; accept a traditionally assigned name, such as "Magog," which is given to the knight with the most sexual experience (Robert Alphonso Taft and William Howard Taft each earned this distinction); or choose your own (McGeorge and William Bundy chose "Odin," Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart-who swore in George H. W. Bush as director of the C.I.A. and vice president-chose "Crappo," W. Averell Harriman and Dean Witter Jr. were "Thor," and Henry Luce opted for "Baal"). John Kerry likely came close to earning the name "Long Devil," the traditional tag for the tallest man in the club, but narrowly missed-Alan Cross, now a doctor in North Carolina, is taller. Kerry chose his own name, but Bonesmen are keeping it quiet. George W. Bush, unable to come up with his own name, was dubbed "Temporary" and never managed to decide on a replacement.
At the end of the school year, the new group of 15 is whisked away to Deer Island in the Saint Lawrence River, 340 miles from New York City; the 50-acre private island was given to the society by a Bonesman at the turn of the 20th century. Both Kerry and Bush returned to the island as seniors. Kerry's group prepared to go to Vietnam. (Kerry spent his time there rewriting his class oration in a rustic cabin by candlelight.) Bush's club spent their time digesting the news that Bobby Kennedy had been shot.
When the knights return from summer break, they almost immediately launch into the activity that a knight from Prescott Bush's class once called "a wonderful sensation." Perhaps the most prevalent rumor about Bones is that initiates must lie naked in a coffin and masturbate while recounting their sexual histories. Naked coffin exploits aren't officially on the Bones program, but part of the rumor is not too far from the truth: at successive Sunday meetings, each knight has an evening devoted to him for the activity known as "Connubial Bliss." In a cozy room lit only by a crackling fire, in front of 14 clubmates lounging on plush couches, he stands before a painting of a woman named Connubial Bliss while the knights sing a sacred anthem about romance, ending with "so let's steal a few hours from the night, my love." Then he is expected to recount his entire sexual history.
Apparently this ritual has remained unchanged since the acceptance of women into the club in 1991. A group of Bonesmen led by William F. Buckley Jr. (Bones name: Cheevy) obtained a court order blocking initiation of the society's first female members, claiming that admitting women would lead to "date rape" in the "medium future." Approximately 83 women have since been admitted, despite feverish lobbying by W.'s uncle Jonathan Bush, whom a fellow member called a "fanatical Bonesman." Neither Bush's nor Kerry's daughters are members, however. Kerry's daughter Vanessa wasn't tapped in 1998, and last year Bush's daughter Barbara decided to join Spade and Chalice, an underground (less formal, tomb-less) society.
For all the mystery and conspiracy theories surrounding Skull and Bones, the club's deepest secret may be its most obvious: the bonds between Bonesmen often supersede others. "For some people, Skull and Bones becomes the most important thing that ever happened to them, and they tend to stay involved," a patriarch told me. Indeed, the year spent as an undergraduate in the club is really only the beginning of a lifetime membership that can, depending on how it is used, reap enormous benefits.
As his father and grandfather had done before him, George W. Bush called a Bonesman when he was looking for his first job out of college. Although Robert Gow wasn't hiring at the time, he still took on Bush as a management trainee at his Houston-based agricultural company Stratford of Texas. In 1977, when Bush formed his first company, he turned to his uncle Jonathan Bush, who lined up $565,000 from 28 investors. One investor brought in approximately $100,000: California venture capitalist William H. Draper III, a Bonesman. Even Bush's Rangers baseball deal involved a Bonesman-Edward Lampert (Bones 1984) was an initial investor.
Bonesmen used to grant favors if a fellow member began a conversation with the code phrase "Do you know General Russell?" By the time he was running for president, Bush didn't have to ask. In October of 2000, Stephen Adams (Bones 1959), who owns Adams Outdoor Advertising, spent $1 million on billboard ads in key states for Bush. When asked a few years ago why he had made such a large contribution to someone he hadn't met, Adams replied that the shared Bones experience was a factor. Even a 1970s Bonesman who tried to quit the society admitted he would readily help a fellow Bonesman "just because of Bones. Because we did go through something really weird together."
Bush apparently feels the same way. One of the first social gatherings he held in the White House was a reunion of his Skull and Bones 1968 clubmates, and within the past two years he held another reunion, this time at Camp David. One of Bush's early appointments as president was Robert McCallum Jr. (Bones 1968), now associate attorney general. (In 2002, McCallum, whose Justice Department civil division includes attorney and 1984 Bonesman David Wiseman, filed pleadings in U.S. District Court asserting an executive privilege that would make information on presidential pardons more secret than in the past.) Among Bush's other Bones appointees are Bill Donaldson (1953), chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission (and onetime director of the Deer Island Corporation); Edward McNally (1979), general counsel of the Office of Homeland Security and a senior associate counsel to the president; Rex Cowdry (1968), associate director of the National Economic Council; Roy Austin (1968), ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago; Evan G. Galbraith (1950), the secretary of defense's representative in Europe and the defense adviser to the U.S. mission to nato; James Boasberg (1985), associate judge of the superior court of the District of Columbia; former Knoxville mayor Victor Ashe (1967), the first mayor appointed to the board of directors of the housing-finance company Fannie Mae; Jack McGregor (1956), a nominee for the Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation advisory board, the same waterway that is home to Deer Island; and Bush's cousin George Herbert Walker III (1953), ambassador to Hungary. Frederick Smith (1966) was reportedly Bush's top choice for secretary of defense until he withdrew from the running because of health reasons.
Bonesmen say the president values the society because it became an extension of his family: the Bush-Walker web in Bones includes at least 10 members, including those who, like Reuben Holden (Bones name: McQuilp), married in. Donald Etra, a member of Bush's 1968 Bones club and a close friend who regularly visits the president, says Bones is important to Bush because "loyalty and tradition is important to the family." But Bush views Bones, he adds, "as a private matter which he does not discuss. The president believes there's still a realm where privacy counts."
Bones loyalty runs deep in John Kerry too. In 1993, Kerry, who, like Bush, has participated in several reunions with his clubmates, organized a meeting and a visit to Arlington National Cemetery on the 25th anniversary of Dick Pershing's death. When Pershing died, Kerry wrote to his own parents that Pershing "was so much a part of my life at the irreplaceable, incomparable moments of love, concern, anger and compassion exchanged in Bones that can never be replaced." After the trip to the gravesite, 10 members convened at a Washington hotel to talk about Pershing, Bones, and one another. "It was very, very moving and poignant," says Chip Stanberry. "It was neat that John went to the trouble to make it happen, and 30 years later we were able to pick up with each other, immediately identifying, feeling a connection." Kerry has also been back to the Bones Tomb a few times and once delivered a speech there. "When he's got a little time, he stops in. Most of us do," Thorne says.
On at least one occasion, Kerry took on a more involved Bones role. In 1986, Jacob Weisberg, now the editor of Slate, was taking time off from Yale to intern at The New Republic, in Washington, D.C., when he received a call from Kerry's secretary. "Senator Kerry wants to see you in his office," the secretary said. "He won't tell me what it is about."
Weisberg showed up at the senator's office at eight a.m. Initially, Kerry made small talk while Weisberg wondered why he was there. Then Kerry tapped him for Bones. Weisberg, who hadn't known Kerry was a member, was stunned.
"Senator Kerry," Weisberg said, "you're a liberal-why do you support this organization that doesn't admit women?"
Kerry listed his efforts to assist women throughout his career. "I've marched with battered women. I've supported women's rights. No one can question my dedication to women." Weisberg said he wasn't interested. Kerry replied, "Promise me you'll think about it before saying no."
When Weisberg called Kerry back, his call went straight through to the senator. He rejected the offer, and Kerry, Weisberg recalls, said he was disappointed.
Kerry's fellow Bonesmen say the senator considers Skull and Bones a valuable part of his college life and a source of lasting friendships-but no more than that. "I don't think it plays a significant role in his thinking or in his circle of advisers," says Alan Cross. Indeed, a glance through notable figures in Kerry's life reveals only the Bonesmen whom he knew before they were tapped. And Kerry, as an anti-war Vietnam veteran, publicly railed against fellow Bonesman McGeorge Bundy in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1971.
"(Kerry's) family carried the name Forbes, but John was never comfortable as a part of the Establishment," says Thorne, who adds that the 1966 group wasn't the "elite Establishment type." "He achieved what he achieved on his own. His is a life marked by intellectual and other kinds of achievement, not by who you know. That's just how he was."
Thorne has friends in both the Kerry and Bush families, and has discussed the Bones-versus-Bones election with Kerry and with first cousin Brinkley Thorne, one of Bush's fellow 1968 Bonesmen, who has remained close to the president. When I asked David Thorne why Kerry dismisses inquiries about the society, he said the Bones face-off is simply a source of amusement. "It's kind of an amazing coincidence, and so much elitism can be drawn from it. The accusation of all the mysteries attributed to Bones-is this the big one?" Thorne laughs. "I think John feels it's not relevant to the election, like marriage or divorce. It's a private matter. Bones is no less meaningful to George than it was to John, and I'm sure they both know of their own experience and they acknowledge that."
Certainly neither man is speaking about Bones in public. "It's a secret," Kerry deadpanned when Tim Russert asked him about Bones on Meet the Press. "It's so secret we can't talk about it," Bush responded when Russert asked him a similar question in February 2004.
Despite political differences, most members view the upcoming election with a mixture of pride in the society and embarrassment at the increased scrutiny. As they see it, Bones will have a White House connection either way. "It's a win-win situation," says a 1960s Bonesman. "If there is a goddess, it looks like she is smiling on them both." "

Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence: Bush and the Oil Traitors

(Guerrilla News Network) " The Bush Republicans are serving the interests of Big Oil and foreign oil producing nations to the detriment of our nation’s future and the American people. Bush’s publicly stated reasons for not using the Strategic Oil Reserve to lower the price of gasoline, diesel fuel and home heating oil sounds good until you apply a little logic and history to the issue. Bush claims that opening the Reserve would make the United States weaker in dealing with supply disruptions resulting from a terrorist attack on oil refineries or key pipelines domestically.
The Oil Reserve is held in unrefined crude oil. It is not held in refined products like gasoline, diesel fuel or home heating oil. It is stored underground in our nation to help the United States deal with disruptions in the world market. The current tight supplies are a form of disruption that threatens the economic strength of the American nation. The excessively high prices are the result of OPEC and the Big Oil companies acting collectively to restrict supplies in order to drive up the prices for petroleum products. OPEC is keeping crude oil prices up by pumping less. The oil companies have been closing refineries and not expanding refining facilities to meet rising demand. The Bush Republicans in Congress and the White House have blocked government assistance to promoting alternative energy while crippling government restrictions on price gouging by Big Oil for over 30 years.
Every oil crisis since OPEC was formed in the early 1970’s have seen record profits by the oil industry quickly followed by floods of campaign donations to Republicans. As anti-monopoly laws have been gutted, Big Oil has moved to capture control of all other types of energy suppliers. Privatization and de-regulation have given Big Oil a dangerously level of control over the entire economic health of the American nation. They have used this excessive market power to gain nearly complete control of the Republican Party and thru them in the Bush era the federal government. At this time in our history, Big Oil runs our government instead of the American people.
For example, the California Energy Crisis was the result of the illegal use of market power by Enron and others under the protective cover of Republican politicians. The Bush Administration stopped federal agencies from investigating the abuses until the damage was done. The current Republican Governor of California let the abusive companies keep most of these illegal profits. No wonder their campaigns received huge donations from Big Oil related donors! Taxpayers and consumers were the losers.
Big Oil has always acted in their self-interest regardless of the consequences for the America nation and our citizens. They helped create our problems with terrorism and many nations around the world by exercising undue influence on the foreign policies of the American government. They helped create OPEC by acting collectively to set the price of crude oil and oil royalties in the OPEC nations. The governments in the OPEC nations nationalized their domestic production and started acting collectively to keep from getting ripped off by Big Oil.
Now, Big Oil has found a way to profit excessively from higher crude prices by further reducing domestic supply. The United States needs to follow the OPEC approach and nationalize the Oil Industry. We should then work with other major oil-consuming nations to set reasonable prices with OPEC. Nations not willing to cooperate should lose all access to the America market for all products. The American market in general is the key engine for the so-called new global economy. If Japan, China or Europe does not work with the United States to control runaway oil prices, they should not be able to sell products here. We need to equalize the market power of the consumers and suppliers. The economic strength of the American nation depends on moving in this direction rapidly.
In the short term, the Strategic Oil Reserve is the key. We need to at least stop the drain on the world crude supply by continuing to fill the Reserve during the current crisis. If this proves less than successful in controlling prices, we should start releasing the Reserve. It would help greatly in the event of a terrorist attack to have this unrefined crude refined into gasoline, diesel oil and especially home heating oil. Closing refineries for unnecessary maintenance under current circumstance hurts to American nation but profits Big Oil. If we lose refineries to terrorism, supplies of crude oil stored underground will be worthless in meeting the needs for refined products. The Bush argument for not using the Oil Reserve simply is bogus.
We need to move aggressively towards lessening our dependence on oil for meeting our energy needs. We need to tighten our laws and regulations against price gouging. We need to vote out of office every Bush Republican at every level so Big Oil cannot dictate our energy policy and foreign policy. Our national energy policy and our foreign policies should be designed to promote our national strength and improving the standard of living of the vast majority of American citizens. We would not have gotten into the current Iraqi mess without the Big Oil influence on the Bush Administration. These writers believe that the Bush Administration will not release the Cheney Energy Taskforce information because it would likely prove that Bush and Cheney were planning on invading Iraq to profit Big Oil long before the 9-11 attacks. The Iraqi misadventure has weakened The American nation greatly.
The interests of United States is more threatened by the greedy traitors of Big Oil and their allies among the Bush Republicans than even the crazed Islamic terrorists they helped indirectly to create and finance! Our only remaining defense is our vote in November.

~Stephen Crockett and Al Lawrence are the hosts of Democratic Talk Radio. "

Conspiracy or paranoia? Mitchel Cohen: For Oil And Empire - Was 911 Allowed To Happen?

(Rense) "Without superior air power, America is a bound and throttled giant, impotent and easy prey for any yellow dwarf with a pocket-knife."
- Lyndon Baines Johnson
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" For 50 minutes, from 8:15 a.m. until 9:05 a.m. on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, it became widely known within the FAA and the Department of Defense that four domestic passenger airplanes had been hijacked.
  New York and Washington DC are surrounded by airbases and defensive systems, and they have been used on numerous occasions to send fighter jets into the air within minutes of an "event" to intercept wayward aircraft. The FAA has published guidelines about what to do as soon as a plane deviates from its flight plan. Air traffic controllers are taught to assume that a hijacking is underway, if there is any doubt at all.
  Flight 11, out of Logan airport in Boston, deviated from its path at 7:45 a.m. It hit the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m.
  No fighter jets intercepted any of the three off-course aircraft that hit the World Trade Center in New York and a section of the Pentagon that was under repair in Virginia. It is estimated that 116 different safeguards simultaneously failed on that fateful day.
Did officials of the U.S. government know ahead of time of plans to hijack these planes and for various reasons did they allow that to happen? There is evidence that these same officials not only allowed 9-11 to occur, but facilitated the hijackings.
 
The Stand-Down of U.S. Defenses
 
When professional golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet stopped responding to radio contact on October 23, 1999, an F-16 was by that plane's side within 18 minutes. The F-16 "intercepted" the off course Learjet, caught up with it, and attempted to make visual contact with the crew. All of this was in line with the procedures published by the FAA. This is standard operating procedure. Deviations from this procedure require direct orders to stand-down. The question is not whether or not such orders occurred, but who gave them.
Was this question ever asked of the powers that be? Actually, it WAS.
On September 13, 2001, acting head of the Joint Chiefs of staff, Air Force General Richard B. Myers issued contradictory statements about why no fighters were dispatched on 9-11 to protect Washington D.C. and the Pentagon. Florida Senator Bill Nelson demanded an explanation.
 
NELSON: Perhaps we want to do this in our session, in executive session. But my question is an obvious one for not only this committee, but for the executive branch and the military establishment. If we knew that there was a general threat on terrorist activity, which we did, and we suddenly have two trade towers in New York being obviously hit by terrorist activity, of commercial airliners taken off course from Boston to Los Angeles, then what happened to the response of the defense establishment once we saw the diversion of the aircraft headed west from Dulles turning round 180 degrees and likewise, in the aircraft taking off from Newark and, in flight, turning 180 degrees? That's the question. I leave it to you as to how you would like to answer it. But we would like an answer.
 
MYERS: "You bet. I spoke, after the second tower was hit, I spoke to the commander of NORAD, General Eberhart. And at that point, I think the decision was, at that point, to start launching aircraft. One of the things you have to understand, senator, is that in our posture right now, that we have many fewer aircraft on alert than we did during the height of the Cold War. And so, we've got just a few bases around the perimeter of the United States. So it's not just a question of launching aircraft, it's launching to do what?"
 
This was a very strange non-response. Myers said: "We have many fewer aircraft." That does not answer the question of whether US air defenses responded or not; it simply provides an excuse for whatever else they say. Myers also threw in the important phrase, "At that point." "At that point ... after the second tower was hit." But the question was, What actions were taken up until that point? The Senator asked point-blank: Why did you wait so long to launch planes? and Myers responded: We decided to launch planes after the second WTC had been hit, and we didn't actually launch them until after the Pentagon was hit. This is a non-response.
As we saw with the Payne Stewart incident, the FAA and military have rules for how an interceptor communicates to a wayward aircraft. The F-16 attempts to get the pilot's attention, using visual as well as electronic signals to determine if the aircraft is in distress and is being flown by the proper pilot.
One day later, September 14, 2001, the official story changed. The FAA and the Defense Department claimed that fighter jets WERE launched -- from Otis Air National Guard base on Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
Why did Myers not report this in his testimony the preceding day?
Of course, this information raises new questions: Why were the fighter jets sent from that particular base which was relatively distant, from the location of the hijacked airlines? But even these should have been able to reach the Pentagon and the second World Trade Center plane before they hit.
According to Aviation Week and Space Technology, at the time of the first WTC crash, 8:46 a.m., three F-16s assigned to Andrews Air Force Base 10 miles from Washington were flying a training mission in North Carolina, 207 miles away from DC. They were already in the air. The F-16s top speed is 1,500 miles per hour -- 25 miles per minute. They could have been over DC airspace in 8.3 minutes. They could have been there at 8:55 a.m., a half hour before the Pentagon was hit. Instead, they were recalled. They are reported to have landed at Andrews Air Force base AFTER Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon.
So what do we have? According to the first version of the official story, no planes were scrambled. It was not until 9:35 a.m. that planes were ordered up in the air. Yet Vice President Cheney made the following statement -- an apparent slip-up -- on "Meet the Press," that "The Secret Service has an arrangement with the FAA," and that around 8:46 a.m. on September 11, 2001, "They had open lines after the World Trade Center was ... "
Cheney cut himself off mid-sentence. Why? Because if he admits that the FAA was communicating with the Secret Service on "open lines" right after 8:46 a.m., when the first tower was hit, then this would be proof that George W. Bush and company in Florida would have been informed BEFORE HE EVEN BEGAN TRAVELING TO THE SCHOOL TO READ TO CHILDREN, in contradiction to the official story.
This is supported by two journalists who were with Bush on 9-11: ABC's Jon Cochran and Associated Press' Sonya Ross, who reported that the President stated that he knew of the terrorist attacks before he left his hotel.
Were the US defense planes ordered to stand down? I believe there is sufficient evidence to indicate that that is indeed the case.
There are certainly many crucial questions about the sequence of events on the morning of 9-11 that remain to be answered. Unfortunately, the official commission investigating 9-11 did not ask them.
Additional questions that need to be asked:
 
- Who ordered aircraft to pick up the scores of bin-Laden family members in the United States and fly them out of the country when every other plane in the U.S. was "grounded," and why?
 
- Was a war against Iraq already "in the cards," awaiting the right pretext? Ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil states in his new book that the war in Iraq was planned from the first day of the Bush Administration and that there was no evidence then, and there is no evidence now, that Iraq was involved in 9-11. Former "terrorism czar" Richard Clarke says that after 9-11, Donald Rumsfeld instantly wanted to attack Iraq. And so what had been originally called "Operation Iraqi Liberation" (OIL) was launched.
 
- Two of the alleged hijackers were trained in Florida at the Hoffman School of Aviation. Why, immediately after 9-11, did Jeb Bush -- the President's brother and Governor of Florida -- seize the alleged terrorist pilots' records at Hoffman Aviation, order them placed onto a government cargo plane, and have them flown out of the country? [This information is raised in the lawsuit filed by Ellen Mariani, whose husband was a passenger on one of the planes that crashed on 9-11.]
 
- Why in March of 2000, did an FBI agent destroy all of the FBI's Denver-based intercepts of messages from bin Laden's colleagues who were under investigation? (He claims he became angry because the Carnivore email monitoring system had somehow mixed what he called "innocent emails" with those allegedly belonging to Al Qaeda. Shouldn,t investigatory bodies be the ones to make such a decision? What exactly were these "innocent emails? Who sent them? What did they contain?)
 
- What was the involvement of Pakistan,s secret police, which had close relations with the U.S. government? On Sept. 10, 2001, the day before the attacks, the head of the Pakistani ISI, General Ahmad, wired $100,000 to Mohammed Atta, who the US government says was the ringleader of the hijackers. (The Times of India reports that the total amount transferred was actually around $325,000. We'll ignore for now the statements from Atta's father that his son is alive and that unspecified "others" had used his identity, along with that of several of the other alleged hijackers.) A Federal News Service reporter questioned National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice as follows:
 
"Are you aware of the reports at the time that the ISI chief was in Washington on September 11th, and on September 10th $100,000 was wired from Pakistan to these groups here in this area?"
 
That was the actual question. The White House provided the press with the following written transcript: "Are you aware of the reports at the time that [inaudible] was in Washington on September 11th?"
The words: "Pakistan's ISI chief" is the only part of the message, according to the White House transcript, that was "inaudible".
 
- Why were 29 pages of the US Congressional 9-11 committee reports (on Saudi/US connections) censored and blanked out, at Bush's request? Did these pages include the names of U.S. corporations and the weapons (including biological and chemical weapons) they sold to Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iraq and other countries in the region?
 
- Why was the 9-11 WTC wreckage swiftly removed and sold off as scrap metal, and melted down within days of the attack, preventing federal investigators from being able to fully reconstruct the "crime scene" and determine the cause for the buildings' collapse?
 
- Why haven't the voice recorders and black boxes from Flight 11 and Flight 175 been made available to public officials and media so that they could be examined?
 
- How did the passport of one of the alleged hijackers miraculously find its way unharmed to the top of a pile of rubble a short distance from the World Trade Center, enabling US government officials to establish the identity of the hijackers?
 
- Why would seismographs in the NYC area register two small quakes at Ground Zero many moments after the planes hit but just each tower began to collapse? This leads to speculation that -- as hard as this is to believe -- the twin towers suffered explosions apart from the impact of the two passenger jets.
 
- How did building #7 at the World Trade Center "collapse"?
 
This latter is terribly important, and it may turn out to be the key to the whole mess. That building housed, among other things, Mayor Giulianis impenetrable bunker, established and originally run by Jerome Hauer and the Office of Emergency Management. It also housed the largest CIA offices outside of Langley Virginia.
Building #7 was not hit by any airplane. It was a large office building, 47 stories tall. To date, however, the common view is that the building somehow caught fire and collapsed along with the two towers. No investigating committee has been examining its "collapse."
Originally, it was claimed tha illegally stored diesel fuel and emergency generators exploded in building 7, setting fires that compromised its structural integrity. Mayor Giuliani had been warned repeatedly by fire marshals that storing thousands of gallons of fuel in that way was a serious violation of all fire codes. But the Federal Emergency Management Agency report stresses that the fuel tanks remained fully intact. In pictures of building 7 at 3 pm on September 11, two and a half hours before it collapsed, the only fires are on the 7th and 12th floors; they are considered small and containable and could have been forseeably put out by the building's sprinkler system. FEMA was puzzled in its report about what happened to building #7 and could only conclude, The specifics of the fires in WTC 7 and how they caused the building to collapse remain unknown at this time.

The report is available at http://www.fema.gov/library/wtcstudy.shtm.

In a September 2002 PBS documentary called "America Rebuilds," the owner of the World Trade Center Complex Larry Silverstein, who had bought the entire complex but a short time before the attacks, states in reference to World Trade Center Building #7:

"I remember getting a call from the, er, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire, and I said, "We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse."
The term 'pull it' means to bring the building down by means of explosives. In the same documentary a cleanup worker refers to the demolition of WTC Building #6 in December, 2001, when he says, "...we're getting ready to pull the building six."

Silverstein's remarks are critical here in understanding what occurred. Why would FEMA commission a report into how building #7 collapsed if it was already known that the owner, presumably in conjunction with the government, made the decision to destroy it on the evening of 9/11?
Thus, it is crucial to establish what exactly happened to building #7: Did Silverstein (and the government?) make the decision to 'pull' the building on September 11, 2001 as Silverstein indicated a year later in the PBS interview, amidst the ongoing chaos, endangering rescue workers and equipment? If so, when was this decision made?
And if, as Silverstein says, he decided to "pull the building, how did they manage to rig explosives in a matter of hours that would successfully and safely take down a 47 story building in the middle of the chaos on 9-11? Could explosives could bought (and from whom? Where is the paper trail, the order receipts, etc.?), brought to the location and carefully put into place within a couple of hours on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, and the 47-story building safely "pulled" at that time? If not, then the explosives would have had to have been in place for such an eventuality PRIOR TO 9-11. The implications of THAT scenario are even scarier and profound - the entire official story about what happened on 9-11 would have to be discarded.
Silverstein Properties' estimated investment in WTC 7 was $386 million. In February of 2002 Silverstein Properties won $861 million from Industrial Risk Insurers to rebuild on the site of WTC 7. This one building's collapse alone resulted in a profit of about $500 million!
One would think that these are the sort of questions that any high school student would ask. The problem is, why haven't the official investigating bodies asked them?

~I am indebted to Sander Hicks for much of the research for this article. "

Study: Calif. Taxpayers Pay $86M Annually to Subsidize Wal-Mart Workers' Public Assistance

(AP) "Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s compensation policies cost California taxpayers $86 million annually to provide health care and other public assistance to the retailer's underpaid workers, according to an analysis released Monday.
Wal-Mart disputed the study by the University of California Berkeley's Institute for Industrial Relations, contending many of its key findings are badly flawed.
The study estimated Wal-Mart employs roughly 44,000 California workers who make an average of $9.70 per hour 31 percent below the $14.01-per-hour average of other large retailers with at least 1,000 employees. The study calculated Wal-Mart's wages using 2001 payroll figures disclosed in a sex discrimination lawsuit against the retailer.
But Bentonville, Ark.-based Wal-Mart said the study's job and wage estimates for California are outdated. The world's largest retailer employs 60,500 California workers who are paid an average of $10.37 per hour, said Wal-Mart spokeswoman Cynthia Lin. "The (study's) conclusions are questionable because they are based on faulty assumptions."
UC Berkeley's study is based on the premise that Wal-Mart's paltry pay scale forces the retailer's workers to supplement their incomes with Medicaid, food stamps and other taxpayer-backed assistance programs at an unusually high rate.
California taxpayers contribute an average of $1,952 per Wal-Mart worker 39 percent more than the average public assistance cost of $1,401 per worker at other large retailers with at least 1,000 employees, the study concluded.
"People understand the benefits of Wal-Mart they have lower prices," said Arindrajit Dube, a research economist who co-authored the study. "What might not be obvious is those low prices are fed by taxpayer-funded compensation."
Wal-Mart rejected that notion, maintaining its wages are similar to those of its rivals. And the company said 90 percent of its workers have health insurance either through the company or coverage provided by the employer of a spouse or parent. Wal-Mart also employs many elderly workers eligible for Medicare, the federal health insurance for senior citizens."

Andrew Buncombe & Nigel Morris: Shocking Prisoner Abuses

(Independent) "Prisoners at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to Abu Ghraib-style torture and sexual humiliation in which they were stripped naked, forced to sodomise one another and taunted by naked female American soldiers, according to a new report.
Some of the abuse has been captured on videotape.
Based on the testimony of three former British prisoners who spoke with other detainees, the report details a brutal yet carefully choreographed regime at the US prison camp in which abuse was meted out in a manner judged to have the "maximum impact". Those prisoners with the most conservative Muslim backgrounds were the most likely to be subjected to sexual humiliation and abuse while those from westernised backgrounds were more likely to suffer solitary confinement and physical mistreatment.
In addition to the sexual and physical humiliation, the report based on testimony provided by Rhuhel Ahmed, Asif Iqbal and Safiq Rasul the so-called Tipton Three also details how prisoners had their religion mocked. "There was a clear policy to try to force people to abandon their religious faith," says one extract of the report, obtained by The Independent. The report also details how prisoners were injected with unknown drugs during interrogation sessions and were told they would only receive medicine if they co-operated with interrogators.
It was also reported that elsewhere in the report, Mr Ahmed claims he was questioned for three hours by a British interrogator claiming to be from the SAS while an American colleague held a gun to his head.
Sir Menzies Campbell, the Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman, said last night: "These allegations make profoundly unpleasant reading. If they are true, they demonstrate a level of behaviour far short of what is acceptable. The American authorities said that the Geneva Conventions did not apply in Guantanamo Bay, but nevertheless they abide by their terms. It seems they have signally failed to do so and one can't help drawing a parallel with what happened at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad."
Five British prisoners were released without charge from Guantanamo Bay, on a US naval base on the south-east coast of Cuba, last March and freed within a day by the British authorities. Another four remain: Feroz Abbasi, Moazzam Begg, Martin Mubanga and Richard Belmar. Three UK residents, Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil al-Banna and Jamal Abdullah, are also there. It is understood that Mr Begg and Mr Abbasi, have been held in total isolation for more than a year.
The abuse detailed in the report, compiled by British and American lawyers and being released today in New York by the Centre for Constitutional Rights, is likely to trigger fresh outrage about the way the US military treats prisoners. Investigators are examining allegations of widespread abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prisoner west of Baghdad. Male prisoners were abused, tortured and sexually humiliated by their US guards. They are also investigating the deaths of several prisoners in US military custody.
One factor which links Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib is Gen Geoffrey Miller, the former commander of the Cuban prison who left to take charge of Abu Ghraib in August last year. Mr Miller reportedly told his staff in Iraq that his intention was to turn the prison into an intelligence hub and "Gitmoize" the operation (Guantanamo is known in the US as Gitmo).
The allegations in the report match those made by other released prisoners. This week the French newspaper LibÈration detailed claims by two French men who said they had been physically and sexually abused, urinated on and refused medical treatment. And in a sworn statement yesterday, Tarek Dergoul, another Briton, said he had been beaten, tied up "like a beast", sprayed with pepper gun and had his head forced down the toilet. He claimed the brutality was recorded on video. The Foreign Office said yesterday no allegations of ill-treatment had been passed to British officials when they visited inmates.
'I was tied up like a beast and beaten'
A British prisoner at Guantanamo Bay said yesterday that he was interrogated for up to 10 hours at a time while chained like a dog to a metal ring in the floor.
During his incarceration, Tareq Dergoul said that he had endured similar abuse and humiliation to that meted out to the Iraqi inmates of Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail.
In a sworn statement, he said he had been beaten, tied up "like a beast", sprayed with a pepper gun and had his head forced down the lavatory. He said the brutality was recorded on video camera.
Mr Dergoul, from Mile End, east London, was picked up by US forces in Afghanistan where he says he had travelled to buy property. He was held in Guantanamo Bay for 22 months - including more than a year in the isolation block - before being released without charge.
He also said that he was stripped, subjected to a full body search and photographed while naked, given forcible injections, forced to lie on a metal bunk without bedding in freezing conditions, and refused medical treatment when suffering frostbite. He later had to have a big toe amputated. Mr Dergoul, 26, said he was put in solitary confinement for translating from English for other prisoners and that soldiers mocked the Koran, played loud music and forced him to look at pornographic magazines during interrogation. "If I refused a cell search, military police would call the extreme reaction force, who came in riot gear with plastic shields and pepper spray. The ERF entered the cell, ran in and pinned me down after spraying me and attacked me."
He said he had been told to sign a form admitting he was a member of al-Qa'ida, but had refused. His lawyer, Louise Christian, said he had been a victim of a systematic regime of abuse "directed and ordered by the top command".
 
BRITONS HELD AT CAMP DELTA
 
DETAINED
 
Feroz Abbasi, 23: Moved to Britain from Uganda aged eight. May have attended Finsbury Park mosque. Arrested in Afghanistan.
 
Moazzam Begg, 36: Ran a religious bookshop in Birmingham. Was arrested in Islamabad in February 2002, then moved to Cuba in February 2003.
 
Richard Belmar, 23: Held in Pakistan before being moved to Cuba. Worshipped at Regent's Park mosque, close to his home in Maida Vale, north London.
 
Martin Mubanga, 29: Has joint Zambian and British nationality. Lived in London. Was arrested in Zambia after reportedly arriving there from Afghanistan.
 
RELEASED
 
Asif Iqbal, 22: Parcel depot worker from Tipton. Picked up in Afghanistan. Family had suggested he go to Pakistan to meet a bride.
 
Shafiq Rasul, 24: Captured in Afghanistan. From Tipton. Travelled to Pakistan in 2001 for a computer course.
 
Rhuhel Ahmed, 21: Left for Pakistan in 2001 with Rasul and Iqbal to attend wedding. Held in Kandahar before being sent to Cuba.
 
Jamal al-Harith or Jamal Udeen 37: Web designer. Believed to have been captured in a Kandahar jail.
 
Tarek Dergoul, 24: Former east London care worker. Believed to have been sent to Cuba in May 2002."

G. Edward Griffin: Fahrenheit 911; The Other Half of the Story

(Freedom Force International) "Four months before the 2004 presidential elections in the U.S., film producer, Michael Moore, released a feature-length documentary film entitled Fahrenheit 911. It was a powerful condemnation of the George W. Bush Administration with particular focus on the U.S. war in Iraq. Moore compiled an amazing collection of video clips showing Bush and key members of his Administration in off-guarded moments and in situations where a lack of sincerity was glaringly evident. The story that emerges shows the Bush family closely allied with Saudi princes and the bin Ladin Family in business ventures that profit from war production and from the vast oil reserves in the Middle East. It hammers hard on the human suffering caused by a war, not to destroy a terrorist stronghold, but to gain access to oil resources and provide lucrative government contracts. Moore’s creative talent was applied with precision and resulted in what may become a new genre of political filmmaking. The effect was devastating to Bush and his supporters who were left with little defense except to claim that the production was biased and that certain statements were not correct.
This is my analysis of Fahrenheit 911:

1. The program is biased, and certain statements are not entirely correct, but every important fact it portrays is true.

2. In addition to profits from oil resources and government war contracts, there is a second motive that also drives U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East and elsewhere. It is the creation of a New World Order based on the model of collectivism, and it is supported with equal vigor by leaders of both major political parties. Mr. Bush and his team are deeply committed to that goal. [For an in-depth examination of this agenda, see The Future Is Calling in the Issues section of the Freedom Force web site.] Fahrenheit 911 gives no attention to that agenda and even goes so far as to claim that it plays no role in these events. That theme was advanced in a statement from one of the on-camera experts who said, “This has nothing to do with conspiracies or political agendas. It’s all about oil and making money.”

3. Omission of this bi-partisan political agenda makes it possible to deliver the message that America’s problems in the Middle East are caused by greedy, war-mongering Republicans who are in power and that the obvious solution is to replace them with humanitarian, peace-loving Democrats. This message was implied throughout the film, but it broke through in clear language when a young soldier said, “I used to be a Republican, but when I get back home, I’m going to work hard to get Democrats elected.” If the film had acknowledged the New World Order agenda of the Bush Administration, it would have led to the fact that leaders of the Democrat Party, including its presidential candidate John Kerry, share the same vision, and the partisan message would not have been possible.

4. The carefully crafted content of the film and the timing of its release make it clear that it was conceived as a covert campaign tool for the Democrat Party and the John Kerry campaign. It follows what I call the Quigley Formula, based on the strategy advocated by Professor Carroll Quigley, President Clinton’s mentor when he was a student at Georgetown University. In his book, Tragedy and Hope, Quigley explained the value of allowing people to believe that, by choosing between the Democrat and Republican parties, they are determining their own political destiny. To a collectivist like Quigley, this is a necessary illusion to prevent voters from meddling into the important affairs of state. If you have ever wondered why the two American parties appear so different at election time but not so different afterward, listen carefully to Quigley’s approving overview of American politics:

The National parties and their presidential candidates, with the Eastern Establishment assiduously fostering the process behind the scenes, moved closer together and nearly met in the center with almost identical candidates and platforms, although the process was concealed as much as possible, by the revival of obsolescent or meaningless war cries and slogans (often going back to the Civil War). … The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can “throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extreme shifts in policy. … Either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, unenterprising, and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor, approximately the same basic policies. [Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: Macmillan, 1966), pp. 1247-1248.]

Inevitably, the mind turns to the question: Was this the intention of Michael Moore? My opinion – no, that is too strong a word – my suspicion is that Moore probably was not consciously implementing the Quigley Formula. However, there are powerful economic factors that would have compelled him to follow it in any event. Anyone who has done as much research into this matter as he has must have come across voluminous information about the political agenda. However, if any of it had appeared in his film, it would have been unacceptable to the Democrat Party. Without the enthusiastic support of that powerful sector, there would have been small chance for film distribution and even less for box-office success.
Many people want simple solutions for political problems. They are not interested in complexities. When confronted with the fact that both major parties are committed to the same agenda, their reaction is: “OK, but who ya gonna vote for?” That, of course, reveals that they don't really understand the Quigley Formula. They honestly believe that their vote for one of the two major presidential candidates makes a difference. This simplifies things a lot for them, because all the complex issues can be boiled down into just one decision: “Who ya gonna vote for?”
In the real world, things are not that simple. First, presidents are not yet absolute monarchs, although that clearly is the trend. Their power still can be curtailed by Congress. We may not have much influence in the election of a president, but we can, with sufficient effort at the precinct level, have significant effect on the outcome of Congressional races.
Second, there are candidates from other parties who may be worthy of our support. “But he can’t win,” is the common response. My reply is so what? Elections are not football pools in which the object is to win a bet. The purpose of an election is, not to pick winners, but to support candidates who reflect our political philosophy. Even if a candidate does not win, the size of his vote is a visible measure of the number of people who support his philosophy, and that can become an important element in shaping public policy. There is no virtue in voting for a winner if he is a collectivist dedicated to our enslavement.
Casting votes and working for candidates, as important as those activities are, represent merely the entry-level of political activism. As long as candidates and issues are chosen by collectivists, there is no hope for meaningful reform. The real action lies in participating in the process that selects the candidates and defines the issues. This is possible only by seeking influence and leadership in political parties, government agencies, educational institutions, media organizations, and other power centers of society. That is the mission of Freedom Force.
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The political agenda omitted from Fahrenheit 911 is revealed in these books and videos, available from The Reality Zone.

Tragedy and Hope
A History of The World in Our Time
by Professor Carroll Quigley
This is the book that blows the lid off the secret organization created by Cecil Rhodes to quietly gain control over nations of the world and establish a global government based on the model of collectivism. (More)

The Anglo-American Establishment
by Professor Carroll Quigley
Quigley states: "What is not so widely known is that Rhodes in five previous wills left his fortune to form a secret society,... And what does not seem to be known to anyone is that this secret society ... continues to exist to this day." (More)

The Creature from Jekyll Island
A Second Look at the Federal Reserve
by G. Edward Griffin
This book reveals the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity. Your world view will definitely change. You'll never trust a politician again -- or a banker. (More)


The Hidden Agenda
Merging America into World Government
In this video interview by G. Edward Griffin, Norman Dodd, Congressional investigator of tax-exempt foundations, reveals their concealed plan for merging America into world government based on the model of collectivism. (More)

Who's Who of the Elite
The Bilderbergs, CFR, and Trialateralists
What are the names of the people who actually rule the world and what positions do they hold? This compilation answers that question. Indexed by name and category. (More)"

Christine Boese: The Screen-Age - Our Brains In Our Laptops

(CNN) "When I taught at a university, I worked with the wireless laptop programs that are replacing computer labs on campuses.
Once students began carrying laptops everywhere and using them in class, an interesting dependency developed. There were times in class when I asked a question and students would glance helplessly at the machines, as if to say, "The answer isn't in my carbon-based brain, but I know I got it right here, on silicon."
Or, if the answer wasn't stored in their notes on the hard drive, it became a contest in which students would search the Net madly to compete for extra credit points.
It was always a sad day for the ones who showed up with a dead battery and no power cord, a busted keyboard or loose wireless card. They watched the rest of the class in a flurry of activity, frustrated and feeling like half of their brains -- more than half for some students -- was missing. Marshall McLuhan -- the prophet
Amazingly, the late media theorist Marshall McLuhan saw this coming in the 1960s. Many things he predicted about television did not appear until the appearance of the Internet and portable computers: so-called "ubiquitous computing."
McLuhan believed our senses become extended outside of our bodies. He suggested that a book was an extension of your eye and a car, an extension of your foot. He would say the Internet is an extension of our central nervous systems.
If we think of ourselves as somehow projected outside our bodies, one's sense of self becomes increasingly fragmented. My math brain lives partly inside a calculator.
My consciousness isn't just split between gray matter and a hard drive or two. Now part of it lives on the Internet and seems to stay there all the time. While I may feel a bit diffuse, mostly I observe changes in what McLuhan called our "sense ratios," like a goldfish changing from one kind of aquarium to another. We adapt. We gain some things, lose others.
Internet researcher Sherry Turkle in her book "Life on the Screen " interviews college students about their online lives. She is interested in their ability to multi-task in ways some older people cannot. She describes students as bombarded with media from multiple sources on a typical night of studying in the dorm. How young people live
A student may have a textbook open. The television is on with sound off (perhaps with the CNN Headline News modular screen). They've got music on headphones. On a laptop hooked in to the Internet there's a homework window, along with e-mail and instant messaging in the background. The Web has become an essential part of checking facts and figures for the homework (not to mention plagiarizing with copy and paste). On top of that, the student may field phone calls or talk with a roommate.
One of the most striking observations in Turkle's findings was a quote from one multi-tasking student who preferred the online world to the face-to-face world. "Real life," he said, "is just one more window."
College students are the leading edge in adapting to this new goldfish bowl, these new multi-tasking sense ratios. Some of us will hold on to the old ways by our fingernails, afraid of losing a coherent self. Others will plunge into the new collective nerve center, our various selves loosely joined in a partial free-fall at all times."

Jewish Bulletin: Jewish Journalists Grapple with 'doing the write thing.'

"DO Jewish journalists have more obligations than others? Are they responsible first to their communities, and do they need to represent Israel in their newspapers?
These questions and others were raised by the 50 participants of 'Do the Write Thing,' a special program for student journalists sponsored by the Jewish Agency for Israel and the World Zionist Organization at the General Assembly of the United Jewish Communities held here last week ...
'On campus there is already so much anti-Israeli sentiment that we have to be careful about any additional criticism against Israel,' said Marita Gringaus, who used to write for Arizona State University's newspaper.
'This is our responsibility as Jews, which obviously contradicts our responsibilities as journalists.' Gringaus explained her position by saying that in the campus media, 'groups are set against each other rather than as objective views.'
Uzi Safanov, a writer at the Seawanhaka newspaper of Long Island University in New York, agreed. 'I'm a Jew before being a journalist, before someone pays me to write,' he said. 'If I find a negative thing about Israel, I will not print it and I will sink into why did it happen and what can I do to change it.'
Safanov said that even if he eventually wrote about negative incidents that happen in Israel, he would try to find the way 'to shift the blame.' Others among the participants felt uncomfortable with these suggestions.
"They reinforce that, as Jews in the media, you have responsibly to help Israel. This is not reporting; this is PR," she said. "I am Zionist, but it doesn't mean you can't be critical of what happens in Israel."
Still, Meyers feels a loyalty to Jewish values. "It doesn't matter if you are a journalist or in another profession," she said. "Our Jewish values influence every aspect of our lives. Nobody can be totally objective because we all come with our own perspective, our own biases, and that is going to come through in the writing."
Leni Reiss, the American Jewish Press Association liaison to the conference, said one can never be 100 percent objective, "but (as a Jew) you can bring your unique knowledge, your unique sensitivity to the job that you do, and it's not necessarily a bad thing." "

Views from the fringe: Key 23: The Corporate Egregore

"This article explores the identity of the corporate body and how it can often become an independent entity, outside the control of any singular individual. In magickal terms the corporation can, by virtue of its presence in memespace and its influence over the collective human psyche, become the magickal construct known as an egregore. Much of this can apply to all corporate or cooperative bodies, but the lifestyle providers that dance on our TV’s, follow us down the streets and in our cars, and who gently invade our homes and minds, are the most powerful and compelling.
The modern corporation is far more than simply a building full of people that creates a product or manages resources. It exists in physical space, data space, and in aetheric space. It is a collective of intentional will committed to self-preservation, growth, and profit. It wields language and media to establish its presence and identity in the age of global trade. The corporation is unified in its focus, executes on its desires, and manipulates resources in accordance with its intent. It is in many ways an individual composed of many cooperative cells. Like the human body, the corporation maintains its identity and function in spite of the continuous recycling of its cells. The structure persists by its own will and inertia. The corporation is not bound to any one location. It can move, disperse, and distribute through data networks. It behaves with a single will, informed by the will of the corporate collective, bent towards the same end: maintaining the existence & continued growth of the corporate entity.
The genesis of the corporation was as a representation of the shared interests of a group. Soon it evolved to have the legal status roughly equivalent to a person. It has become an independent entity with the same rights as an individual (or more). Its person-hood reinforces its self-identity and the identity it projects to the world. It wants to appear human and be regarded as such. This is the only way to find intimacy with the consumer; the only way the corporation can generate trust and acceptance. This identity begins with the corporate vision but soon moves into the minds of the consumer culture where it can tap into a deeper level of emotional associations. It is at this point that it has evolved from a business entity into a psychic one.

Corporate Sigil

The corporation is recognized by its products - the output of its collective will manifesting in the material plane - and by its image - the constructs it builds up around itself, intentionally & unintentionally, through advertising, marketing, its actions and its transgressions. As the corporate image becomes more and more focused and defined, it is easier to package and deliver to the minds of consumers. While the internal corporate identity may wear one mask, the public persona usually wears another. It is this basic deception which gives power to the emergent egregore and allows it such access to our dreams & desires.
The coporate logo is a sigil used to represent it to the world. The logo is a way to encapsulate a highly complex system in a single, easy to digest image that can be fed to the masses. The better the corporate sigil, the more that people identify with its logo, and the less they look beyond its representation of the corporate ideal. The sigil is a spell cast upon the world to ensnare us in its allure and avert our eyes from its indiscretions. The corporate image employs a vast army of trained psychoengineers hired explicitly to exploit the psychological and perceptual weaknesses of the consumer culture. They distill its carefully crafted identity into emotional aggregates, surgical abstractions designed to re-associate the faceless corporate entity with ideas and images and slogans that appeal to the human animal on a subconscious level.
The corporate logo is an abstraction of the crafted persona, containing within it the cultural weight of its associations, wrapped in a simple image easily absorbed and remembered. The corporate entity clothes itself in meaning and uses symbolism to represent that meaning. Now the Nike “swoosh” represents far more than just a company that sells shoes. It is athleticism, adventure, competition, endurance, work & struggle. Michael Jordan. Nike Town. Sweatshops and personalization agitprop. When Jonah Peretti made international news for trying to personalize a a pair of Nike’s with the word “sweatshop", the Nike meme expanded to include this as well. (this was an excellent example of a simple magickal assault on a corporate egregore.) And remember when they used the Beatles song “Say you want a revolution” in a TV commercial? The egregore clothes itself in pop culture in order to gain greater access to the collective unconscious - to co-opt & commodify the human spirit.

Corporate Egregore

An egregore is a magickal entity that functions with its own will. It is unique from a deity or godform in that it is explicitly a human creation, rather than an inherent archetype or psychic representation. It is given life by the intent of its creator and is initially designed to fulfill a certain goal. This is typically the role of a servitor as a servant to its master. But if the servitor gains enough power it can become an egregore, independent from the will of its creator. It takes on a life of its own. When the Nike execs go home for the evening, the egregore lives on in media, in the minds of consumers, and in its product set behind glass windows, walking the streets, sitting in our homes. Indeed, if successful it will persist through generations, drawing devoted servants into its halls - servants who will work hard to extend its presence in the noosphere.
Satire and cultural appropriation are indicators that a meme has grown beyond the scale of its original intent. As it passes through more and more heads its identity expands further into the global mind. As the egregore yields more of its identity to the mass culture, it grows beyond the control of its servants. They must simply respond and adapt to the consumer climate. There is a subtle feedback loop here. The egregore influences culture, which in turn sets greater demands on the egregore and its product.
Brand association with genres, lifestyles, and cultural identity bring meaning and depth to the inherent soullesness of the corporate egregore. It’s power grows as it occupies more bandwidth in memespace, and as it clothes itself in emotional aggregates, feeding on dreams & desire. As pop culture evolves, so too will the masks of the egregore, enlisting celebrities and popular trends to peddle its product. Even after the inevitable demise of its material foundation, the egregore lives on as a relic of antiquity - a memory of pop culture.

Targets

With this profile of the corporate egregore - the magickal lifestyle branders - it should be possible to identify points of entry for magickal attacks. If the egregore occupies aetheric space, then it is open to aetheric assault. It must be remembered that it has entered our space and we ultimately make the rules.
One method is reprogramming brand associations. Engage the corporate sigil directly, then methodically re-brand it internally. Make associations with the opposite of its advertising intentions. Re-brand your conception of Nike with weakness, exploitation, plastics, petroleum byproducts, and failure. By changing your own internal aetheric representation of the corporate brand you weaken its hold on the collective psyche.
The sigil can be further re-engineered by altering it to have a satirical or contradictory message. It can then be re-associated in trance & ritual, or printed on t-shirts & bumper stickers. Then send them to the employees. Use agitprop to re-image the corporate meme in a way that is counter-productive to its goals. Reveal it’s hidden secret in public satire.
As the corporate egregore expands into memespace and becomes more and more integrated into pop culture, it leaves more and more traces of itself. Logos, ads, product placement, branded wrappers, product carried by consumers, news items, parodies & satire - all of these can be regarded as it’s children, like tentacles spreading through the aether. As such, they are potential points of entry… tunnels back to the source. This technique is, of course, dangerous. Putting yourself in a highly suggestive state and then merging into a corporate logo is not recommended. Who’s existence is more widely believed? Yours, or DuPont’s? But for the bold, there is a potential path here.
Magickal assaults can use these techniques to invoke the egregore, but what do you do once you’re there? The fundamental assumption within the corporation is that stuff is important. That goods & services are necessary to human survival and happiness. Conversely, the most terrifying reality of the corporation is that it is impermanent. It’s always struggling against market factors, shareholders, and fickle customers; employee negligence & stupidity; corporate watchdogs and bold journalists. Strike with the inner peace of impermanence. Strike with the relentless change of time, who brings down all attempts at order. Strike with hawk-headed gods and egyptian queens. Strike with the legends and myths of humanity, rich with depth and meaning and integrity. Amidst the backdrop of history, the corporation is a fleeting moment. Show it this truth. Plant seeds of aetheric chaos.

The Big Boys

Most of this paper has been oriented towards lifestyle providers and high-profile manufacturers. But what of the dark forces, the archons of war and exploitation? Are magickal assaults on such entities viable? Safe? Bechtel, Halliburton, the Carlysle Group - these are the real powers stalking the planet. These shadowy egregores prefer to keep as low of a profile as possible. You’ll not find any corporate sigils lying around like keys to the vault. An effective angle uses good ‘ol guerilla journalism. Get the word out. When the profiteering and lies become public knowledge, the dark egregore is exposed and weakens. It can no longer function unfettered. How many people knew what Halliburton was 5 years ago? Now the egregore is under assault. Draw them out of the shadows, then attack with the light.
The best magick is practice. Your money is your voice. Try not to buy corporate products. Buy local and independent. If you’re buying designer clothes, don’t wear labels. Cut them off or blot them out. There’s no way to stop supporting corporations completely. The luxury of the first-world is supported by the cheap labor of the third. But support good businesses, and don’t give your money to the bad ones. Educate people about the worst corporations, and strike the egregores in their inevitable moments of weakness.
Finally, never under-estimate the Tibetan Buddhist rituals of compassion. If you gain access to the mainframe of the egregore, feed it your inherent love for the beauty of nature, the mother creator, the genetic link binding us to life and love and light. The ideals and dreams of the human animal are the most powerful weapons we have in our vast arsenal of evolutionary technology. Sigilize your deepest adoration of the earthly kingdom and give it as an offering to the heart of the corporate egregore.
Then go for a nice walk. "

MIKE WHITNEY: The 9/11 Commission & Civil Liberties: "We Need an American Secret Police"

(CounterPunch) "It is also a fact that America is too democratic at home to be autocratic abroad. This limits the use of America's power, especially its capacity for military intimidation. Never before has a populist democracy attained international supremacy. But the pursuit of power is not a goal that commands popular passion, except in conditions of a sudden threat or challenge to the public's sense of domestic well-being. The economic self-denial (that is, defense spending) and the human sacrifice (casualties, even among professional soldiers) required in the effort are uncongenial to democratic instincts. Democracy is inimical to imperial mobilization."
- Zbigniew Bzrezinski, "The Grand Chessboard"
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"The ambition to curtail the civil liberties of Americans is not new, but it looks as though the Bush Administration has moved that goal within reach. Former National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski accurately reflects the sentiments of many elites who believe that freedom is basically a "nuisance" that disrupts the smooth functioning of empire. Politicians and corporate "bigwigs" know exactly where they want to steer the country and don't like the obstructions that naturally appear in a democracy. They also prefer to have institutions in place to monitor the behavior of groups who may pose a potential threat to their continuing prosperity and power. This being so, corporate powerbrokers and their apologists in the "punditocracy" normally tilt towards autocratic governance.
So, we shouldn't be surprised when Brzezinski blithely reminds us that are just "too democratic at home." His remarks are noteworthy not simply because of their "undisguised contempt for personal liberty", but also because they articulate a view that was widely held among elites even prior to 9-11.
The great strides the administration has made in eviscerating the Constitution, have all been made in the name of "national security"; the "sacred cow" of demagogues. It is understandable that they would reiterate this same mantra to dismantle the legal protections we all (used to) take for granted.
The Patriot Act, the illegal detentions, the branding of "unlawful combatants" (which strips citizens of all Constitutional protections) and the concerted effort to shred the 4th, 5th and 6th Amendments, have all been justified as the "necessary precautions" we need to take to protect ourselves from another 9-11.
Brzezinski's comments prove that these excuses are rubbish. The desire to disembowel personal freedom long preceded any terrorist threat. The type of "top down" style of government that Brzezinski and his ilk favor merely requires a dubious pretext (like terrorism) to rid the public of "those bothersome liberties" and get on with the heavy lifting of ruling the empire.
Look how hard the Republican Congress fought just to maintain one small provision in the Patriot Act; the law that allowed the government to secretly find out what books individual citizens are reading.
The law has nothing to do with terrorism; the claim is ludicrous. It does, however, have a great deal to do with insuring the "unlimited powers of surveillance" of the government. (and, thereby, the corporate chieftains who support them)
After much debate, the provision was left in; another major blow to basic privacy rights.
Even so, the response of the President was extraordinary. Bush threatened to use his veto power to overturn the expressed will of Congress if they failed to comply with his wishes.
No one believes for a minute that Bush made this decision on his own. Why would it matter to a simple man like Bush what Americans are reading?
No, it's obvious that he is simply executing the orders of his most powerful constituents. These supporters are making it quite plain that personal liberty in America is seriously at risk.
It is in this light that we should consider the ongoing proceedings (and recommendations) of the 9-11 Commission.
The most strident voice from the Commission has been that of vice chairman, Lee Hamilton. Hamilton is a reliable Bush ally who proved his loyalty years earlier by helping to provide the "whitewash" for both the Iran-contra scandal and also Reagan's "October Surprise" (the allegations that the future Reagan Administration worked out a deal with Iran to stall the release of Americans hostages until Reagan was elected)
Hamilton has established himself as one of many dependable political hacks on the "hand-picked" panel whose primary function was to make sure that fingers were not left pointing at the President or his team (for the failures of 9-11)
He succeeded admirably. With well scripted bromides like, "When everyone is to blame, no one is to blame" and "We decided from the very beginning we were not going to play the blame game," Hamilton adroitly shifted the blame from the Oval Office to the Intelligence services.
But that was only part of Hamilton's mandate from Bush and co.
His mission now is to convince the Congress "that placing an intelligence director and a National Counterterrorism Center inside the Executive Office" is the only way to reform and coordinate the Intelligence services. (The Washington Post) Without these draconian changes, Hamilton insists that Americans "will not be safe."
"We have concluded that the intelligence community is not going to get its job done unless somebody is in charge."
Not surprisingly, that "somebody" should be a political (Bush) "appointee", according to Hamilton; a clear invitation to more intelligence disasters.
Aside from the fact that the administration has been more prone to politicize information than any administration in our 200 year history, (the conspicuous massaging of intelligence before the Iraq war is the most striking example) creating a "Terrorist Czar" who is appointed by the President encourages even greater abuse.
For the Bush clique it means that all of the investigative and operational levers of the national security apparatus would be entirely at their disposal. Information could be maligned according to political objectives (creating yet another filter between the people and the information they require to be informed) and, more importantly, the President could carry out covert operations against dissident political groups (or perceived enemies) with complete impunity.
When the "top dog" is a presidential appointee, there's no question whose interests he will serve. In such an atmosphere, the objective gathering of information and analysis will undoubtedly suffer. The corruption or "spinning" of intelligence will be an unavoidable consequence.
Senator Carl Levin seems to be the only member on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to grasp this obvious fact.
Levin sagely noted that "greater independence and objectivity of intelligence analysis" should be a priority of any reform. He opined, "Aren't you putting that person closer to the policy-makers?"
Indeed, the recommended changes guarantee that intelligence will be manipulated and modified to suit the policy aims of the administration. (just as it was before Iraq)
What Hamilton and, presumably, Bush are asking for is that supreme authority for the many disparate intelligence gathering organizations (civilian and military) be put under the direct control of the President. And, if the President doesn't like the results he's getting from his new Czar, he can simply replace him. (as he has so often with those who have provided science that that doesn't mesh with administration policy)
There's no doubt that a National Counterterrorism chief will fulfill Brzezinski's dream of shrinking freedom for the American people. With the support of legislation, (The Patriot Act) a compliant Supreme Court (unwilling to rule on even the most fundamental constitutional principles, as per Padilla vs. Rumsfeld) and, now, an internal security apparatus for the surveillance and harassment of citizens; Bush will have achieved the "Trifecta" he boasted of four years ago. The 9-11 Commission will have provided the final ingredient for absolute power; a blueprint for an American Secret Police.
For Americans, the nightmare of diminishing liberty still seems distant and elusive, but the institutions are being assembled one stone at a time."

ANTHONY VIOLANTI: THE UPCOMING BATTLE for the American Soul: Second Story: The stakes in the coming presidential election are frighteningly high

(Buffalo News) ~This is Anthony Violanti's latest story for First Sunday on the homeland's changing cultural landscape. He covers media for The Buffalo News. His e-mail is aviolanti@buffnews.com

"You will remember where you were this summer. It will be the same way you remember where you were when John Lennon was shot, or when Scott Norwood missed that field goal, or when our lives changed as profoundly as they did that crystal-clear Sept. 11 morning when hijacked planes flew like arrows into two humanity-filled symbols of American hegemony.
Now, the American cultural homeland, the landscape where all of us play out the drama of our lives, is about to confront its destiny. The moment of truth for this country is coming, and its name is that four-year commencement known as a presidential election. There's a word to describe all those people who still reject or cannot recognize the meaning of this presidential election: idiots.
This country will define itself in November. American history, the kind that leaves an indelible mark on each citizen, is going to be made. If it's not clear by now, it should be: The direction of our country and our lives will be determined by what happens in this presidential election. Now, in mid-summer, sandwiched between the Democratic and Republican conventions, we are catching the heat of a campaign that will not only shape our future but the future of our country.
And people from all different political and cultural backgrounds recognize how much it matters.
"November's vote will be a big decision on foreign policy, economic policy and judicial appointments," says Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and one of the most influential conservative voices in Washington. "People would be foolish not to care about this election because there's more at stake than just an election."
What's at stake is America's identity and standing, at home and throughout the world. What's at stake is the way we live and what we represent. The campaign between President Bush and Democratic Sen. John F. Kerry, more than any since the Reagan years, will define our country.
"It's horrendous the way we are perceived in the world community," says Geraldine Ferraro, the first woman on a national ticket when she ran for vice president in 1984 with Walter Mondale as presidential candidate.
"President Bush went to Ireland, and you had 40,000 people marching against the United States," Ferraro says. "Whoever heard of that? This is killing us. Something has to be done to re-establish our standing in the world, not only with our friends, which is mind-boggling, but also, if we want to resolve some of these problems, we have to start a dialogue with the people who are not our friends."
Maybe the Bush White House will do an uncharacteristic about-face. Maybe it will back off from its existing policy of pre-emptive war, building a new American Empire and fostering fear-mongering back home with endless warnings of terrorist threats. If the Bush administration does not change that existing policy - the choice between the candidates seems clear.
America needs change, not for the sake of change, but for a return to the values that represent our country. Sept. 11 may have changed the way we live, but those terrorists did not and could not destroy our history, cultural heritage and moral standing in the rest of the world. That could only happen from within.
Sadly, that heritage and the fundamental Constitutional fabric of our society have been under siege for the past four years, culminating with the war in Iraq, the major focus of this campaign and election.
The war in Iraq has taken the lives of over 900 American fighting men and women. But that's only part of America's challenge over the past four years. We had a presidential election decided by a politicized Supreme Court, and the candidate who lost the popular vote won the White House. We live under the bright colors of daily terror alerts and surrender guaranteed Constitutional legal rights in the name of patriotism.
Such digression from the Founding Fathers' vision of America does not come cheap. Consider this little shorthand list of what actually is at stake in this election:
Cost: The White House intends to ask for an additional $25 billion to operate in Iraq and Afghanistan in fiscal 2005, a number Time magazine estimates is only half or a third of what those operations will actually cost. The nation has spent more than $126 billion on the war in Iraq; each American family will pay $3,400 for it, according to studies issued by the Institute for Policy Studies and Foreign Policy in Focus in Washington. Military personnel are stretched to the limit, with extended tours of duty and the call-ups of National Guard and Reserve troops. Bringing back the military draft has been discussed by members of Congress. The financial demands of Iraq War Part II will continue to escalate, sucking up money that might be spent on health care or schools or struggling cities like Buffalo.
International Profile: "A lot of people in America don't understand how America is perceived in the rest of the world," says Jehane Noujaim, a documentary film director whose current film, "Control Room," is about press coverage of the Iraq war. "They don't know why there is this anger against the United States.
"When I'm sitting in a coffee shop in a poor, rundown section of Cairo and I hear Bush on TV talking about how he's bringing freedom and democracy to the Arab world, it gives me a stomachache. You have to understand that the Arab world is seeing film of American destruction and killing in Iraq. It is being beamed into their living rooms every day. That's how other people in the world see America."
Domestic Identity: "I've never been so alienated from my country," Art Garfunkel said in an interview when he and Paul Simon performed at HSBC Arena in June. "I don't think any comparison to the '60s matters. This is the worst I've ever seen the state of the nation. It's as if we're living in a bad dream. It goes on and on, ever since this new White House regime came into power."
Garfunkel is not alone. The cost of the war and White House economic programs have upset conservatives. "Federal government spending is out of control," David Keene, president of the American Conservative Union, wrote in a letter to members.
"This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts," wrote conservative columnist George F. Will.
"We lied our way into the war; it's a terrible mistake, a terrible foreign policy error," Ron Reagan, son of the late president, told CNN. He also disagreed with Bush's stand against stem cell research and addressed the Democratic convention.
Basic National Credibility in the Electoral System: "I don't know how to see this election," Garfunkel said. "I almost feel the rules are suspect, which is a whole new feeling I've had as an American. I'm one of the Americans who kind of feel my country has been stolen from me."
Garfunkel's distrust over vote counting in the 2000 election remains. Does this election year offer any hope?
"No," Garfunkel said. "I think that whatever is hidden from me, whatever pulled off this amazing thing to put such an ordinary man (Bush) in such an important position of power, whatever trick that made that happen, is firmly in place to do it again. And it's still hidden from me."
Earlier this summer, a Senate Intelligence Committee issued a report saying the Bush administration's primary reason for going to war in Iraq - Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction - was untrue.
"Listen, we thought there was going to be stockpiles of weapons," Bush said at a campaign rally soon after the report was released in July.
So Bush led America to its first pre-emptive war (meaning we started it) in history and immersed America in what many see as an ill-planned quagmire because he "thought" Iraq had weapons?
Regardless of one's political loyalties, it's crucial to remember: Pre-emptive war has always been a foreign concept to America.
"The United States has long taken a leading part in advocating an international law which will outlaw aggressive war," the late Robert H. Jackson, a Jamestown lawyer who became a Supreme Court justice and later prosecuted Nazi leaders at the Nuremberg War Trials, once said. "Aggressive war is criminal."
Jackson was also concerned about protecting constitutional rights, often trampled in the name of war. "We must not forget that the process which tries to overthrow your liberties is a subtle thing and is never announced as such," he wrote. "It is under the guise of protecting you."
National Security: "I believe we were right to go into Iraq. America is safer today because we did," Bush said.
But how safe is America?
This year, even the presidential election may fall victim to the terrorist scare. News reports indicate Election Day could be postponed because of a possible terrorist threat. That would be another historical first under Bush.
Iraq, meanwhile, has become a haven for terrorism, possibly the most dangerous country in the world. One of the first acts of the new Iraqi government was to declare martial law, hardly a sign of a budding democracy.
Many, including Richard Clarke, former White House terrorism adviser under Bush, believe the war with Iraq has hurt the American fight against terrorism throughout the world and also weakened the defense of our country at home. During Clarke's testimony before the 9/11 commission, he apologized to the American people for the government's failure to protect them.
"Frankly," Clarke later told CBS, "I find it outrageous that the president is running for re-election on the grounds that he's done such great things about terrorism. He ignored it. He ignored terrorism for months, when maybe we could have done something to stop 9/11. Maybe. We'll never know."
Kerry has suggested the Iraq war has diverted the United States from other threats to this country.
"The facts speak for themselves," Kerry told the New York Times. "There was less nuclear weapons material secured in the two years after 9/11 than in the two years before. North Korea has reportedly quadrupled its nuclear weapons capability in the past year. Iran is developing nuclear weapons capability. Afghanistan has become a forgotten front in the war on terror."
So far, Kerry's exact stance on the war in Iraq has been vague. Many observers think it's by design, waiting until the moment is right to articulate a coherent policy and correct his inconsistent Iraq war voting record.
"I'm surprised Kerry hasn't made the break with this war," Helen Thomas, veteran Washington, D.C., journalist said last month. She has covered the White House since John F. Kennedy was president.
"His mantra was always anti-war," says Thomas. "Then he voted for the resolution giving Bush the power to do anything necessary in Iraq, which was the green light for war. It was almost word for word like the the Tonkin Gulf Resolution that gave Lyndon Johnson the right to make war in Vietnam.
"Kerry has to make a break with the (Bush) policy," says Thomas. "If he's going to be "me too,' he might not win."
No matter how controversial or costly, the Iraq War suits Bush in this election year. The war on terrorism is his badge of political identity.
"I'm a war president," Bush told NBC. "I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign policy matters with war on my mind. Again, I wish it wasn't true, but it is true. And the American people need to know they got a president who sees the world the way it is. And I see dangers that exist, and it's important for us to deal with them."
Despite the gravity of this election, somehow, the media doesn't get the message. Instead of issues of life and death, we get analysis about red states and blue states. Instead of policies of war and peace, we get stories about soccer moms and NASCAR dads. Instead of matters of conscience and morality, we get ideology and a combination of journalism and entertainment that has morphed into something called Infotainment.
The media is suffering from inverse reality in this election year. The more crucial this election becomes, the more it is portrayed as a shouting match between talking heads.
"Politics is becoming an increasingly ugly business," says Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine and author of the book "What We've Lost" due out next month. "And the uglier it gets, the more it drives good people away from the arena."
Voters are having a difficult time as they take stock of where we're going and where we've been in the last four years.
"I would say they are both fearful and their lack of understanding of the real issues makes them hidebound," says Carter. That's hidebound, as in "stubbornly prejudiced, narrow-minded or inflexible."
In a way, the campaign shows how far we have come since those days of Sept. 11, when Americans were united and had the sympathy of the rest of the world.
"I live in New York and I think George Bush exploited the terrible things that happened on 9/11 in the most cynical way," says Anthony DeCurtis, a writer for Rolling Stone magazine. "I think this campaign reflects that exploitation. It's sad and it's frustrating."
November's election represents a clear choice for the country's future. If it's a battle for the nation's soul, even seasoned seen-it-all politicians say that struggle is profoundly worth it.
Geraldine Ferraro ran on the ticket against Reagan in 1984. She learned an enduring lesson about America during a presidential election year.
"You go all over this country and it's amazing how many people you see with the tremendous values that make us strong," says Ferraro. "People are so patriotic, and it's not just waving the flag. They have real pride in their country.
"I remember going to these big campaign rallies. I'd look down from the stage and I'd see men with kids on their shoulders, women with babies in their arms, and elderly people just standing and listening. They were all together. They were there because they believed in democracy and they believed in this country. They believed anything was possible."
Maybe that's what presidential elections are all about: possibilities. Maybe that's what America is all about. This country and its leaders have lost their way before, but America somehow always managed to rediscover its moral equilibrium and reinvent itself.
The country has three months left in this campaign to find that redemptive road, to find a leader who best represents this country's historical legacy and future hope.
To fail, to make the wrong decision, means a long and painful four years until our next national commencement exercise."