My purpose in publishing this essay is to introduce a perspective, relevant to the debates about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney, that thus...
By Sander Hicks
In defense of the "9/11 truth movement."
Editor's note: The role of the alternative press is to offer perspectives that the commercial media won't touch. Having run a number of articles...
by Abid Ullah Jan
Media Monitors Network
General Pervez Musharraf has partially admitted to some facts in his book. For example he admitted that Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was trapped in the case of kidnapping and...
“The real rulers in Washington are invisible and exercise power from behind the scenes.”- - Justice Felix Frankfurter
It used to be the three branches - congress, the executive, and the courts - that we...
Sibel Edmonds' latest essay makes a strong case that, among the powerful in government, there is no principled interest in protecting Americans from the legitimate threats posed to them. Shedding more light on the corrupting influence of big lobbying, Edmonds shows once again that real security for Americans is routinely sold out for profit. The 9/11 attacks have not changed this basic fact. Edmonds' "foreign agents by default," like the treasonous James Baker, routinely trump up false threats and ignore true ones, all to keep the flow of cash coming for themselves and their sponsors. As 9/11 skeptics have argued for two years now, the 9/11 Commission Report was simply a well-publicized effort to create the appearance of due diligence while assuring that no real structural changes to the corrupt status quo would occur. The hint of resignation in Edmonds' last paragraph may indicate that the enormous pressure she has been under has taken its toll. This would certainly be understandable. Ironically, in her resignation she comes closest to telling the truth of the matter. Congress will not address core corruption. Its most powerful members are deeply complicit in the corruption (see Edmonds' own pointed expose of Dennis Hastert's influence-peddling, for example), and in fact cannot rise to the level of power without becoming corrupt themselves. This is the way the game is played. Electing a handful of new Democrats will not change this - not, at least, without citizens applying continuous, and enormous public pressure. Two caveats: Edmonds does seem to underestimate the motivation that domestic members of the investor class have on their own to steal the future of American citizens. Carlyle Group-type corruption should not be blamed on the corrupting influence of foreign interests. The American kleptocrats need no push from foreigners. Second, Edmonds does not pay enough attention to the way that Washington trumps up the terror threat to keep the public off balance, making it easier to fund aggressive wars and shift hundreds of billions from 'butter to guns.' Still, Edmonds' diagnosis is important for helping to build public consciousness around the ruinous impact of the normalization of investor class lobbying.
The clear-thinking Paul Craig Roberts shines a
spotlight on the most pressing matters confronting
Congressional Democrats: first, repeal the ghastly
post-9/11 legislation that has been used to hollow out
our civil liberties, revoke habeas corpus and justify
torture. Second, admit the illegality of our military
aggression in Iraq and Afghanistan and make the
architects of the policy fully accountable.
Roberts hits the nail on the head in saying, "The
notion that Americans can be protected from "terror"
by giving up the Bill of Rights is absurd. . . The
legislation that has been passed during the Bush
regime is far more dangerous to Americans than Muslim
terrorists."
