whitebeard

Sunday, November 14, 2004

Gott mit uns

Cavalry Regiment 5th Battalion positioned on the outskirts of Fallujah, 10 November 2004.

Found here

posted by: Whitebeard at 17:44 | link | comments |

Thursday, November 11, 2004

Also the mass media

had difficulty

killing him

12 Conventional Lies against him

Barak has turned every stone to achieve peace.

At Camp David, Barak went further than any previous Prime Minister

Arafat blew up the Camp David summit.

All the time, we give, give, give. Arafat doesn’t give anything!

How can one make peace with the Palestinians when they break every agreement?

Barak is the heir to Rabin.

The lynching in Ramallah shows that the Arabs are animals.

The Palestinian media are instruments of incitement.

They shoot at us and the Israeli army is exercising self-restraint.

The Arabs send their children against our army positions, so that they can be killed, In order to provide pictures for the world media.

Again it is proved that the whole world is against us. They are all anti-Semites.

We have no partner for peace.

Read the answers

posted by: Whitebeard at 10:24 | link | comments |

Monday, November 08, 2004

Still for 4 years together

posted by: Whitebeard at 19:47 | link | comments |

Dear American Fellows,

Dont give up. We, italians, we still have our Berlusconi and D'Alema. You have Bush, Kerry and the band of hypocritals. Be coscient, ironic, be attentive, be like our fathers partisans. Be patient, active, don't discourage You. Fight in peace, and for Peace. Don't hate anyone. Be Gandhi.....be The Truth...

You have already done something great....You are also a fundamental part of our future. Stay firm in face to the world....You will win....with the "resto" of us.....at least....

I bet.

(Alamo was about ordinary men)

A glance here

posted by: Whitebeard at 09:23 | link | comments |

Sunday, November 07, 2004

Science fiction is reality fiction

The Simulacra By Philip K. Dick

Originally published in 1964

Plot Summary:
Set in the middle of the twenty-first century, The Simulacra is the story of an America where the whole government is a fraud and the President is an android. Against this backdrop Dr. Superb, the sole remaining psychotherapist, is struggling to practice in a world full of the maladjusted. Ian Duncan is desperately in love with the first lady, Nicole Thibideaux, who he has never met. Richard Kongrosian refuses to see anyone because he is convinced his body odor is lethal. And the fascistic Bertold Goltz is trying to overthrow the government. With wonderful aplomb, Philip K. Dick brings this story to a crashing conclusion and in classic fashion shows there is always another layer of conspiracy beneath the one we see.

In The Simulacra, the population is divided into two groups. The Be's are the masses who live their dull existences with blind acceptance and are brainwashed by a condescending government. The Ge's are the elite who control the population through a matriarchal "puppet" government. The power structure of the country rests on the popularity (and deep love for) Nicole Thibodeaux, the first-lady who has remained in power for more than 40 years.

The story follow a diverse group of characters whose adventures are seemingly unrelated except that they inhabit the same world. Nat Flieger is a record company executive who travels to northern California to record the greatest living musician, telepathic pianist Richard Kongrosian. The problem is Kongrosian is too much of a genius and reflects his low self-confidence and mental illness on his view of the world. Three characters, brothers Vince & Chic Strikerock and Ian Duncan are trying to get ahead in the world but can't seem to get a break. In a subplot that could only have been dreamed up by PKD, Hermann Goering is brought from the Nazi Germany of the past by first-lady Nicole (as she' affectionately known) in an attempt to influence the outcome of WWII. This is one of the more intriguing parts of The Simulacra but unfortunately is not well developed in the story.

There's also a popular leader named Bertold Goltz who is able to see beyond the government's facade and also the limitations of time due to his possession of time travel equipment. When the government facade collapses and the strict societal boundaries are broken down, the lives of all the characters are affected. They all face difficult decisions involving planetary emigration, loyalty to each other and even establishing contact with reality.

There are some radical notion of the world and the future presented in The Simulacra. Dick's portrayal of a matriarchal society draws from the deepest and most basic human emotions. Kongrosian's use of telepathy is the basis for the highest degree of creativity and artistic ability. Dick also addresses the role and need for government in people's lives. He suggests that underneath the surface, society creates a population that needs to be ignorant and apathetic in order to preserve it's own structure.

posted by: Whitebeard at 21:05 | link | comments |

Thursday, November 04, 2004

I must admit

that the results we are seeing do look totally unbelivable from this side of the Atlantic.

Follow...

posted by: Whitebeard at 09:49 | link | comments |

Good morning Iraq

Democracy Fails: Corporations Win
By Peter Phillips

Democracy in the United States is only a shadow in a corporate media cave of deceit, lies and incomplete information. We stand ignorant of what the powerful are doing in our name and how the corporate media ignores key issues affecting us all.

A young professional couple from San Diego stated the weekend before the election, "we don't think voting will make any difference so why bother?" Over 80 million eligible voters joined them by refusing to participate in the most recent election. While having been a voter for 35 years, I can't fault them for their logic. November 2 gave us a choice between war and more war, corporate globalization and more corporate globalization, the continuation of gifting billions of dollars to Israel, the Patriot Act and an expanded Patriot Act, a police state and an seriously growing police state, media monopoly and even bigger media monopolies, and wealth inequality or an even greater wealth divide. With the only alternative to these issues being minor candidates without a snowball's chance, for many voting seemed meaningless.

The issues where a choice was offered, abortion, Social Security, and medical care, were so under-covered by the corporate media that most voters still don't understand the differences. Voting ended up being a faith-based decision embedded on visceral reactions to individuals instead of key societal issues.

The real winners November 2 are the military industrial complex, who will continue to feed at the 500 billion-dollar military trough and the corporate media, whose coffers were filled with billions of dollars for campaign ads.

And can we be sure we actually had a fair election among those who did vote? Election Systems & Software (ES&S), Diebold, and Sequoia are the companies primarily involved in implementing the new voting stations throughout the country. All three have strong ties to the Bush Administration. The largest investors in ES&S, Sequoia, and Diebold are government defense contractors Northrup-Grumman, Lockheed-Martin, Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and Accenture. Diebold hired Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC) of San Diego to develop the software security in their voting machines. A majority of officials on SAIC's board are former members of either the Pentagon or the CIA including:
- Army Gen. Wayne Downing, formerly on the National Security Council
- Bobby Ray Inman; former CIA Director
- Retired Adm. William Owens, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
- Robert Gates, another former director of the CIA.
So we have a CIA/military private firm that programmed the security in the voting machines for companies owned by some of the largest military contracts in the country. No wonder the Co-founder of the Citizens Alliance for Secure Elections, Susan Truitt said November 3: "Seven counties in Ohio have electronic voting machines and none of them have paper trails. That alone raises issues of accuracy and integrity as to how we can verify the count. A recount without a paper trail is meaningless; you just get a regurgitation of the data. Last year, Blackwell tried to get the entire state to buy new machines without a paper trail. The exit polls, virtually the only check we have against tampering with a vote without a paper trail, had shown Kerry with a lead. ... A poll worker told me this morning that there were no tapes of the results posted on some machines; on other machines the posted count was zero, which obviously shouldn't be the case."

Our level of non-participation really means democracy has failed in the US. Democracy is the people making decisions about the important issues in their lives. Freedom is the ability to act on these decisions. Without an electoral choice democracy is non-existent and freedom only means the right to choose your own brand of toothpaste. Without an active independent media informing on the powerful we lack both freedom and democracy.

Peter Phillips is an Professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and Director of Project Censored. For a listing of current censored news stories see http://www.projectcensored.org/

--

Peter Phillips Ph.D.
Sociology Department/Project Censored
Sonoma State University
1801 East Cotati Ave.
Rohnert Park, CA 94928
707-664-2588
http://www.projectcensored.org/
Found in my email